Wild Sky

by Suzanne Brockmann

  Milo squeezed my shoulder. Yes. We did. I know this. You’re right.

  We’re going to help Sasha even more, and we’re going to find Lacey, I continued, and everything will finally be normal and…great.

  Of course, I had no idea what normal would look like, other than great. I suspected it involved Milo and me going to prom or whatever the big school dance was called at Coconut Key Academy. It may also have included those elusive words that ended every romantic fairy tale—and they lived happily ever after. Dear Lord, what I’d give to live happily ever after with Milo forever at my side…

  I realized with a rush of embarrassment that I’d let my mind wander again. I’d actually been imagining myself wearing a yellow ball gown like the one Belle wore in the Disney classic Beauty and the Beast, as I danced in the moonlight with a blue-coated and knickers-wearing Milo, his hair pulled neatly back at the nape of his neck.

  Milo was back to gazing out at the water. Maybe his mind had been wandering, too, and he’d missed all of that.

  Everything will be great, I thought again, and he glanced at me.

  I wish this were a fairy tale, but I’m afraid it’s not, Sky. It’s real life.

  Okay, so he had seen my fantasy dance in that yellow dress. I hurriedly continued: We’ll also find Jilly and we’ll help her get away from Rochelle. Because that’s what we do.

  Assuming, of course, that Rochelle hadn’t already killed the girl. I hated to think that, but it was hard to assume Jilly was safe, considering that story Garrett had told us. The screaming in the kitchen, the broken dishes, the threats of “locking her in,” whatever that meant—

  Suddenly—like static interrupting a perfectly clear frequency—

  A door. Slamming shut.

  Darkness. Muffled yells and then crying. God, the crying…

  Without warning, Milo jumped away from me, propelling himself off the bench. As our contact was broken, the sounds and image of darkness ceased. Just like that.

  “Hey,” I said out loud and stood up to take a step closer to a suddenly faraway Milo. “What was that?”

  “Nothing!” Milo exclaimed with an urgent, almost-irritated tone to his voice. “It was—nothing. Sorry,” he added.

  “It wasn’t nothing. Someone was crying. In a dark room. That was…creepy. Was that you? I mean, were you thinking about that?” If what I’d just heard and seen wasn’t something Milo had been thinking, it was entirely possible that I was having some kind of psychic or prescient vision. And if I was, I needed to know.

  “Yes. That was me thinking that. Sorry.” Milo actually let out a nervous laugh, which was strange because I’d never heard him do that before. He crossed his arms over his chest and cleared his throat. “It must’ve been because…well, Dana’s been downloading horror movies again, and I made the mistake of watching one with her. That must be it.” He cleared his throat again. “I’m not a fan.”

  Dana lived on a constant diet of incredibly scary movies. And Milo was not a fan. He’d told me that plenty of times before. It kind of made sense.

  Except that it hadn’t felt like the memory of a movie. The whole thing had felt way too real.

  And was it really a coincidence that I’d been sending out waves of childish Disney-prince fantasies, complete with my fairy-tale longing to live happily ever after, right before Milo took an express train trip to the nightmare-hell level of his mind?

  I stood there, just looking at him, uncertain of what to say. “Sorry?”

  He shook his head. “No, I’m sorry,” he said.

  I sat back down on the bench, but instead of joining me, he leaned against one of the ends of the frame that held the swing in place. He crossed one ankle over the other before he folded his arms over his chest. He was just far enough away from me so that we were easily able to talk to one another—without being close enough to touch.

  “I got spooked.” He attempted a joke. “Next time, I’ll pick the movie and go for something a little less hardcore, like Seven Brides for Seven Brothers. Still terrifying in its own way, but…not…yeah.”

  So okay. Milo was acting super-weird, and I wasn’t going to pretend otherwise.

  “I also don’t want to… I mean, man, all that renewed hope,” he added as I struggled to understand him without having access to his thoughts. “I’m pretty discouraged,” he continued. “I mean, yes, we rescued Sasha and all those girls in the barn that day, and that was a good thing. But it doesn’t seem like there’s an end in sight.”

  I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t want to make it all about me, but Milo’s body language was weirding me out. And I couldn’t help but feel as though it had absolutely nothing to do with him feeling discouraged. In fact, if anything, it felt like it had everything to do with me.

  Had I made a mistake, maybe come on too strong with that inadvertent burst of hope that I’d hit him with—my faith that we’d help Sasha and find Lacey and even Jilly?

  All that renewed hope, he’d said, like maybe it was something alien or unpleasant.

  And I’d also told him how much I enjoyed having access to his secret thoughts, followed by that full-on fairy-tale fantasy filled with insane-girlfriend-type thoughts of happily-ever-afters and forever-by-my-sides.

  Oh, my Lord…

  “I’m sorry if I…” I started but didn’t know how to finish. I wasn’t quite sure what I’d done or how I could fix it, so I retreated to another simple “I’m sorry.”

  Milo looked at me with his intense, dark eyes. He took a deep breath in and then blew the air out slowly. I didn’t need to be psychic to know that he wanted a cigarette—even though he’d quit smoking months ago. The cravings still haunted him, especially in times of stress.

  “Are you out of nicotine gum?” I asked. He still hadn’t kicked that part of his habit entirely, but it was much better than the alternative.

  “I am,” Milo said and shrugged. “It’s okay.”

  For a moment longer, we locked eyes and said nothing. I longed to touch him. But I didn’t move from the bench swing.

  And he didn’t move from where he stood.

  “It’ll be okay,” I said out loud, finally. If nothing else, my words broke the silence, which had become too much for me to handle.

  Milo nodded. “Yes,” he said. “It will all be okay.”

  But for the first time since I’d met him, Milo made me feel anything but reassured.

  “Come on,” he said. “It’s getting colder. I’ll walk you home.”

  And he did. But he didn’t reach for my hand, so I kept mine in my pockets, too, as I wondered how I could fix this—whatever this was that I’d somehow stupidly done.

  Chapter Seven

  “Would you rather eat fried cow eyeballs or drink a gallon of cockroach juice?” Cal asked me. He was leaning his head against the steering wheel of his car.

  We were parked on the side of the road, half-hidden in the tall reeds as we staked out Rochelle’s palatial “beach house,” looking for any sign of her daughter-slash-niece Jilly. We’d been here since six a.m.—or as Cal called it, the butt-crack of dawn—and we were both feeling it.

  At around ten o’clock, Rochelle had left the house, pulling out of her garage in her expensive convertible and vanishing down the street toward town. Milo had followed her on Dana’s motorcycle. Meanwhile, Dana and Garrett had gone off in Garrett’s car to do God knows what.

  The idea that Dana was spending the day with Garrett was making Calvin cranky. Crankier, that is, than he normally might be from sitting in a car for going on eight hours now.

  We’d run out of food a long time ago. Calvin now licked the inside of an empty bag of chips while moaning quietly.

  I was extra cranky because Milo hadn’t called. According to Dana’s official plan, Cal and I were under strict orders not to leave the safety of Cal’s car until Milo called to say t
he coast was clear, meaning that Rochelle had her head in a beauty parlor sink or was securely locked in a spray tanning booth. But it was fast approaching two o’clock, and Milo still hadn’t called.

  I checked my burner phone again—nope. No calls, no texts, no Milo. He’d been distant again this morning while we’d all shared breakfast, and I’d been using this endless stakeout to fine-tune my obsession. Why had he jumped away from me like that yesterday at the beach? And why had today’s good-morning kiss ended so quickly?

  “We could just walk down to the house, maybe peek into the windows,” I started to say.

  Calvin turned his head so that just his left cheek rested on the steering wheel. He lifted one eyebrow with deliberation as he glared at me. “Girrrrl, just because Rochelle McCrazypants isn’t home right now doesn’t mean she won’t be coming home soon, and if she is a Destiny addict, she’ll know right away that you’re a G-T and she’ll immediately try to suck your blood.”

  “She’s not a vampire,” I pointed out, although right now the idea of staking someone through the heart was extra appealing.

  “I’ve been giving it some thought,” Calvin countered, “as I sit here starving to death. D-addicts are freakily vampiric. The blood of innocents makes them stronger; they lose their souls; they’re creepy as shit…”

  He was being overly dramatic, but not about the Rochelle will know right away part. A Destiny addict could tell if a girl was a Greater-Than. And vice versa. One up-close moment with Rochelle and—if she was a D-user—I’d be able to ID her, too.

  Unfortunately, I hadn’t gotten more than a hint of her shiny blond hair as she drove off this morning.

  I aimed the binoculars again. What I was really hoping for was a glimpse of Jilly’s emo-punk green-and-pink hair through one of the humongous sliders that led out onto the equally monstrous deck.

  But nothing continued to move in or around the house.

  I finally gave up, surrendering the last of my dignity as I tried Milo’s phone again, but my call went straight to voice mail. I wrote another text: Would love a report. But then I backspaced and changed love to like before I hit Send.

  Yeah. That’s how inside my own head I was.

  But again, all I got back was more nothing.

  I was starting to worry about more than just my love life or impending lack thereof.

  “Cow eyeballs or roach juice?” Calvin prompted me.

  I set my phone on my lap, next to the binoculars. He’d been hitting me with Would You Rather questions all day. Would you rather go on a stakeout or stick needles in your eyes? was one I’d gotten more than once—and right now I wasn’t in the mood. “Focus. Please. And PS, you’re disgusting.”

  Calvin sighed mightily without moving a muscle. “I was trying not to focus on dying from terminal boredom. And PS, thanks for the compliment.”

  I matched Cal’s mighty sigh and changed the subject entirely. “So when exactly were you going to tell me that you were tracking down Morgan-the-Wonder-G-T?”

  He still didn’t lift his head. “So Milo kinda sucks at keeping secrets, huh? One touch, and you instantly know everything.” He made a rusty sound that might’ve been considered laughter among the undead. “That must be weird.”

  “That’s not the way it works,” I said, but then just shook my head. I didn’t want to talk about Milo, even though I could think of little else.

  Meanwhile, Calvin was waiting for me to continue. Or maybe he wasn’t waiting. Maybe he’d just given up on anything ever happening. His eyes were starting to glaze over.

  “Milo told me,” I told Calvin, nudging him so that he’d snap to it and listen, “with his words, intentionally, that you’d gotten an email from someone that you think might be Morgan. The G-T girl who can get inside Sasha’s head and help her, while also finding out what she knows about Dana’s sister.”

  “Yeah, I dunno,” Cal said listlessly. “For someone who’s supposed to be like the second coming of Jesus with her super-telepathy, Morgan’s kinda mercenary.”

  “Mercenary, as in…?”

  “She charges for her services,” Cal informed me. “Two fifty for a consultation, a grand for what she calls an intervention. That’s what she would do with Sasha. And? The consultation is required before she’ll do the intervention. And she’s apparently scoping us out during the so-called consultation. She decides, after she takes our two hundred and fifty dollars, if she can be bothered to do the intervention.”

  “That’s kind of…” I couldn’t find the word.

  “Bullshit?” Cal provided it for me. “Not just kind of. Absolutely.”

  “Does Dana know?” I asked as nothing continued to move in or around Rochelle’s beach house.

  “I told her this morning, when you and Milo were…” He made those obnoxious smooching sounds that I’d come to hate.

  I socked him in the shoulder, more because Milo hadn’t kissed me in a smoochy way. It had been more like a kiss for Great-Aunt Matilda.

  “Ow!” Cal still didn’t sit up. He just turned slightly and made a sad face at me.

  “Milo and I were eating breakfast,” I told Cal. “With Garrett.”

  My use of the G-word triggered even more pain than that pseudo-punch, and Cal’s sad face turned tragic. “Why, oh why did Dana take him on her errands instead of me?”

  “Probably because she didn’t want to leave me alone with him,” I suggested. “Which I appreciate. Also? I’m pretty sure whatever she’s up to, she’s paying for it with Garrett’s credit card.”

  “Do you think they had lunch?” Cal moaned. “Someplace nice? Someplace delicious? Someplace where they’ll get something to go, and bring it, here, for us to eat—and whatever you do, don’t say no. Lie if you have to, but for the love of God, don’t say no…”

  “Yes, I think she’ll bring us lunch,” I obediently told him, although I had no clue if Dana would give us as much as a second thought. “So what did she say when you told her?” I added, “About Morgan?”

  “She was pissed, and it got noisy,” Cal said, perking up a little because Dana’s creative use of f-bombs always delighted him. “She thinks Morgan isn’t real.”

  “We pay two hundred and fifty dollars for a face-to-face, so Morgan can choose to not do the intervention with Sasha?” I asked. “Do we still think Morgan is real?”

  “Our only other option is to let you try to surf around inside Sasha’s head,” Cal pointed out.

  “So we need to find two hundred and fifty dollars,” I concluded because we both knew that was a no-go, and we soon fell back into silence. It was possible that Calvin dozed off.

  I alternated between looking at nothing through those binoculars, and watching my phone not ring.

  Where was Milo, anyway?

  And oh, yeah. Jilly. The girl who was missing. Where was she? Once we found her, we’d have Garrett out of our hair and this current awfulness could go back to normal.

  “Would you rather,” Cal mumbled, “have all your food smell like poop or everything you drink smell like urine?”

  I had no answer. Both choices were too awful. The question was a true lose/lose.

  And I realized then, with Milo acting so weirdly distant, and with Dana so frustrated and angry over our lack of leads in our search for her sister, I wasn’t at all convinced that the normal we’d return to wouldn’t be equally awful, too.

  ————

  Milo’s burner phone had died.

  That’s why he hadn’t called.

  He finally came back, roaring up the street on Dana’s motorcycle, dust flying behind him as he approached, like some blockbuster movie hero.

  Again, he didn’t reach for me or kiss me hello after he pushed his bike into the reeds and then climbed into the backseat of Cal’s car.

  Of course, that might’ve been because I greeted him with a somewhat s
trident “Where have you been? Are you all right? Why didn’t you call?”

  “I apologize,” he said as he handed his burner cell over to Cal, who was our unofficial tech expert. “When I left this morning, I had ninety percent battery and three hundred minutes left. But the first time I tried to call you, it was already dead. I’m so sorry, Sky. I didn’t want to leave Rochelle.”

  Calvin handed the phone back to Milo. “It’s dead, Jim. Looks like a case of POS-itis. You’re gonna have to get a new one. Maybe go for a little less of a piece of shit this time?”

  I exhaled hard. “Well, where’s Rochelle right now? Do we have time to—”

  Milo was already shaking his head no. “She stopped at the farm stand down by the public beach,” he reported. “She’ll be here soon.”

  So much for ringing her doorbell or peeking in the windows.

  “We need to duck when we see her coming,” Milo continued. He met my eyes. “I don’t want her near you. She’s definitely a Destiny addict. Her day was full trophy-spouse—tanning, facial, yoga—which isn’t all that different from lots of people here on Coconut Key, I know. But Garrett wasn’t kidding when he said that she’s mean. The way she treats other people…” He shook his head. “She’s a user.”

  Cal and I were well aware that Destiny addicts quickly lost their humanity and empathy.

  “She does have at least one friend though,” Milo continued. “Someone she met for lunch over at Harbor Locke.”

  Harbor Locke was where the really rich people lived in Coconut Key—not just your average multimillion or billionaire, but full-on trillionaires.

  “This woman could’ve been Rochelle’s clone,” Milo told us.

  “So…another D-user,” Cal concluded.

  “That would be my guess,” Milo said. “They had lunch there, at the club. It was all air kisses and hugs when Rochelle finally left. Happy-sounding See you laters.”

  “Did you get a name?” Cal asked.