PARVATI AND I FISHED THE phone out of my trunk the second McGhee and Gonzalez left. Of course the battery had died. I started scrubbing it down with a baby wipe. No more blood. No more fingerprints.
A giant clap of thunder came out of nowhere, shaking the windowpanes. Raindrops began to plink against the glass.
“Nice call on the warrant,” I said.
“Yeah,” Parvati replied, without looking at me. She was staring at the phone. “If they find that, they’re going to arrest you.”
“So let’s just get rid of it.” Even as I said the words, I knew we couldn’t. We might need it to find Preston’s mysterious girlfriend. There could be other clues on it too. I finished with the baby wipe and then set the phone on the coffee table.
Parvati reached for it. Using the sleeve of her shirt, she pressed the power button. The screen stayed dark. “At least if the battery is dead they won’t be able to track it anymore.” She sighed deeply. “But we can’t just baby-wipe away the smears of blood in your trunk.”
“You really think some random smudges that may or may not be blood are enough to prove I committed a crime?”
“No, but add the smudges to the fact that you had the phone and got rid of it, and that they have an eyewitness that says you and Pres were arguing. All that is more than enough to convince them to test your trunk for blood and go digging for other stuff.”
“Other stuff they won’t find.”
She arched an eyebrow. “You sure about that?”
I shook my head. “I’m not sure about anything,” I said. “Preston wouldn’t make it an hour without his phone. If he thought he lost it he would have pulled over and gone through his whole car to find it. And then he would have realized he forgot it and turned around. How could it end up in my trunk?” With blood on it. “And who the hell told the cops Pres and I were arguing?”
Parvati rested her forehead against her hands. “It’s almost like you’re being—”
“Set up.” Like I was a suspect in one of Amanda’s detective shows instead of a high school kid. Like I had fallen into someone else’s life. One that might look fun if I was watching it on TV, but sure as hell didn’t feel fun.
I thought about the Jacobsens, the only other people at the beach. They had to be the ones who told the FBI about Preston’s car not being parked at the overlook. But were they the ones who lied about seeing Pres and me fighting? If so, why? The surfing brothers had nothing against me.
At least, I didn’t think so.
Too much had happened too quickly. I was still waiting for Preston to roll up in his car and tell me a big funny story about his adventures in Vegas. I hadn’t completely wrapped my brain around the possibility that something bad had happened to him, let alone the possibility that someone else had hurt him and was setting me up to take the fall.
But then I remembered how weird Pres had been acting at the overlook. He was upset about something going on with his family. Bad thoughts started to creep in. “What if someone hired Violet to get close to Preston online? People are speculating about his dad getting tapped as Secretary of Labor. Maybe the FBI is right and some political nutjobs snatched him.”
Parvati went quiet for a second as she mulled the possibility over in her head. “Did Pres have any enemies of his own that you know of?”
“He told me he owed Jonas Jacobsen money, but according to Jared that was a lie.” I raked a hand through my hair. “Everyone else worships Preston, don’t they?”
“Pretty much,” she agreed. “If someone took him, his parents will get a ransom request.” She paused. “But the FBI guys are still going to pounce on you once they find the blood in your trunk. I’ll charge the phone and then drive somewhere and turn it on just long enough to look at the recent calls and texts. But you need to get rid of your car, or find someplace to hide out until we can figure out what really happened.”
I couldn’t just get rid of my car. Was I supposed to tell my parents that someone stole that twenty-year-old rust bucket? Even if I wrecked it or ran it off a cliff, the agents would still find it unless I set it on fire or something.
The idea of skipping town until all of this blew over was majorly appealing, but if the feds pulled Preston’s body out of a back alley or some crazy bitch’s apartment in Vegas, I was going to blame myself. “Screw that. I haven’t done anything wrong. If I split I’ll look totally guilty.”
“And if you stay you’ll look guilty, and you’ll go to jail. I’ve heard my mom talk about stuff like this. Your parents won’t be able to make bail on kidnapping, Max. Or worse. We’re talking six figures, minimum.”
Worse. Like murder. The agents had decided I was guilty of something from the moment someone had lied about Preston and me arguing, if not earlier. They’d see my trunk, test the blood, and arrest me. I’d never figure out what happened to Preston from inside a jail cell, and they might not waste time looking for other suspects once they had me.
“Plus they probably know about your assault charge,” she added. “I’m sure that’s not helping matters.”
“The lawyer told me that couldn’t be used against me,” I protested.
“Probably not in court, but that doesn’t mean those guys won’t judge you because of it.”
My assault charge. Technically assault and battery, but what a bunch of bullshit. It happened a couple years ago. Amanda was playing outside after school and I was supposed to be looking after her, but I was inside watching TV instead. I remember I had just found out I had to retake American History in summer school, so I was really pissed off. I peeked out at my sister during a commercial and saw these two boys out in the street hollering at her—calling her a freak. Just as I opened the door to get her safely inside, one of the boys picked up a crushed aluminum can and threw it at her. What kind of epic douchebag throws stuff at a little girl with a disability?
Props to my sister, though, because instead of running away to safety, she picked up the crushed can and threw it back. Then she screamed a word that Darla would definitely not approve of and grabbed a loose clod of dirt and threw that too. I was beside her in an instant, chucking the first thing my hands closed around, which unfortunately was a rock.
My aim was a little better than Amanda’s.
Ben and Darla were furious when the cops came around to arrest me. Turned out my aim was so good that one of the little thugs had to get five stitches. I thought my parents were going to leave me locked up until my trial date. But once they shut up and let Amanda tell them what had really happened, they got me out the same day. I still got a lecture about violence, but Ben couldn’t keep from smiling throughout the whole thing. He might as well have high-fived me and taken me out to dinner.
After that day I was Amanda’s freaking idol. She was kind of my idol, too. The only thing that sucked was that the public defender said I might get tried as an adult, since I was sixteen and obviously knew what I was doing. (It probably didn’t help that the kid I hit was eleven.) She said if I pled guilty I’d just get community service and probation since it was my first offense. If I pled not guilty I might end up going to jail.
So of course I pled guilty, and now a couple of asshole FBI agents probably thought I was the kind of loser that got my jollies beating up little kids. They’d use that info to paint me as some unstable whack job who jacked his rich, popular friend. Who cares if they didn’t have a motive? Crazy kids committed random acts of violence all the time, didn’t they? My brain was finally catching up to Parvati’s. If I let them take me in, I was done for.
I started flipping through the possibilities of where I could go and what I could tell Ben and Darla so they wouldn’t worry. Unfortunately, I wasn’t coming up with much.
“Maybe I’ll head to Vegas,” I said. “See if I can locate this Violet chick. If you find her number on Pres’s phone you can text it to me.” I glanced down at my own phone. “I have to pick up my sister in twenty minutes.”
“I’ll get Amanda,” Parvati said. “The teachers have seen us pick her up together plenty of times. I’ll just tell her your parents needed extra help at The Triple S.” She hopped off the couch. “Going to Vegas is a good idea if we can figure out for sure where Pres went. Otherwise it’s just a waste of an entire day. Give me a few hours and I bet I can con my way into Preston’s room. I’m sure the FBI took his laptop, but he keeps an external hard drive hidden away. There might be information on it.”
“What am I supposed to do for a few hours?” My heart started banging out a drum solo in my chest. I didn’t know how long it took to get a warrant, but I had a feeling I’d be seeing McGhee and Gonzalez again soon. Maybe I could clean my trunk. Can you even clean blood off fabric? You can’t, can you? It’s one of those things that shows up under those cool purple lights you see on TV. And trying to clean it would only make me look more guilty. Maybe I could just rip the upholstery out of the trunk. Maybe I could set the car on fire.
“Hide somewhere,” Parvati said. “I’ll grab the hard drive, meet up with you, and we can check out his files together. If Preston is in Vegas we can head there tomorrow after my parents go to work.”
She made it sound so easy, like there wasn’t anything to think about. Hide. Then find Preston. Get back to a normal life by the weekend. “I guess I could go camping again. Maybe a little ways up the coast, catch a few waves.” I frowned. “Darla’s going to get all freaked out, though. We were supposed to go out to dinner for my birthday.”
On cue, a bolt of lightning cut the sky outside into two pieces. The rain came down in sheets, blotting out my front yard and the houses across the street.
“Stupid weather.” Parvati swore under her breath. “You can’t camp in this. What about my dad’s cabin?”
“Isn’t it still full of his military pals?” I envisioned a few Navy SEALs launching themselves through the plate-glass front window in gas masks and full riot gear.
“I saw Dad detail-cleaning his rifles last week, so hunting must be done for this year. You should be okay.”
Being inside was definitely preferable to riding out the storm in a tent. Plus, the cabin was isolated, and McGhee and Gonzalez had no reason to know about it. They didn’t know Parvati and I were still together, so they’d have no reason to suspect she was helping me. Not yet, anyway. By the time they figured out we were still a couple and thought to question her, we’d be on the way to Vegas.
“I’ll go back to Pres’s house and talk Esmeralda into letting me in his bedroom,” she continued. “Then I’ll meet you at the cabin. We’ll look at anything I manage to find and go from there.”
“How are you going to get away with cutting class?”
She grinned. “The same way I’m getting away with it right now. ‘I’m afraid Parvati’s condition has not improved. It might be the influenza,’” she said in an exact imitation of her mother’s lilting Indian accent. “Duh. Liars, Inc. Self-alibis are free, right?”
I shook my head. “You’re a piece of work, you know it?”
“A national treasure,” she said, still speaking in her mom’s accent.
“It’s kind of hot when you talk like that.” For a second, I almost forgot I was preparing to run away to avoid being arrested for a crime against my friend.
“It’s hot no matter how I talk.” Parvati leaned in and gave me a quick kiss on the lips.
Both of us smiled, and I realized how glad I was to have her on my side, how everything seemed a little less scary with her around.