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my little brother and I go inside.
    Even though it is against my better judgement, I tell Hayden to wait on one of those black leather sofas next to the spires of a stiff green plant that looks like it could be a weapon—if I was really desperate.
    Hayden is not to talk to anyone. Look at anyone. Trust anyone . Just stay put. My heart could not beat any faster if I’d had a gun in my pocket and had planned to actually rob the bank. Which, of course, isn’t my mission. I wait in line with my mother’s ID—the one that had my age at thirty-something. Part of me dreads that I could pass for someone that old, but the other part—the part that wants to survive and find my mother’s captor—desires nothing more than to have the clerk look me over, think I’m my mother, so that I can retrieve whatever is so important from the vault.
    I leave my stolen sunglasses on and I make sure my scarf is draped messily around my neck as though I was in a hurry. I am in a hurry. A hurry to get out of here as fast as I can.
    The clerk, a young man with an X-acto blade-sharp nose and unibrow, looks over my ID and compares it with the signature card that he pulls from a file cabinet behind him. It seems like a very, very long time, but it was probably only a second. His hair is blond—golden, really. I wonder if my hair looks as bad as his.
    “This doesn’t look like you,” he says curtly.
    “I get that a lot,” I answer in a throatier version of my voice, one that I assume sounds like my mother —or at least someone older than fifteen. I offer no excuse. Sometimes the less you say, the better the odds are of getting what you want.
    “Did you change your hair or something?” he asks.
    I shrug as if the remark doesn’t challenge me, which it does. “I change my hair about three times a year, so  …  yeah, I changed my hair.”
    He raises his unibrow and I instantly think of a big, hairy McDonald’s arch.
    “Looks better the way it is now,” he says.
    I wonder if he’s hitting on me and if he is, he is breaking the law. I am underage, no matter what that ID card states. At least I am pretty sure I am. I couldn’t be eighteen. Or could I? I don’t have time to pursue that thought now. It’s creepy, but if this guy thinks I’m a woman and not a girl then I must be doing something right.
    “Follow me,” he says, dangling the vault key like a dog treat—not quite ready to give it to me, but reminding me how much is at stake and how he literally holds the key over my head. He’s wearing corduroy trousers and as he walks he makes a swishing sound. I almost want to laugh, but I feel so scared and sick inside I think a laugh would just make me throw up.
    He leads me over to a little iron gate at the end of the row of cashiers and unlocks it with a big flourish, eyeing me with a look I feel unsure about. A leer? With suspicion? I’ve seen looks like that before, but the teller’s face shuts down like a sea anemone poked with the tip of a clam digger’s shovel and I’m unsure about what he’s thinking. Maybe about his job? Maybe he caught that unibrow in the reflection of the tellers’ booths and finally realizes he has to do something about it? I follow him to the safe deposit room, down a tiled corridor that is impressively bleak.
    He stops at the doorway and turns to face me.
    “Passcode?”
    “What?” I ask, my pulse quickening.
    “You need to enter your passcode,” he says, his eyes riveted to mine.
    I feel sweat collect on the back of my neck. Passcode? I don’t have any passcode. His nicotine stained index finger points at a keypad.
    “I thought all I needed was my box key,” I say, running every memory through my mind that could lead to a passcode. I knew the code Dad had left in blood meant to get away. But a passcode for a safe deposit box?”
    “I have a passkey and you need to give me your personal passcode,” he says. “We need both to enter the vault.”
    I think hard and fast. Now my face is