Then Christopher suddenly had a calculus breakthrough and he jumped up, cheered like he’d just hit a home run, and spun my chair around. I laughed and closed my eyes to keep from getting dizzy, which only made me dizzier. When he stopped me, I opened my eyes again and all I saw was his face as he brought his lips down on mine.
The second he touched me, it was as if something inside of me was released. Something I hadn’t even known was there. But still, I pushed him away.
“What are you doing?” I demanded.
“I broke up with Darcy,” he blurted, breathless.
I felt like I’d just been tipped upside down. “What? When?”
“This morning. You didn’t hear?”
I rolled my eyes. It was so natural for him to think that everything about his life reached every ear in school in a nanosecond.
“No. She didn’t…I haven’t even seen her,” I said.
“Well, I broke up with her because I couldn’t take it anymore,” Christopher said, squatting down in front of my chair like he was taking his catcher’s stance. “For the last few weeks, whenever you’re here…” He paused and reached for my fingers. “Rory, whenever you’re here, all I can think about is this.”
Then he leaned forward and kissed me again. I put my arms around his neck and he hugged me to him, tugging me up so we were both standing. I couldn’t believe any of this was happening. Christopher liked me back. He’d broken up with Darcy for me. I’d wanted this for so long, and, unbelievably, it turned out that he’d wanted it, too.
Christopher kissed me hard, like he was hungry for it, and I matched his every move. He tasted like Oreos and smelled like a fresh shower. When we tumbled onto his bed, I was so excited and baffled and flattered and happy. And then I saw Darcy’s face and I pulled away.
“We can’t do this,” I said, panting for breath.
“Because of Darcy?” he said, reaching for my wrist. He clamped his fingers around it, and I realized how big his hand was and how small my wrist seemed. He shook his head. “She’ll be okay. We’ll just—”
I turned around and sat with my back to him, my legs hanging down the side of the bed.
“She’s my sister, and she’s in love with you,” I said. “I can’t—”
“But, Rory.” He sat up behind me. “I’m not in love with her.”
“Chris—”
“Rory,” he said playfully. He slid over so I could see his face. “I have been trying not to kiss you for, like, two months. Every time you come over here, I get excited like it’s a date or something. It’s pathetic, but I actually look forward to calculus tutoring. I can’t take it anymore. And yeah, it sucks that you’re the sister of the girl I’ve been with for the last two years, but that’s just the way it is.” He pushed a lock of hair behind my ear. “I want to be with you, not her.”
They were the sweetest words anyone had ever said to me. Someone had picked me. Mousy, too-smart, awkward me over popular, gorgeous, witty Darcy. But Darcy was all about Christopher. She jumped whenever he texted. She wore his varsity jacket around the house even when the heat was jacked up.
So I told him no, and I got up and I left. But he still came over the next day when Darcy was at cheerleading practice and asked me to the holiday dance. And though I wanted nothing more than to go with him, I still said no. Because Darcy had spent the whole night crying in her room. And I couldn’t do that to her.
The rhythmic ticking of the chemistry-themed clock my mom had bought me for my tenth birthday brought me back to the present. My breathing slowed and I felt a little calmer. Maybe I couldn’t have gone out with Christopher then, but I could at least tell him how I felt now, especially considering how mean Darcy was being. If nothing else, the experience with Steven Nell was an awful reminder that life was short.
I opened my eyes, and my room came slowly into focus. Outside the window, rain had started to fall. A screen saver picture of me and my mom at the finish line of my first track meet flashed across my laptop. My blue yoga mat was unfurled on the floor from when I’d done my abs exercises, my fallen phone sitting in the center of it. A running shoe poked out from underneath my white bed skirt. Then I blinked. I could have sworn I’d left my bed unmade that morning—I’d been having nightmares ever since the attack, and it felt pointless to smooth out the sheets when I’d just wildly tangle them up each night. But now it was made with perfect hospital corners, the pillows neatly fluffed. And there, on my patchwork bedspread, was a single red rose.
For one moment, I wondered if Christopher had left it for me. A small note card was tucked beneath the rose’s thorny stem. A ragged breath caught in my throat. On the card, printed in all-too-familiar capital letters and underlined three times, were five ominous words:
WE WILL BE TOGETHER. SOON.
I screamed. Loudly. My knees gave out and my butt hit the floor. I scrabbled back against the closet door and curled into a ball, sobs racking my chest.
“Rory!” My father burst into the room with Messenger and Darcy on his heels. “Rory, what happened?”
Shaking, I pointed at the bed. Instantly, Messenger was on her walkie-talkie, barking orders.
“Oh my god,” Darcy breathed.
“Get her out of here,” my father told her.
Gently, Darcy tugged me off the floor and into the hallway, where we both sat on the floor. Outside, sirens wailed.
“He was here, Darcy,” I whimpered. “He was in my room. He got past the officers…the alarm…”
“It’s okay. You’re okay,” Darcy said, putting her arm around me.
“It’s not okay,” I said. “He’s going to kill me, Darcy. He’s going to kill me.”
I squeezed my eyes shut and cried. Outside, the roar of a helicopter engine filled the night, and searchlights illuminated the hall.
“How could this happen?” my father demanded from inside my room. “How did he get in here?”
“The how isn’t important right now. It’s the fact that he did,” Messenger stated, walking out into the hallway. The rose and the note dangled from her fingers in separate evidence bags. “We’d thought our measures would be enough, but clearly he’s even more capable than we’d realized.”
She placed her hand on her gun holster, as though checking to make sure it was still there. All of a sudden, she was like a whole new person—energized, ready to jump into action. Her phone beeped and she checked the message, then tucked it away. She looked at each of us.
“You’ll need to leave for a safe house,” she told us. “Tonight.”
“Leave? Now?” my dad exclaimed.
Darcy got up, dragging me off the floor.
“No way,” she said. “I can’t just leave. I’m graduating next week!”
“A safe house?” I said. “Why?”
“There’s something I didn’t tell you before,” Messenger explained, looking me in the eye in a way not many adults ever seemed to do—like I was her equal. “He’s never failed to finish a job before. Only one other victim escaped from him, and two weeks later he broke into her house and killed her entire family.” She took me by my shoulders. “Rory, I am not trying to scare you, but he will keep coming. He will never stop.”
My heart executed a series of folding maneuvers that made me feel faint.
“And as for you, I’m sure they’ll still give you a diploma, but are you really going to care if you’re dead?” the woman asked Darcy.
“Wow. You really don’t sugarcoat anything, do you?” Darcy asked.
Messenger stared her down. “Not my style. Now I suggest you all start packing. You’re leaving here in fifteen minutes. No photos, no personal items or IDs. Nothing that connects you in any way to this life.”
Turning her back on us and heading for the window over the staircase, she glanced out. Dozens of cops in rain gear scoured the wet lawn, the helicopters’ searchlight flashing its wide beam over everything from our old swing set to the dilapidated fence around what used to be my mom’s vegetable garden.
“We really have to do this? We really have to go?” my dad said through his teeth, bracing one hand over his head on the wall near his bedroom door. His face was ashen.
I saw his eyes travel to a framed picture on the opposite wall. The one professional shot of my family, taken when I was in third grade, Darcy was in fifth grade, and my mom was young, beautiful, and untouched by cancer. She smiled back at him, her blond hair gleaming, her makeup perfectly applied, her favorite pink turtleneck crisp and unfaded. It had been threadbare by the end, with sweat stains around the top of the collar and little holes frayed at the hem, but she had refused to take it off. It was her favorite thing and she didn’t want to let it go.
My heart slowly tore down the middle. I wished with every fiber of my being, with every bone in my body, with every ounce of my blood, that she was here right now. And I knew he was thinking the same thing, too. My mother would have known what to say, what to do. My mother would have taken charge.
“Look, Mr. Miller,” Messenger said, her tone soothing. “Hopefully it won’t be forever. But it’s the only way to keep your family safe.”
My heartbeat pounded in my ears. My skin prickled. My feet itched to move, to run, to flee. My father looked over his shoulder at us, and our eyes met.
We have to get out of here, I wanted to scream. Please listen to her. Please.
“Girls,” he said, his voice gravelly. “Go pack.”
In my room, I grabbed my big duffel bag, the one I usually packed for science camp, and started opening drawers, pulling clothes out at random, and shoving them inside.
I couldn’t believe this was happening. I couldn’t believe that Mr. Nell had found a way past the FBI into my house. That I was being forced to leave the only home I’d ever known. The house where my mother had lived. The house where she’d died.
Angry, terrified tears filled my eyes as I whirled around. Tacked to the mirror around my desk were dozens of blue, red, and yellow ribbons, awards for science and academic competitions. In the corner on my desk was my microscope, surrounded by schoolbooks, notepads, slides, and sample dishes. None of that stuff was coming with me, obviously, but I grabbed The Merck Manual off my shelf and shoved my iPad into my bag. It slid right out and bounced across the floor.
“No!” I screeched, releasing all my emotion on behalf of my prized possession. I knelt to pick it up, my eyes overflowing with tears as I checked it for dings and scratches. I turned it on, and it blinked happily to life. Irrationally, I laughed and hugged it to my chest.
“Rory?” my father called. “What the hell was that?”
“Nothing! I’m fine!” I shouted back, my voice breaking.
Why? Why did I have to cut through the woods that day? Why had Mr. Nell picked me? Suddenly, my tears wouldn’t stop.
Just breathe, Rory. Calm down and breathe.
I sat back on my heels and silently recited the periodic table.
Hydrogen, helium, lithium, beryllium, boron, carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, fluorine…
Recitation was a great calming mechanism. My mother had taught me that back when she was sick, and it had helped me get through all the hospital visits, the long nights after she came back home and there was nothing to do but wait for her death. It got me through the funeral, the wake, and a thousand terrified nights since, wishing she was here with me.
“Rory! Where are my black jeans?” Darcy demanded, appearing in the doorway.
“What? How would I know where your black jeans are?” I quickly shoved my iPad into its case and turned my back to her, wiping my eyes with both hands. I glanced at the photo of me and my mom from my ninth birthday and snatched it off my dresser. I didn’t care what Messenger said. The picture was coming with me.
“Because I put them in my closet this morning and now they’re not there.”
I shot Darcy an incredulous look. She was always doing this—accusing me of taking things I would never take from her.
“Like your jeans would even fit me,” I shot back, shakily gathering up my charger and a few pairs of socks from my top drawer. “In case you haven’t noticed, you have no thighs.”
“Well, then where the hell are they?” she shouted.
“I have no idea! Is this really what you’re worried about right now?” I cried.
“They’re my favorite jeans!” she yelled back.
“Girls!”
Agent Messenger had appeared at the top of the stairs.
“What?” we both shouted at her.
Then my heart dropped. Yelling at an FBI agent was probably a bad thing.
“You have two minutes,” she told us. “Get it together.”
Then she turned and walked into my father’s room, where he was busy slamming drawers and ripping clothes off hangers.
“I don’t believe this,” Darcy sputtered, yanking on the drawstrings of her sweatshirt. “I’ve only been looking forward to Becky’s party all effing year! Everyone’s going. Everyone! But guess who’s not gonna be there in her favorite black jeans! Me!”
I rolled my eyes and took a deep breath. She was just venting. Just dealing. If I could scream at my iPad falling to the floor, she could ramble psychotically about some stupid party. That was all that mattered to her, after all. Her friends. Her parties. Her fun.
She stormed into the hallway and started down the stairs. Suddenly, there was a loud tumbling noise followed by a crash. Heart in my throat, I ran out of my room.
“Sonofa—”
Darcy was sprawled at the bottom of the stairs, her head back against the corner of the small dresser where we threw the mail and everything else we didn’t know what to do with. She sat forward and shakily reached for the back of her head.
“Are you okay?” I demanded.
“I’m fine.”
She drew her hand out. Her fingertips were coated in blood.
“I’ll get Dad,” I said.
“No! I said I’m fine,” Darcy shouted, shoving herself to her feet. “I’m going to check the laundry room.”
She took one staggering step, then righted herself and disappeared around the corner. I glanced over my shoulder, surprised my dad and Messenger hadn’t heard her fall. But then I realized they were making enough noise to drown out just about anything, him slamming around his room and her speaking loudly over the din.
Slowly, I tiptoed over and hovered near the open door, just out of sight.
“How long are we going to have to be away?” I heard my dad ask, banging a drawer closed.
“As long as it takes to find this guy and lock him up,” Messenger said. “For now, let’s talk logistics.”
“All right, fine,” my father said tersely. I heard a zip, then another slam. “So talk.”
“As soon as you and the girls are ready, we’ll lock up and go,” she said. “The car we’re providing for you is parked in the driveway. In it is a GPS programmed with your final destination, along with a packet of information on your new identities, credit cards, IDs, that sort of thing.”
“New identities?” my father asked incredulously. “Is that really necessary?”
“It will be if you need to stay in hiding for more than a couple of days,” she replied. “Your first names will stay the same, but you’ll be the Thayer family, from Manhattan.”
My father let out a rueful laugh.
“What’s so funny?” the agent asked.
“I always wanted to live in the city, but my wife couldn’t stand the noise.”
I never knew that about my dad. He’d always seemed like Mr. Suburbanite.
“Do you always put new lives together so fast?” he asked.
“When dealing with a man like Krauss, we try to have our bases covered. We created this contingency plan as soon as we learned of Rory’s attack.”
“Oh,” my dad said, a hard, angry note in his voice. “Was there a reason you didn’t mention this to me earlier?”
“I’m telling you now,” Messenger said calmly. “There was no need to worry
your girls more than they already were.”
There was a long pause, followed by another zip.
“All set, Mr. Miller?” Messenger asked.
“Don’t you mean Mr. Thayer?” my father said, dripping sarcasm all over the place.
My face burned. Why couldn’t he ever just answer a question normally? Why did everything have to be a fight?
“Girls!” my dad said, stepping into the hallway with an old black suitcase. Darcy came back upstairs with her hood up over her head and her black jeans folded in her arms. “Are you ready?” my dad asked.
“I’ll get my bags,” Darcy replied, ducking past him into her room. I grabbed my stuff and rejoined them, just as Darcy arrived in her doorway with her hobo bag on one shoulder, her backpack over the other, her rolling suitcase behind her, and her earbuds in her ears.
“Are you coming with us?” I asked Agent Messenger.
She shook her head. “I have to stay here. I’m the expert on Krauss,” she said, gesturing to the flashing lights outside.
“Oh, okay,” I said softly, a tremor of nerves running through me.
“I need your cell phones,” Messenger said, holding out a palm.
“What? Why?” Darcy’s eyes were wide. She was addicted to texting. I was sure she couldn’t imagine the next hour without her phone, let alone possibly days.
“You cannot contact anyone,” Messenger answered as I handed my phone over. “If anyone knows where you’re going, it puts not only all of you, but them in danger as well. And when you get where you’re going, you can’t tell anyone who you really are or where you’re from or why you’re there. For your safety and theirs.”
My father gave her his cell. Darcy pulled hers out and started to hit some buttons. Messenger snatched it right out of her hands.
“Hey!” Darcy shouted. “I was just deleting something!”
“Don’t worry. I wasn’t planning on reading your love notes,” the agent shot back. “Now let’s go.”