Watched (The Watched Trilogy)

by Cindy M. Hogan

  “I don’t think we should push our luck. Why do you know how to do all these dances anyway?” We’d only focused on the tango for three days in class. I would be lost.

  “My parents made me learn them when I was little. They said a true man dances, and dances well.”

  “Smart parents,” I said, laughing.

  “Let’s move to the side and I’ll teach you this one. It’s a bit harder than the Waltz.”

  “Okay, but no guarantees your toes won’t be killing you tonight.”

  My heart hummed the whole time we danced. I tried to stay calm and enjoy myself, but my nerves were on fire.

  After slaughtering the meringue and the tango, twice, it was nice to fall back into the Waltz. It made me feel even more like Cinderella. Much to Alex’s credit, he never criticized me the whole time—he only cheered me on.

  “I’m so thirsty, and I could use something to eat,” Alex said.

  “Good idea,” I said, a bit relieved. “I’ll be right back.” I headed for the nearest restroom. I couldn’t help humming the music of the last Waltz we danced.

  Coming back out of the restroom, looking down at the water spots on my dress, I ran right into someone.

  “Oh, sorry,” I said.

  “Oh, no, I’m sorry,” he said, reaching for me. It was Rick.

  I laughed.

  “Fancy meeting you here, Princess Christy,” he said with a bow.

  “The pleasure is all mine, Prince Rick,” I said, with my best curtsey. He was so fun.

  “May I have this dance?”

  Automatically, I looked in the direction where I’d left Alex, which made Rick look that way too. Alex wasn’t there.

  “I’m sure he wouldn’t mind,” he said.

  I blushed. “Sorry. It’s just that I feel…” I looked at my feet and then back at him. His face was soft and kind even though I’d been so rude looking for Alex. I had to say, “Okay.”

  He held my hand and took me over to the rock band dance floor. They had just started a slow song. He pulled me into his arms. With no space between us, he rested his cheek on mine and whispered, “You look stunning.”

  I wondered if he felt the heat in my cheeks when he said that.

  “You don’t look so bad yourself,” I said, trying to play it off. Really, he did look gorgeous. There was something about a tux that made guys look so great. Rick was no exception. My heart beat hard, but I felt comfortable, like I was meant to be in his arms. I loved being with Rick. He made me feel so sure, so right. We danced in silence the rest of the song.

  When it ended, I tried to pull away, but he held me tight.

  “Just one more,” he whispered, as the band started playing another slow song.

  “I don’t know, Rick. I feel obligated to Alex.”

  “I know. But he has you all night. Can’t I have you for one more song?”

  He moved his face right in front of mine, his eyes pleading.

  “Okay. One more.” I gave in. It wasn’t hard to do.

  He pulled me close again and whispered, “It feels so good to have you in my arms.”

  I sighed, silently agreeing.

  When the song was over, he gave me a final squeeze, and kissed my hand before leading me off the dance floor. He put his arm around my waist and said, “You know, I was going to stay at the hotel with you. I almost missed the last limo.”

  “I thought so. Sorry about that.”

  “I like Alex’s idea better. I wish it’d been mine.”

  I gave him my best look of understanding, when I noticed Alex, not ten feet from us, leaning back on the bar, looking at us.

  I stopped, and Rick looked at Alex, too.

  “Don’t go, Christy.”

  “I have to,” I said, pulling away. My heart burned and my eyes fell to the floor as I walked toward Alex.

  “Where’ve you been?” he asked when I reached him.

  “I ran into Rick by the bathroom, and he asked me to dance.”

  “I was waiting for you.”

  “I know. I’m sorry.”

  “If you don’t want to be with me—”

  I grabbed his free hand and moved in really close. Looking up at him, I said, “No, I do. I’m sorry. I guess I should’ve said no to Rick, but…Alex, I’m all yours now, totally and completely.”

  “Really?” He looked past me now, at Rick, who stared at us.

  “Yes,” I said, turning back to Alex. “Yes. Come on. Let’s dance.”

  He set his drink on the counter and squeezed my hand. He didn’t lead me to the ballroom dance floor this time, though. We went to the country one, our hunger forgotten. I was surprised. Did he like country music? The band sang a popular slow song, and Alex pulled me in to him so tightly, that I almost couldn’t breathe. It was uncomfortable, like we were in a vice, being squished together. It reminded me of our “first kiss” and how uncomfortable that had been. We moved in a tiny circle. I was a bit relieved when the music changed to a fast song. His hold on me loosened slightly, and I took a deep breath looking into his eyes.

  “I didn’t like seeing you in Rick’s arms, Christy. Especially when you stayed for the second song.”

  He had watched us the whole time.

  “Look Alex, he’s my friend. What was I supposed to do?”

  “Your friend? I’m not blind. He’s totally into you. And I saw you leave your room to be with him the other night.”

  A quick burst of air escaped my lips. He had seen me go with Rick? Is that why he’d been so tired? “Can we forget about it, please?” I said, not wanting to get into it.

  He looked at me playfully and said, “Maybe just this once. But you better not be thinking about him tonight.” He pulled me in and kissed me, long and hard. Then, his smile, wicked, he looked past me. I turned and saw Rick sitting at a table not far from us, a frown on his face. Alex chuckled. I punched him.

  “Jerk!” Before I could walk away from him, he pulled me to a different dance floor.

  I wasn’t prepared for how kissing Alex in front of Rick would make me feel. I didn’t think it would bother me. Why did Alex have to act like that?

  “Don’t ever do that again,” I said.

  “What?”

  “If he does like me, like you said, you were hurting him on purpose, and I don’t like that.” I pulled my hand hard away from his and turned to walk away.

  He grabbed my shoulder and turned me around. “Okay, okay. I won’t do it again. I just wanted him to know that you are taken.”

  “Am I?” I asked, the disgust I felt for him melting away.

  Just then, I saw Jeremy, walking toward me at a fast pace and looking around the room with exaggerated sweeps of his head. A huge, bald man doing the same sweeping motions with his head followed him.

  “Jeremy,” I said, when he was only a few feet away. “What are you doing here?”

  “We need to leave right now.”

  “But, what’s—”

  “No questions now. Just come with me. Quickly, now.” He was already leading me away from Alex. I looked behind me to see the bald guy talking with Alex and taking him away, too. From the looks of it, Alex wouldn’t go easily.

  I looked over my other shoulder and saw that Rick no longer sat at his table.

  The glow of excitement I’d just felt fizzled out like a snuffed out candle. He pulled me and I had to run to keep up with him. I realized that my toes and heels had blisters, every step hurt.

  Before I knew it, we had run all the way to the back of the conference center and Jeremy pushed me out a door marked as an emergency exit. No alarm sounded. He opened the door to a cab and helped me in. Nathan sat in the cab. He ran some machine over me as the cab began to move. It looked like the wands they use at airports to check you for metal. It squealed three separate times as he scanned me.

  “What’s going on? What are you doing?”

  “Don’t miss a single inch of her. They’re tricky buggers,” Jeremy said to Nathan, ignoring me.

&nb
sp; “I won’t. Don’t worr,” Nathan said.

  “Hello! Is anyone listening? What’s going on?” I asked, enunciating every word.

  Jeremy held his finger to his lips. Apparently, I needed to be quiet.

  We drove for what seemed forever before we stopped.

  When we did, they put me into a large van, and they used a bigger wand to go over my body. Then they handed me some clothes and motioned for me to go to the back of the van.

  “Change into these clothes, please.”

  “Is anyone going to tell me what’s going on?” I said.

  “Go change, please,” the man with the wand said again, insistent.

  I moved into a makeshift changing area and was shocked to find they had even given me new underwear and a bra. After changing, one of the men in the van went into the changing area, picked up my beautiful dress and shoes and shoved them roughly into a bag. So much for being a princess. After re-scanning me, they rushed me out of the van and into a black BMW with tinted windows.

  “Here’s the deal, Christy,” Jeremy said, once the BMW sped away. “We overheard some chatter about one of eight packages being picked up at the conference center address. It made us worry that you all were the packages so we had to get you all out of there.”

  “What?” I said, trying to digest what he had said. “Wait a minute. Did you say they had one of the eight? Who?”

  “We don’t know yet. Maybe no one.”

  “You don’t know yet? When will you know?”

  “Soon, Christy, soon.”

  The car stopped again, and they helped me into an SUV. Neither Jeremy nor Nathan climbed in. Summer and Rick were already inside, fancy clothes gone. Summer’s eyes were puffy and red and through her teeth said, “This is all your fault.” The door slammed shut.

  Rick moved toward me.

  “Don’t listen to her. She doesn’t know what she’s talking about.”

  “Yes she does,” I said, dropping my head into my hands and crying. “If only I hadn’t looked. If only I had stopped you all from looking.”

  “I didn’t look, and I’m still here,” Summer said, sneering now.

  “I’m so sorry, you guys,” I said through my tears. I had the feeling of being swept along by a dark current.

  “It’s not your fault, Christy,” Rick said. “It’s the terrorists’ fault. They’re the ones who did something they shouldn’t have. Don’t cry. Please don’t cry.”

  I sunk deep into his chest, taking refuge in his strength and sobbed until I couldn’t cry anymore, then let myself drift off to sleep.

  I woke up to the sound of tires on gravel and looking out the window, I could see the full moon. We had stopped at a house surrounded by a lot of trees. I stretched and tried to get a kink out of my neck. Everyone else slept until the driver turned around to face us and said, “Everyone up. We’re here.”

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  In the darkness, the huge house reminded me of the spooky houses that were always used for horror movies: two story, painted, wooden houses with wrap-around porches. The only difference was that it showed no signs of aging—no shutters hanging askew and no paint peeling. The light from the windows cast a weird glow on the wooden rockers that moved slightly in the wind. If I weren’t so tired and surrounded by FBI agents, I would have been too afraid to go in. We dragged ourselves inside, and were then each taken by our agents to different rooms to sleep. The guys headed upstairs, the girls stayed on the main floor.

  Jeremy took me down a narrow hallway, just to the left of the stairs and into a small, plain bedroom with only a twin bed, a nightstand, two token pictures and a dresser. Thick curtains were drawn, and there was a closet and one more door, which turned out to be a small bathroom with a shower. I sat on the edge of the bed, ready to drop over.

  “Come here, Christy,” Jeremy said, sliding the closet door open.

  I stood up and walked over, trying to see what was in the closet before I was actually there. It was lined with wooden slats, and when Jeremy turned the clothes rod, some of the panels of wood slid to the side.

  “Now listen. If you get scared or you hear an alarm, turn the rod and jump into this secret spot. See this blanket here?” I nodded, thinking it curious to have only a blanket inside. “This blanket is special. It makes it so that no one can see the heat coming from your body. You must totally cover every inch of you, or else a heat sensor could detect you… And don’t forget to slide the closet door closed behind you.”

  “Okay,” I said, wondering how long I could stay in that little spot, covered up with a blanket, without freaking out. Small spaces had never been my friend.

  “Nothing will happen—but just in case.”

  “Can’t I just room with Marybeth?” I asked, suddenly feeling alone.

  “She’s not here.”

  “Oh my gosh! Is she the one that got taken?” I moved toward him, frantic.

  “Whoa, now. The others are at a different safe house and won’t be coming here.”

  “A different safe house? But why aren’t they coming here?” Despite the fear I felt for Marybeth, I couldn’t help thinking about seeing Alex one more time. I wanted to hear what he was about to say at the gala about me “being taken” when Jeremy interrupted him.

  “We had to separate you according to what you saw. If this house were to be compromised, which it won’t, then we would still have almost the same testimonies available to us at the other safe house. It guarantees us we will get the bad guys.”

  “But someone is missing still?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you know who?”

  “It’s not important.”

  “I have to know.”

  “Well, you’re just going to have to trust me when I say this person will be okay. Now, get into bed and go to sleep.” He walked toward the door.

  “Please, I won’t be able to sleep if you don’t tell me.”

  “I’m sorry, I can’t. Go to bed. I’ll be next door.” He shut the door behind him.

  “Well, I’m not going to sleep,” I yelled after him, as if it would change his mind. I climbed into the bed anyway, with my clothes still on. It was comfortable and warm but did nothing to calm my mind.

  What if the terrorists did come? I stared at the closet. The door was open, and I had to climb out of bed to shut it, hoping that would help me stop thinking about having to use that small hideout for real. He hadn’t told me how to open the door to the hideout once inside. What if I got stuck in there forever?

  I tossed and turned. Who had the terrorists taken from the gala? Had the FBI found whomever they’d taken? At least I knew it wasn’t Alex, Summer, or Rick.

  Finally, after a few hours of incessant worry and fear, I got up and left my room. The empty, long and mostly dark hall seemed to never end. The only light came from small vent-like night lights near the floor. After passing Jeremy’s room, I hesitated, feeling a bit scared, but then Jeremy popped out of his room, gun in hand.

  When he saw me, he tucked it into the back of his pants.

  “You all right, Christy?”

  “Yeah. I couldn’t sleep.” I wasn’t sure if I felt safer or less safe knowing Jeremy had a gun.

  “I was afraid of that.”

  “Who did they take?” I asked. “It’s driving me crazy. I know you know. Just tell me.”

  “It’s not important, Christy. We have a locator on this person and will bring him back.”

  “Him? It’s one of the guys?”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “You did, too! You said ‘him.’ It has to either be Eugene or Josh, then.”

  “No, it doesn’t.”

  “You’re driving me nuts! Just tell me.”

  “No. Don’t worry. They will get him or her. You all have locators in your clothes: Tiny microchips that send a signal to us so we can keep track of you.”

  “Really? So you knew where we were every minute of every day?”

  “Yes. I told you you were
protected. I meant it. Except of course, when we thought you were Marybeth at the club that night. And even then you were protected, just not by us, by her agents.”

  “No way.” I really was safe. “That car that was following our cab….Did you guys make it crash?”

  “Not me, but other agents. Yes.”

  Wow!

  “Then why did you let me go to Senator Randolph’s office?” I felt my face go hot.

  “We didn’t think you would actually end up with him physically. You just have this way of getting into trouble. It didn’t matter that you were with him anyway. We have plants in his office. You were protected in there, too.”

  “Funny. I didn’t feel that way…So, was it the FBI at the pizzeria, too?”

  “Some of the agents were FBI. But it wasn’t our deal. I didn’t even know about it until you told me about it. I had to ask at the office what it was all about.”

  “Really?” It seemed like I’d said “really” a million times already. My mind was reeling at how safe we’d actually been. Why had I felt so unsafe?

  “Really,” he said, eyes wide.

  “Tell me who. Please.”

  He shook his head and breathed loudly. “It’s not important.”

  “It is to me. Please tell me.” I grabbed his arm hard.

  “I have this feeling that I won’t be getting any sleep until you know.” His pause was long, and I knew from debating at school that the first one to speak would lose. So, I bit my lip to stop myself from asking again.

  “Don’t worry,” he finally said. “Marybeth is a resourceful girl. She’ll be fine.”

  “Marybeth? What? No!” I moved close to him and laid my face on his chest.

  “Crap!” he said under his breath. He sighed and then wrapped his arms around me. “Don’t worry, we have her signal, and it won’t be long before we have her in a safe house.”

  “Will I be able to talk to her?”

  “Eventually. We’ve got to round up all the terrorists first. We’ve already grabbed a bunch of them and are moving in on the others as fast as we can. Once we intercepted the information about the eight packages, we realized we couldn’t wait another minute to get those creeps off the streets. As we speak they are being picked up.”