Chapter 1 - The PhotographFor ten years, I had trained myself not to look backward.
Not at the old house.
Not at my father's face.
Not at the photograph albums my mother used to keep beneath the living-room cabinet.
And certainly not at Jake.
My twin brother had been the other half of every memory I owned. We had shared a crib, a bedroom, secrets, punishments, victories, scraped knees, and the strange private language only twins understood.
Then we turned eighteen.
And everything broke.
I could still remember the way Dad had stood in the kitchen that night, his arms folded across his chest, staring at the makeup case beside my dinner plate as though it were a weapon.
"Throw it away."
I had thought he was joking.
He wasn't.
I had refused.
He gave me the ultimatum.
I packed.
Jake watched.
Mom cried.
Dad told me the real world would make a man out of me.
Ten years later, he appeared at my apartment.
I almost didn't recognize him.
His hair was mostly gray. His shoulders had lost their old confidence. His coat looked like he had slept in it. His hands shook when he pushed them into the pockets.
"I'll do anything," he whispered.
I stared at him through the narrow opening of the door.
"Why?"
He swallowed.
"Because I need you to come home."
I almost laughed.
Home.
He was standing in front of the apartment he had no right to know existed.
"I don't have a home with you."
His eyes dropped.
"Please."
"Why now?"
He looked over his shoulder as if someone might be watching the building.
Then he reached into his coat.
My body tensed.
But he pulled out a photograph.
"I need you to see this."
He handed it to me.
The image was old, grainy, taken outdoors.
Jake stood on the left.
Older.
Thinner.
His beard barely visible.
But unmistakably Jake.
Beside him stood a woman.
My stomach twisted.
I knew that face.
I had seen it in the mirror of a high school bathroom ten years earlier, except back then a deep scar ran from her cheekbone to the edge of her jaw.
Maya Torres.
The girl whose scar I had covered before prom.
The girl who had taught me what makeup could really do.
The girl everyone said had died.
My fingers went numb.
"Maya..."
Dad nodded.
"She's alive."
The room tilted.
"No."
"I saw her myself."
"When?"
"Three weeks ago."
My breathing became shallow.
The photograph trembled in my hand.
"Where's Jake?"
Dad looked at me.
For one terrible second, there was something in his expression that frightened me more than grief.
Fear.
"That's the problem."
I looked down at the photograph again.
Jake and Maya were standing outside a building with a red sign.
I knew that building.
I'd been there once.
A long time ago.
It was the old Bellwether Hotel.
A place Dad had forbidden us to mention after we were children.
I lifted my eyes.
"What happened to Jake?"
Dad didn't answer.
Instead, he whispered:
"Your brother disappeared six days ago."
The photograph slipped from my fingers.
Dad caught it.
"Then why didn't he call me?"
"He tried."
I froze.
"What?"
Dad's voice cracked.
"He called you every night for three weeks."
My heart slammed against my ribs.
"That's impossible."
"Check your phone."
"I would have known."
"You didn't."
He reached into his pocket again.
This time he took out an old phone.
It was cracked.
Burned along one edge.
He placed it on my table.
"That belonged to Jake."
I stared at it.
"And there's one message."
My throat tightened.
Dad pressed the screen.
A recording began.
Static.
Breathing.
Then Jake's voice.
My twin's voice.
The voice I had spent ten years pretending I didn't miss.
"Evan..."
I stopped breathing.
"If Dad comes to you, don't trust him."
The recording ended.
I looked at my father.
He had gone completely pale.
"That's why I'm here," he said.
"For once, I'm not asking you to forgive me."
He stared directly into my eyes.
"I'm asking you to survive."
Then, somewhere outside my apartment, a car engine roared.
Dad looked toward the window.
His expression changed instantly.
"They found us."
May you like
The lights in my apartment went out.
And someone knocked three times on my door.
