Page 75 of All the Ways You Save Me
“I’m already involved. Garrett, I’ve been to the warehouse dozens of times. I’ve chatted about the weather and drank cocktails with his wife. What if the whole time he’s been forcing Jason to work for him?” I remember Waylon’s charming smile, his arm around Jason’s shoulder. Jason never flinched, never turned pale. He went for cocktails at the house and golf games at the country club. How did he pull it off? How did he put on a good face for so long, knowing the monster he was working for? “Do you think Jason knows if Waylon is watching me?” I shudder.
“That’s exactly why you should leave town and go to your sister’s place,” Garrett growls. “Once you’re gone, I’ll talk to Jason, and we’ll go to the FBI together.”
“I’m not leaving.” I cross the room and take the photo off the mantel. What if instead of the decades of secrets, those kids in the picture had just been honest with each other from the very beginning? “You two have been trying to take care of everything on your own for too long and it’s not working anymore.”
A loud buzz echoes through the apartment. The doorbell downstairs. My gaze swings to Garrett. “It’s Jason.”
He stares back at me, his jaw twitching as if he’s wrestling with what to do.
“It’s time to finally let the truth come out and work as a team,together.”
Garrett’s shoulders drop, and he nods, slowly moving toward the door.
I turn to put the photo back on the mantel, and just as I set it down, my heart nearly stops beating. A cold sweat breaks out on my forehead. Something isn’t right. Garrett reaches for the button to buzz Jason in.
“Wait, Garrett. Stop!”
FORTY-FOUR
PRESENT DAY
Garrett
I jump back from the door and spin around to see Madeline’s stricken face. “What happened? What is it?”
“Something doesn’t add up.” Madeline waves a hand at the photo. “This picture. It’s the only one I have of the three of us because my phone was destroyed when I jumped in the river to look for you. I slipped on a rock and went in over my head.”
My heart aches at the thought of Madeline on the bank of the river that night. The horror and trauma she must have experienced thinking I was trapped in the car, or getting swept downstream, drowning. When I conceived of the plan, I had no idea she would ever be there watching it play out.
“Jason waded in to stop me, to pull me out of the water. He made me run back to the road to get help. He said he’d dive in and find you.”
The guilt is so thick in my throat, I can barely swallow.
“After I ran for help, Jason said he dove in the water, over and over, frantically looking for you. He tried to swim out toyour car, and the rescue divers had to drag him out. But when we were sitting on the bank of the river in the freezing rain, Jason’s parents called him. He pulled out his phone, and it was working fine.”
The doorbell buzzer goes off a second time.
I glance nervously at the door. “What are you saying?”
She turns to me, eyes wide. “Is it possible Jason never went in looking for you? He could have looked wet from the rain, but that wouldn’t have destroyed his phone like being submerged in a river.”
“Why would he lie about diving in to look for me?” But as the words fly from my mouth, a weight drops in my chest. Why wouldn’t Jason try to save me from the river? I stare at the photo on the mantel, at the smiling faces of teenaged Jason, Madeline, me. Best friends. Except that Madeline and I were more than friends, and Jason was the odd man out. A memory scrapes at the edges of my consciousness. This same photo slid out of an envelope in Jason’s drawer when Jason’s dad was looking for drugs. But there were more photos, and Jason gathered them up quickly.Photos of Madeline.
But it wasn’t just the photos in his drawer. I always suspected he wanted her, he always wanted her, from the very beginning.
“I have a bad feeling.” Madeline grabs my arm. “Jason doesn’t seem like he’s trapped working for Waylon. The two of them are always so friendly. And Jason keeps getting these promotions and raises and making more and more money.”
The air in the room seems to thin like I’ve climbed a high mountain peak, and my lungs ache for oxygen. Have I been wrong about Jason all this time? When the drugs were stolen at the gas station, maybe he saw his chance to get rid of me. After all, I’d taken the fall before, when Jason’s parents found cocaine in his pocket, so why wouldn’t I do it again? And then he could stay on Waylon’s good side and have Madeline for himself.
A decade ago, I never would have believed it. But now… I don’t know anymore.
The sound of the buzzer pierces the air for the third time, in four urgent bursts, like Jason is leaning on the button over and over.
“I have to answer it,” Madeline says with a tinge of panic in her voice. “He’s expecting me to answer.” Her phone lights up with a text from Jason, no doubt asking her where she is.
I swear under my breath. “Can you get rid of him?”
“Yes.” She shoves me toward the hall closet. “Go hide in there.”
