Page 78 of Your Every Wish
“Who told you to do that?” Misty squints into the camera. “Is that Liam? Liam, is that you?”
“It’s me.”
“For cremini’s sake. These girls are going to take you down with them. Okay, everyone shut up and let me concentrate.”
She closes her eyes and purses her lips, and it takes everything I have not to bust up laughing. I’m probably just punchy because it’s so late (or early, depending on how you look at it) but to repeat my earlier sentiment, you simply can’t make this shit up.
We wait, and for a second I think Misty might’ve fallen asleep. She’s still as a fence post. All I can hear is her breathing (she’s kind of a heavy breather) and the constant hum of the garage’s fluorescent lights.
Then her eyes pop open and she pronounces that it’s not the golf bag.
Good, we can go. The truth is I can’t wait to get out of here. Every second we stay brings me closer to the risk of having to call Dex for bail money.
“But it’s important,” Misty continues. “I can see it and it’s a piece of the puzzle.”
“What is it? What do you see?” Kennedy is practically vibrating.
Even Liam seems excited. Who knew the guy was such an adrenaline junky?
Misty closes her eyes again. “A sheet . . . it’s white . . . a piece of paper. That’s it, it’s some sort of document or map. It’s inside a metal safe or a box. I can’t tell. But it’s important.”
“But not money,” Kennedy says.
“Not money. Definitely not money.” Misty opens her eyes. “That’s all I have. I’m exhausted and am going back to bed. Try not to get arrested.” And with that she closes out of Skype, leaving only a blank screen.
Liam turns to me and hitches his brows. “That was interesting.”
“What do we do?” Kennedy starts picking at the wall with the poultry scissors. “She says it’s important.”
“But what does that even mean? Important to what?”
“To us, I guess. To finding the money,” Kennedy says.
“Or to the federal government, something Willy was trying to hide.” Something that might be better left hidden. “And if we open the wall, they’ll know.”
It doesn’t matter how much I protest; I can see that Kennedy’s mind is made up. We are going in.
“The house is being auctioned in a few days. This is our last chance. And the likelihood is the FBI will never step foot in here again. They’ve probably hired some company to sell it off. No one will be the wiser.” Kennedy turns to Liam. “Do you think you can patch it just enough so that it doesn’t stand out?”
“Without tape and mud?” He hitches his shoulders. “I can give it a try but more than likely it’s going to look like someone hastily tried to cover up a hole in the wall.”
“I’m good with that,” Kennedy says.
“You really like living on the edge, don’t you?” I throw my hands up in the air because it’s fruitless trying to argue with her. And the truth is we’ve come this far, we may as well go all the way. What’s another five or ten years behind bars?
Kennedy
We’re on our way home and it feels like we’re fleeing a crime scene. And for what?
After all that sawing with a butcher knife, dust from the sheetrock, cleanup from the mess, and trying to leave everything exactly the way we found it, all we got for our trouble was a book on gambling.The Sports Gambling Bible.Stuck between the pages was a piece of paper containing a row of hand-scrawled numbers. Probably the odds for horses at Belmont Stakes.
In Liam’s infinite wisdom, we snapped pictures of the book and the paper before tucking everything back inside the hidey-hole. No harm, no foul, right? Except we’re right back where we started.
Liam pulls off the interstate for a rest stop, so we can use the bathroom and freshen up. We’ve been going for nearly thirty-six hours without sleep. When we get to Cedar Pines I’m going to stay in bed for a week.
A sharp, cold wind cuts through me as Emma and I cut across the parking lot to the restrooms. We’re on something Emma calls the Grapevine. I thought it was supposed to always be warm in Southern California.
We each take a stall, then wordlessly wash our hands and face at the sad excuse for a mirror in front of the sinks.
