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a rush of relief.
    Brendan held up the poster. “The nose isn’t quite right, but I would say it’s pretty close. If you did your hair different, you would be a ringer. You could work an angle on this for sure. It’s not like this age-enhancing stuff is an exact science.”
    I fidgeted on the rock. “Did you see the reward amount?”
    “Quarter of a million is a bit of a jump from your usual five-dollar con limit,” Brendan pointed out.
    “I can’t figure out how to pull it off though. If I come forward and announce I’m the mysterious missing Ava, I’m betting Mom and Dad McKenna are going to want to do a DNA test, and that’s the end of that plan.”
    “Even if we found a way around the DNA test, it’s more than that. This kid has been missing for fifteen years. You suddenly showing up, the sorry little rich girl found at last, is going to be a big deal. We’re talking CNN, People magazine, movie-of-the-week kind of big deal. Whatever cover story you’ve come up with is going to be under huge scrutiny. Everyone we went to school with is going to be interviewed. It’ll be a lot of pressure and attention.”
    I cut him off. “I know.” I chucked a rock in the water. It sank without skipping even once. “Then there’s the fact that if I say I’m the missing Ava, my parents are basically guilty of kidnapping,and I’m pretty sure that guarantees them both a one-way ticket to prison.” I shrugged. “Of course, my dad is already there, so at least for him it’s a short trip.”
    “On the upside, you’re pissed at your mom already. It’s a win-win in that way. You pull off the con, and you get her back for taking your cash.”
    “Now that I think about it, the whole idea was stupid.” I rubbed my palms on my pants. “I don’t know why I told you. I guess I thought maybe you would see a way around all of this.” I went to grab the poster back from Brendan, but he held it out of my reach.
    “You’re going at this the wrong way. No way a straight approach will work. Too many things that could go wrong, too much attention. The more people looking, the more likely someone is going to see what you don’t want them to. You don’t need two hundred and fifty thousand, so don’t go after that.” Brendan wasn’t looking at me, he was staring out at the ocean. I could practically see the gears in his brain working.
    “So what do I do?”
    Brendan smiled. “You’ve been thinking backward. You’re looking for someone to give you money because Ava’s been found. What you need to do is figure out how much is it worth to someone to keep Ava missing.”

chapter eight
    M y dad always says the snake in the garden was the first con artist in history, sweet-talking Eve into taking a bite of the apple for his own gain. He says a profession as old and established as grafting should be treated with more respect. Then again, my dad is currently finishing off a two-year sentence for bilking people out of their money in a real estate pyramid scheme, so take his advice for what it’s worth.
    There are as many cons as there are con artists, from bar bets to street hustles, carnival scams, card tricks, and Internet fraud. For the con to work, you need the mark, or the victim, to be naive, greedy, fearful, or insecure. Cons always point out that you can’t cheat an honest man.
    I turned over Brendan’s plan. The idea of taking money from people looking for their lost daughter still missing after fifteenyears hadn’t sat very well with me, even with Berkeley on the line. I’d never pulled a con based on someone else’s fear before. It might sound twisted, but while I knew what I did was unethical and wrong, there was a limit to how wrong I was willing to be. My dad worked a con for several years where he pretended to be a psychic. For a price, he would connect people with the ghosts of their long-lost loved ones. He argued that it made people feel better. They had a chance to resolve things, maybe say “I love