The Missing Hours by Julia Dahl

Author:Julia Dahl
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: St. Martin's Press

CLAUDIA

“What should we do?” asked Trevor after he’d told her about his encounters with Chad and Ridley.

“We?”

“Those assholes came after me, too.”

Claudia was ready with her answer: “I have to assume that video is going to get out. When it does, the story isn’t going to be: Claudia Castro is a slut. The story is going to be: The guys who fucked with Claudia Castro got fucked up.”

“I want to help you.”

They decided that step one was to get Claudia out of the hotel, where she was registered under her name. Whatever was going to happen next had to happen with a minimal footprint. She’d turned on her phone on that morning and deleted all the social apps. Texts were mostly from Trevor and her mom. Mom requesting a “family meeting”; Mom saying Edie “needs her sister.” They were easy to ignore. But after what had happened to Trevor’s phone, Claudia realized that having hers on made her vulnerable to GPS tracking. Ridley had his lawyer fingers in with all kinds of hackers. Chad once told her that was how his dad got a better deal in the divorce: He got into Chad’s mom’s phone and got proof she’d been having an affair, too. She paid up rather than look like a slut, Chad said. How could she have ever thought they were friends? The whole time, he just wanted to shove himself into her. To make her his.

She and Trevor went downstairs to the hotel’s business office to use the Internet. A few clicks and they found an open room at a Holiday Inn on Ninth Avenue. Her fake ID said she was Ingrid Greggs twenty-two, of Yonkers, and she figured that with enough cash up front, she could convince the desk clerk to overlook a “lost” credit card.

Step two was the bank.

“I’m gonna run some errands,” she told Trevor. “Meet me at the hotel in an hour?”

He didn’t make her explain further.

She walked into a Bank of America branch on Forty-Second Street, but the ATM had a $2,000 daily withdrawal limit. That wasn’t going to cut it. She needed $5,000 for Lesley. Plus who knew how many nights in the hotel after this. And maybe a plane ticket? And she should give Trevor something to make up for what he lost when he told Ridley to fuck off. Claudia knew she had nearly $70,000 in her personal checking. Jim Morgan transferred $5,000 from the family’s account into hers every month, and since coming to college she’d cut back on clothes and shoes and bags. It was one of her resolutions when she started at NYU: less stuff, more experiences. Aerial yoga and live music and even tasting menus were cheaper than designer dresses, so the money piled up. To get as much out as she wanted, though, she was going to have to show her real ID. Hopefully it would be worth it. From behind the glass doors leading into the branch Claudia assessed the tellers for the one she thought would ask the fewest questions.

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