The Safest Lies (33 page)

“It did,” I said. It gave us time to make a plan, to fight, to defend ourselves.

“No,” she said. “You did that all on your own.”

Ryan paused in the middle of the road—calm, finally—listening to my mother’s secrets, too. “What happened back there, Kelsey? They got two people in custody as they were trying to escape the fire. But they couldn’t find you.” I noticed the slightest tremor in his hand, the way he still gripped the flashlight, and the way it trembled as he looked down the gray shadowed road, waiting for help to arrive.

I slowly pushed myself to standing.
Two people in custody.
“There were three,” I said.

Ryan paused, lowered his voice. “The fire’s pretty big, Kelsey.” Implying something more. He took a step closer. “What happened?”

I set it. I destroyed my home, the only place my mother felt safe. The fire that someone couldn’t escape—

My mouth hung open, the breath stuck in my throat. “Get away from the sewer,” I whispered.

“What?” Ryan looked over his shoulder, at the dark sewer entrance at the edge of the road behind him.

I felt my mother reach for me as I stepped away from the car. Ryan wasn’t moving, and I remembered that feeling in the tunnel. The feeling that we weren’t alone. The sound of the door closing in the safe room, the smoke filling up the room so neither of us could see anything.

You don’t just get to take something from a man like Samuel and get away with it.

“Move,” I whispered. My legs were leaden, and Ryan wasn’t moving fast enough. “Move!” I yelled. “He’s in there. He has a gun. He’s still
in there.
”

Ryan switched on his flashlight and swung it toward the opening—bare, empty. Still, he stepped aside. “There’s nobody,” he said.

Residual fear. Leftover adrenaline. My mind playing tricks on me. I took the flashlight from Ryan, pointed it deep into the sewer, leaned over the edge. The tunnel kept going. Running along the edge of the road…I quickly checked down the road, but couldn’t see past the curve in either direction. Couldn’t make out the shadows of the trees in the distance, now covered in a fine haze of fog.

“Hey,” Ryan said, placing a hand over mine. “Help is coming, okay?” But even he was moving us back toward his car.

My mother was crouched in front of the car, on her feet, but low to the ground—as if she was expecting Samuel to spring from the sewer at any moment.

“Let’s wait in the car,” Ryan whispered, as if that could offer protection.

A crunch of leaves in the woods beyond the car, and I froze, my gaze fixed in that direction, searching for movement. The outline of a shadow hidden just inside the fog. A nightmare. A name.

Samuel Lyter remained perfectly still with one foot in front of the other, and then he stepped forward, smiling. He was covered in soot and smoke, and I realized I must look the same as him.

His eyes darted quickly from me to Ryan, and I saw him taking it all in. We were two kids. Two kids with no weapons, clinging to nothing but each other and a flashlight. “Hello again,” he said.

Ryan’s grip tightened around my back.

“Don’t come any closer,” I said.

A gun hung limply at his side. He tapped it twice against the side of his leg, as if he was thinking something through. God, where were the police? The firefighters? We were not that far from home—they should be here already. Unless they thought there was no reason. Ryan said he had us, that we were fine….

“You’re really something,” he said. “Willing to trade your own mother?” His mouth twitched, the thought bringing him pleasure.

I made myself stare straight at him, not looking where my mother remained hidden. Not giving her away. “No, I wasn’t,” I said.

“You set the house on fire.”

I felt Ryan tense beside me. Wondered if he saw me in a different light. As something made of darkness and destruction. Willing to trade lives, when he had not.

“That’s not true,” I said. To him. To Ryan. To myself. Realizing as I said it what I had known all along. “She knew what to do. She knew, because she taught me the same thing. It wasn’t a trade at all.” It was an action. It was a move.

And I had to make another one, right now.

“I realized something earlier,” Samuel said, ignoring my argument. He tapped his gun once more against his leg. “I pointed this at the wrong person.”

Through the shadows of the woods, I saw the gun rise to meet me. Samuel eyed Ryan as he stepped closer. “You will back away now.”

Ryan sucked in a breath, unsure, undecided. There was no good option now.

Ryan would not leave me on his own. I wished for darkness that I could hide within. Walls and gates that would keep us all safe. We were too exposed, and there was no way left to hide who we were. There was nothing but the fog surrounding us, and the light in my hand.

I stepped away from Ryan instead, closer to Samuel.

“Where’s your lovely mother?” he asked.

“Went for help,” I said. “Should be here any minute.”

Come on, come on.

“Fitting then,” he said as he came closer, his steps crushing the dead leaves underfoot, brittle and crackling. “Can you think of anything better for her to return to? Come now, Kelsey, before I shoot your boyfriend. Or is that not reason enough for you, either?”

“Okay,” I said, taking small, cautious steps in his direction. Ryan’s yellow flashlight remained in my clenched fist.

“Kelsey—” Ryan said from somewhere to my right.

“Ryan, everything’s okay.”

But everything was not okay. There was no situation where I went willingly and we survived. Samuel would not leave Ryan alive, I knew this.

I saw a shadow moving in the corner of my eye, something turning solid through the fog—blink and you might miss it. And in that moment, I raised my voice, to mask what was happening behind him.

He was just a man. Nothing more. “Before I knew who you were, I used to be afraid of you,” I said.

He paused. “You don’t fear me now?”

“I’ve seen your face. You’re just a man.”

“I’m a man with a gun right now, Kelsey.”

But he couldn’t see everything happening all around him. He didn’t know us at all.

I saw the shadow closing in before he heard it, and I flicked the flashlight on, shining the powerful beam directly in his eyes. He instinctively raised his other arm to his eyes just as the shadow launched itself at his side.

I dropped to the ground as a shot rang out.

My ears were ringing, and the pavement stung my cheek. I pushed onto my knees, trying to orient myself. I called for my mother. I called for Ryan. But I couldn’t even hear my own voice over the ringing.

And then the flashing lights lit up the fog and the roadside. I saw fragments—Ryan scrambling toward me from one direction, his mouth moving; my mother and Samuel on the ground in the other direction. Her body flat and unmoving on top of his.

The EMTs sprinted toward my mother and Samuel, gently lifting her, gesturing for others, bringing out the gurneys and strapping her down while police rolled Samuel over on the ground. They ran my mother to the nearest ambulance, the doors shutting—my mother gone once more.

Ryan had me under the arms, pulling me toward him, running his hands over every inch of me. His mouth moved, and even though I could only hear the ringing, I saw what he was saying—
You’re okay.

I moved my hands to his face, to his shoulders, his face bathed in the colors of the ambulance siren. “You’re okay?” I asked.

The corner of his mouth twitched, and the ringing in my ears died down. “Yeah,” he said. He pulled me to his chest, where I heard his heartbeat pounding, felt the faint tremble in his arms as he held me close.

Another EMT was heading our way, and Ryan called, “We’re good,” as she approached.

“My mom?” I asked as she crouched in front of us.

“She was shot in the shoulder,” she said. “She’s stable. You can meet her at the hospital.”

“What about…the guy? Samuel.”

“In custody,” she said. “Had the wind knocked out of him pretty good when your mother landed on top of him. But otherwise, he’s fine.” She used a rag to wipe something off the side of my face. “Soot,” she said. “Not blood. I was just checking.”

“Can I take her?” Ryan asked.

The medic looked at me closely, pulled me to standing. “You’re sure you’re not hurt?”

“I’m sure,” I said.

Ryan led us toward his car, sending a message through his walkie-talkie, letting his team know he was okay, and where he was going, and then adding, “Yeah, yeah, I know. I’ll call my dad.”

A car braked to a halt beside Ryan’s Jeep, and Annika spilled out, leaving the door ajar, her hair untamed, her eyes wild. “She’s okay?” she called. “You’re okay?”

I barely had time to turn in her direction before she was falling into my arms, burying her face in my hair. “They wouldn’t let me back down your street, or mine. Nobody would tell me
anything.
” She lifted her head, stared at Ryan. “And
you
weren’t answering your phone.” She reached around me and smacked him on the upper arm, which made Ryan smile. “And then I heard sirens and followed the lights….”

“I’m okay,” I said. “Where were you?”

But Annika was just shaking her head, her curls tickling my cheek.

“She called,” Ryan said.

“You saw the fire?” I asked.

“Before,” Ryan answered again. “Apparently couldn’t get any signal on her cell, which tipped her off.”

“I looked over the wall to your house,” she said, “but I couldn’t see anything. Still. I knew. I took my car and saw the other one parked at the end of my driveway, and that’s when I was
sure.
I drove until I got signal, but the police thought I was crazy. Apparently no cell signal is not exactly an emergency. And then I called Ryan—but turned out he was already on his way….He said he’d call it in. Oh my God, I was so scared.” She shook her head again, and I held her tight.

I turned to look at Ryan, who raised one shoulder in a shrug. “You weren’t at lunch,” he said. And then he frowned. “I wish you’d told me. You could’ve told me.”

“I didn’t want to drag you down into this. Not any more than I already have.”

“Kelsey, you don’t have to drag me anywhere.”

But I thought of the way he had looked at me when he realized I had started the fire. Now he knew all of the truth, and I wondered if everything was about to change. “I set that fire, Ryan. I did it.”

He pulled me from Annika. Held me close. “And I wish I had been there with you. I wish you hadn’t had to do it all alone.”

But I didn’t. Annika and Ryan had gotten help when I could not. And I thought how lucky I was—that even when I believed I was alone in that house, I was not.

—

Annika followed us to the hospital, waited with Ryan out in the lobby while I was taken to see my mother. The police were already in there, and so was Jan, but I pushed through them, pushed straight to the side of her bed, my heart breaking as she smiled. She reached a hand for mine.

“You’re okay?” I asked.

“The bullet went straight through,” she said, gesturing toward the bandage on her upper arm. I knew it would scar, though. That there would always be a reminder. I hoped when she reached her hand for it, when she felt the rough skin that would remain over time, she would remember what she did.

“Okay,” my mother said, taking a deep breath. She turned to the man standing at the foot of her bed. Detective Mahoney. “I’ll tell you everything. But my daughter stays.”

All the stories, all the secrets, came out in the long hours that followed, as I kept watch beside her hospital bed. Jan had called a lawyer, but my mother wasn’t interested in his advice. I didn’t leave her side. This was my story, as well as hers.

Samuel Lyter was his name. A ghost to me, brought to flesh. He was three years older than my mother. He was her boyfriend, and she went willingly. She did. She thought it was her only way out. She wanted to leave behind her terrible past. She wanted her father to come home and see that she had destroyed the house. She wanted him to pay. She did not mean for it to look like a kidnapping, but she couldn’t go back. The story took on a life of its own, as stories tend to do.

Her testimony and my DNA should be enough to bring him to justice, easily. It had started with petty theft, she said. How they survived.
Just wait here,
they’d tell her, and she blindly listened. Samuel and his brother Martin would leave her waiting in the car, ready to drive off quickly. She did not realize at first what was happening inside.

The lawyer told her—and still she did not listen—that she would be held liable for those crimes as well, whether she knew about the violence happening inside or not. But it didn’t matter: she confessed them all.

By the time she
did
realize what was happening, around the time the media had also turned on her father, she found out she was pregnant—and she tried to leave. I hoped that counted for something. I hoped that counted for a lot. And that’s when they tied her up, kept her in the basement, burned her back with industrial-strength drain cleaner, doused the room in gasoline, holding up a match as a threat.

And then one day, she escaped.

Her father was dead.

She was guilty.

The media would vilify her too if they knew the truth. And she had something more, now. I was just an idea then, she said. But still, something more.

These were not simple choices. Most things weren’t.

When she finished her story, the lawyer said he wanted to discuss things in private. The police left, but I remained. My mother looked me in the eye, then at Jan. The room smelled like smoke, and I realized it was me. That I was covered in soot and smoke, and there was still half a story that needed to be told—mine. And that this part I would have to do on my own.

Jan placed a hand on my shoulder. “It’s time to go now,” she said, but I shook her off.

“Go, Kelsey,” my mother said. She brought my hand to her face, which was warm and familiar, and she whispered into it, “It’s time for you to go now.”