Lisa Gardner: Hide

Minute passed into minutes. My hands grew shakier. I thought I should run while I still had the chance. Then I thought maybe I'd feel better if I could just throw up.

Footsteps finally rang out.

A woman appeared, walked straight toward me. Slim-fitting jeans, tall stiletto boots, a tight-fitting, white-collared, button-up shirt, and a really big gun, holstered at her waist. Her face was framed by a wild mass of blonde curls. She looked like she ought to be a cover girl. Until you saw her eyes. Flat, direct, unamused.

That blue gaze homed in on me, and for one moment, something flickered across her face. She looked as if she might have seen a ghost. Then she closed the space.

I took a deep breath.

My father had been wrong. There are some things in life for which you cannot be prepared. Like the loss of your mother when you are still a child. Or the passing of your father before you had a chance to stop hating him.

"What the hell?" Sergeant Detective D.D. Warren demanded to know

"My name is Annabelle Mary Granger," I said. "I believe you're looking for me."

THE OFFICES OF the Boston Homicide unit looked like they belonged to an insurance company. Bright, expansive windows, twelve-foot-high drop ceilings, pretty blue-gray carpet. The beige cubicles were modern and sleek, breaking the sunlit space into smaller desk areas, where black filing cabinets and gray overhead bins were decorated with plants, family photos, a child's latest grade-school art project.

I found the whole setup disappointing. So much for all the years I'd dedicated to NYPD Blue .

The receptionist gave Sergeant Warren a friendly smile as we walked in. Her gaze flickered to me, open, unassuming. I looked away, fingers fidgeting with my bag. Did I look like a perpetrator? A key informant? Or maybe the family of a victim? I tried to see myself through the receptionist's eyes but came up empty

Sergeant Warren led me to a small, windowless room. A rectangular table filled most of the tiny space, barely leaving room for chairs. I searched the walls for signs of a two-way mirror, anything to fit in with my TV-prepped expectations. The walls were blank, painted a clean bone-white. I still couldn't relax.

"Coffee?" she asked briskly.

"No, thank you."

"Water, soda, tea?"

"No, thank you."

"Suit yourself. I'll be right back."

She left me in the room. I decided that must mean I didn't look too guilty. I set down my bag, surveyed the space. Nothing to look at, though. Nothing to do.

The room was too small, the furniture too big. Abruptly, I hated it.

The door opened again. Warren was back, this time bearing a tape recorder. Immediately, I shook my head.

"No."

She appraised me coolly. "I thought you were here to make a statement."

"No tape."

"Why not?"

"Because you just declared me dead, and I plan on keeping it that way."

She set the recorder down but didn't turn it on. For the longest time, she stared at me. For the longest time, I stared right back.

We were equal height, five foot four. About equal weight. I could tell from the expanse of her shoulders, the slight bulge of her crossed arms, she also trained with weights. She had the gun on her side. But guns had to be drawn, aimed, fired. I didn't have any of those constraints.

The thought gave me my first measure of comfort. My arms uncrossed. I took a seat. After a moment, she did, too.

Door opened again. A man walked in, wearing tan pants and a long-sleeve dark blue dress shirt, credentials clipped at his waist. A fellow homicide detective, I presumed. He wasn't huge, maybe five ten, five eleven, but he had a lean, sinewy build to go with a lean, hard-edged face. The moment he saw me, he also did a little double-take, then quickly caught himself and blanked his expression.

He stuck out a hand. "Detective Robert Dodge, Massachusetts State Police."

I returned the handshake less certainly. His fingers were callused, his grip firm. He held the handshake longer than necessary, and I knew he was appraising me, trying to get a read. He had cool gray eyes, the kind used to sizing up game.

"Want some water? Something to drink?"

"She already played Martha Stewart." I jerked my head toward Sergeant Warren. "With all due respect, I'd just like to get this done."

The two detectives exchanged glances. Dodge took a seat, the one closest to the door. The space seemed overcrowded, closing in on me. I placed my hands on my lap, trying not to fidget.

"My name is Annabelle Mary Granger," I began. Dodge's hand reached for the recorder. Warren stopped him with a single touch.

"We're off the record," she told him. "At least for the moment."

Dodge nodded, and I took another deep breath, trying to rein in my scattered thoughts. I'd spent the past forty-eight hours rehearsing the story in my head. Obsessively reading all the front-page stories of the ugrave" found in Mattapan, of the six remains that had been collected from the site. Details had been sparse-the forensic anthropologist could confirm only that the remains were female, the police spokeswoman had added that the grave was possibly decades old. They had released one name, my own; the other identities remained a mystery

In the absence of real information, and with round-the-clock coverage to fill, the TV personalities had begun speculating madly. The site was an old Mafia dumping ground, possibly a legacy from Whitey Bulger, the mobster whose murderous work was still being dug up around the state. Or maybe it was a former cemetery for the mental hospital. Or perhaps the hideous hobby of one of its homicidal patients. A satanic cult was operating in Mattapan. The bones were actually from victims of the Salem Witch Trial.

Everyone had a theory. Except, I guess, me. I honestly didn't know what had happened in Mattapan. And I was here right now not because of the help I could give the police, but because of the help I was hoping they could give me.

"My family fled for the first time when I was seven years old," I told the two detectives, and then with gathering speed ran through my story. The parade of moves, the endless procession of fake identities. My mother's death. Then my father's. I kept the details sketchy.

Detective Dodge took a few notes. DD. Warren mostly watched me.

I exhausted the story more quickly than I'd expected. No grand finale. Just The End. My throat felt parched now. I wished I'd had that glass of water after all. I lapsed awkwardly into silence, keenly aware that both detectives were still studying me.

"What year did you leave?" Detective Dodge, pencil posed.

"October, '82."

"And how long did you stay in Florida?"

I did my best to run through the list again. Cities, dates, aliases. Time had dulled the specifics more than I'd realized. What month had we moved to St. Louis? Was I ten or eleven when we hit Phoenix? And the names… In Kansas City, had we been Jones, Jenkins, Johnson? Something like that.

I started sounding less and less certain and more and more defensive, and they hadn't even gotten to the hard questions yet.

"Why?" Detective Warren asked bluntly when I had wrapped up the geography lesson. She spread out her hands. "It's an interesting story except you never said why your family was running."

"I don't know."

"You don't know?"

"My father never gave me the details. He considered it his job to worry, my job to be a child."

She arched a brow. I couldn't blame her. By the time I was sixteen, I'd become skeptical of that platitude myself.

"Birth certificate?" she asked crisply

"For my real name? I don't have one."

"Driver's license, Social Security card? Your parents' wedding license? A family photo? You must have something."