Death by Latte

by Linda Gerber

  Mom began handing out orders like a drill sergeant. “Aphra, check the bathroom; Seth, start going through the cupboards and drawers in the kitchen; I’ll search the den; and Stuart, you take the front room.”

  I had to give Stuart credit; he set to work without question, flipping over his carefully positioned couch cushions. And even though he was the one who was antsy for us to clear out of the apartment, he pulled out all the stops searching the place. He even dug his hands through the soil of the potted plants. It didn’t improve his mood, though. By the time we had finished searching the apartment, the stairwell, and the garage, day had turned to night outside. With each passing moment, Stuart was becoming more and more irritable.

  “This is not protocol. We should have been gone a long time ago.”

  Mom shrugged him off. “It’s better to leave after dark, anyway,” she told him. He just tightened his lips and finished packing up his computers.

  Seth was inconsolable. He paced in the corner, muttering, “What am I going to do?”

  I tried to comfort him, but he just glared at me. “You’re the one who lost the ring.”

  “I didn’t lose it! It was taken from me.”

  “It wouldn’t have been taken if you hadn’t left it.”

  “I did not leave it!”

  He folded his arms and turned away.

  Mom was gathering her papers and arguing with Stuart. When she caught me watching, her face turned cold, almost hostile. I couldn’t take it anymore. I had to get away from Mom, from Stuart, and especially from Seth.

  No one even noticed when I slipped out the door and into the hallway. I wanted to scream. To punch something. To punch myself.

  I never thought I’d say it, but I wanted to go home. If I were back on the island, I could pretend the whole trip never happened. I could pretend my mom wanted me to find her. I could pretend Seth liked me. I could pretend I didn’t feel like the biggest loser on the face of the earth.

  But pretending never made anything true. In reality I knew I could never go back. Not to the way things were. Too much had happened. I pushed through the door to the stairwell and ran blindly down the steps, not stopping until I spilled out into the garage. The lights flicked on—thanks to the stupid sensor over the door. I hugged my arms and sank down along the edge of the wall, waiting for them to click off again. It was hard enough to face the reality of the cold, stark garage, the overpowering smell of rubber, grease, and motor oil, and the fact that I had let a lot of people down. I didn’t need the glare of the light highlighting my flaws.

  A tear rolled down my cheek and I swiped it away. I had no right feeling sorry for myself when Mom had lost a partner and Seth’s dad was being held hostage somewhere.

  The lights had barely turned off when the door opened and they blazed on again. Seth’s broad shoulders filled the doorway, but there was a posture of defeat to them, and in the hesitant way that he stepped through the opening. I turned my face away from him, scrubbing my hands over my eyes to hide the tears. The last thing I wanted was for him to see me crying.

  The click of the heavy metal door closing echoed through the garage and I could hear Seth’s footsteps on the rough concrete floor. “Aphra?” His voice sounded as if it had lost its edge, but I’d lost all faith in my ability to guess what he might be thinking. I didn’t answer.

  He took another step. “Aphra, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to blame you.”

  “But it’s my fault.” My voice sounded small. Pitiful.

  He closed the distance between us and touched a tentative hand to my shoulder. “It’s getting cold. I grabbed this from the apartment for you.”

  I looked up to see him holding out a Seahawks sweatshirt. His gesture made me feel even worse. I stood and took the sweatshirt from him, unable to look in his face. I dutifully slipped it on over my head and stood awkwardly, struggling for something to say.

  “I’m so sorry, Seth.” My voice cracked.

  “You didn’t know.”

  “What you must be going through . . .”

  He dug his hands into the pockets of his jeans and hunched his shoulders. “They hurt my dad,” he said. He sounded lost and frightened.

  Tears filled my eyes once more, but I was no longer ashamed of them. They were for Seth, not for me. “I’m sorry,” I whispered again. He held my gaze for a long while and then brushed a tear from my cheek with the back of his finger.

  “Ah, jeez, Aphra.” His voice was rough and husky. “I didn’t mean to . . .” He took my hand hesitantly, almost shyly, and drew me to him. The garage lights flickered off and in the darkness I found the courage to wrap my arms around his waist. I laid my cheek against his chest, listening to the rhythm of his heart. He smelled like I remembered, felt like I remembered. I wanted to cry for real.

  Because even though in that moment I finally had what I had wanted—to be with Seth, his arms around me—I realized with painful clarity that was not how it would always be. Seth and I would never end up together. We couldn’t. If we stayed alive long enough to find the ring and save Seth’s dad, the Mulos would have to run again. And if what my mom said was true, I would always act as a kind of divining rod that the bad guys could use to lead them to Seth. The only safe thing for us to do would be to stay apart.

  I held him tighter, knowing that it might be the last time I ever would. We could have stood like that all night and I would have been happy. But I knew the clock was ticking. Mom and Stuart would be ready to clear out at any time. Whoever had killed Joe could be looking for us next. I had to set things right and then step out of Seth’s life forever.

  I pulled back, wiping my eyes. “We can’t give up.”

  In the shadows, I couldn’t read Seth’s face. He didn’t say anything, but his head moved. Maybe he was nodding in agreement. I didn’t know.

  With new determination, I pushed away and marched toward the door.

  “What are you doing?”

  “I’ll find it for you, Seth. If I have to retrace Joe’s steps from the moment he left the apartment, I’ll find it.”

  “Don’t be crazy. What are you going to do, walk to the city? Do you even know how to get there from here?”

  “I’ll . . . I’ll take the car. I have a pretty good sense of direction. I can find the way.”

  He made an incredulous sound in his throat. “Right. You think your mom’s going to just hand over her keys?”

  “I wouldn’t ask her.”

  “Aphra. Be real. Your mom and Stuart worked for the CIA. You’re not going to be able to swipe anything without them knowing.”

  “Well, I can’t just sit around and do nothing! It’s making me crazy.”

  He stuffed his hands into his pockets again. “I know.”

  The pain in his voice deflated my bravado. I felt empty inside. Helpless. “Seth, I need you to know how sorry I am.”

  “I do know.” His voice was gruff. “But it’s my own fault. I didn’t know the ring was such a big deal.”

  I edged closer until I could see the worry line his face as deeply as the shadows. “Why is it such a big deal, Seth? Why do they want it so much?”

  He looked at me with an intensity I’d never seen in him before—like he wanted to tell me something, but he wasn’t sure if he could.

  I drew his hand from his pocket and clutched it in my own. “You can trust me, Seth.”

  He bobbed his head, but still didn’t say anything for what felt like a very long time. Finally, he spoke in a low voice, barely a whisper. “The ring . . . contains a list.”

  “It contains a list? What kind of list? How?”

  His hand slipped from mine. “I . . . can’t say . . .”

  That wasn’t exactly the answer I was hoping for, but I knew better than to pursue it. Yet. “Seth, the people who are holding your dad . . . what do they want the ring for?”

  “I don’t know. I only heard one side of the phone call.”

  I swallowed, remembering what Seth had said about his mom having
to hear his dad scream on the other end of the line. I couldn’t even imagine the helplessness and horror she must have felt. “How is your mom dealing with all this?”

  He shrugged and looked down at his feet.

  “Why didn’t she come with you?”

  “She didn’t know I was leaving.”

  “What?”

  “I wasn’t meant to hear the phone call. It came in the middle of the night. She probably thought I was asleep. All I could think was that it was my fault. I had given the ring away; I had to get it back.”

  I took his hand again. “We’ll find it. If we have to—” I blinked. “Wait. A list! I almost forgot! Joe talked about a list, too. Right before he died.”

  Seth’s eyes widened. “What? What did he say?”

  “I’m not sure I remember it all. It didn’t make sense to me at the time. Plus he didn’t give me complete sentences, just random words. At least I thought they were random.”

  He tightened his fingers around mine. “Think, Aphra. What exactly did he say?”

  I screwed my eyes shut tight, trying to remember. “Something about a list and a . . . a cup or something. I thought he was talking about his coffee cup. Like he knew he’d been poisoned. I watched him, Seth. I saw him take a drink and then he started jerking and fell to the ground and I ran to him and . . .” I tried to erase the image of his panicked face from my mind. “He could hardly take a breath.”

  “When did he tell you about the list?”

  “He said ‘the list is . . . ’” I grasped at the air as if I could find the answer hanging there. “In something.”

  “In the cup?”

  “Cup holder! That’s what it was, a cup holder.”

  “What kind of cup holder? Like for takeout? What does that mean?”

  “I don’t know. He didn’t have any cup holder with him.”

  “Are you sure he didn’t say anything else?”

  “I’m sure.” I could barely stand under the weight of Seth’s stare. It was like he was trying to will me into understanding exactly what Joe was talking about. But I didn’t. Unless . . . “Wait. What if he was talking about the cup holder in the van? Maybe the ring is in there.”

  We raced to where the van was parked, but the door was locked. Seth cupped his hands around his eyes and peered through the window.

  “Do you see anything?”

  “No,” he said. “It’s too dark.”

  “We have to get the keys.”

  “Wait!”

  I stopped midstep. “What? Why?”

  “I don’t want to alert Stuart and your mom.” He glanced pointedly at the stairwell door. “If we find the ring, we don’t say anything to them, okay?”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “We don’t know who has my dad. I trust your mom, but . . . ”

  “But they’re probably watching her.”

  “Right. And she said herself that there may be a leak in the Agency. It would be better for everyone if they think I’m going home empty-handed. At least until I can take care of my dad.”

  “Okay.” I looked around the shadowed garage. “But how are we going to get into the van?”

  “We need some wire.”

  We searched quickly among the shelves and castoffs scattered around the garage, but there was no wire to be found except for some flimsy, plastic-coated electric wire, and that wasn’t what we wanted, according to Seth. “It needs to be sturdy enough to pull up the pin.”

  The words were familiar enough to me—I’d learned to pick household locks from our super back at the resort—but I couldn’t envision the inside mechanics of a car door.

  “Wait. I got it.” Seth popped the arm off the windshield wiper. “It has a U-hook on the end. I can use that.”

  He slid the makeshift hook down between the window gasket and the window, fishing inside the door.

  I folded my arms. “I don’t even want to know where you learned to do this.”

  “I lived near Detroit,” he said. Like that explained anything.

  I glanced nervously at the stairwell. Any moment, Mom and Stuart could be ready to leave. I doubted either one of them would appreciate us messing with the van . . . or keeping whatever we discovered a secret. “Quickly!”

  The lock clicked.

  Seth climbed into the van and I pushed in behind him. We felt in the dark for the plastic cup holders. One of those insulated aluminum coffee cups sat in the hole closer to the driver’s side. The little sipping spout was half open and I could smell the remains of Joe’s coffee—bitter and black. I lifted it gingerly. It felt creepy handling his cup, but I had to check beneath it, just in case. Nothing. The look on Seth’s face told me he had found nothing in the other side, either. Another dead end.

  I wasn’t ready to give up yet. “What about . . . Could he have put the ring in the car before he went to the coffee shop?”

  “Only one way to find out.”

  I jumped out of the van and ran to the car. Crossing my fingers, I grasped the handle. “It’s open,” I called softly.

  I climbed into the car and felt for the cup holder. Unfortunately, this one slid out from the dash like a CD drive on a computer. It featured two holes cut into the molded plastic that cups could fit into. There was no room for a ring to be hidden behind the mechanism.

  Seth peered in through the open door. “Well?”

  “Nothing.”

  I could literally feel his disappointment, but what did he expect? It had been a dumb idea, anyway. If this ring was so valuable, there’s no way Joe would have left it lying around in a cup holder where anyone could see it.

  I froze. He wouldn’t have wanted anyone to see it. He would have hidden it. “Back to the van! We’ve got to pull it out.”

  “What?”

  “The cup holder. It’s just molded plastic sunk in a hole in the console. He could have put the ring beneath it.”

  I didn’t need to say anything more. We raced to the van and clawed at the edge of the cup holder until we were finally able to pry it up.

  I felt around the vacant hole, checking for secret compartments or other covert stuff like that. Clearly the vehicles were standard issue, because there were no James Bond-type features anywhere.

  Dejected, I fitted the cup-holder piece back into the hole. I grabbed the coffee cup from where it had fallen on the floor, dribbling coffee all over the floor mat. It rattled. I drew in a breath. A slosh I might expect, but a rattle?

  I dumped the coffee out the door. It splattered on the garage floor.

  “What are you doing?” Seth hissed.

  “Hold on.” Hands trembling, I unscrewed the lid and upended the cup. Out slid the ring, still attached to my chain.

  “You got it,” Seth breathed.

  Just then, the lights flicked on. I blinked against the sudden glare and closed my fist around the ring.

  “What’s going on?” Mom marched across the garage, followed closely by Stuart. “What are you doing in there? Get out this instant.”

  Seth climbed out the passenger-side door and I climbed out the driver’s side, slipping the ring into my pocket as I went.

  “We were just searching the van,” Seth explained.

  “Well?” Stuart looked beyond me and into the van through the open door. “What did you find?”

  I made my face go blank. “Nothing.”

  He pushed past me to see for himself and stepped right in the puddle of spilled coffee. He looked down.

  I rushed to redirect his attention. “Um . . . what if he left it in the coffee shop? We should go back there and—”

  “Absolutely not.” The light danced on his glasses as he shook his head. “You don’t think the police will have that place staked out?”

  “But—”

  “Too dangerous. Besides, I’m sure the Agency has scoured the place from top to bottom by now.”

  “Oh.” I tried to look suitably disappointed as I shut the van door. “Just trying to help.”

 
; Stuart gave me a condescending pat on the arm. “And we appreciate it. We’ve really wasted enough time, Natalie. We need to move out now.”

  Mom gave a resigned sigh. “I am so sorry,” she said to Seth. “We’ll figure something out.”

  Seth hung his head like he was completely defeated. Even though I knew he was only acting, it broke my heart. “I understand,” he managed.

  Mom and Stuart headed back inside. At the door, Mom paused and turned back to us. “Be ready to leave in five.”

  I nodded, afraid to speak for fear I’d give something away. The moment she closed the door, Seth rushed to where I was standing.

  “Where is it?” he whispered.

  I pulled the chain from my pocket and held it out to him, the ring swinging like a pendulum.

  He grabbed it and clutched it to his chest. “Yes!”

  “So you still have time to help your dad, right?”

  His smile faded. “I hope so.”

  “Can you call them? Tell them you’re coming?”

  “Not without tipping off everyone else.”

  “Who’s everyone? Who else is after this ring, Seth?”

  He wouldn’t meet my eyes. “I don’t know.”

  “I think you do. I also think you know why they’re after it.” It wasn’t an accusation. Just a fact.

  Finally, he looked at me. “The ring contains a very important list.”

  My stomach twisted. The list again. Is that why Joe was killed? “What kind of list are we talking about?”

  “A list of names.” Seth waited for that to sink in, and then added, “Sleepers.”

  I drew in a breath. The other members of his parents’ sleeper cell! I thought of how I had been carrying that ring around for the last couple of months and my head felt light. But . . . I had never seen any lists. And it’s not like there were a lot of hiding places in a ring. “How is that possible?”