Wanted (Amanda Lance) - By Amanda Lance Page 0,105

practiced in my head while Reid drove me. When it came down to it, I implored his help because I knew he wouldn’t hesitate to be rid of me. Elise might try to convince me to stay, and one of the guys might try to force me to stay.

“Everything is kind of hazy.” I didn’t lie but I didn’t tell the truth, either. I said that I remembered being in a small room, lots of cigarette smoke, different voices talking about card playing…

Everyone made notes on their pads of paper. I marveled at the autocracy of it.

“How did you get in contact with your father?”

I also marveled at Reid’s creativity. When I reached for a suggestion he had been surprisingly helpful.

This Norton was like a puppy with a new bone. And while I needed an easy out, it wasn’t as though I was lying when I became overwhelmed. I felt the tears welling up but tried to keep them back. “Someone dropped a phone and I took it. I thought it was to prove I was alive—a ransom thing. But when they caught me with it…” I pointed to my face and gestured to the bruises there. My hand inadvertently wiped away the tears. I marveled at the wet on my fingertips. Because while I had planned to make myself cry, I had never intended to do it for real. “Listen, I don’t want to talk anymore.”

“That’s quite all right, Addie,” Dr. Dayton attempted to comfort me with lame smiles and pats on the back, yet it did me little good. I wanted—needed Charlie there. “You don’t have to if you don’t want to.”

But Norton ignored us both. “Do you know how you got from New York to California?”

“N-not really,” I lied. I switched the ice pack to the other side of my face, hoping it would cover up any inconsistencies in my expression. “I slept a lot.”

Another part of the lie I had prepared for.

“I’m a terrible liar,” I warned Reid.

“Yeah, I got that.”

“Well, then, I’m open for suggestions—”

“Here.” He violently yanked my wrist and forced my palm open, shoving two small blue pills inside. “Take these. When they ask, just say someone spoon fed you them all day long.”

I laughed in his face. “I’m not taking these.”

“Don’t trust me?” he mocked.

I fastened my seatbelt and scowled back, “About as far as I can throw you.”

“Look! Those people are professionals, they won’t believe you if you just outright lie. They see some sleeping pills in your blood and maybe—maybe they’ll believe you don’t know anything, that you just slept all week.”

I squeezed the tablets in my hand. “And if they don’t?”

“Then I know where you live.”

Norton opened up his file and began reading off a sheet of paper. “Yes, your tox screen is positive for diphenhydramine, but the head neurologist says your head CT is clear. You don’t remember how you got three-thousand miles from home?”

If only this one knew how far from home I had really been.

“At some point I ate the food they offered me,” I sniffed. “I know it was stupid, but I didn’t want to starve to death, either. After that, a man named Wallace would give me blue pills every few hours. He said they wouldn’t hurt me, but he’d do a lot worse to me if I refused.”

I then described Wallace with every possible detail I could, right down to the angle of his hairline. I could tell Harpsten was impressed by how intricate some of my answers were. But before Norton could ask anything else, Harpsten shook his head at him and took the remainder of the files. Agent Harpsten and Norton were looking at each other as they put away the photographs. They didn’t quite have the answers they wanted but they were still somewhat satisfied.

“Thank you, Addie,” said Agent Harpsten, “you’ve been really helpful.”

By the time we got back to New Jersey, thirteen different newspapers had thirteen theories about what had happened to me and what had occurred between New York and California. Robbie had collected most of them, obnoxiously waving them in my face (which had for the most part healed), and been about as annoying as any brother could be.

“‘Kidnapping’s Happy & Mysterious Conclusion’? ‘Nabbed Teen Escaped Captors’? Can you believe this stuff?”

“Anything about alien abductions?” I asked.

“What?”

“Never mind, Robbie.” I went back to my crossword.

The days and weeks that followed my return home were long and brought the kind of dull ache that one might feel after