Red blinked.
Her heart was in her throat, grotesque and swelling, cutting off her airway as she watched Oliver turn to face her, his chest rising and falling. Arthur was still bent double behind, coughing into his hands.
“What did you say?” Oliver asked her again, and she could feel his eyes boring into hers, an almost physical sensation. She didn’t like it, him looking at her like that, it might leave a mark.
“I have the secret. It’s me,” she said, voice almost failing her.
Everyone else was watching her too, Red checked around the RV. There was a look of shock in Maddy’s eyes. Wait, was it shock, or that same strange look from before?
The static fizzed in her hands, and Red hugged the walkie-talkie to her chest, purring against her empty rib cage because her heart was still climbing, in her ears now.
She had to give it up.
“Well, what is it?” Oliver spat, puppet strings pulling his head to one side, hanging askew on his neck.
“You okay?” Simon spoke across him, patting Arthur on the back as he finally straightened up.
“Fine,” Arthur said, brushing Simon off to look at Red. A question in his eyes, the same as in everyone else’s.
“Well?” Oliver took a step forward. “What is it?”
“R-Red?” Maddy said tentatively, tripping over the word.
Red exhaled. Her heart had moved out the top of her head now, somewhere loose in the RV, fleeing from that look on Oliver’s face.
“It’s me,” she said, framing each word carefully, choosing the right ones. “I’m the witness.” She paused. “The protected witness, in the Frank Gotti case.”
Oliver’s eyes snapped open, first shock, then disbelief. “No.” He shook his head. “It can’t be you.”
And how much easier it would be to agree with him. But Red couldn’t.
“It is me,” she said, treading carefully, like Reyna had before, tiptoeing around the landmines in Oliver’s eyes. “I’m the witness in the case.” She took one more breath and began. “I was walking in this little park on the waterfront, Washington Avenue Green. This was last August, August twenty-eighth. It was nine o’clock in the evening, not quite dark yet, but getting there. I was walking to the bus stop on Columbus Boulevard, I’d been at the Staples nearby for school supplies earlier. I decided to go through the park rather than walk on the road. It’s nicer there.”
Red paused, but she didn’t need to. Words rehearsed so many times, over and over, she didn’t even need to think about them. They followed each other out of her mouth, in their prearranged order, just like in her statements. The way she would have said it all at the pretrial conference in two weeks, and at the trial. She was ready. Keep her face straight and her story straight. All the details.
“I was on the path, going past the back of the industrial complex there. The map says it’s for sheet-metal workers,” she said. “I didn’t know that then, though. There was no one else around at that time, just me. And then…” Red did need to pause here, checking that the others were listening, that Oliver hadn’t crept any closer while she’d been talking. “I heard two gunshots. One right after the other. One-two. It was close by, though. Real close. Somewhere out the back of the parking lot there, near the dumpsters. I didn’t want to run
in case they started shooting at me too, so I hid in one of the bushes by the path. And I waited.”
Red swallowed.
“Keep going,” Oliver said, like she needed his permission to continue and he was giving it.
“I heard footsteps on the pavement, and I looked up and I saw him. He didn’t see me, but he walked right by me. A white man in his fifties. Dark curly hair. Long, tan coat, even though it was warm out. I later identified him from photographs. It was Frank Gotti,” Red said. “Definitely him. There was no one else around after the gun went off. I left about ten minutes later, once I was sure he was gone. Tried to forget about it. But I called in to the police station a couple days later, after I heard about the body they found there that evening. Joseph Mannino. Shot twice in the back of the head. I should have called it in earlier, but I didn’t know anyone got shot until it was on the news. I heard Frank Gotti kill him, saw him leaving the scene. I’m that witness.”
She finished, daring a glance up at the others. Arthur was looking down, chewing his lower lip with a small shake of the head, like he couldn’t believe it. Oliver was staring right at her, Red could feel it; she tried to avoid his gaze, to not fall into that trap. Reyna was watching, tears gone now, a small sympathetic stretch in her mouth, not a smile, but on the way there. Simon puffed his cheeks, blowing out a mouthful of air, not meeting Red’s eye. Why wouldn’t he look at her, avoiding her gaze like she was avoiding Oliver’s? Maddy was behind; Red couldn’t see her, so Maddy couldn’t see her either and that was lucky. It was half the story, half the plan. But the only half they needed to know. Red couldn’t say the rest, not here, right in front of them.
“Why did you never tell me?” Maddy croaked, and now Red spun to look at her, over by the table. Just five feet between them, but it felt longer somehow, different sides of the RV.
“I wasn’t allowed to, Maddy,” Red said, shrugging one shoulder, just one. “Full anonymity for my agreement to testify in court. I had to sign a lot of paperwork. It was for my own safety, they said. No one knows, that’s the whole point. Not even my dad.” Red had turned eighteen in the first week of September, when this was all starting. She was an adult in the eyes of the law
now, she didn’t need to tell him. Not that she was sure it would have registered, anyway. Nothing did anymore, hardly noticing whether she was coming or going, home or not. Maybe he didn’t even notice the cold inside their house in winter.
Oliver cleared his throat, eyes back and forth like he was working through her story, sifting through the details. He was prelaw, didn’t you know? “Why were you at that Staples?” he asked. “There’s one closer to where we live.”
Red had been prepared for any question about her testimony, including that, running through them like drills, memorizing her responses so she could make them look natural on the stand.
“Sometimes I go to the waterfront, by the piers,” she said, clearing her throat, pausing in the appropriate place. “Because it’s close to where my m…” She breathed, and that wasn’t part of the act; it still hurt to say, guilt churning in her gut beside the fear and dread. “Where my mom died.”
No one reacted, faces blank as a favor to Red. No one except Maddy, a rustle as she fidgeted somewhere behind, an outward breath that almost sounded like a sigh. Maybe Red was banned from saying the word too. Sorry.
Oliver raised his head, another question forming on his lips. “What are the chances that it was you, you’re the lead witness for the prosecution, and our mom is the lead prosecutor?” Except it wasn’t a question, not one Red knew how to answer at least.
“Oliver,” Maddy said, stepping forward, voice stronger now. “Don’t you see? That’s probably why Mom fought so hard to have this case, to make sure it wasn’t tried in federal court. It was so she could protect Red. Make sure her name was kept out of all court documents, that she was completely anonymous. She would have wanted to be in charge of all that, for Red.”
Maddy was right, her mom had done all that. Red had met with Catherine Lavoy many times over the past six months, not as Red and her best friend’s mom, or her dead mom’s best friend, but as assistant district attorney and her lead eyewitness in an upcoming case, going over the facts and Red’s testimony, practicing for trial. She was safe, Catherine would tell her. Her name would never get out, she promised. Except now it was, promise or not.
Oliver nodded, seeing the sense in what Maddy had just said. “Yes,” he said, just to confirm it. “Yes, she would have wanted that. To keep Red safe, anonymous. Make sure no one ever found out who you were. Except”—he paused, a wayward muscle ticking in his cheek—“someone has found out who you are. They know you’re the witness. That’s what all this is about.” He gestured his arms around the RV, rolling those too-wide shoulders. Red followed his fingers as he traced them in the air, pointing to the bullet holes in the walls and furniture. “I said—right at the start, didn’t I?—that this had organized crime written all over it. This is what they do.” He stood still for a moment, staring right at her, through her. “They’re here to kill you, to make sure you can’t testify at the trial.”
Simon gasped, maybe not at what Oliver was saying but that he’d said it at all. But Red knew Oliver was right, the rest of them must as well. The man out there with the rifle knew who she was. And that little red dot, it was meant for her, always meant for her.
“Oliver,” Reyna hissed, trying to tell him something with her eyes, but Oliver blinked and looked away from her, back at Red.
“Why didn’t you say all this three hours ago, when the sniper told us he knew who we were, that he was looking for a secret?” His eyes darkened, and Red’s heart reacted like there was a direct link between them, cause and effect, kicking up in her chest. “You must have known he was talking about you.”
But she hadn’t, and that was the truth. She hadn’t because she’d listened to Oliver once again, over her own gut.
“No,” Red said, taking one step back, away from Oliver, toward Maddy. “I didn’t. I didn’t think there was any way they knew I was the witness. Your mom told me no one could find out my name or any identifying factors, that was the whole point. And then you confused me.” Red shook her head. “You said they were holding you and Maddy hostage to get the name from your mom. And I thought you must be right, and obviously I didn’t want them to get the name because then they’d know it was me, so I went along with your escape plans. I was wrong, but so were you.”
It happened in half a breath, in one flicker of static hissing in her hands. Oliver switched, flipped, face changing around those overbearing eyes. Hard edges and all teeth.
“You should have told us at the start!” he roared, pointing two fingers toward her, like a gun made from the flesh and bone of his hand. “You knew this was about you. You kept it to yourself, kept us here hours longer than we needed to be! Selfish, Red! Stupid. Those two people out there.”
Red bet he’d already forgotten their names.
“They’re dead and it’s your fault!” Spit flew from his mouth. “You could have ended this hours ago!”
No, not more guilt, Red couldn’t carry any more. She’d begged Oliver not to pass that note to Joyce and Don. It was him, not her. Please say it wasn’t her.
“You didn’t tell your secret back then either,” Arthur said, rough and jagged. Was he angry, or was that from Oliver pressing against his throat? “It could have been about you and you held on to it, you and Reyna. You only spoke up when Reyna forced you to.”
“Shut the fuck up!” Oliver said, not taking his eyes off Red, trapping her there in his gaze. She shouldn’t have looked back, now she was stuck, legs melding into the ground.
“If you die, Frank Gotti walks,” Oliver said, voice lower, but the threat was still there, recharging. “That’s what they want. They’re here to kill you.”
“She knows that, Oliver,” Simon said, staring at the back of his head. “You don’t have to keep saying it.”
Oliver blinked and Red moved another step back, closing the gap between her and Maddy. The RV wasn’t safety, but Maddy Lavoy was. Maddy looked after her, just like Catherine. Paid for Red’s lunch sometimes when she couldn’t, though Red had never asked her to. Helped her look for things when she lost them, kept reminders like a walking, talking to-do list. Organized this whole trip so Red could afford to come on spring break. Maddy cared.
“Red,” Oliver said, turning her name ugly in his mouth, full of hard edges. “You have to leave the RV.”
No one said anything for two seconds, only the empty fizzing static that had made its home in Red’s head.
“What?!” Maddy shrieked, voice right behind her, cutting through. “Oliver, what are you talking about?”
“She has to leave the RV!” Oliver looked over at his sister, like Red was already gone and it wasn’t up for discussion. “They want her. She’s putting the rest of us in danger by staying here. Look. He’s going to keep shooting up the RV until he gets what he wants. Some of us will get hit. Some of us will die if we continue. We need to give him what he wants, and he wants Red!”
“No!” Arthur roared now, voice dark and dangerous to match Oliver’s. He stretched up to his full height, raised his chin to look Oliver in the eye. “Red is not leaving the RV.”
“You can’t be serious,” Simon was saying. “He’ll kill her!”
Oliver didn’t answer Simon, instead looking at Red like she was the one who’d spoken. Her heart was fast in her chest, too fast, it knew what was coming and so did she, both unraveling at their seams. She didn’t want to die. She wasn’t ready. And, oh god, she’d know it was coming, just like her mom did, lifetimes of regret and guilt and anger and hate in those last few seconds of life. No one’s world would fall apart without her, though, at least that was one good thing. Would it hurt, or would it feel like relief, when the bullet finally split her open? What should her final thought be? Please, not about the fucking pattern in those fucking curtains, why couldn’t she let that go? She was supposed to be thinking about dying, for fuck’s sake. She didn’t want to die. No, this couldn’t be happening. Maddy, help.
“You must have known,” Oliver was saying, voice strange and unsteady like he was trying to control it, trying to be reasonable when reason had gone out the window hours ago. His eyes betrayed him, though, wild and overfocused. “On some level. You must have known this was a possibility when you agreed to testify, Red. I mean, this is the Philly mob we’re talking about, what did you think was going to happen?”
Not this, never this. No one was ever supposed to find out her name, Catherine told her that.
“But she didn’t do anything wrong,” Simon said, backing up to stand closer to Red. “She just saw a man leaving a crime scene, she shouldn’t have to die for that.” His arms tensed at his sides, the Eagles logo on the back of his shirt rippling, mouth opening and closing like it was whispering silent nothings to Red. “I mean, Oliver, you actually killed someone and you weren’t prepared to leave the RV.”
“This doesn’t concern you, Simon,” Oliver said, darkly, trying even harder to mask it.
“Yes it does!” Simon raised his voice. “It concerns every single one of us. ‘No one is leaving this RV,’ that’s what you said, back when you thought it was your secret they wanted. I see the rules are different for you, then! We’re not kicking Red out!”
“Do you want to die?” Oliver let his eyes fall on Simon, and Simon shrank under their weight.
“No one wants to die, that’s my point,” Simon answered, trying to push back.
“She’s not going anywhere,” Arthur said, flanking Oliver from the other side, glasses flashing under the lights.
Oliver ignored them both, turning back to Red. “Red, listen to me,” he said, softening his voice, but it wasn’t soft at all, it was stiff, barbs and thorns at the end of his words. “You need to accept what’s happening here. There’s nothing the rest of us can do. You know it, don’t you, you know you have to leave the RV to save the rest of us. To protect Maddy. She’s your best friend, isn’t she? You’ve known each other all your lives. Save her.” His chin moved up and down with those final two words, drilling them home.
“Oliver, no!” Maddy cried. “Stop it, please. Just stop.”
“You’re all thinking it too.” Oliver cast his eyes at all of them, skipping over Red because she didn’t matter anymore. There were still two sides to the RV, but this time it was Red against everyone else. A team of one. “Don’t pretend. None of us want to die.”
“None of us want to throw Red out,” Arthur said in answer, and he must have learned it from Oliver, sharpening his words to a point. Oliver even winced, took one step away.
“I know you’re all protesting because you have to in front of Red,” he said. “Because you care about her.” His eyes spun, another circuit of the RV. “That’s why we’re going to put it to a vote. A blind ballot, so you can vote whichever way you want and no one else will ever know.”
The air had grown thorns now too, infected by Oliver’s words, pricking at Red’s skin, stabbing at the surface of her eyes. It wasn’t warm now, it was hot, sweat pooling along the line of her lip, but there was a chill at the back of her neck, hairs rising. She didn’t want to die. She didn’t want to die.
“A vote?” Reyna asked, shattering the silence, eyebrows pulling together across her forehead.
The static hissed, retreating into Red’s cupped hands.
Oliver nodded, just once, that was enough. “A vote on whether Red stays, or she goes.”
