? ? ?
We went out an employee entrance and climbed into a hired car for the trip to the Tate house. It was almost an hour’s drive up the coast from LAX to Hidden Hills, California. From the news story I’d read about Daniel’s disappearance, I knew the Tate family had money, but nothing had prepared me for Hidden Hills. The entire town was cloistered behind a gate, where a guard in a crisp uniform spoke to Jessica before waving the car through. This is what Lex had meant about us being safe here; no press would ever be able to enter the town. Once inside, it was all rolling green hills and elegant mansions bathed in sunshine and hidden from the world. My coat was bundled in a ball at my feet; I’d realized as soon as I’d stepped out of the airport and into the perfect twenty-four-degree weather that I wouldn’t need it here. I would have thrown the ratty thing away if I wasn’t sure they’d be shipping me back to Canada any second now, when the adrenaline wore off and they realized I was a fake.
We drove deeper into the community, and the houses got farther apart and farther from the road. At the top of a winding hill the car pulled up to a scrolled wrought iron gate where the driver punched in a code to open it. We drove into a tree lined lane where the sunlight turned soft as it filtered down through the green leaves and the white and purple blooms of the flowering trees. Then the foliage opened up, and I was looking at a mansion of pale yellow stone and endless windows poised on the hillside, red mountains distant on the horizon.
I struggled to swallow, my throat suddenly tight. What the hell had I done? Without even meaning to, I had stumbled into the biggest con of my life.
“Home sweet home,” Patrick said as the car stopped in the circular driveway, complete with fountain, in front of the house. “Does it look familiar?”
“A little,” I said.
The driver unloaded our bags and left. I felt everyone watching me as we walked up to the house. I didn’t know what they expected me to do, so I didn’t know how to act. All I could do was try to focus on keeping up the con. Don’t look too scared. Don’t look too shocked.
Patrick opened the door and ushered me inside. “Welcome home, Danny.”
“Thanks,” I breathed. Maybe it was just my imagination, but my voice seemed to echo in the cavernous foyer, reverberating off marble and crystal and glass.
We all stood together inside the door. The Tates just staring at me.
Lex was the one who finally spoke. “You’re probably tired, huh, Danny? Do you want to rest for a little while?”
“Yeah,” I said. “That would be good.”
No one moved. It took me a second to realize, with horror, why. They were waiting for me to leave, to go to my bedroom. Danny’s bedroom. If I walked in the wrong direction, I risked giving myself away, but if I kept just standing there like an idiot . . .
Lex raised the handle of her rolling suitcase. “Come on,” she said. “I need to drop off my stuff too.”
Saved by Lex again. She might not be bright, but she was helpful.
I followed her up the curving staircase. At the landing she turned right. The hallway was lined on one side with oversized windows that overlooked the velvety lawn below and the mountains in the distance. I counted the doors as we walked. She stopped in front of the fourth.
“Here you go,” she said. “Come back down whenever you’re ready, okay?”
She walked back in the direction we’d come, and I slowly opened the door to Danny’s bedroom.
Like everything else I’d seen of the house so far, the room was pristine. The kind of museum clean that made me simultaneously nervous to touch anything and tempted to wreck it all. It was obvious that no one but the maid the Tates certainly employed had been in here for a long time. The room felt faded and stale, like it belonged to a world that didn’t exist anymore. It was an interior decorator’s vision of a little boy’s dream room, with navy blue walls and framed vintage baseball posters and tasteful furniture. A bulletin board over the small desk held photos from fishing and beach trips, flyers for Little League tryouts, and ticket stubs from sporting events. Something inside of me started to come apart as I looked at these objects. I opened the middle drawer of the dresser and found little-boy clothes inside, the creases in the fabric permanent from going undisturbed for so long.
This wasn’t a bedroom. It was a tomb. A mausoleum for a body they’d never found.
I fled into the hallway and started opening doors until I found a bathroom. I locked the door behind me and stared at myself in the mirror. What was I doing here? What the fuck was I doing here?
? ? ?
Maybe you won’t believe me, but I honestly never meant to take Daniel Tate’s life. He was just supposed to buy me time and breathing room so I could get away from Short Term 8. I had no idea how quickly things would start to move once I became him.
I picked Daniel because he was the first missing boy I’d come across who was the right age and look. It was probably the worst choice I could have made, because, as I soon realized, the Tates weren’t a normal family. I’d been counting on many days or weeks of bureaucratic red tape to give me the chance to make my escape, but then Patrick McConnell had swooped in. He and Lex had gotten on a plane the next morning. They’d greased the skids at the American Embassy with their money and their connections to get me a passport within hours, after only a cursory examination of my claims. Even Alicia had commented on it.
“I’ve never seen anything like this move so fast,” she told me as we drove back to Short Term 8 for my last night there. “Detective Barson said there was a lot of pressure coming from the Americans to get this sorted out quickly. You’re lucky, you know, that your family is so powerful and loves you so much.”
That was me. Mr. Lucky.