Project Paper Doll: The Trials

by Stacey Kade

I couldn’t blame him. Her knitted hat had slipped back, revealing more of her pale hair, but more than that, it was her posture that spoke of something other. Her back straight and formal, she was rigid with tension, sitting forward in the cracked and worn leather seat as though she might be ejected from it at any second and have to scramble to regain her footing.

  It wasn’t normal. At all.

  I looped an arm over her shoulders and leaned back in the seat, pulling her with me. HE’S STARING. I focused on the words, putting effort behind them and trying to imagine them floating through the air to her. YOU NEED TO RELAX.

  She stiffened and then sagged into me, her head resting on my chest, a deliberate act rather than one of true ease. I could still feel the steel rod of fear running through her. “I can’t fail, Zane,” she whispered. “If we can’t find her, then nothing changes.”

  “I know, it’s okay. We’ll find her, I promise.” A promise I had no business making, but what else was I going to say?

  I tugged her hat into place. The wisps of hair that had escaped, now more than before, formed a halo of white-blond that framed her face, drawing even more attention to her unusual coloring.

  Brushing the strands off her forehead, I tried to smooth them into place beneath her cap. But they refused to cooperate, curling and kinking in absurdly illogical directions, tangling around my fingers.

  I winced in empathy and attempted to free myself without hurting her. “Sorry. I was just trying to help, but I…I think it has a mind of its own.”

  A startled laugh escaped her. “You wouldn’t believe how many hours I used to spend trying to get it to look…right.” She made a face. “Never quite managed it.”

  “It’s beautiful,” I said, my voice gruff. I felt like the biggest doofus saying it, but she deserved to hear it. I just wasn’t used to the whole giving or receiving compliments; I hadn’t had much practice with it.

  She looked up at me. “Thank you.” She reached out and touched my chin carefully, the tips of her fingers catching on the stubble. Then she stopped, turning her head to the side, her gaze going distant. I recognized the look. She was hearing thoughts, most likely those of our driver.

  When she turned to face me, her expression had shifted to something more calculating. “You’re right. He is curious. Perhaps we should give him a reason to turn his attention elsewhere,” she said under her breath.

  She raised herself up on her knees and pressed her mouth against mine, her tongue sliding over my lower lip.

  Whoa. In the cab? With the driver right there…Oh, who cared?

  I caught hold of Ariane’s waist, holding her steady against the motion of the car and pulling her closer.

  She framed my face with her hands as she kissed me, and her breasts brushed against my chest in a way that sent shock waves through me.

  I could feel the edge of her hip beneath my grip on her waist and, listening to temptation whispering in my brain, I slipped my thumb beneath the edge of her jeans.

  Her breath caught, and she shifted abruptly, moving to sit in my lap. Which made things so much better and so much, um, harder.

  I moved away from her mouth to trail kisses down the side of her neck. And she tipped her head back to let me. The skin of her throat was so soft, and she smelled so good.

  God, if we could just have twenty minutes alone…

  The cabbie cleared his throat loudly—we were getting a lot of that lately—and Ariane pulled away.

  “Almost there. You’re missing all the good stuff.” He gave an awkward bark of laughter. “Or maybe not, eh?”

  “The park is nearby?” she asked. Then she slid off my lap and onto the seat, as if the last few minutes hadn’t happened. Her cheeks were flushed and her breathing faster than it had been, both of which sent an odd burst of pride through me.

  I let out a slow breath, not able to make the shift as quickly.

  The cabbie pulled up to a sidewalk, across the street from signs for the Art Institute. “Here. Millennium Park.” He gestured grandly at an expansive stretch of manicured grass and gardens.

  Ariane sat forward in her seat. “And where is the Bean from here?”

  “Oh, for that, you’ll need to head north and a little west, away from the lake.…”

  I tuned out the driver’s directions, concentrating on calming the blood pounding through the various parts of my body, which was made all the more difficult because I could still feel Ariane against my side and smell the fresh lemony scent that would forever in my mind be associated with her. I’d probably have a hard-on every time I smelled dishwashing detergent for the rest of my life.

  As I stared out the windshield, trying to focus on something, anything else, a cab that had pulled to a stop ahead of us caught my attention. Five girls were piling out, laughing and tripping over each other in their giddiness. One girl, in particular, stood out. Her hair, some shade between brown and blond, was pulled up in a ponytail, and she wore a green shirt. One that might have been the shade used by Michigan State.

  “Ari.” I nudged her. “Look.”

  She straightened up and tilted her head to see around the driver.

  “Is that her?” I asked under my breath.

  Moving swiftly, Ariane shoved her door open. “Yes.”

  “Hey, hey,” the cabbie protested. “The fare?”

  Ariane paused long enough to thrust a handful of bills through the plastic divider without counting them.

  I hung back for a second, just to make sure it was enough. Though, if it wasn’t, I didn’t have more funds to cover.

  “You guys on a scavenger hunt or something?” he asked, handing me a bunch of singles through the divider.

  “Yeah,” I said to the cabbie, “and we just found the team we have to beat.” I pulled out a couple bills and gave them as a tip.

  With one last curious glance at me in the rearview mirror as I slid across the seat and out the door, he gave a nod. “Good luck with…whatever.”

  Yeah, that sounded about right.

  ELISE AND HER FRIENDS LINKED arms, laughing and chattering, as they walked into the park. They paused just long enough to crowd together and take a picture of themselves on someone’s phone—I couldn’t tell whose from this distance.

  One of them shrieked upon reviewing the photo, and they went through the routine again, wobbling as they squished closer.

  I felt a squeeze of envy in my chest. Of all the emotions I expected to feel upon actually seeing the girl who was supposed to die at my hand today and who might now be the one person able to help me save lives, envy was not one of them.

  But there it was, just the same.

  “Hey.” Zane caught up with me, out of breath. Then he frowned. “What’s wrong? You look…sad.”

  “Sometimes I just miss what might have been.” I tipped my head toward Elise and her friends.

  He followed my gaze and nodded in understanding. “Doesn’t mean you can’t have it, Ariane. Just not right this second, maybe.” He flashed me a smile.

  “Okay.” I took a deep breath. “Let’s do this.”

  “Wait.” He caught at my sleeve. “We can’t just walk up to them and start talking about alien assassins and conspiracies and government agencies.”

  “Really?” I asked. “And that was going to be my opening line, too.”

  He sighed. “Fine. I deserved that. My point was that we should have our story straight.”

  “And what should that story be?” I asked.

  He frowned. “The cab driver said something about a scavenger hunt. We could use that. Tell them we need to get points for, I don’t know, getting a stranger to let us use their phone.”

  “I was thinking we could tell her the battery ran out on my phone and just ask to borrow hers for a minute.” We wouldn’t be able to say much to Adam because they’d all be listening, but that would be the case, regardless.

  Zane opened his mouth and then closed it with a rueful smile. “Oh. Okay, yeah, that could work.”

&
nbsp; “Simpler is usually better,” I said, and because he looked so crushed, I stood up on my tiptoes and kissed him quickly, though it was more on his jaw than his mouth, because that was all I could reach.

  He looked startled, then pleased.

  I drew in a deep breath. “Excuse me,” I shouted at the girls ahead of us, lifting my hands to my mouth to help funnel the sound. “Hey!”

  It was a bizarre feeling to shout with the intention of drawing someone’s attention to me; I’d spent so many years working for the opposite. It made me feel exposed.

  A couple of the girls turned around to look; neither of them were Elise.

  Nor were they looking at me, I realized. The taller of the two girls leaned down to whisper to the shorter as they stared at Zane, and they both giggled. I felt a distinctly familiar buzz of interest from them.

  Crap.

  “Um, I think you’re up,” I said to Zane.

  “What?”

  “This is going to go better if you do the talking.” I gestured ahead of us to where all five of the girls had now stopped and were facing us. Elise was in the dead center, smiling, looking on mildly interested as her two friends on the end laughed. She resembled her brother mostly in her coloring, honey-colored hair, and brown eyes.

  Zane made a face. “I’m not really very good at that kind of thing—”

  “They’re not particularly interested in your words,” I said tightly. One of the girls, the tall one with the gorgeous dark skin, was very loudly wondering in her head if I was his girlfriend and how that had happened.

  My meaning sank in and the color in his face rose. “All right,” he muttered.

  Visibly summoning effort, he jogged over to them, and I followed at a slower pace.

  “Hey, sorry to bother you.” He gave them an easy smile, which all of them immediately and reflexively returned. I gritted my teeth against the gnawing jealousy. Of course they would smile at him. This was his world; these were the type of girls that should be flirting with him.

  “I was hoping we could borrow your phone for a minute,” he said, mostly to Elise, because of course that’s whose phone we needed.

  But it was the tall girl who volunteered hers. “Here. You can use mine.” With a flirtatious smile, she flipped the thin, ornate braids of her hair behind her shoulder and produced her phone from the pocket of her very short shorts.

  I tensed, ready to step in, but to Zane’s credit, he didn’t so much as blink. “Actually, it’s really dumb,” he said with an apologetic smile, “but we’re on a scavenger hunt and we need to borrow the phone of a girl in a green shirt.”

  Elise swung her bag off her shoulder but hesitated.

  Zane held up his hand in the Boy Scout salute or whatever it was. “I promise, we’re not calling China or a 900 line or anything. We just need to check in.”

  Her friends nudged her, whispering endorsements. I held my breath, but then Elise shrugged, digging into her bag and pulling her phone out of a deep side compartment.

  “You look so familiar,” the tall girl said to Zane as he stepped forward and took Elise’s phone. “Have I seen you somewhere?”

  I barely kept from rolling my eyes. I am here.

  The little blonde next to the tall girl with braids, her partner in staring at Zane, nodded. “Teri’s right. I know I’ve seen you before.” She frowned. “Are you on TV or something?”

  Oh my God, seriously? Zane was handsome, there was absolutely no doubt about that. But weren’t they laying it on just a little thick?

  “No, sorry,” he said, concentrating on Elise’s phone.

  The blonde frowned at him. I could feel her certainty and confusion. This was not flirting, or not just flirting, anyway. She really believed she’d seen him somewhere, and recently. She was mentally flipping through her day, trying to place his face.

  A small ribbon of dread began to uncoil in my stomach. I had a bad feeling about this.

  “You don’t remember where you saw ‘him,’ do you? I mean, he’s always wanted to look like someone famous,” I said.

  Zane raised his eyebrows at me, but I ignored him, concentrating on keeping my fake smile intact. I was good at pretending to be normal, when it involved being quiet and staying out of the way. Engaging people and getting them to give me information through regular social discourse, however, was not one of my specialties.

  The blonde stuck her lips out in exaggerated pucker of thoughtfulness. “No…Maybe…no.” She pulled out her own phone from a sparkly bag strapped across her chest and scowled down at as she scrolled through images.

  Zane turned to me and tilted the screen so I could see the list of names. There was an Adam in Elise’s contacts. No last name.

  I nodded.

  He hit send and held the phone up to his ear.

  The ensuing silence in our little impromptu circle lingered too long, well past the comfortable point, even for me.

  Fearing that would only draw more attention to whatever Zane would say on the phone, assuming Adam even answered, I tried to fill the gap. “So…you’re having fun in the city? Where have you been already today?” I figured that would be a safe topic of conversation.

  But the blond girl was still frowning over her phone with the braided hair girl. The other two girls were already bored, talking amongst themselves and rolling their eyes with great enthusiasm at something.

  Elise bobbed her head in assent. “Yeah, it’s been great. We’ve hit the usual places. Museums, Wrigley, Willis Tower.” She shifted her weight uneasily, glancing between her friends and Zane, who was holding her phone captive.

  His head popped up sharply. “Hey, man. It’s Zane,” he said quickly. “Don’t hang up.” He gave me a thumbs-up gesture, which I took to mean that we’d reached Adam and that it was the correct Adam.

  I let out a slow breath of relief. Thank God.

  There was a long pause on Zane’s end, and I abandoned all pretense of conversation with Elise and/or her friends.

  “No, it’s not what you think, okay?” Zane said, still trying to sound casual. “But this…scavenger hunt is more complicated than what we were told. The targets are different for everybody. We need to meet up and…get a game plan together.” Zane sent a questioning look to me, and I nodded quickly.

  Even though Zane’s words weren’t anything conspicuous, the tension was building. Even the girls, who had no idea what was going on, could feel it, fidgeting as they waited.

  “It’s not a trick, and I don’t care that you took my place,” Zane said. “But there are some things you should know. You need to stop what you’re doing and we need to meet.”

  “You know, guys, we really need to get going,” Elise said to her friends, but in a loud voice that was meant for us.

  Then something Adam said made Zane blanch.

  Oh no. No, no, no. I knew all too well what that might mean for Carter. For Ford. For all of us. “Give me the phone,” I said.

  “No,” Elise protested, reaching out as if she might try to intercept, even though she was on the other side of Zane.

  Zane turned away from me, keeping the phone out of my reach. “Yeah, fine. You’re more qualified. Done. Agreed. Just tell us where you are,” he said. “We’ll meet you.”

  My temper sparked to life. “Zane,” I said through clenched teeth. “Give me the phone.”

  Suddenly, the blond girl shrieked, making me jump. “I knew I recognized him!” She shoved her phone, face out, at her friends.

  As she did, I caught a glimpse of Zane’s face, an image of his school picture from last year like they’d scanned it from the yearbook.

  Or gotten it from his parents.

  Oh no.

  “It’s the guy from the news,” the girl continued. “On the screen in the cab? Remember, the mom worked for those companies and then they abducted him or whatever, and Teri said that, hell yeah, she’d abduct him.” She paused just long enough to look in Zane’s direction and blush, though he was still distracted, his back to the
m as he talked to Adam.

  I moved swiftly, darting around Zane and snatching the phone out of the blonde’s hand for a closer look.

  “Hey!” she said with a pout.

  It was indeed Zane’s school picture, with a blue banner beneath it that said MISSING, PRESUMED ABDUCTED. And it was part of the Breaking News section of the ABC 7 site.

  TONIGHT: Research Assistant in Alleged Chicagoland Bioethics Scandal Speaks Out; Accuses Former Employers of Abducting Her Son.

  My heart sank.

  There was a promo video, posted an hour ago and just fifteen seconds long. The still of it was Mara Bradshaw sitting in a chair, looking small, old, and tired, the silver in her hair lighting up extra bright beneath the television lights. And oddly enough, she was wearing a school sweatshirt supporting the Mustangs, even though Wingate was home of the Hawks.

  How had she managed this so quickly? Zane had spoken to her only this morning. Unless it had been something she’d been planning already. I supposed that was possible. Still, something about it seemed strange. And it was definitely dangerous. Very dangerous. For her and us.

  I reached back and yanked on Zane’s sleeve until he turned. “What?”

  I held the screen so he could see it.

  He paled, his hand with the phone slowly dropping to his side. “She said she’d do something. I…I didn’t think it would be that.”

  I hit the button to play the video. Better to know what we were dealing with.

  “Oh, there were questionable practices at both companies, GenTex and Laughlin Integrated. I was involved in unauthorized human testing, experimenting on children,” Mara said in response to an unheard question.

  I couldn’t breathe. She was really doing it. Talking about the lab and what they’d done there. I felt as if someone were tearing my clothes off in the middle of a public arena. Or lifting me up so I could see the sun for the first time. It was a horrible mix of exposure and relief that made my stomach churn.

  There would be no going back from this. Not for Mara. Not for me, either. The risk now would no longer be being recaptured but what lengths Jacobs and Laughlin would go to keep us silent or make us disappear.