Page 43 of That's Not My Name

He laughs. “Or something.”

Only Max could drag a smile out of me on a night like this.

When I turn down Autumn’s street, the amusement curdles.

Fuck. I can’t believe we’re about to do this.

Autumn’s house is a hunter-green single-level ranch with wide windows and a dead lawn. Her old, dented Volkswagen sits in the pebbled driveway. I pull up behind it and spot her anxiously pacing the front porch in her sparkly sweatshirt.

She climbs in without a word and buckles herself into the middle seat. I drive off before anyone can back out of our plan—including myself.

I try not to look at Lola’s house as we come to the stop sign, but I can’t help it. Tonight all the lights are off except for her bedroom.

“They’ll never turn that off,” Autumn says from the backseat. “The bulb will burn out, and they’ll replace it again and again until they’re a hundred years old.”

I look at her through the rearview mirror and catch her wiping a tear from her cheek.

The atmosphere in the car changes.

Max sits up straighter. I tighten my grip on the steering wheel. Autumn puts her hood down and her face turns to steel.

“They’ll turn it off when we find her,” Max says.

“Right,” I say. “Let’s go over the plan one more time. We can’t mess this up.”

“Okay, first step. Go.”

“You guys drop me off at the park,” Max says. “I wait until ten thirty, then call 911 from the ancient pay phone. I tell them there’s a creepy guy chasing a woman in the park, then scream like a frail old lady and hang up.”

I try not to smile. The “scream like a frail old lady” part is new.

Autumn rolls her eyes. “It’s the night shift, so the call will get the two deputies out of the station. That should make it easier to get around the office without so many eyes. They’ll drive around the park for a bit, so Max, you gotta get out of there.”

He nods. “I’ll get back to the car and hunker down.”

“I’ll park around the block from the station,” I say

“Then I go inside and distract my dad,” Autumn says. “He never answers his personal cell at work, and I already called it six times tonight telling him I can’t remember the Wi-Fi password, the laptop charger is gone, and Netflix froze up on me. I’ll get him out of his office and complain until he goes blue in the face, giving Drew a chance to get past him.”

I nod. “I’ll go in, download the recordings off his computer, slip back out, and we’ll all meet back in the Liberty.”

Autumn leans forward, sticking her pointy little nose into the space between the front seats. “Last time I was in his office, he had folders with open cases across the top of his home screen. The ‘Scott.L’ folder was in the middle, the tip-line recordings should be in there, but they also get emailed to him, so they might be in his downloads folder instead. His computer password is my mom’s birthday. Twelve, twenty-eight, nineteen seventy-six. With periods between the numbers and no spaces. I already texted it to you so you won’t forget.”

I gape at her in the rearview mirror again. “Damn, Autumn, you’re not messing around.”

She shrugs. “I’m a Virgo. I always come prepared.”

I don’t know if she’s piling onto my Libra joke or if she’s being serious.

We stop at a red light. The park is up ahead on the left. The police station is another quarter mile away.

Max looks around the outside and unbuckles his seatbelt. “I’ll get out here. We’re the only car on the road anyway. Good luck. I’ll see you after.”

He snatches a few quarters from the junk in his cup holders, andthen he darts across the street and down the road. Watching Max run off alone suddenly makes this feel like a bad idea again.

“The light is green, Drew.”

I hit the gas. We can’t stop now.

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