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I press my face to her window. I need to see.
There’s too much street traffic. Too many cars and people.
I can’t…
Then I see him.
Dressed all in black, with his back to me, across the four-lane road, is a man heading into a narrow alley.
With my heart thundering behind my ribs and my blood pulsing between my legs, I watch him reach up and pull the ski mask from his head.
And I watch familiar long hair tumble free.
CHAPTER60
Cassie
Just as theoven timer stops beeping, my phone starts ringing.
I throw down the hot mitts I was putting on and reach for my phone on the counter.
Seeing that it’s my mom, I almost don’t answer. They just left here an hour ago, after spending the entire day with me since picking me up from the airport.
“Hi, Mom.” I don’t hide all my exasperation.
“I know, I know, we were just there.” She repeats the thoughts I just had, and I can hear my dad sighing in the background. “I just wanted to check in, see if maybe you changed your mind.”
“Thank you, but no. I promise I’m okay.”
She spent the day trying to convince me to come spend the night, and tomorrow night and probably the rest of my life, with them in their little apartment.
I obviously refused.
It’s Saturday. I was supposed to fly home from Mexico yesterday, but after the wholebus highjackingon Thursday, the authorities made us stick around an extra day to give statements.
It was weird, and stressful, and long, and… confusing.
“Well, if you decide you want to come over, you are always welcome,” Mom reminds me.
“I know, Mom. But I just want to try and get back to normal.”
“If you’re sure.”
“I am,” I sigh. “It was freaky.” Seeing three men die, and hearing more get shot, should be more than freaky… but that’s a worry for intrusive thoughts later. “But it’s not like I was personally targeted. No one is coming after me. And even if the guys who attacked us wanted to travel all the way to Minnesota to steal me, or whatever the plan was, they’re all dead,” I try to reason.
“Except the man in the mask,” Mom argues back.
I glance through the big picture window in my living room to Hans’s house. “He helped us, Mom.”
When we gave our statements, I lied. I told the police officers the man in the mask had blue eyes and tattoos on the visible part of his neck. And that the tiny bits of hair I could see in the mask eye holes were black.
I gave my parents the same description.
I don’t know why I lied.
No, that’s another lie.
I lied because a part of me believes that the man in the mask is Hans.
