The Book of Lies

“You think he didn’t drive my van all around the port, making sure the eyes-in-the-sky got a good look? Ten seconds’ worth of homework before ICE realizes I’m the one who snuck into the port with Timothy. . . .”

“On behalf of a shipment that’s tied to your father,” my dad adds.

Which brings us right back to the gun. We’re both silent as it all seeps in. Forget what happened with Mom. Ellis just has to point his cop finger our way. Once they hear we killed a federal agent—we’re repeat offenders. They don’t make bags small enough that’ll carry our remains.

“We should follow the truck,” my dad suggests, looking out toward the dark road. “He didn’t have that much of a lead.”

“Yeah, maybe,” I reply.

“Maybe? The only way to prove what actually happened is by finding what’s really in that—”

I turn away. That’s all he needs.

“You know what’s in that truck, don’t you, Calvin?”

18

Stay, girl. . . . That’s my girl,” Ellis said to Benoni, adding a quick scratch between the dog’s ears. In the passenger seat of the truck, Benoni was breathing calmly now—but with her ears pinned back and her eyes narrow and intently fixed out the window, it was clear she was just simmering.

After setting the odometer back to zero, Ellis grabbed an old pair of bolt cutters from the toolbox behind his seat, shoved open the driver’s door, and climbed down from the cab of the truck. He was still annoyed that he’d let Cal get away, but when he’d heard Benoni cry like that—the way she was shaking on the ground—family had to come first.

Most important, as he glanced around the empty rest stop and walked around to the back of the truck, he had what he wanted. And thanks to his police uniform, surprise was most definitely on his side. Especially with Timothy. But that was the benefit of taking on a partner—there was always someone else to blame things on. As his grandfather wrote, the mission was bigger than a single man. Finally, after the headache in China and Hong Kong and Panama and here—finally—mission accomplished.

He dialed quickly on his cell, then pinched the phone between his chin and shoulder and lifted the bolt cutters to the metal seal that looked like a silver bolt at the back of the rust-colored container. The phone rang in his ear . . . once . . . twice . . . He knew the time—it was six a.m. in Michigan—but this was victory.

There was a loud cunk as the bolt cutters bit down and snapped the seal.

“Judge Wojtowicz’s line,” a female voice answered. “You need him to sign a warrant?”

“No warrants. This is a personal call. For Felix,” Ellis said, knowing that using the Judge’s first name would speed things up. With a twist of the thin metal bars on the back of the container, Ellis unlocked the double doors.

He knew how he got to this moment. His grandfathers—in their commitment to the Leadership—began the quest. For all Ellis knew, his mother had searched, too. But the research had survived only because of the water- stained diary.

The word Schetsboek was embossed in faded gold on the front. Dutch for “Sketchbook.” Flipping through it that first time, Ellis had stopped on a page dated February 16, 1922, on a passage about the covenants between God and man. In the story of Noah, God made a rainbow as a sign of His covenant. With Abraham, God’s sign was a circumcision. And with Moses, the sign was the engraving on the tablets. But covenants could also be between people. That’s what the diary was, Ellis realized. He’d been so focused on the Cain part—on the tattoo and the dog—he’d nearly missed it. The diary was his true sign. His covenant. The promise from his mother. And the way, over a century later, surrounded by cricket songs, he finally found the Book that was more powerful than death itself.

“Who may I say is calling?” the woman asked through Ellis’s phone.

“He’ll know,” Ellis said as he tugged on the back doors of the truck. There was a rusty howl as the metal doors swung wide open, clanging against their respective sides of the truck. Surprised by his own excitement, Ellis was up on his tiptoes, peering through the mist of—

It was supposed to be cold. And smell like shrimp. Why didn’t it smell like—?

Reaching up and pulling frantically, Ellis yanked the nearest box to the ground. His breathing started to quicken as he ripped it open. Pineapples. Plastic pineapples. He pulled out another box. Fake. They were all fake. Like the government uses when they—

Damn.

They switched it. Switched the bloody trucks.

“I’m paging him now, sir,” the secretary announced.

“Paging?” Ellis asked. He looked at the phone. “Don’t page him. Leave him be.” Shutting his cell phone, Ellis stood there a second. Just stood there, eyes closed. A rat-tt-tat drumbeat— rat-tt-tat, rat-tt-tat—hammered at the back of his neck at the top of his spine. He clenched his jaw so hard, he heard a high-pitched scream rushing in his ears. Anger. All he had was anger now. People didn’t understand what a life’s worth of holding back and hiding could do.

He wouldn’t hold back anymore.

He knew who’d done this. Timothy. Timothy and the other one. The one who hurt Benoni. Cal.

Cal caused this. Cal and his damn father. But Ellis had it wrong before. Lloyd wasn’t the only trickster. Cal was one, too. To switch the trucks—to steal what was inside—Cal hadn’t just stumbled into this. He’d planned it. Stolen it. And now Cal had the Book of Lies. He had what Ellis had waited a lifetime to find.

But the one thing Cal didn’t have? A good enough head start.

Ellis looked down at his tattoo. With the Book, Cain unleashed murder into the world. That was nothing compared to what Ellis would unleash on Cal Harper.

19

Do you know what’s in the truck or don’t you?” my dad asks.

I stomp my feet to shake off the excess water, then open the door to my van, hop inside, and flick off the blue lights. “Not yet.”

“Whoa, whoa—hold on,” my dad says, climbing into the passenger seat. “I saw him take the truck and drive off with—”

“He didn’t take anything.”

Landing with a squish in the passenger seat, my father looks at me, then out at the empty road, then back at me. “No, I saw it—container number 601174-7. I checked the numbers myself. There’s no way you could’ve unloaded it that fast. And when I drove it out, you were following right behi—”

I close my eyes and picture the black numbers on the side of the forty-foot rust-colored container: 601174-7. At three in the morning, in the dark, it’s amazing what you can do with some black electrical tape.

“The numbers. You switched them, didn’t you?” my dad blurts. “That container Ellis just drove off with —”

“Is filled with three thousand pounds of plastic pineapples, courtesy of the controlled delivery sting operations that Customs keeps prepared for just such an occasion.”

Starting the van and noticing the exposed wires that Ellis used to hot-wire underneath, I swing the steering wheel into a U-turn and do my best to ignore the blue pulsing swirls as Timothy’s unmarked car fades behind us. Up above, the purple-and-orange sunrise cracks a hairline fissure through the black sky. The water from my clothes soaks my seat and puddles at my crotch. But as I look in the rearview mirror, it still hasn’t washed off the flecks of Timothy’s blood that’re sprayed across my cheek.

“You think this book—whatever it is—you think maybe there could be something good in it? Y’know, like, maybe we’re finally getting some good luck?” my father asks.

I turn to my dad, who’s eyeing the steering wheel and— Is he studying my hands? He turns away fast, but there’s no mistaking that gleam in his eyes. He’s anxious, but also . . . it’s almost like he’s enjoying himself.

“Lloyd, let me be clear here. There’s nothing good about this. The shipment . . . the