Chapter 10
Ten years ago
I told the man interrogating me the truth about what my father and I had been doing in the hotel room. I figured I had no choice since he had the chronicle of my whole life laid out in front of him. He knew every identity I’d ever had; I had no room left to lie.
When I finished, he gazed at me with a look hinting at pity.
“When can I see my father?” I asked. My teeth had stopped chattering. The jacket he’d draped over my shoulders had taken off the chill. I’d finally stopped shaking.
He stroked his mustache with his long fingers and rested his hand on top of my open file. “Probably never.”
The answer hit me like a blow to the chest. At the same time, a sense of freedom buoyed my spirit.
Despite my father’s promises that the hotel was going to be our last job, I’d had my own plans.
I was finally eighteen and ready to be free of his lifestyle.
Our life—all the lies—was all I’d ever known, but I was ready to break away.
To live on my own. I was nothing if not independent.
I’d hoped to escape and find my own apartment, maybe sign up for community college courses and be a normal young adult.
But all that had changed when his gun went off in the hotel room.
Someone else’s gun had been held to my head moments before, and I had not yet processed how lucky I was that my father’s gun had gone off instead.
I had come close enough to death not to feel it yet.
The terror of the cold metal barrel against my temple, that man’s merciless arms around me, would set in later, I was sure.
“Where is he?” I asked.
The man casually flipped my file closed and rested his hand atop it. He looked like he was silently considering something and didn’t answer my question.
“I just told you everything,” I said through gritted teeth. I did not want to beg, but I did not like the game he was playing. “Can you at least tell me if he’s okay? Please?”
He looked up at the shaking plea in my final word. His eyes softened with sympathy. “He’s fine. Recovering from a gunshot wound to the leg, but he’s in custody.”
I sagged with relief. I may have wanted to be free of him, but that didn’t mean I wanted him dead. “What’s going to happen to him?”
At this, he let out a small, dark laugh. He straightened and tented his fingers over the closed file. He leaned forward. “Erin, if I have this much on you, just imagine what I’ve got on him.”
My throat went dry and stiff. I quietly coughed and hoped he’d offer me some water, but instead, he leaned back in his chair.
“And that actually leaves us in an interesting position.”
The dark note in his voice set my hair on end. I tried not to look nervous.
“Look, I know you’ve been through hell tonight—and for a good portion of your life—and most of it wasn’t your fault.
But there are many judges who’d try you as an adult for many of the things you’ve done.
You’re eighteen now, and there’s enough in here to put you away for decades.
” He picked up his pen and tapped the file.
He remained silent and gazed at me until I met his eyes.
“Including accessory to the murder your father just committed.”
My heart surged up into my mouth and brought the taste of bile with it. “I didn’t do—”
He shook his head. “You were in the room, Erin. Your father had a gun. You were a coconspirator in an attempted robbery. No one is going to let you off that hook.”
My heart was pounding. I knew we were in trouble, but murder wasn’t on my radar. My father had never killed anyone before to my knowledge. Until that moment, I hadn’t known the man from the hotel room had died.
I shook my head in a grip of panic. Perhaps it was the shock from the night, but all my training had left me. “Please, I wasn’t—We weren’t going to—”
He calmed me with a raised hand. “I imagine you weren’t, Erin.
I think you were just going along with what your father told you to do, and things didn’t go according to plan.
That’s not your fault.” He leaned in and lowered his voice.
His gaze grew deadly serious. “But I can tell you, with a record like yours, no one’s going to believe that. ”
I felt like I was drowning right there in the interrogation room. All the air had turned to murky, cold water filling my lungs like cement. I was terrified and alone.
He sat back and released a breath. “But,” he said, and my head jerked up, “maybe we can work something out.”
A sick feeling swirled in the pit of my stomach at the thought that he was suggesting an exchange of services I did not want to provide. I became intensely aware we were alone, locked in a room together. I broke out in a cold sweat.
When he opened my file again, I relaxed a fraction. “You have a very impressive skill set, Erin. One that takes most people many years to master. Someone so young being so talented at assuming identities could prove to be a valuable asset.” He paused and looked up at me.
The layers of shock and nerves still clouding my consciousness made me slow to understand. “What do you mean?”
A slow smile spread his lips, lifting his mustache. “I mean we could help each other.”
“We could?”
He quietly laughed, seeming to find my innocence amusing. “Yes. Do you know what a confidential informant is, Erin?”
I’d heard the words before but only in movies and on TV.
“Like a spy?”
He laughed again. “Sure. Like a spy.”
I didn’t find any of it funny. “What does that mean? You want me to like, go undercover?”
He stopped smiling and looked at me straight on. “I want you to think carefully about what you want, Erin. Do you want to go to prison for most of the rest of your life? Or do you want to stay out of prison by working for us?”
It might have been the shock of the whole night, but it wasn’t until he said us in an unusual tone that I realized I wasn’t even sure who he was referring to.
I thought I had been talking to an FBI agent the whole time, seeing as that was who’d busted into the hotel room, but on closer inspection, I didn’t see a badge or any of the storied letters I’d grown to fear shouting in block letters from his clothing: FBI, CIA.
He was entirely nondescript. I wondered fleetingly if I’d somehow been kidnapped on the way to being interrogated.
“Who are you?” I asked, unable to keep a note of fear from cutting into my voice.
His mustache twitched when he gave me a soft smile. “I can only tell you if you agree to take the deal.”
I knew then I was right. I had been intercepted. I steadily held his gaze, finding whatever nerve I had left. “Why would I take the deal if I don’t know what I’m agreeing to?”
He leaned forward on his elbows and looked impressed. “Fair point. Let’s just say I work for an organization within the government that is very interested in acquiring your skill set.”
The government. So, he wasn’t a criminal who’d kidnapped me on my way to getting arrested. He was a legal authority figure, though apparently some secret, covert off-radar kind.
“Can you at least tell me your name?” I asked. “Seems only fair since you know all of mine,” I said with a sweep of my hand over the table.
He seemed to consider with another amused twitch of his mustache. “My name is Joseph. Joseph Wallace.”
I nodded, happy to have even that bit of information.
“Take the deal, Erin,” he said after I sat in silence for several moments. “I promise you, whatever horror you are imagining trusting me might lead to, prison would be a thousand times worse.”
A shiver shook me, but the choice seemed obvious. I was alone and drowning, and when the man sitting across from me threw me a lifeline, I saw no choice but to grab it.