I Do Not Trust You: A Novel Read online

  M kept going, the itchy sensation in her hands growing stronger. The neighborhood seemed normal, but in her gut she knew something was off. Her gut was never wrong. The first thing—the most important thing—her parents had ever taught her was to trust her instincts.

  The party was at some lacrosse guy’s house five blocks away. She needed to keep going straight.

  She turned right at the next corner.

  Somebody was behind her, walking slowly, unthreatening.

  The guy dressed in black.

  M broke into a jog.

  His pace picked up behind her.

  She broke into a run. Up ahead was a wrought-iron fence surrounding a small side yard. M reached for one of the bars, swinging herself up and vaulting over. She hit the ground running, her Chucks pounding the cement walkway, then the grass in the yard as it opened up behind the brownstone. A short stone wall separated it from the next yard.

  M jumped it and kept going.

  His footsteps echoed hers. She could hear his breathing.

  Another wall. Another backyard. He kept coming.

  Enough. Time to go on offense.

  A quick scan of the next yard showed a small deck built onto the back of the house. She ducked under the row of evergreen bushes growing along the wall, before jumping the wall and climbing onto the deck, giving her a five-foot advantage on her pursuer.

  The guy in black vaulted over and paused, looking for her.

  M pulled the bo staff from her jacket and flicked her wrist, causing the ends of the staff to snap into place so it was three times longer. His head turned at the sound. M jumped, landing in front of him before he could react. She circled the staff above her head and brought it down in front of her into ready position.

  “Memphis,” he said.

  M moved into horse stance, legs wide, knees bent, preparing to attack.

  “I’m not here to hurt you.”

  She brought her arms up. Before she could execute the rib strike, he jumped back, scrambling to get away.

  “Stop!” he cried. “M, stop!”

  Shocked, she paused. Nobody called her M except her family. And Mike.

  “Your father sent me,” the guy said.

  M adjusted her grip, keeping the bo staff poised over her head. “My father is dead.”

  This time he didn’t flinch. “That’s what they want you to think.”

  CHAPTER 2

  The fluorescent lights of the diner shined down on his bracelet. It wasn’t regular thread, but some kind of flax woven together in an unusual design. His dark hands curled around the coffee mug, dwarfing it. His fingers were long, elegant, his nails perfectly buffed.

  “My name is Ashwin Sood.” His accent was British, posh. The motorcycle jacket looked beat-up but obviously so, as if he’d bought it already distressed. “I know your father.”

  M sipped her coffee. The world was buzzing somewhere at the back of her mind, thoughts and emotions, questions and sobs, all fighting for her attention. Instead, she focused on him. His hair was black with a wave. His eyes hazel, beautiful against his dark skin.

  “I’m sure it sounds—”

  “He died in a plane crash. They brought me his wedding ring from the wreck.” M replied coldly. The coffee felt like it might come back up. M closed her eyes, willing it—and her feelings—back down.

  “I don’t know anything about that.”

  He was lying.

  “I only know he is alive and I saw him last two days ago.”

  She broke.

  “This is a cruel fucking joke,” she spat, opening her eyes. “I don’t know who you are or what you’re trying to accomplish, but I hope you rot in hell.”

  But her anger couldn’t keep the worst emotion from bubbling up anyway, despite her defenses. Hope.

  Ashwin seemed taken aback. He stared at her, then looked down at his hands. M wanted to storm out, but hope kept her rooted in place. She had to know, even though it was a lie.

  “He said to give you this.” Ashwin pushed a scrap of paper across the table. On it, sketched in small hieroglyphs, was a message. M felt as if her heart stopped. She’d know her father’s writing anywhere. His slanted, careful rendering of pictograms that looked like Egyptian hieroglyphs, but weren’t, not exactly. His use of standard symbols intermixed with the strange, off-kilter signs used only by the priests who served Horus thousands of years ago. It was a language her father had devoted his life to deciphering.

  “He said you could read it. Can you?” Ashwin watched her intently.

  “I learned these signs along with my ABCs. It was our secret language,” M whispered. She wanted to question him, doubt him … but couldn’t. She could barely breathe. The hope was getting stronger. It sat there like a lump, constricting her throat.

  No. Her father was dead. He’d been dead for almost a year. It was insane to think anything else. Hope was useless and wrong. It would hurt her. If this turned out to be a lie, it would be like losing Dad all over again.

  “What does it say?”

  M’s attention snapped back to him. “He didn’t tell you?”

  He shook his head, expression worried. Why worried? M narrowed her eyes, filing his reaction away for later. She looked at the paper, running through the glyphs in her mind, translating images to words. Her father may have been the official expert, but she’d grown up with these little pictures. He’d always said she would be more fluent because she learned it all at a time when her brain functioned like a sponge.

  “Do you call yourself Ash?” she asked.

  “Yes.” He narrowed his eyes. “Why?”

  “It says to trust you.”

  She saw him relax a bit, the muscles in his jaw unclenching. “Anything else?” he asked.

  M considered not telling him until she could figure out her own thoughts. The note didn’t make sense. It was about Dad’s work. It didn’t say: “I’m alive!” or “Help!” It was just a message about Ash and about the map. Nothing more.

  “It says I should give you the map,” M said slowly.

  Ash smiled, relief washing over his face. She knew there was something about him that just wasn’t quite right. But her mind was still spinning.

  “But I’m not giving you anything. I don’t believe a word of this,” she added. She sat back and waited for his reaction.

  Ash held her gaze. “Dr. Engel assured me he put proof in his message to you,” he said at last.

  Proof. M immediately flipped the paper over. The cult of Horus was big on secret messages. Dad had always loved that. There would be hidden keys in their correspondence, double meanings in their pictograms, even outright tricks to fool non-priests. There would be important clues hidden in different places.

  On the back was one tiny picture. An owl—the ancient Egyptian hieroglyph for the letter “M.” But instead of the typical face, this owl had a small smile. It didn’t mean the letter “M,” Dad had always said. It meant the girl M. It was how he’d started writing her name when she was little. She hadn’t seen this smiling owl in a year.

  Her eyes grew wet with tears, the diner blurring around her. She wondered if she would faint. Then the anger took back over.

  “Where is he?” she demanded.

  “He’s being held prisoner,” Ash replied. “By a group of archeologists.”

  M snorted. “I’ve spent my life surrounded by archeologists. They’re not the taking-prisoners type. They’re not generally the knowing-which-end-of-a-gun-to-hold type. My father was unusual that way. Is unusual.” There it was again, the hope. Could her father really be alive? M pushed her giddiness away and focused on Ash. “He taught me well. I can take you down before you know what hit you. So tell me again, where is my father?”

  He sighed. “You’re correct. These archeologists are more like … zealots. When your father published that article about his map, it caught their attention.”

  “Why?”

  “Dr. Engel’s article was widely circulated because of the map’s inco
nsistencies,” Ash said. “The paper and ink dated to the Middle Ages, but the language was that of a cult gone for over three thousand years. People wanted to know how such a thing was possible, as I’m sure you’re aware.”

  M felt a stab of panic. “Are you saying conspiracy-theory nutbars have my dad?”

  “No. These archeologists found it interesting for a different reason. They recognized what the map was for.”

  “What it was for?” M frowned. It wasn’t really a map at all. Her father hadn’t wanted to call it one, but he’d lost that fight with his editor. It was more like a list of descriptions, attributes. Dad had called it a “word map.” That the random hieroglyphs described certain locations had been his first big breakthrough. Until then, the scroll had sat untouched in the British Museum for a hundred years. Early archeologists had thought it a practice paper for an Egyptian scribe learning how to write. The glyphs on it didn’t say anything when strung together, they seemed like nonsense.

  Only after realizing that the words described specific places did he get a grant to take the scroll for further study. And then, once carbon dating put the paper so much later, it was clear no Egyptian scribe had been involved.

  Dad hadn’t cared much about the places, or the dating inconsistency. He cared about the language. He was a linguist before he went into archeology, and the unique tongue had piqued his interest. He hadn’t known what the word map was for, and he hadn’t cared. All that mattered to him was translating what it said.

  Mike had asked, once, why these locations would be listed all on one scroll. But Dad didn’t know. M hadn’t thought about it since.

  “The people who have your father believe this is the map they have been searching for,” Ash told her. “One that will lead them to an ancient artifact that was divided into five pieces and hidden.”

  “What artifact?” M asked. “I’ve never heard anything like that.”

  “A figure of the god Set.” Ash sighed. “They took your father because he is the only one who can read the map. They plan to hold him captive until he can translate the entire map, and they can recover the pieces.”

  M couldn’t stop staring at the scrap of paper in her hand. Dad was alive. He was still here in the world with her, writing to her in their secret language. A sob escaped her lips. “Is he okay?”

  Ash looked surprised. “Your father? Yes. They are treating him well. Although…”

  “What?”

  “He fears his time is running out. That’s why he sent me to find you.”

  M couldn’t think about her father in danger. If he was alive, he needed to be here with her, safe, right now. “Where is he? Why didn’t you call the police?” she demanded.

  He hesitated. “It is a complicated situation.”

  M stood up abruptly. “Your story doesn’t make sense. If these archeologists want to locate an ancient artifact, why wouldn’t they just ask for my father’s help? Surely it would be worth enough money that they could cut him in instead of committing a felony.”

  “Please. Listen,” Ash said quickly. “I promise I will explain.”

  M sat back down. “You have five minutes, then I go to the police.”

  “Very well. What do you know about the god Set?”

  “Are you kidding me?” M asked.

  He didn’t answer.

  “Fine. He’s the Egyptian god of chaos and war, usually depicted as a strange-looking animal,” M said. “He killed his brother, Osiris, chopped up his corpse, and scattered it throughout Egypt. Then Osiris’s wife, Isis, found the pieces and restored his body. Or she restored it enough to conceive a child, who became the god Horus, ruler of Egypt. Osiris went to the underworld and ruled there.”

  Ash nodded. “Right. So this is a representation of Set that has been chopped up and scattered, just like what he did to Osiris.”

  M rolled her eyes. “Except it’s a statue, not a person. What does any of this have to do with my dad?”

  “These people don’t want to sell the artifact. They want to use it,” Ash said. “They believe that if the pieces of the Set artifact are rejoined, Set himself will rise, like Osiris did. They worship him. They think they’re doing his will.”

  Silence. M took a long sip of her now lukewarm coffee, then set it down carefully. “Let me get this straight. When you said archeologists took my father, you meant zealots. And when you said zealots, you meant a bunch of crazypants cultists who think they can resurrect an ancient god of the underworld.”

  Ash blinked, his eyebrows drawing together. “Well…”

  “It sounds bananas, and you sound like a liar.” M leaned toward him. “Am I also supposed to believe that these cult members told you this whole story and let you come find me even though they apparently faked my father’s death and kidnapped him?”

  “No!” he protested. “I’m a student, an anthropology major. I got a job working with their group, doing grunt work, barely even a research assistant. For months it seemed normal. I would see Dr. Engel in the study, working on his translation. I assumed he was one of them. But one day I saw them bring him back to his room. They locked the door from the outside.”

  M felt a chill run through her. Even the idea of Dad locked up, controlled by strangers, made her panicky. She had to help him.

  “I began slipping him notes,” Ash said. “He told me the truth. He asked me to get word to you.”

  M frowned. Dad’s note didn’t ask for help. It didn’t even say “I love you.” It only said to trust Ash and give him the map. It was the type of thing you might write if somebody put a knife to your throat and told you to.

  “He asked you to get the map from me? Not to call the cops. Not to rescue him.”

  “He thinks the only way to gain his freedom is to find the artifacts,” Ash said. “He’s confident in his translations, but his captors haven’t discovered any of the Set pieces at the sites he sent them to.”

  “Meaning his translations don’t point to the correct locations,” M said, doubtful. Dad had previously translated two lines of glyphs pointing to specific archeological sites. There was no way those translations were wrong.

  “He now suspects it is a cipher. He hopes there is a decryption key of some sort on the original map that he did not notice before.” Ash cleared his throat. “He has not told the archeologists his map is not the original.”

  M raised an eyebrow. “They’re archeologists and they didn’t notice he’s using a copy?”

  That didn’t make sense, though to be fair, her father’s copy was fairly authentic looking. He liked getting the feel of the original without compromising its integrity by exposing it to the elements. And besides, the original was nearly impossible to read. M felt a little dizzy thinking about Dad’s copy of the map. She’d assumed it was gone, consumed in the flames of the plane crash. She had been working from the original, taking pictures with her phone so she could blow them up and copy the glyphs. She only took it out when absolutely necessary.

  “Memphis, he needs the original map,” Ash said. “If he can figure out the true locations, they will release him.”

  “Okay.” M put on a smile. “Let’s go.”

  Ash stared at her, uncomprehending. “Go?”

  “Yes. Let’s take them the map.”

  As she’d expected, he instantly began to backtrack. “You don’t understand. You are to give the map to me and I’ll bring it to them. Isn’t that what your father’s note said?”

  “It said to give you the map,” she agreed. “But I’m not going to do that.”

  “What … why?” he sputtered.

  “An hour ago my father was dead. Now he’s alive. So I want to see him. Now. If you’re going back to where he is, I’m going with you.”

  “But … no, he wants me to bring back the original, not you,” Ash said.

  “Where did you tell your employers you were going? Do they know you’re here for the map?” she asked. “When you show up again and give him the original, do you really expect t
hem not to notice?”

  “I…”

  “You’re obviously not telling me the truth,” M said. “If you want me to turn over the map, I’ll only do it when I see my father’s really alive.”

  Ash dropped his face into his hands. “I cannot bring you to your father.”

  “Why not?”

  “It’s too dangerous,” he finally said, looking at her. “These people are violent. It wouldn’t be safe.”

  Violent. M pushed the thought away. “You said they were treating my dad well.”

  “For now,” he replied. “It won’t last. They are organized and powerful. They will hurt him. They will hurt you.” He leaned forward, staring intently into her eyes. “You should know … your guardians, they are part of this. They arranged a fake plane crash. They produced a falsified will. Memphis, they never even knew your parents.”

  “You told me you didn’t know anything about that,” M pointed out.

  “I’m trying to protect you,” he insisted. “They watch you, don’t they? If you give them any reason to think you’re aware of this, they’ll hurt you.”

  That’s why Dad is cooperating, M realized, a sick feeling settling into her stomach. Because they’re threatening me. She pulled out her cell. “That’s exactly what I’m going to do then.”

  Ash’s eyes widened. “Excuse me?”

  “I’m going to call Liza and tell her everything you just said,” M replied. “I’ll offer her a deal: she can have the original map as long as she lets me stay with Dad while he translates it.”

  His upper lip was sweaty now. Panicked, his eyes darted to her hand, calculating whether he could snatch her phone away.

  “Or, you can tell me the truth,” M said. “The actual truth.”

  CHAPTER 3

  The moment stretched out, frozen in time. Philip had taught Ash to do that, to focus so completely on each passing second that even the briefest instant could seem long. Long enough to make an impossible decision? Ash closed his eyes, opening his mind to his god.