The Good Lie by A.R. Torre

CHAPTER 20

Scott was halfway onto the side porch when Nita spotted him carefully pulling the door closed, his hand keeping it from hitting against the frame.

“Scott!” she called.

A guilty look flitted across his face. Just as quickly, it was replaced with a bored teenage stare. “Hey.”

“Where are you going?”

“Just for a drive. Thought I’d go by the school.”

Beverly High. The scene of his abduction. The private school where he no longer attended classes, his assignments now delivered each week with offers of tutoring and special assistance steeped in apologetic guilt. One of their own was responsible for this. The man who ate doughnuts in the faculty break room had pressed lit cigarettes into her son’s ribs. He had forced objects into him. He had tied him down, naked on his bed, for days at a time.

“I’ll drive you,” Nita offered, looping her purse over her shoulder and pulling the door open so she could squeeze through.

“Oh no. You said Susan was coming over.” He blocked her path.

“I don’t need to be here for that.” She waved off the concern. Susan had been cleaning their home for the better part of a decade. She could figure out what to focus on without Nita’s help, though Nita did make a mental note to text her a reminder to dust the fan blades in the loft.

“Mom, I can drive myself.” Scott held up his truck keys, which she would have sworn were locked in their safe.

“The battery isn’t charged,” she protested. “You haven’t driven it in months.”

“Dad put in a new one yesterday.”

Damn George. He knew she didn’t want Scott driving. She wasn’t ready for this, couldn’t stand to watch him drive away and potentially never come back.

“I need to go by the grocery store anyway.” She elbowed her way through the door. “I’m making fruit pizza tonight. The one you like, with the strawberries and mangoes. We can swing by the grocery store after we go to the school.”

“Mom. Stop.”

She met his eyes and silently pleaded with him to let her come. He didn’t have to go to the school. He could go next week. Or the next. She needed just a few more days to conquer the fear that was closing its fist around her heart.

“I love you, but I need to get out of this house and be normal for a few hours, okay? I don’t need a chaperone.”

“Promise me you won’t get out of the truck,” she said desperately. “Just drive around. And if you get a flat tire, or break down—”

“I won’t.” He carefully steered her back inside. “I’ll be back in a couple of hours.”

“One hour,” she countered. “The school’s ten minutes away. One hour is plenty.”

He groaned. “Fine.”

“I love you.”

He grinned, and it was almost like it used to be. “You, too, Ma.”

She watched as he turned and strode toward their garage, the far door lifting to reveal his truck. They should have gotten him the Volvo sedan. Five stars on every single safety rating. It wasn’t too late. She was looking at them just yesterday. His truck was a rollover waiting to happen. Those giant tires? The center of gravity was dangerous. The visibility was horrible. And he played the radio way too loud. It wasn’t safe, having the music that loud. He couldn’t hear a horn, or if someone shouted out a warning.

The noisy diesel engine rumbled to life, and she wondered if George had put gas in it. Stations in this area were safe, but if he took a scenic route home and stopped in a questionable area . . .

“Stop fretting.” George came up behind her and wrapped an arm around her waist. “I know that look on your face.”

She stayed in place, watching as Scott’s truck pulled forward. “I can’t believe you put a new battery in his truck. He can’t be out there driving, all by himself—”

“Would you rather him sneak out and then get stuck somewhere with a dead battery?” he asked gruffly. “Nita, you’ve got to trust that he’s going to be okay.”

She pulled out of his arms and headed for her study, quickening her pace as Scott’s truck rumbled down their drive.

“Nita?” George called.

Settling at her desk, she opened her laptop and powered it on. Pulling her hair into a tight ponytail, she watched the screen with impatience, then opened a web browser and logged in on a tracking software’s website. Blue, red, and green dots appeared on the map, and she let out a sigh of relief.

There was a tracking device in Scott’s truck and an app installed on his phone. The phone was a new one, purchased after his return, the original uselessly left in his football bag on the night of his abduction. She had spared no expense with the replacement phone, or the tracking disks that were now affixed to the soles of his favorite shoes, underneath the seat of his bike, and in his backpack and wallet.

She would not lose him again. Counting slowly to ten and inhaling deeply to relax her tension, she watched the cluster of dots as it moved down their street in the direction of the high school.

One hour was manageable. She could watch him from here, call the police if anything happened, and take enough Xanax upon his return to drown this stressful event in a sea of pharmaceutical bliss.

“Nita.” George appeared in the open doorway of the office. He had been at his mistress’s apartment the morning that Scott had returned home. She had dealt with their son’s disappearance by falling apart; George had weathered it by falling into someone else’s arms. She didn’t blame him for it. Someone had needed to keep their life running, keep the money coming in, the bills paid, the staff maintained, and he had done all that. And ever since Scott had come home, George had been right by her side. No scent of another woman on his clothing, no mysterious errands that took him out in the middle of the night. “Let’s go sit in the garden. It’s beautiful outside.”

“I can’t.” She clicked a button to switch to satellite view, and a pinwheel slowly turned in the center.

“He’ll be fine. He’s just—”

“Why, George?” She looked up at him. “Why will he be fine? Because he’s a grown man? Guess what, he was still taken. Because he’s in a nice area? So was his school!”

“Randall Thompson was arrested,” he said gently. “He’s in jail. Scott is safe.”

What a stupid statement. Scott was not safe, and the most maddening thing about it was that she didn’t have any way to protect him. He wasn’t safe here in the house, and he wasn’t safe out there, and life had been so much easier when she was blissfully unaware of that.

George mumbled something, then left, the office falling silent as she watched the satellite image fill the screen. The dots had moved, and she zoomed in. Her eyes narrowed. Why was he driving south on Santa Monica? The school was in the opposite direction. She started to call him but stopped herself. While Scott was aware of her paranoia and fears, he would freak out at the idea that she was tracking his movements.

Instead, she checked his phone through the software. Battery full. Location services on. He’ll be fine, she told herself. He was driving around. He didn’t have a good reason to go by the school anyway. He was probably heading to that burger drive-through, the one past Westwood Boulevard. Kicking off her wedge heels, she put her bare feet on the small footstool she kept underneath her desk and forced herself to let go of the death grip she had on her mouse.

Her worry was unhealthy. That was what George and her therapist said. Her obsession with what-ifs and dangers was emotionally depleting her. Plus, according to Nan Singletary, who had become a visualization guru after watching a Netflix documentary, continually envisioning and expecting something risked bringing that event about. Hearing that, Nita had promptly cut off contact with Nan, because now it was impossible not to think of all the dangers facing Scott, and she wasn’t about to feel guilty for potentially triggering a future event with her thoughts.

Scott’s journey continued as he moved in an odd path south, then east. Nita watched as he drove down Sepulveda, then Venice, then turned onto a residential side street, where he finally curved around and came to a stop about halfway down the block. She stared at the blinking dots, expecting the phone to separate from the truck as Scott left the vehicle. The dots stayed in place. A minute passed. Then two.

She glanced at the clock, noting the time. Maybe he’d stopped to return a text. Maybe to call her. Maybe to flip through the GPS and figure out where he was and how to get back to home.

She let out a slow, controlled breath. This was no reason to panic, she reminded herself. If he sat there long enough, she could always call him.

The green dot turned purple, and she frowned, hovering over it to see what the change was.

Location services disabled during call.

He was on the phone. A burst of relief hit her. He was on the phone and he’d pulled over to be safe. For years, she’d been telling him not to drive and talk on the phone, but had always assumed the advice had been ignored, especially since both she and George frequently bucked the rule.

The purple dot turned green again, then moved, separating itself from the others as Scott’s phone moved away from the truck. The dot moved in an erratic fashion to the left, then right on the street, almost as if he were pacing. It was still for a long moment, then returned to the truck.

She frowned, then switched screens, pulling up his cell phone records.

Today’s activity was sadly empty, except for the most recent call, to an unfamiliar number, with a call duration of less than a minute.

She considered calling the number but opted to put it in the search engine first. As the results loaded, his truck finally moved, the group of dots pulling a U-turn in the middle of the residential street.

This was odd. The number was for a San Diego real estate company. Seized by a sudden burst of insight, she searched for the addresses near his parked location. Sure enough, one across the street from his parking spot—22 Terrace Drive—was one of their listings. Scott must have seen their sign in the yard and called.

She nodded, feeling a burst of triumph for putting so much of this together.

Except . . . why? Was this a random drive that had sparked a curious call? Or was Scott looking to buy a house?

The second option seemed absurd. He was seventeen and—if she had any input into it—would live under their roof for another three or four years, at minimum. And he didn’t have a job—he certainly would never be approved for a mortgage, not without her or George signing on.

Okay, so a random drive-by was the only solution, though the theory had its own plot holes. Unless there was a hot girl in the front yard, Scott didn’t pay attention to homes and had certainly never called a number on a real estate sign. She glanced at the tracking software, her son’s truck following a return route back to her house.

“Here.” George stepped into the office, a chilled glass of wine in hand. He came around her desk, and she closed the window before he could see the screen. He held out the flute, and she took it with a grateful smile.

“Thank you.” She took a sip.

“I’m sorry for going behind your back with Scott’s truck.”

“Just tell me you put gas in it.”

“I did.” He gave her shoulder a reassuring squeeze. “He’ll be okay, Nita.”

She nodded and let him put his arm around her. He didn’t need to know about the Realtor call. Not now. Not until she could figure out what was really going on with their son.