Jesus, nothing makes sense anymore. Not even words.
“Just one more thing,” I say. “Take a left here.”
My heart is racing as I leap out of the parked car and frantically wave my arms, trying to look desperate and helpless. Wyatt kneels by the back tire, struggling with the jack. Clearly, rich boys who drive Lexus sedans do not change their own tires. I know how to do it, but we agreed that I have to look like a damsel. To that end, I left my huge hoodie in the car, and goose bumps sprout around my thin tee, the November wind rattling my teeth.
The black SUV has to stop anyway, as we’re blocking a four-way stop, which just so happens to be the four-way stop just outside of Château Tuscano. The denuded forest behind it shows neat rows of shiny black vehicles, which means I was right: It’s perfect for a Valor compound, and that means that suits will be coming and going, and that’s why we’ve been sitting here for two hours, pantomiming a broken-down car whenever the approaching vehicle is black. The last one was an old man who couldn’t help. But this one . . . Maybe this is the one.
The SUV rolls to a stop about twenty feet behind us, and I run toward it like your average moron who knows nothing about the bank’s hostile takeover.
“Please help!” I shout. “Can you please help us?”
The windshield is tinted dark and shiny—a good sign. A flash inside might be sunglasses. The SUV either has to do a U-turn on a narrow road with no shoulder, pull around us, where Wyatt’s tools are sprawled and ready to pop tires, or do the decent thing and help.
A window rolls down, and a guy calls, “We can’t help you. Government business. Please clear the road.”
I run up closer, waving my arms, holding up the flip phone Wyatt lifted off his Crane goon. “What? No. We need help. Like, my dad’s not answering. We can’t get the tire off. Please?” I’m not quite in front of him but not quite to the side. I’m right where he would have a harder time shooting me, thanks to the lines of the car.
Inside, voices whisper in argument. “We’re going around. Get out of the way.” The window closes, and the SUV’s tires twist left.
“What? No. Come on, please!” I have to play this like someone who has no idea that these guys are heavily armed, like someone who still thinks the government is here to serve and protect. I run right up to the window and tap on it.
I can barely breathe as the window rolls down, the shiny black revealing two pissed-off guys in matching black suits with the typical Valor earpieces.
“Look, kid—” the driver starts, and the passenger puts his hand on the driver’s arm and leans in to whisper something.
The second the driver turns his head, I whip the gun out of my waistband and shoot the passenger. Not in the face—in the chest. And then my gun is trained on the driver.
“Nope. Hands up,” I say as his hand edges toward his jacket.
“Kid, you have no idea who you’re pissing off,” the guy says.
“I know exactly who I’m pissing off.” Keeping the gun trained on him, I add, “Put the car in park.”
“Last chance, kid. Drop the gun and hit the ground, or shit will rain down on you—”
Wyatt’s behind me now, his gun likewise pointed at the driver. “Put it in park,” he snarls.
The driver’s pissed, breathing hard through his nose. I can’t see past his sunglasses, but I imagine him checking each mirror for help, for more Valor guys.
He mutters, “Charlie Tango, this is Delta-Three-Five—”
And then I remember that he’s wearing an earpiece, and I don’t know if that means they can always hear him or he can always hear them. Before he can finish, I reach up, rip it off, and throw it past him, into the backseat. He takes a deep breath and puts the car in park. Soon Wyatt has him in his own handcuffs and forces him to climb into the trunk of the Lexus.
“What if he kicks out the lights?” I say.
“Oh, crap. You’re right.” Wyatt pulls off this bracelet he wears, messes with it, and suddenly, it’s a long roll of paracord, which he uses to bind the suit’s feet together and tie that to the guy’s handcuffs. I hold my gun to the suit’s temple to remind him not to fight so much.
“You kids have no fucking idea. You have no—”
Wyatt slams the trunk, and the sound cuts off.
“See you at the trailer,” he says, pecking me on the cheek.
He tosses the tools, jack, and tire iron into the backseat of the Lexus and takes off, just like we planned. As much as he didn’t want to let me out of his sight, it would be suspicious if we drove together. I climb up into the SUV and arrange the front seat and mirrors so that I can reach the pedals and see what’s behind me. The dead man in the passenger seat is sticking up more than I’d like, and seeing him makes me want to throw up, so I shove him down until he’s all below the tinted black window. He leaves a red smear behind on the black fabric.
God help me, when I look at him, I feel guilty. Even though he’s a bad guy, even though it didn’t hurt to pull the trigger when I was all jacked up, now all I can see are the place he nicked his jaw shaving and the laugh lines in the corners of his eyes. A dead Valor suit seems more human than a living one, somehow. I’ve tried so hard not to change, not to lose who I was, but perhaps this is the first moment that I accept what I’ve become: a killer. Because this time? This is war. And as much as I hate to admit it, no matter what family this guy had, the world is better off without him, whoever he was. Without well-armed suits, Valor is just a bunch of computers, like Leon said.
Soon I’m driving to the Crane compound, taking back roads and following the speed limit. When I notice another black vehicle in a parking lot, idling, I snatch the sunglasses off the dead man’s face and slide them on, making my face a mask. Does Valor even hire women as suits? Does the car in the lot belong to Valor? There’s just so much I don’t know. But maybe, now that we have a hostage, we’ll find out.
But then I realize—are they tracking the car right now? To Crane Hollow?
What the hell have I just done?
I hit the gas to zoom past Crane Road, turn down the next little street, and pick a dirt road with ragged construction forms flapping against an old barn. The car bumps over the gravel and skids to a stop in a bend, where it can’t be seen from the road. I can’t believe I almost delivered a Valor SUV to the Citizens for Freedom without checking to see if it was bugged, tagged, or being tracked. My brain treats me to a vision of helicopters descending and shooting up the tent city, of the house on fire and Kevin trapped, alone, in his bed upstairs. All those deaths, on my head just as much as Robert and Sherry and Ken.
And then I pull myself together and pull out the flip phone. At least the goons are predictable—Leon is the last contact who called, three times, probably leaving furious messages about how the missing kid should’ve already reported back from driving Wyatt on the Wiper mission. I press the call button and pace in the gravel as it rings.
“Alex is right here, so who the hell is this?” Crane’s voice is low and deadly, a soft chorus of men gabbling behind him.
“I’ve got a present for you, Mr. Crane,” I say.
He exhales like he hates surprises. “I repeat: Who the hell is this?”
“This is Zooey Goddamn Hemsworth, and I just stole a Valor SUV. You want to tell me how to disable whatever tracking system they’ve got on it?”
“Shut up!” he shouts, and a door slams. His side of the line goes quiet. “Well, of course it’s the same mouthy, pain-in-the-ass girl who seems like catnip for the Grim damn Reaper. You’ve gone and poked a stick into the hornets’ nest, and now you want to bring it right to my doorstep?”
“I didn’t take you for a pessimist, Leon. Now, do you want your present or not? There are all sorts of yummy-looking boxes in the back.”
He mutters a long string of curses, and I can imagine him running a hand through that crazy hair. “Stay on the line. Let me get my tech guy.”
Time stretches out as I kick gravel and toss rocks at tr
ees. Birdsong seems so strangely normal now. Soon a new voice clicks on, this one deeper, slightly amused, and lacking the typical, honey-slow Crane accent. “Yeah, okay, so you’ve got a Valor car? What make?”
I walk around back. “GMC Acadia.”
A keyboard clicks, and he pops gum. “Yeah, okay, so here’s what you do.”
Soon I’m on my back on the ground, gravel digging into my spine as I edge under the car. I’m pulling out wires and crushing SD chips and pressing codes into the front-seat computer while a dead man’s blood congeals on the floor mats.
The GPS screen goes to an error message, and I say, “Got it.”
“She got it, Leon,” he says, voice slightly muffled.
Leon’s voice, offscreen and far away, whoops. “Devil Johnny would be proud of those hackin’ skills, son!”
“What now?” I ask.
“You did a good job, kid. But you’re going to want to hurry back with it before they show up to investigate. They’ll be on site within twenty minutes. You got any Valor guys with you?”
“One. Dead. Hank has the other one in his trunk for questioning.”
“Damn. You are gutsy. Pull out the earpiece, get the card out of the battery box, snap it in half, and toss it somewhere far away from where the vehicle is. Then you should be good to go.”
“That’s it?”
The guy snorts. “That’s it? For real? I just helped you deactivate the world’s most cutting-edge tech, and you want to know if that’s it? Fucking ungrateful kid.” But he sounds kind of impressed.
I click the phone shut and peel out.
Driving over a bridge, I roll down my window and drop both of the snapped earpieces into a creek. Last week I might’ve forgotten about the one I threw in the backseat, but now? That’s the sort of detail that gets people killed.
Now I can go home.
I turn down the dirt road, and a Crane goon steps out from his hiding place among the trees, his gun already tucked against his shoulder. I roll down my window and push down my Valor sunglasses to give him a wink.
“What the hell is this?” he barks.
“I brought Leon a present. He’s expecting me.”
He shakes his head like I’m a moron, but an impressive one. “Name?”
“Zooey Goddamn Hemsworth.”
After checking a small notebook, he nods. “Don’t park it in the field. Take it out to the barn. They’re waiting for you. Follow the tire tracks through the woods. Got it?”
I nod, roll up the window, and drive. It’s late afternoon, and the tent city is awake and busy, with people of all ages moving around, laughing, talking. They all have paper plates of food and plastic cups of soda, and it looks like the world’s biggest family reunion. Which one of them, I wonder, put the yellow marks on the twenty that got us in hot water earlier today? And what other seemingly trivial jobs are they doing to earn their places with the Citizens for Freedom? And is there a chance that my mom is out there right now, among them, handing out snack cakes or throwing corn at the chickens? Because she wasn’t in my house when it blew up. I refuse to let myself even consider it.
A few people look up as I drive by, closer to the tents than most of the cars that go park in the field. A few shouts and pointed fingers remind me that I’m in a Valor vehicle with the windows up, and that means I look like the enemy, like the car that drove up and ruined all their lives. I roll down the window again and push the sunglasses up on my head, waving like the queen. The crowd breaks out into laughter, and one old man shouts, “Take that, Valor!” to the tune of clapping.
The forest is much quieter as the SUV bumps over the tire ruts and under the trees. A line of tense men with guns waits outside the barn, Wyatt among them. Tuck waves me toward a rolled-up garage door, and I drive in, park, and get out of the SUV. I’m shivering, and Wyatt walks up and hands me my hoodie, which I put on with a grateful smile as we stand in front of the still-warm Valor SUV.
“Where’s the other guy?” Crane says, marching up with his hands in his jacket pockets.
“You’re welcome. And he’s in the passenger seat. I tossed his wire.”
Crane inclines his head, and two of his guys hurry around to pull the suit’s body out onto the concrete with a dull thud. I look away and feel like the worst person on earth. They search him and make a pile of what they find: handcuffs, a nice pen, a pocketknife, a phone, an ID badge with Delta-Nine-Nine listed as his name. Then come the guns: one on his ankle, small and stubby; a Glock like mine at his waist; and in a shoulder holster, hidden under his jacket, a long and evil-looking one with a silencer.
“Same ol’, same ol’,” mutters one of the guys before they stand up and look to Leon.
“You kids can go,” Crane says to Wyatt and me, and Wyatt’s hand sneaks down to hold mine and give a supportive squeeze.
“What about the driver?” Wyatt asks, and Crane’s eyes narrow at him.
“What about him?”
“We want to know what you’re going to do with him. We want to know what he knows.”
Leon’s smile is patronizing and easy. “Son, you get full credit for delivering enemy goods to the Citizens for Freedom. But you don’t want to be involved in what happens next. The man we took out of your trunk is not a good man, and what we’re going to do to get information out of him means we’re not good men, either. Trust that we know what we’re doing. And hold on to whatever innocence you can, for as long as you can.”
“What about the laptops?”
Crane looks bored. “What laptops?”
“The ones we brought to the high school. What did you find, besides her name?”
“Nothing you need to know. Now get on.”
Wyatt looks down at me, and I grit my teeth and shake my head. I wanted leverage, not to see what kind of torture a sociopath like Leon Crane is capable of when faced with enemy intelligence in his taxidermy barn. I look around real quick. The walls are covered with dead things: deer faces and flying pheasants and gun racks made of neat black hooves. A pegboard along the wall is chock-full of tools that might be handy for yanking out a dead thing’s guts—or a live man’s teeth. There are rags and newspapers and coils of thread and jars of needles, and my stomach starts to turn when I notice the ancient refrigerators and freezers humming along the wall.
Yeah, I bet they know what they’re doing.
And I’m pretty sure I know what I’m doing.
“Leon, I’ve done everything you asked and more. I’ve brought you information and hostages and a bulletproof SUV. Now I want to see my mom.”
The corner of his mouth curls up, and he rocks back on his heels. “I’m sure you do. Let’s talk about it in the morning, shall we?” He inclines his head toward the door, and one of his guys snickers.
“No, let’s not. Let’s talk about it now. Is she here or not? Is she alive? Because we watched my house blow up, and I don’t think I can relax unless I know she wasn’t actually in it.”
Leon steps into my personal space, and Wyatt bristles. Up close, the head Crane smells like wood smoke and clove cigarettes, and his thumb is calloused as he chucks my chin. “Just because you can shoot a stranger in cold blood doesn’t mean you can tell me what to do.”
I look up and mirror his twisted smile. “I guess not. But as friends working together, it sure would help keep my faith if you could give me just a little something. A pic on someone’s camera phone would do. Maybe her voice. Because I can’t sleep well if I’m worried. And when I don’t sleep well, I get up to no good.” I pause. “And just out of curiosity, when are those nut cans going to do their work?”
His eyes flick to me, sharp again. “You plant ’em all?”
I nod.
He chews the inside of his cheek like he wants to let me in on a juicy secret and can’t tell if I deserve it or not. “Tomorrow. Tuesday morning. Outlet mall’s supposed to have a big sale. Pre–Black Friday thing. Kaboom! Ink everywhere.” He raises his fingers and lets them flicker down like fireworks. r />
“So. My mom?” I give my most winning, desperate smile. The same one that got a window rolled down on the SUV currently being pried apart across the garage.
Leon calls someone on his phone. “Yeah. Hey. Look, can you put the Klein lady on for five seconds? Five seconds, then hang up.” He holds out his phone, another burner, and I jab my ear against it.
“Hello?”
My heart jacks up and tears squirt out. “Mom! It’s me. It’s Patsy.”
“Honey, you’re okay? They said you were, but I didn’t—”
“That’s five,” says a man’s voice, and the line clicks off.
“I love you, Mom!” I shout at the dead phone.
Leon shrugs and tucks it back into his breast pocket. “We good here?” He points at the door.
“Just one more thing.” My heart’s yammering, and I would tear Leon limb from limb for five more seconds on that phone. And he knows it, damn him.
“Now, look, little lady. I’ve all but bent backward for you, so it’s about time you thank me and head back to your nice, homey trailer and get some sleep. Your work ain’t over yet, but it’s over for today.”
“Can I at least visit Kevin? The kid in the clinic?”
Leon’s eyes twinkle. “The innocent boy you shot?”
“Yeah. Him.”
“Well, of course. A friendship like that can’t be severed, now, can it?”
“Thank you, Leon.”
His eyes go dark. “That’s ‘Mr. Crane’ to you. Now get out before things go ugly.”
I don’t know if he means ugly for me or ugly for the Valor suit they’re escorting into the garage and dragging toward a closed door. There’s a black bag over his head, and they’re not being gentle. At a coded knock, the door opens, and they shove him inside. I can’t see anything but a dangling lightbulb, and honestly, I don’t really want to see more. So I take Leon’s advice and let Wyatt tug me out into the night.
The moment the door shuts behind us, I wrench my arms around his neck and fold my body against his, kissing his neck and holding him tight.