Pretty Wanted (29 page)

Corbin limped back in the room. The bullet hadn’t gone in deep but he was bandaged and still in pain. “Where’s Mr. Murphy?”

“He’s gone,” I said. “He must have left in the middle of the night.”

His face reddened and he slapped a hand to his forehead. “That kid . . . he’ll have me in a grave by forty-five. So he just disappeared? No word?”

“He didn’t tell us where he was going, I swear,” I said. That was purposeful, I was sure. He wouldn’t have wanted us to put ourselves on the line for him. Our time of crossing boundaries was done.

“Goddamn.”

“Are you going to send someone after him?” I asked.

“I have to. Even though it’s a colossal waste of our time and resources. And you?” Corbin asked Tre.

“I’m on my way out, sir. Catching a 10:15 back to Phoenix.”

“I don’t have to worry about you skipping the bus or going somewhere you shouldn’t, do I?”

“No, sir. I’d like to stay a free man.”

“Stick with this kid, Willa,” Corbin said. “You could learn something from him. You and Murphy both.”

“I already have,” I said, smiling at Tre.

“I can call you a cab to the station,” Corbin offered.

“That would be great,” Tre said.

When Corbin was gone, I turned to Tre. “Okay—you can’t leave without telling me how you and Cherise got past that checkpoint.”

He grinned. “Oh that. It was really just a good story I gave them.”

“What’d you say?”

“I said there was an emergency backup at the bakery plant and we had to deliver the goods ASAP. At first he was looking at me like, ‘What’s this black kid doing driving a truck?’ but Cherise and I told him it was our dad’s truck and we had to get to L.A. by sundown or there would be a shortage.”

“The cops weren’t suspicious?”

“I can be pretty convincing,” he said. “Also, we gave them a case of crumb cakes.”

“Everyone’s a sucker for Betelman’s.” I shook my head. “So there was no gun?”

“Are you crazy? That was some rumor that got on to the internet. You know how they do.”

“Well, I’m relieved.” If Aidan was more of a badass than I thought, then Tre was less of one.

We stood up to face each other. “So you’ll take the money and deposit it, send the checks for me?” I’d signed the checks over to him.

“Will do.” He gave me a hug and I felt my whole body enveloped by his. It was warm there, and I knew I was taken care of. “You’re going to be okay?”

“Sure,” I said, trying to fake it. “No safer place than jail, right?”

He raised an eyebrow as we broke apart. “I can think of a few. I’ll visit you, okay? Call me when you can.”

“I will,” I said, feeling something catch in my throat. Something unfinished between us, something familiar. But there wasn’t time to sort it all out for myself, let alone try to articulate it to him. “Thank you—for everything. I couldn’t have done this without you.”

“Yeah yeah yeah,” he said with a wink.

We hugged again and then he kissed me softly on the cheek. “Be good, Sly Fox.”

Then Tre left and I watched him from the window, swinging off his backpack to get into the cab. As it pulled away from the curb, I swallowed hard. First Aidan. Now Tre was gone, too.

I looked out at the blocky, mirrored, and shadowed shapes of the city, this city I had come to know so well over the past few days, and felt a surge of affection for it. It had soul and history. People chose to work and love and have children and build their lives in St. Louis, and their energy hummed in the streets.

I understood, finally, why my parents had been fighting for this place, even if their plan had been the wrong one, and why Granger had stayed on all these years to try to represent its people. As someone who was shuffled around from home to home, in town to town, I almost envied them—they had a home of their own.

A few minutes later, Corbin came back into the room. “Your friend leave?”

I nodded. “So I guess someone will be escorting me back to Arizona?”

“Well, I’ve been thinking about that. You don’t really need to go back there, do you?”

“You tell me.” I frowned. What was he getting at? “Are there any other options?”

“I have one. Why don’t you join Leslie in Mexico? Neither of you need to be in hiding anymore, but you could at least get a fresh start out there. I can arrange it so you have amnesty for helping us solve the crime. Consider it my last gift to you. Well, to Leslie, really.”

“You’d do that?”

“Look, family’s all we have, right?” His eyes were kind, if a little sad. “You belong together. And I think your mom would have wanted it this way. All along, I wondered how she could have been mixed up with these people, and something Granger said last night cleared it up for me. He said she’d always been poor, and her parents had pretty much abandoned her when she had Leslie as a teenager. I think being part of something bigger like that group gave her hope. The point is, I think you need to be part of something, too, Willa. We all do. I don’t know . . . maybe that’s why I was stuck on this case, on finding Leslie all those years. And heck, maybe that’s why you guys had so many fans, you know?”

I stared hard into his face and I could see that it was finally relaxed. He had all of his answers, after all of these years. This was his way of telling me he was grateful for helping him put the case to rest.

“Let me make a few calls, and then we can have you sign some documents and get this together. Stay put, now.”

I sat at the table, feeling newly excited and relieved. No juvie? That was awesome. I would see Leslie again. We’d be together. And Mexico . . . Where would we live? Where would I go to school? I let the daydream unfurl in my head. It would be a new life, and this time we were both choosing it.

Alone in the room again, I started looking through the contents of my mother’s bag. There was a soft fuchsia turtleneck sweater, a pair of gray corduroys. I’d seen photos of her and lists of her other belongings. But touching these items, fabrics she’d worn against her skin, was different. I unfolded a pair of jeans, ran my hands over the denim. As I grazed the back pocket, I felt the shape of a folded piece of paper tucked deep within its crevice.

I reached into it and pulled the paper out. An envelope. No address, but a name. The Franklin family. No return address, either.

Franklin Family.
My heart started to race. I slid my finger under the flap, which was already open, and removed the letter inside.

I’ve been trying to avoid this situation for too long. I want you to know how sorry I am about what’s happened. Not a day has gone by when I haven’t wished we could go back and change it. While I can’t make it right, and I can’t change any of it, I can help you with your care costs. There’s more where this came from, but for now, please accept this check.

Folded inside the letter was a yellowed, brittle check, written to the Franklin family for the sum of a million dollars. I stared at the typeface so long that it blurred into indecipherable scratchings, barely believing what was in front of me. Here it was. Her letter.

So she’d been planning to do the right thing all along—to give the money to the victim, to truly help someone. She’d just never gotten the chance before she was killed. And no one had known about this, not until now. Maybe it always takes something big, something painful to make us shift our perspective. In her case it was this terrible tragedy. In mine, it was finally understanding the mother I hadn’t even known I’d lost.

I knew then that I had to call Tre and tell him to send the rest of our reward money to the Franklins. Leslie’s money, the original money, was going back to the bank, but I had to make sure that my mom’s final wishes were fulfilled.

All at once, I felt her presence—so powerful, it was as if she was in the room with me whispering into my ear. I understood exactly who she was and what she’d been trying to do.

And now I knew for sure who I was. Who I’d been all along, and it wasn’t Sly Fox. It wasn’t Willa Fox, either. Finally, I was ready to do the right thing and do it the right way.

I smiled to myself. Corbin would be coming back any moment now, and he’d have all the plans ready, all the documents for me to sign. I would sign them, but I would ask him if it would be all right to use my real name.

Maggie Siebert.

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

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EPILOGUE

“I WISH I
could get this damn thing to work,” Leslie said, fumbling to adjust the angle of the beach umbrella, which seemed to have a mind of its own. “My last one got carried off by the wind.”

“Why can’t we just soak in the rays?” I said, lying down on my towel and stretching out lazily. “Forget the umbrella.”

The sand was white and hot, and the water licked quietly at the beach, the edges of the teal waves barely foamy. I’d arrived yesterday at Leslie’s place in Todos Santos on the Baja Peninsula. Today we were taking the day to relax and catch up. There was a lot to catch up on. Hostages, fake bombs, death-defying getaways. You know, the usual biz.

She chucked me a bottle of sunblock, SPF gazillion. “You can’t just soak in the rays—you have Siebert skin. We got Mom’s lovely porcelain complexion, so deal with it.”

She was put off, at first, by the fact that I’d changed my name back to Maggie, since she was the one who had named me Willa. Then I pointed out that she was no longer going by Joanne, either. We were new/old people. And I also pointed out that it was only fair that this time I got to pick.

I squeezed out some lotion and started to apply it around the straps of the awesome red bandeau bikini I’d bought at the airport. Whatever possessions I had back in Paradise Valley were going to stay there until Cherise or Tre could get me a package through their contacts in the Sly Fox fan network. It was under the conditions of Corbin’s deal that I was supposed to avoid contact with everyone in Paradise Valley, but there was no law against having a middleman. Besides, just because I’d promised to stop stealing and running away didn’t mean I wasn’t going to connect with my friends when I needed to. Some teeny-tiny rules still needed to be broken—when it came to people you cared about, at least.

“So you missed me all this time out here by yourself?”

She smiled. “If you want to know the truth it was nice to have a little me time for once.”

“I’m glad it was so relaxing,” I said, giving her the eye. “Next time I’ll try to extend my stay on the road, maybe find a tougher case to crack so you can work on your downward dogs.”

“Oh, come on. Of course, I thought about you constantly. I worried a lot—I had no idea you’d skipped out on Corbin until he called me last week. I can only say thank God you didn’t get killed by those psychopaths.”

“Thank God I didn’t,” I repeated, shuddering away the memory of the trunk, the power plant, the gunfight. I could still hear those shots in my dreams and feel the panic of losing Aidan.

“So what did Granger say?”

I called him earlier that morning to let him know I’d arrived safely, and I had a few other things to report. “I told him the news. That Mom was planning to send the money to the Franklins. That she wasn’t keeping it for herself in the end.”

“How’d he take it?”

“He was emotional. I could hear his voice shaking a little bit. Guilty, I guess. Now he knows that she truly died for nothing. The case doesn’t look good for him. The car DNA was a match. Chet hasn’t confessed to anything yet, but they have Bailey’s recordings that implicate him.”

“So Granger’ll probably be in for a while.”

“Unless his legal team can do some magic, I guess. I gave him the other news, too. About the paternity test.”

She leaned in. “And? He didn’t have a heart attack right then and there?”

“He was happy,” I said, defensive. “He said he’d been hoping it was true. But he said he would understand if I didn’t want to call him ‘Dad’ or anything.”

“What do you think? Will you keep in touch with him?”

“Maybe.” He was screwed up—he’d let his ambition destroy lives—but he was my dad, after all. It seemed like he really wanted to change. Everyone deserved the benefit of the doubt, didn’t they?

Leslie wouldn’t want me to have contact with him—that much was clear—but she was no longer acting as my mom.

Whatever happened next, I wanted it to be on my own terms. And I wanted to do right by my mother and live by the lessons she’d taught me. Did that mean opening my heart and forgiving Granger? Possibly.

In any case, I couldn’t think that far into the future. Right now all I could think about was the soft sand caking my toes. That me and Leslie were together again, building our home as we’d done so many times before. That I had no other obligation for the moment except to try not to get a sunburn. I had my life here. Weirdly enough, even though my mom was dead and my dad was in jail, I no longer felt like an orphan. I belonged somewhere. And after all my mistakes, I was getting another chance. I vowed I’d make the best of it, that I would stay true to my beliefs but also stay true to the people I loved.

Then, of course, Leslie, being my mom-like sister, had to go and break the spell with some practical nonsense. “So I looked into the school here and I think we can start you in the spring. You’ll have to take some extra Spanish courses over the next few weeks to get ready for it. Forget French.”

That was okay. I was ready to forget French. The language had done nothing for me, except provide me with an opportunity for my first heist. And we all know how that turned out.

A new school. Again. The truth was, I would miss Paradise Valley. As many bad memories as I had there, there were also plenty of happy ones. Aidan. Cherise. Tre.

I had no idea where Aidan was by now. He could be on the East Coast or he could be in Kansas. I prayed he was doing okay, that he was warm and not hungry, and that he was safe and well caffeinated. He would find his way, I was sure of that. It was hard to let him go and even harder to let him be alone out there. Still, I wanted him to be happy and he couldn’t get that at home.