No Easy Way Out

  Something in the kind tone of his voice made it hard for Shay to keep up her façade of competence. “I’m having a hard time.” Why is that so hard to admit?

  “With what?”

  “Life?”

  Kris swept his hands out. “Are you trying to tell me that spending over a week in a mall is getting to you? What’s wrong with you? What, do you normally like go outside or something?”

  Shay smiled in spite of herself. “Wait, are you saying the food court isn’t outside?”

  “Crap,” he said. “Now I’ve blown it. Everyone, we’re still in the mall! Sorry to have misled you with the trees.”

  “The giant pots did kind of give things away.”

  “Well, we were on a budget.” Kris grabbed his plate and sat down outside the circle of their little five-year-olds.

  Shay took her plate from the trolley. “We’re down one.”

  “Better than yesterday,” he said.

  “Focusing on the bright side?”

  “Always.” He held his spork up as if toasting the concept.

  Shay raised hers and tried, really tried, to pretend that one gone instead of five was a good thing.

  • • •

  Marco had allowed himself five minutes in a closet to get over Shay. He’d done everything except cry. He would not cry over her. His hand hurt from where he’d punched the wall.

  But five minutes was all the time he gave over to feeling. He had a crapload of real estate to search and only eight hours left to do it in. So far, he’d patrolled the service halls and stockrooms of one quarter of the first floor of the mall. He even searched the first-floor stockroom of the med center. No alcohol.

  It was not easy, scrambling through all the junk that the cleaning crews had discarded that first day to clear the way for civilization. He expected that the alcohol would be boxed, though if the thieves were any good, they would have hidden it in boxes from the store they were hiding it in, to try to make the stuff blend in.

  Sometimes he wondered if he was giving these thieves too much credit. They were probably just alcoholics who couldn’t go fifteen minutes let alone a week without a drink. These were not the master-planning types. Marco suspected that at some point he’d stumble on the two of them passed out with a pile of empties in front of them, red-faced and red-handed. Of course, they could be anywhere in the million and a half square feet of retail space afforded by the Shops at Stonecliff.

  As he crouched under a giant shelf structure in the back of the BathWorks, Marco’s stomach gave off an ugly growl. He’d skipped breakfast—something about his conversation with Shay had turned him off food. Screw it. If he didn’t eat, he’d pass out, and that wouldn’t help him to find the drunk cabrons any faster.

  He walked out the front of the BathWorks and joined the line for slop. He glanced around him, trying to calculate how much longer the search would take. His figures were not adding up to anything good. Another day and maybe he could cover every stockroom, but eight hours?

  “You the guy with the parties?”

  Marco needed this like he needed another foot in his ass. “No.”

  The guy grabbed Marco and forcibly turned him around. “Guy over there says you are.”

  The dude looked like he was twenty-five and could bench press Marco’s weight ten times over. He was one of those short, muscular guys whose shoulders sort of melded into his skull. And behind him were two gentlemen of a similar build. In other words, Marco had little choice but to talk to the man.

  “I’m having a bit of a supply problem,” Marco said. “All parties are off.”

  The guy smirked. “Supply problem?”

  “Look, I don’t piss beer. I get it from somewhere. And I can’t get it anymore. So no parties.”

  “How about this?” The guy glanced at his two compatriots like they offered anything more than ballast to the conversation. “You fix your supply problem or we make life more difficult for you than it has to be.”

  “I could scream and security would be on you like—”

  “Not if I punch you in the throat and break your larynx.”

  Marco swallowed. He enjoyed having use of his throat. “Look, I don’t know what you want me to say. I don’t have any alcohol. I can’t help you.”

  “I think you’re going to find life in this place very uncomfortable from here on out if you fail to deliver alcohol to my crew and to the gentlemen over there who introduced us.” He pointed at the pendejo who’d spent last night treating Marco like a goddamned valet, then slapped Marco’s arms like they were just good ole pals chatting it up and walked away with his two goons.

  “The line moved,” some asswipe behind him whined.

  “Screw you,” Marco managed. He shuffled forward in the line and tried to shake off the feeling that everyone in the mall was sizing him up. He felt like he had way back in elementary school, before he’d mastered the art of self-protection through sarcasm, back when every minute was filled with anxiety, waiting for the next punch to fall.

  He had to find the alcohol. How? He needed access to the security tapes. If the senator had footage of him going into Johnny Rockets, she had to have other footage from the service halls. Anything would help. Lexi. Lexi could get her mother to give her the tapes.

  And then he remembered that they were supposed to have gotten together last night.

  Marco mentally slapped himself in the face. He would fix things between them. Had to. Anyway, Lexi liked him. She’d believe anything he said. And then she would help him. Now, where the hell was she?

  • • •

  After two hours of searching storefronts and ducking security, Ryan kicked himself for not remembering that all children were at the “school” the senator had set up. Ruthie would not be treated like a criminal—would not be treated the way he and Mike were. A runaway kid was to be pitied, not punished. So as the rest of the mall scurried toward their nice hot lunch and actual tables, Ryan snuck up to the food court and looked for Ruthie.

  It was not easy, busting into the backs of the food court kiosks and peering over the counters, scanning for one little girl in a crowd of them. He finally gave up the stealth tactics and just walked around the crowds of kids, weaving between the tables and picnickers on the ground.

  “Excuse me,” a woman’s voice barked behind him. “You’re not one of my teachers.”

  Ryan turned slowly, gave himself a second to think. “My little sister,” he said. “I just wanted to see my little sister.”

  “No unauthorized visits during the day,” she said. “You should know that.”

  “Oh.” Ryan scratched at his dirty shorts. Everyone else in the place was wearing clean clothes—mismatched clothes you’d expect to see on a senile old bat, but clean.

  “I haven’t seen you before,” she said. “I’ve seen everyone in this mall.”

  “I have one of those forgettable faces,” Ryan said. “I guess I’ll see my sister later.” He shrugged and began shuffling away between two rings of kids eating their lunches.

  “Stop,” the woman said. “Security! I have an unregistered.”

  Ryan did not wait to see if there were any guards around paying attention; he hurdled two kids and bolted down the hallway. Taking the escalator stairs down two at a time, he launched himself into the crowds on the first floor, then slowed to a walk, hunched his shoulders, and tried to blend in. While he was blending in, he figured he may as well get a decent meal, so he joined one of the food lines.

  After a few minutes and no sign of pursuit, Ryan allowed himself to relax and look around the line, spotting Marco a few people ahead of him. Three guys were talking to him, then the one in front grabbed Marco’s arms and gave him the kind of pat Ryan had seen Mike execute on guys he was about to bury. What the hell was Marco involved in?

 
Ryan shuffled through the other people in line—no one seemed to mind his cutting them, like they weren’t that eager to get their meal anyway—and tapped Marco on the shoulder. The guy jumped like Ryan had pushed him.

  “Dude, it’s me,” he said, hands up in surrender.

  “What do you want?” Marco said, sounding disgusted.

  “Nothing,” he said. “I just saw you with those guys and wondered what was up.”

  Marco’s face tightened like something was sucking it from the inside against his skull. “Nothing is up. And you shouldn’t be here.”

  “I’m looking for one of my kids,” Ryan said. “Security took her last night.”

  “Why the hell do you bother with them? Call security on them yourself and save yourself the trouble.” Marco seemed overly angry about a situation he had nothing to do with.

  “I bother with them because they have no one else,” Ryan said. He was not interested in having Marco crap all over him. “Do you think security would put her in with the other kids? That’s what I was thinking.”

  “I honestly don’t care if they pushed her out an airlock and set her free in the world.” Marco kept glancing over his shoulder like he was looking for someone.

  “Do you have a date I’m interrupting?”

  Marco sneered. “You’d like it if I had someone, wouldn’t you? Make you feel better about stealing Shay?”

  So that’s what this is about. “I didn’t steal Shay,” Ryan said, trying to be diplomatic. “She and I were kind of together before, you know, I was, well, forced to the sidelines.”

  “But you knew that she and I had something after you bailed.” Marco glared at him. “You only care about you—what you want, your problems. Get over yourself.”

  No one had ever looked at him the way Marco was at that moment: like he hated him, really hated him. No one hated Ryan Murphy. Ryan was the nice guy. Had he really done something wrong? How could his being with Shay be wrong? She chose him.

  “Do you need help?” Ryan said finally.

  “Not from you,” Marco said. “Now get out of here before someone notices you. You have to be registered to get any food.”

  Ryan let the line sweep past him, watched Marco’s head slink away. Was Marco right? What the hell was he doing out here in the open where any second some guard could bag his ass and throw him in jail again?

  But he couldn’t bail on Ruthie, not now. He’d promised to protect them, promised Jack he’d bring her back. They needed him. Mike and Drew didn’t need him. If anything, he was a leech on their butts. And Shay was safe in this new mall life with her co-teacher and dorm with clean clothes. Ruthie and Jack were the only people who really needed him, Ryan Murphy, and no one else.

  How could he not have thought of it before? Shay—of course! She was a teacher. She could find Ruthie for him and help him sneak her out. He had some time to kill before their meeting time—enough to find some scraps left behind in the stores. God, how he missed real food. A burger—his mouth drooled at the thought. But he had to settle for what was available: some half-eaten plate dumped in the trash? No, he wasn’t there yet. He turned toward the PhreshPharm and prayed no one had cleared it of its crap food.

  • • •

  “Jerk alert,” Ginger whispered, twitching her head to the right.

  Lexi turned and saw Marco coming toward where they stood in the lunch line. “Potential jerk,” she said. “There’s still hope.”

  “Aw, hope,” Maddie said. “How adorable.”

  Marco was holding his plate and soda (soda today!). “I am so sorry about last night,” he said. “Can we eat lunch together?”

  Lexi nodded, afraid that if she spoke she might start squealing like some girl.

  He said, “Great,” and sounded like he meant it, then kind of nodded to Ginger and Maddie. “Hi,” he said. “I’m Marco.”

  “Oh, we know.” Maddie gave him the once-over. “So where were you?”

  “Huh?” Marco was more flustered than usual.

  “Last night?” She popped her hip, upping the ’tude quotient. “You were MIA. I want to know why.”

  “I got held up,” he said, flinching like he was being poked. “And then security busted me.”

  Maddie looked at Lexi, who smiled to confirm that this was good enough for her, then rolled her eyes. “We’ll catch you back in the scullery,” Maddie said, hoisting her plate.

  They had been assigned to a new crew this morning: laundry. On laundry duty, you worked in the parking garage and had to don a full suit of plastic, then duct tape the sleeves to plastic kitchen gloves and the legs to wellies, and finally cover your hair in a shower cap, all so that other people’s clothing didn’t infect you with their germs. Not that they were washing the clothes of the sick. Only the healthy people’s clothes got washed for a second use. But apparently, even a mall the size of Stonecliff had trouble providing fresh clothing for thousands of people for more than four days.

  Lexi got her lunch and found Marco at a remote little bistro table hidden behind a giant plant pot. “A little out of the way, but I like it.”

  “It’s quieter here,” he said, though with all the echoes, no place in the mall was really quiet.

  “Did you get held up by that girl I saw you with?” She couldn’t help but ask. “The alleged girl who is a friend?”

  “What?” He didn’t look like his alert and cunning self; bags ringed his eyes and he was all jittery. He glanced up at every person who passed like he expected them to attack.

  “Are you okay?” she asked. She touched his arm, more to bring his focus back to her than anything else, but he stared at her hand like it was a lifeline.

  “Do you like me?” he asked.

  She was taken aback. Lexi shoveled a bite into her mouth to stall. Boys didn’t ask direct things like that. She was sure that all communication between the sexes was supposed to be covert, like furtive glances across the caf.

  She swallowed, and, lacking a better plan, decided she would go with the truth. “Yes.”

  He looked like he might cry. “You wouldn’t if you knew me,” he said.

  “You’re funny, and smart. And you’re nice.” He hiccupped a laugh when she said it. “What?” she continued. “You’re nice to me. And we both like movies, and I can tell you’re a gamer. Why wouldn’t I like you?”

  He leaned back in his chair, considering her, arms dangling. “Is it really that simple?” He seemed to honestly be asking.

  “Marco, what is going on? You’re freaking me out.”

  His face hardened again. “Don’t worry about it,” he said. “I can handle it.” He shoveled a bite into his mouth.

  “Can I help you?”

  “I said I can handle it. Let’s talk about something else. You’re a gamer? You play EVE?”

  “EVE is for money-grubbing douchebags.”

  “I’ve killed people for lesser offenses than the one you just committed.”

  “I’m sure you have, EVE-verser.”

  “So, what, you’re into Warcraft?”

  “Minecraft when I play online, but mostly Xbox with my friends.”

  “Lame.”

  “You’re lame.” She kicked his shin under the table.

  “Under-the-table assault? You’d be perfect for EVE.”

  She put her fork down. “If I can do anything to help you, I would totally do it.”

  Marco pushed his tray from him, then explained that he had tried to sneak into the Grill’n’Shake where he used to work to scrounge some decent food and got busted. The Senator accused him of stealing alcohol, which he said was nuts because he didn’t even drink, but she wouldn’t let him off unless he helped her find the missing stuff.

  “She showed me a security tape of two people breaking in the gate,” Marco said. “I t
ried to tell her I got busted alone, but she wouldn’t listen. The two guys hid their faces from the cameras in the halls.”

  “But did she show you the feeds from the hidden cameras?” Lexi asked, sensing her opportunity.

  As Lexi had guessed, the Senator had not shown them to him, and so she took it upon herself to sneak into her mom’s office and steal the receivers for the hidden cameras. But, honestly, was it even stealing? Marco was trying to help the Senator, and Lexi was helping him, so really, she was helping her mom, which made the whole theft totally legitimate. Totally.

  It was a lot of footage to fast-forward through. Lexi pushed each receiver into the USB port on the laptop she had “borrowed” for their investigation and then ran through all the footage. When they got to the one for outside the Johnny Rockets, Marco told her to skip it.

  “No alcohol,” he said.

  “But they could be stealing other stuff too,” she said, and watched it anyway. It turned out Marco did have a reason for wanting her to skip that receiver: He was a freaking liar. The screen showed Marco himself scanning a card to let him into the back of the Johnny Rockets.

  Lexi paused and zoomed in on his face. “You want to tell me something?” She hated that the camera had caught him in a lie. She had so wanted to believe him.

  Marco kicked the nearest shelf. “Okay, look, I told you most of the truth.” He explained that he really was working for her mom, but it wasn’t because he got busted for sneaking into the Grill’n’Shake, but rather because he had stolen a universal access card from a cop during the riots. “The deal is I help your mom with stuff and I get to keep the card.”

  Lexi so wanted to believe him.

  “Okay,” she said.

  She went back to scanning the receiver footage, clinging to his lie like a life raft.

  “Wait,” Marco said during their tenth scan. “What’s that?”

  It was the footage from the crappy camera she’d stuck outside the Pancake Palace. The image was grainy, but clearly showed a guy rolling a keg in the back door. A big guy, like a dad.

  “I think we’ve got your thief,” she said, pausing on the best shot of the guy, which was still terrible.