And Then I Found Out the Truth

by Jennifer Sturman

  We’d arrived with ten minutes to spare, and we needed five of them just to cross the crazed traffic between us and the center island. Then we had to find a spot that offered a clear view of people coming and going and where it wouldn’t be immediately obvious we were on a stakeout.

  “Too bad we don’t have a camera,” I said. “We could pretend to be tourists.”

  “We do have a camera,” said Quinn, digging one out of his backpack. “I thought it might come in handy. It has a zoom feature, though it’s no substitute for binoculars. I’ve got binoculars, too, with great aspherical lenses, but those might attract unwanted attention.”

  He’d definitely put more thought into packing for this trip than Carolina and I had. “What else do you have in there?” I asked.

  “Toothbrush, toothpaste. Change of clothes. My iPod. A book or two. Various surveillance equipment.” “Wait — what?”

  “Surveillance equipment. You know, like the binoculars, and a pen that’s actually a video recorder, and a bionic ear, which lets you listen in on people’s conversations — basic stuff like that.”

  “You just happened to have all that lying around your house?”

  He sounded almost sheepish as he explained. “When I was little, maybe Bea’s age, I got really into James Bond. It was sort of how my dad and I bonded. Hunter’s a huge fan. He’s collected first editions of all of Ian Fleming’s books — that’s the guy who created Bond — and on birthdays and holidays he always gives me secret agent—type gadgets. So, yeah, I did have all this stuff lying around.”

  The way Quinn and Hunter were about James Bond wasn’t that different from how Ash and I had been about surfing — I didn’t think he should be embarrassed. Before I could say anything, though, Quinn grabbed my arm. “Is that him?” he asked.

  I turned. And sure enough, there was Thad, threading his way through the six lanes on the other side of the avenue. Quinn had never met him before, but in his khakis and button-down shirt, and with his BlackBerry clipped to his waist, Thad looked exactly like what he was — a tech executive from Silicon Valley — so here in Buenos Aires he didn’t exactly melt into the crowd. As we watched, he narrowly escaped being flattened by a truck running the red light, and I couldn’t help registering a twinge of disappointment.

  He managed to reach the center island intact and began scanning the crowd, searching for a specific face. Even without the hat and sunglasses he probably wouldn’t have noticed me — after all, he didn’t expect me to be there, and he was looking for someone else entirely — but I was glad of my disguise and Quinn’s presence as his eyes passed over us.

  When I’d called Brett from the locutorio, she said she’d do what she could, but she also warned me Thad had been less than responsive to the messages she’d already sent while he’d been away.

  Still, it looked like an urgent request to meet Samantha Arquero at the Obelisk at 3:30 P.M. was all it took to get his attention.

  Regardless, I was stunned my plan had worked. Not only had I confirmed there was a connection between Thad and Samantha Arquero — why else would her name be sufficient to lure him here? — but now we could also follow him wherever he went next.

  Thad, meanwhile, had no way of knowing Samantha Arquero wouldn’t arrive at any moment, and he settled in to wait for her. For him this meant fiddling with his BlackBerry and glancing up every few seconds to see if she’d appeared. Fifty feet away and safely off to the side, out of his line of vision, Quinn and I pretended to be busy taking pictures.

  A full fifteen minutes elapsed before it seemed to occur to Thad that he might have been stood up. Through the camera’s zoom lens, I could see his expression in profile, morphing from impatient and weaselish to annoyed and weaselish. He took a wireless headset from his pocket and clipped it to his ear before thumbing something into his BlackBerry.

  “Perfect,” said Quinn, grabbing a cell phone from his backpack.

  Only it wasn’t really a cell phone — it just looked like one. “My dad gave me this for Christmas last year,” he explained in a low voice, pulling off his sunglasses so he could get a better look at its screen and pushing buttons on its keypad. “It lets you tap into other people’s Bluetooth connections up to a twenty-five-yard radius. You can hear both sides of their call, but they can’t hear you.”

  And the amazing thing was that it worked. When Quinn held the phone to my ear, bending down so we could listen together, there was the sound of a number being dialed and then someone answering.

  “Arquero Energía Argentina,” announced a woman’s voice.

  “Samantha Arquero, por favor.” This voice was Thad’s, and it was as clear as if he’d called us directly, though his Spanish didn’t sound anywhere near as good as Quinn’s.

  “Momento,” came the response.

  And a moment later, another woman came on the line. “La oficina de Samantha Arquero,” she said.

  “Teresa, it’s Thad Wilcox. I’ve been waiting for Ms. Arquero for fifteen minutes. Where is she?”

  “Oh, hello, Mr. Wilcox,” the woman answered, a note of confusion in her tone. “Ms. Arquero is in a conference with her father this afternoon.”

  “I had a message from my assistant to meet her at three thirty,” Thad insisted.

  “I’m afraid there has been a mistake. You are on her schedule for tomorrow morning, as we arranged last week. I was going to call you at the end of the day to reconfirm. Eleven o’clock at the Café Tortoni.”

  Thad hung up without saying thank you or good-bye, and then he immediately dialed a new number. Quinn and I listened as it rang four times before a voice mail greeting clicked on.

  This is Brett Fitzgerald at TrueTech. I’m on the other line or away from my desk. Please leave your name and number, and I’ll return your call as soon as I can.

  Thad gave an irritated grunt as he waited for the beep. “Terrific,” he said sarcastically. “You’re probably out at lunch already, and it’s not even noon yet in California. I need to know about that urgent message from Samantha Arquero. Call me ASAP. And I mean ASAP.”

  He ended this call as ceremoniously as he’d ended the previous one and yanked the headset from his ear. He shoved it into his pocket and clipped his BlackBerry back onto his belt as he strode over to the crosswalk and waited impatiently for the light to change. I felt guilty about Brett — I should have realized Thad would call to check when Samantha Arquero didn’t appear. And based on how angry he’d sounded, I wouldn’t put it past him to fire her. I could reassure myself that my mother would fix everything once she returned, but Brett didn’t know that, and I couldn’t tell her until it was actually safe for T.K. to come back.

  The green light finally turned red and the DON’T WALK signal gave way to the WALK signal. Quinn and I moved to follow Thad as he stepped into the street, trying to keep a safe distance behind.

  But before he was even halfway across, Thad froze in his tracks, right there in the crosswalk. Then he spun around, and the look on his face reminded me of a cartoon character who’d just had an epiphany. There should have been a bubble above his head with a lightbulb inside.

  He headed back for the center island, and now he wasn’t even watching for the occasional rogue driver who might decide to ignore the red light. Instead, he was scanning the people around the Obelisk with fresh intensity.

  Fortunately, Quinn and I hadn’t even made it to the crosswalk yet, and my disguise was still in place. Now we paused and feigned immersion in our map. From the corner of my eye, though, I could see Thad’s gaze sweep over us as he stalked by, and he was clipping his headset back onto his ear.

  “He’s making another call,” I whispered to Quinn, who was already punching buttons on the spy phone.

  We had a false start, picking up the signal from some unknown person’s phone instead, but Quinn pressed another button and the torrent of Spanish was replaced with another annoyed grunt from Thad as his call was answered by voice mail.

  For a fleeting moment, I thou
ght he’d tried to reach Brett again, and that this time he really would fire her — not only over the phone, but by leaving a message, which seemed extra wrong.

  But the greeting that picked up wasn’t Brett’s.

  It was mine.

  Twenty-nine

  I’d recorded the greeting months and months ago, long before T.K. had disappeared and my entire life exploded. As I listened to my own voice, it sounded strangely sunny and carefree, like a relic of a different person altogether.

  Hi. It’s Delia. Sorry I missed you. Leave a message, and I’ll call you back.

  And then, like a true Californian, I added: “Have a great day!” I couldn’t believe Charley hadn’t made me change that — people telling her what kind of day to have was right up there with emoticons on her list of pet peeves.

  Thad, however, didn’t sound like he was having a great day as he recorded his message. In fact, he sounded like he was having a really bad day. “Delia. This is Thad Wilcox. I’m wondering where you are right now. I suspect it’s not where you’re supposed to be.”

  There was an undertone of menace to his words that was more than a little disturbing, though he was less condescending than he’d been when he threatened me in Patience’s apartment the previous week — maybe he was starting to respect me, now that he knew I could scheme and connive, too.

  Because though it had taken him a while, it seemed safe to assume he’d realized I might have been behind the message about Samantha Arquero. After all, who else would have used Brett as a go-between? Samantha Arquero’s assistant sounded like she was used to talking to Thad directly — he’d known her name and everything.

  And if Thad had figured that out, he’d probably also figured out there was a decent chance I was somewhere nearby, hoping to do exactly what I’d been hoping to do. My brilliant plan was starting to look a lot less brilliant.

  Especially since as he continued to speak, something weird began happening to our spy phone connection, kind of like an echo effect.

  Except it wasn’t an echo.

  Slowly, trying not to give us away with any abrupt movement, I turned my head to get a better look. Thad was moving in our direction, and now we could hear him in stereo, both through the spy phone and more faintly as his voice traveled toward us, carried on the breeze.

  He was still a healthy distance away, searching the faces of everyone he passed, so I didn’t think he’d spotted us.

  “We should get out of here,” said Quinn softly, closing the spy phone and slipping it into his bag.

  “Good idea,” I said. Quinn put his arm around my shoulders in a casual, touristlike gesture, and we started for the crosswalk.

  And that’s when it happened. A sudden gust of wind caught the brim of my hat, and because I’d drawn the line at actually using the chinstrap, it went spinning off my head. My hair whipped around my face, so I couldn’t even see, but I heard Thad give a shout of discovery. “Delia!”

  There was no time to wait for the light to change. Quinn grabbed my hand, and we dove into traffic.

  The next thirty seconds were the longest of my life, since I fully expected each one would be my last. None of the surfing or snowboarding or anything I’d done with Ash had prepared me for sprinting across six lanes’ worth of speeding traffic, though it would have made a riveting new X Games event.

  Taxis and motorcycles and trucks rushed at us in a dizzying assault of color and speed and noise as we darted from lane to lane, their horns blaring in protest. It was probably a good thing I didn’t know Spanish, because I had the feeling every single one of the words the drivers were throwing out at us would be bleeped if they ended up on TV.

  I still don’t know how we reached the other side without becoming roadkill, but somehow we made it. And I could tell from the way the yelling and honking continued behind us that Thad was giving chase.

  The restaurants and theaters and cafés along the Avenida Corrientes were a blur of stone and glass as we ran past, dodging the pedestrians on the sidewalk and dashing across another intersection just as the signal changed.

  Of course, after crossing the enormous Avenida 9 de Julio against the light, a regular street wasn’t much of a challenge — it didn’t stop us and it didn’t stop Thad. When we looked back, he was still on our heels, weaving through oncoming traffic. Even the shriek of metal upon metal as a car swerved to avoid him and smashed into a parked van wasn’t enough to break his stride.

  I was pretty fast for my size and the adrenaline pumping through me definitely helped, but I knew Quinn had slowed to match my pace, and Thad’s legs were a lot longer than mine. Thad also wasn’t wearing the Christian Louboutin ankle boots Charley had insisted were the only possible footwear for the jeans I had on, not that she’d been factoring in the potential for impromptu track meets.

  We made the light again at the next intersection, and the next, but every time I stole a glance over my shoulder the gap between us and Thad seemed to narrow. It was like the most clichéd nightmare there was — being chased through the streets of an unfamiliar city, with the pounding footsteps drawing ever closer — but this was real and in broad daylight.

  The fourth intersection we came to was the Avenida Florida, a pedestrian zone thronged with shoppers and tourists, all enjoying the spring afternoon. Quinn and I were thinking and moving like one person, and we automatically cut right and into the crowd. The lag between when we turned the corner and when Thad did might buy us just enough time out of his sight to lose him. Particularly if he didn’t see us race into one of the dozens of shops lining the street.

  At the last possible moment, we cut right again and through a set of doors.

  We found ourselves in a bookstore, its quiet calm in jarring contrast to the frenzy of the last five minutes. And if the customers inside thought two American teenagers bursting in and immediately crouching down behind a table stacked with paperbacks was odd, none of them showed it. Mostly they were too absorbed examining the books and magazines on display to pay any attention to us. Nor did they notice Thad moments later, hurtling past on the street outside. Quinn and I watched, peering over the stacked books and through the window, as he elbowed his way through the people milling about, pushing forward as if he thought we were still ahead of him.

  Several doors down, though, he came to an abrupt halt. Panting, he put his hands on his hips and turned in a slow circle, surveying the crowd and the storefronts.

  For once I was glad I was so short, pinhead and all. Thad knew how easy it would be for me to slip away, shielded by the height of others. And the brilliant sun reflecting off the glass turned the shop windows into mirrors, making it impossible to see who might be hiding within. We could have been anywhere, inside or out. But my heart was still beating incredibly fast, and not just from the running.

  Thad turned in another slow circle, breathing hard, and then another, but on his next trip around something caught his attention and he did a double take. He was facing away from us, but I ducked down further behind our bookshelf anyway. And when I peeked over the books again, he was staring at a kiosk papered with flyers and ads. As I watched, he walked over, and with an angry tug he ripped off one of the flyers and tore it to pieces.

  There was no way to see what was on the flyer, but at this point I could be pretty confident it was another part of Dieter’s cultural experiment. And if Thad’s familiarity with Samantha Arquero and how he’d just tried to chase me down hadn’t been enough to prove which side he was on, watching him tear my image to shreds was the clincher.

  Either way, he’d apparently resigned himself to temporary defeat. He tossed the remnants of the flyer to the ground and trudged off, returning in the direction of Avenida Corrientes and disappearing from sight.

  He’d lost us, but we knew exactly where we’d be able to find him.

  And miraculously, Quinn was still holding my hand.

  Thirty

  We hung out in the bookstore a while longer, to catch our breath and make sure Thad w
as truly gone. The sales clerk pointed me to a pay phone in the back, and I left Quinn browsing guidebooks and went to check in with the switchboard at the Alvear again. I’d memorized the number by now, and when the operator answered, I asked for Lourdes, as Manolo had instructed.

  Lourdes was expecting my call. “You are the new friend of Manolo, sí? He is muy simpático, Manolo, always with the new friends. He is studying to be a doctor, you know.” She was as proud as if he were her grandson.

  Anyhow, after Lourdes and I talked some more about how much we liked Manolo, I asked if anyone had called for me.

  “Yes, indeed,” she said happily, and my heart skipped a beat — in a nice way for once. “I have the message here, from a Señor Rafael Francisco Valenzuela Sáenz de Santamaría. He is your uncle?”

  That seemed optimistic on Rafe’s part. He might be completely smitten with Charley, but it would be a stretch to construe their current relationship as even dating — the odds of him becoming my uncle anytime soon were low. But I went with it anyway. “Right, my uncle. What did he say?”

  “He is very mysterious, your uncle. He says to tell you he has found the captain’s elected tail. Do you know what this means?”

  Assuming Rafe had actually said electronic, not elected, and trail, not tail, I did know what it meant, and that was good news, because it would help us nail Samantha Arquero. “Did he mention where he was? Or where anyone else was?” Like T.K., for instance, though I didn’t really think Rafe would divulge her whereabouts over the phone to a total stranger, however grandmotherly she sounded.

  “No, he only said to tell you he would be on a plane tonight, but you should return to the hotel. This is very important. He was very clear on this topic.”