by Brinda Berry
“You think I’d let you touch me?” I growled through my teeth as I felt anger winning out over panic.
“Don’t flirt with her,” Regulus snapped to Arizona. “You’re scaring her.”
The smile left Arizona’s face, and he was serious when he looked at me next. “Accept my sincere apologies. I meant no offense. Umm, I think I’d like to eat something. I’ll see what I can find in her kitchen.”
I looked across at Regulus to see if he would be following Arizona to the kitchen, but he didn’t move. We sat in silence as I wondered how I might escape. I could stand and probably hop to the door if they were out of the room. But then, where would I go? I couldn’t drive like this, and we were too far out of town to walk anywhere.
I noticed the time on our grandfather clock for the first time since waking. I saw that I had missed the first tardy bell at school. I would be missed. Em would know something was up. Could I last that long? He was staring at me, but I ignored him. I closed my eyes and tried to think logically. While playing Quest of Zion, I had several strategies to turn the tide if losing a battle. I could throw my opponent by changing the location.
Chapter 4
Seeing is Believing
“I have to go to the bathroom,” I said calmly.
“OK, we’ll both go,” Regulus answered.
“There is no way I can use the toilet with you in there with me.”
“Why?” he asked.
“Are you crazy? I can’t. You’ll have to wait outside the door. But I gotta go.”
Regulus pulled me out of the recliner, easily hoisting me into his arms. I stiffly avoided looking into his face as he carried me to the downstairs bathroom. It occurred to me that I could try to struggle or head butt him, but I scrapped that plan since I had no follow-up move.
He set me on my feet in front of the door. Since this bathroom was basically a powder room with only a sink and toilet, the cabinets lacked anything that could help me escape. He looked around once, then stepped out of the way to allow me to enter.
“Can you manage?” he asked.
“Yes,” I hurriedly answered with my face turning red.
He stared at my wrists. “Here, be a smart girl. I’m doing this against my better judgment.” He stuck his hand in his pocket and pulled out a metal object that promptly ejected a blade.
I sucked in air involuntarily.
“Hold out your hands, and I’ll cut the tape,” he said in a calm, slow voice as if speaking to a child.
I obeyed. Once he had cut the binding on my ankles as well, my mind began to whirl with the possibilities.
Regulus shut the door, and I could tell that he was still on the other side.
I reached over, turned the lock, and sat on the floor with my head on my knees. What did they want from me? I huddled there for a good half hour.
“You know you can’t stay in the lavatory all day. I didn’t see any tools. Just how long do you plan to stay in there?” Regulus sounded cranky.
I refused to answer. I was still hoping I could figure something out.
I could smell food. The blond guy had actually gone into my kitchen and cooked himself something. The nerve! I couldn’t believe I was a prisoner in my own home. I listened and their voices turned to colors in my mind’s eye, spreading a warm glow that I associated with good things. That didn’t make sense. I smashed down the treacherous emotional glow of warm yellow he emitted and tried to concentrate on his words.
“Tell her, man,” Arizona’s cheerful voice came across in a hushed whisper. “We could use her help.”
I could make out every word if I pressed my ear against the door.
“She’s not supposed to know yet,” Regulus murmured.
I was getting panicked. What did he mean by “yet?”
“It’s not time,” Regulus said. “I can’t risk her knowing too much. We could have walked out of there last night if you had followed the plan.”
I sat leaning against the door and waited. I heard sniffling. I bent my head down and pressed my cheek on the cold tile floor to look under the door. Biscuit’s wet black nose was wedged in the narrow space. He started to whine.
“Your little pet is becoming distressed,” Regulus said.
“That’s because he’s scared.”
He laughed. “Your little pet isn’t scared in the least, and you shouldn’t be either. If Arizona or I wanted to harm you, it would be done. We would have taken care of that last night. Actually we’re your friends.”
“Oh yeah,” I muttered to myself. “My friends always drug me and get out the old duct tape. Favorite pastime.”
I always know about people from the colors they exude from every pore. It’s there whether I want to see it or not. I didn’t know why their colors didn’t warn me.
Why hadn’t they done anything to me? I did concede that you never know about the crazy ones. I had watched movies where the kidnappers make you trust them.
“So, you guys on America’s Most Wanted?”
“I don’t know what that means.” I recognized Regulus’s voice.
In the silence after his answer, I could hear Arizona smacking away on whatever he had cooked. My stomach growled.
“You know, like you’re wanted for some heinous crime in ten states and the FBI is looking for you. And you always wear a wife-beater tank.” Except that’s not how you look, I thought.
“Your FBI does not have information about me.”
“Maybe she meant the CIA,” said Arizona. I heard a pop as an object hit the floor. “Hey, you almost hit me with that.”
“We are agents of the IIA.” Regulus’s voice was slow and probing, as if testing this piece of information.
“OK, real cute.” I visualized my irritation rising like the red bar of a thermometer. I was getting irritated. I talked at the door. “Listen guys, this has been fun and all, but you will get caught. My friends know I should be at school today. My friends know about you.”
“Do they?” Regulus asked. “Now that’s a problem. Sorry, Mia. I had hoped that your friends wouldn’t become involved.”
But I wasn’t listening to the last sentence. I heard the words, “Sorry, Mia,” and I knew I had experienced a déjà vu moment.
I flashed back to the seconds in the garage last night when he had walked toward me. He had said my name last night. This creep knew my name before Arizona had read my dad’s e-mail. The gravity of this was sinking in like a heavy weight pressing on my chest. Had these guys been scoping out my house long enough to know my name? And why? What had they been planning to do to me and Dad?
At that moment, I heard a chime. My laptop sat on the living room sofa notifying me that someone wanted to chat. I guessed that the sound represented a message from Em. She probably wanted to gripe at me for not being at school.
I flattened to the floor and saw Regulus’s shoes retreating. I figured that he was going to see about the sound in the living room. And there sat my cell phone on the floor. It must have fallen out of his pocket. I froze and held my breath. Could I somehow get my phone?
I quickly unlocked the door, opened it, and bent down to retrieve the phone.
“It’s just the computer,” I heard Regulus say. Footsteps started in my direction. I scooted back into the bathroom and closed the door, locking it. I fumbled to dial. In my haste, the phone fell and hit the tile floor, sliding across and behind the toilet. I clumsily dove to grab it.
“She has the phone,” Regulus yelled to Arizona. He shook the door handle. “She’ll call the police.”
“We know about Pete. We know he’s alive,” Arizona said in an urgent voice.
I stopped breathing. I blinked and sat down on the cold tile, no longer reaching for the phone.
“Curse you, Arizona,” Regulus’s voice was a low growl. “You have chosen her fate.”
* * *
I shivered and leaned back as I jerkily slid down the wall to sit. The pattern of roses on the bathroom wallpaper swirled and I forced mys
elf to focus on the curling edge at the seam. The paper was coming unglued like my mind, I thought. Voices from the other side of the door grew louder. I started to wonder if I had hallucinated the entire day.
Or maybe the events were just one of those extremely vivid dreams. In a flash, I remembered the early days of Pete’s disappearance when all of his friends were questioned. Those days, I’d walked around in a dreamlike state. No, a nightmare. The police, of course, had reassured us that there was no sign of a struggle, and therefore no reason to believe that Pete had been taken. Also, there was the fact that kidnapped teenagers didn’t pack a duffle bag.
“Mia, answer me, or I’ll bust the door in,” came a persistent voice through the wooden barrier between us.
At first, only a squeak came out of my mouth when I tried to answer. The squeak exploded from me in an angry deluge. “You had better tell me what you know about Pete, and you had better tell me now. If this is some head game, you’ll be sorry ’cause I am the wrong girl to mess with.”
I clamped my hand over my mouth. What was I saying? These guys had information about Pete. And if I instigated their anger, they were less likely to tell me anything. I inhaled deeply, and then exhaled in small puffs.
“Calm down,” replied the deep voice I now recognized. Regulus sounded close, as though his face was only inches from the door. “I’m going to take the door off the hinges, or you can unlock it. I’m sure you want to talk to us about this.”
I listened to Regulus’s voice, so calm and reasonable, so disarming. Maybe his voice belied his growing anger. I knew he could get inside the bathroom easily enough. I just hated to lose that one last bit of control I had of the situation. He did have something I wanted, and he was well aware of it.
I’d waste time if my stubbornness forced him to remove the door. I didn’t swing the door wide as that would probably have knocked me over given that I was restrained to small areas of movement. I peeked out, and Regulus stood with his arms folded, leaning against the door frame.
“I’m glad you opened the door.” He opened it fully, stepped inside, and retrieved my cell phone from the floor. In the last few moments, I had completely forgotten about it. Now the cell phone didn’t matter. What did matter was finding out if they knew something about my brother.
Arizona appeared out of nowhere with the duct tape and held it up to show Regulus. Then, he bent and began unrolling it.
I froze as he balanced on one knee to wind the duct tape around my ankles. In this close proximity to both Regulus and Arizona, I could see that they were both closer to my age than I had first thought. Being scared out of my wits had skewed my perception. I couldn’t make an educated guess since all the guys I went to school with looked like teenagers with their stubbly chins and lanky limbs.
“I think we can do without the restraints, don’t you?” Regulus asked.
Arizona stood a little close for comfort. I stumbled to move away and he backed out of my personal space. He smiled shyly.
“OK, let’s give her some room,” Regulus said as he nodded to Arizona. They both took a couple of slow steps back, never taking their eyes off me. I mimicked their slow movements. Though I wasn’t taped, my arms and legs felt wooden and tense.
“Can we sit and talk without anyone doing something rash?” Regulus asked.
I led the way to the sofa, extending my hand like a gracious host. He sat on one end, and I picked the opposite edge. Arizona sat on the coffee table, which put him right between us, ignoring Regulus’s glare. I edged away, disconcerted that I was within touching distance of both.
“Mia, sometimes things are not as they appear,” Regulus said.
I had the uncanny feeling that he was talking to me the same way one talks to a mental patient. “What do you know about Pete?” I cut in, all business. I made an effort to sound calm and rational.
“The more important question is, what did Pete know?” Arizona said.
Regulus gave him one sharp look that instantly quieted him.
“OK, I’m not good with riddles. What did Pete know? What the heck does that mean? Was he in some kind of trouble?”
“Pete knew about us, and who we are,” Regulus said.
“So, who are you?”
“We are enforcers.”
I could see Regulus and Arizona making steady eye contact with each other at this point, but I didn’t have the faintest idea why. Did they expect me to say, “Ah, that makes it clear?” The silence was heavy. I heard the grandfather clock’s pendulum swinging rhythmically in the hallway, weighing on my brain like a dark purple fog.
“We are unsure if Pete ever confided in you about the IIA.” Regulus offered the words as if prompting for information.
“Is this some secret organization, like the Mafia or something?” I tried to tone down my mocking sarcasm. I wanted my answers about Pete. I knew my brother well enough to be quite certain that he wouldn’t be involved with anything illegal.
Regulus nodded his head, appearing to have come to a decision. “IIA stands for Interdimensional Immigration Authorities. I think it would be better for us to show you something important to the IIA.”
The statement filled me with dread. Is this something that Pete knew about? I swallowed audibly. “OK.”
Regulus rose, and Arizona jumped to his feet. They led the way outside to the front lawn, and I followed. The sun was shining directly overhead, so I knew it must be around noon. I was still in my short pajamas, but I had become unconcerned about this minor detail in the events of the morning. I did have the good sense to wear some tennis shoes as we left the house, and now I was glad as I tried to keep up with the two guys leading the way down my gravel drive.
Both Regulus and Arizona wore boots, so they walked like they were on an easy hike while I had a difficult time keeping up. The crunching sound filled my head, along with a visualization of the pictures I had taken with my cameras. And then I just went blank as I tried to keep up with their swift pace. The driveway had never been paved since it extended for a half mile, and I was fairly winded as we approached the end near the waiting booth. I still didn’t see anything out of the ordinary when Regulus and Arizona started toward the spot opposite.
Buzzing began along with the tickle up my back. The instant Regulus’s feet entered the swirled spot on the ground, he was gone. Literally. There one second and gone the next.
I gasped in shock. Arizona heard, turned his head toward me, and winked as he stepped into the flattened spot of brush.
I looked from side to side. I was alone.
My knees wobbled. I sat on the bench of the waiting booth. I blinked hard.
Once, my dad had taken my brother and me to a magic show in Branson, Missouri. The magician had walked on the stage and amazed us with a variety of tricks relying on sleight of hand and faith of audience. As a finale, he had made a helicopter disappear from the stage. We were thoroughly impressed.
This was another déjà vu moment.
What had happened? It had to be a trick, of course. Not magic. You don’t just step onto a spot and disappear. But just as my imagination could not devise a place for the helicopter to be hidden from view, I couldn’t imagine a hiding place for Regulus and Arizona. I walked over to examine the spot where they both had stood momentarily. I circled it and looked around to make sure that I was still alone. No abracadabra. Only me and the birds.
And the buzzing sound that seemed to engulf me. I flashed back to the moment that Regulus had disappeared.
I scooted my foot forward to the edge of the circle of flattened grass. I inched my toe into the circle. I don’t know if I thought I would disappear to the mystical hiding place where Regulus and Arizona were surely waiting for me, but nothing happened. Nothing except for the vibration that buzzed through my head and traversed down my body like silver mercury trying to converge but instead, wiggling aimlessly.
I planted both feet in the circle and waited again. I closed my eyes expectantly.
I had def
initely lost my grip on reality. A mental replay of the events of the last twenty-four hours flashed through my mind like a cartoon flip book. I went back to the bench and sat leaning my head back against the cool wood of the booth and closed my eyes.
I opened them, expecting to see Regulus and Arizona standing there. The blond, Arizona, would be smiling since he didn’t seem to be able to wipe that constant grin off his face.
I was still alone.
I sat as the sun slid from an overhead position, and my stomach began to protest. When you aren’t wearing a watch, time becomes meaningless, gauged only by the traveling sun. I couldn’t tell if I had been there for thirty minutes or two hours.
I lay on the bench, looking up at the roof and noticed my camera. My camera held the proof. Tangible evidence that I wasn’t out of my mind. I disengaged the tiny memory card and ran up the drive as gravel pierced my canvas sneakers.
The door was wide open. I could just hear my dad asking if I had been raised in a barn. I ran to my bedroom to insert the memory card into the computer. I chewed my thumbnail in anticipation while the computer seemed to take tortuous minutes to open the files for viewing. My hair, which had been pulled back into a neat ponytail before bedtime last night, hung in a wild tangle around my head. I tried to brush my fingers through the mess and get it out of my eyes.
The images displayed on the screen, and I rapidly clicked through the first ones. The camera had taken pictures during the night. I hit the arrow key furiously trying to move past the array of animals that the camera had recorded. Ironically, there were five times the number of pictures as the previous time I had checked the card.
“Apparently moon phases do make a difference in feeding patterns,” I said, finding the humor in trying to get past those images.
I sucked in a breath as I displayed the picture I wanted.
I wasn’t going to be committed to an asylum after all. There on the screen stood Regulus and Arizona. You couldn’t see their faces because they were both walking away from the camera when the motion detector activated. It caught them at the moment right before Arizona had turned and winked at me. I knew this because in the next moment, they were gone.
