Chapter 19
Nineteen
I don’t care if Agent Grant has people watching the Beaumonts’ street. I’m going to find my own way out of here before Miles
has a chance to rat me out.
Because—despite the hug and the genuine way he seemed to care about me—I don’t think I believe him. I don’t believe he didn’t
have a recording device somewhere in that room last night, and I don’t believe he’s going to keep my secret despite what he
said about solidarity. Not outing someone is queer solidarity; committing a crime to let a stranger continue to steal a missing-and-probably-dead-kid’s
identity is not.
So when Valencia says she’s running out to pick up dry cleaning and check in on her dental practice, after setting the alarm
and double-checking every door is locked, I search for a backpack. There’s one—probably Easton’s—in the front hall closet,
but right beside it is a slightly larger duffel bag with ratty gym shoes in it—also probably Easton’s.
I put the shoes in the backpack and take the duffel instead, then go straight to the pantry.
There’s plenty of canned goods, beans and tomatoes mainly, but I only take two cans of garbanzo beans and put them in the bag.
I don’t want to be too weighed down if I need to run.
There’s also a box of protein bars, but there are only eight left, so I take three, hoping they won’t be missed.
Before closing the pantry, I snatch a packet from the open Pop-Tarts box. It’s an okay start. If it all goes at once, they
might notice. I’ll take a couple things every few days until I think I’m ready.
After that, I head up to my room and look at the clothes the Beaumonts bought me. It sucks that I don’t have any of my own—my
stashed backpack under the Starbucks dumpster is probably long gone by now—but I take two shirts, two pairs of underwear,
three pairs of socks, and a pair of jeans, and put it all in the duffel bag, nestling the food between folded clothes to protect
it.
Then I slide the bag under my bed, toward the headboard. I walk over to the door, imagining what the Beaumonts might notice
if they peeked in. So far Valencia and Marcus haven’t been snooping around, but a random bag under the bed might be suspicious.
I can’t see it from here, but being so exposed makes me nervous, so I grab it and put it in the closet on the top shelf. I
push it back against the wall so it looks like any old bag.
“Where’s Mom?”
I startle as I close the closet door, and there’s Easton. I didn’t even hear him come in.
“Running errands, and then she said she had to check on the office.” I go over to the bed and lie down as casually as I can
and take out my phone. I shouldn’t have silenced it, because there’s notifications that the alarm had been turned off and
the front door opened and closed. When I look up at Easton, I have to force myself not to glance over at the closet.
He grins. “And she left you alone! I can’t believe it.”
“She said she knew you’d be home soon.”
“Probably tracking my location, as usual.” He seems bored by all this, but he makes a good point. Is she checking my location at all times? I knew I’d be leaving this phone here when I left, but didn’t realize she’d be tracking my every outing
until then.
“She watches our phones?”
Easton shrugs. “You were kidnapped. She’s paranoid. I’ve found it’s best to leave your phone behind sometimes if you want
privacy.” He takes his phone out of his pocket and puts it on Nate’s old dresser. “Come with me. I want to show you something.”
I get up, looking at his phone, and he nods.
“Leave it here with mine.”
“Are we going somewhere?”
“Yes. And she never tracked us when we used to go there. Put on some shoes and let’s go.” He heads downstairs and I watch
him for a moment before putting my phone on the dresser next to his. I slip my feet into the new shoes Valencia picked out
and follow him.
He stops to wait for me in the mudroom between the kitchen and garage.
“I’m going to show you one of my tricks.” He reaches up to the sensor stuck on the garage doorjamb. There’s a small white
piece of plastic on the jamb, and another larger one on the door itself. He peels up the smaller one slowly, and it instantly
clicks over to the larger.
“Magnetized,” he says, pulling open the door. The contact stays attached to the larger sensor. “No alarm notification. You
can use that if you need to sneak out once I’m back at school.”
Holy shit. My pulse quickens. Easton just showed me how to get out of here unnoticed.
He leads me out to the garage, pressing the automatic opener.
Mounted on the far wall are two kayaks. The aquamarine kayak in the top mount is a two-person, the red one below it is one-.
He grabs one side of the aquamarine kayak and motions for me to get the other side.
There are three paddles against the wall, and as we walk out of the garage, he grabs two of them.
I stare at the large garage door as we pass under it. “Mom and Dad don’t have an app for the garage door opening?” I ask.
Easton shakes his head. “There was one they could use to open and close it, but the company went bankrupt and the app isn’t
supported anymore. They just use the openers in their cars.”
He takes the lead once we’re clear of the garage—using a PIN pad on the exterior of the door to close it—and walks down to
the dock.
“Why isn’t this thing kept in the boathouse?” I ask, pointing to it with my free hand as we pass it.
“An empty boathouse means Marcus can bug Valencia about getting a boat to fill it whenever he gets the chance,” he says sarcastically,
and the way he uses his parents’ names instead of “Mom and Dad” makes my lips pull into a smirk.
He sets the kayak into the water, doing most of the work himself, then holds it steady.
“You get in first.” He nods to the front seat. Nerves buzz in my stomach as I picture the kayak tipping over. But with Easton
holding it for me I’m able to sit down without making a total ass of myself. He hands the paddles over for me to hold while
he gets in the back and pushes us off the dock.
I hand one back and turn to watch him paddle, mimicking his movements.
“Now you row on the opposite side, so we go straight.”
Straight ahead to the island in the bay. “We’re going there?” I point to it.
“Yep.”
It seems so far away, but as we paddle across the calm waters of the bay, I’m shocked by how quickly we’re traveling. Water
laps against the sides of the kayak. Easton’s strokes are almost silent, while mine are clumsy and splash water onto my hands.
I breathe in the salty air and a light breeze skims the water. The knots in the muscles of my chest, stomach, and shoulders
all loosen. I breathe deeply and it feels like the first breath I’ve taken in days. I don’t think I ever realized how calming
something like this could be. As we approach the island, I find myself wishing we could keep paddling around the bay.
But Easton beaches the kayak onto the shore and hops out. I follow, and he pulls the kayak up to a patch of tall grass. The
edge of the island is dirt and rocks, not sand, and there’s a little path leading into the trees.
The house on the shore looks so much smaller from here. Maybe the island is bigger than I originally thought from the reverse
point of view.
“Come on.”
Easton stands on the path heading into the woods. I look back to the house once more before following him.
“We used to come all the way out here?” I ask. He bends a sapling that’s grown over the path out of the way, waiting until I pass to let it spring back.
“Yeah. I mean, I did all the work because you would always whine about getting tired halfway here.” He gives me a knowing
glance. “Thanks for almost pulling your weight this time.”
“Almost?” My arms are already a little sore from paddling.
“Holy shit,” Easton says ahead of me. I can’t see his face, but I can hear that he’s surprised. “I can’t believe it’s still
here.”
The path leads to a clearing with a large dead tree lying across the middle of it.
I step around him and focus on a little A-frame structure built against the tree. The top of it comes up to eye level, and
it’s made of broken tree branches and tied together with frayed twine. Dirty old blankets covered in dead leaves make up the
“walls” of the fort. It’s messy and structurally unsound. Obviously created by two kids who knew little to nothing about architecture
and went with whatever stayed upright.
Easton steps aside and holds out his hands like he’s showing off a new boat Marcus bought.
“Ta-da!”
“Yeah, looks . . . great.” Honestly, it looks like something from a horror movie. Like a group of lost hikers would stumble
upon this and then one of them would go into the woods to pee only to be decapitated by the lunatic who built the hut. There’s
a dirty green beach towel on the ground inside—acting as a rug, I guess.
“You helped me build this,” Easton clarifies.
I nod because I don’t know what else to do.
Paddling over here helped with the never-ending anxiety and feeling of being trapped that comes with living at the Beaumonts’, but now the guilt is back.
I didn’t help build this; Nate did. Easton thinks he’s sharing a special moment with his little brother, but I’m just some random kid.
Easton crouches down, then crawls into the stick hut. He goes back as far as he can to the dead tree. He sits cross-legged
and looks up at the structure with childlike eyes. Then he smiles at me and pats the beach towel in front of him.
I sit at the entrance to the hut. It’s not big enough for both of us to sit in—at least, not without touching the musty blankets
on the sides. Though maybe it was big enough when Nate was six and Easton was nine.
He grows serious and draws a line in the dirt next to him. “Can I tell you a secret?”
I want to say no. Keep your secret, Easton. I’m not worthy of a secret. Especially not since you spilled your heart out to
me last night. Talking about all the guilt you’ve kept for so damn long, thinking Nate was dead.
“Is it a fun secret?” I ask, trying to lighten the mood. And maybe also hint that he can keep it to himself if he wants.
He frowns and turns his attention back to me. “What secrets are fun, Nate?”
Got me there, bitch. So far, none of the secrets in my life have been fun.
“Surprise party,” I say as soon as the idea pops into my head.
He doesn’t smile or laugh. Just stares at me for a few more seconds like he’s trying to figure out if I’m joking or if I really
think surprise parties are the only fun secrets to have.
“That day.” He doesn’t need to clarify which one. “I wasn’t at JT’s house like I told the police I was. I hid here.”
Hiding? From what? Who? I don’t know how to ask, and honestly I don’t know why I want to so badly. But Miles’s offer pops
into my head. It’s new information that he doesn’t know. Would it be enough to get him to help me escape from this place?
“Why?”
“Because I thought Dad would be pissed at me. I still don’t remember what we argued about, but I know I shoved you and you
pushed me back and we kind of fought. And you said you were going to tell on me when he got home. So I got a kayak and paddled
out here by myself. That’s why you got kidnapped.”
Jesus, this kid. How much guilt has he been carrying for the past ten years? I’d feel bad for Easton any day of the week for
holding on to this secret for so long, but knowing that he’s confessing it to me, thinking I’m Nate, makes it so much worse.
And why the hell are Valencia and Marcus paying for my therapy but neglecting their actual son who clearly needs it?
“Stop saying shit like that,” I say. He looks into my eyes and it seems like he’s about to cry. His eyes aren’t glassy, but
his face is twisted in pain. “What happened to me isn’t your fault.”
He lets out a bark of a laugh and shakes his head. “You can say that all you want, but it doesn’t make it any truer.”
And it definitely doesn’t help him feel less guilty.
“Why did you tell everyone you were at JT’s instead of out here?” I ask.
He shrugs. “I was still scared I’d get in trouble with Dad.
I was a kid, so I don’t think I realized how serious it was.
When Mom and Dad asked me where I’d been, I panicked and said at JT’s because I didn’t want to get in trouble for fighting with you, for going to the fort without you.
And . . .” He stops and sighs, and when he speaks again it sounds like he can’t even believe he’s telling me this.
“This is also our place. They knew we came out here, but they didn’t know about the fort.
They thought we were playing around on the island.
We promised each other not to tell them, that it would be our secret place. I wanted to keep that promise.”
And once the lie was out, he couldn’t go back on it. Not even when the police came and started asking questions.
I know the feeling.
“Well, stop worrying about it at least. I’m here, right?” It’s the one lie that I can’t go back on, after all.
He laughs and looks back up at the structure, pushing at the sticks. “I think we need to expand. Or build an addition at the
very least.”
“Yeah,” I say. “We should probably do that on a day when Mom isn’t going to return to the house to find us both gone.”
In reality, I don’t want to mess with something he built with his brother. I’d never be able to forgive myself if I helped
take this apart and put some other fort up instead. I imagine Easton paddling out here by himself after I’m gone and he’s
found out the truth. Crying as he destroys the fort and wondering if his real brother is alive or dead.
He nods. “Shit, you’re right. Let’s head back.”
I stand and we walk back out to the kayak.
If I do help Miles, he might be able to figure out what happened to Nate.
I don’t want to tell him about Easton, though, because he might say in his podcast that Easton’s lie is the reason Nate was kidnapped.
It doesn’t matter either way, though. Nate would have disappeared regardless of whether Easton told them he was at JT’s or the fort.
So if I can protect him from Miles—and guarantee that Miles will leave him out of his podcast—maybe I can help him get closure another way.
Miles knows more about the case than I do, and he’s obviously a great investigator, so maybe he’ll have an idea of where I
should start.
In exchange for his silence and help.
Because Easton has given me a good getaway plan. The police aren’t watching the bay like they’re watching the street.
Once I’m back up to my room, I text Miles.
Okay. Where do we start?