The Book of Lies

“Where’s Lucas?”

“Right next to me. He wants one of those Star War movies—those are okay, right? No nudity or anything?”

Naomi doubled back into the hallway and quickly checked both bedrooms . . . closets . . . bathrooms . . . All empty. Back in the living room, she studied the carpet, the sofa cushions, even the slight sway of the vertical blinds that led to the backyard. Nothing was out of place. The back door was still locked. But something still . . .

“Mom, go to the back of the video store,” Naomi said into the phone. “There’s a bathroom there—”

“Wait, what happened?”

“Just find the bathroom—they’ll let you use it if you ask nice—then lock the door and wait there for me, okay? I don’t care who bangs on that door, you don’t open it, you don’t let Lucas out, you don’t check on anything until I’m there. Only me.”

Naomi pulled out her GPS device, clicked back to Scotty on her cell, then began to search for the red triangle.

“Nomi, don’t click off like that!” Scotty scolded. “I thought you were—”

“Shh.” It took a moment to reorient herself. On-screen, the tiny crimson triangle stood completely still. So did Naomi. She was rushing so fast, she never even saw it. According to the screen, the beacon was now coming from behind her.

Naomi twisted around and dashed up the main hallway, rammed her shoulder at the front door, and crashed outside, back into the bright sun.

Outside, her front yard was empty. There was no breeze. And no sound but the shrieking sirens that finally turned onto her block.

“He’s gone,” she whispered.

“You sure?” Scotty asked. “If he came there— No note? No message?”

On-screen, the crimson triangle overlapped almost perfectly with the white, elongated triangle that represented Naomi’s location. Overlapped . . . Looking straight down, Naomi stepped off the exploding-fireworks-shaped doormat she still hadn’t removed since July Fourth and took a peek underneath. On the ground was a tiny and familiar flat oval disk.

“Oh, he definitely left a message,” Naomi said, pinching the transmitter with two fingers. Ellis didn’t come here just to leave it under the mat. If her son had been home, Ellis would’ve— A boil of anger bubbled up the back of her neck. The last time she was this mad was during her repo years. The victim sued for the cost of the hospital bills. And won. Four figures.

“You okay there?” Scotty asked.

Naomi let go of the welcome mat, and as it slapped against the concrete, a swirl of dust cartwheeled out the sides. For a moment, Naomi just knelt there, thinking about her son, and her mom, and everything that might’ve happened if something might’ve happened. But it hadn’t. And that’s what made it so damn easy to focus back on Ellis. And Cal. Especially on Cal. The former agent . . . the one who was at the port last night . . . and the one who could’ve easily given her family’s address to—

“You’re plotting their deaths now, aren’t you,” Scotty said.

“I want the next flight to Cleveland.”

“Yeah, and I want to eat cream sauce without feeling puffy after.”

Naomi didn’t say a word.

“I was joking, Nomi. (Kinda.) Now do you want the bad news or the really bad news?”

“Bad news.”

“You just missed one of the flights to Cleveland; you’re on the next one.”

“And the really bad?”

“I got Ellis’s full file from the prosecutor, like you asked. They got everything in here: psych profiles, behavior reports, even identifying marks.”

“I thought you said this was really bad?”

“Hear that noise? That’s the other shoe falling, Nomi. Because that tattoo on Ellis’s hand? You’re not gonna believe what it stands for.”

41

Cain? As in Cain Cain?” I ask Roosevelt through my newest disposable cell. As we whip down the highway, I scour the buttons on the dashboard, searching for—

“Here,” my father says from the passenger seat. He clicks a switch, and a cannonball of warm air blasts at the fog on our windshield, lifting it away like a raised curtain.

“Now find the heat,” Serena pleads from the backseat as the gray Cleveland sky smothers all light and we plow through the slush and past the blackened snowbanks on I-71.

It’s December in Florida, but not like December here. At barely four o’clock, it’s nearly dark. Still, we’re not completely unprepared. From my job, my dad and I have the two thickest winter coats the donation room had to offer. From Serena’s driver’s license, we have an untraceable rental car. And from the gas station right outside the Cleveland airport, Serena has a Cleveland Rocks sweatshirt, and I—like Roosevelt in Fort Lauderdale—have a brand-new chat’n chuck mobile phone to make sure we’re not traced. Everything’s in place. But it doesn’t stop me from studying every car around us. The next Florida flight to Cleveland left barely an hour after ours. It’s not much of a lead.

“I thought you were dropping her at a hotel,” Roosevelt says as he hears Serena’s voice.

“If Ellis is following, it’s not safe by the airport. Trust me, we’re doing it first thing after the house,” I tell him. “So you were saying about Ellis’s tattoo.”

“Can’t you put him on speaker?” Serena asks from the backseat, looking up from a foldout map. Quickly backing down, she adds, “Sorry. I just—” Her voice drops to a whisper. “It’s not like I can’t hear everything he’s saying anyway.”

“They can hear me?” Roosevelt asks through the phone.

In the rearview, Serena nods. My dad thinks I don’t see him smile.

“Roosevelt, you’re on speaker,” I announce with the push of a button as I stuff the phone in a dashboard cup holder. Behind us, I notice a white Jeep with its lights off. “So the tattoo: It’s Cain from Adam and Eve. Okay, so he loves the bad guys.”

“Oh, goodness, son—you’re missing it all, aren’t ya?” Roo-sevelt asks, and I swear I hear a swish from his ponytail. “Sure, all the images—the dog, the stars, the moon, even the thorns that the man is carrying—they’re all ancient symbols of the so-called Mark of Cain. But deciphering that mark is one of the oldest questions of the Bible. Most scholars believe it’s something God gave to Cain as punishment for killing Abel: that God marked Cain as a murderer—gave him horns, put a cross on his forehead, made him into some gol-durn half-beast—then sent him wandering in the Land of Nod. But the real question remains: Who is Cain?”

“No . . . uh-uh. No offense to Sunday school, but spare us the lecture,” I shoot back. “Just tell us why it’s important.”

“Cal, this guy tried to kill you. Both of you,” Roosevelt says as my father shoots me a look. “Dontcha wanna hear why?”

On the highway, the car plows over a flat sheet of ice. We don’t go flying or spinning out of control, but for a full two or three seconds, I turn into the skid and know—as we glide in perfect, soundless silence across the ice— that I’m not in control. Since the moment I found my father, that’s my life.

“Just listen to him,” my dad insists, sounding like a dad.

I hold tight to the steering wheel, and the tires again gain traction.

“So back to brother Cain,” Roosevelt says through the speaker. “God created Adam and Eve—making Cain the first human ever born. First killer. First human villain, correct?”

“Depends what you want to believe: the Bible . . . ” I say, “or every single carbon-dated archaeological dig of the last hundred years that proves people existed fifty thousand years before Adam and Eve ever supposedly went on their apple rampage.”

“Here—exit here,” Serena calls out from the backseat, and I tug the wheel and