“Why don’t you begin at the beginning? We need to hear everything.” For once there’s no judgment or accusation in Gonzalez’s voice.
“Okay.” I take a deep breath. “So it all started the day I tried to get detention.” I remind them about Liars, Inc. and the alibi. Then I tell them about the pictures I found in the trigonometry book, about going to Rosewood, about being adopted when I was ten. At one point, Gonzalez steps out in the hallway to take a phone call and McGhee has me wait until he returns before I continue. I rest my head on the cool metal table until he ducks back into the room. Then I tell them about Adam showing me the video clips and drugging me. As the lies multiply and the story gets more tangled and convoluted, I expect the agents to scoff at me and act all incredulous—well, Gonzalez, anyway. But when I finish my tale about accidental shootings, planted evidence, fake adoptions, and one very psychotic kid named Adam Lyons, all McGhee says is, “Thanks, Max. You should probably get that arm looked at now.”
Then his cell phone rings. He answers it, says “I see” a couple of times, and then gets up to leave. “Thanks for coming down,” he says. “We’ll be in touch.”
“Wait. What?” My voice rises in pitch. “What about Parvati and me? Are you going to tell people where you got the videos? Are you going to put us in some kind of witness protection program? Senator DeWitt will kill us if he finds out we handed those over.”
“The judge is issuing an arrest warrant for Remington DeWitt as we speak.” McGhee fiddles with his tie. “You won’t have to worry about him.”
“Already? How? I thought hidden videos weren’t admissible evidence.”
“They’re not usually,” he says. “But when we confronted Claudia DeWitt with that footage, she cracked and confessed everything. That’s what took us so long to get back to you. We were next door, interrogating her.”
I remembered Adam saying Claudia had always been the tortured one, the guilty one. Maybe all this time she had been waiting for a chance to make things right—as right as they could be, anyway. “So then it’s over?” I ask. “Just like that?”
“I’m sure DeWitt will make bail, so if you feel threatened at any time you can contact the local police for protection. But we have no immediate plans to tell him you were the one who gave us the phone. As far as he knows, it was Adam that turned it in.”
“And what happens to Adam?”
“Two counts of murder, plus kidnapping plus attempted murder? I’d say he’s going away for a long time, but I’m sure he’ll try to get off on an insanity defense.” McGhee yawns. “Either way, he won’t be bothering you or your girlfriend for a while.”
“Speaking of Ms. Amos,” Gonzalez says. “That call I got was an update on her condition. She’s out of surgery. Her condition is still critical, but the doctors think she’ll pull through.”
I exhale deeply, my body slumping back in the chair as the air leaves my lungs. A knot forms in my chest. “That’s good,” I say. “Thanks for telling me.”
“Remember. You can go to the ER, but you’re not allowed near the ICU where she’s staying, okay?” McGhee says. “And technically the nurses can’t give you any information about how she’s doing.”
“I’m just glad she’s hanging in there.”
“If she’s still your girlfriend, maybe her parents will be willing to update you,” Gonzalez offers. “Give them a phone call. The restraining order doesn’t extend to them.” It’s probably the nicest thing he’s ever said to me.
“I don’t even know what she is to me anymore,” I admit. “It’s complicated.”
My whole life went from simple to complicated because of one little lie.
I’m ready for things to be easy again.
EPILOGUE
December 17th
IT’S A WEEK LATER WHEN I finally get my birthday dinner.
The FBI kept their promise, and so far no one has gotten wind of the fact that Parvati and I were involved in Senator DeWitt’s arrest. Still, I had to tell Darla who Adam really was. I didn’t want her to read about the kid she almost adopted going crazy in the newspaper. She took it like I expected, blaming herself for everything that happened. I reminded her she did what she thought was right for her family at the time, and that a lot of other factors contributed to the person Adam became.
Then I told her I was really glad she made the choice she did. She got a little teary-eyed at that.
The LA Times broke the whole story, from the accidental shooting of Preston DeWitt to the fake adoption to everything Adam Lyons did. The senator resigned from politics and DeWitt Firearms. Claudia DeWitt took a deal from the DA to testify against him. I don’t know where Adam ended up. McGhee told me he was transferred to a lockdown psychiatric facility and that Parvati and I would be notified if his status changed.
“Table for four?” The Steak Shack waitress smiles down at Amanda. “Do you want a kids’ menu?”
“I’m a vegetarian,” my sister informs her.
The waitress laughs. “I’ll take that as a no.” She seats us at a long table next to a giant plastic Christmas tree covered in fake snow and silver tinsel. Amanda immediately begins to speculate if the wrapped boxes arranged around it have real presents in them. The waitress gives us each a plastic menu shaped like a cow and disappears into the back.
I ball up my straw wrapper and launch it across the red-and-white-checked plastic tablecloth at Amanda. She giggles and takes aim at me with her own wrapper. The crumpled ball pings directly off the center of my chest.
“Nice shot,” I say. She flashes me a grin before building a catapult out of a salt shaker and a spoon. The waitress returns with glasses of water and a fake smile. She tries not to stare at the remnants of our wrapper war.
“Settle down, guys,” Ben says. “Time to order.” We end up with three steaks and one spinach salad. Ben digs right in, but Darla seems more interested in cutting her prime rib into teensy tiny pieces than in actually eating it.
“If you cut that any smaller it’s going to be a liquid,” I say. “Are you planning on taking some home for the twins?”
Darla laughs nervously. She blots her mouth with her paper napkin, even though I’m pretty sure she hasn’t taken a single bite. “So, Max. We have a couple of things to discuss with you since you’re now eighteen.”
Uh-oh. Hopefully they just want me to start thinking about what I’m going to do after high school or something. It’s a discussion I’ve been expecting for a while, but, jeez, you’d think it could wait until after my birthday dinner.
“What’s up?” I ask.
“Your da—um, Ben and I made some calls. If you’re interested in changing your last name back to Keller, we can help you fill out the paperwork.”
That’s what this is about? I’ve never even thought about changing my name.