Problem #1: Bank robbery goes wrong because of missing bank manager.
Problem #2: Bank robbers have the ultimate leverage over the missing bank manager . . . They just don’t know it.
I give her my best bullshit smile. “Casey, will you check that second drawer of the desk for me, the one with all the files? I’m worried I missed something.”
“Okay.”
She goes over to the desk, and Wes says, “They wanted the bank manager,” as soon as she’s out of earshot.
“And they haven’t tried to get the teller to give them any money. They haven’t even mentioned the vault. Just the basement and the bank manager,” Iris adds. “Something strange is going on. This isn’t a normal grab the cash and go kind of robbery.”
“What are we going to do?” Wes asks.
I look over my shoulder at Casey, bent down next to the desk, rummaging through the files.
“We need to learn more. They need the manager for something other than the vault if they keep asking for him.”
“I don’t think the bank robbers are gonna tell us their whole plan, Nora,” Wes says, and the frustration that’s been simmering in him since the parking lot leaches into his voice so fast it makes my cheeks heat.
Right. He’s still pissed at me. Like, really, really, really pissed.
And he has good reason to be. Walking in on your former girlfriend making out with the girl you’re both friends with is basically a fish-slap in the face when it comes to ex encounters. Even worse than that, I’d broken a promise about not lying to him anymore. He and I don’t break promises to each other, not after I broke us and then we managed to painfully assemble the parts back together. Franken-friends, he likes to joke, and it always makes me laugh, because it’s true . . . and it’s edged in a dark twist of humor that the new us—the Franken-friends—needs to exist.
But there’s no humor in him right now, and if my entire adrenaline system wasn’t firing at the speed of light, it’d scare me. But considering I don’t know if we’re going to last the next five minutes, I have to put it aside. Focus.
How do you hide a girl in plain sight?
They’ll want our names, eventually, if they haven’t gotten them off of our IDs already. Shit. Her ID.
“Casey, did you have an ID with you?”
She looks up from the desk and shakes her head. “I left my bag at my mom’s. She was mad because she didn’t have time to go back and get it, she had a meeting. My phone was in there, too.”
“Good,” I say, and she frowns.
“Listen, if either of them out there asks, do not tell them your real name,” I say. “Do not mention who your dad is. Tell them your last name is Moulton. You’re Iris’s cousin, okay?”
Her frown deepens. She doesn’t get it, and there’s not enough time to explain, because I hear the scraping outside the door. One of them is coming back.
“Casey, tell me you’re on board.” I’m throwing her headfirst into this, and her eyes are wide and she doesn’t get it, because deception wasn’t built into her blood and brain like it’s been in mine.
“I—”
“Casey Moulton. Say it.”
Doorknob’s turning.
“Casey Moulton,” she whispers.
Door swings open.
— 11 —
Rebecca: Sweet, Silent, Smiling
One of my clearest early memories is my mother standing me in front of the mirror and combing my blond hair back off my shoulders as she said, Rebecca. Your name is Rebecca. Say it, sweetie. Rebecca Wakefield.
My name isn’t Rebecca, if you were wondering.
It’s not really Nora, either. But everyone in Clear Creek knows me as Nora.
I thought it was a game. The Rebecca thing. But later Mom slaps my arm when I answer to anything but Rebecca, and I learn it isn’t a game.
I learn it’s my life.
Rebecca. Samantha. Haley. Katie. Ashley.
The girls I’ve been. The perfect daughters to the women my mother has become to con her marks.
Each girl was me, but different. The best con has a seed of truth. She taught me well, to take those truths and spin them into stories so believable no one would think to question them.
Rebecca wears her hair loose with an Alice band holding it back. This is when Mom stops letting me cut it beyond a trim. By the time Lee gets me out when I’m twelve, it hangs down to my hips, and people sometimes stop Mom or me to coo about how pretty it is. Rebecca wears a lot of pink. I tell Mom I don’t like pink as much as purple, and she says Rebecca loves pink, that it’s her favorite color . . . and then she makes me repeat it.
She makes me repeat a lot of things when we’re alone. My brain is a sponge, that’s what she says, and I need to learn early what the world is like. You and me, baby. We’re going to be something.
That something turns out to be criminals.
Rebecca is Justine’s daughter. Justine is my mother and also not her. She wears brown contacts and pencil skirts, and she calls people sugar with a little lilt to her voice that Mom doesn’t have. Justine works as a receptionist in an insurance office, and her mark is Kenneth, the CFO. He’s skimming from the company coffers—not that the insurance game isn’t already a huge racket, but that’s another conversation—and she’s got him paying her in a blackmail scheme quicker than you can snap your fingers.