Page 86 of Five Survive

“What did you say?” Oliver asked her again, and she could feel his eyes boring into hers, an almost physical sensation. She didn’t like it, him looking at her like that, it might leave a mark.

“I have the secret. It’s me,” she said, voice almost failing her.

Everyone else was watching her too, Red checked around the RV. There was a look of shock in Maddy’s eyes. Wait, was it shock, or that same strange look from before?

The static fizzed in her hands, and Red hugged the walkie-talkie to her chest, purring against her empty rib cage because her heart was still climbing, in her ears now.

She had to give it up.

“Well, what is it?” Oliver spat, puppet strings pulling his head to one side, hanging askew on his neck.

“You okay?” Simon spoke across him, patting Arthur on the back as he finally straightened up.

“Fine,” Arthur said, brushing Simon off to look at Red. A question in his eyes, the same as in everyone else’s.

“Well?” Oliver took a step forward. “What is it?”

“R-Red?” Maddy said tentatively, tripping over the word.

Red exhaled. Her heart had moved out the top of her head now, somewhere loose in the RV, fleeing from that look on Oliver’s face.

“It’s me,” she said, framing each word carefully, choosing the right ones. “I’m the witness.” She paused. “The protected witness, in the Frank Gotti case.”

Oliver’s eyes snapped open, first shock, then disbelief. “No.” He shook his head. “It can’t be you.”

And how much easier it would be to agree with him. But Red couldn’t.

“It is me,” she said, treading carefully, like Reyna had before, tiptoeing around the landmines in Oliver’s eyes. “I’m the witness in the case.” She took one more breath and began. “I was walking in this little park on the waterfront, Washington Avenue Green. This was last August, August twenty-eighth. It was nine o’clock in the evening, not quite dark yet, but getting there. I was walking to the bus stop on Columbus Boulevard, I’d been at the Staples nearby for school supplies earlier. I decided to go through the park rather than walk on the road. It’s nicer there.”

Red paused, but she didn’t need to. Words rehearsed so many times, over and over, she didn’t even need to think about them. They followed each other out of her mouth, in their prearranged order, just like in her statements. The way she would have said it all at the pretrial conference in two weeks, and at the trial. She was ready. Keep her face straight and her story straight. All the details.

“I was on the path, going past the back of the industrial complex there. The map says it’s for sheet-metal workers,” she said. “I didn’tknow that then, though. There was no one else around at that time, just me. And then…” Red did need to pause here, checking that the others were listening, that Oliver hadn’t crept any closer while she’d been talking. “I heard two gunshots. One right after the other.One-two.It was close by, though. Real close. Somewhere out the back of the parking lot there, near the dumpsters. I didn’t want to run in case they started shooting at me too, so I hid in one of the bushes by the path. And I waited.”

Red swallowed.

“Keep going,” Oliver said, like she needed his permission to continue and he was giving it.

“I heard footsteps on the pavement, and I looked up and I saw him. He didn’t see me, but he walked right by me. A white man in his fifties. Dark curly hair. Long, tan coat, even though it was warm out. I later identified him from photographs. It was Frank Gotti,” Red said. “Definitely him. There was no one else around after the gun went off. I left about ten minutes later, once I was sure he was gone. Tried to forget about it. But I called in to the police station a couple days later, after I heard about the body they found there that evening. Joseph Mannino. Shot twice in the back of the head. I should have called it in earlier, but I didn’t know anyone got shot until it was on the news. I heard Frank Gotti kill him, saw him leaving the scene. I’m that witness.”

She finished, daring a glance up at the others. Arthur was looking down, chewing his lower lip with a small shake of the head, like he couldn’t believe it. Oliver was staring right at her, Red could feel it; she tried to avoid his gaze, to not fall into that trap. Reyna was watching, tears gone now, a small sympathetic stretch in her mouth, not a smile, but on the way there. Simon puffed his cheeks, blowing out a mouthful of air, not meeting Red’s eye. Why wouldn’t he look ather, avoiding her gaze like she was avoiding Oliver’s? Maddy was behind; Red couldn’t see her, so Maddy couldn’t see her either and that was lucky. It was half the story, half the plan. But the only half they needed to know. Red couldn’t say the rest, not here, right in front of them.

“Why did you never tell me?” Maddy croaked, and now Red spun to look at her, over by the table. Just five feet between them, but it felt longer somehow, different sides of the RV.

“I wasn’t allowed to, Maddy,” Red said, shrugging one shoulder, just one. “Full anonymity for my agreement to testify in court. I had to sign a lot of paperwork. It was for my own safety, they said. No one knows, that’s the whole point. Not even my dad.” Red had turned eighteen in the first week of September, when this was all starting. She was an adult in the eyes of the law now, she didn’t need to tell him. Not that she was sure it would have registered, anyway. Nothing did anymore, hardly noticing whether she was coming or going, home or not. Maybe he didn’t even notice the cold inside their house in winter.

Oliver cleared his throat, eyes back and forth like he was working through her story, sifting through the details. He was prelaw, didn’t you know? “Why were you at that Staples?” he asked. “There’s one closer to where we live.”

Red had been prepared for any question about her testimony, including that, running through them like drills, memorizing her responses so she could make them look natural on the stand.

“Sometimes I go to the waterfront, by the piers,” she said, clearing her throat, pausing in the appropriate place. “Because it’s close to where my m…” She breathed, and that wasn’t part of the act; it still hurt to say, guilt churning in her gut beside the fear and dread. “Where my mom died.”

No one reacted, faces blank as a favor to Red. No one except Maddy, a rustle as she fidgeted somewhere behind, an outward breath that almost sounded like a sigh. Maybe Red was banned from saying the word too. Sorry.

Oliver raised his head, another question forming on his lips. “What are the chances that it was you, you’re the lead witness for the prosecution, and our mom is the lead prosecutor?” Except it wasn’t a question, not one Red knew how to answer at least.

“Oliver,” Maddy said, stepping forward, voice stronger now. “Don’t you see? That’s probably why Mom fought so hard to have this case, to make sure it wasn’t tried in federal court. It was so she could protect Red. Make sure her name was kept out of all court documents,that she was completely anonymous. She would have wanted to be in charge of all that, for Red.”

Maddy was right, her mom had done all that. Red had met with Catherine Lavoy many times over the past six months, not as Red and her best friend’s mom, or her dead mom’s best friend, but as assistant district attorney and her lead eyewitness in an upcoming case, going over the facts and Red’s testimony, practicing for trial. She was safe, Catherine would tell her. Her name would never get out, she promised. Except now it was, promise or not.

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