“Of course. Hold on just a moment.”
The silence stretched, and each second ticking by felt like an ice pick jabbing behind my eyes—another of those brutal headaches coming on. I spun in my chair and grabbed a Diet Coke out of my mini fridge, hoping the caffeine would fight it off. As I popped the top, my phone dinged. There was a text from an unknown number with a message and a link.Do they know who you really are?I shouldn’t have clicked the link, but I couldn’t seem to help myself.
Instead of a photo of Jeff Angler, my mug shot looked back at me. There was only one word to describe the girl in the photo.Terrified. The article was from a smaller newspaper in the Portland area that had a reputation for being sensational in their news coverage. The headline read:Teen Kingpin Arrested. Bile crept up my throat.
“Anna, did you hear me?”
“Sorry, what?”
“Did you get my text?”
“Hold on.” I exited out of the internet browser and returned to my messages. One from Keisha was at the top. I clicked on the photo. He looked incredibly normal. Unremarkable in every way. But I memorized the planes of his face, the jut of his chin. The color of his eyes and hair. Because this man had the potential to ruin everything.
19
Mason
“Your aunt is goingto kill me,” I muttered as I walked down the street with Justin and Lyla in tow.
“But at least you’ll go with ice cream in your stomach,” Justin argued.
I chuckled. “Fair point.”
Lyla looked up at me with those wide, innocent eyes. “What she doesn’t know won’t hurt her.”
I blinked down at her. “Kid, I think you might have a future as a lawyer.”
She shook her head. “Naw. I think I want to be a doctor that helps kids.”
I wrapped an arm around her to guide her into the ice cream shop. “That would be a great job.”
“I think so, too. I bet it’s hard, but I could make everyone feel better, and that would be awesome.”
I looked at Justin. “What about you?”
“I dunno. I like soccer a lot, but that’s probably not a job.”
“You could always be a coach. Or a teacher and coach on the side.”
He looked thoughtful for a minute. “That might be fun. I like my history classes a lot. Maybe I could teach that.”
“History was my favorite subject when I was growing up. We learn a lot from what happened before us.”
Justin grinned. “I like the battle stories.”
“Those don’t suck.”
A girl who looked to be in her later teens appeared behind the counter. “Hi, guys. What can I get for you?”
Justin ordered cookies and cream, while Lyla opted for strawberry. I settled on a mint Oreo milkshake.
Justin took his cone from the girl. “Next time, I’m trying what you got, Mase.”
“It’s always a winner.” I paid the girl, leaving a healthy tip in her jar. “Want to walk down to the park?”
“Yeah! I want to do the monkey bars after I finish my ice cream.”
As we walked, they told me about their days. Lyla had worked on an arts and crafts project that had gotten more than a little messy, and one girl had gotten paint stuck in her hair. Everything about the moment was so normal. Ordinary—and everything I’d been missing for so long.
