Page 27
Story: Everyone Is Lying to You
Lizzie
Idream about being back in college. It’s a dream I have a lot, a few different variations of it.
The buildings are always vaguely similar to the ones I spent four years in: Some are gray-stone imitations of European castles, others modern towers of glass donated by masters of the current universe.
Even though I know this place, I never have any idea where I’m supposed to go or which classes I should be in.
I’m aware that finals are coming soon and that I’ve never been to a single class.
I know I will fail. Sweat pours down the back of my neck and tears sting my eyes.
An intense dread settles into my stomach as I curse myself for being so careless.
In my unconscious state I’m begging the registrar for a copy of my class schedule or I’m hunting down the one faceless classmate who I know has excellent notes for Victorian lit.
My real friends and former boyfriends are rarely there, or if they are it’s a cameo.
They wave across the quad or smile at me in the hallway and then disappear.
But in this dream I see Bex as I’m coming out of the registrar’s office.
My schedule is in my hand, but I can’t read it.
The words are blurry. In the dream she’s a mixture of Rebecca and Bex.
Her hair is long and blond and loose around her shoulders like it is today, but she’s wearing ripped jeans that ride low on her hips and bare her perfectly toned belly, complete with a turquoise belly button ring, the same one I used to have after we pierced our belly buttons together at a place called Hole Lotta Fun.
She’s got on the purple halter top we bought at a street fair during spring break in Myrtle Beach, the one with shimmering beads and sequins that wink at me in the bright morning sun.
Despite the hour, she’s ready for a night out, a damn good time, and she reaches her hand out to me.
I shake my head. It’s too early. I have to get to class. I have to find those notes. I have to study and pass the tests and get the degree and then the job and climb the ladder. I mumble all of this and she smiles ruefully at me.
“None of it really matters, Lizzie.” Her voice echoes like it’s coming out of an old radio speaker. She reaches out her hand again and I turn away.
As I walk across the quad, I hear her start to follow me, but I don’t turn around. And then there’s a bloodcurdling scream, the kind of scream that turns your blood to ice. I turn and Bex is gone.
When I open my eyes and look around the bedroom that isn’t mine, it takes me a minute to orient myself in the beautiful suite in the middle of the desert, to remember that I did graduate from college, that I did so with honors.
That I got a job that I loved in a city I never wanted to leave.
That I got promoted and promoted again and that I got to do the kind of work that was meaningful and fulfilling.
Until I didn’t. Until the goalposts moved and everything I’d worked for meant essentially nothing.
None of it really matters.
***
The Sommers ranch is about ninety minutes from the resort, and as I drive out to it, I can’t help but imagine Bex on this same road driving home after she left my room just the other night.
She had plenty of time. It would have taken her an hour and a half, maybe less, to get home, to find her husband, lure him out of his bed.
Maybe she gave him something to drink with a sedative in it, because how could a woman as petite as Bex overpower a man who runs ultramarathons?
But it’s possible she gave him some milk laced with Valium and then lured him into the garage and shoved him in front of the spikes of some plow type of thing, shoved him so that his skin peeled away and spilled his guts all over the floor.
My stomach curdles at the image, bringing a stinging bile up the back of my throat.
I need to think. Assess. This drive is as good a place to do it as any.
The landscape changes as I get farther and farther into the red canyons.
Alien rock formations rise high above the shrubs and dust, striated towers of orange, pink, and purple.
It’s beautiful and otherworldly, and I’m oddly calm even as I go through the gory details I know to be true and the possibilities that are playing out in my head.
Grayson was found by one of the farmworkers around seven in the morning.
I know this from my discussion with Detective Walsh when he tried to pin me down on the last time I saw Rebecca.
It was early when she left me, just after sunset, only about eight p.m .
or so. Plenty of time to go back to her hotel room, get what she needed, pack up, and drive out here.
I think about the text message I glimpsed on her phone when I picked it up thinking it was mine.
You won’t get away with this you fucking bitch
It came from G. Possibly Gray. But what exactly was she getting away with?
According to Olivia, Bex was about to go behind her husband’s back, her very controlling husband’s back, and announce a major business deal that didn’t involve him.
A business deal she knew he didn’t want her to accept.
Had he found out about it? Did he know about her betrayal?
Was that what set this all in motion? Did it cause a fight that ended with him bleeding out on his barn floor?
Murdering him would destroy everything Bex has worked so hard for.
Only if she doesn’t get away with it, a little voice whispers in my head. Are you helping her get away with it?
A fine layer of dust settles on the rental car and the roads go from pavement to gravel to dirt.
I know where I’m going. I spent a good deal of time last night figuring out how I would do this.
The main entrance to the ranch is clearly going to be both sealed off and possibly crowded with cops and reporters if the police and media action at the hotel are any indication.
But the property is huge, more than two hundred acres since it’s technically still a working cattle ranch.
I cross-referenced Google Maps and Bureau of Land Management records and then downloaded an app called OnX Hunt, which promised to be the most comprehensive property record locator for hunters who are trying to avoid hunting on private land.
It showed privately owned land interspersed with government owned and public land.
None of the boundaries were a perfectly closed circle and there was a public use easement right in the middle of the Sommers ranch, which meant there had to be a gate where the cattle were locked in on either side and could be moved across the public land when they needed to switch fields.
I learned way more than I ever expected to learn about hunting, land ownership, Western ranches. It was weirdly fascinating.
Sure enough, Google Earth showed me a gate when I looked at it in the satellite view on my computer. Bingo.
That’s where I’m heading. From the maps and the apps it looks like there will be a dirt road from that gate to the Sommers ranch house and the barn.
I’m hoping it isn’t occupied by the police at the moment.
It’s a risk. But I also have a gate code and two keys, which allows me to convince myself that what I’m doing isn’t trespassing.
I’m more than a little proud of this plan and the execution is giving me a bit of a thrill.
I’m still good at this. I haven’t felt this excited since I was nominated for a national magazine award for a piece about an underground railroad I uncovered, Catholic nuns rescuing young women from being sex trafficked.
That was years ago, before the kids, but the memory of the reporting, the research and the flow of the writing, is as sharp as if it happened yesterday.
There’s no cell service out here, but the GPS on my phone still works so I can follow the maps I’ve laid out for myself.
And just as I expected, the fencing opens up, and there’s a large metal gate on the side of the road.
The gamble I’m making is that the gate code is the same for all the gates, since there’s no way Bex could have known which one I’d be using.
If it was Bex who left me the key. That’s something else I need to consider.
That all of this is bigger than Bex and bigger than Grayson.
That this world Bex found herself in is much more dangerous than either of us knew.
I pull the car to the side of the road and suck in a deep breath as I remove the pale pink piece of paper from my bag.
I had stared at the numbers long and hard last night and finally realized the code must be her first child’s birthday.
Alice, the beautiful redheaded piano prodigy.
Further proof to me that Rebecca wouldn’t put her children in danger.
She loves them. They’re a part of her. I lift the lid on the keypad and punch in the six digits.
Three beeps. As the gate slides, I allow myself a smile at the small victory and return to the car, unsure how long it will stay open.
I shouldn’t have worried. This fancy metal barrier is on a sensor and slides shut right behind me.
Its efficiency makes me nervous that some kind of alarm has been sounded, that someone is watching me.
But I calm my nerves by reminding myself this gate must be opened for the cattle on a regular basis.
Also, who would be monitoring things right now?
Possibly the police. Gray’s dead. Rebecca’s missing.
There’s probably a farm foreman but did they show up for work today?
None of it really matters . Rebecca’s words from my dream echo in my head again.
Table of Contents
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- Page 27 (Reading here)
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