No Easy Way Out

  “She told me she doesn’t want to see you.” Kris sounded like some know-it-all jerkwad.

  “I’m her sister,” Shay growled. “You have no right to hide her from me.”

  “You asked me to take care of her,” he said calmly. “I’m taking care of her.”

  Ryan couldn’t take this asshole for another second. He strode out from behind the trash can where he’d been hiding and grabbed Shay’s shoulders. “Where did you hide Preeti?”

  Both Shay and Kris looked at him.

  “You’re with him?” Kris asked. “You left your sister for some guy?”

  “Ryan, I told you to wait.”

  “He’s being an ass,” Ryan said.

  “Buddy, you’re the ass,” Kris said. “I see you’re sporting some bruises too. What the hell have you two gotten yourselves into?”

  Ryan felt the anger rising inside him. “Just take us to her sister.”

  “Are you going to try to drag her off into some backroom hideout?” Kris asked, eyeing the two of them. “She’s safer here than with you.”

  Shay smacked Kris. “I trusted you.”

  Kris glared at her. “Preeti trusted you.”

  People were staring. Ryan noticed a guy with a stun stick moving toward them.

  “We have to go,” he said, pulling Shay’s arm.

  Shay let him pull her away. Ryan ducked between the nearest food kiosks and then dragged Shay at a run to the door.

  “The card,” he said. “Scan it.”

  Shay kept looking over her shoulder, back at the food court. Her lip trembled. She looked ready to fall apart.

  Ryan grabbed her shoulders. “We’re fine.” He saw the guard peek between the kiosks. “So long as you open the door now. We will find Preeti.”

  Shay nodded, pulled the card from her pocket and unlocked the door. Ryan opened it and shoved her through. The guy with the gun was trotting toward them, yelling for them to stop. Ryan prayed the guy didn’t have a similar card and slammed the door shut behind him.

  • • •

  “We have to get away from here!” Ryan yelled.

  Shay couldn’t piece a thought together. Preeti had a nervous breakdown? Was she that mad at her? Or was Kris just being a dick? He seemed angry with her for getting herself hurt more than for abandoning Preeti.

  She let Ryan drag her through another door, down a hall, her feet slapping the cement obediently.

  Ryan was right. They would find Preeti themselves. Tonight. They would sneak into the JCPenney and talk to her.

  They turned another corner and Ryan stopped abruptly. Shay ran into his shoulder. Several older-looking kids hefting long metal sticks with hooked ends had them surrounded.

  “You’re trespassing,” a guy who appeared to be their leader hissed. “And we don’t like trespassers.”

  The two other members moved swiftly, throwing heavy bags over both Shay’s and Ryan’s heads, tugging the thick material down over their shoulders and arms, and then pushing them over some sort of short wall and into a bin, which then began to roll.

  F

  I

  V

  E

  P.M.

  Marco and Drew, along with the Tarrytown guys, had broken most of the doors between the Lord & Taylor and the JCPenney, plus most doors leading to the fire staircase next to the IMAX. Marco tried to keep tabs on each of them as they moved from door to door in case someone got electrocuted and needed to be shoved off the current, but so far, they’d all destroyed the door locks without destroying themselves in the process. It was getting late, though his iPod had died and so he had no idea what the actual time was. From the increase in noise, he guessed it was around dinner.

  “We should get everyone together,” he said to Drew, who was tugging on a stuck hammerhead. “If it’s dinner, which I think it is, security has more manpower at its disposal to address our door busting.”

  “Just one more to go,” Drew said, freeing the hammer. He reached into the wall with the plastic coat hanger they’d stolen and tugged all the wiring loose.

  “Why are we busting into the pet store?” Marco asked, noticing the label on the door.

  Drew kicked it open. “Dinner,” he said.

  The pet store was on the second floor, so there was little chance of being spotted barring a rogue guard patrol. Still, Marco didn’t want to see a bunch of dead pets in their cages. He was surprised when Drew was greeted with a chorus of barks.

  “Crap!” Drew shouted, running to the cages like that would quiet the dogs.

  The front wall of the room was lined with cages, each cage containing a puppy. Someone had obviously been assigned pet care duty, from the relatively healthy condition of the dogs. Drew tried to stick a finger into each cage to calm them.

  Marco crossed his arms. “There is absolutely no way I’m eating a dog,” he said. There were limits to what he would eat, even half starved as he was.

  Drew looked at him like he’d suggested they eat each other. “Of course we’re not eating Fido here. Go see if any of the fish in the tanks are big enough.”

  Marco was not thrilled to be given the job requiring exposure to the outside. But the thought of a fish—even a small fish—was tantalizing. He’d seen A Fish Called Wanda. He knew you could eat the little suckers.

  Careful to duck behind the low shelves lining the sales floor, Marco took one of the bags from the stack near the tanks and scooped up some water, then collected what looked to be the meatiest fish in the joint. They were not bluefin tuna, but hey, they were better than another night of soup crackers and beer.

  Just as a test, he reached into the tank filled with goldfish. It took three tries, but he finally got one. It wriggled in his hand, its little mouth gasping, its pathetic life beating to its end. He tossed the fish back into the water. There was no way he could eat it alive. At least not while sober. He tied off the bag he’d filled and snuck back into the stockroom.

  Drew stood triumphantly in the middle of the floor with a large birdcage. In the cage was a rather fancy-looking duck with a white swoop over its eye and a frill of orange feathers on its wings.

  “Found him in a back office,” Drew said, a goofy smile on his face.

  “That bird is not legal,” Marco said, pointing to the handwritten note taped to the cage. “There are no other birds in the place.”

  “Who gives a rat’s ass?” Drew said, poking the bird through the cage. The thing gave off a honk. “This looks like some fine drumstick action to me.”

  “How the hell do you expect to cook it?”

  “There was a blowtorch or something in the haul from Reynolds’s stash.” Drew waggled his eyebrows. “We’re going to torch this mother.”

  Marco shrugged—if Drew wanted to torch a bird, so be it. Bird torchers. This was the class of people he’d aligned himself with. “Try to keep it from squawking. We want to make it back to the IMAX without alerting every guard in the mall.”

  “Aye, aye, Cap’n,” Drew said.

  • • •

  Lexi found her mother waiting for her when she was finally released from the medical center.

  “Are you feeling okay?” Dotty asked, her face stricken, expecting the worst.

  “They said it was a panic attack,” Lexi said, embarrassed to have caused so much trouble over something so ridiculous.

  “But are you okay?” Dotty seemed to be way overreacting.

  “They gave me some oxygen and an anti-anxiety pill.” Lexi held the tiny blue oval up.

  “We should be passing those out like candy,” her mother said. “I’ll ask Chen about adding it to the water.”

  Lexi leaned against her mother. It was nice that she took the time to check on her. “Anything falling apart while you’re here with me?”

  “What’s not
falling apart?” her mother joked, though neither of them laughed.

  “Did they tell you anything about Dad?”

  “No change,” her mother said. She stroked Lexi’s head, then kissed it and released the hug. “You should get dinner before it’s gone.”

  “Is there a chance of that?”

  Her mother smiled. “I hope not.”

  “Do you know if Maddie and Ginger are out?”

  “Oh, god, honey,” her mother said. “I’m sorry. I haven’t had time to check.”

  Lexi shrugged. “I guess I’ll find out soon enough.”

  “I’ll look into it tonight, okay?”

  Dotty looked like she meant it, even though Lexi knew that her mother would forget, that something much more pressing than the illegal imprisonment of two minor thieves would come up. Lexi nodded, blew her mother a kiss, and walked alone toward the central courtyard.

  Not surprisingly, Maddie and Ginger were nowhere to be found. Lexi got her ration of dinner, which seemed awfully small on the plate, and ate it standing next to the garbage. She knew what she had to do: Locate Maddie and Ginger herself and rescue them using Marco’s access card. But just waiting for him to show up had not proved successful, so she had to become proactive.

  If Marco was with the vigilantes as her mother and Goldman suspected, maybe all of them would be at these alleged parties Maddie and Ginger kept trying to attend, if there even was a party tonight. Lexi glanced around for a person who looked like they partied, meaning a person who looked like Maddie and Ginger. Someone with plucked eyebrows.

  Two pretty, skinny blond girls sat at a table chatting up some beefy-looking guys. Lexi steeled herself, then stepped up to the edge of the table. “Hey, you guys hear about a party tonight?”

  The conversation stopped. One of the girls gave her the once-over. “I dunno,” she said.

  One of the guys ran a hand over Lexi’s ass. “She can come with me.”

  Lexi nearly vomited up her measly dinner. “Where should I meet you?” she said, trying to sound as much like Maddie pretending to be Sexy Maddie as possible.

  The other blonde rolled her eyes. “Fine,” she said. She curled a finger indicating Lexi should lean in. “IMAX,” she whispered. “Invite only.”

  Lexi nodded and batted her eyes like she totally understood that this was an exclusive gig. The letch pinched her ass and sucked his teeth as if he were inspecting her haunch for later consumption. Lexi giggled and swished her hips as she walked away, then hid behind a column and tried not to cry.

  She just had to get to the IMAX, then she’d find Marco and everything would be fine. The only question was, how to get there. Guards monitored all movement after Lights Out. She would have to go through the service halls like a regular deviant. She prayed she didn’t get too lost.

  • • •

  Shay had been encased in the stifling bag for long enough that the rough fabric had chafed a welt on her skin. Every time she moved or tried to wriggle out of the bag, she was hit with something, likely the metal sticks. Shay could hear their captors whispering around her. When first captured, she and Ryan had yelled threats at them, but soon they realized this was not achieving anything and shut up.

  After an interminable period, Shay felt hands grab her bag and she was pulled upright. The top of the bag was cut open and the bag dragged down until her head was free.

  She was in a bright, open stockroom. There were about ten people she could see, some sitting on the heavy-duty shelving that lined the walls. From the picture of the president and the various USPS stickers all over, Shay realized she was in the back of the mall’s post office.

  “How long have you been here?” she asked. There were sleeping bags stretched on the shelves like bunks and bags of trash peeked out from a distant corner. A few of the people had laptops and from the uniformity of the screen images, seemed to be reading the same thing.

  “A while,” the lead guy said. He had a row of what looked like silver claws lined against his knuckles like rings.

  “What are you doing with the laptops?” she said, nodding toward the people on the shelves. “Did you get the Internet back?”

  The guy smiled proudly. “We hacked the mall’s intranet. We know who’s where, how many have died, how much food is left and where it is.” He swung down from his perch and flicked the stick at her. “Now, I have a question. How’d you get through our door?” He pointed at the nearest stockroom door. “Only way in requires a card key.”

  “How did you get through?” Shay tried to get a bearing on her surroundings—she was next to a mail sorting bin, in which was a large bag with Ryan’s legs sticking out the bottom.

  The guy with the stick twirled it. “We have our ways,” he said.

  As if to demonstrate, someone slammed in through the door. Shay caught a glimpse of something on the magnetic lock panel.

  “Sydney,” the leader groaned. “Way to give secrets away.” He pointed at the door. “We traded some stuff rescued from the mail with a guard in return for his opening a few doors for us. Once open, we covered the lock’s contact plate with a couple of layers of aluminum foil. The magnet reads as locked, but it’s way less powerful and you can just shove it open.” The stick pointed back at her. “Now you. How do you get through doors? You didn’t slam into the door, so I know you didn’t know our little trick.”

  Shay was not about to tell him they had an access card. “Ryan’s strong,” she said. “We saw the edge of the foil and he just pushed it.”

  “I think you might have the rumored magic key.” He pointed to the girl, Sydney, who’d busted into the room. “Search her.”

  Shay yelled for Ryan, who yelled back, but Sydney was fast. Her hands felt up Shay’s legs like she worked for the TSA. Shay would not lose the card to these people. She made the only move she could and dropped to the floor. She rolled into the cart and kicked it hard. Ryan somehow intuited her plan: He rolled with the jolt from her kick and toppled the thing over.

  Sydney collapsed onto her and resumed her molestation. Shay wriggled every which way, but really, there’s little you can do trapped in a mail bag with a person sitting on your legs.

  “I’ve got it!” Sydney yelled.

  “Screw that!” Ryan said, tackling her.

  And then the whole mess of postal people piled on. Shay took the opportunity to escape her bag, then began tugging at random articles of clothing to uncover Ryan. It was a testament to his skills as a football player that he emerged from the edge of the pile, one arm tucked to his chest, and yelled to Shay, “GO!”

  Shay bolted for the door Sydney had come in through and tore it open. Ryan ran out. Shay jumped up, grabbed the tin foil sheet from the lock, and slammed the door closed. They ran to the next door. Ryan opened it with the card, and Shay again removed the tin foil and slammed it shut.

  “I think we’ve locked them in,” she said, trying to catch her breath.

  “Let’s not wait and find out,” Ryan said, grabbing her hand.

  Adrenaline rushed through her body and she felt an undeniable need to kiss him and so she did. He kissed her back, but then pulled away.

  “Come on,” he said. “There’s plenty of time for that when we’re not in a hallway facing a mob of angry postal workers.”

  They made their way to the nearest fire stairwell and ran to the parking garage, thinking they could hide out and regroup there. Alas, the parking level was crawling with people. Ryan held a finger to his lips and led her down the aisles of cars. Skulking behind him, Shay saw that his ankle was covered in blood and his shoe ripped. She recalled the postal leader’s fist of claws.

  “You’re bleeding,” she said, touching his ruined shoe.

  “I’ll live,” he whispered, and kept going until they reached a brownish SUV.

  “Yours?” she whispered.
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  “Sort of.”

  He pulled open the door and was greeted by a plastic bag full of something to the head.

  “Get out!” a young girl’s voice screamed.

  Shay was about to oblige when Ryan said, “Ruthie?”

  It was the little girl Shay had tried to save for him, the little girl who had nearly outed him to security. Shay felt this was a prime moment to run.

  “Ryan?” the girl said, sounding much friendlier than she had in the food court. She appeared from behind the second row of seats. Seeing him, a waterfall of tears burst from her eyes. “Jack’s dead!” She flung herself over the seatback and wrapped her arms around Ryan.

  He hugged her like they were family. “Crap,” he whispered. “I’m so sorry.”

  Shay felt like she should leave them alone, but there was nowhere to go.

  Ryan glanced up at her. “We have to stay,” he said.

  Shay nodded. Of course they had to stay.

  L

  I

  G

  H

  T

  S

  OUT

  When the lights blinked out along the parking level, Ryan lifted Ruthie’s sleeping head from his lap and crawled into the middle row of seats with Shay. She was writing in a notebook with a lighted pen.

  “Any deep thoughts?” he asked.

  Shay closed the book, but left the pen on for light. “Just trying to pull together a single thought. My head’s taken quite the beating.”

  “Can I do something?”

  “Have any spare heads?”

  “I’d give you mine, but that would be a little weird. I’d have to kiss myself, which is wrong.”

  “You’re not bad-looking,” Shay said. “I mean, I would kiss you.”

  “Really?” he said, leaning in.

  Shay stopped him. “The ankle,” she said. “Have you cleaned it?”

  “I told you,” he said, leaning closer, “it’s fine.”

  He kissed her—though she stopped things before he really got going.