I PULLED MY HAND FREE from Parvati’s and gave it a fierce wipe against the safe darkness of my pants. My fingers came away clean. “Blood? How could you possibly know that?”
“I tasted it,” she replied. “Salty. Metallic.”
“Gross,” I said. “And not exactly scientific.” My voice was sharp with doubt, but there was a part of me that believed her. She was usually right about weird things. Hell, she was usually right about everything.
Without warning, Alexis Destroyer started singing again, the tinny ringtone surprising me so much that I dropped Preston’s phone. Parvati and I both watched as it landed facedown in the trunk next to a larger smear of brown on the upholstery.
More blood.
She wrapped her hand in her sleeve and reached out for the phone.
“Wait,” I said. “It’s mine this time.” I fished around in my pocket, but the caller had hung up. The icon for a new voicemail message appeared. It was from Special Agent McGhee. He and Gonzo were on their way over to my house. One of my teachers had probably told them I skipped school. “The feds are looking for me. I have to get home.”
“No,” Parvati said. “You can’t go home.” She headed back toward the passenger seat.
“What? Why not?” The world blurred in front of my eyes. My brain felt like it was barely functioning, like someone had put me on frame-by-frame advance while Parvati was operating on fast-forward.
“Because they have something on you, or they wouldn’t be so hell-bent on questioning you again. Maybe they GPS’d this phone while your car was parked at home.”
“Yeah, but I didn’t put it in my trunk,” I protested.
“I know,” Parvati said. “But what makes you think the feds will believe you?”
“You’re being paranoid. They’ve been waiting for me to call them all day. Maybe they just have new information,” I said. “Or someone at school blabbed about Liars, Inc. and they figured out what happened. Anyway, I should fess up about Pres going to Vegas to meet Violet, just in case she’s some crazy stalker who has him chained up in her basement.” It had been stupid not to tell them earlier, but they had treated me like a criminal from the second they saw me—especially Gonzalez—and I didn’t want to give them the satisfaction of admitting any wrongdoing. Plus, back then I still thought Preston was going to show up any second and have a good laugh at my expense.
But what about now?
The phone. The blood. Parvati could be wrong—it didn’t have to be blood. The trail leading down to the beach had clay mixed in the dirt. It could be that. Or it could be rust from my camp stove. Or maybe it was blood but Preston just had chapped lips or a cut on his hand. It wasn’t a big pool of red, after all. Just a couple of brownish smudges. Somehow Pres’s phone had gotten mixed up with the camp stuff he brought for me, and that’s how it got in my trunk. He was probably fine, just sleeping off a sex-and-alcohol hangover.
Still, it would be shitty of me to let his parents worry. I could tell the FBI about the alibi without mentioning Parvati or Liars, Inc. That way they could make some calls, check out Violet, and see if Preston’s car broke down or he got arrested for underage gambling.
“Don’t worry, I won’t bring up your name.” I headed back to the driver’s seat.
“I’m not worried about me,” she said. “If you’re going home, I’m coming with you. I want to hear what they say.”
“We’re supposed to be broken up, P. They could tell your dad—”
“They don’t have to know I’m there. I’ll hide in the kitchen or a closet or whatever.”
“What about the Grape?”
“My car’s still at school. I walked to your house.”
I knew her well enough to know that when she got an idea like this into her head I wasn’t going to be able to change her mind. “Fine,” I said. “We’d better get going or they’re going to beat us there.”
Parvati slipped her tiny frame into our overstuffed living room coat closet, adeptly straddling a bouncy seat and other assorted baby stuff. The feds showed up a few minutes later. Gonzalez let the door slam shut behind him, and I twitched at the sharp noise.
“What’s the matter, kid?” Gonzalez asked. “Awfully jumpy.”
“I guess I’ve been a little on edge since my friend disappeared, jackass.”
“Watch your mouth,” Gonzalez barked.
I rolled my eyes at him. I was pretty sure calling an FBI agent a jackass wasn’t against the law. Especially since it was true.
McGhee eyed the seating options and selected the overstuffed armchair. That left the sofa and the rocking chair. Gonzalez sat on the side of the sofa nearest to McGhee, and I plunked down in the rocker.
No one said anything for a moment. I swore I could hear Parvati’s breathing, slow and steady, from the closet. Then McGhee flipped open his notebook and pulled a nubby pencil from the pocket of his shirt. My heart started pounding, getting bigger with each beat, crowding out my lungs so it was hard to breathe. What the hell was going on?
McGhee cleared his throat. “I just have a couple follow-up questions for you, Max.”
“Yeah?” My voice actually squeaked. I wanted to kick myself. Or better yet, kick Gonzalez. I could see him fighting a smile. I raked a hand forward and then backward through my hair, leaving one of my eyes obscured by bangs.
“Did you and Preston argue the night of your camping trip?”
This again? I shook my head. “The answer is still no. Why?”
Gonzalez started to say something, but McGhee cut him off. “We received a call from someone who says they saw two boys arguing at the top of Ravens’ Cliff Saturday night.”
“Bullshit. We were walking along the cliff and Preston got too close to the edge for me. I told him to stop freaking me out. I wouldn’t call that arguing.”
“So there was no physical struggle? No pushing and shoving?”
“Preston outweighs me by at least sixty pounds. If there had been pushing or shoving, my broken ass would be floating out to sea right now.”
McGhee abruptly changed the subject. “Did Preston take your ex-girlfriend to homecoming?”
I almost blurted out that Parvati and I were still together. “Yeah. So what? They went as friends. We’re all friends.”
“So Ms. Amos isn’t dating Preston?” he asked.
“Nope,” I said. “They’ve never dated.”
McGhee nodded. “And Preston’s car. You said he parked it next to you in the overlook parking lot?”
“Yeah.”
“That’s a problem, Max,” McGhee said. “We have multiple witnesses that swear Preston’s car wasn’t at the beach parking lot on Sunday morning.”
“Well, yeah, not after he went home.”
McGhee flipped back in his notebook. “According to you, Preston left about nineish.”
“Uh—” A wave was brewing inside my stomach. McGhee had set me up when I was leaving the station with Darla and Ben. He waited until my guard was down to ask about the parking. “I might have been a little off.”
“According to multiple eyewitnesses, Preston’s car wasn’t there at six, when the sun came up.” Gonzalez leaned forward for emphasis.
Fucking Jacobsen brothers. It had to be. No one else was there. I bet one of them was the mysterious eyewitness who saw Pres and me “arguing” too.
“Can you explain how Preston’s car was parked at the overlook parking lot Sunday morning and also not parked there?” McGhee asked.
“Isn’t eyewitness testimony wrong a lot?” I asked. “My little sister is always watching detective shows, and it seems like I’ve heard that over and over.”
“Sometimes.” McGhee chewed on the end of his pencil. He sighed. “Look, I want to believe you, Max, but I know you’re not being straight with me. I can help you if you tell me the truth.”
“Or,” Gonzalez said, “we can arrest you for obstruction of a criminal investigation if you keep lying to us.”
I looked back and forth from McGhee to Gonzalez and didn’t say anything for a few seconds. Then I blurted out, “Here’s the deal. The camping trip was just a cover.”
Gonzalez’s eyebrows shot up, but he kept quiet for once.
“What do you mean?” McGhee had a knack for keeping his face perfectly expressionless. It was a little creepy.
I told him how Preston had asked me to cover for him so that he could go to Vegas to meet a girl. As I talked, McGhee made notes and Gonzalez made faces. Snarls and sneers, the kinds of looks you give to someone you think is totally full of shit.
I finished my story and McGhee sat in silence for a moment, looking at me, but not really. More like looking through me at the living room wall. He nodded to himself. “Got a last name for this Violet?” he asked.
“No,” I said.
Gonzalez laughed. A brittle sound, like breaking glass.
“Something funny?” I asked him.
“What’s funny is how often the stories start to change once we catch someone in a lie.” He reached up to scratch the side of his neck. “Although you think quick on your feet, I’ll give you that, kid.”
“It’s the truth,” I said.
“Why wasn’t it the truth yesterday?” McGhee asked, nibbling on his pencil again.
I shrugged. I still didn’t want to tell them about Liars, Inc. It wasn’t like any of our classmates had kidnapped Preston. “I thought everything was fine. I told him I would cover for him, so I didn’t want to screw it up and get him in trouble.”
McGhee nodded. “I see. He hasn’t called you, has he?”
“No.”
“But he should have his phone with him, wherever he is, right?” McGhee asked. “Preston’s mom said he was always glued to his cell.”
“Yeah,” I admitted. My stomach lurched as I thought about Preston’s phone still hanging out in my trunk.
“You don’t mind if we take a look around, do you?” McGhee said. “It’s not like you have anything to hide, right?”
I froze. “I, uh, I think my parents would want to be here for that.”
“We promise not to disturb anything. We won’t even go in their room,” he said.
I could feel the blood draining from my face. My phone buzzed sharply. Gonzalez watched as I accessed the text message. It was from Parvati. One word: warrant.
I tucked the phone into the pocket of my hoodie. “Look. I have to go pick up my sister from school in a little bit. Now’s not a good time for you guys to start looking around.” Then, almost as if it were an afterthought, I added, “Anyway, don’t you need a warrant to search somewhere?”
“We only need a warrant if you don’t give us permission,” McGhee said.
“I think my parents would want a warrant.”
Gonzalez narrowed his eyes. “Just remember, Max. If you make things hard on us we might feel inclined to make them hard on you.”
“Well, it’s all been easy and fun so far.” I made a big show of pulling my car keys out of my pocket and glancing toward the door. “Talk to you guys soon, I’m sure.”
“I guess we’ll get out of your hair,” McGhee said. The two agents exchanged a long look. I didn’t know what it meant, but I didn’t like it.
They got up and headed for the door. “Hey, Max,” Gonzo called back over his shoulder. “You just turned eighteen, right?”
Just my luck that all of this was going down the exact day I legally became an adult. Happy birthday to me. “Why?” I asked. “Did you buy me something nice?”
He smirked. “Let us know if you’re going to leave town, okay?”