A Vault of Sins Read online

  I wish I could explain to her that cereal and breakfast beers at three in the morning are the happiest part of my day, but it’s too depressing to voice out loud. Instead, I rest my head on her shoulder, and we sit together in the dark. This happens sometimes. Mom and I hug a lot more than we used to, but we still haven’t been able to find strings of words to go along with those hugs. But that’s okay, because somehow the silence says everything.

  “Know how early we have to wake up to get you to D.C. on time?”

  “An hour. I have to wake up in an hour.”

  I start to laugh, and she joins in before sighing and standing up. “I’ll start the coffee.”

  This trial is making her old. Every day passes and the lines on her face deepen, another gray lock streaking her hair. My mother is wasting away because of me. I try and piece together the right words to remind her how thankful I am, to spout out anything that will relieve her of the stress today and every day brings. I’m not quick enough; she’s already busying herself in the kitchen.

  I get up and head through the narrow hall to my room and flip on the light switch. It’s only been my room for a couple of months. We moved to a quiet apartment in San Antonio after the paparazzi infested my old Phoenix neighborhood like roaches. Not even Todd was safe; Mom caught reporters harassing him at the bus stop and blew a gasket.

  That morning made the front page of a popular tabloid: Clara Ibarra: Cracking Under Pressure?

  Liz, my lawyer, says that we should keep most of our things packed so we can be prepared to move on a moment’s notice. If the media gets a whiff of our location, we don’t want to stick around any longer than we have to.

  I’ve gotten rid of most of my belongings. I’m left with only my linens, my clothes, and my old paintings. I kept my tablet and phone too, but only because Liz insists I must have an easy way to keep in touch with her; not to mention, they hold my only photos of Meghan.

  This room is a representation of what my life has been since the trial has started. Bare walls and windowsills, empty, uninspired canvases stacked in the corner. Mom picked up my boring khaki-colored bedspread on sale at a department store. My room in college was splashed with color, so many clothes piled around my bed you couldn’t even see the floor. I remember when Liam stepped on a tube of acrylic paint and yellow exploded all over my favorite jeans. Screaming, I socked him in the shoulder, but before long we were laughing and making out on the bed.

  Now, my paints are packed deep within one of the taped-shut boxes. I don’t know which one.

  I lay out my blouse and pencil skirt on the bed and sit in front of the closet door mirror. I start my makeup. Everything is a strategy, including the pale pinks of my blush and lipstick. Look as innocent as possible. That’s the goal, although I’m not fooled into thinking that my pink lipstick will do anything to help my relatively shitty situation.

  As I’m applying my makeup, my tablet pings, and I groan. I’m notified every time a news article about me pops up on the Internet. That was Liz’s idea too. Always know what people are saying about you, even the rumors.

  This one I would have rather been oblivious to.

  The photo is of Casey and me outside the courthouse. In the middle of being swarmed by reporters and ushered to a car by guards and our lawyers, someone caught him whispering into my ear.

  Criminal Romance: What’s Really Going on Between Evalyn Ibarra and Casey Hargrove?

  The tabloids really need to figure out a different way to word article titles.

  In the photo, his hand rests on my waist, his lips against my ear. I remember this moment, even though I can’t remember what he was telling me. He probably leaned in just so I could hear him over the screaming reporters. But regardless of what he was saying to me, regardless of whether or not the gesture was actually romantic, the image is poison.

  If our romance gets out, we’ll be doomed in the eyes of the public. People will see us together and assume we’re conspiring with each other—two criminals in looovvve trying to take down the division.

  I cannot be perceived as being with or screwing or loving Casey Hargrove.

  Before I’m finished reading the article, which, lucky for me, consists of mostly speculation, I receive a message from Liz.

  No more PDA.

  She must have read it already.

  I reply: Whispering is hardly PDA.

  Liz: Whispering infers you have secrets. Secrets will ruin us.

  I grit my teeth and glance away from my tablet, applying my mascara as violently as I can without poking my eye out. Yes, secrets will ruin me.

  Not like it matters. People starved for scandal can speculate all they want about my secrets, but today will finally solidify the true image the public has of me. Gemma Branam is taking the stand, and we’ll also be given the final word on the investigation of the CR files. Everything in those files will prove that what Casey, Valerie, and I have been claiming is true.

  I may be immoral, but at least I won’t be a liar.

  2

  I must have imagined thousands of different ways that today’s events would unfold, but none of them involved me chasing Valerie down a courthouse hallway.

  I know where she’s headed. There’s a room upstairs where the three of us meet often with our lawyers—a safe room. Hardly anyone ever goes upstairs, so we have the place to ourselves, to collaborate and curse and yell if we have to, or hide out until the press has died down outside. But I don’t think that’s going to happen anytime soon, not with the way court went today.

  I scream her name as she takes off up the stairs. She doesn’t wait for me. Casey’s minutes behind us, slowed by his screwed-up hip.

  On the second floor, she flings open the door to the meeting room ahead. By the time I’ve reached her, she’s mid–panic attack, leaning against the windowsill on the opposite side of the room.

  “Valerie . . .”

  “How?!” she screams, spinning toward me, her face flushed red. A tear trickles from the corner of her eye. “How . . . how is this happening to us?”

  I want to give her an answer, to find a way to make sense of everything that just happened in the courtroom. Instead, I collapse onto the leather couch, cupping my hands over my face.

  Gemma was prepared with diagrams and reports of our time in the Compass Room—a “virtual simulation center” where we underwent a month-long dream. She had enough fake information to convince the court that we were tested with virtual scenarios while we were strapped to comfortable recliners, unconscious, and in a sterile lab. Our reactions to our dream-like experiences were what determined whether we were given a humane lethal injection or survived another day.

  Which is complete bullshit.

  Not only that, but her forged reports also stated that while our Compass Room glitch resulted in early termination, there were no accidental deaths.

  “If we had taken the deal, they would have admitted to Jace’s death.” Valerie paces the floor, and when I don’t respond to her, she slams her fist down on the nearest table. “Fuck!”

  I stand and walk to her, grabbing her wrists and pushing her up against the wall. “Val . . . Val, listen to me.”

  Her jaw clenches, and her fists are balled so tightly that her knuckles are white, but she doesn’t try to fight me.

  “They are trying to hurt you. They are trying to hurt us, to punish us for defying them and fighting to get the truth out. This isn’t your fault that they are getting away with lying.”

  The door creaks open, and I know our lawyers have joined us. Casey finally limps in, and I leave Valerie and help him to the couch.

  When Liz begins to pace, I know we haven’t heard the end of the bad news.

  “Tell me you can prove that those reports have been falsified,” I beg. “Tell me that the investigation dug something up. Anything that can help us.”

  “Evalyn . . .”

  I sink down onto the couch next to Casey, because the way Liz says my name tells me everything. “Our i
nvestigators tore through all of the CR files. Everything mirrored the evidence Gemma brought to court. We have photos of the simulation centers she described. We have nearly infinite data on each one of your so-called virtual cycles.”

  Casey squeezes my hand. “So you’re telling me that everything we went through . . .”

  “It’s not possible.” Valerie clutches the windowsill tightly. “It wasn’t a virtual simulation. There is no fucking way what we went through was a virtual simulation. Is the entire world stupid enough to believe the obvious evidence? Casey’s hip was shattered, for fuck’s sakes!”

  “They’ll find a way to write it off.” My voice cracks, and I lick my dry lips. The division will effortlessly override our testimonies with lies. This is how it’s going to end.

  Liz exchanges glances with her team of solemn lawyers. “I . . . I agree with you. But we’re beyond that now. The trial is beyond that. We have to start making some decisions.”

  Valerie slides down the wall, her face ghost-white and shining with sweat.

  We’ve lost.

  Casey holds my hand throughout the entire meeting. When Liz finishes, we’re left waiting for our cars to arrive at the back of the courthouse, granting us a safe, media-less exit. In the meantime, I retreat to the bathroom.

  Thirty seconds pass before Casey gets the hint. When he enters the women’s room, I hop onto the marble counter. “How’s your hip?”

  He slips between my legs and shuts me up with his mouth. I cross my ankles behind him and pull him as close to me as I can. In the brief moment we have, I relax into him and surrender. Holding him is the last straw, and suddenly I’m weeping, burying my face in his chest. He holds me and waits as I clutch the fabric of his dress shirt, until I’ve composed myself enough to say, “I’m so scared.”

  “I’m fucking terrified.”

  Someone clears their throat behind Casey. He pulls away, wincing at his own sudden movement. I wipe my face.

  Valerie’s bloodshot eyes send a bolt of guilt through my abdomen, and I tuck my hair behind my ear. Casey and I exchange glances, his way of saying good-bye.

  He leaves, and I hop off the counter and straighten my ensemble. My face is swollen and red. The crying will be impossible to cover no matter how much makeup I use.

  Valerie exits the stall, and we stare at each other in the mirror before she dips her hands beneath the automatic faucet. “I promised someone very important that I’d fight for Jace.”

  “It isn’t over.”

  She nods, but it’s absent of all sincerity. We need a miracle to come back from this.

  We need to find where the truth is hidden. But no one even knows where to look.

  3

  Our lawyers don’t want Casey, Valerie, and me seen together in public, especially with the inevitable outcome of the trial. We need to be viewed as starting over—resetting ourselves and breaking ties with the dark aspects of our former lives. Publicly bonding with other Compass Room survivors isn’t severance, it’s flirting with the deviance we’re trying to bury, especially since the world thinks we made up lies about what happened in the Compass Room.

  Liz is adamant about every trail, anything that could be tapped or hacked or intercepted. Because of this, there has hardly been any hashing out between me and Casey about us.

  The idea of us is emotionally masochistic, a fantasy fed on the idea that one day we could cultivate a functioning, normal-person relationship. We’re murderers and supposed liars, hardly able to exist and thrive on our own let alone be with someone else. And that’s not even considering falling in love—honey-sweet, pitter-patter loooovvee—after sixteen days of a wilderness torture chamber. Yeah, okay.

  Yet it’s not my own well-being at the end of this trial that I’m obsessing over night after night or my miserable future. It’s his. So since I can’t speak to him, I learn everything I can about Casey Hargrove from the news archives on the Internet.

  His father owned a mechanic shop, his mother a waitress until Casey’s birth, when she decided to stay home. She had two miscarriages before him. How the media knows about Stefanie’s unborn daughters is a mystery, although I’m sure they dug into his past thoroughly. We CR deviants are scandalous entertainment, after all.

  The miscarriages allude to Stefanie being either stressed or beaten consistently by her husband for their entire marriage. None of the articles use this knowledge as an excuse for Casey’s crime, but to simply enlighten readers further as to how fucked up his family life really was.

  My head fills with hundreds of vicious voices wanting to dissect Casey—his manner, his temper, his hate—and he becomes a character in my mind. I find myself questioning whether or not the Casey I know is built upon faux memories that bandage my brain from every screwed-up thing that happened in the Compass Room. Everyone thinks I’m lying—maybe I am making stuff up.

  The thought fills me with cold dread, and for a week, I wonder if I’m going insane. Finally, one afternoon, as I’m sitting on my khaki-colored bedspread with my tablet in my hands, tabs of Casey news articles scattered across the screen, he calls me.

  “Incoming call from Casey Hargrove. Accept or decline?” the mechanical voice chimes.

  I stare at the screen of my phone, the text of his name illuminated. I’m not hearing things.

  Fuck caution.

  “Accept.”

  Our lines connect, and I wait to speak, listening to his slow breathing over the speaker.

  “Evalyn?”

  “Yeah,” I stammer. “Yeah, I’m here.”

  “I need to see you.” When I don’t respond right away, he continues. “I know I’m compromising—”

  I cut him off. “Where?”

  ***

  A new high-speed train line was built three years ago, connecting San Antonio to the Chicago track. It’d only take me a few hours to get to him, but he won’t let me. After useless arguing, we decide on the flat middle of the country, halfway between him and me. Missouri, Middle-of-Fucking-Nowhere, population 298.

  The shitty hotel has a cash-up-front option. I didn’t even know places like this still existed. Everyone wants to know your information, or at least who you are and where they can charge damages if you destroy a room. Here, the paint peels off the walls and the carpet smells like cigarettes. Half the letters in the cheap florescent vacancy sign have died, and I’m sure the strung-out guy at the front desk wouldn’t care if we burned the whole place to the ground. He gives me the grimy metal key and I text Casey the room number. Then I sit on an itchy, stained comforter underneath a dim, bare bulb and wait.

  Half an hour later, he knocks. I swing the door open and Casey greets me with a wince, leaning against the frame.

  He’s getting worse, but even pained and out-of-breath, all I see is perfection.

  “I should have come to you.” I pull him inside by the front of his shirt and shut the door.

  “We should work equally as hard to see each other,” he argues.

  “Chicago would have been easy to—”

  “Fuck Chicago.”

  I push him down onto the bed and slide onto his lap. His hands find my neck, but before he can kiss me, I place a finger against his lips. “Wait.” I exhale, my nose brushing his. I need to savor this, the moment of waiting we never have. We were too busy sneaking kisses in the seconds we have alone. Time is a luxury I didn’t acknowledge until recently.

  “Wait,” I repeat.

  His eyelashes flutter against me as he blinks. I count, forcing myself to wait a full minute before our lips meet. His tongue coaxes me open, hands fisting the back of my shirt.

  I unwrap him, fingers fumbling on every button of his coat. He shrugs it off, and my hands roam from his collar to his belt, sliding beneath his shirt to risen scars. Familiar territory.

  “Fuck the media. Fuck everyone. I can’t live like this.” He flips me onto my back and slides on top of me, even though I know he’s hurting. “I can’t keep ignoring you. I can’t keep pretending I
don’t give a shit about your life when half the country would kill you if they had the chance.”

  “It’s too dangerous.” The second the sentence leaves my mouth, I know it will never persuade him. Hand cupping the back of my neck, he says, “I’d take a bullet for you.”

  “Don’t you ever say that again,” I threaten.

  He rolls his eyes. “Regardless, we’re fucked anyway, Ev.”

  No, I want to say. I’m fucked. And it’s the truth. Before we entered the Compass Room, we signed a contract that said we could be retried for our original crimes. Casey’s lawyer is fantastic. His sentence will be minimal.

  Me on the other hand—no further evidence has been found unearthing what really happened the day of the shooting; it’s a closed case. If I’m lucky, I’ll be sentenced to life in prison.

  I don’t remind Casey of this. It isn’t just his hip that pains and slows him. I see the shape of his soul in his eyes and the lines of his face. And I want him, as selfish as that is. While I deserve all of this self-loathing, being with Casey reminds me that I’m capable of other emotions too.

  I nod. “Then we’ll make something work.”

  His smile reaches his eyes, skin crinkling around his lashes. He leans in, and our kiss is slow. His sweeping tongue savors me, and the feeling borders between euphoria and pure torture.

  My fingers fumble with his belt buckle until he stops me.

  “Not tonight.”

  I gape at him, but before I can argue, he cuts me off. “Evalyn, I have three more hours before the sun comes up and all I want to do is stare at you. Let me.”

  I relax in defeat and touch my forehead to his. His eyes search mine and I want to ask what he’s looking for, but the question would be too much of an interruption.

  So for three hours, we say nothing. His fingers comb through my hair as I think of our confessions of love in the Compass Room, wondering if they were contrived by circumstance—by desperation. Maybe they were and maybe I don’t care. Casey makes me feel human. It’s different with Mom, and even with Liam in the brief moments I’ve seen him since I escaped. In the same breath they say they believe me, they also want to forget, hoping I’ll reboot and begin again.