by Rysa Walker
Kelsey taps on the window. “Call my cell from the cottage phone when you arrive so I’ll know you’ve made it. I’ll either be in the cab or at the airport.” She nods toward the backseat. “There are a few bags of food there, just some things I had in the house. Coffee is in the travel mug. Deo, I’m counting on you to keep up a steady chatter so that Anna stays awake.”
“Yes, ma’am.” He gives her a mock salute as I begin backing the car down the driveway.
And, just as Deo predicted, driving is a snap. A few minutes later, we’re on the Beltway, and I shift lanes smoothly with the flow of the traffic. It’s second nature, just like ice-skating.
Around one forty, I pull Kelsey’s dark-red Volvo into a gas station on Chesapeake Beach Road. The indicator is nearly on empty with about twenty miles left to go, and I’m not sure how many more stations will be open this late. I add twenty dollars of gas to the tank while Deo runs inside to pay and grab drinks.
He’s holding a bottle of water for me and one of those fruit-tea concoctions he likes when I meet him at the door.
“I’m going to hit the bathroom.”
“Is the car unlocked?” he asks.
I push the little button on the key fob and the Volvo’s lights flash. “Is now. Be right there.”
I’m only inside a couple of minutes. The woman behind the counter nods and mumbles, “Haveagoodevenin’” as I push the door open to head back to the car. Her voice is tired, the words almost a snore.
The first thing I see is Deo’s strawberry tea. The bottle is crushed, the pinkish liquid still oozing onto the concrete. I run to the Volvo, but he’s not inside. His phone is there, however, stuck in one of the cup holders between the seats. His silver ear cuff is clipped to the top of the phone.
I turn around and scan the parking lot. “Deo! This isn’t funny!”
But I know he’d never do anything like this. Especially not after the past few weeks.
I race back into the store. “My friend . . . the boy who paid for gas just now. He’s gone. Did you see another car pull in?”
Her brow creases slightly. “Think maybe I heard a car turning around out there, but no. I didn’t see anything.”
She’s not going to be any help, Anna. The woman’s eyes are barely open even now.
I’m relieved to hear Molly’s voice. It sounds much calmer than my own and helps to stomp down the panic that’s starting to build. Not much, but at least enough that I don’t start screaming.
The door clangs behind me as I run back to Deo’s abandoned drink bottle. Thick tire marks spread the liquid a few feet. I follow the tracks, but they don’t go far enough for me to see whether the car turned left or right at the highway. Or maybe it turned down the other road?
No taillights are visible in any direction.
Get back in the car! We’re totally exposed out here.
Molly’s right. I know she is. But I still stand, squinting in all directions, hoping against hope that I’ll see a glint of red, a breadcrumb for me to chase after.
Aside from a few streetlights, and a pair of headlights from a truck that’s now moving past me, all four directions are dark.
Call Aaron.
“I don’t know where I put his number. I think Deo has it.”
Then my shoulders start shaking and tears stream down my face. My fault. This is totally my fault. I should have never gotten involved. I should have told Molly no.
Pull out your damned phone, Anna. Come on! Work with me! You’re not doing Deo any good just standing here.
And then my hand is pulling out the phone, and my legs are running back to the car. Molly slides us behind the driver’s seat and dials a number.
Taylor answers, annoyed.
“Where the hell are you, Anna? Aaron’s been driving around for the last—”
“Tay? It’s me. Could you get Aaron to the phone?”
“Like I just said, Molly. He’s not here.”
My voice, my phone. And somehow, despite that, Taylor picks up that it’s Molly.
“Then call him! Tell him to call me back at this number. They’ve got Deo!”
The connection ends and it’s less than a minute before the phone rings.
“Anna?”
“No,” Molly says. “It’s me. Anna’s kind of freaking out right now.”
“Why did she leave? I had the place staked out, like I said I would. Daniel had a cruiser circling by every hour. If anyone had—”
What if it had been Badea, flashing her badge or card or whatever? I’m pretty sure any creds that allowed her to question me in the middle of a police station would have been sufficient for her to haul me and Deo off in the middle of the night.
Molly ignores me and focuses instead on catching Aaron up to speed. I barely hear what she says because I’m mentally replaying the past hour, trying to figure out where I went wrong. We weren’t followed after we left the city. Once we were out of Upper Marlboro, there were stretches where I didn’t even see another car. So they got the info some other way. I didn’t see anyone turn down the road behind the cab when it dropped us at Kelsey’s place, although if Marietta put out an alert, the driver might have told the police where he dropped us. I don’t think Kelsey would have told the police where we went, and I know she wouldn’t have told anyone else. Not unless—
Molly! I have to call Kelsey.
But Molly is still ignoring me. She sets my phone aside, and dumps the contents of Deo’s backpack onto the backseat. Her fingers run around the inside of the bag, and after a few seconds, she pulls something out.
Then she grabs the phone again. “Found it! At least, I can’t think what else this would be.”
“Okay,” Aaron says. “Do the same thing to Anna’s backpack. If you find another one, leave them both in a place we can locate them, outside the store.”
She looks around. “There’s a propane tank stand. I’ll leave them behind the right rear leg.”
“Good. Then get out of there. Pretty sure they’re only planning on using Deo for information . . . or leverage . . . but—”
Anger surges inside me at the thought of them using Deo in any way. I can’t be responsible for Kelsey, too. I push again, hard.
“Kelsey!” I yell, much louder than necessary, when I finally break through.
“What?”
“I have to call Kelsey, Aaron. If they know we’re here, someone must have followed us to her place, or the cabdriver told them and—”
“No, no, no. Calm down, okay? Pretty sure it was the tracker. That thing Molly just pulled out of Deo’s pack. Badea or her assistant must have slipped it inside at the station. You need to make sure it’s the only one and get rid of it. Are you okay to drive?”
“Yes.” Even though the panic is still there, and part of me is still screaming inside, knowing there’s a chance that Kelsey is unhurt has pulled it down a notch. “I can drive.”
“Good. First things first. See if there’s a second tracker. I’ll call Sam or Daniel and get one of them to pick the trackers up. Maybe they can find a truck stop near 95 and attach them to a semi heading out of the area. And they’ll see if we can get any info from the clerk, maybe the surveillance feed.”
“You might as well just destroy the trackers. If that woman can read anything in Deo’s mind, she’s never going to believe that I’d take off without him.” I fight back the thought that they may well try to make Deo believe I’ve taken off without him, but they’d probably do that regardless of where the stupid trackers are.
I grab my pack and start to dump it in search of the tracking device.
Feel along the top before you dump everything out. It’s probably in the same spot.
And she’s right—it’s at the very top of my bag. A thin, round disk, stuck to the lining.
I start to yank it, but my hands stop, almost of their own accord.
The tracker is how they found Deo. So it stands to reason that it’s the easiest way for whoever has Deo to find me. And that�
��s what has to happen. They have to find me, and let me know what I need to do to keep Deo safe.
My fingers brush over it one more time, but I leave it in place. I toss the tracker from Deo’s bag in as well . . . might as well boost the damn signal.
Molly’s confused at first, then angry.
What the hell are you doing? This isn’t smart, Anna.
They don’t want Deo, Molly. They’re using him to get me to cooperate. I have to give them a way to find me.
She’s still yelling at me. I can hear her, faintly, even after my wall is all the way up.
I pick up the phone. My thumb pauses over the end-call button, but Aaron sincerely thinks he’s doing the right thing.
“Thanks for trying to help, Aaron. Molly was right . . . you’re a nice guy.”
“What? Anna—”
I end the call and turn off the ringer.
CHAPTER TEN
At 2:12, I pull into the driveway of a tall, narrow building that is light-years from my mental image of a cottage. It’s a full-fledged house. There are two additional stories above the two-car garage, both with decks overlooking the rocky shoreline across the street. And there’s another smaller level at the very top that’s just a sundeck.
I get out and hold the QR code that Kelsey sent against the reader. I pull her car into the garage and retrieve my pack and the bags of groceries. Seeing Deo’s stuff, still scattered over the backseat, is like a gut punch, but I shove it back into his bag.
Kelsey’s sister had very different taste, or maybe there’s a mandatory seashore décor if you live near the ocean. The entire place is painted in varying shades of blue and seafoam green. All of the lamps in the living room have seashells glued around the base, the windows look like portholes, and there’s a fake-looking pointy-nosed fish over the mantel.
I call from the cottage phone, as I promised Kelsey I would. She answers on the second ring and I release the breath I was holding. She’s safe.
“Anna! I’m glad you made it. I was beginning to worry. Did you have trouble with the car?”
“No,” I tell her, trying to keep my voice light. “No problems. We stopped for gas, and I took it kind of slow on the road. Didn’t want to get pulled over.”
“You looked exhausted when you were here. I’m glad Deo managed to keep you awake on the drive.”
I clench my fist, digging my nails into the palm of my hand. “Yeah. He was great.”
“Well, get some sleep. We’ll talk more in the morning.”
“Yeah, I’m wiped out. Thanks again, Kelsey.”
I grab a bottle of water, then drag myself up the stairs. Four bedrooms, each with a bath. I drop my backpack onto the bed in a room that overlooks the water and cross over to the sliding glass door that leads onto the deck. The road in front of the house is so narrow that you only see it if you look straight down from the railing. Otherwise, you can almost imagine that you’re directly over the water. It’s too cold to leave the door open, but I crack it to let some fresh air in.
When I put my phone on the nightstand—surprise, surprise—there are three calls from Aaron. Two texts from Taylor. Eventually they’ll call Kelsey to get the address, and once they tell her about Deo, she’ll either give it to them or come looking for me herself. But Kelsey will be on her flight to Indianapolis in about an hour, so I don’t think they’ll reach her before tomorrow morning at the earliest.
I set the alarm on my phone for 7:00 a.m., turn the ringer back on, and crawl under the covers. My mind is still racing. And each time it circles back around to Deo, it’s like a knife twisting. As much as I want to take the two pills that are still in my pocket, I put them back in the bottle. If Dacia, Cregg, or whoever is holding him tries to contact me—
The phone buzzes and I bolt straight up, knocking the phone off the nightstand in my rush to grab it. The timing is almost like someone is reading my mind. Which, given the events of the past twenty-four hours, might actually be the case.
The text is just four words, two of them misspelled.
Patients is a virtute.
I type in that I’ll do whatever they say, but before I can hit send, more words start popping up:
Silents is golden.
Do not call police. Wait for instructiun.
Fiecare pasare, pe limba ei piere.
I have no idea what the last one means, but I hit send on my response:
Just let me know what you want. Please don’t hurt him!
Silence, which I find not at all golden, is what I get in return.
I run the last quote through Google Translate. The answer is an ominous “each bird perishes by her tongue,” which seems to be Romanian for be careful what you say.
I send several more pleas, and get nothing in return. So I try calling the number that sent the texts.
A chipper woman’s voice comes on immediately. “This number has been changed, disconnected, or is no longer in service. If you feel you have reached this recording in error, please check the number and try your call again.”
Sleep, when it finally takes me, is deep and dreamless, even without the pills. The only good thing about the events of last night is that they seem to have jolted Molly’s consciousness a bit, and there were no memories to assimilate. In fact, it’s Molly puttering around, rather than my alarm, that awakens me. I’ve yet to find a way to keep my wall up when I’m sleeping.
Nothing new on my phone, only the earlier unanswered voice and text messages from Aaron and Taylor.
You should call them, Anna. Do you really think you can handle this alone?
Didn’t you read those messages? I’m supposed to WAIT and say nothing. I’m not going to put Deo at risk by doing anything else.
The sky is just beginning to show a hint of daybreak as I step into the shower. This place has four full baths, one for each bedroom, with a half bath on the main floor and another in the basement. There are only three bathrooms at Bart House, which means there’s always a line and never enough hot water. I can’t even remember the last time I was able to shower without someone banging on the door.
But I can’t enjoy it. Even though the ring volume is at max, and I could probably hear it from downstairs, I keep glancing at my phone, perched on the sink next to a basket of shell-shaped soaps, hoping I’ll get something more than the cryptic messages from last night.
I’ve been in the shower about three minutes when I do hear something—not the phone, but someone banging on a door. Okay, not really banging. It’s more like tapping, and it’s not the bathroom door, but farther away. I rinse the last of the conditioner out of my hair, then cut the water and open the door so I can listen.
The doorbell sounds this time, followed by more knocking. Rapid, staccato knocks that suggest the person knocking has been at it for some time.
I wrap a towel around myself and flick off the bathroom light, and also the bedside lamp, so that the room is dark. Then I walk over to the sliding glass door and peek through the vertical blinds. A black car is parked in the driveway. I recognize it even before I hear the voice from the porch below.
“Anna, come on. I know you’re in there.”
Aaron. There’s a strange echo effect in my head as Molly thinks the same thing. How the hell did he get here?
I mutter a few curses under my breath, then slide the door open and step out so that I can whisper over the railing. “I’m coming. Shut up.”
He steps away from the door and glances up at me. I realize a moment too late that he has a very interesting view right now, given that I’m in nothing but a towel and he’s looking up from below. Ducking inside, I pull the door closed and rub the towel through my hair, now chilly from the breeze coming in over the bay. I take my time pulling on a sweater, jeans, and socks.
Aaron is leaning on the porch railing when I open the front door. He looks sad more than angry. “Can I come in?”
“No. You can get back in your car and leave. Molly told you everything she remembers.”
; Not true. I didn’t know you were planning to—
And the wall goes UP.
“If you want this place to remain a safe house,” Aaron says, “it would probably be a good idea not to draw too much attention.”
“Maybe,” I hiss through clenched teeth, “you should have thought of that before you started banging on the door at six a.m. And in case you haven’t figured it out, I brought the trackers with me. I want them to find me.”
“Yeah, I kind of pieced that together. But do you want the neighbors phoning the police?”
There’s no movement except for a lone fisherman heading down the pier across the street. I’m not sure how many people are even around this time of year, but he’s right. There’s no sense in drawing further attention. I step aside and let him enter.
“Thank you.” He rubs his hands together, blowing on them to warm up. “Sorry I interrupted your bath.”
I try to fight back the blush, but it doesn’t work. “Apology noted. How did you find me?”
Now it’s his turn to blush. “Porter installed a tracking app on your phone when he had it.”
He can clearly see what I think about that, because he says, “I’m sorry, okay? Wasn’t me. But I called Ella and finally convinced her to ask Porter to give me the coordinates when the nurses woke him up to check his vitals this morning.”
I start looking through my phone, trying to find this app that Molly’s asshole grandfather installed.
“Give it here,” he says. “I’ll remove it.”
I hand him my phone and watch as he uninstalls something called WhereUB.
“Probably why this thing has been a battery hog lately.” I stash the phone back in my pocket. “Thank you. But you need to leave now. I’ve done my part. I delivered Molly’s message. You know pretty much everything she knew. I hope you find that bastard Lucas, and I hope you find Graham Cregg, but I’m out. I’m not helping you.”
