The Lies He Spoke

ONE

OLIVIA

Olivia woke up because of a nightmare.

She sat up in bed, her neck and chest slick with sweat, breathing uneasily. She pulled her sweaty hair from her face and bent over, trying to calm her heartbeat.

She couldn't remember most of the nightmare, but there had definitely been a dark basement. Her brothers were chained up again, but this time was much worse. There was so much blood. Too much blood. Blood dripped everywhere.

Olivia checked her hands, half expecting them to be covered in red, sticky liquid, but it was only sweat.

Breathe and think to yourself, this too shall pass.

It's already passed. Just calm down.

When she was sure her lungs were no longer about to explode, she swung her legs out of bed and slowly crept into the dark kitchen for a glass of water. She took out a couple of ice cubes and plopped them into the glass, too.

It was always so unbearably hot in Louisiana. Having moved there from Chicago, Olivia could never understand why people would stay where the summer was endless and temperatures never seemed to go below ninety degrees.

She was constantly sweating and showering and even nighttime didn't bring the kind of relief she would have had back home.

But this was her home now. The witness protection program had promised to put them somewhere no one would know them - and they hadn't been kidding. Olivia was starting to regret it.

After stuffing some ice cubes in her cheeks, she got back in bed and lay awake, staring out the window. It was eerily quiet where she and her oldest brother, Elijah, lived. Seven months of living there and she still couldn't get used to the silence.

A floorboard creaked outside of her room, interrupting the silence.

She sat bolt upright in bed, her heart hammering.

It's just Elijah, she tried to convince herself. I'm not in Chicago anymore. No one is looking for me here.

But the terror wouldn't go away. Her thoughts pushed her out of bed and to the door, where she slowly turned the doorknob, willing the hinges not to creak.

She poked her head out of her room and glanced down the dark hallway just in time to see the front door close. There was a click as it locked.

Come on, get a grip on yourself.

Olivia took a deep breath and went back down the hallway, holding her phone in her hand in case she needed to a) call the police b) use her flashlight or c) whack any incoming intruder.

But there was no one.

Instead, she could see that Elijah's shoes were missing from the shoe rack at the front door.

She went to his room to make sure she wasn't imagining things, and sure enough, he wasn't there.

She glanced down at the phone in her hand. It was 2:31am.

Where on earth was he going at this time of morning?

She went to the apartment balcony and pulled the sliding door open, letting in a blast of hot, sticky air. Four floors below was the front entrance and the parking lot of their apartment complex.

In the parking lot, there was a black car double parked behind the normal parking spaces.

Olivia squinted and leaned over the railing a little further to see who had made such a dumb mistake. They were going to get towed.