Five survive, p.17
Five Survive, page 17
Red turned, the effort of picking up her feet almost too much.
Arthur’s face was hidden as well, wrapped in his arms against the refrigerator door. His back shaking.
“Excuse me,” Red whispered, her voice not her own. No one was listening. Reyna and Oliver were shouting behind her. Reyna hadn’t known about the note, neither had Simon, but they knew now, Oliver telling them in breathless snatches.
“You should have told us first,” Reyna said. “We should have all decided together whether or not to do that!”
“Oh, easy for you to say now, Reyna. I had to act quickly!”
Red tuned out, their shouts becoming just noise that she left behind her.
She walked, slowly, past Arthur and the kitchen, her heart too fast, shedding a little more of her every time it beat. Red was surprised there was any left as she passed the bunks and through the open door into the back bedroom. Surely there was just a hole in her chest now, an empty echo against the cage of her ribs.
She placed the walkie-talkie on the bed, laying it down carefully like it could feel pain too. With her other hand, she grabbed a pillow from the top of the bed, digging her fingers into it, the fabric pulling like spiderwebs around her fist. She brought the pillow to her face, held it there with both hands.
Red screamed.
She screamed, the heat of the muted sound hitting her in the face, stinging her eyes. She screamed until it started to snag in her throat, and then she stopped. Put the pillow back in its place, fluffed it up so it didn’t look disturbed. She picked up the walkie-talkie, checked it was okay, and then walked back to the others.
Oliver watched her as she returned.
“How did you know?” His voice was hoarse. “How did you know he would do that?”
Red didn’t know if she could talk, not until the words were there waiting, raw from the silent scream.
“Because he said. He told us he would kill them and I believed him.”
She didn’t need to say the rest, it was there, haunting the end of the sentence, finishing the thought. I believed him, but you didn’t.
“But I don’t understand how he—”
The static dropped out, cutting Oliver off.
“That was your fault,” the voice said, dark and deep, breaking up at the edges. “I told you to send them away.”
Oliver was in front of Red before she realized, taking the walkie-talkie from her hands. Hey, that was hers. Her responsibility.
Oliver pushed down the button.
“You didn’t need to kill them!” he shouted, the white of his knuckles pushing through his skin like a prehistoric backbone. “We didn’t tell them anything. You were watching, we didn’t tell them anything. They were leaving!”
Static.
“You passed them a note telling them to call the police,” the voice answered, clipped and clear.
Oliver’s mouth fell open.
“Did you think I wouldn’t know?” the voice continued. “That was your fault, I didn’t want to do that. They’re dead because of you.”
He paused. A fizzing, metallic breath leaked out of the speakers before the static took over.
“I’m not the one who fucking shot them,” Oliver said, voice breaking, but he hadn’t pushed the button, and Red couldn’t tell if he’d meant to or not.
“Now,” the voice came back, “before anyone else has to die, listen to me. Stop trying to escape. You can’t. Everything has been planned for. Do what I asked you to.” He breathed out, almost a sigh. “One of you has a secret. Give it to me and I’ll let the others live. We have hours before daylight. I’m not going anywhere until I get it, and neither are you.”
Oliver’s brows lowered, a shadow over his eyes.
He raised the walkie-talkie, remembering to hold the button this time. “One of us has the secret?” he asked, unsure, tripping over the words. “You’re not holding us hostage to get information from someone else?”
This was about him and Maddy, wasn’t it, to get that name from Catherine Lavoy? The Frank Gotti case that Red knew backward and forward. Oliver had been so sure before, and Red had followed him right there.
Static.
“This is all about one of you, inside that RV. Give me what I want and your friends don’t have to die.”
Oliver looked at Red. She tried to hide her realization from him, blink it away. Oliver had been wrong about why they were here. Wrong about the note too. Now two people were dead, right outside, and it was all their fault.
“It’s not about using you and Maddy to get to your mom,” Reyna said, voice steadier now, speaking to the back of Oliver’s head. “Someone here has a secret, knows what this is about. That’s what he’s saying. Oliver, it could be—”
Oliver cut her off, raising the walkie-talkie to his lips. “Who?” he asked. “Which one of us?”
A crackle of static followed by a cackle of laughter.
“That’s not how this works,” the voice said. “You know who you are. I’ll be waiting.”
Static.
The walkie-talkie dropped to Oliver’s side, his eyes dropping with it. Red looked beyond him, at Reyna, then Maddy, Arthur over there and Simon at the back. This was about one of them, about something they knew.
Red coughed, looked away. You know who you are. She had a secret too, didn’t she? Bigger than most. But this wasn’t about her. It couldn’t be. No one knew, that was the whole point of it. No one could ever know, not even tonight. That was the plan. Red needed the plan and she wasn’t the only one. But she had her answer; it wasn’t about that, about her. And if they were talking secrets, Red wasn’t the only one hiding something. Clearly Reyna had a secret, something bad enough to think this night could be about that, something Oliver must know too and didn’t want out. Red had picked up on that. She had potential, see? And before, Maddy had denied having a secret just a little too hard and a little too fast, and Red knew her just a little too well. Which meant there was something she didn’t know at all. She didn’t like that feeling.
Simon was the first to speak, voice cutting over the static. “Their truck is right there, like twenty feet from the door.” He sniffed, turning to look out the windshield. He didn’t have a secret he was thinking about, then. Or he was just better at hiding it. “All four tires, working engine, no holes in it. Yet. Doors still open. Ready. It will move. It can drive away.”
“I don’t think we’d make it,” Maddy replied. “At least not all of us. He shot them both so fast.”
Simon went on, like he hadn’t heard her. “The old man had the keys in his hand, I saw before…I don’t know if I’ve ever seen blood like that before. Too much. I didn’t know, I didn’t think it would look like that.” His hands were shaking, pressed against the glass. “It doesn’t look real.”
Was he in shock? Maybe Simon needed to go back there and scream into the same pillow, trap it in there with hers. Red walked around the others to the front of the RV, coming to stand beside Simon, her arm brushing against his.
He flinched, and Red could now see why.
Out through the windshield, glowing in the white headlights, was Joyce. Right in front of the hood of the truck. She’d almost made it to the open passenger door. Almost. Simon was right, she didn’t look real, folded there like an unfinished mannequin, one hand open and reaching. Her head undone, leaking out and soaking into the road. It didn’t look red from here, the blood, it looked almost black.
That was what Mom must have looked like, right? Inside that wooden box draped in the Star-Spangled Banner. Had the bullets gone all the way through, like with Joyce? Was part of her face missing too?
The sound of static grew behind her as Oliver approached. He rested the walkie-talkie on Red’s shoulder, wordlessly passing it back to her. Hers, her responsibility, keeper of the voice. Her fingers closed around it.
Oliver stared out the windshield too. “Maddy’s right,” he said. “We wouldn’t all make it. He’d be able to take at least two or three of us out before we got the truck moving.”
And there were three people Oliver cared about in this RV, so that was a risk too far.
“Especially as the sniper somehow seems to know exactly what we’re doing every time,” Oliver was still talking. “I can’t work out how he knew about the note. There was no way he could even see it, let alone see what was written on it. He…”
Oliver’s head whipped around, eyes overstretched, too much white showing above and below. He opened his mouth like he was going to say something, then stopped himself, gritting his teeth.
“What?” Red asked him.
He shushed her, head pivoting on his wide shoulders as he looked around the RV.
He charged forward, toward the dining table, grabbing his phone from the surface. He unlocked it, tapped at the screen.
Red walked over, Simon on her heels.
“What are you—?” Reyna began, silenced by the deadly look in Oliver’s eyes.
They gathered around him, and Red leaned over to see what he was doing.
On the screen, on a fresh page in the Notes app, Oliver was typing.
There’s only one way he could have known about—
“Fuck this,” Oliver said, irritated, swiping out of Notes, the phone’s fault for taking too long, not his. Oliver’s eyes flicked to the bottom of his screen, and his thumb followed, pressing onto the music app.
“Oliver, what are you doing?” Maddy asked.
“Wait,” he told her, scrolling through the screen, finger landing on a random playlist. Christmas Songs, it said. Oliver pressed play on the first song and dragged the volume bar right to the top.
The song began, choral voices singing ah, and a high-pitched strum on the guitar. “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree.” In April. Deafening as Oliver held the phone in the middle of the group, speaker facing up. He beckoned them all closer.
Red stepped in, shoulders pressing into Reyna and Simon. The drumbeat of the song ticking half as slow as her heart.
Oliver flashed his eyes at them all.
He started to speak, not loudly, only just audible over the sound of the music. Red had to concentrate, but now she was thinking about the lyrics, and dancing around the tree with Mom before there were two holes in her head.
“There’s only one way he could have known about the note,” Oliver said, looking at each of them in turn. “The window, yeah fine, his guy on the other side could have seen us climbing out and told him about it. But not the note. There’s no way either of them could have seen. So, there’s only one way he knew.” He paused.
Everyone dancing merrily in the new old-fashioned way.
The saxophone burst in, too loud, screaming in Red’s ears.
“He heard us talking about it,” Oliver said. “Because the RV is bugged.”
The song continued, saxophone screeching up and down.
“Bugged?” Reyna repeated. Oliver signaled for her to lower her voice, to hide it under the music. “Like with a microphone?”
“How else could he know everything he seems to know?” Oliver replied.
“When would he have bugged the RV?” Reyna returned, just as the chorus did, and Red had to strain to hear. “We haven’t left it unattended.”
“Maybe when we were changing the first tire?” Simon spoke with the music. “We were all out there, on the other side to the door. Red and Arthur were off somewhere. He could have snuck in then?”
Oliver shook his head. “Not when we were jacking up the RV. We would have felt it.”
“When, then?” Reyna asked. “When we stopped for lunch, for dinner at the rest stop? But we double-checked it was locked.”
“Maybe even before that,” Oliver said. “Maybe before today. You heard him; they planned for everything, they’ve been planning this awhile. Maybe he planted the bug before Simon even borrowed the RV. Maybe it’s something to do with your uncle.” Oliver looked at Simon as he said that, a shadow of suspicion in his eyes. Simon sniffed. “Or maybe it’s in the stuff we brought onto the RV. In our bags. We need to search everywhere, find it, so we can get our advantage back.”
His eyes flashed as the song drew to an end, rallying them all. He dragged the cursor back and restarted the song.
“We’ll have to turn the music off so he doesn’t get suspicious, but no one mention what we’re doing. Just speak normally. Okay?”
Yes, sir, right away, sir. Red blinked. It seemed Oliver had already forgotten that two people just died less than fifteen minutes ago, bleeding out on the road out there, blooms of red around their once-heads. He was already on to the next thing. Moves and countermoves. Sniper takes a turn, then them. Win-win solutions, as Catherine Lavoy would say, but so far they’d won nothing. It seemed Oliver wanted to avoid the other solution, the most obvious one: finding the secret that the voice on the walkie-talkie wanted. It wasn’t Red’s he was after, couldn’t be. But now Red was starting to doubt herself, dark thoughts slipping in through the gaps, through holes in her head. Was she doing the exact same thing as Oliver, as the rest of them too, maybe, clinging to her secret because she didn’t want to lose it? She needed the plan. Needed it. Oliver Lavoy didn’t need anything, he already had it all.
“Red, you keep cycling up through those radio channels while you look. Okay, let’s do this.”
Oliver paused the music, holding his finger to his lips, making sure they all saw. He pointed to himself and Reyna, and then to the back bedroom and the bunks. Red he pointed into the kitchen. Simon the bathroom. Arthur right here at the dining table and sofa bed. Maddy up front in the cockpit. They nodded and dispersed.
Red went to the refrigerator first, pulling it open, pressing her body close to the cool air that seeped out of it. The RV was growing warm and sticky, no air passing through, too many bodies, too much movement, too much fear, and dread and guilt. When would Red’s heart stop beating so hard? It couldn’t keep this up. It didn’t want her to forget—did it?—that Don and Joyce were dead outside. She could have done more. She should have done more. She knew that would happen and she let it. The second time she’d listened to Oliver, chose him, and when would she learn? No time soon, apparently, because she was doing what he told her to right now.
Red moved aside a six-pack of beer, unopened, checking behind it. Cheese slices, salami, butter, beer, oat milk, wine coolers, chocolate. Nothing out of the ordinary. Not that Red knew what a bug looked like anyway, some small black microphone thing, right? Well, there was nothing like that in here. She closed the refrigerator door and turned to the counter, placing the walkie-talkie on top.
Red pulled open the bottom drawer and searched through the saucepans and frying pans, opening each lid and checking inside. Running her fingers into each corner of the drawer to be sure.
Next drawer up, pulling out the stacks of plates and bowls, placing them on the counter and separating each one, the porcelain scraping together, the sound grinding in the bones of her jaw. Nothing there either. Only five sets of each, but there were six of them here.
Top drawer, cutlery. Red picked through the knives, forks and spoons, checking beneath the cutlery holder too. Nothing. An empty space for the sharp kitchen knife that was now sitting on the dining table. Red looked; Arthur was underneath the table, only the bottoms of his shoes visible, sticking out the end.
Nothing around the faucet or the plug in the sink. Red wanted to wash the drying sweat off her face, but maybe that would be a waste of water. How much did they have in that tank below? And how long would the generator keep running? She couldn’t remember those numbers, but thirty-one feet was burned into her brain, cropping up when she didn’t need it, like right this second.
The high-up cupboard with the glasses. Red stood on tiptoes, pushing them carefully aside to see in, but she didn’t really need to. She could see through the rows of glass; nothing black or bug-like in here.
She sidestepped to the oven, swinging the door open. They probably would never have used it on the trip. What could you make using cheese, salami, beer, chocolate and oat milk anyway? Nothing good. She needed to stop thinking about food. She was hungry in the slow comedown from the adrenaline. Scratch that, she’d been hungry before, hadn’t she? Or maybe that yawning feeling in her gut meant something else entirely.
“Red?” Arthur’s voice interrupted the thought; he was standing behind her. She straightened up and turned.
His eyes were drawn and sad behind his glasses, lashes long and downcast.
He didn’t say anything, just raised his eyes to meet hers and then raised one hand.
There, on the back of his hand, written in that same black felt-tip pen against his tan skin, were the words: YOU OK?
Beside them were two options. YES with a square checkbox drawn next to it, riding up one knuckle. And below that, NO, with an empty box.
Arthur gave her the pen, pressing it into her hand, fingers warm against hers as they lingered there. Something passed between their eyes. Red held up the pen, uncapped it. She was always fine, when people asked. Of course she was fine, thanks, yes, she and Dad were doing just great, thank you. Fine, okay, fine. An elaborate lie squeezed into those two tiny words, the greatest gifts to a liar like her. No one asked for more detail if you were fine. But Arthur, he was really asking, she could tell. And so Red really answered.
She reached out and held his hand steady, gripped the pen and drew a check mark in the box next to NO. She wasn’t okay. And maybe Arthur wasn’t either. He hadn’t forgotten that they just watched two people die twenty minutes ago. Joyce and Don were somebody’s someone. Each other’s. They had a daughter, a grandchild. But it was the daughter who stayed in Red’s mind, between thirty-one feet and the unknown pattern in the curtains. A daughter like her.
“You did everything you could,” Arthur said, the marked hand dropping to his side, matching the to-do lists on hers. “You tried to stop it.”
Arthur’s face was hidden as well, wrapped in his arms against the refrigerator door. His back shaking.
“Excuse me,” Red whispered, her voice not her own. No one was listening. Reyna and Oliver were shouting behind her. Reyna hadn’t known about the note, neither had Simon, but they knew now, Oliver telling them in breathless snatches.
“You should have told us first,” Reyna said. “We should have all decided together whether or not to do that!”
“Oh, easy for you to say now, Reyna. I had to act quickly!”
Red tuned out, their shouts becoming just noise that she left behind her.
She walked, slowly, past Arthur and the kitchen, her heart too fast, shedding a little more of her every time it beat. Red was surprised there was any left as she passed the bunks and through the open door into the back bedroom. Surely there was just a hole in her chest now, an empty echo against the cage of her ribs.
She placed the walkie-talkie on the bed, laying it down carefully like it could feel pain too. With her other hand, she grabbed a pillow from the top of the bed, digging her fingers into it, the fabric pulling like spiderwebs around her fist. She brought the pillow to her face, held it there with both hands.
Red screamed.
She screamed, the heat of the muted sound hitting her in the face, stinging her eyes. She screamed until it started to snag in her throat, and then she stopped. Put the pillow back in its place, fluffed it up so it didn’t look disturbed. She picked up the walkie-talkie, checked it was okay, and then walked back to the others.
Oliver watched her as she returned.
“How did you know?” His voice was hoarse. “How did you know he would do that?”
Red didn’t know if she could talk, not until the words were there waiting, raw from the silent scream.
“Because he said. He told us he would kill them and I believed him.”
She didn’t need to say the rest, it was there, haunting the end of the sentence, finishing the thought. I believed him, but you didn’t.
“But I don’t understand how he—”
The static dropped out, cutting Oliver off.
“That was your fault,” the voice said, dark and deep, breaking up at the edges. “I told you to send them away.”
Oliver was in front of Red before she realized, taking the walkie-talkie from her hands. Hey, that was hers. Her responsibility.
Oliver pushed down the button.
“You didn’t need to kill them!” he shouted, the white of his knuckles pushing through his skin like a prehistoric backbone. “We didn’t tell them anything. You were watching, we didn’t tell them anything. They were leaving!”
Static.
“You passed them a note telling them to call the police,” the voice answered, clipped and clear.
Oliver’s mouth fell open.
“Did you think I wouldn’t know?” the voice continued. “That was your fault, I didn’t want to do that. They’re dead because of you.”
He paused. A fizzing, metallic breath leaked out of the speakers before the static took over.
“I’m not the one who fucking shot them,” Oliver said, voice breaking, but he hadn’t pushed the button, and Red couldn’t tell if he’d meant to or not.
“Now,” the voice came back, “before anyone else has to die, listen to me. Stop trying to escape. You can’t. Everything has been planned for. Do what I asked you to.” He breathed out, almost a sigh. “One of you has a secret. Give it to me and I’ll let the others live. We have hours before daylight. I’m not going anywhere until I get it, and neither are you.”
Oliver’s brows lowered, a shadow over his eyes.
He raised the walkie-talkie, remembering to hold the button this time. “One of us has the secret?” he asked, unsure, tripping over the words. “You’re not holding us hostage to get information from someone else?”
This was about him and Maddy, wasn’t it, to get that name from Catherine Lavoy? The Frank Gotti case that Red knew backward and forward. Oliver had been so sure before, and Red had followed him right there.
Static.
“This is all about one of you, inside that RV. Give me what I want and your friends don’t have to die.”
Oliver looked at Red. She tried to hide her realization from him, blink it away. Oliver had been wrong about why they were here. Wrong about the note too. Now two people were dead, right outside, and it was all their fault.
“It’s not about using you and Maddy to get to your mom,” Reyna said, voice steadier now, speaking to the back of Oliver’s head. “Someone here has a secret, knows what this is about. That’s what he’s saying. Oliver, it could be—”
Oliver cut her off, raising the walkie-talkie to his lips. “Who?” he asked. “Which one of us?”
A crackle of static followed by a cackle of laughter.
“That’s not how this works,” the voice said. “You know who you are. I’ll be waiting.”
Static.
The walkie-talkie dropped to Oliver’s side, his eyes dropping with it. Red looked beyond him, at Reyna, then Maddy, Arthur over there and Simon at the back. This was about one of them, about something they knew.
Red coughed, looked away. You know who you are. She had a secret too, didn’t she? Bigger than most. But this wasn’t about her. It couldn’t be. No one knew, that was the whole point of it. No one could ever know, not even tonight. That was the plan. Red needed the plan and she wasn’t the only one. But she had her answer; it wasn’t about that, about her. And if they were talking secrets, Red wasn’t the only one hiding something. Clearly Reyna had a secret, something bad enough to think this night could be about that, something Oliver must know too and didn’t want out. Red had picked up on that. She had potential, see? And before, Maddy had denied having a secret just a little too hard and a little too fast, and Red knew her just a little too well. Which meant there was something she didn’t know at all. She didn’t like that feeling.
Simon was the first to speak, voice cutting over the static. “Their truck is right there, like twenty feet from the door.” He sniffed, turning to look out the windshield. He didn’t have a secret he was thinking about, then. Or he was just better at hiding it. “All four tires, working engine, no holes in it. Yet. Doors still open. Ready. It will move. It can drive away.”
“I don’t think we’d make it,” Maddy replied. “At least not all of us. He shot them both so fast.”
Simon went on, like he hadn’t heard her. “The old man had the keys in his hand, I saw before…I don’t know if I’ve ever seen blood like that before. Too much. I didn’t know, I didn’t think it would look like that.” His hands were shaking, pressed against the glass. “It doesn’t look real.”
Was he in shock? Maybe Simon needed to go back there and scream into the same pillow, trap it in there with hers. Red walked around the others to the front of the RV, coming to stand beside Simon, her arm brushing against his.
He flinched, and Red could now see why.
Out through the windshield, glowing in the white headlights, was Joyce. Right in front of the hood of the truck. She’d almost made it to the open passenger door. Almost. Simon was right, she didn’t look real, folded there like an unfinished mannequin, one hand open and reaching. Her head undone, leaking out and soaking into the road. It didn’t look red from here, the blood, it looked almost black.
That was what Mom must have looked like, right? Inside that wooden box draped in the Star-Spangled Banner. Had the bullets gone all the way through, like with Joyce? Was part of her face missing too?
The sound of static grew behind her as Oliver approached. He rested the walkie-talkie on Red’s shoulder, wordlessly passing it back to her. Hers, her responsibility, keeper of the voice. Her fingers closed around it.
Oliver stared out the windshield too. “Maddy’s right,” he said. “We wouldn’t all make it. He’d be able to take at least two or three of us out before we got the truck moving.”
And there were three people Oliver cared about in this RV, so that was a risk too far.
“Especially as the sniper somehow seems to know exactly what we’re doing every time,” Oliver was still talking. “I can’t work out how he knew about the note. There was no way he could even see it, let alone see what was written on it. He…”
Oliver’s head whipped around, eyes overstretched, too much white showing above and below. He opened his mouth like he was going to say something, then stopped himself, gritting his teeth.
“What?” Red asked him.
He shushed her, head pivoting on his wide shoulders as he looked around the RV.
He charged forward, toward the dining table, grabbing his phone from the surface. He unlocked it, tapped at the screen.
Red walked over, Simon on her heels.
“What are you—?” Reyna began, silenced by the deadly look in Oliver’s eyes.
They gathered around him, and Red leaned over to see what he was doing.
On the screen, on a fresh page in the Notes app, Oliver was typing.
There’s only one way he could have known about—
“Fuck this,” Oliver said, irritated, swiping out of Notes, the phone’s fault for taking too long, not his. Oliver’s eyes flicked to the bottom of his screen, and his thumb followed, pressing onto the music app.
“Oliver, what are you doing?” Maddy asked.
“Wait,” he told her, scrolling through the screen, finger landing on a random playlist. Christmas Songs, it said. Oliver pressed play on the first song and dragged the volume bar right to the top.
The song began, choral voices singing ah, and a high-pitched strum on the guitar. “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree.” In April. Deafening as Oliver held the phone in the middle of the group, speaker facing up. He beckoned them all closer.
Red stepped in, shoulders pressing into Reyna and Simon. The drumbeat of the song ticking half as slow as her heart.
Oliver flashed his eyes at them all.
He started to speak, not loudly, only just audible over the sound of the music. Red had to concentrate, but now she was thinking about the lyrics, and dancing around the tree with Mom before there were two holes in her head.
“There’s only one way he could have known about the note,” Oliver said, looking at each of them in turn. “The window, yeah fine, his guy on the other side could have seen us climbing out and told him about it. But not the note. There’s no way either of them could have seen. So, there’s only one way he knew.” He paused.
Everyone dancing merrily in the new old-fashioned way.
The saxophone burst in, too loud, screaming in Red’s ears.
“He heard us talking about it,” Oliver said. “Because the RV is bugged.”
The song continued, saxophone screeching up and down.
“Bugged?” Reyna repeated. Oliver signaled for her to lower her voice, to hide it under the music. “Like with a microphone?”
“How else could he know everything he seems to know?” Oliver replied.
“When would he have bugged the RV?” Reyna returned, just as the chorus did, and Red had to strain to hear. “We haven’t left it unattended.”
“Maybe when we were changing the first tire?” Simon spoke with the music. “We were all out there, on the other side to the door. Red and Arthur were off somewhere. He could have snuck in then?”
Oliver shook his head. “Not when we were jacking up the RV. We would have felt it.”
“When, then?” Reyna asked. “When we stopped for lunch, for dinner at the rest stop? But we double-checked it was locked.”
“Maybe even before that,” Oliver said. “Maybe before today. You heard him; they planned for everything, they’ve been planning this awhile. Maybe he planted the bug before Simon even borrowed the RV. Maybe it’s something to do with your uncle.” Oliver looked at Simon as he said that, a shadow of suspicion in his eyes. Simon sniffed. “Or maybe it’s in the stuff we brought onto the RV. In our bags. We need to search everywhere, find it, so we can get our advantage back.”
His eyes flashed as the song drew to an end, rallying them all. He dragged the cursor back and restarted the song.
“We’ll have to turn the music off so he doesn’t get suspicious, but no one mention what we’re doing. Just speak normally. Okay?”
Yes, sir, right away, sir. Red blinked. It seemed Oliver had already forgotten that two people just died less than fifteen minutes ago, bleeding out on the road out there, blooms of red around their once-heads. He was already on to the next thing. Moves and countermoves. Sniper takes a turn, then them. Win-win solutions, as Catherine Lavoy would say, but so far they’d won nothing. It seemed Oliver wanted to avoid the other solution, the most obvious one: finding the secret that the voice on the walkie-talkie wanted. It wasn’t Red’s he was after, couldn’t be. But now Red was starting to doubt herself, dark thoughts slipping in through the gaps, through holes in her head. Was she doing the exact same thing as Oliver, as the rest of them too, maybe, clinging to her secret because she didn’t want to lose it? She needed the plan. Needed it. Oliver Lavoy didn’t need anything, he already had it all.
“Red, you keep cycling up through those radio channels while you look. Okay, let’s do this.”
Oliver paused the music, holding his finger to his lips, making sure they all saw. He pointed to himself and Reyna, and then to the back bedroom and the bunks. Red he pointed into the kitchen. Simon the bathroom. Arthur right here at the dining table and sofa bed. Maddy up front in the cockpit. They nodded and dispersed.
Red went to the refrigerator first, pulling it open, pressing her body close to the cool air that seeped out of it. The RV was growing warm and sticky, no air passing through, too many bodies, too much movement, too much fear, and dread and guilt. When would Red’s heart stop beating so hard? It couldn’t keep this up. It didn’t want her to forget—did it?—that Don and Joyce were dead outside. She could have done more. She should have done more. She knew that would happen and she let it. The second time she’d listened to Oliver, chose him, and when would she learn? No time soon, apparently, because she was doing what he told her to right now.
Red moved aside a six-pack of beer, unopened, checking behind it. Cheese slices, salami, butter, beer, oat milk, wine coolers, chocolate. Nothing out of the ordinary. Not that Red knew what a bug looked like anyway, some small black microphone thing, right? Well, there was nothing like that in here. She closed the refrigerator door and turned to the counter, placing the walkie-talkie on top.
Red pulled open the bottom drawer and searched through the saucepans and frying pans, opening each lid and checking inside. Running her fingers into each corner of the drawer to be sure.
Next drawer up, pulling out the stacks of plates and bowls, placing them on the counter and separating each one, the porcelain scraping together, the sound grinding in the bones of her jaw. Nothing there either. Only five sets of each, but there were six of them here.
Top drawer, cutlery. Red picked through the knives, forks and spoons, checking beneath the cutlery holder too. Nothing. An empty space for the sharp kitchen knife that was now sitting on the dining table. Red looked; Arthur was underneath the table, only the bottoms of his shoes visible, sticking out the end.
Nothing around the faucet or the plug in the sink. Red wanted to wash the drying sweat off her face, but maybe that would be a waste of water. How much did they have in that tank below? And how long would the generator keep running? She couldn’t remember those numbers, but thirty-one feet was burned into her brain, cropping up when she didn’t need it, like right this second.
The high-up cupboard with the glasses. Red stood on tiptoes, pushing them carefully aside to see in, but she didn’t really need to. She could see through the rows of glass; nothing black or bug-like in here.
She sidestepped to the oven, swinging the door open. They probably would never have used it on the trip. What could you make using cheese, salami, beer, chocolate and oat milk anyway? Nothing good. She needed to stop thinking about food. She was hungry in the slow comedown from the adrenaline. Scratch that, she’d been hungry before, hadn’t she? Or maybe that yawning feeling in her gut meant something else entirely.
“Red?” Arthur’s voice interrupted the thought; he was standing behind her. She straightened up and turned.
His eyes were drawn and sad behind his glasses, lashes long and downcast.
He didn’t say anything, just raised his eyes to meet hers and then raised one hand.
There, on the back of his hand, written in that same black felt-tip pen against his tan skin, were the words: YOU OK?
Beside them were two options. YES with a square checkbox drawn next to it, riding up one knuckle. And below that, NO, with an empty box.
Arthur gave her the pen, pressing it into her hand, fingers warm against hers as they lingered there. Something passed between their eyes. Red held up the pen, uncapped it. She was always fine, when people asked. Of course she was fine, thanks, yes, she and Dad were doing just great, thank you. Fine, okay, fine. An elaborate lie squeezed into those two tiny words, the greatest gifts to a liar like her. No one asked for more detail if you were fine. But Arthur, he was really asking, she could tell. And so Red really answered.
She reached out and held his hand steady, gripped the pen and drew a check mark in the box next to NO. She wasn’t okay. And maybe Arthur wasn’t either. He hadn’t forgotten that they just watched two people die twenty minutes ago. Joyce and Don were somebody’s someone. Each other’s. They had a daughter, a grandchild. But it was the daughter who stayed in Red’s mind, between thirty-one feet and the unknown pattern in the curtains. A daughter like her.
“You did everything you could,” Arthur said, the marked hand dropping to his side, matching the to-do lists on hers. “You tried to stop it.”
