A Vault of Sins Read online

  Casey knows better. He knows it’s more complicated than starting over.

  At five in the morning, we call our cars and leave our shitty Missouri hotel. I shut the door behind me, and beneath the eaves, he leans in and kisses me on the cheek.

  As he limps toward his car, I realize we haven’t exchanged a word in three hours. And those three hours were exactly how they should have been.

  ***

  The story is published before I arrive home.

  Secret Love Affair Between Criminals? Evalyn Ibarra and Casey Hargrove Seen Together at Missouri Hotel

  “This?” My mother cries as she pushes her tablet displaying the story (with incriminating photos) in front of my face. “How could you be so careless?”

  I watch as Todd finger paints on the dining room table, completely oblivious to what’s going on around him. My refusal to make eye contact with her is the nail in my guilty coffin.

  “You didn’t even take a guard with you!”

  “It’s not what you think,” I lie.

  “Please, enlighten me.”

  I glare up at her. Why does she need to be enlightened? I’m old enough to make my own decisions, and my own mistakes.

  My phone starts to ring. I pull it out of my pocket, praising my good fortune, until I realize that it’s Liz.

  When I’m in my room, I pick up. “Hello?”

  I can tell she’s furious and trying to hold it together. I listen mutely, sitting on my bed as she scolds me.

  “Here’s the thing, Evalyn. You already have it in your head that you’d rather sacrifice yourself than see Casey or Valerie go down. I’m not going to let you do that because I’m your lawyer, but this . . .” She sighs. “Casey has a real fighting chance. His original crime already had sympathizers. If you care at all about the outcome of his trial, you need to stay away from him. I mean it, Evalyn. I believe your story. I always have. And I’ll do my damnedest to prove it to the rest of the world if we’re taken back to court for the shooting. But until that happens, people will still think that you are a conniving manipulator, and for your sake and his sake, Casey Hargrove cannot be seen as your pawn.”

  I blink to hold back the burning tears, and choke out, “Did you tell him this?”

  “Yes, actually. And what I’m about to say is going to be hard to hear.”

  I can imagine that conversation perfectly, Casey fuming, his voice shaking as he hisses through gritted teeth his response to Liz’s proposal. “He said that he won’t stop seeing me, didn’t he? He’d rather take the fall alongside of me than keep himself safe.”

  “I’m sorry, Evalyn, I’m sorry this has to fall on your shoulders, but you must break his heart. For his safety and for yours.”

  When she hangs up, I cradle my phone in my hands and curl up on my side. I let myself cry for the first time in a while.

  Liz is right. Casey Hargrove can’t be in love with a psychopath. The world needs to see him without ties to his criminal past, cleansed and ready to live as a normal, functioning citizen. He has a fighting chance, and I can’t get in the way.

  My whole body trembles, but I force myself to sit up. I think of the moment I found out that he had made it out of the Compass Room alive. I foolishly believed that because we were both breathing, he could be mine. I couldn’t have contrived a stupider thought. Our baggage can be spotted by orbiting satellites. We don’t deserve to move on side by side.

  I should be happy. I should be happy that he might, for once, have a chance at a somewhat-normal life.

  “Ev?”

  I look up. The universe must be playing a cruel trick on me, because Liam’s standing in my bedroom doorway.

  Uncomprehending, I watch him frown and scratch the back of his head. “I talked to your mom. She told me where you guys were living. Said you’d object to me visiting so I begged her not to tell you. I wanted it to be a surprise.”

  I fumble, incapable of forming a coherent sentence in my stupor, and he continues rambling like he’s desperately trying to fill the awkward silence. “I don’t know why you wouldn’t want to see me.”

  He looks like I just murdered his entire family. Somehow it’s still not clicking in my brain that he’s actually here—Liam Callaway, my boyfriend of five years—the one I never really broke up with. He looks tired—older. Behind those bright eyes, he’s afraid. Walking across the room, he sits on the bed next to me. Seconds pass.

  “Say something.”

  “This . . .” I inhale. “It’s just a really fucking bad time, Liam.”

  “I needed to see you. To know how you are.” He rests a hand on my knee and squeezes. This used to be the resting place for his hand every time we sat next to each other, a move practiced over and over until it became subconscious. We clicked together like jigsaw pieces, his hand on my leg, my arm looped in his. If we were somewhere public, he’d lean into my neck and whisper as he spoke. Anything we shared was a secret.

  It isn’t fair, what happened to us, that we were so happy. My sins were his suffering. To think that I hated him in prison after loving him for nearly a quarter of my life. I remember the shift in emotion—how fast it had happened. How broken I’d felt. Maybe I hadn’t given him the benefit of the doubt. My judgment of Liam had been clouded the moment I was dealt a really shitty hand. Anyone who couldn’t be right there with me had been against me.

  I instead of linking my arm with his, I rest my hand on top of his slender fingers. “I miss you.”

  There’s a beat of silence before I confirm my words again. “I do.” I squeeze his hand tight and let go. “But you can’t be here with me.”

  “Ev, I’ve been following your trial. And I believe you—everything the three have you have been saying about what actually happened to you in there. I know you. I know you wouldn’t lie.” The tremble in his voice confirms that I have to focus on his hand. His face will shatter all the determination I have to speak the truth that Liam has earned.

  “But you don’t know everything about me.”

  For five years, I trusted him. I can do that again for the last time, can’t I? I owe him that.

  Before he can argue with me, I tell Liam Callaway everything. I start with the shooting, about the relief I felt when I killed a man in cold blood, and how that moment was the first time I ever saw a glimpse of the monster inside of me.

  But I don’t stop there. I tell him about the Compass Room. About Casey. About everything.

  ***

  I’m on the couch nursing a beer when Mom sits down next to me.

  “Is he coming back?”

  I shake my head, and the disappointment on her face slices me deep.

  “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you. I thought it’d be good for you to see him again, you know? But maybe I was wrong . . . maybe . . . you have feelings for that boy you were in prison with, don’t you?”

  I wish I could tell her it’s that simple, that I sent Liam away because I have feelings for Casey. One boy for another. But some problems can’t be so surface—about love or sex or what relationship is best for me. I’m forever beyond that.

  “I told him the truth.”

  “About?”

  About . . . it’s a loaded about. “Everything. My life for the past year and a half.”

  A long, dry pause fills the air. “And then he left?” She’s afraid that I’ve told him something she doesn’t know. And I did, I guess.

  “Something happened.” I concentrate on ripping the label off my bottle. “There’s this whole new, terrifying side of me I never knew about, not until the shooting. And the Compass Room. It’s like they poked and prodded us in all the right ways just to make us snap. And I did.” My fingers roll the shredded paper into a ball. I wonder what Mom’s expression would be like if she’d seen me with Gordon’s blood soaking my clothes, his corpse in front of me. Liz is trying so hard to uncover video that proves what really happened in Compass Room C, but maybe it’s better if all of that stayed buried. “I snapped.”

  Like
the live wood at the campsite. Casey would always tell me to never grab it because it smoked instead of burned, and when you’d try to break it in half it would just bend and bend until it doubled over and couldn’t resist any longer. . . .

  “Evalyn?”

  My eyes focus back on her. “I can’t reset myself.”

  She blinks slowly. “Maybe he’d still love you. This you. You haven’t even given him a chance.”

  I know I won’t ever give Liam that chance. No matter what he expects from me, and even if he wants to accept and love the person I am, there will always be a part of me he’ll never understand.

  She waits for the answer I can’t give her. Finally, she sighs. “They’ve found us again.”

  I bite down hard on my bottom lip. “How?”

  “Must have followed Liam here. Apartment manager called me about a half hour ago. Said some reporters were snooping around, asking tenants questions.”

  I know better than anyone that the vicious reporters never miss a shot. With my meet-up with Casey yesterday and Liam visiting me today, the tabs and blogs tomorrow will brim with scandal if they aren’t already. We’re going to have to move. Again.

  I can’t drag Mom and Todd down with me.

  Scooting toward Mom, I wrap her in my arms. I don’t know what the hug means exactly, but it’s just as violent as the ones she’s been giving me lately. I squeeze her tight, an apology for not only screwing up the past two years, but the past twenty-two. I apologize for the quiet, escalating fire of our relationship.

  “I have to leave,” I whisper.

  “I know, baby.” She starts to cry. “I know.”

  RFC Flash News Update: January 18

  BREAKING STORY: DIVISION OF JUDICIAL TECHNOLOGY FOUND NOT GUILTY OF PRISONER NEGLIGENCE.

  The case of the century has finally ended.

  Early Friday morning, the Division of Judicial Technology was found not guilty for prisoner negligence.

  The Division was brought to court after Evalyn Ibarra (22), Casey Hargrove (20), and Valerie Crane (26), were extracted from Compass Room C this summer due to what the division called “a minor system malfunction.” The three survivors claimed that the Compass Room was not a series of virtual simulations, but an obstacle course in the middle of the wilderness. The persecution also argued that the Room had been glitching from the start of the test, unintentionally killing several moral candidates. After a two-month long trial, the division was found not guilty of candidate negligence due to the lack of evidence to support the former inmates’ claims.

  While updates are being made to the Rooms, the next series of tests for newly sentenced candidates are on schedule.

  Two Months Later

  4

  In my painting, Casey’s shirtless, his scars entrapping him like Compass Room vines.

  A part of me wonders if it’s wrong to paint him in the Compass Room, like I’m reminiscing about our time there. But somehow, painting in order to remind myself of everything that happened seems more important than my shame of not wanting to forget.

  I’ve been painting a lot. The others are tucked behind my plastic dresser beside the double bed, the only pieces of furniture in my six-hundred-square-foot shack of a rental house in the middle-of-nowhere, Pennsylvania. Half-empty bottles of pretty amber liquid line my counter space, and my easel sits in front of the biggest window, a half-finished painting of Casey gracing the canvas.

  This is my version of lying low. Mom pays my bills until the controversy surrounding my existence dies down or until the division arrests and retries me for the shooting—whichever comes first.

  Mom and Liz are the only ones who know my whereabouts, other than the government officials assigned to keep tabs on my tracking monitor—the stupid bracelet I have to wear for the next year. Jenna, the cute name I gave my operating system, takes care of me, announcing when scathing news articles pop up on the Internet, or when there’s an incoming phone call from Casey I need to ignore. I haven’t spoken to him in fifty-seven days.

  I’m very much alone.

  I paint Casey from memory. I’ve learned that the pictures of him on the Internet aren’t him—they aren’t my Casey.

  Mimosa in hand, I work at the detail of the thread of his scars. Some of them stretch from his body to entwine with the surrounding vines. This is my favorite part because it reminds me of the paintings I used to create from Meghan’s photographs. Expanding reality.

  In the morning I paint, and in the afternoon, after two vodka cranberries and an early microwave dinner, I browse my favorite website on my tablet. Named CR Collective, its sub-forums consist of conspiracy threads, news updates—even fan-fiction—of Compass Room casualties and survivors. These people, for whatever reason, are obsessed.

  I’ve been following a particular thread for the past couple of weeks that began after the trial ended. They use an abbreviation for me—EI. Makes me sound like something less-than-human.

  TimtheTheorist: Been closely following EI articles and interviews for the past few weeks. Nothing really stands out like she’s remorseful at all, which makes me believe the whole trial with the Division of Judicial Technology really was an elaborate scam for money and she’s the soulless bitch I first thought she was. Damn. Really was hoping the crazy obstacle course CR and the mass glitch were legit.

  Nine Lives: You think EI’s a soulless bitch but you wanted her to be telling the truth? Make sense, please.

  TimtheTheorist: Because a Compass Room conspiracy would have been awesome, but EI is the essence of evil. Can she just get the lethal injection already so we can call it a day?

  Santana18: There’s rumors of her getting back with the guy she was with before the trial.

  TimtheTheorist: Fucking moron. She probably brainwashed him.

  Nine Lives: Whether EI is evil or not, something can’t be right. If the division is telling the truth about everything, that the CR is made up of virtual simulations and EI, CH, and VC were extracted on day sixteen, why did EI last so long?

  TimtheTheorist: What do you mean?

  Nine Lives: Why wasn’t EI dead yet?

  TimtheTheorist: Did you not READ through the trial transcript? Here, [LINK] for your future reference. Gemma Branam explained it all in her testimony.

  Nine Lives: But that doesn’t make any sense in comparison to other psychopaths who’ve committed similar crimes and died in the CR. All of them were killed within 48 hours of the CR beginning. Why not EI? If she’s really a psychopath and the CR wasn’t malfunctioning, shouldn’t she have been executed in the first few days? I mean, she’s a terrorist.

  No one has responded to Nine Lives yet. I don’t know who the member is, but I like him or her. At least someone is suspicious of the so-called truth that everyone else believes so easily.

  ***

  In my dream, I’m alone.

  The forest swells up all around me, warm and dark and moist. It’s a cocoon of comfort, if I didn’t know better. This is always the worst part of the dream—the feeling of entrapment, of loneliness. I’m lying on the ground, the underbrush of the woods spidering over my body, and I smell the Compass Room again. The wood fire, the soil, the sweat—and the blood, permeating above all the other odors.

  It’s always night in the dream-Compass Room. Fog rolls through the air, thick enough to taste.

  I hear the other candidates. Tanner and Jace scream the loudest. Shrieks of anguish, like their flesh is slowly being ripped from their bones. I shut my eyes to wait it out because I know that I can’t save them.

  But then I hear Casey.

  The underbrush ropes me to the ground, growing tighter as I twist and writhe, trying to free myself to get to him. His voice rips the night in half, and I scream to match his, back arching off the earth, the entire forest shattering into a thousand sharp pieces.

  I jerk awake, lying on my back with my hand pressed to my chest, waiting for my heart to stop pounding. I inhale the cold air of my living room and hold it in my lungs as the te
rror dissipates. It’s like waiting for a brain freeze to end. I get up, flipping on all the light switches in the silent house, checking the shadowy corners for dream monsters.

  Not dream monsters. Illusions. Nick or Meghan, a Compass Room test crawling from the darkness. There’s nothing in the house, but of course there wouldn’t be.

  I peel back the curtain in the living room. Fingers of the dark trees sway back and forth with the wind and I want to throw up my heart. I let the curtain fall back into place, rush to the kitchen, and take a long pull from the tequila bottle. The good tequila bottle.

  Returning to the living room, I flop back onto the bed.

  The woods in my dreams are thick, always lurking with Compass Room devils. The woods around my home are nothing more than a scattering of sad little trees, but my mind doesn’t care.

  Gemma and the division thought they erased Compass Room C from existence, but they can’t. It’s everywhere.

  Posted by Figar077: Let me set things straight.

  I am not some crazy conspiracy theorist in every aspect of my life, nor am I a huge EI fan in particular. But looking at the bare bones of this case, someone is lying, and I don’t think that it’s EI and her criminal posse.

  Gemma Branam is the CR creator and leading witness for the defense in the Malfunction Trial, so her word would generally be taken as fact. But she has to be covering up something.

  The only thing that we do know from previous Compass Rooms is the order in which the criminals die, and that never varies.

  The most evil die in the first handful of days. Terrorists, serial killers, serial rapists. Then, over the course of the rest of the month, the moral arrow of the remaining candidates take a little longer to determine.

  This was the case for every CR up until EI’s room—Room C. So tell me, if Branam claims the room worked just like the others, why was both Gordon Ostheim, a torturer, and Ibarra, a terrorist, alive in week two?