谎言书：19
时间：2017-02-17 05:30:51
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（单词翻译）
We get so comfortable in our lives, things get so
mundane1, we spiritually
fall asleep. But you don’t have to go to an ashram in India to reignite your
life. If we just follow those feelings, like my feeling to go talk to your dad
at the airport—”
“Serena, the only reason I got on this plane was to save my own rear.”
She
undoes2 her Indian-style position, stands up from her seat, and never
abandons the soft, knowing smile that lifts her cheeks. “Your father told me
where you work, Cal. If you really were as tough as you think, you wouldn’t
be there. And if you really didn’t want to connect with him, you wouldn’t be
here. It’s no different than taking me along with you. In that act, you did one
of the most beautiful things anyone can do. You said yes to me. And with your
father, just getting on this plane, you did the same. You
buckled3 your belt the
other way.”
As she walks back to her seat, I look down at my unfastened seat belt.
“Airline
buckles4 only go one way,” I call out.
“Not when you share them with the person next to you,” she calls back.
40
The blue lights
swirled6, the siren howled, and Naomi held her breath.
Three minutes. She’d be there in three minutes, Naomi told herself,
clenching7the wheel as her car slowly elbowed through the lunchtime traffic on Miami
Gardens Drive.
In her ear, Scotty was gone. She needed her cell to make sure—
“Pick up the damn phone, Mom!” she screamed. But all she heard back
was a droning ring, again and again and—
“This is Naomi,” her own voice replied on the answering machine. “I’m
probably screening you right now, so—”
With a click, she hung up and started again. Mom’s cell. Still no answer.
Home phone . . .
“This is Naomi. I’m probably screening you—”
Click. Redial.
Two minutes. Less than two minutes, she swore to herself as she cut off a
black Acura and the phone continued to ring. . . . Dammit, why isn’t she
picking up!?
On the GPS screen, the glowing
crimson8 triangle still hadn’t moved from
her house. No, don’t think the worst —
Swerving9 across two lanes of traffic, Naomi jerked the wheel to the left,
and her dark green Chevy
bucked10 and bounced over the last few inches
of the street’s concrete turning lane. The phone beeped and she reacted
“Mom?” she asked, picking up.
“Local police are en route,” Scotty said. “For all you know, this is just—”
“Just what!? He’s at my house, Scotty — with my son!”
“That doesn’t mean—”
“How the hell’d he know where I live!?”
Ramming12 the gas, Naomi sank her nails deep into the rubber of the
to get a better look past the thin trees. At the far end of the block was a
modest, faded yellow rambler with a
crooked15 garage door and . . .
Her mom’s car. Still in the driveway. Oh, no . . .
“Who gave him my address!?” she shouted at Scotty.
“Listen, you need to—”
“I’ve never been listed! Someone gave him my damn address!”
The brakes were still screaming as Naomi threw open her car door and
leapt outside.
“Nomi, if he’s still in there . . .” Scotty warned.
“Scotty, swear to me you didn’t give anyone my address. By accident
or on purpose . . . I need to hear it.”
“A-Are you—? I — Of course I didn’t!”
There was real pain in his voice. She trusted that pain.
“Lucas!” Naomi screamed, pulling her gun and
sprinting16 for the front
door. Her feet felt like
anvils17, her throat like a pinched straw. She tried
to breathe. . . .
“Luuucas!” She jabbed her key at the bottom lock, but even before it
got there . . . the door slowly swung away from her. God. It was already
open. She could hear the sirens in the distance.
“Nomi, you need to wait,” Scotty pleaded. “Don’t go in without—”
Darting18 inside, she felt her heart kicking in her neck. Her eyes scanned
the hallway . . . the front closet . . . but all she was really looking for were
her son’s shoes . . . There.
Lucas’s flip-flops.
That means Lucas is still —
Frantically19 sprinting toward the kitchen, she heard her phone beep in her
ear. Another call.
“What’re you, a mental patient?” her mother asked as Naomi clicked over.
“Who leaves fifteen
rambling20 messages like that?”
“L-Lucas . . . where’s—? Where are you?” Naomi asked, her gun
pointed21straight out and her back
touching22 the wall as she prowled around the
corner of her dark and clearly empty kitchen.
“The video store — we walked from the park — though I didn’t realize that
was a reason to call out the entire Customs Service,” her mother shot back.
“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
vertical23 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
beacon24 was now coming from
behind her.
Naomi twisted around and dashed up the main hallway,
rammed25 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
shrieking26 sirens that finally turned onto her block.
“He’s gone,” she whispered.
“You sure?” Scotty asked. “If he came there — No note? No message?”
elongated29 triangle that represented Naomi’s location. Overlapped . . . Looking
straight down, Naomi stepped off the exploding-fireworks-shaped doormat
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
swirl5 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
prosecutor32, 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
tattoo33 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
scour34 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
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
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
holder39. 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
killing40 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
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