Four steps from the car she thought, No. They are not going to lock me up, even if it’s a spa, they are not. They are not. Not when she’d come this far. She grabbed her mother and shoved her into the guard and sprinted the other way. One of the men tried to intercept her and Trevor tackled him, both of them landing in the oil stains of the parking lot, the man howling as the side of his face scraped the pavement.
Jane ran. She ran down the hillside that led to one of the winding creeks that threaded through Lakehaven. These always flooded during the spring rains, but now, in the autumn, it was shallow and cold and choked with leaves. She ran and then saw one of the men chasing her. She didn’t know where the other one was.
Don’t, Trevor, don’t fight them.
She started scrambling up a hill between the office park and a nearby road, the incline thick with oaks and cedars, slowed by the steepness. The man was gaining on her, calling, “Don’t do this, Jane, don’t. We are here to help you.”
What if she found someone to help her? All her mother had to do was show the commitment papers Kevin had drafted and all her denials would be worthless.
She ran. And behind her, she heard the crack of a gunshot.
No, no, no. She nearly stopped but she saw the man closing the distance. No, keep going. She went behind the storefronts; there was a Dumpster, another tree-studded hill leading to a park. She couldn’t outrun this guy. She jumped in the Dumpster, closed the lid behind her, covered herself in the gross garbage bags, a couple of which had leaked. She buried herself in the pile. Her cage smelled of rotting food and soiled diapers—one of the storefronts was a toddler learning center—and she held her breath. She could hear footsteps going past the Dumpster. She stayed still, barely breathing, fighting the urge to cough and gag.
Footsteps coming back. The lid being raised. She felt the weight of a bag landing on top of the bags that covered her.
“Can I help you?” a man’s voice asked. Different than that of her pursuer.
“I’d like to look in your Dumpster. There’s a young woman who may be hiding in there.”
“And why?”
“She’s being committed to a mental health facility and she ran from us.”
“You got some ID?”
“The family hired me.”
“You don’t have any ID from a hospital or nothing?”
A slow beat of silence. “No.”
“Well, look, she ain’t in here. I just threw in a ton of garbage. No one’s in there.”
She couldn’t see, she did not dare move. The silence stretched and stretched. The lid fell.
“If you see her…” the pursuer began.
“If I see someone, I’ll call the police. Thank you.”
She waited. Waited. It felt like a grave. He could come back, wait for her, drag her to a car and now she’d really look ill, the woman who’d covered herself with garbage. She counted to a thousand, disciplined and measured, then finally she crawled out from the Dumpster. She shivered. She wanted to head back to the parking lot, to know that Trevor was safe, that her mother was all right, because as mad as she was at her mother, there had been a gun fired. Which might bring the police.
But she didn’t hear a siren. She crept back through the woods toward the parking lot, thinking, This is stupid, they’ll catch you. She splashed a trickle of cold water from the creek onto her soiled face. She climbed back toward the lot, ready to retreat again.
They were all gone. Except Adam, who was sitting on the hood of his car texting. He stared at her.
She walked up to him. “Thanks for selling me out.”
“Your mother is worried about you. And you smell like crap.”
“There was a gunshot…”
“Oh, did you come back to see if Trevor was all right?” he asked sarcastically.
“Adam, don’t. I was worried about everyone.”
“Trevor was the one with the gun, genius.”
“What?”
“Trevor had a gun and it went off when the guy took it from him. He unloaded it and gave the gun back to Trevor but not the ammo and then told him to leave or they’d call the police on him.”
“Where is my mom?”
“With the guards and your doctor, looking for you. They’re in three different cars. I expect one of them will roll back through here at any moment.”
Now her gaze met his. “If you care about me so much, why didn’t you tell me and why would you do this to me now?”
Ten seconds ticked by in silence. Finally he said, “Why didn’t you let me be the one there for you? Trevor walks back in and wow, all of a sudden, he’s the hero. Not me. You need me until you don’t, then you throw me aside for a dumb jock.”
She could hardly keep her voice steady, she was so rocked by his betrayal. “You have been my dear friend, and I never meant to make you think otherwise. Trevor and I were involved. Really, really involved. Before the accident.”
Adam’s face blanched.
“And I don’t know if the memories of how I felt about him are coming back, or I just like him now as a friend, but he had things that only he could tell me about that night. Me turning to him for help wasn’t a rejection of you. I can’t reject you if I don’t know how you feel about me.”
Adam turned away. She turned his face back toward her. She wanted to slap him, but she couldn’t. She needed his help, so she forced her anger down.
“If you want to help me, really help me, help me get out of here. I think I know how to find out what happened that night. Or you can continue to act like a complete jackass who only pretends to care about me.”
He stood up a little straighter. “Get in the trunk of my car.”
“I don’t trust you that far.”
“You’re not going to stink up my car.”
“I want you to take me to Trevor’s.”
He shook his head. “That’s a bad idea. I heard one say they were going to follow him, because you might go to his house.”
How can I trust you? she thought. It’s not like I have a ton of options. “OK.” Then she told him where to go.
“Why there?”
“I have a reason. And when this is done, you and I can have a talk about…us.” There was no “us”; there never would be. But he didn’t know that. Her coldness amazed her. But this was what had to be done.
He nodded.
It took all her will to get into the trunk. He closed the lid. He could drive her straight to her mother. Either he regretted his actions or he didn’t. Why did a guy have to be this way?
She lay in the stinking quiet, and when he opened the trunk again, she wondered if she was back at her house. She climbed out. She wasn’t. She was, as requested, at the Halls’ lake house.
“What exactly are you going to do here, Jane?” Adam asked.
“Wash off in the lake and then get inside the house. And that’s a crime, and you can’t be here. And you need to get amnesia for the last twenty minutes.”
“Jane.” He took a step forward.