Page 134 of Hide And Seek

I stared at him for a second before the anger drained out of me as quickly as it had come, leaving behind nothing but exhaustion.

With a sigh, I sank back onto the edge of the bed. “My first name is really Alissa,” I said. “And my second name is really Madsen. It’s just… not my last name.”

“So you’ve been using your middle name as your last?”

“Yes. It’s my mother’s maiden name,” I said. “My parents gave it to me as a middle name because they wanted me to have both family names without hyphenating them.” I hesitated and swallowed hard before going on. “My actual last name is Skalbeck.”

For the first time since this conversation started, Rhys looked genuinely caught off guard.

“Skalbeck?” he said, eyes widening slightly. “As in Adrian Skalbeck? The airport bombing?”

I nodded stiffly. “He’s my uncle,” I said. “It happened before I was even born. But when a member of your family kills almost four hundred people and becomes one of the worst domestic terrorists in American history… that kind of thing follows you around.”

Something shifted subtly in Rhys’s expression. “I can imagine.”

“My parents didn’t want to change our surname, and that made life pretty hard sometimes,” I said, staring down at my hands. “People would hear it and immediately assume we supported Adrian, even though we didn’t. So we got harassed a lot when I was growing up.”

I rubbed my palms against my leggings, head shaking slightly.

“Eventually we moved to this tiny town in Montana where most people actually left us alone and treated us normally,” I continued. “But every now and then random people would still track us down. Send letters. Leave threats. That kind of thing.”

“That’s fucked up.”

“Yeah. And even when people weren’t being hostile, they’d still react when they heard my last name. Every single time. They’d get this weird look on their face. Or they’d immediately start asking questions about my uncle like I was some kind of morbid trivia exhibit.”

Rhys stayed silent, just watching me.

“It got really exhausting,” I added softly. “And I knew it was going to follow me around forever.”

“So you started using Alissa Madsen instead.”

I nodded. “I’ve wanted to be a journalist since I was a kid, but I knew the Skalbeck name would probably overshadow everything I ever did. People wouldn’t even care about mywork. They’d just see the byline and think ‘terrorist relative’. So eventually I just stopped introducing myself as Skalbeck. My socials all use Madsen, and I’ve been meaning to legally change my name. I just haven’t gotten around to it yet.”

“So your official records still use your real name,” Rhys said. “Which means you’d have to use it for anything important. College applications. Jobs. Banking.”

“That’s right.”

He tilted his head slightly. “So why did you use a fake name and fake ID to apply here?”

I exhaled slowly. “That wasn’t really my idea. It was more of a precaution.”

“Not your idea, huh?” Rhys’s expression sharpened. “Let me guess. It has something to do with that investigative journalism professor you pretended not to know when we talked about him.”

“Professor Farrelly,” I said quietly. “Peter.”

“Sounds like you’re pretty close to him.”

“He’s basically my idol,” I said, twisting my hands together in my lap. “I took three of his classes during freshman year, and I did really well in them, so he offered me an internship the following year. We got close after that.”

“Are you sleeping with him?” The jealousy in Rhys’s voice was immediate and obvious.

“No, and I never would. He’s happily married.” I paused pointedly. “To a man, by the way.”

“Right.”

“He’s my mentor,” I added. “That’s it.”

His gaze stayed fixed on me for another second before he spoke again. “So why did he send you here?” he asked. “And why the fake identity?”