He stays a few feet behind. I don’t see him, but I sense him lurking like a shadow. He’s so inconspicuous, I can’t help but wonder if he’s followed me before. Then I remember earlier today, at school. I saw him. He’d been following me then. My stomach knots.
I saw him at my school and dismissed it as my imagination. It’s mistakes like those that could get me killed, and yet I can’t stop making them.
I lift my chin as my foot hits the sidewalk. Across the street, lights from the Chicago Theatre’s marquee bursts through the dimming twilight. Descending the Red Line stairs, I push my way through the turnstile and take the escalator down to the platform. Hundreds of people pass me going up, headphones snaking into their ears, messenger bags slung across their torsos. None of them seem more frightened or alerted than on any other day. I’m half expecting someone to recognize me as the girl from the pier, the girl found on the mayor’s dock, the girl whose father was savagely murdered exactly two years and eighteen days ago. But no one takes a second glance.
I look for Swarm, unable to find anyone who fits the stereotyped profile I’ve created for them. And it worries me. I have no idea who they are. Stepping off the escalator, I squeeze my way to the front of the platform, taking my place beside a tiled pillar.
I glance over my shoulder. He stands behind me, several rows of people back, not looking in my direction.
Train lights flicker in the tunnel to the right. The air is stale and warm. Sheets of discarded newspaper flutter on the tracks below. A rat scurries to take cover. Across the platform, the same Chicago ad from the train takes up most of the wall. It promotes Phase Two of the Lakefront Project, listing ways the project has benefitted the city like it’s justifying the next group of mansions they’re about to build. Someone has spray-painted Save the Parks across the entire poster in green.
I’m trying to figure out how someone crossed the tracks to spray-paint their message when the train’s rumbling grows into a booming, rattling noise that overwhelms the station.
The first several cars pass as it slows to a stop. Every car is crowded. Standing room only. The car that stops in front of me is especially packed. Teenagers with hard, scowling faces stand behind the door beneath the train’s putrid florescent lighting. Dozens of them. One guy glares at me with ferocity. I’ve never felt so hated. His lips are pressed together. His nostrils flare.
They’re here for me.
They stand two feet away on the other side of the train doors, ready to mob me, to beat me to death. I try counting them, to determine my odds, but I can’t stop staring at the lead boy. He’s the one who will throw the first punch. I try to step back, but too many people push me forward from behind. I can’t move. No one lets me move. And then the train chimes, the doors open. People flood out of the car.
Someone collides with the right half of my body, spinning me around. It knocks me off balance. This is it—the start of my attack. Not a punch or a hit, but a shove, knocking me backward. I’m falling to the ground and my death. I can’t breathe. Can’t run.
And then his arm reaches out and catches me. I don’t hit the platform. His chest and his bicep hold me upright. I clutch his shirt, bracing myself for the next hit. Dozens of people file out of the train, pushing me, knocking into me.
But they go right past us.
Every. Single. One.
No one hits me or kicks me or shoves me down. Instead, each passenger rushes out of the train and up the stairs to catch their transfers.
They aren’t trying to kill me. It’s just a crowded train full of people shoving and racing and not paying attention like any other rush hour train on any other day. And it’s that realization that makes me lose it.
I’ve been holding my breath for too long, and I gasp for air so abruptly I start to cough.
He guides me into the train while I wring his shirt, gulping oxygen, looking like some frenetic lunatic. I stumble as he leads me to a seat in the back of the train. A burning sensation explodes behind my nose. I start crying and shaking. It’s all too much—my dad, Dopney, people who want me dead. The pain of it pours out in a horrific, ugly deluge of snot and tears and coughs.
Everything seems to fade into the background—the scene I’m making, the commuters staring at the freak show I’ve become, and the fact that he tilts my hat to cover my face as I cry into the chest of this guy whose name I still don’t know.
Somewhere along the way, the train emerges from the city’s tunnels. Dusk hits the windows, pouring into the dark and dingy car as the Red Line becomes elevated like the others in the city.
With my crying under control, I keep my face against his chest while our train travels to the north side of the city. My breakdown is humiliating enough. Last thing I need is seeing it all over tonight’s news broadcasts because some jackass with a camera phone recorded my meltdown. If the city’s reporters are desperate enough to jump into some fictional romance between me and Cullen Henking, I can only imagine what they’d do with this.
We’re approaching Fullerton when he nudges my elbow. “We’re getting off.”
I lift my head. The sun’s soft orange glow reminds me of how red and puffy my eyes must be. I can’t get off this train fast enough.
When the doors open, he grabs my hand. Head down, eyes down, I follow him to the elevator at the end of the platform.
“Give me the sweatshirt.”
The elevator doors close behind us.
“I thought . . .” My words catch in my throat. I clench my teeth. Hand over his sweatshirt. “I just thought back there . . .”
He faces the elevator door, waiting for it to open as it hits street level. “I know what you thought.” His voice is dry, quiet.
Of course he does. I rub the tear stains on my face. He knows exactly what I thought because he’s in the Swarm. He’s seen it happen a dozen times.
I follow him for several blocks to a parked Audi that beeps as he unlocks it. I’m not sure what I expected—not exactly a black Escalade with tinted windows, but not a silver car either, much less a nice one with leather seats. It feels normal, too normal, for the nameless gray-eyed attacker who seems to be stalking me.
He opens the passenger side door.
I tense. My first instinct is to run. There are a million different ways to get home from here—bus, taxi, on foot. The second I get in his car, I’m trapped. He could take me anywhere. Do anything to me.
But hasn’t he had those chances already? On the pier? In the stairwell? So far everything he’s done has gone against the Swarm’s MO. This guy holds answers I’ve spent the last two years searching for. He knows how the Death Mob operates, who’s heading the organization. With both of my leads dead, I can’t walk away from that. I’m not sure he’ll say more than a few words at a time to me, but it’s a risk I have to take.
He moves around the back of the car and climbs in the driver’s side without glancing my way.
Pushing my shoulders back, I step inside, hoping this isn’t the last time I’m ever seen again.
He starts the engine. Satellite radio blares acoustic rock.
It can’t be his music of choice. This car has to be stolen. I stare at the blue lights on the dashboard, waiting for him to turn the station to some kind of angst-ridden punk. But he doesn’t. He doesn’t adjust the seat or the mirrors either. Instead, he tosses his sweatshirt in the back and shifts the car into drive.
“Why exactly are you helping me?” It’s the lamest of my questions, but by now, he must know what I’ve been trying to do.
He pulls away from the curb and starts driving like a normal person in a very anti-Cullen Henking way. Dropping his shoulders, he leans toward the window and releases a little of the edge he’s carried with him since the library. “I told you.”
“You were vague.”
The sun is low. The dusk has turned gray. Shadows pass over his face, making his unreadable expression more difficult to interpret than usual as we drive down a street lined with brownstone homes.<
br />
“Is it some type of guilt thing? You feel guilty for the horrible things you’ve done and helping me somehow makes up for that?”
We stop at a red light. For several seconds, he says nothing.
I refuse to speak, my silence demanding an answer.
At last he turns to me with his stoic expression. “Yes.”
Not a shrug or a maybe or a yeah. It’s a full-out yes—with eye contact.
I’m not expecting it, and my mind blanks. The glow illuminating his face turns from red to green, softening his features. He looks away, and the car lurches forward.
I grab the pendant around my neck and start twisting it around my index finger. I wrap the chain around and around, letting blood pool in my fingertip.
This guy is a murderer, not a hero. He hurts people—kills people. He’s the reason my dad is dead. And I let him console me. I cried into his chest. So he could feel redemption from his crimes? “I’m not going to let you use me to absolve your guilt over murdering people.”
“And I’m not going to let you get yourself killed,” he snaps, shattering his mask of indifference. “The only reason your dad didn’t die sooner was because his investigation was high profile. Yours isn’t,” he says with contempt. I can’t tell if he’s threatening me or not. Either way, he knows what I’ve been up to. “He risked his life protecting people in this city. That included his daughter,” he says, like I’m the one who’s done something wrong.
It’s so hypocritical. Ironic. And the most he’s ever said to me at once. “My dad died putting people like you away.”
He snorts. “You’re more clueless than I thought.”
“What makes you think I won’t turn you over?”
His eyes flash at me, slicing into me. He leans closer to the door, indicating the conversation is over. “I don’t,” he says, his even, dispassionate tone returned.
I can’t tell what he means. He knows I’ll turn him over? He doesn’t care? He doesn’t think I will? I have no allegiance to this guy. I didn’t ask him to throw me off the pier. Or yank me into the stairwell. And I still have no idea why he did either.
Realizing he isn’t going to reveal anything I want, I stare out the passenger window. Maybe I don’t need to know more. I already know the details of his face—enough to give a sketch artist. It’s better than nothing. And if that’s the only tangible evidence I have, I’m not afraid to turn it over. Regardless of whether he knew my dad.
Every home we pass is dark, with the exception of a hall light or a front room lamp, casting the impression that people are inside. Usually the sidewalks are busy with runners or dog walkers, but tonight the streets are empty. Several blocks away, a halo of light rises above the buildings. I’m sure it’s my house, the brightness thanks to reporters still camped out front, eager to grill me about my lust for Cullen Henking.
He jerks the steering wheel, and we come to an abrupt halt on the side of the road. “You need to be smarter.”
He turns toward me, his eyes glistening against the ill-lit street. They don’t feel distant and cold—emotion lies behind them, one I still can’t pinpoint. And it drives me crazy. I’m usually better at reading people.
“They’re watching you closely. Make yourself irrelevant.”
We sit a few feet apart, his coffee house rock playing softly in the background. For a second, it almost seems like we’re fighting on the same side in a war against the city.
“Were you following me today?”
“Yes.”
I didn’t expect an honest response. “Were you following me yesterday at the pier?”
“No.”
“Were you there to kill Jeremiah Dopney?”
“I was part of the Swarm.”
I clench my jaw, trying not to wince at the thought of him beating Dopney to his death. I can’t forget who he is and what he does. We’ll never be on the same side of anything.
“Were you there when my father was killed?”
“No.” He looks in the direction of my house three blocks away. “If I were . . .” He turns back toward me and my heart leaps in my chest. “I would have done everything I could to save him.” He sounds sincere, like it’s the most important thing he’s said to me all evening.
He nods at the passenger door. “Time to go.”
“What’s your name?”
He remains silent, like he’s used up his allotted word quota for the day.
I unbuckle, reach for the door handle, and wait. I won’t leave without an answer. At the very least, I need to know what to call him.
His steel eyes flash at me like a wolf’s. “Ryan.” He points to my house. “Looks like you’ve got company.”
CHAPTER 12
Ryan grabs my wrist as I climb out of his car. “Lia.” He holds on as if to emphasize his point and looks at me like we’ve known each other forever. “Don’t trust anyone.”
“But I should trust you, right?”
Something flashes behind his eyes. Amusement? Deception? Irritation?
He lets go of my wrist and turns away. “You don’t trust me, so it doesn’t matter.”
“You don’t look like a Ryan.”
Ryan is a safe name, a wholesome name, a name for a guy who plays soccer and wears crew neck sweaters. Ryan is not the name of a murderer or stalker or a guy with eyes the color of metal who expresses no emotion when he talks.
Before he can respond, I slam the door and tuck my hat and my scarf into my bag. I creep along a series of wrought iron gates guarding each home. At least eight vans with satellites that reach toward the sky idle in the street, waiting to broadcast my latest secrets to the greater Chicago area. My lawn, which is big for a city lawn, is littered with reporters and camera crews. They light up my house like a sacred architectural dig site. Some of them are busy reporting. Others are waiting. For what? Has my train meltdown already become a viral sensation?
All of them ignore the sleek black town car parked outside my house. I imagine whoever was inside the car is now inside my house.
When my dad was alive, we had visitors all the time. Any of them might have been the type to take a town car to our house. But since his death, no one visits, which means whoever came in that car is here because of what happened Saturday.
At two blocks away, I zigzag—right down a side street and left past the corner house and into the alley behind our home. Even though I try to keep my steps light, gravel crunches beneath my feet.
I slink against my neighbors’ detached garages. Motion sensor lights flip on two of them, their giant spotlights exposing me. As I reach for the latch on our wooden gate, Charlie starts barking like a maniac—the angry, foaming-at-the-mouth kind. Any other night I’d yell at him to shut up. Tonight, I’m more worried his bark will out me. Reporters will catch on, start herding toward me with their trivial questions. I unhitch the door, slip past my garage, and hurry onto the back deck, where I take the stairs two at a time up to our first floor. Charlie barks the entire time, but no one comes—a sign of the media’s idiocy.
The curtains on our French doors block my preview to what’s waiting inside. I lean over the wooden porch rail, propping myself on my stomach to peek in through our kitchen window.
Inside, a man with short sandy-brown hair that sticks up in the back sits at our kitchen counter, bent over what I assume is his phone. Richard. Behind him, my mom amicably smiles at our breakfast table and nods while clutching a paper coffee cup. It’s out of character. She hates overpriced coffee or basically anything not made in her own coffee pot.
The mayor must be in there.
Playing nice with Cullen’s dad is the absolute last thing I’m in the mood for right now.
I hop down from the railing and smooth out my shirt. If Cullen’s inside, I’m running the other way. Never seeing him again would be too soon.
When I open the door, my eyes are drawn to Richard first. He’s fixated on the TV in our living room. I assume it’s about Dopney—his condition, his tie to C
hicago, but instead the news anchor is talking about some city event. “. . . expecting an announcement later today regarding the fate of the annual Save the Parks Gala, originally scheduled for next week . . .” An older woman’s face flashes on the screen with her name, Sydney Cornell, highlighted in white beneath it.
Richard sets his cell on the kitchen counter and stands when he sees me, his shoulders hunched like he’s hiding his height. He smiles, a real one, his face bending in accompaniment.
The mayor and my mother stand in unison.
“I was just getting ready to text you,” my mother says. “The mayor stopped by to check on you.”
She shoots me a warning look behind the mayor’s back, indicating best behavior, manners, don’t pull your I’m-too-tired routine this evening. It’s a look I know well.
The mayor steps forward. “Amelia.” He puts out his hand. “Allow me to formally introduce myself. Jim Henking.”
The mayor’s undeniable presence makes my kitchen and living room feel small and inadequate. His dark hair is combed back to the left, highlighted with the right amount of gray, as if a hairstylist colored it that way. Crow’s-feet around his eyes deepen when he smiles, somehow making him look charming, not older. His white teeth gleam. He’s like a walking billboard for whitening toothpaste.
When we shake, my hand feels babyish in his grip.
He pulls out a chair from our table. “Please, join us.”
I throw my bag on the floor and sit, unsure how I feel that he’s offering me a seat at my kitchen table.
“Would you like something to drink?” He holds out a hand to Richard, who brings him a cardboard cup holder filled with drinks. “Let’s see. What do we have?”
He lifts each one to read the label.
“A vanilla latte.” He returns it to its place before picking up the next. “A caramel macchiato . . .” Drink two is put back. “Or a green tea lemonade? The coffee drinks are decaf with skim milk.” He waits for my choice and smiles. It’s too warm, too congenial, like he’s spent an exorbitant amount of time perfecting his smile in front of the mirror.
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