Pacifica

  So it would be like this. Like everything was fine. Despite what he’d said the last time they’d spoken, Ross didn’t want a new Tersley. He wanted things to go back to normal, the way they never could. Where Adam was beside him, giving him a synopsis of last night’s history reading, and Tersley was motioning him to walk faster, and what existed below the cliffline was a curiosity, not a reality.

  He said, “I want to know what’s going on.”

  Brighton paused midway through opening the car door. “Your father wanted me to tell you to have a good day, and to remember what you talked about. A lot’s riding on you.”

  The conversation with his father returned hard and fast, and disgusted him in so many ways. Because this new Tersley was probably his father’s spy. Because Adam was missing, and yet still taking the fall. Because a girl’s life was at stake and no one seemed to care. Because every day his father carried burdens that Ross couldn’t possibly understand, and in one stupid night he’d jeopardized the president’s ability to hold a whole country together.

  He got in the car.

  * * *

  Center Academy’s brightly lit main hall led into a dome-covered courtyard, filled with iron sculptures and benches where students sat and talked, awaiting class. Ross had managed to convince Brighton to stay outside, but now felt alone without Adam at his side. He hovered on the outskirts of the crowd, knowing that if he walked through, half a dozen people would want to say hello. Today, he couldn’t even pretend to be social, so he detoured down the first hall on his left, a familiar path that cut through the athletic wing.

  The walls were lined with banners and trophies for the school’s various athletic teams—rowing and swimming, which were done in Center’s pool; archery and shooting, which were so much like his console games at home he never bothered signing up; dance; wrestling and boxing, both noncontact and done in simulators, which couldn’t be more boring or fake; and track.

  His name was stamped into thirteen plaques on the wall for different length sprints, and as he continued on, he looked up at his father’s name beneath a section marked “Worthy Alumni.” George Torres had done distance running in his day. He’d tried to convince Ross endurance required more skill and dedication, but Ross had always preferred to run all out, full speed, until his legs shook and felt like they would buckle.

  He stopped and stared at the plaque for several long moments, wondering how many times he’d wanted his own right next to it, just so one day his father might see.

  Moving on, he passed the coaches’ offices and found himself pushing through the door into a dark gym, notably cooler in temperature and smelling faintly of sweat. The lights rose slowly, revealing eight treadmills, all sleek black and spotless, all facing a giant wall screen.

  He walked to one and climbed aboard, feeling the spongy padding beneath his uniform shoes. He pressed a button that activated the machine with a loud hum, and the screen before him burst into light. It had been a couple months, but his fingers remembered the moves. He turned the dial and the screen before him flashed from a stadium track, to an old red dirt road, to a mountain trail. In the keypad he could type his name, and it would bring up a log of his old stats: times, race dates, practice runs. He didn’t, though. He stared at the dusty road leading up the hill toward a clear, blue sky, and thought of how he’d never run farther than the length of his own stride.

  “Look who finally came around.”

  Ross turned to find Marcus Pruitt standing just inside the door. At under six feet, he was one of the shorter guys on the team, but what he lacked in height, he made up in muscle. He was flanked by the Gomez brothers—Felipe and Jonas—fraternal twins who shared the same broad forehead, but little else.

  Ross rolled his shoulders back, aware of every muscle that refused to relax. They thought he’d rejoined the team. That he could, after what they’d done.

  “Finally,” Felipe said. He was thicker than his brother, generally less of a pain in the ass, though they hadn’t spoken since the day Ross had quit the team. “We slipped to second without you.”

  Ross faltered. “Kasca?” The northern school was always their biggest competition.

  Felipe nodded.

  For an instant, he wanted back in the game. To put on his uniform, lace up his shoes. Leave Kasca in the dust. All he had to do was sign back up for the team.

  “Don’t see your shadow. You and your boyfriend have a fight?” Jonas, the taller, skinnier Gomez, asked, making a show of scanning the corners in the room.

  Ross’s hands clenched. He stepped off the treadmill.

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” Felipe said, gaze landing somewhere on the far wall.

  “Felipe is right,” said Pruitt. “Ross doesn’t let him out of his cage until nine o’clock.” He took a bite of an apple in his hand, and juice sprayed into the air. Jonas chuckled. Even Felipe cracked a smile.

  Before Ross knew it, he was standing inches away from Pruitt, staring at his ruddy face. Fury vibrated down his limbs as Pruitt took a slow look at the hand Ross had fisted in his collar.

  “I told you before to leave him alone,” Ross said. He wanted Pruitt to try to hit him. To test just how thin his control actually was.

  “What’s wrong with you?” Pruitt said, unimpressed, as he shoved Ross’s hand away. “You don’t have to play diplomat every second of the day. In case you forgot, his trawler friends are putting good people on stretchers every night.”

  Ross felt a slash of regret as he remembered that Pruitt’s mother was the chief of the City Patrol, and that she could easily be one of those good people he mentioned.

  But she also could have been the other kind, who’d forced him and Adam to run for safety.

  “He didn’t do anything to you,” Ross said.

  “Yet.” The word hung between them like a threat.

  “All right,” said Felipe, though he didn’t follow it up with anything.

  Ross inched closer to Pruitt, ready to pound him into the floor. Maybe it would make him feel better, maybe not. He’d have to see.

  “Is there a problem, gentlemen?”

  Ross turned to see Professor Dorn, his English teacher, standing in the threshold, and the backs of the Gomez brothers as they made a quick escape down the hall.

  “I don’t know,” said Pruitt. “Is there a problem?”

  Ross took another step back. He pushed his hands in his pockets, fists clenched so hard they vibrated.

  But it wasn’t his fist vibrating. His comm was vibrating. Automatically, he looked down, and saw Adam’s face on the small screen.

  He felt a sudden sense of lightness, as if he’d tripped and had yet to hit the ground.

  A message was typed beneath the picture.

  “No,” said Ross quickly. “We’re good here. I just need to, uh … take a walk.”

  “Take your time,” said the professor, as if class weren’t starting in a few minutes.

  No one at Center questioned the things Ross did or said. Last term, he’d passed math without turning in one piece of homework. Last week, Professor Atwal had given him perfect marks on an essay about the North American Culture Clash, and the two paragraphs he turned in were copied straight out of his sociology text.

  He strode away without another word, head throbbing, feet moving in time with his racing pulse. His gaze lowered again to the message.

  Plaza Centro. Need help. No security.

  Adam was in trouble.

  He didn’t know why he’d said no security, except that maybe he was afraid of his dad finding out. Ross didn’t blame him. Every fear he’d felt pushed against the ragged edges of his control. He needed to get to the Plaza Centro now.

  The halls were empty; class had begun. At a jog, Ross tapped the screen, but the call was met with static. It didn’t go through—something must have been wrong with his comm.

  On my way, he messaged back. He hoped Adam got it. If not, he’d be there soon enough.

  Because he didn’t know how to tu
rn off the tracker, he decided to turn the whole comm off. Adam didn’t want security, fine. Adam got whatever Adam wanted for the rest of his life as far as Ross was concerned.

  He ran back through the athletic wing, past the practice room, out the back doors into the now pelting rain. Maybe the camera outside the building caught him leaving, but if it did, no one came to stop him. He kept his head down and crossed the street, entering the back of Monument Park and passing an ancient, giant statue of Lincoln that had been moved from the old capital. Then he ran through the rain to the courthouse, where he waved down a taxi and told the driver to take him to the Plaza Centro.

  CHAPTER 13

  MARIN HID in the alley between a giant stone theater and a restaurant, eyes on the tiled fountain marking the middle of the plaza, the bracelet comm she’d taken from Adam in her hand. Her fingertips traced the cracked glass of its face and around to the back, where earlier she’d popped off the slim battery pack with her knife and found the chip dislodged from its holding place. Once she’d realigned the parts, it had turned back on. Shortly after, it began to vibrate, and a picture had flashed up on the small screen.

  Blue Eyes. Ross Torres. The son of the president.

  She was so shocked by the fact that he was there that she’d nearly thrown the comm across the street and made a run for it. It was like he was following her, and if he was, maybe his bodyguard was too.

  But then she’d remembered that this was Adam’s comm, and that if Ross was calling, he was looking for Adam. She’d held it up to her face again, staring at his thumbnail-sized photo, still unable to believe she’d met him—in a riot, no less. The whole thing seemed half dream, half nightmare now. Too impossible to be true.

  She thought about the way he’d picked her up off the pavement when they’d run, and how he’d tried to talk his man out of shooting her. There’d been genuine worry on his face when he’d told Hiro she’d been hurt.

  Those things seemed most impossible of all. There were reasons the Shorelings hated the elder Torres, and none of them had to do with the kindness she’d seen in his son.

  It didn’t make sense.

  So she’d kept the comm, huddled in her hiding place atop an old fire escape, and checked through Adam’s messages as the sunrise finally released the docks from curfew.

  Ross Torres had called twenty-seven times during the night.

  He’d left messages too. Where are you? And Tersley’s coming to get you. And I’m sorry.

  He hadn’t planned on being separated from his friend, which meant there was an even slimmer chance he’d expected Adam to be taken by la limpieza. The fact that he’d continued calling led her to believe that he still didn’t know where Adam was, which meant that she possessed some potentially valuable information.

  The kind someone with money might even pay for.

  Adam had said if she helped him there’d be a reward. Maybe she’d lost him, but she knew where he’d gone at least. And if she could turn that into money for Gloria, she would.

  They might not have to starve after all.

  Because part of the comm was still damaged, she couldn’t answer him, or call him back, but the messaging feature seemed to still work so before she chickened out she’d told him to meet her here, at the plaza. No security, she’d said. Last thing she needed was to get shot in the chest again.

  Leaning against the theater, she rubbed her sore wrist, staying out of the way of the people who walked by. No one else was dressed like she was. No one else’s skin was as browned by the sun. If she made herself too obvious, she’d make others suspicious, and she wouldn’t put it past these rich kanshu to call la limpieza on her.

  Besides, if Ross came, she wanted to see him first, to make sure he was alone.

  Minutes passed, each one gnawing on the ends of her nerves.

  “Come on, terreno,” she said, using the word her people used to describe the mainland monsters. It reminded her of the past, of drunken words slung out around the firepit. Of her father, and stupid Luc, who was next in line to head the captain’s table.

  The thought made her cringe, like she’d just bitten into something too sour.

  I am not the only one who wants a new start.

  Hiro was wrong about that. She didn’t want a new start, she needed one. Noram wasn’t a destination for her, it was a hiding place.

  Movement by the fountain caught her attention. A man, running from a car on the side of the road toward the fountain’s cluster of stone trees. Despite his speed, he moved almost effortlessly, rocking as he came to a stop in the center of the pavilion. He was wearing a clean white shirt, made see-through on his shoulders and chest by the rain. His dark blue pants were streaked with water, but the way he held himself, shoulders back, chin high, brought on a punch of recognition before her gaze could rise to his face.

  This was Ross Torres, son of the president. How she’d not seen that before, she didn’t know. His dark hair was gleaming wet. Wariness had drawn in his black brows. His mouth was a thin line as he checked the comm on his wrist and then spun in a circle, looking all around.

  He seemed to be alone, but it could be a trap. His bodyguard could be hiding somewhere—tons of them could have come with him. If they found out she’d tricked him into coming here, she’d surely be arrested, then they’d see her tattoo and know she was a corsario. They’d throw her in a box, and she’d never see the water or the open sky again.

  She could set down the comm and run, and he’d be none the wiser.

  It was her grumbling stomach that held her in place. She was hungry, and the people who’d helped her were hungry, and this could end all of it.

  Her father’s words whispered back to her from years earlier. You are a corsario.

  It was time, once again, to think like a pirate.

  Taking a deep breath, she stepped from the shadows, from the protection of the theater, into the rain.

  He didn’t see her at first, and she didn’t go to him. She waited while he turned, and searched, and checked his comm. People moved around them, hiding beneath their umbrellas, wearing long sleeves and pants to protect their skin from the bite of the rain.

  She could tell the moment he saw her. He grew very still and stared, mouth open, as if he were seeing something he couldn’t make sense of.

  He took a step forward, and then another, and she didn’t move. Her heart pounded, but her feet stayed in place. Her head screamed to run, but she didn’t falter.

  She lifted her chin and tucked her strong hand behind her, around the handle of her knife, just in case.

  His pace never went faster than that same cautious walk, though he still seemed to reach her too soon, before she was ready. An arm’s length away, he stopped, gaze roaming over her face and falling lower, to the fist-sized bruise below her collarbone.

  Rain slid down his temples, but he didn’t seem to notice. He just kept staring until her skin began to flush, and she felt like he could see every secret she kept locked away inside.

  With her sore hand, she tried to pull up the neck of her sleeveless shirt, to hide the bruise from where she’d been shot, but the shirt was too tight and sticky from the rain, and it clung to her narrow waist, unable to stretch.

  “You’re all right,” he finally said.

  Then, before she could answer, he closed the space between them and wrapped her up in his arms, smashing her against his chest, elbows at her sides. She wasn’t immediately sure what he was doing—if he was trying to crush the life out of her, or just giving her a hug. He squeezed so tight she could barely manage to tell him to let her go, and it wasn’t until her knee connected with his thigh that he finally set her down.

  “Sorry,” he said quickly. He raked a hand through his hair, blinking back the rain. “Sorry. I just … I didn’t know…”

  “You’re glad to see me,” she said. “I get it. Happens all the time.”

  But it didn’t really. She spent most of her time lying low, or running errands for Gloria. It didn?
??t leave a lot of time for hugging strangers.

  He quirked a smile, then gave a quick shake of his head. “Have you seen the guy I was with last night? Adam?” He looked behind her, into the alley. “He’s supposed to be meeting me here.”

  “What a coincidence,” she said.

  He gave her an odd look.

  Lifting her hand, she unfurled her fist, showing the smudged silver band and the cracked face of Adam’s comm.

  Ross stared at it.

  “I don’t understand.”

  The space between her ribs felt liquid and cold as she straightened her back.

  “He said there’d be money. A reward.”

  A beat passed, and then Ross’s expression changed. Lines creased around his eyes. His jaw flexed beneath the smooth skin. A vein in his neck stood out.

  It was nothing personal. She was doing this to help Gloria. To help herself. With the tar gone, she didn’t have another way, not for another month at least.

  “No security,” he said slowly. “Is that because you have him?”

  An old familiar rush filled her blood. It wasn’t unusual for her dad or the other captains to ransom prisoners. The process was simple even. Board their boat. Steal their goods. Tell them to contact their families or employers and arrange an exchange.

  If their people didn’t pay, they swam. Simple.

  But she had never taken a prisoner before. She didn’t even have a prisoner to take.

  It didn’t matter. Selling information was the same as selling tar. When it came down to it, she had something he wanted.

  “I don’t have him,” she said. “But I know who does, and for a price, I’ll tell you what I know.”

  CHAPTER 14

  ROSS BLINKED. And then blinked again. For a moment, there was only silence in his head, and then the clashing of too many thoughts all at once. Is he okay? What did you do to him? How did you find his comm? Is this some kind of joke?

  “Okay,” he said. Because apparently that was what you said when your brain shorted out.