Right Place At The Right Time

Right Place At The Right Time

Authors note

I needed to give Chuck a break. He’s been extremely busy, and poor guy deserves a little time to figure things out. Sarah, on the other hand, is just sitting around bored.

Just a quick update to let you know that Sarah and Chuck have been separated for a little less than two days. Chuck has been trying to figure things out, while Sarah is trying to find things to keep herself occupied. Of course, both of them are constantly thinking about each other.

This is a two-part arc. It’s basically Sarah remembering her childhood, from when she was a toddler up to where she is now. I could have posted both parts at once, but I thought I’d give you guys a little break, so I’ll be posting the second part tomorrow.

And finally, thank you to everyone who is sticking with me through this story. You guys are the reason I keep going. After two days of having a chapter posted and seeing only a couple of comments or reviews, I sometimes start thinking maybe I should just leave the story where it is. Then another review comes in, and I remember that there are people taking the time to read this story and tell me what they think. I don’t want to let those people down.

So thank you to everyone who has taken the time to read, leave a comment, write a review, or tell me what you’re thinking and what you’re looking forward to next. I really do appreciate every one of you.

Don’t own Chuck.

Chapter 14

Memories That Never Die

Sarah was having anything but a peaceful dream. If she had to name it, she would have called it the worst nightmare she could remember in her eighteen years, except this one was different. It wasn’t really a nightmare anymore. It was a memory, one her mind had decided to drag back into the present night after night, no matter how desperately she tried to leave it behind.

When Sarah finally woke, she came out of the dream thrashing beneath the sheets, her breathing ragged as she struggled to convince herself she was no longer there. Her nightclothes clung damply to her skin, and her hair was matted against her forehead and cheeks. For several seconds, she didn’t know where she was.

Her heart hammered against her chest as she stared into the darkness.

Then the memory returned. She could almost hear the gunshots again. It was the same recurring nightmare that had followed her since Wednesday.

She could still see her friends lying across the couch, their bodies motionless and riddled with bullets while four men stood over them, pistols still clutched in their hands. What disturbed Sarah most wasn’t even the violence. It was the expressions on their faces. There had been no hesitation, no anger and no remorse, only the cold indifference of men who had already decided that the people they had killed didn’t matter.

Sarah remembered running through the room, staying silent as someone shouted for her to stop. She remembered the voice behind her and knowing that if she stopped, she would die too. She hadn’t looked back. She had simply run through the room, burst through the front door and kept going.

The neighborhood surrounding Mike’s house was almost completely abandoned, the kind of place where gunshots had become so ordinary that nobody bothered to investigate anymore. People didn’t rush outside when they heard the cracks of gunfire, and nobody stood at their windows trying to see what had happened. Everyone had their reasons for staying out of other people’s business.

Sarah swallowed hard and slowly lowered herself against the pillows. She was back in her bedroom now, safe, at least that was what she kept telling herself. The words were easier to believe than the silence that followed them.

“Enough,” she whispered into the darkness.

The word sounded small. Sarah reached toward the nightstand and looked at the clock. 2:19 in the morning. There was no point trying to go back to sleep. Her mind had already decided where it wanted to go, and for once Sarah didn’t fight it. Rather than fight the memories, Sarah let her mind move somewhere safer, somewhere warmer.

She went back to her parents.

Since waking that night, Sarah allowed herself to remember Jack and Emma without immediately thinking about everything that had happened afterward. She remembered being very young, so young that some memories existed more as feelings than complete pictures.

She remembered her mother holding her close and the sound of her father’s laughter as he tried to figure out what to do with a little girl who seemed determined to squirm out of his arms.

Jack had never really known what to do with a daughter, or with a child in general. He had always seemed far more comfortable planning a con than changing a diaper or figuring out why his daughter was crying.

But Sarah could still remember the love he had shown her.

She remembered lying on the floor surrounded by stuffed animals while her father tried to make her laugh. She remembered the ridiculous faces he would make when he thought nobody was watching and the way his voice became exaggerated and dramatic whenever he read her a story, as though he were performing for a theater full of people instead of one little girl sitting cross-legged in front of him.

There had been something wonderfully foolish about those moments, and Sarah had loved every minute of them.

Then there was her mother.

Emma.

Sarah could almost hear her laughter.

It had always been different from Jack’s. Her mother’s laughter was softer and warmer, and somehow it could make a cheap motel room feel like home. When Emma held Sarah, the little girl believed that nothing else in the world mattered.

For those first few years, Sarah thought she was living the most wonderful life imaginable. Her world consisted of laughter, stuffed toys scattered across motel rooms, games played on beds while her parents watched, evenings when her mother tucked her beneath the blankets and kissed her forehead, and mornings when Jack pretended to be annoyed because Sarah had somehow managed to climb into bed between her parents during the night.

Those were the memories Sarah held onto now.

A small smile appeared on her face as she lay there in the darkness. For a few precious seconds, she allowed herself to simply enjoy the memory of being loved.

Then the smile faded.

Even the happiest memories had an ending, and Sarah knew exactly when hers had begun to change.

As she grew older, her parents began explaining more about what they did. They never told her everything, but they told her enough that the pieces gradually began to fit together. Her parents didn’t have ordinary jobs. They didn’t leave every morning for an office, didn’t have regular hours and didn’t have coworkers whose names Sarah knew.

They traveled constantly.

They changed names, changed stories and became different people whenever the situation required it.

At first, Sarah didn’t understand why any of it was necessary. Eventually, she began to understand the first rule of her family’s life.

Lying was how they survived.

One of the memories that stood out most clearly was from when she was seven.

They were staying in another motel, one that looked almost identical to a dozen others Sarah had already seen. She could still remember the faded carpet beneath her feet and the thin curtains covering the window. Her mother had placed several books on the small table beside the bed, along with a sheet of paper covered with assignments.

“Sarah.”

She looked up to see her mother standing in front of her.

“Yes, Mom?”

“You need to stay here while your father and I go out.”

Sarah frowned and looked toward the door.

“Why can’t I come?”

“Because this is something your father and I have to do.”

Emma pointed toward the books. “Your books are over there. I expect you to go through everything and read the material I’ve listed.”

Sarah looked at the pile and then back at her mother. “All of it?”

“All of it.”

Sarah sighed dramatically. “No.”

Emma raised one eyebrow.

Sarah immediately reconsidered. “…Yes.”

“And no television until you’re finished.”

Sarah’s mouth dropped open. “Mom!”

Emma tried not to smile. “No television.”

“But I’ll be bored.”

“Then you’ll have plenty of time to read.”

Sarah crossed her arms. “I hate reading.”

Emma leaned down and kissed the top of her head. “No, you don’t. You just haven’t found the right things to read yet.”

Sarah gave her mother a reluctant look before glancing back at the books. “Okay, Mama. I’ll get it done.”

Her mother smiled and gently touched her daughter’s shoulder. “Good girl. I’ll check everything when I get home, so take your time and make sure you’ve done it properly.”

Her mother straightened and glanced toward her father, who was standing near the motel door. Sarah watched the brief exchange between her parents without understanding what passed between them.

Looking back now, she could see things she hadn’t been capable of seeing at seven.

There had been concern in her mother’s eyes, calculation in her father’s, and a quiet understanding between them that their little girl was growing up faster than either of them had intended.

Her mother turned back toward Sarah.

“Stay here. Don’t open the door for anyone. We’ll be back soon.”

Sarah nodded.

“Promise?”

Her mother’s expression softened.

“Promise.”

“Okay, Mommy.”

Her mother leaned down and kissed her forehead before giving her another warning.

Her father stepped forward, his voice taking on a more serious tone.

“And darling, you make sure that door stays locked at all times. You keep those drapes closed, too. I don’t want to walk in here like last time and find the door open and those curtains pulled back. You understand me, Sarah?”

Sarah nodded obediently.

“Yes, Daddy. I understand.”

Her father gave her a serious look.

“You heard your mother.”

“Yes.”

“Good.”

He reached down, ruffled her hair and straightened again. Sarah smiled up at him, but the truth was that she didn’t understand.

Not really.

Sarah watched her parents leave, and when the door clicked shut behind them, the room immediately seemed to become larger and quieter.

At seven years old, Sarah understood the rules. The door had to remain locked. The curtains had to stay closed. She wasn’t supposed to answer unless one of her parents was standing on the other side.

What she didn’t understand was why she wasn’t allowed outside.

Or why the world beyond that thin motel door was something she was supposed to fear.

Most of all, she didn’t understand why she was expected to spend so much of her childhood alone.

Sarah sat on the bed with her books spread around her and tried to concentrate. For a while she managed to read the material her mother had assigned and work through the exercises. She even tried to write neatly because she knew Emma would check her work when they returned.

Eventually, however, the silence became impossible to ignore.

She could hear people walking past the room. Their voices came through the thin walls and the gaps around the door, muffled and distorted until they sounded like echoes from another world.

Then Sarah heard a child’s voice.

She stopped reading.

Another child’s laughter floated in through the window, and Sarah slowly looked toward the curtains.

Her mother’s warning immediately came back to her.

Keep the curtains closed.

She hesitated.

Curiosity was only part of what drew her toward the window.

She was lonely.

Sarah quietly approached the window and carefully moved one corner of the curtain aside. Sunlight slipped across her face, and outside she saw a little girl who looked about her age playing in the motel pool.

An older woman sat nearby watching her, smiling as the girl splashed through the water.

Sarah stared at them.

The girl had someone to play with. Someone to watch her. Someone who had brought her outside.

Something twisted inside Sarah.

She wanted to go out there so badly that for a moment she could almost feel herself running across the pavement. She wanted to take off her shoes, jump into the pool and introduce herself. She wanted to know the girl’s name.

More than anything, she wanted a friend.

Sarah’s fingers tightened around the curtain. For several seconds she considered disobeying her mother, but eventually the familiar warnings won out.

Don’t open the door.

Keep the curtains closed.

Reluctantly, Sarah let the curtain fall back into place, cutting off the sunlight and the view of the little girl.

She returned to the bed, climbed beneath the thin motel blanket and picked up her book again, but the words no longer meant anything.

She stared at the page while the girl’s laughter continued outside.

More than anything, Sarah wanted to go to school.

She wanted a classroom filled with other children, someone to sit beside at lunch, birthday parties, sleepovers and friends who knew her real name.

But those things belonged to other children.

Her family never stayed anywhere long enough for Sarah to have any of them. A week, sometimes two, and then they were gone again, moving on to another town, another motel, another name and another con.

Whenever her parents returned from one of their jobs, there seemed to be only two possibilities.

Sometimes the door would burst open and they would come inside smiling. Her father would scoop Sarah up and throw her into the air while she screamed with laughter.

“We did it!”

Sarah would laugh along with him. “Did what?”

“We made a big score!”

Her mother would shake her head and smile, and her father would promise to take everyone out for dinner.

Those were the nights Sarah treasured most. For a little while, the lies disappeared, and her family felt like nothing more complicated than a family.

Other times, the door would open and everything would feel different.

Her parents would come inside quietly. There would be no laughter and no celebration. Her father would close the curtains himself while her mother checked the lock, and then they would begin whispering.

Sarah learned quickly that whispering meant something had gone wrong.

She would sit quietly on the bed and listen to fragments of conversations she wasn’t supposed to hear.

“Did anyone see us?”

“How long do we have?”

“We need to leave.”

“Pack only what we need.”

“Sarah can’t know.”

Sometimes her father would look toward her, and whenever he did, Sarah would pretend she hadn’t heard anything.

She became very good at pretending long before she understood how important that skill would become.

She didn’t know it then, but she was learning one of the first lessons her parents would ever teach her about their world.

You didn’t survive by asking too many questions.

You survived by knowing when to be quiet.

“Sarah! Get your stuff packed. We gotta go.”

Sarah looked up from her book.

“What?”

“Pack your things,” her father repeated. “Hurry up. Don’t diddle-daddle. Let’s go.”

She knew that tone. It meant there was no arguing. Sarah scrambled off the bed and began gathering her things. Her books went into her small bag first, followed by the few clothes she had scattered around the room. Within minutes, they were out the door and climbing into the car.

Sarah settled into the back seat while her father started the engine and her mother slid into the passenger seat. They pulled away from the motel. For the first few miles, nobody spoke. Then her father caught Sarah’s eyes in the rearview mirror.

“Sarah.”

She looked up.

“Did you see anybody outside the motel?”

“No.”

He glanced at the mirror again. “You sure?”

“Yes.”

Her mother turned toward him.

“Jack.”

“What?”

“She’s seven.”

“I’m asking her a question.”

Sarah sat quietly in the back seat, listening to her parents while keeping her eyes on the book in her lap. She had learned that they often forgot she was listening, or perhaps they simply assumed that because she was a child, she didn’t understand what they were saying.

They were wrong.

Sarah didn’t know exactly what her parents were doing, but she was beginning to understand that the stories they told people weren’t always true. They used different names. They talked about people looking for them. They talked about money, leaving town and making sure nobody had seen them.

Slowly, the pieces began to fit together. Her parents weren’t ordinary people with ordinary jobs. They lied to people. They gained their trust. And then they took their money.

There was a word for people who did that.

Con artists.

Her father was usually the mastermind behind their little enterprise. He knew what people wanted to hear and seemed to understand exactly when to push and when to back away.

Her mother was different. Emma questioned him. She challenged his ideas, and whenever Jack’s plans came too close to Sarah, she made certain he knew where she stood.

“Keep your voice down, Jack. Sarah can hear you.”

There would usually be silence afterward.

“She’s going to have to learn sooner or later.”

Sarah remembered one particular conversation especially well.

“She’s almost eight.”

Emma had been quiet.

Jack continued.

“She’s almost eight, Emma. She’s old enough to start learning the ropes. She can help us when the situation calls for it. She’s smart, she pays attention, and she’s already learning how to read people. She needs to know how to perform.”

Still, Emma said nothing.

“She’s part of the team.”

Sarah remembered looking at her mother through the gap between the front seats. Emma had been staring through the windshield, her expression unreadable.

She didn’t say yes. But she didn’t say no either. And somehow, that frightened Sarah more than either answer would have.

Before Sarah turned eight, Jack decided she was ready for her first con. She was going to play the victim. Emma would play a recently widowed woman who had been abused by her husband, while Sarah would play the little girl who had supposedly suffered at the hands of the same man.

In their story, Sarah was an orphan, her father was dead and her mother was desperate for help. Except none of it was real. The husband didn’t exist. The abuse had never happened, and Sarah wasn’t an orphan.

Her father explained the story to her as though he were teaching her the rules of a game.

“You have to look scared.”

Sarah nodded.

“Don’t smile.”

She nodded again.

“If somebody asks you what happened, you tell them Daddy hurt Mommy.”

Sarah swallowed.

“What if they ask me if he hurt me?”

Her father looked directly at her.

“You tell them yes.”

Sarah’s eyes immediately moved toward her mother. Her mother was standing across the motel room, holding a blouse in her hands, but she wasn’t looking at either of them.

“Mom?”

Her mother slowly raised her eyes.

Sarah waited.

For a moment, she said nothing. Then she crossed the room and knelt in front of her daughter.

“You don’t have to be afraid.”

Sarah frowned.

“I’m not.”

Her mother gently touched her cheek.

“I know.”

“But Daddy said I have to tell them he hurt me.”

Her mother’s eyes flickered toward her father before returning to her daughter.

“Your father wants you to do this because he thinks you’re ready.”

Sarah’s expression changed as she looked up at her mother. The confidence she had been trying to show began to disappear, replaced by a worried uncertainty she couldn’t quite hide.

“Do you really think I’m ready, Mom?”

Her mother didn’t answer immediately. That hesitation told Sarah more than any words could have. Finally, she gave her a small, reassuring smile.

“You just have to remember that you’re pretending.”

Sarah nodded slowly.

“Okay.”

Her mother pulled her into a hug, and Sarah wrapped her arms around her mother’s neck.

For a moment, she felt safe again. But neither of them said what Sarah was beginning to understand. This wasn’t playing pretend anymore.

It was work.

This time, her parents weren’t simply teaching her how their world worked. They were putting her inside it.

The elderly woman took pity on Emma and Sarah and eventually invited them to stay in her home. According to the story Jack had created, Emma was a recently widowed mother who had nowhere else to go, while Sarah was the frightened little girl who had lost her father and desperately needed somewhere safe to live.

The woman believed every word. And for a time in Sarah’s young life, the con gave her something she had never expected. It gave her a place that actually felt like home.

The woman had a grandson who was about a year younger than Sarah, and the two children became friends almost immediately. They played games together, explored the property and spent hours talking about the things children talked about when adults weren’t listening. He showed Sarah his favorite hiding places, and Sarah showed him some of the little tricks her father had taught her for distracting people and getting them to look somewhere else. She never told him where she had learned those tricks. Even at that age, she understood that some things were better kept to herself.

As the days turned into weeks, Sarah became increasingly attached to the boy. She began looking forward to waking up each morning because she knew he would be there. She had never experienced anything like it before.

The children she had met in other towns had always disappeared from her life within a week or two. This boy was different. He was still there the next morning. He was there the day after that. For once, Sarah was beginning to believe that perhaps she could actually have a friend.

The grandmother noticed how close the children were becoming, and she began to grow attached to Sarah as well. She watched her grandson laughing with the little girl and saw something in Sarah that reminded her of the family she had once had. She began bringing Sarah small gifts, asking about her day and making sure she had a place beside her at dinner.

Sometimes she would reach across the table and take Sarah’s hand simply because she wanted to. Sarah liked those moments more than she was willing to admit. There was something genuine in the woman’s affection that Sarah had rarely experienced outside her own family.

What Sarah didn’t know was that the boy she had become so close to was dying. He suffered from a rare disease that had already taken much of his childhood from him, and the doctors had very few options left. Sarah hadn’t understood how sick the boy really was. She only knew that he was getting weaker, spending more time resting and less time playing with her. His grandmother tried to hide her worry, but Sarah could see it in her face.

Then another player entered the con.

Jack arrived at the house posing as an insurance representative who claimed he might be able to help the boy. As far as the grandmother knew, he was a stranger who had heard about her grandson’s condition and had access to a program that could supposedly provide the treatment he needed. Jack and Emma never acknowledged knowing each other, and Sarah quickly understood that she was expected to do the same.

While Jack worked on convincing the grandmother that he could save her grandson, Emma and Sarah continued playing their parts, keeping the woman emotionally attached to the frightened mother and daughter she believed she had taken into her home.

Sarah watched it all without really understanding where it was leading. She only knew that Jack seemed to have an answer for everything, and that the grandmother desperately wanted to believe him.

By the time Sarah understood what her father had actually done, the grandmother had already signed over part of her savings to Jack’s fake insurance company. She believed the money would be used to find treatment and give her grandson the long life she desperately wanted for him.

Sarah never learned all the details. By the time she understood what her father had done, her father, her mother and Sarah were already on the road, two states away from the house that had felt more like home than any place she could remember.

She sat quietly in the back seat and watched the landscape pass outside the window, thinking about the grandmother and the boy she had called her friend.

She didn’t ask where they were going. She didn’t ask how much money her parents had made. Instead, her thoughts returned to something her mother had told her.

Her mother had always said that the people they conned would be fine. They had more money than they needed, Emma would explain, and eventually they would recover from whatever they had lost.

Sarah wanted to believe that.

If the people they con could recover and her family only took what they needed to survive, then perhaps none of it was really wrong.

But something inside Sarah felt different this time.

She cared about the grandmother. She cared about the little boy. They had been kind to her, welcomed her into their home and made her feel like she belonged there.

Sarah sat quietly in the back seat as the house disappeared behind them, her mother’s words still in her mind while an uncomfortable feeling settled deep inside her. She felt sad, almost to the point of tears. Something felt wrong, and Sarah didn’t know what to do with it. So she pushed it away, putting it somewhere deep inside herself where she didn’t have to think about it. Over time, she would become very good at building those walls, keeping the things that hurt her buried where she didn’t have to feel them.

Her father taught her to read people, to watch their hands, their eyes and the small changes in their expressions that revealed nervousness, greed, loneliness or insecurity. He taught her how to pick a pocket without being noticed and how to become a distraction whenever he or her mother needed one.

He also taught her how to play the victim.

That lesson came easily because Sarah had spent much of her childhood watching adults and learning what they responded to. She knew how to make her voice tremble and how to make tears appear in her eyes. She knew how to make people feel protective toward her.

Her mother taught her the other side of the performance.

Sometimes the best distraction wasn’t a loud child causing trouble. It was a quiet little girl standing exactly where she wasn’t supposed to be, asking innocent questions and drawing attention away from everything else.

Being useful meant Sarah was less likely to be left behind.

Whenever she hesitated or questioned whether the people they were conning would be all right, her mother reminded her of the same thing.

“These people will be okay.”

Sarah remembered asking her mother about it once.

“How do you know?”

Emma had smiled gently.

“Because they have more than we do.”

“They’re going to get the money back?”

“Eventually.”

“And what about us?”

Emma pulled her closer and kissed the top of her head.

“We only take what our family needs.”

Sarah accepted the explanation because she wanted to believe it.

She needed to believe it.

On Sarah’s tenth birthday, her father gave her something that had nothing to do with a con.

It was a set of throwing knives.

To Sarah, they were the most beautiful things she had ever seen.

She held them carefully, fascinated by their weight and balance, while her father explained that they were meant for practice.

He bought her specially made target boards and set them up whenever they stayed somewhere long enough.

At first Sarah missed the target more often than she hit it, but she was stubborn. She kept practicing until she started hitting the board consistently.

Then she began hitting the target.

Her father was impressed, and Sarah was immensely proud of herself.

She saw it as another skill she had mastered, another way she could prove that she belonged with her parents.

She didn’t understand that her father had just given his daughter her first real weapon.