The Rules for Breaking

by Elston, Ashley

  “I don’t know! There was a crowd outside my window tonight, but I have no idea why.”

  “Keep moving,” Tyler says and we follow him down the hall on the first floor. The entire bottom floor looks like any other museum. Statues of religious people and paintings and even jewelry with the tiny little plaque next to it describing the who, what, when, and where litter every possible space.

  We pass through a second set of doors and find ourselves in the middle of a very small but ornate church.

  Tyler seems to have forgotten that he’s supposed to be holding us captive. The knife is down by his side and he’s racing ahead of us, dragging Teeny, not even looking back to see if we are following. I wonder, not for the first time, how he got involved with Thomas. He is completely inept at this and Thomas seems like someone who doesn’t tolerate mistakes.

  “This way,” he calls over his shoulder.

  He pushes the side door open, slowly. After he’s satisfied Mateo isn’t lurking outside the door, we follow him through. We empty out into a deserted side street and run in the opposite direction of the crowd. After zigzagging through some side streets, we all stop to catch our breath.

  Tyler remembers a moment too late that he’s dropped his guard.

  “I don’t think you know how to use that knife,” Ethan says to Tyler. He pulls Teeny away from him, then pins Tyler against an old brick wall behind a Dumpster. “You better start talking or I will kill you.” And he is dead serious. In this moment, I think Ethan would do it.

  And Tyler must think that too, because he wastes no time. He gives Ethan the quick and dirty version: he was set up to be my boyfriend in the hope I would confide in him what I knew.

  “He pretended to be my friend, too,” Teeny says.

  Ethan throws me a glance over his shoulder. I feel the accusation there. I had a chance to tell him about Tyler—what he was to me, what we were to each other—and I lied. And it was the one thing I swore I’d never do again, especially to Ethan.

  “Who is Daniel Sanders? His prints were on her journal.”

  Ethan has to loosen the grip on Tyler’s neck before he can answer. He looks at me when he says, “I’m Daniel Sanders. I sent the flowers.”

  I gasp and even Ethan seems taken aback.

  “And I tracked you down at that party so I could return your journal.”

  “I…don’t…understand…. I asked you if Tyler was your real name!”

  “My name is Daniel Tyler Sanders. Tyler is my real name and what my mom called me. I didn’t lie to you,” he answers.

  “And the ‘T’ was for Tyler, and we all assumed it was for Thomas. You’re the reason we’re here!”

  Ethan punches him in the face before I can process what’s happening. And he keeps hitting him.

  Blood squirts from Tyler’s nose and he goes down into a crouched position to protect his face and body. Ethan grabs him by the throat and lifts him up against the wall. “I ought to kill you.”

  I’ve never seen Ethan so angry.

  Grabbing Ethan’s arm, I try to pull him away from Tyler, but he won’t budge.

  “Don’t do this, Ethan. Think about this. We need answers. Let’s hear what else he has to say.”

  Finally, I break through the rage he’s in and he lets go of Tyler, who slides down the wall. He’s moaning and bleeding and I try to find an ounce of sympathy for him, but I can’t.

  Ethan squats down, getting in Tyler’s face. “Tell me his plan or I will beat you until you’re unconscious.”

  Tyler spits out a mouthful of blood on the ground next to me. “Just like what he said. Mateo is after us. He’s using you as bait. He plans on killing him. He’s going to kill the head of the cartel who ordered the hit, Vega. He’s going to take over. I’ll tell you everything you want to know. Just let me catch my breath.”

  “How does he plan on doing that?” I ask.

  Tyler shrugs. “I don’t know. He doesn’t tell me everything.”

  Ethan, Teeny, and I stand there forever, all of us trying to absorb what Tyler said. And then I remember what Thomas said to me in the woods, This is not about you, or really ever has been. You just found yourself in the middle of a very dangerous power struggle.

  Ethan moves back and Tyler inches back up until he’s standing.

  “Keep talking,” Ethan says.

  Tyler looks at me when he finally speaks. “I didn’t know what was going on when he asked me to get close to you in Florida. I didn’t know anything…about his profession. Once I figured it out, I made him promise not to fulfill the contract. I never ask him for anything, but I asked for this.”

  I move in closer to Ethan. The night air is cool but I’m freezing inside. I keep thinking this is a horrible dream and I will soon wake up.

  And then it dawns on me. Tyler is the person who made Thomas promise not to kill us. Tyler is the reason I’m alive right now.

  “When he got back from Arizona, he gave me your journal. Said you obviously liked me more than we both thought you did based on what you’d written about me. He thought I would want to keep it, but I really wanted you to have it back. I could tell how important it was to you.”

  I feel sick.

  “So I went to Natchitoches and followed you and waited for the right moment to give it back. But I didn’t think it through. I didn’t think you would tell the feds. When Thomas found out through his sources that they had the journal and were going to test it for prints, he knew they would find mine and he wanted to get the journal back before that. That’s why he broke into your house. Finding me would lead to him.”

  “This is so screwed up,” Teeny says and for a second I want to laugh. This is so screwed up.

  Ethan still doesn’t look convinced. “But how did his boss find out about all of this?”

  “That agent put it through the system that there was an informant ready to flip and tell everything about Thomas. You don’t get to be in Vega’s position without having your own sources. He heard this and cut Thomas loose immediately and found a replacement. There is a line of guys waiting to take his spot.”

  “What are you doing with him to begin with? Why does he trust you?” I ask Tyler.

  Tyler is quiet a moment before whispering, “I’m his brother.”

  Holy shit.

  “Why did he bring us here, to New Orleans?” Ethan asks after he somewhat recovers.

  “He keeps places all along the southern U.S. border. Gives him somewhere to regroup when he comes in and out of the country. This one just happened to be the closest one we could get to. It was the perfect hiding place,” Tyler says. “In a quiet part of the Quarter. No one messed with it.”

  And this reminds me of the crowd outside. “Why are all these people here?” I ask.

  Tyler lets out a nervous laugh. “They’re here for you.” Maybe he’s just glad there’s something wrong that he didn’t cause.

  “Me? All I did was open my window. I don’t know why those people started taking pictures of me.”

  “All those carriages are from the same tour company. I checked their site when I saw people out there. Some woman on a haunted tour last night took a picture of Ursuline. After looking back at her pictures this afternoon, she noticed one of the images had a girl hanging out of a top-floor window of Ursuline, waving her arms around. She sent her picture and story to the haunted tour company and they posted the story and picture on their site. Told everyone to come back at dusk to see if there would be another ‘sighting.’”

  “And those people are here to see a girl hang her head out of a window?” Ethan asks.

  Tyler rolls his eyes and says, “She stuck her head out and stirred up the rumor. Every other building in this area is supposedly haunted or has some dark rumor attached to it, but no one ever sees anything weird on those tours—until last night. There will be two beliefs floating ar
ound with the locals about that picture—it’s fake or it’s part of the three-hundred-year-old rumor associated with Ursuline.”

  “What rumor?” Ethan and I ask at the same time.

  “The Casket Girls,” Tyler answers. “For the last couple hundred years, one of the biggest superstitions in the Quarter is that the third floor of the Ursuline Convent is where the vampires live, and that tour company is going crazy with what they call ‘proof.’”

  “What?” we all ask at the same time.

  Tyler shakes his head, “Not here. It’s a long story and it’s not safe standing around here with Mateo so close. Come with me. I can take you somewhere safe.”

  “We’re leaving, just the three of us. You can sit here and piss yourself for all I care.”

  “You have no idea what you’re up against,” Tyler says.

  “You’re probably right, but at least we’ll be in control of what happens to us.” Ethan says. Then he knocks him out cold.

  Rules for disappearing

  by Witness Protection prisoner #18A7R04M:

  Always have a backup plan….

  New rule by Anna Boyd:

  Forget the backup plan—just make sure you have a plan. Even if it sucks.

  are people everywhere. By the time we stop running, we’re several blocks away from the alley where we left Tyler hidden behind one of the Dumpsters. As much as I hate him right now, I don’t want Mateo to find him. I take a quick look at the street sign—Toulouse and Dauphine—although that means absolutely nothing to me. We stand in the middle of the sidewalk and try to take it all in.

  Ethan is still furious—with Tyler, with Thomas, and probably with me for not telling him the truth when I could have. And he’s favoring his left side, so I’m guessing he’s in a lot of pain, too.

  Another wave of guilt washes over me for getting him involved with this.

  “We need to keep moving,” he bites out.

  There is a huge group of girls heading toward us and they seem to be holding up this one girl in the middle. She’s hammered drunk, stumbling with each step, and wearing a strapless black minidress and a wedding veil. And it’s no regular veil—this one has condoms attached to it. Lots and lots of condoms.

  “What kind of necklace is that girl wearing?” Teeny asks.

  The group gets a little closer and I can make out a replica of a guy’s private parts.

  We push Teeny along and I walk behind her, trying to block her view of the roving bachelorette party behind us and totally ignore her question.

  By the time we hit Bourbon Street, there’s no hiding the craziness of the French Quarter from Teeny. Every other business is a strip club and some of the girls who work there, wearing very little, call to customers from open doorways. And if that wasn’t enough, most of the windows to these businesses are papered with pictures of what goes on inside.

  But the music is incredible. Every door has a different sound pouring out: jazz, rock, country, and blues. It’s hard not to stop and stare and try to take it all in.

  I hear little gasps from Teeny as her eyes soak up every single thing on this street—good and bad. We’ve slowed down to try to blend in with the crowd as they flow down the street.

  So this is Bourbon Street.

  “Ethan, what’s the plan? Where’re we going?”

  “I don’t know,” he grits out through clenched teeth. “I’m looking for somewhere we can sit and figure this out.”

  The next block still has an abundance of strip clubs, but there are a few more bars and restaurants. Ethan ducks into an open doorway, Teeny and I right behind him. It’s a small restaurant, really just a wide hallway with a bar on one side and a row of booths on the other.

  The place looks like a dive but the smells are incredible. We pass trays of boiled crawfish with corn and potatoes and it’s like swimming through a sea of seasonings.

  We slide into the only empty booth in the back.

  “What are we gonna do?” I ask. “We don’t have any money.”

  Ethan looks at me for the first time and it breaks my heart. I can see the disappointment in his eyes. “I know. I know. I just need to sit for a minute and think,” he answers back.

  “Can we call Dad?” Teeny asks.

  I take a deep breath and tell her about the video Thomas left behind.

  Her eyes well up with tears but they don’t spill over. I couldn’t be more proud of how she’s handling all of this.

  An older woman walks up to the table and just looks at us, no greeting, nothing.

  “We’re waiting on some people. Can you give us a minute?” Ethan asks.

  She glances at the bar. “A few minutes then you gotta order or get lost.”

  Teeny tugs on my sleeve and whispers, “Do you think they’ll give us some water for free?”

  “Can my little sister have a glass of water while we wait?” I ask the waitress.

  Her mouth puckers and a million little lines form around her lips. “Y’all in trouble?”

  We all shake our heads, probably a little too enthusiastically.

  “No, trouble. We just need a minute and a glass of water. Please.” Charm oozes from Ethan and just like that, the waitress is gone. Seconds later, she’s balancing a tray with three waters and a basket with a hot loaf of buttered bread. I hope the drool running from my mouth isn’t obvious.

  “Thank you so much,” Teeny says as she breaks off a huge chunk and shoves it in her mouth.

  “That’s on the house. But you got about five minutes before Sam notices you ain’t ordered nothing. Better get moving ’fore then.”

  The bread is gone within seconds and the hunger I was only vaguely aware of earlier is screaming its presence now. Even with that huge amount of food in our room, I had no appetite while we were there.

  “Do we have anything we can hock? We need money. We’ve got to get off the street,” Ethan says.

  I look at my hands; no watch, no rings, nothing.

  Teeny’s head drops a little as she digs something out of her front pocket. She opens her hand to show what’s inside.

  The pocket watch from the box in the wall.

  I put my arm around her. “Will you be okay giving up the watch? Hopefully we can get enough for a room somewhere for tonight. Otherwise, we’ve got nowhere to go.”

  Teeny hands it to me and nods. “Yeah, it’s fine. It doesn’t work anyway.”

  From across the table, Ethan lifts it out of my hand to get a better look at it. “What’s it made out of?”

  I shrug. “Not sure. It’s pretty tarnished. Probably silver.”

  “What the hell are we going to do?” Ethan asks, rubbing a hand over his face.

  I shrug, feeling hopeless. “Thomas warned me if we called the cops, he would know. He was wearing that police uniform and I really believe him even though I’d love nothing more than to dial 911 right now.”

  “I don’t think we can trust Agent Williams, either,” Ethan says. “We still don’t know exactly what reason Thomas had Noah.”

  Ethan’s right. I’ve never felt so powerless.

  I look at Ethan and say, “Maybe we can figure out somewhere to take Teeny. To get her away from this.”

  Teeny’s head pops up. “If I can’t be with Dad, I’m staying with you. I don’t trust anybody else. And don’t talk about me like I’m not sitting right here.”

  Ethan looks at me a moment, his expression weird. “Tell me everything you know about the brother.”

  “I met him when I was Avery Preston in Florida. We started hanging out, a little at first then more regularly.”

  “Is that a different way to say y’all were dating?” he asks.

  “Are you mad?” I ask back.

  He drops back against the booth hard enough to make the table vibrate. He’s shaking his head befo
re he starts talking. “Why would I be mad that you had a boyfriend before I ever met you? I’m mad you weren’t straight with me the minute you found out he was under that mask. Why did you make it out like he was just some random guy you knew? It’s not like this isn’t a big deal, Anna.”

  He’s right and I feel terrible. Worse than terrible.

  “You were so hurt and frustrated when I got to your room. And look at how you reacted when you found out that we had dated! You nearly beat him to death. I didn’t want to give Thomas any reason to get rid of you. I thought I was doing the right thing.”

  He spins his empty water glass on the table. “And to think it’s his fault we’re here. He was there, at the party. He knocked into our chair so hard you almost fell out.” He looks up at me and asks, “You didn’t see him there?”

  I hold my hands up in front of me and say, “No! I swear. I didn’t see him.” I scoot out of the booth and then back in on his side. I move as close as I can to him and I’m relieved when he doesn’t back away. My arms go around him but he doesn’t hold me back.

  I turn my head toward his ear and whisper, “And the reason I never mentioned him to you before is because he never entered my mind. I liked Tyler. At the time, it was nice to try to be a normal girl with a normal boyfriend. But I never loved him like I love you.”

  Ethan closes his eyes, tightly and says, “I just thought we were done with the lies. I understand you couldn’t tell me everything while y’all were in the program, but we’re past that now. We will not get through this if we can’t trust each other.”

  “You can trust me.” I can’t lose him over this.

  “We’ll talk about this later. We need to find a place to stay for tonight.”

  On the way out, Ethan pulls the waitress aside and talks to her quickly, then he ushers us out of the restaurant.

  “She said there’s a pawnshop not far from here. Let’s go.”

  We walk back the way we came, getting off Bourbon and heading down Orleans Street. It’s still crowded but significantly less so.

  Ethan pulls Teeny close. “Scan the crowd. Mateo won’t stand around Ursuline long. Look for the cross tattoos on his neck.”