The Rules for Disappearing (36 page)

He barks orders to the suits behind him. “Find out if this place has security cameras and look for a picture. Get the tech guys in here.”

He whirls around. “Did he touch anything in here?”

My eyes close as I bring back the image of him entering the

room. “No. We gave him the bag with the ledgers. He said he was calling you and then he left.”

“He got in this house some way. Get someone over here to dust

every doorknob.” Agent Williams screams at everyone in the room,

“How did this happen?”

“I put the tracker in the bag.” Ethan’s voice is firm but quiet.

Silence.

“What tracker?” Agent Williams bears down on Ethan.

“A GPS tracker we use with our dogs. Anna had one, so I threw

it in the bag with the ledgers. I figured it couldn’t hurt.”

The room erupts in chaos. Ethan asks to borrow a smart phone

and pulls up the website that shows where the ledgers are. Agent Williams starts barking orders, handing the phone over to a suit

—S

before he runs from the room.

—N

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Agent Williams turns to me. “I don’t even want to get into why you came out here on your own, but why would you give the ledgers to someone you didn’t know?” His voice is raised, and his face is red and splotchy.

“What do you mean? I did know him. And he told me Sanchez

was killed last night—that you wouldn’t need me to testify anymore,” I say quietly.

Silence.

“Sanchez is alive and well—I saw surveillance tape of him this morning. How did you know this man?” His voice is controlled but still angry.

What the hell. Sanchez is alive?

I flash my eyes around the room, stopping at Ethan. He’s back

next to me and holds my hand. “He found me one day in a coffee shop in Natchitoches. I skipped class. When the school couldn’t get Mom they called you guys. He came and tracked me down.”

Agent Williams lets out a deep breath and closes his eyes. “The U.S. Marshal’s Service is not listed as a contact at a protected person’s school.” He opens his eyes. “Did you see him any other time?”

I swallow hard. This is really scaring me. “Yes, he came to the laundry room where we live. Said he needed to talk to me about Mom. That he had just been talking to Dad, but Dad wasn’t being helpful.”

A vein ticks on the side of Agent Williams’s face. “A U.S.

Marshal will never approach a minor outside of the presence of her parents unless it is an extreme emergency. Like this. Is that it?”

S—

I shake my head. “No, he gave me his business card. I called him N—

because I wanted to know what would happen if I left the program.

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He came and checked on me at Pearl’s once, too.”

Agent Williams holds out his hand. “Do you still have the

card?”

I pull the card from my back pocket. I hate to admit he would

have been the one I called if Ethan and I got into trouble.

“What made you call him and not some other agent? You have

a hotline number to call if there’s a problem.”

I shrug, feeling helpless. “I don’t know. He seemed nice. He’s the only one of you who ever really talked to me.” I feel so stupid.

Agent Williams holds it by the edges and inspects it closely,

turning it over several times. “This is a fairly good copy. Don’t know that I would recognize it as a fake.” He drops it into a plastic bag that is offered by one of the other suits.

The tech team arrives, and the suits direct them around the

house.

Ethan and I are ushered to the den and we sit on the edge of

the couch. Carla and Elle are gone. I’m assuming they left with the paramedics. I don’t hear Laura screaming anymore either. Mrs.

Price came home at some point, pointing her finger and threatening lawsuits but they moved her out pretty quick.

Agent Williams crouches down in front of us. “I’m going to

bring a few people in. In case they can’t get him, we’re going to need you to remember as much as you can about the conversations you’ve had with this man. There will also be a sketch artist. Work with him and let’s see if we can get some sort of idea of what he looks like. The housekeeper and your friend never saw him, but luckily, you both did.”

—S

Yeah, real lucky.

—N

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Agent Williams stands to leave and I crumble into Ethan’s

arms. All the adrenaline is gone. I’m left with the sinking feeling of being right back where I started. If the ledgers are gone and they know my memory is back, I’m back on the chopping block. I’m worried the suits will still want me to testify against Sanchez, but I’m more worried Sanchez still wants me dead.

We’re drained. Ethan and I have been questioned all afternoon. I repeated my conversations with Thomas over and over to make sure I remembered every detail. The artist was here and created a pretty accurate drawing of what he looks like. Ethan and I couldn’t agree on a few things, like the exact shape of his eyes, but all in all it’s good. The techs collected a ton of prints.

Ethan and I lean back into the couch. My head’s on his shoulder and we watch all the activity around us.

Ethan turns his head toward my ear. “We could make a run

for it.”

I smile. “If I thought we could get away with it, I’d be the first one out the door.”

He plays with my fingers. “So, what does this mean?”

I shrug. “I guess I’m back in the program. I don’t know. With

the ledgers gone, I’m all they’ve got.”

“You could refuse. If Thomas worked for Sanchez or the drug

cartel, he could have killed us both this morning. Why didn’t he?

Two quick shots and we’d be gone.”

I get goose bumps when he says this. It’s a thought I’ve had

S—

crawling around in the back of my mind, but was too scared to let it N—

come to the surface. Ethan’s right. We should be dead right now. In 306

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fact, he’s had a handful of times to kill me.

I curl up and bury my head in the cushions. I can’t take any more of this. Nothing is what I thought it was and I feel like I am going crazy. Ethan keeps a hand on my back but doesn’t say anything else.

I turn my head and watch the room. It’s still full of people writing reports and talking on phones, it reminds me of that morning at my house. My world is falling apart and its business as usual. Agent Williams is in the corner, his phone to his ear. He’s listening to the conversation but watching me and his expression is not good.

He hangs up his phone without saying a word. He shouts,

“Everyone’s got what they need in here. Let’s take what we have and start looking for this guy.”

The suits pack everything up and scatter one by one, leaving

Ethan and me alone with Agent Williams.

He sits down in the chair, looking at us both. His hair is sticking up in the back and his eyes look tired. “I just got a call from one of our agents following the tracker. They traced the signal to Eduardo Sanchez’s home. Sanchez is dead. The tracker was stuck in his pocket and his body was still warm. We’ve had agents on him ever since the shooting, but no one saw anything this morning. In fact, they didn’t realize there was a problem with Sanchez until the other agents showed up looking for the tracker.”

“Was it Thomas?” I ask.

Agent Williams looks deflated. “No one knows. No one saw

anything.”

“How did he die?” Ethan asks. I don’t know if I want to hear

the answer.

—S

“His neck was cut from one side to the other.”

—N

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I bury myself in Ethan’s side while he stares at the floor.

“So what does this mean?” I ask.

“Well, that’s the kicker. For you, it’s actually good news. There’s no one to testify against. And no reason anyone should come looking for you. If Thomas wanted you dead, that’s all we would’ve found when we got here.”

I should be relieved. But I’m sick inside. And confused. For

whatever reason, Agent Thomas let us live and I’ll probably never know why.

S—

N—

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THREE WEEKS LATER

Thedoorbell rings and I struggle to get it open without messing up my nails. Catherine, Julie, and I got mani’s and pedi’s for the Mardi Gras Ball tonight and the polish I picked was called “Cajun Shrimp.” I thought that was appropriate since my family has decided to make Louisiana home.

“I have a delivery for Anna Boyd.”

I can’t help but squeal at the huge daisy arrangement filling the doorway. My boyfriend rocks!

The last three weeks have been crazy. It was three days before the suits let us leave Arizona. Dad flew out and was so pissed at what Ethan and I did that he lectured us off and on for two days.

And when he wasn’t scolding me, he was hugging me and telling

me over and over how sorry he was that this happened to us. In the end, they flew us back to Louisiana while a couple of agents drove Fred’s Mustang home.

I carry the flowers back to my room. Dad stayed with the fac-

tory but moved to the accounting department so we were out of the

—S

tiny cottage and into a house not far from Ethan’s.

—N

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Teeny pokes her head in a few minutes later and says, “Don’t

forget Ethan said I could take a ride in the limo before you go to the dance.”

“We won’t forget,” I answer.

Teeny’s better, but she still freaks if we don’t get home when we say we will. And I don’t think she’ll ever get over her fear of men in suits.

She stayed with Pearl when Dad was with us and she didn’t

speak to me or Dad for three days after we got back. She was mad we left her behind.

But she forgave Ethan immediately. Figures.

It’s chaos when Ethan and the rest of the group finally show

up at the house. We’re riding with Will, Catherine, Julie, and Trey.

Dad drags us all in front of the fireplace for pictures. He takes shots of us as a group and then each couple. It’s pretty embarrassing.

I hug him on my way out and he whispers, “I’ll e-mail these to Mom. She’d love seeing you all dressed up like this.”

Mom’s in a treatment facility in Baton Rouge. Dad’s the only

one who’s seen her and has been trying to talk me into visiting her soon. Not sure I’m ready for that yet.

We take Teeny for a ride through the neighborhood; she presses every button and climbs all over us.

The school dances are different here. In Arizona, the school

would have rented a ballroom from one of the best hotels. We would have had a three-course meal first, then danced to a well-known band. Not in Natchitoches, though. The ball is in the gym and deco-S—

rating means throwing tons of green, yellow, and purple streamers N—

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two, but three balloon arches. It’s pretty cheesy but I love it.

Ethan and I head straight for the dance floor, where a slow song is playing. He pulls me close, and we sway in rhythm to the music, my face buried in his neck and his arms tight around my waist. It’s hard to believe I’m here. With him. In a cute dress Catherine and I went shopping for last week.

It’s moments like this when Thomas creeps into my mind.

When I realize how lucky I am to be here. There’s not a day that goes by that I don’t try to figure out why he didn’t kill us. And I still have the nightmare at least once a week.

I raise my head slightly and look over Ethan’s shoulder and see Ben and Emma dancing nearby. “I’m still not sure it’s a good idea for us all to go to the cabin together.” I whisper in Ethan’s ear.

“It’ll be fine. Will and Catherine will be there, too. I owe Ben a weekend at the camp and he’s holding me to it.” The suits tracked Ben down about an hour from the fishing cabin and held him the rest of the weekend, not believing he didn’t know where we were.

“And just think—a road trip with no drug smugglers, hit men, or government agents. It’ll be great.

Ben and Ethan have made some headway in repairing their

friendship. Emma and I have formed an unspoken truce. We’ll

probably never be friends but at least she’s not hostile anymore. I can’t tell if she’s scared of me or impressed by me.

Ethan and I are sort of like rock stars at school now. No one

knows the whole story, just enough to make us seem really cool and mysterious. I’m back to my original name, hair, and eye color and it seems to freak people out.

—S

“When do you have to be home?” Ethan asks. Dad’s loosened

—N

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up a lot and even helps Ben’s dad with his books. There’s a small chance now that his family might not lose his farm.

“Not for a while. I told him we’d be late.” We’ve been insepa-

rable since we got back. I don’t think he’ll ever know what it meant to me that he was there when I needed him, but I’m trying every day to show him.

Catherine waves to us from across the room. “I think everyone’s ready to head to Will’s,” Ethan says.

Time for the after-party.

I step away and he pulls me back in quickly, kissing me on the small daisy tattoo that’s showing on my bare shoulder before letting me go again.