When he finally spoke, his words were a low growl. “You’re on guard duty with Bear. Whistle if you see anyone.”
“But I can’t—”
He walked out of view before I could inform him of the major flaw in his plan. I’d never been able to whistle; I just looked like I was trying to cool down some soup every time I tried. I put one foot through the window in an attempt to lower myself back into the bathroom, remembered the rage in Reed’s eyes, and decided it might be better to follow his orders.
I slid down the top of the dumpster and landed beside Bear. The dog glanced up at me and bumped his head against my hand before turning his attention back to Blackfin Street. The minutes ticked by, and as I sat and stared at the morning traffic at the far end of the alley, a little knot of shame and embarrassment began to grow inside me.
Was I too impulsive? Looking back on my life, I’d never been big on planning. I’d bolted out of Weyland on a whim, preferring to upend my life over having yet another difficult conversation with my family about Bruce, then reversed that course with little more than an hour’s consideration. How much better would my life be right now if I took the time to think things through? I had a feeling I wouldn’t be sitting in an alley wondering what Reed was doing. Maybe I’d be working for a comic book company somewhere with a decent income and a real future ahead of me.
But where would that leave Bethany? Bruce got into bed with the Nyx brothers before I even graduated high school. Whatever path my life might have taken, Bruce was already firmly on his road to ruin with Bethany riding shotgun. If I wasn’t so quick to action, I might not even know she was missing right now. If I bothered to think about things logically, I might have waited too long to start looking for her.
If I’m not too late already.
The image of all those vacant mattresses haunted me. I clutched the golden strands of hair I’d found on the pillow, and I had to believe they belonged to Bethany. She’d slept on that mattress. She was close, and I wasn’t going to give up on finding her. Not ever.
A high whistle sounded, and Bear stood up and began padding out to Blackfin Street.
“Hey!” I whisper-shouted. “Come back here!”
But it was just as ineffective as when I’d tried to order him to stop jumping on Reed. Bear ignored me, leaving me no choice but to stand up and follow him. Just before we reached the sidewalk, Reed pulled up to the curb in his white box truck. Bear and I climbed inside, and I took my place in the passenger seat.
“What did you find?” I asked.
“That depends.” Reed didn’t look at me as he pulled away from the curb. “Are you ready to start listening to me? Or are you going to just keep doing whatever you feel like doing?”
Grateful for the time I’d had to myself in the alley, I was able to answer him calmly. “I’m really sorry. I couldn’t shake the feeling that Bethany was on the other side of that wall… I was sure I’d find her if I could just get over there.”
“Well, you’re damn lucky you didn’t find her. Because she wouldn’t have been alone. I told you our only advantages are stealth and surprise, Tess. You can’t just go barreling into an unknown situation.” He looked over at me then, and I was shocked to see sadness in his dark eyes. “You could’ve died.”
“I know. It won’t happen again.”
Reed shook his head and turned back to the road. “You don’t know that. I don’t know that. If I’m distracted trying to protect you, I won’t be able to protect myself. Or your sister, when we find her.”
“You think we can still find her?”
“I think I know where they went after they cleared out of the warehouse. After your run-in with Ian in that alley, he probably got spooked. That move wasn’t planned. The warehouse would’ve been spotless if they hadn’t left in a hurry.”
“So they had to go somewhere close, right? Somewhere they already had access to?”
“That’s what I’m thinking. And I have a hunch it’s going to be another warehouse.” He pulled the truck over and gestured.
I stared out the windshield. “You think they’re here?”
Ahead of us, the enormous, smoke stacked headquarters of the Belladonna Seafood processing plant loomed.
He nodded. “We just need to figure out a way to break in.”
Reed and I hadn’t settled on a plan to break into Belladonna, but we agreed on one aspect: Bear couldn’t come with us.
“I’m sorry, buddy,” Reed told the dog as we sat in the truck outside my apartment building. “You’re a brave guy, but it’s too dangerous. You need to stay here.”
Bear stared back and forth between us beseechingly, whining quietly. His classic puppy-dog eyes worked, and I threw my arms around him.
“Can’t he come?” I asked Reed. “If he stays quiet in the truck?”
Reed shook his head, but he was smiling. “Tess McBray, don’t make me be the bad guy.”
Bear whined again, turned his head toward mine, and ran his tongue up the side of my face.
“Bear is special,” I said. “He knows how to be quiet, don’t you boy?”
Bear squeezed his eyes shut and seemed to smile up at me, but Reed’s face turned serious.
“He can’t come. It’s too much of a risk—for us and for him. He’ll be fine in your apartment, trust me.”
It wasn’t Bear I was worried about. Truth be told, I’d grown to love him. His presence made me feel safe, and I hated the idea of going into a proverbial lion’s den without my guard dog by my side. Even if Reed would be there with me, I wanted all the backup I could get.
Reed seemed to read my mind. “We’ll be fine, too.”
“Promise?” I whispered.
He hesitated, and my heart sank. Of course he couldn’t promise that. It’d been a stupid question.
“Never mind.” I slid the truck’s door open and hopped out onto the sidewalk. “Come on, Bear.”
The dog followed me up to my apartment, and I made sure he had enough kibble and water to last him for a few days, just in case I couldn’t come back right away.
“But I will be coming back,” I told him. It made me feel better to say it out loud.
I also made sure the door to my balcony was open so he could access the puppy training pads I’d set out for him. I hated to admit it, but this wasn’t a good situation for a dog. I’d been so wrapped up in my search for Bethany, I hadn’t really thought about what it must be like for a giant Doberman to be cooped up in my tiny one-bedroom.
“Don’t worry, buddy,” I said. “I’ll find someone to walk you.”
After leaving my building, I detoured to Helena’s Place to see if she’d be willing to take my secret dog for a walk. Given how much she seemed to love helping people, I had no doubt that she wouldn’t mind helping a big, furry, four-legged animal. A large closed sign hung in the window, but when I tested the door it opened. I went inside and weaved between vacant clusters of tables and chairs toward the door leading to the back office.
“Hello?” I called.
No one answered.
I pushed open the office door and found Helena slumped in her computer chair, clutching a tissue box and staring off into space. Her brown eyes were bloodshot and puffy, and her black curls stuck out wildly in every direction. There was no trace of the strong, collected woman I’d met on my first day back in town. A pang of worry shot through me; whatever had happened to cause this transformation, it was serious.
“Helena, what’s wrong?” I pulled up another chair and sat down across from her.
She simply shook her head and kept staring at the corner.
“I’m going to call Angie, okay?” I pulled my cell phone out of my pocket and dialed Angie’s number. She’d know if this was a normal thing for her mom to do, and would want to come over to help her mom deal with whatever was happening.
A second after I hit the “Call” button, I heard a muted vibration coming from Helena’s lap. I realized the tissue box wasn’t the only thing she was hold
ing. Behind it, she hugged a spaceship-shaped backpack to her chest. I sat there for a moment, staring at the backpack until Angie’s voicemail picked up and the buzzing stopped.
“Hi, this is Angie!” the recording chirped. “If you’re hearing this, I must be on an away mission. Wish me luck, ‘cause I’m just a red shirt. Leave a message, and I’ll get back to you later!”
I tapped the button to end the call and dropped the phone to my side. “Helena,” I whispered, “where is Angie?”
At the name, Helena’s shoulders began to shake. Sobs racked her body, and she clutched the backpack tighter.
I felt very cold. “Helena? Can you tell me where she is?”
After several long seconds, she finally answered, her voice so quiet I had to strain to hear her. “They took her.”
She didn’t need to specify who “they” were. I knew at once that even if Helena didn’t know their names, she meant the Nightshades. I stumbled backward, bumping into the doorframe behind me. There was no way this was a coincidence. They had to have taken Angie because of me, because of what I’d done to Ian in that alley.
No, that doesn’t make any sense. I shook my head, trying to straighten out the twisted lines of logic that were tangled up in my brain. Ian Nyx could easily figure out who I was, especially since I’d told him the truth about my relationship to Bruce. But how would they know about Angie? We didn’t live together. I hadn’t even seen her since we’d spent the day together at the rally. Had they taken her Saturday night, or sometime since then?
“When?” I asked through gritted teeth.
“Last night. She helped me close up and headed home…” Her voice choked off, and she shook her head. “I’m so sorry.”
“It’s okay,” I lied. “Everything is going to be okay. Have you talked to the police?”
She nodded. “They came in this morning, just as the rush was starting. They found this”—she lifted the backpack for a moment before hugging it close again—“under the stairs to the Fishbone station by her apartment.”
Furious rage boiled up inside me, and it was a struggle not to stand up and punch a hole through Helena’s wall to match the one in my apartment. But that wouldn’t do Helena or Angie any good. I needed to keep my cool.
“It’s going to be all right,” I said. “I’m going to find her.”
Helena shook her head. “What’s going on, Tess? My baby girl!”
She began to wail, and the sound was filled with so much sorrow it cut into me like a knife. Just then, the door opened, and one of the diner’s regulars—one of the men with an untamed beard who’d helped me into Angie’s car when I was injured—stepped into the office. He nodded to me, then leaned down and helped Helena to her feet.
“Come on, Helena,” he soothed in a deep, gravelly voice. “I’m gonna take you to your sister’s, all right? Let’s go, now.”
She stood on wobbly legs and started shuffling out of the room. As she passed me, she reached out a hand and dug her nails into my shoulder. “Find my baby,” she said. “Please.”
Her eyes were wild, and I wasn’t sure if she knew she was talking to me or if she thought the police were here again. But I nodded, and her grip relaxed. She released me as her friend pulled her out of the office. I stood up and followed them outside, watching as he settled her into a low sedan before returning to lock up the restaurant. My emotions had frozen, along with my legs.
This can’t be happening, I thought. That single sentence ran laps around my mind like the chorus of a very uninspired song. What was going on? Was I cursed? Every person I got close to—everyone I loved—was being snatched away from me. My thought from inside Helena’s office echoed in my mind: it couldn’t be coincidence. I wondered what I’d done to make the universe hate me so much that it punished the people around me just for being in my life.
Several minutes after Helena and her friend drove away, my knees unlocked, and I was able to move again. I turned my back on the restaurant and climbed into Reed’s passenger seat.
His face paled when he saw my expression. “What’s wrong?”
As I relayed what Helena had told me, two red spots of anger grew on Reed’s cheeks. When I got to the part about the police finding Angie’s backpack near her apartment downtown, he slammed his fist into the edge of the steering well so hard it bent a little.
“Dammit!” he shouted. “They’ve never taken someone from that far north before. They targeted her, and we need to find out why.”
“Because of me,” I said. “They took her because she knows me.”
“They couldn’t possibly have put that together. You met Ian Nyx less than twelve hours ago.”
I didn’t respond, because I didn’t have any answers, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that somehow Angie was in danger because she was my friend.
Reed chewed his lip, and I stared at him, wishing I was as strong as he was. I could see the wheels turning in his head. He was putting together a plan—a plan he’d be able to execute because he’d been gifted before he’d gotten his powers. He’d already been smart. He’d already been driven by compassion. Now he was super strong, super-fast, and he could sense when people needed his help.
What could I do? I could toughen my skin into steel, but that was just armor. I wasn’t clever like Reed or brave like Bear. I wasn’t well-connected; literally the only two people I thought of as friends had been snatched up by the Nightshades. I was, in a word, worthless. I could tag along as Reed’s little sidekick, but I’d never be a hero like him, the kind of person who helped so many people that he had his own fan club.
Fan club.
“Holy crap!” I shouted.
Reed stared at me. “What is it?”
“I have an idea, and I think it’s a good one.”
My heart raced as I climbed the stairs to the train platform. In just a few minutes, I was going to make contact with someone who could be our man on the inside, someone who might be able to help us get to Bethany and Angie much more quickly than we could manage on our own. That is, if luck was on our side.
I wasn’t comfortable with relying on good fortune. But I’d found myself arguing on the side of rolling the dice just minutes before when Reed had expressed the exact same concerns about the fickle nature of Lady Luck.
“I don’t like it,” he’d said, glaring out the windshield at the Fishbone station off Trident Avenue. A light rain pitter-pattered on the roof of the truck. “He works for the Nightshades.”
“No, he doesn’t. He works for the Nyx brothers at the processing plant. His job is legit.”
“How do you know that’s his only gig? That’s a pretty convenient position if he wanted to moonlight as security for their other interests.”
I shook my head. “He wouldn’t do that.”
Reed’s scowl deepened. “You’re basing that on the person you knew when you were five.”
“Seven,” I corrected.
“Whatever. That’s a long time, and people change. Are you the same little girl who ran around with him in your parents’ backyard?”
I folded my arms across my chest. “Yes.”
Okay, I was being a teensy bit petulant at this point. But every question Reed asked chipped away at my confidence in my plan, and I’d been on shaky ground to start. I needed to feel like I was making the right call, or else I wouldn’t be brave enough to go through with it.
And Bethany didn’t have time for me to be anything less than fearless.
“Look,” I said. “You weren’t at the rally to support your own alter-ego, but I was. So only one person in this truck heard Anatolya’s speech about you. He’s on our side, Reed. I could feel his conviction in the way he spoke. He wasn’t faking it.”
“You’re right, I wasn’t there. I was putting a stop to a drug shipment. I’ve dealt with way more criminals than you have, Tess. So of the two people in this truck, I’m the one who’s better qualified to decide if we can trust this guy.”
“Which is exactly why we’
re going to vet him.” I glanced down at the clock on the dashboard. “The train will be here in like five minutes, and we’re not exactly swimming in other options here. Either I need to get up there, or we need to pull the plug. Your call.”
We glared at each other over the center console. The sound of the rain on the roof was like the ticking of a clock, counting down to the point of no return.
“Fine.” Reed clicked a button, unlocking my door. “But if I get the slightest feeling that something is off with this guy, even if it’s just because he smells funny, I’m calling it. We’ll find another way in.”
“Agreed.”
Now I stood next to a poster of a grinning Jim Jenkins on the train platform, tapping my foot and praying I wasn’t wrong about Anatolya. A train pulled into the station, and I watched for him among the lunchtime commuters streaming onto the platform. He was easy to spot since he was twice as broad as everyone else. I waved to him but didn’t wait for him to come to me. Instead, I hurried over to his side and grabbed his arm.
“Hey—what?”
Without answering, I pulled him back onto the train. The doors closed behind us.
“What’s going on?” he asked.
The car was only half full, and I glanced around to make sure we were out of earshot of the other passengers. Everyone else was at least a few rows away from us, so I decided it was safe enough for a whispered conversation.
“Look, first I have to apologize. I sort of lied about why I wanted you to meet me.”
His face fell. “I knew it. This isn’t a date.”
I raised an eyebrow. “You thought this was a date?”
“You asked me to lunch.”
“Yeah, as friends. I meant that I wanted to catch up with you, not… you know.”
“Oh. Wait—so what part of that was a lie, exactly?”
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