We Know by Gregg Hurwitz Page A

weren't driving back to Glendale. We were driving to LAX. Slim pulled over at Terminal One. The big guy handed me a torn piece of paper, then dialed the car phone and stretched it back to me.
    "Read," he said.
    My throat was closing up, but I fought it open. Callie's answering-machine greeting finished, and after the beep I read from the slip of paper, "I know
    I'm responsible for Frank's death. I can't figure out how to face you every day. I'm sorry. I hope you'll forgive me."
    The worst part was, they'd gotten it right.
    The big guy flipped an envelope into my lap. Filled with thousands of dollars in traveler's checks. I felt my last ray of hope extinguish. I thought about the financial-aid package waiting for me at UCLA. I thought about the baseball team. The attention I might get. The opportunities.
    He said, "You don't talk about this to anyone. Ever. Or we'll know. And we'll know who you talked to also. We won't be nearly as accommodating next go-round. To you or her. Bear that in mind."
    I said, "I will."
    "You stay gone. A good long time. Understand?"
    I nodded.
    "If they require guardian clearance for you to buy a ticket"--he pointed at a phone number that had been written on the envelope flap--"you're two days shy of your eighteenth birthday. Forty - eight hours."
    I had forgotten.
    He knuckled his broad nose, and it made a faint popping sound. "By the time they declare you a missing person, you'll be an adult. Able to uphold your commitments."
    So that's what I was now. A missing person.
    My stomach roiling, I got out, clutching the
    envelope. Cars honked, cops ticketed, people hugged one another good-bye. In a stunned haze, I stepped into the terminal, and the glass doors whistled shut behind me.

    Chapter 11
    After my meeting with Caruthers, I went home to change out of the hospital-gift shop T-shirt. Then I headed over to the First Union Bank of Los Angeles, on Montana Avenue between a handmade-soap store and a juice place with little doormats of wheatgrass in the window.
    I waited until I was in line to pull the brass key from my sneaker, and I hid it in my fist until I reached the teller's window. The security cameras were making me sweat. The emergency exit was just past the loan desk--if I hopped the rope, I could be in the alley in a few seconds. My paranoia had returned, so forcefully it seemed impossible there'd ever been the quiet life I'd been torn out of last night.
    "My stepdad just died, and my mom found this key among his possessions. How can we figure out which bank it belongs to?"
    The bank teller looked at me over her glasses, then took Charlie's key and examined it in the flat
    of her palm.
    "Doesn't look like a safe-deposit key to me." She took my disappointment for greed. "Oh, honey, even if it was, I doubt the box would be filled with something your mom would want. You'd be amazed the things people keep locked up. Most of them sentimental."
    "Why don't you think it's a bank key?"
    She tilted it. "Well, at least ours don't have as many grooves. They're flatter, with square teeth and a cloverleaf head. Plus, this one says it belongs to the U.S. government, but we're privately owned. Banks generally are." She handed it back. "I'm sorry I couldn't be of more help, and I'm sorry to hear about your father. I just lost my mom, so I know how hard it can be sorting through the possessions, trying to figure out how to do right by a loved one."
    Her gentle smile made me feel like a heel. I thanked her and left.
    The locksmith a few blocks down didn't even give me the chance to lie to him. He was a burly man with a bottlebrush mustache and an indistinct accent. "I not can copy for you. Our blanks not are thick enough, bro." He rolled the r in "bro," infusing it with an / sound.
    "I don't actually need it copied."
    "Unlawful-to-duplicate key require seven-pin key blank. Illegal to have seven-pin key blank, bro." A massive eyebrow contorted suspiciously, pinching his right eye. His name tag, which read ASK