The Disappearance of Sloane Sullivan, page 31
I tsk in mock disapproval but really my insides are all glowy and warm. “You are so on.”
I open my door and point Jason to the bathrooms at the end of the hall. He stands on my threshold and cocks one eyebrow. “Both doors have a picture of a girl on them.”
“A welcome gift at the beginning of the year from the guys on this floor. They were hoping some girls would get confused and end up showering in the boys’ bathroom.”
Jason snickers.
“You want the one on the right.” I watch him for a moment as he heads down the hall. Even though I haven’t seen him in months, he still walks the same. And kisses me the same. And makes ridiculous bets the same. I hadn’t realized until this second how worried I’ve been that something would’ve changed between us. But it hasn’t.
I let the door fall shut and take one last look around my room. Goodbye preppy, hello possibility. Anyone, anywhere, anything. It’s all possible.
A contented sigh leaves my mouth as I cross the room and close my open duffel bag, the one that had my mom’s letter in it. There should be something satisfying to the steady zip, like a soundtrack to me closing this chapter of my life once and for all, but it sets me on edge. I move both bags closer to the door, closer to freedom, but something’s still off.
I glance around the room, trying to figure out why it feels like I’ve forgotten something. I triple-checked my bags so I know I haven’t, but this nagging sensation isn’t going away. My gaze lands on the aqua spot in the middle of Celeste’s hot pink rug where Jason and I stood a minute ago. His kisses and his sheepish grin and his words all mix together in my head: “I was a little worried I’d be wandering around campus for days searching for you.” Then the voice I hear isn’t Jason’s, it’s Mark’s: “In case we get separated during an emergency so we don’t have to spend days wandering around looking for each other.”
The paper Mark gave me with the code and the untraceable email addresses flashes in my mind. I haven’t thought about those emails since that day in the safe house, when I was too stressed-out to remember how to even sign in, and now I can remember them perfectly. My chest tightens. I gave Mark such a hard time about making an emergency plan for the emergency plan when really, he wasn’t wrong about needing more backup.
I study the bags by my door, filled with clothes and cash and, yes, notes about some places I’ve scoped out online as possible emergency meeting spots in towns we may stop in, but that’s it. Maybe it wouldn’t hurt to have more of an emergency plan than just Dixon’s phone number.
My eyes dart to my laptop. Usually I wouldn’t do this kind of thing on my own computer, but I didn’t spend last night in the library researching the easiest ways to destroy a hard drive for nothing.
I’m at my desk in a flash. The email Mark created for me is as good a place as any to start. If it still works after not being activated for so long, then all I’ll have to do is create the same type of account for Jason. My fingers tingle as I type in the eight-digit code to sign in. And my heart stops beating.
There are four emails in my account, all from Mark’s email address.
I zero in on the last one in the list, the one that came in first. It’s from the day the Marshals showed up at school. Since I destroyed my phone that day, the exact timing of things before we got to the safe house has always been a little fuzzy. But it was sent probably right around the time Kessler and Dixon found me. With a shaking hand, I click it open.
Don’t come home. It’s not safe.
Don’t go to our meeting spot—it’s too close to home.
Lie low and reply to this so I know you’re okay.
That’s it. No greeting or names or explanations. I can picture Mark, panicked after Lorenzo showed up at our house, scrambling to figure out what to do next. My pulse races as I click on the next message.
I know you gave me crap about the double emergency plan or whatever, but seriously? Why haven’t you responded yet?
Are you okay?
I look at when it was sent: 5:33 p.m.
I open the third message, checking the time first. It came in at 2:16 a.m., not long after I snuck out of the safe house. My mouth goes dry as I read Mark’s words:
I can’t wait anymore, I’m coming to find you.
Please be okay.
I close my eyes. He thought his family was in town and he didn’t try to leave or save himself. Instead, he stayed and tried to figure out a way to find me, to protect me when he thought they had me. Because he wanted me to be okay. And less than an hour after that email, I was in the Avalon house shooting him.
A feeling of dread settles deep inside me as I hover the cursor over the arrow that will open the last message. I almost don’t want to read it, to know what his last thoughts were before I showed up and everything went to hell, but I force myself to keep going.
Right away something’s different.
Sloane,
I don’t know if you’ll ever see this email but just in case you do, I need to say thank you. For saving my life and for helping me find a way out.
Wait, what? My eyes fly to the date on the email and a cold sweat breaks out across the back of my neck. It was sent eight days ago, the day after I testified at Angelo Rosetti’s trial.
Without your 911 warning text that day, I never would’ve put on the bulletproof vest I bought before we left Kentucky. And without that, I wouldn’t have survived the shots Lorenzo fired at me before I stopped him. Or the one you fired at me, for that matter.
I understand why you did it, even though I wish things had turned out differently. I wish you would’ve picked me. And I definitely wish your aim wasn’t so spot on. Even with the vest on, that hurt. But I get it. You made the choice that helped make the bad guys pay. And in the choice I offered you, the bad guys wouldn’t have been held accountable. I’m glad that recording you made of me helped with that part.
There’s more you need to know, but I’m leaving it up to you. If you want answers, you know what to do.
Duckie Markovitch
Under the signature is an address. In a town only half an hour away.
I stand up and take a step back, the chair squeaking against the hard floor. It’s a trap. Someone in the Rosetti family is messing with me, trying to lure me out of hiding. The Marshals said Lorenzo was in town on prom day, the day I made up the Duckie Markovitch name. Maybe they had our house bugged and overheard it. But how would they know about the email accounts when Mark gave me that piece of paper weeks before prom? How did they know to pick an address in Florida? And why would they wait to send this until after I testified?
The memory of standing over an eerily-still Mark, waiting for his chest to move up and down, searching for blood but not finding any, makes me shiver.
But it can’t be true. I mean, sure, Mark could’ve owned a bulletproof vest I didn’t know about. But I wasn’t the only one to see him dead. There were Marshals all over the Avalon house, way more than just Kessler and Dixon. Mark was described as deceased by everyone at the trials. And I saw Angelo’s face when they mentioned Mark’s name—he wasn’t faking his grief.
It doesn’t make sense.
Before I consciously realize what I’m doing, I’m back at my computer, typing in the address from the email. I half expect some horror-movie shack of torture in the middle of a swamp to pop up. Instead, I frown at what appears on my screen. Okay, that’s...weird. I click through picture after picture, trying to get a feel for the layout of the place, until a quick knock pulls me back to the present.
“Your bathrooms are way nicer than mine were,” Jason says when I open the door.
I pull him inside, leaving him standing in the midst of Celeste’s Technicolor side of the room. “Really? Maybe I should’ve tried the boys’ room.” I was going for light and teasing rather than I just read an email supposedly from a dead person, but my voice sounds off.
He notices right away. “What’s wrong?”
I should push him right back out the door and leave. Just go and forget I ever saw the email. Which might be possible, if I could get one word to stop bouncing around my head: answers.
I hold Jason’s gaze. “There’s a stop we need to make on our way out.”
* * *
“I don’t like it.”
Jason cranes his neck to get a better view of the small brick building that’s halfway down the block on the other side of the busy four-lane road we’re facing. “Explain to me again why I can’t go with you?”
“It’s a bank, Jase. It’s crawling with cameras. And you came here today wearing a baseball cap for a reason.” I tap the brim of his hat. “Even if it’s not my school, we don’t need to be caught on camera together the day we both go missing.”
He bites the side of his lip. “But why that old one? Why not that one?” He gestures to a large white two-story building almost directly across the road from us, all marble and columns and impressiveness. As far as banks go, it does look a little more safe than the run-down one I’m heading to.
“I don’t know, but that’s what I’m going to find out.” I lean over and kiss the side of his mouth, right where he was biting his lip. Then I snatch the hat off his head. “I’ll—”
“Don’t say it.” There’s a half smile on his face, but a tightness to his voice that takes me a minute to understand. He’s thinking of the words I said when I wasn’t coming back: I’ll see you later, okay?
I lean my forehead against his and breathe in that Jason smell. “I’m not going anywhere,” I whisper, echoing his words from earlier. “Except maybe to do a little recon on a bank.”
He snorts.
I pull back just enough to stare into those deep blue eyes and start a new goodbye tradition, a new promise. “I’ll be right back.”
My pace is slow and steady as I cross the street and walk down the block, but really my heart’s beating a mile a minute. Jason’s hat is doing a good job of hiding my face from the cameras, but my hand still shakes the tiniest bit as I open one of the bank’s double doors. I flex my fingers, trying to get rid of the twitch, but stop short when I see a second set of doors a few feet in front of me.
Double locking doors. Don’t let the shabby exterior fool you.
The door behind me clicks as it locks shut. I have just enough time to think here goes, then the door in front of me buzzes open and I’m in.
It looks just like the pictures I saw online: a long, chest-high counter where tellers sit to my right, two large wooden desks with several chairs arranged in front of each of them to my left, and two doors straight ahead at the far end of the room, one unmarked, the other with a small sign that reads: Safe Deposit Boxes.
My feet follow a well-worn path in the navy carpet to the first available teller. She has short hair that’s dyed a shade so red it’s almost burgundy and lips that match. “Can I help you?”
The teller at the next station hands a deposit slip to an elderly man with a cane and says, “See you next week, Walter.”
I take a deep breath and pray I’m about to say the right thing. “I need to get into a safe deposit box.”
“Okay. Do you have your key?”
Key? Shit. The email didn’t say anything about a key.
When I saw the photos earlier, the safe deposit boxes were the only thing that made sense. Short of some Rosettis popping out from behind the counter or a silent alarm being tripped that will make mobsters magically appear in the next few minutes like cops responding to a robbery, what else could I be here for? I don’t know how a bank account could give me answers, but something in a safe deposit box could.
“Um, no.”
The redhead frowns. “You can’t get in without your key. That’s the way it works. The bank has one key and you have the other and both are needed to open the box.”
For half a second I wonder if I should just pretend I have it and try to pick my way into the box. Then I peek at the other tellers and all at once I understand why I’m in this bank and not the fancy chain one up the block. All of the women are older than fifty. They’ve probably worked here their whole careers. Because this is the mom-and-pop local bank. The one that’s been a part of this community for as long as anyone can remember. The one where the tellers know their customers by their first names. The one where someone could be talked into breaking a rule under the right circumstances.
“Actually, I was told I didn’t need a key. That this was a special case.”
The teller’s already shaking her head. “I don’t know who told you that, but—”
“Would you mind checking for me?” I smile sweetly. “It’ll only take a second.”
She purses her lips, but years of customer service override her annoyance. “What’s the box number?”
A string of possibilities flashes through my head: the number of towns Mark and I lived in together, the address of our place in North Carolina, our last cell phone numbers. It’s impossible to guess the right one—I don’t even know if it’s something related to Mark. I don’t even know how many digits I’m supposed to be working with. But the email said I would know what to do.
Then it clicks. “911.” The only number in the email.
My heartbeat takes off as she types three digits on her keyboard.
Her eyes skim over her monitor, then she really purses her lips. “Wait here,” she says, her words clipped, then disappears through a door in the back.
Before all the ways I can spin getting caught breaking into a safe deposit box that isn’t really mine fully play out in my imagination, a different older lady comes back through the same door. Her gray hair is pulled into a bun at the base of her neck and her brown eyes are shining behind wire-rimmed glasses. She marches over to me, clasps her hands together at her chest and says, “I was wondering how long I’d have to wait to meet you.”
A grin takes over my face.
“When your brother came in and asked about setting this whole thing up, I’ll admit, as the bank manager, I was a little skeptical at first.”
Brother? I have to bite the inside of my cheek to keep from hurling questions at her rapid fire. What did he look like? Was he alone? Did he seem oddly murderous every time my name was mentioned?
“But then he explained you were on a mission trip in Africa building schools for orphans—orphans!—and there was no way for you to receive packages so he couldn’t just mail the key to you. And how he was getting ready to leave for his own mission and you wouldn’t be back before he left, so this was the only possibility.”
Mission trips? Someone put a lot of thought into this. I nod. “He’s in a remote village in Costa Rica right now.” That plausible, right?
But the corners of the woman’s mouth turn down. “He made it seem like it might be a while before you made it in though. He paid enough to have the box for years. I’m not sure—”
“I had to end my trip much earlier than expected,” I blurt, trying to cut off the doubt creeping into her voice. “Because of the accident.”
Her face blanches. “Accident?”
I put a little wobble in my voice. “Our parents were the ones that organized all the mission trips for our church, so they basically just traveled from one mission site to another. They were on their way to the airport in Haiti and...” I shake my head.
One hand splays across her chest. “Oh, you poor thing.”
“My brother had just gotten to Costa Rica and he didn’t feel right leaving. They would’ve wanted him to stay and finish the mission, you know?”
She nods.
“So here I am.” I take an exaggerated deep breath. “But now I need what’s in the box more than ever. You can keep whatever he paid. It’s not important.”
“Of course.” She types something on the teller’s computer and looks at me, a hint of guilt in her eyes. “Your brother and I set up a few security questions you have to answer first. It was the only way I’d allow access without the key.”
I swallow hard, but flash her a smile. “That’s fine. Thank you for doing this at all.”
Relief flashes on her face. “Okay. So I probably should’ve started with this one when I first came out here, but what’s your name?”
That probably wouldn’t be a difficult question for most people, but when you’ve had as many names as I have it makes things a little trickier. Like with the box number, there are too many possibilities. Then I remember who the email was addressed to. “Sloane Sullivan.”
“And your brother’s name?”
For a second I’m about to say Duckie Markovitch, but that wouldn’t make sense if he was my brother. “Mark Sullivan.”
“And what is Mark’s favorite sports team?”
I grin. I would’ve known this one even without the hint in the email. “The University of Kentucky basketball team. Go Wildcats!”
She checks the screen and nods approvingly. “What nickname did you give him?”
So this is where it comes in. “Duckie Markovitch.”
She shakes her head good naturedly. “There must be a cute story behind that one.”
“It involves a malfunctioning rowboat and a runaway hot-dog cart.”
We both chuckle together. “Okay, only two more,” she says. “Which of his injuries hurt the most?”
I know the email told me the answer, but it doesn’t lessen the way guilt makes the words burn as they come out. “Being shot.”
Her eyes widen even though the answer must’ve been on her screen.
I shrug. “Sometimes mission trips can be dangerous.”
She nods and takes a deep breath. “Last one. What did you do for Mark that he’s the most thankful for?”
I drop my eyes. Out of all the things I’ve said since I entered the bank, this is the one that most feels like a lie. “I saved his life.”
