Page 40 of No Place Left to Hide

The robotic asshole clears his throat. “As I was saying…confesswhat you did to the proper channels, and you live. It’s as simple as that. When we reach service again, if you haven’t come clean…well…let’s not find out. Hmmm?”

The fucker starts laughing again.

I want to burst into tears. I want to tell him that I won’t confess to something I didn’t do. I want to scream that he’s a fucking idiot for asking me to do this on a stretch of road where I’ll have no service, but there’s no time for any of this.

The long straightaway we’ve been on starts turning inland. We’re going so fast that we eat up the rest of the turn in seconds. The line crackles and disconnects on him midlaugh.

The cell service bars in the upper right corner of the dash screen blink off.

NO SERVICE

I start to hyperventilate. The second the call is disconnected, my downloaded coffeeshop playlist springs back to life, filling the car with calming guitar that needs to read the damn room.

We’re stuck on this empty highway, being tailed by some bitter loser in a shitty car, with no way to call for help for the better part of an hour. It won’t take him that long to run us off the road. Half the highway is cut into hills with thousand-foot drops on the other side of a guardrail.

There’s no way to stop.

There’s no way to call for help.

We’re going to die out here.

Thirteen

Before

September 2nd

Claire watches my face, and my mind races to find a way out of this. I can see only two paths. Either I extend some kind of olive branch and hope it’s enough to disarm her, or…everyone here has to collectively decide to toss her out. I’m not sure how to make either of those things happen.

So I stall.

I sigh and lean both elbows against the railing, looking out over the lake. The moon flickers in and out of sight between the clouds, but when it breaks through, it glitters across the water. A few moments later, the lake and yard disappear into the shadows again.

“This is getting old, Claire,” I say, still staring out toward the dark lake. Better that than the derision on her face. “I don’t know why it has to be like this.”

She mirrors my stance, but she’s taller than me, so her body leans a little further over the banister. “Yes, you do.”

“I don’t. If you told me freshman year that we’d be at each other’sthroats, I would have laughed hysterically. You were like a sister to me.” When she says nothing, I turn my head to look at her. “Remember when we went to Portland to get school clothes before eighth grade? It was our last year before Waldorf uniforms, so we went all out and dragged your mom through at least twelve stores across the city. When we were done, we were so tired we passed out in the back of the SUV and your mom left us sleeping in the driveway.”

Something like a quiet snort comes from her, but otherwise, Claire still doesn’t respond.

“We woke up at, like, ten at night when your dad came knocking on the glass with a pizza. We begged him to let us have a sleepover in the SUV, but he shut that down, so we ate pizza on your trampoline with blankets and spent the whole next day planning our outfits for the first week of school. Do you remember that?”

She’s quiet for a long time. Then, “What’s the plan here, exactly? Take a little trip down memory lane so I’ll feel bad for coming after you?”

“No, I was only pointing out that we used to spend time together without it dissolving into a catfight. We can get back there if we put all this drama behind us.”

She laughs again. “How could you possibly think there’s a way back after everything your family has done to mine?”

“Jesus, you’re like a broken record. For the last time, my dad didn’t have anything to do with what happened at the firm.”

“And mine didn’t plant that evidence. He barely even worked on that case, and he busted his ass for that job. There’s no way he would have threatened everything he worked for by fabricating evidence to sway a trial in his favor.”

“My family is a whole-ass legacy in this county. Why in the hell would my dad threaten all that for a single case?”

She makes a sound that’s part groan and part growl. “My dad was up for partner too. You think it’s a coincidence that your dad was promoted as soon as mine was removed from the premises?”

I shake my head. The tenacity, the single-minded focus on his career, the long hours worked both in the office and at home—that’s what earned my dad partner. His work is his life. Claire’s dad cared more about golfing with the partners than going to court. He didn’t deserve partner. It was never his to lose.

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