Page 122 of The Lie Maker

“I want you to die,” she said.

“Well, that will happen eventually, but I’m guessing you’d like it to be sooner rather than later.”

“Present yourself to me,” she said.

Dad said, “Say again?”

“Turn yourself in, to me, and we’ll let your son’s girlfriend go.”

Dad and I exchanged glances. I suppose we both knew this was coming. Gwen had a strong hand to play.

“Where are you?” Dad asked.

Gwen chuckled. “There’s an idea. I just tell you, and then you can call the police. We’ll need to work out the details. I’ll get back to you. And I can’t impress upon you enough that I’ll kill her if I get even a hint that you’ve notified the authorities. Make sure Jack knows. Make sure Jack knows I’m prepared to do what I have to do.”

“He understands,” Dad said.

There was no reply to that. Dad picked up the phone, saw that the call had ended, and turned to me.

“She’s gone?” I said.

“She’s gone.”

“I know where they are,” I said. “I mean, I don’t know where they are, but I think I’ve been there. I could hear something in the background, a ticking, like a fan. When they took me to see the witness I was writing a backstory for, there was a fan that sounded like that. But I was blindfolded. I don’t know where we actually went. It was out in the country.” I stopped talking and waited for him to say something. He seemed deep in thought.

I couldn’t take it anymore and asked, “What the hell are we going to do?”

And I realized that my father didn’t have to do anything. Lana was a stranger who meant nothing to him. Did Gwen really believe my father would surrender himself to save someone he’d never met?

After all, hadn’t he walked away once before to save his ass?

Okay, he would have argued he also did that to save my mother and me from any retribution Galen Frohm might mete out. Sure, Frohm’s goons threw a few scares into us after Dad was gone, but he never went so far as to actually harm us. Frohm had to know holy hell would rain down upon him, even if he was already in prison. There were ways to make a bad situation even worse.

But this. This was different.

All Dad had to do was get into his car, find a cheap motel for the night, and come morning, Stan would find a new life for him.

And Lana would lose hers.

This was all on me. I’d been suckered and drawn Lana into this nightmare.

Dad had gone a good half minute without responding to my question. Finally, he had one for me.

“What are you thinking?” he asked.

“That the smartest thing for you is to run,” I said. “Gwen knows I’ve found you, but she doesn’t know where we are. You take off now and you’re home free. You don’t know Lana. You didn’t get her into this.”

He nodded. “True.” He went to the fridge, took out another beer, opened it, and took a sip. “Show me her picture again.”

Again? And then I remembered I had shown Lana’s picture to him when we met in the diner after the road rage incident. I picked up my phone, found a shot of Lana I had taken one day when we were on Boston Common. She was looking into the camera, laughing.

I handed the phone to my father.

He studied the picture. “She’s a lovely girl. She has a... a kind of sparkle in her eyes, doesn’t she?”

“Yes,” I said, holding my breath.

“And she means the world to you, I’m guessing.”