The Homecoming Masquerade (Girls Wearing Black: Book One)
Chapter 26
“I want you to leave with me. Right now,” Ryan said. “I want for the two of us to walk out the front door, get in my car, and drive. I have a hundred and forty thousand dollars in my bank account. If we leave now, no one will think to look for us for a few hours, and by then we’ll be in Philadelphia.”
The look in his eyes as he said it – the sincerity in his voice – here she was, a Network spy, dancing with a boy she was supposed to seduce…
And he was seducing her. He was looking at her with eyes that saw right through the charade. He didn’t know she was a spy, but he didn’t need to. He saw the real person inside, the girl Nicky had learned to put away. Ryan knew nothing of Nicky’s history, of her agenda, of her mission, but he saw who she was and he liked it. He connected with it, and now that connection was pulling hard at Nicky.
That connection made her want to stop living in the past, to face the reality that the family from her childhood was gone and it was time to move on. Time to be someone besides the lost girl driven by her past. Time to finally put her old life behind her and start a new one.
“I know this guy,” Ryan continued. “If we go to Philadelphia he can help us get away. He gives people new identities so they can escape. He says he helps people do it all the time.”
“Ryan, I--”
“No, listen to me Nicky. This is our only chance. I swear to you this guy is legit. I started looking into this during freshman year. The guy’s name is Patrick. I met him online. I researched the heck out of him. Last summer I went to Philadelphia and met him, anonymously. I gave him a fake name, and wore a hat and sunglasses. I told him I wasn’t ready to go yet, but I was thinking about it. He told me to come back whenever I was ready and he’d get me out. It’s what he does. He helps people who have gotten in trouble with the immortals, people who need to disappear without a trace. He says there is an escape route that leads out of the country.”
Ryan was talking about the Network, without even knowing he was talking about it. The man he had met was Patrick Hall, a goofy, skinny guy with salt and pepper hair who loved to make bad jokes. When Nicky and Gia were staking out the immortals in Pennsylvania, they stayed in Patrick’s apartment.
The escape route Patrick had mentioned to Ryan was known as The Wormhole, and was a string of safe houses throughout the world where the residents were Network sympathizers with the training and connections required to forge identity papers that could get people out of the country. If they went to see Patrick, he would draw up new driver’s licenses and passports for them and put them on the next flight out of the country. While they were in the air, Patrick would make arrangements for another Network sympathizer to meet them at the airport and give them yet another new identity. On and on they could go, bouncing from safe house to safe house along The Wormhole until they had effectively disappeared.
“So what do you say? Let’s go now, Nicky. The immortals are on the floor. Sergio’s going to cut in and dance with you any minute now, and when he does, it’s all over. After you dance with Sergio, you’ll be as committed to the contest as the people who made you enter.”
Oh, Ryan, she wanted to say. If only you knew. If only I could tell you that Sergio won’t have the same effect on me that he’s had on everyone else, that the reason I’m here wearing black is because the immortals can’t control me.
Why couldn’t she tell him? If she wanted to, she could walk out the door with him right now, just like he was saying, and then she could tell him everything. The second they hit the highway she could tell him the truth about what she was doing here, about how the story she’d told him was a lie, that there wasn’t some evil interest group making her enter the contest to defeat Kim, but that she’d entered of her own volition, that she was here to kill Sergio.
That she was here to save the world. That her mission was already well underway, and many people had risked their lives to bring it this far. Jill, in particular, would be left holding the bag if Nicky disappeared in the night. Jill, who had risked her life to hack her way into the admissions database, who had been undercover all summer, who had betrayed her parents the moment she told the story about a secret consortium of which they were a part…
And Ryan. Had he given any thought to what he would leave behind if he ran away?
“I can’t,” Nicky said.
The music was blaring now. Nicky felt the sound vibrate in her chest, but she heard none of it. In that moment, for her, the world was silent.
In that moment, Nicky wished she could be the girl Ryan saw. She wished she could go away with him and hide inside some secret life like so many other people the Network had sent away.
“We can’t leave, Ryan. We’re too visible. Our families..”
“Our families put us in this position,” he said.
Now Ryan was the one being dishonest. Whatever animosity Ryan felt toward his parents, Nicky knew he didn’t want to leave them behind for dead, and dead is exactly what they’d be if Ryan and Nicky up and left. Nicky was a girl wearing black. There were rules governing her movements now. If Nicky disappeared, everyone connected to her would be suspect. The immortals would question and punish them all. The Network would be exposed. Ryan’s parents would be killed.
“My family has done some terrible things, but I can’t leave them to die,” Nicky said. “And you can’t either.”
Ryan said nothing in response. Nicky had pulled him out of that moment of bliss when all their problems could be solved by running away. He hadn’t thought it through. He had just said it. He wanted to just do it. Nicky loved him for that. But they both had to live in the real world. They both had to recognize the consequences of their actions.
They circled the ballroom without speaking. They circled again, and Nicky put her head on Ryan’s chest. The current song was maybe half-way done, but Nicky had a sense that their dance would soon be over, so she she kissed him on the cheek and whispered, “I’m sorry,” in his ear.
“I’m sorry too,” Ryan said.
A few seconds later, a dark, shadowy presence pushed his way in between them, and Nicky was dancing with Sergio Alonzo.