by Sophia Sharp
I embraced Madison’s crystal, and the blue light covered everything in a flash. I sped through the connections, focusing on the gun the man held—on the grip, specifically. I could make it hot, hot enough to scald the man’s hand. I prepared myself mentally for the strain would come, and then began. Pain flared beyond my temples as I pushed energy into the metal of the gun. Hot enough to scald, but not to melt. That would take too much out of me. I added more, more and more, until I was sure it was beyond scorching. I released the crystal.
Everything happened at once.
The man yelped, and dropped the gun. Without hesitation, Rob charged at him. The man fumbled for the knife, the one he stabbed John with, the one tied to his belt, but I had not forgotten about it – he would have just as much luck holding it as the gun. Rob slammed a shoulder into him in a football tackle, and they both flew to the ground. Liz fell to one side, crumbling to her knees.
I ran to her, and quickly helped her up. Together, Madison and I carried her away. I looked back. Rob was struggling with the man. They were both rolling on the ground, fighting for an advantage. I wished I could do something with the crystal, but I knew of nothing that would help. Still, I couldn’t just stand aside. I started to run back toward them, when suddenly the man went completely limp. Rob yelped and pushed him away like a rabid dog. The man was on his back. He convulsed once, twice. Blood started running from his nose. He coughed, and a spray of blood spurted from his mouth. He coughed again, and was still.
I ran to Rob. “What happened?”
“He… he took a pill,” Rob said. He sounded shaken. “He dropped it into his mouth while we were fighting. Is he…?”
“Dead.” Madison finished his sentence. She had left Liz to one side, and was kneeling beside the man. “He has no pulse.”
“Jesus Christ!” Rob said under his breath. “Jesus Christ! What did we get into?” Suddenly, his attention shifted. “Liz! Is she hurt?”
“I’m fine, thanks to you,” she said, coming up behind us. I glanced at her as I helped Rob up. She placed a hand on my shoulder. “Thank you, Tracy. And you Rob. And Madison.”
“Of course,” Rob and I said as one. Then we looked at each other in surprise.
“What did he want?” Madison wondered.
“He thought I was Tracy,” Liz said. She was all liquid cool composure again. I had no idea how she jumped from one emotional state to another so quickly. “The question is: What do we do with him?”
“We have to call the cops,” Rob said.
“No!” I said firmly. Rob blinked, and looked at me questioningly. “We can’t draw attention to ourselves,” I explained.
“Well, we can’t just leave him here,” he said.
“No, obviously not,” I said.
“Who was he?” Madison asked. She bent down to check his pockets. “There’s… nothing on him. No wallet. No ID. Nothing.”
“Is there anything in the car?” I wondered aloud.
Liz went to check. “It’s empty,” she said, returning. “Glove compartments, underneath the seats, the back… it’s all wiped clean.”
“Whoever he was,” Rob said, “it looks like he took great pains to remain anonymous.” Then he turned to me. “What happened to the tires, anyway? It looked like the van just drove over a spike strip.”
I looked at the girls uncomfortably. How could we still keep Rob in the dark? Hadn’t he proved his allegiance to us, over and over? Liz shook her head just a sliver.
“Uh, we got lucky, I guess,” I said.
“Really lucky,” Liz added unhelpfully.
“Well, we can’t rely on our luck any further,” Rob said. He looked at me again. “And why did he drop the gun? You said you could make him…?”
Liz glared at me. I felt my cheeks go red. It was lucky nobody could see that in the night. “Did I?” I defended weakly. “No, I don’t think—”
“You definitely did,” Rob said. “What’s more, you said it right before he dropped the gun. You couldn’t have known, could you?”
“Rob, it doesn’t matter!” Liz exclaimed, throwing up her hands. “Focus! We need to figure out what to do with the body!”
The diversion seemed weak to me, but it was enough to draw Rob’s attention. Maybe. He may have also given me a furtive glance that promised we’d talk later.
“Well, we can’t just leave him here, but since you guys don’t want to call the cops…” Rob began.
“Even if we wanted to, we couldn’t,” Madison said. She was still standing by the body. “If they find us here, they’ll want to ask questions. We’ll never get away from them. We’ll never get to Harvard. Sooner or later, they’ll find out that we ran away from school, and we’ll be forced to go back there – in the best case scenario. Worst, we go to jail for murder.”
Rob sighed. “You’re probably right. But we don’t even have a car. We’re stranded in the middle of nowhere. How do we get back?”
“Call the others!” I exclaimed. It was so obvious it was a wonder I hadn’t thought of it earlier. I pulled out my phone, and saw that it had just a single bar of battery life left. I made a note to charge it when I got the chance. As I was dialing Ashley, I glanced at the time. It was few minutes past midnight. I shivered. Midnight. It seemed a fitting time to find a dead body on your hands.
Chapter Thirteen – A Secret Shared
An anxious hour passed before headlights in the distance heralded the arrival of John, Ashley, and Eve. They had called a cab, but were delayed by the need to bring a container of gas for the truck. After the fare was taken care of, Ashley and Eve emerged from the back of the taxi, and John limped out after them. Liz ran up to him right away, her face twisted in worry. While the cab turned and drove away, John had to assure Liz many times over he was alright. Finally, and only once Liz was satisfied, did John come speak to the rest of us.
“So?” he asked. “What happened?”
“We put the body in the van,” I explained. “Rob took the man down, and while they were fighting, he managed to put some kind of pill in his mouth.”
“Probably cyanide,” John said. “Based on your description of the way he died.” He inclined his head respectfully to Rob. “Fighting him was brave of you,” he said. “Brave, but dangerous.”
“Liz was in even more danger,” Rob said.
John nodded. “Well, let’s take a look.”
We walked to the van, and I opened the rear doors. The man in the white coat was there, lying motionless. Blood stained the front of his shirt.
“A quick death,” John said after examining the body. “I still can’t understand how this man got close enough to stab me. It’s not what I would have wished upon him, but…” he trailed off, not finishing the sentence. “It looks like someone didn’t want him to talk. Or maybe he didn’t want to talk. Getting caught was an option worse than death, it seems.”
“What are we going to do?” Eve asked from behind us. “We can’t leave him here.”
“No,” John said thoughtfully. He paused, and ran a hand through his hair. “We’ll drop him off by the nearest hospital ER. If there’s an attendant outside, I’ll tell him it was an overdose. If not, well, the better for us.”
“Won’t they search him?” Rob asked. “For fingerprints, things like that? Couldn’t we get the blame?”
“No. He ingested the poison himself. It’ll be obvious to the coroner that the cause of death was whatever he swallowed. There won’t be an investigation. The bigger question,” John continued, “is how did this man find us?”
“Our phones!” Madison said suddenly. Everyone turned to look at her. She didn’t shy back. “Well, isn’t it obvious? You guys have seen the movies, right? You can find anyone’s position if their phone is on.”
“And it’s even easier when there are seven of them,” John agreed. “Idiot! I can’t believe I didn’t think of it earlier!”
My chest constricted at the thought. John told me that if the people who were after us could get t
o Traven Island unnoticed, they could track his credit card. Tracking a phone, in comparison, seemed so much easier. It was such an obvious oversight on our part that it stung. Even worse, we all still had our phones on us.
Suddenly, I felt very vulnerable. We’d been in one spot for the better part of an hour. The whole time, our phones had been like a beacon to anyone watching. “Everyone give me your phone,” I said quickly. “We’ll leave them here.”
I went around to collect everyone’s phone. When I got to Eve, she hesitated.
“Eve?” I asked.
“I left mine at the motel,” she said.
“Oh. That’s fine, I guess.” I didn’t think we were going back there again, and as long as we weren’t where our phones were, there was no harm in leaving it there.
“The faster we get out of here the better,” Rob said. “I feel like a sitting duck out on the road.”
I agreed. It seemed like there was no safety for us anywhere. Not on the island, and not out here. The sooner we got to Harvard, and started to understand the origin of this entire mess, the better.
“We have enough gas to get to the next petrol station,” John said. “From there, we can drop the body off at the hospital. And then we’ll be on our way. I want to be as far away from here as possible, and leave as few indications where we went as we can.” He started to limp back to the truck, and Liz ran immediately to place herself under his arm. This time, he didn’t shoo her away.
“Come on,” I told Rob. “We’ve got to move the body to the truck.”
He nodded, and went to help me. Eve and Ashley came along, too. By the time we had hefted the limp body into the back, John had finished filling the tank.
“Your leg,” I asked, “is it good enough to drive?”
Before John had a chance to answer, Rob held up a hand. “I can do it,” he said. “Besides, I got some sleep earlier. John needs to rest.”
“Thank you,” John said, climbing into the passenger seat. Liz scrambled up beside him, and squeezed herself on the cushion to his left. Rob sat in the driver’s seat. I looked at the other girls. None of us wanted to ride in the trunk bed with a dead man—especially not in the cold. So, we ended up jamming together in the tiny backseat of the truck.
***
I breathed a sigh of relief as our ill-fated stay at the motel faded behind us. We had a full tank of gas, and our hands were clean. We’d left the body at the hospital without any trouble, picked up bandages and disinfectant for John’s wound, and were on the freeway to Boston. All our phones were securely behind us. There was no way for anybody to track us anymore.
Rob drove while everyone else dozed off. Everyone except me. One thing stood out in my mind. It did not fit. The man who tried kidnapping Liz had done so because he mistook her for me. That was a glaring oversight. The other men – the silent one who attacked me, the two burly ones in my room – knew exactly who they were targeting. There was a lurking suspicion in my mind that Chris and his dad were not the ones behind the most recent kidnapping attempt. The first man who came to get me was smooth, professional, and had only failed because of a fluke appearance by Rob. This man – the one in the white, the one who killed himself – was exactly the opposite. He stabbed John, hastily grabbed Liz, and made an ill-fated getaway attempt in a van that obviously could not go very fast. Compared to the first kidnapper, this one was an amateur.
If my suspicion was true, it meant that the men who had come after me were sent by different masters. There was somebody aside from Chris and his dad who knew about the crystals. Even worse, this meant that there was a second threat facing us – one that we knew little about. How else to reconcile the difference in the attackers?
One thing was certain: There were great secrets at play. Who else knew about the crystals, and more importantly, about us? That CIA stamp kept intruding my thoughts. It was key to something. It had to be! There was something deep and shady going on here. We were all caught in the tailwind. I prayed we would find the answers at Harvard.
***
A day and a half of nonstop driving later, we found ourselves in Boston. The main city passed by in a flash, and we quickly came into Cambridge. Cambridge’s main claim to fame is sheltering Harvard. The town where my father went to college. It felt strange, coming to his alma mater for the first time like this. But that was a fleeting thought. We had finally arrived. Finally, we would get the chance to find our answers.
I was bursting with excitement as our rusty truck drove over the bumpy, crooked roads. It felt like we had stepped back in time. Red Georgian brick houses lined the streets. The cobblestone sidewalks looked like they had been there for centuries. Streetlamps cast from dark iron curved in a fashion that reminded me of the 1800s. The only thing missing were the horse-drawn carriages.
Rob pulled into the parking lot of The Harvard Square Hotel, and we all got out of the car. John hobbled out on his crutches with Liz at his side. The morning sun shone bright overhead, though it was a little chilly at this time of the year. The hotel wasn’t busy, but that didn’t mean room prices weren’t exorbitant. Still, after only a little bit of haggling at the front desk, John got us our rooms.
And what rooms they were! We were on the top level in the grand suite. It was more like a luxurious apartment than temporary lodgings. Our suite had three bedrooms with a king size bed in each, a spacious living room, a kitchen, and private bathrooms off each of the bedrooms. John said after the disaster in the motel, it was worth it to stay at a nice place.
Only a few minutes after we got into the suite, John and Rob left. They said they wanted to find out more about Arthur Eliot, and wanted to have a chance to look around. My suspicion, however, was that they had some things they needed to discuss on their own. It suited me perfectly, because there was something I had been dying to talk to the girls about too.
“We need to talk,” I announced from the middle of the common room. Eve was looking out the window, Ashley was fiddling with something behind the kitchen counter, Madison was sitting on the couch, and Liz was just taking her shoes off.
“I agree,” Ashley said. “I still can’t believe that man just killed himself. What was he afraid of? Being caught?”
“Or maybe failing whoever sent him,” Eve suggested.
“That’s… even worse,” Ashley said.
“Well, at least we got here without another incident,” I put in. “We have to figure out what to do next. And first of all, we have to decide what we’re going to do about them.”
“Who?” Madison asked.
“Rob and John.”
“What about Rob and John?” Liz asked suspiciously.
“We’ve had time to digest everything that’s happened,” I explained. “We’ve stepped back from things and gotten some perspective. We know who’s on our side, now.”
“What are you saying?” Liz asked. “If it’s something we’ve already gone over, Tracy—”
“I’m saying we have to tell Rob and John about the crystals!”
There was a collective intake of air from all the girls. The room was silent for a few moments.
“Yes.” Eve broke the quiet. “I agree. We can trust them. John took a stab wound for us. Rob got knocked out. What’s the worst that’s happened to any of us? Liz, you got dragged around by your neck? Tracy, you had a scare? Those two men have risked their lives for us, and it’s only fair they know.” I looked at Eve in surprise. She had articulated my argument perfectly.
“The more they know, the greater the danger becomes,” Liz began, but I’d heard this before. I cut her off before she had a chance to go further.
“Look,” I said, “back on the island that type of thinking made sense. Keep the crystals to ourselves. Don’t let anybody else know. Even when we thought Rob would be staying there, and I wanted to tell him about them… it was prudent, in a way, to keep them a secret. But, not anymore. Both Rob and John are in danger because they’re involved with us. That danger doesn’t come from knowing about
the crystals. It comes from being around us.”
“They have both proved they can be trusted,” Madison said slowly. She looked up at me from the couch, and I saw the conflict on her face. She trusted me. She had told me her greatest secret. But she had grown up with Liz. I doubted the girl had ever disagreed with Liz on anything before. Could this be the first? “Maybe Tracy is right. Maybe telling them would make things better. At least, we could speak freely about the crystals then. Maybe they can even help us figure something out!”
“Like what?” Liz spat. “It’s not like they can use the crystals! Neither of them has the experience we have. I don’t see what good can possibly come out of them knowing. All I see is an increased risk of danger!”
“Liz, you’re being stubborn,” Eve said.
“I am not!” Liz exploded. “I’ve risked everything keeping it like this. Keeping the crystals to us. This is how it has to be!”
“Not anymore,” Madison pointed out from the couch. She pushed herself up and stood beside me. “Liz, I think they’re right. These are different circumstances. We have to adapt.”
“Madison, you’re with them?” Liz looked shocked—betrayed, even.
“It makes sense,” Madison admitted shyly, glancing at her feet. For a second, she looked very much the young girl she had revealed herself to be. Then her eyes shot up, and she met Liz’s gaze again. There was no meekness left. “Just why don’t you think it’s a good idea?” she demanded.
“It’s too dangerous!” Liz threw her hands in the air.
Eve laughed. “Dangerous? Danger comes from the people coming after us. Danger comes from the attacker in the night. A knife in the dark. Danger comes from those people, not from our friends, not from people we can trust. And the truth is this: the people who are dangerous to us already know about the crystals! John is spending his money on us without a single question. He left his job for us. Rob ran away from school for us. How can you still think we can’t trust people like that?”
