Sinless

by Sarah Tarkoff

  “But what if the package is bad? What if it’s a bomb or something? What if it’s some kind of code? ‘Package’ could mean anything.”

  “It won’t be a bomb.” Jude laughed a little at my paranoia.

  “How do you know?”

  “Why would Prophet Joshua want to bomb something?”

  “I don’t know. Why would he want to do anything? I have no idea what I’m walking into. If Joshua’s bad, maybe this thing I’m going to do is bad.”

  Jude saw that I was starting to spin out. “It’s going to be fine,” he reassured me. “I’ll follow you, I’ll be right there. Whatever it is, we can handle it.”

  “You promise?”

  “I promise.” I was still shaking with fear—he wrapped his arms around me. “You’re doing a really brave thing.” His praise was all the encouragement I needed.

  The week flew by in a haze of dread. When Saturday arrived, I downed a pill, not willing to risk any potential guilt showing on my face, and I headed out. The appointed meeting spot turned out to be a pharmacy in the middle of town. I looked around the store. These all looked like regular shoppers. I had no idea who I was supposed to meet.

  Long, uncomfortable minutes passed. Was I in the wrong place? I was about to call the number on the business card again, to ask what I was doing wrong, when a pharmacy clerk approached me. “Are you Grace?” I nodded, and she handed me a plastic bag with something heavy inside. “The address is on the box inside.”

  I nodded, taking it, and headed out of the store as quickly as I could. Once I was safely at my car, I took a deep breath and unloaded the bag—a box of chocolates. Innocent enough. But something didn’t feel right.

  I thought of the water in the prophet’s office, which I could only assume had contained the poison that killed Clint and Rowena Ramsey. My stomach curdled. There was only one reason Prophet Joshua would ask me to deliver something like this—why he wouldn’t simply ship it through the mail, or use an external delivery service. He needed secrecy because the chocolates were poison. I was about to commit murder.

  Chapter 2

  Where was Jude? I drove out of the parking lot as slowly as I could, cars honking and swerving around me. This was supposed to be our signal that something was wrong. Why wasn’t he pulling up next to me, why didn’t I see him anywhere on the road?

  My mind began to whirl. What if this whole thing had been a setup somehow? What if Jude had been tasked with recruiting me from the very beginning? What if his affection was a ploy to get me to this very moment—what if the recording in the bear I got from his mother had been a setup?

  I pulled inside a parking garage to regain my composure. It seemed Jude wasn’t coming to meet me, so I’d have to come up with my own plan. I had two choices: (1) try to skip town and cross the border into Canada on my own, with no time to prepare, or (2) go through with what was very likely tantamount to murder. As I struggled to think of any kind of third option, someone rapped on my window. Someone in a blue motorcycle helmet. Jude was still on my side after all.

  I rolled down my window. “Where have you been?” I couldn’t contain the frustration in my voice.

  Jude flipped up his helmet’s visor. “I’m right here. What’s going on?”

  “It’s chocolates. The package is chocolates.”

  I could see Jude jumping to the same conclusion I had. “Are they wrapped?”

  I showed him the box, sealed in plastic wrap. “They could have sealed them even if they’re poison.”

  Jude examined the wrapping. “It looks like any store-bought box.”

  “But what if it’s not? I’m not going to kill someone, I can’t do it.”

  “Calm down. Take a breath.”

  I did, but against my will. “What am I going to do?”

  Jude was calm, focused. “I’ll go buy another box. One we know isn’t poison. We’ll switch them out.”

  “How?”

  “I’ll meet you in the parking lot or wherever, we’ll trade really quickly, it’ll be easy. I’ll drop mine on the ground, you pick it up for me, no one will even notice.” I looked down at the box of chocolates. If we succeeded, no one would be able to tell the difference. “Now go. If anyone’s watching you, they’re gonna wonder why you’re hanging out in this parking lot.” I thought of the guard with the ice-blue eyes and wondered if he was still tailing me. The prophet had implied that the guard was no longer following me, but I imagined that might change while I was doing a mission specifically for him. I looked around. It was just me and Jude in here, and I saw no security cameras. It seemed like I was safe so far.

  “Okay. Thank you.” Jude had put me at ease. We had a plan. We could do this.

  “I’ll see you in a few,” Jude said, flipping his visor down. He drove off, and my stomach reknotted with anxiety.

  I drove slowly, wanting to give Jude plenty of time to find the chocolates and meet me at the address. I made a few intentional wrong turns, hoping to seem to anyone monitoring me that I’d simply gotten lost. I circled the block before finally pulling into a parking lot. The parking lot of an elementary school. I was glad I’d taken the pill to ease my guilt, because the thought of bringing these chocolates into a building full of children made me want to scream. I walked very slowly toward the doors, following the instructions I’d received with the package. Jude should be here by now . . . where was he? This parking lot was huge. He could be anywhere. Did he see me?

  “Are you here with the package?”

  I turned. Squinted at the woman walking toward me, her neat blue dress swishing rhythmically as she walked.

  “I . . . I don’t . . .” I stammered, trying to buy time.

  “A little bird told me a pious young woman was stopping by with a package from the prophet himself. We’ve all been so excited . . .” Behind the bright bubbly woman, I saw a motorcycle pulling up. Jude held a package that looked just like mine.

  I tried to stall longer. “It’ll be here in just a minute.”

  “Is that it?” She looked at the bag I was holding. “What’s in there?”

  “Chocolates.”

  “From the prophet?”

  “Yeah,” I said, knowing I couldn’t lie.

  The woman laughed. “Look at you, trying to pull my leg.”

  She tried to take the package from me, but I held tight. “I’m supposed to deliver it to someone directly. A Rebecca Ridgeway?”

  The woman waved toward the building, where I saw a pretty young elementary school teacher standing with her class. “Becky!” she called out to the woman. “Your package!”

  The second woman walked toward us, and I thought about bolting, thought about warning them of the danger they were about to bite into, but I couldn’t. Or I should say, I didn’t. I just stood there as the two women took the package from my hands and tore it open.

  “Chocolates! He sent you chocolates. You got chocolates from the prophet!” the first woman squealed. Rebecca was practically jumping for joy, ripping through the cellophane.

  I took a step away, and then another, faster and faster. I’d done it. They were examining the selection, taking a bite, then another, and I couldn’t watch. I couldn’t be there when it happened. I walked right past Jude, to my car, and I drove away.

  Chapter 3

  “I should have grabbed it away,” I sobbed to Jude days later. “I should have told them, I should have done something, I shouldn’t have just run away . . .” He sat next to me on my bed as I ranted on. “I’m a coward.”

  “You’re not a coward. You were trying to do something good. And we don’t even know if anything happened.”

  I’d been watching the news obsessively, certain that “Elementary School Teachers Punished in Parking Lot” would have been a top story, but so far no hits. I’d taken a pill every day since Saturday, but I still felt guilty. “I just have to know,” I said.

  “You have her name. Here.” He held up his phone, where he’d Googled her. No news articles, but the white p
ages site did list her home address. “Let’s go check in on her.”

  So we drove to Ms. Ridgeway’s house, and we sat outside, waiting. We spent hours in that car, watching her neighbors walking their dogs down this quiet, middle-income block. And then, finally, a car pulled into her driveway. A woman got out. “That’s her!” I cried.

  “She’s alive,” Jude marveled.

  I looked through a pair of binoculars I’d borrowed from my dad. She looked pious as ever—more beautiful, even. “She’s fine,” I said, not quite sure I believed it.

  “So maybe the chocolates were just chocolates.”

  “Maybe . . .”

  Maybe I’d gotten lucky. Maybe this was it, maybe it would all be this easy.

  My cell phone rang. It was that number that had been on the business card. “Don’t pick it up yet,” Jude said.

  We drove away, and the number kept calling. “I have to,” I said, and finally, I did. “Hello?”

  “Thank you for your service, Grace,” a voice on the other line said. I didn’t recognize it.

  “Who is this?” I asked.

  “Another friend of the prophet. He’s asked me to deliver something to you. Are you home?”

  “On my way!” I said brightly.

  I dropped Jude off and headed for my house, trembling. A man was waiting on my front porch. One I recognized. A man with ice-blue eyes.

  “Good to see you again, Grace.”

  “You, too,” I said weakly.

  “The prophet asked me to give you this.” The guard handed me a flash drive.

  “What is it?”

  “A series of simple tasks, things you can do at your own pace. If you feel so moved.”

  “I live to do the work of Great Spirit!” I said, hoping I was convincing.

  The guard smiled, and left. I stared at the flash drive in my hand. I hoped that somewhere on it was my ticket to freedom.

  A few hours later, Jude snuck in my bedroom window, and we went through the drive together. It held five folders, each labeled with a person’s name. “Do you recognize any of these people?” Jude didn’t. Each folder contained a bio, some maps, and a file labeled “Mission.”

  “Mission! Dun dun dunnnnn. Grace Luther, superspy,” Jude teased.

  “Stop it,” I said, but I still felt a thrill. As much as I feared what was on this drive, I was curious. The world was still full of secrets to unravel.

  The first folder we opened was for Nicole Tao, a pious-looking aerobics instructor who worked thirty minutes away. The mission file said to deliver her a vase of flowers, which I could get by contacting the prophet’s office. “Is there a way to drug those?” I worried. “Some kind of airborne poison maybe?”

  “Who knows. Maybe the prophet just has crushes on these women,” Jude quipped.

  “Like he had a crush on the Ramseys, I bet.” Remembering the way they lay on the ground, dying, gave me pause. I’d been lucky once . . . I didn’t want to assume I would be again. I didn’t want to be responsible for any more deaths, directly or indirectly.

  We moved on through the others. Nothing looked helpful, until at “Dr. David Marko” Jude took control of the mouse.

  “Do you know him?”

  “No. But I know his lab. Smith-Marko Pharmaceuticals—it’s a little research company not far from here. That scientist I told you about, Alexandra Smith—she’s been working with us. She’s in hiding,” Jude explained. “We rescued her from being taken to this prison-lab . . .”

  “Prison-lab?”

  “Like a work camp for scientists. We’ve never been inside, but we’ve heard the stories. All these scientists who have gotten too close to the truth, to discovering what’s really happening, they just disappear. Forever. Supposedly they end up at this work camp, doing who knows what kind of experiments, for Prophet Joshua we assume. Their families are threatened, so they’ll develop technology for whoever’s perpetrating this conspiracy. Alexandra just got grabbed in the middle of the night—some guys shoved her into a van. Dawn intercepted her, saved her. If she was valuable, maybe information about her partner would be, too.”

  We called Dawn, and I could hear the elation in her voice. “Dr. Smith is the one who found the link between brain chemistry and changes in appearance—she’s the reason we’ve been able to save so many people already. But Dr. Smith lost all the data from her experiments when she lost access to her lab. If we get that data back, we could find out even more, maybe even how to stop all this.”

  “How would we get it back?” I asked.

  Jude pointed to Marko’s mission file. “The prophet gave you the entrance codes to the lab.”

  I skimmed over the file. “He wants me to steal Marko’s data, not hers.”

  “Steal them both. Make copies of them both, and just give the prophet what he wants.” Dawn was breathless. “This could be the breakthrough we’ve been waiting for.”

  I put us on mute and looked at Jude. “And if I do that, that’s enough? You’ll feel like you paid your debt?”

  Jude considered it. “I think so.”

  “You’d come with me to Nova Scotia?”

  Jude laughed. “That’s really where we’re going, huh? Nova Scotia?”

  I smiled. “So you are coming.”

  “I’d go anywhere with you.” He kissed me—a kiss of hope. For once I was excited about the future, and I tried to push aside the obvious—that I was officially picking a side in this cosmic war, and I had no proof that it was the right one.

  Chapter 4

  So the plan was in motion. I kissed Jude goodbye, and then kissed him goodbye again. It was hard to get out the door, now that I knew he loved me. But I’d be back soon, with that “breakthrough” data in hand.

  The streetlights whizzed by as I drove back into town, to the address marked on the map. Smith-Marko Pharmaceuticals. I parked in the empty lot and stared at the building—lush landscaping, big glass doors, modern interior. I wondered whether this could possibly be another test from the prophet—breaking and entering should make me feel guilty, right? But I reminded myself, not if I was doing it in Great Spirit’s name. I shuddered to think of all the things someone could justify doing in the name of Great Spirit. It echoed mankind’s warlike past in a way that frightened me. I steadied myself. Old Grace would have been just fine in my shoes. She would get through this mission un-Punished, and so would I.

  I tapped the numbers into the keypad, and the door slid open. I stepped inside—the place was empty, eerie. Lights came on as I walked, following me through the building. Joshua had provided me with a basic floor plan, which led me through winding corridors directly to Dr. Marko’s office. It was messy, family photos and scribbled children’s drawings mixed in with scholarly articles. I wasn’t sure exactly what I was looking for, but I figured copying the contents of Marko’s hard drive would suffice.

  While the drive was copying, I went on my secondary mission—the missing research of Dr. Alexandra Smith, the files that would let me run away with Jude. A quick search of office nameplates showed that Alexandra’s office had been repurposed some time ago. Where would they be keeping her data?

  Dawn had told me what to look for, though I struggled to keep the information in my brain. Even then, when the details of Dr. Smith’s research were immensely important to me, my eyes had still glazed over when she explained it. I knew I was looking for keywords, big long chemical names.

  After a quick rummage through a few other offices, I found a storage closet full of musty filing cabinets. I pulled out a few drawers, then found it, the mother lode—a whole drawer labeled “A. Smith.” Copies of her old files that the prophet’s operatives hadn’t managed to find and destroy. All those matching keywords—my ticket to a lifetime on the run with Jude. I grabbed as many files as I could carry and headed back out into the hallway, where I heard a noise.

  I quickly stepped back into the storage room, waiting, listening. The noise was getting closer. Footsteps. And then—a bright light in my ey
es. A flashlight. “Who are you?” the voice asked.

  Chapter 5

  I held my hand up to my eyes, and the light lowered, giving me a view of the man who’d caught me—fortyish, with kind eyes and messy hair. “I’m Amy Thurlow’s niece,” I said quickly, remembering a name I’d seen on another door earlier. “She sent me to grab some files. She wasn’t feeling well and I offered to go get them so she could work at home tomorrow.”

  The man squinted at me. “Thurlow’s niece? Sister’s kid or brother’s?”

  “Sister’s,” I said, hoping that was the right answer.

  The man chuckled a little. “You must have some stories, then.”

  “Yeah, I’ve got a few,” I joked back, grateful to this faceless woman who was helping my cover.

  “Tell me what you’re looking for, maybe I can help.” He seemed so earnest.

  “Oh, I found it all in here,” I said, gesturing to the filing cabinets, not knowing how to bluff my way through actual science with an expert.

  The man looked at the files in my hands skeptically. “In here?”

  “Yep!” I smiled, hoping he’d just go away.

  “What’s she working on?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. She started explaining, but I don’t remember . . . I’m not so great at science.”

  He chuckled, going into fatherly mode. “Everyone great at science had to work hard to get there. What if Einstein had been so fatalist? If science is in Amy’s blood, it’s in yours.”

  “Maybe it skipped a generation.” Before he could attempt to inspire me any further, I said, “Well, she’s waiting. Gotta go!”

  “Do you need me to walk you out to your car?”

  “Nope, I’m okay,” I said.

  I walked past him, out the door, but he followed behind me, full of concern. “Are you sure?”

  “I’m okay!” I repeated.

  I kept praying for him to peel off, go somewhere else—and then he did—into Dr. Marko’s office. “Have a great night!” he called ahead to me. I realized with dread—I’d been talking to Dr. Marko this whole time.