Spider Tattoo pays no attention to me. When I pass, he looks away—a forced gesture.
I pick up the pace and continue walking with quick, uneven steps, vowing to slather Neosporin all over my cut and prop it for the rest of the afternoon if I make it home alive.
For whatever reason, I wish Ryan would do his thing where he appears out of nowhere. Walk with me till I catch a ride. Watch my back in case Copperhead sprints down the stairs after me or Spider Tattoo tries to gut me.
I turn around expecting to see Spider Tattoo listening to his music at the bottom of the steps, but instead I find him walking twenty or so paces behind me. He keeps his head down—definitely on purpose—and tucks his hands inside the pockets of his coat.
I hobble faster across the courtyard. Pressure builds in my chest. I think of what Ryan said about running. There’s no way I could run for my life if this kid starts chasing me.
A cab turns down the street. Just as I feel a twinge of hope, a black Escalade pulls in behind it.
Spider Tattoo quickens his pace to match mine.
I throw my hand up, hailing the cab, but it doesn’t slow. Bracing myself for this kid to hurl himself at me from behind, I break into an awkward run as the cab passes the front entrance of our school. The Escalade picks up speed.
“Hey!” I scream, my throat burning as I round the brick pillars that lead to the sidewalk.
I glance behind me. Spider Tattoo is closing the gap between us, glaring at me like a bull about to charge. And then, from the corner of my eye, I see red brake lights. The cab stops. I chase after it. Foot throbbing, lungs constricting, I wrench open the back door and plunge inside.
“Where to?” the driver asks, casting a deadpan glance at the frenetic high school escapee in his back seat.
I dig through my purse for my inhaler and give him my address. I peek out the window. Spider Tattoo walks down the sidewalk with his head down, his hands in his pockets like that’s been his plan all along. I’m about to sit back when the Escalade pulls up beside him. Spider Tattoo glances up and glares at me for several prolonged seconds before getting in.
The cab takes off. I collapse against the seat. My breathing is quick and short. Keeping my head low, I risk a peek out the back window. The Escalade turns down a side street and speeds off.
I sink into the faded upholstery and inhale my medication before I have a panic attack and stop breathing altogether.
The cab loops my block a few times as I watch for the Escalade, but the only noticeable cars are two news vans parked outside my house. Hoping it’s left me alone for the time being, I have the driver drop me off near the back alley. Despite the pulsing ache in my foot, I hurry past the first two houses, furtively glancing in all directions with each step. When I reach the fence to my backyard, I lean on its wooden gate and roll my ankle around.
Charlie starts barking. Just as I’m about to scream at him to shut up, a woman’s voice from the other side of the fence says, “Charlie, sit.” She snaps her fingers twice, and the dog is silenced.
Our neighbors never try to quiet Charlie. Or do they have the authority over their own dog to make him stop on command like that.
I lift the latch to our wooden gate and ease it open a tiny slit, ready to turn and run if I see another teenager waiting for me. Instead, sitting on the top of the stairs just outside the French doors to our living room is Emi Vega.
She tosses something to Charlie, who chases it down and eats it. The Bluetooth in her ear and phone in her other hand suggest she’s listening to something, which explains why she hasn’t noticed my approach. She wears black dress pants, a red boatneck shirt, and dark lipstick—camera ready at all times. I take a quick glance around my backyard in search of her crew, but she appears to be alone.
I could retreat. Circle around front and let the other news teams film me walking into my house alone. Maybe give them a statement to piss Emi off. But since she sold me out to the entire nation as a liar and a marked girl, the video of my dad’s murder was left on my trash can and three Swarm members showed themselves at my school today.
Lifting my chin, I walk through the gate eager to unleash on this woman.
Emi looks up with a wry smile.
“Jerky.” She nods toward the neighbor’s lawn, where Charlie is silent like he’s waiting for the next command. “No dog can resist beef jerky.”
Emi stands to greet me much like Mayor Henking did a couple nights ago. She brushes her palms against each other and takes the Bluetooth out of her ear. What is it with people feeling overly comfortable at my home?
I cross my lawn undeterred, careful to hide my limp. I’m sure Emi would just love to share with the world that I’m incapacitated.
“You really should take the front door every now and again to vary it up. It’s only a matter of time before the press realizes your whole back-door strategy.”
The closer I get to her, the tinier she looks in person. I’m small for a sixteen-year-old, but Emi’s waist is smaller than mine. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. Last year she competed in the Ironman World Championship in Kona. WGN did a whole feature on it, airing interviews with Emi and her equally perfect and supportive wife, along with clips of Emi’s training. All I could focus on was her ponytail that held so much hairspray, it didn’t move when she ran.
“I always come around back.” I reach the bottom of the stairs and realize she intends to stand her ground. “I have nothing to hide.”
“How about that cute little Hewitt boy you’ve been sneaking in and out of here? That would put a damper on your whole Cullen Henking lover-boy story.”
I lower my head, infuriated she not only knows about Ryan, she figured out who he is quicker than me. I ball my right fist and walk up the steps, tempted to hit her as I pass.
“Using the press is a smart move on your part, but you could use some help.”
“Help, right—like outing me as a liar to the entire world and inviting the Swarm to assassinate me?” My mom’s hanging baskets full of freshly planted mums swing above her head. I imagine one of them falling and knocking her out.
Emi smirks. “You saw my interview.” The pride in her voice sickens me.
The closer I get, the more I think I’m going to hit her. I picture her powdered face with a swollen black eye. That would slow down her chances at a national spotlight. Adrenaline pumps through my veins. I narrow in on her pinched cheekbones—a perfect target for my right cross.
Then I get a vision of the Initiators delivering the first hit to Jeremiah Dopney, to my dad—the ones that knocked them down, set them up for their brutal beatings. No matter how much I hate this woman, I could never do what they do.
“Who do you think you are?” I reach the porch, unleashing my pent-up anger and shame. “You set me up to get killed. All to boost your own reputation, because you’re that desperate for fame. And now you show up pretending like you want to help me?” A stinging sensation forms behind my nose. I lift my chin, swallowing it back.
We stand face to face on opposite ends of the porch. If she weren’t wearing such high heels, we’d be the same height.
Her eyes narrow, mimicking the perfect mean-girl glare. “That’s the thing with you. You’ve always acted like everything is all about you.”
“This is about me!” I snort at how ridiculous she sounds. “It’s my life you’re screwing with. My father died in the Swarm.”
She closes the three feet between us in one stride. “Didn’t you ever wonder why your father’s case closed after he died?”
It catches me off guard, and I stand there like a giant idiot unable to think. “Bill Morrell killed himself.” I give the standard answer—the one the media proclaimed was the end of the Death Mob era.
“That suicide story was a cover-up. Bill Morrell was a fall guy, which you already knew, or else you wouldn’t be stalking the Death Mob.”
I’ve waited two years to hear someone agree with me, that Bill Morrell wasn’t the actual head. Now t
hat it’s happening, I don’t know what to say. Emi Vega is certainly the last person I expected it to come from.
Emi lowers her head and her voice without losing any force behind her words. “Your dad’s death confirmed the attacks are organized, but the whole thing got swept under the rug. There were plenty of people working with your dad who could’ve taken over the case, but they were either scared away or bought off. The one intern who did pursue it ended up dead. Another supposed suicide. And the whole world went back to believing that gangs were behind the Swarm all along. You and I both know that means there are some people pretty high up in this city who wanted this thing to go away two years ago. Those people haven’t disappeared.”
“You just put a giant target on my back!”
Emi’s face tightens. Her eyes flash. “Get over yourself and this naïve woe-is-me routine. I brought your story to the national market and expanded your audience. Because of me, millions of people are interested in what happens to you.”
“They’re interested in a juicy story—not me.”
“They are interested in whether you live or die, which is all that matters.”
She sounds like Cullen, glorifying public opinion.
Emi leans in and narrows her heavily lined eyes. “If something happens to you, the nation will not ignore that. They’ll have questions and want answers. Whoever’s in charge of the Death Mob knows that. That’s the best protection you’re going to get. Never mind the target I put on my back by putting you in this position.”
I feel my face flush. “So now this is about you?”
“What? They can silence a prosecuting attorney, but a news reporter is off limits? You poor little Gold Coast white girl. You still don’t get it.” She throws her hand out as she makes her point. I think of the beat reporter who was stabbed. Dumped in the river.
“This is bigger than you. An entire community has been vilified, scapegoated. The fire at the Latino community center. The church vandalism—smashed windows, spray paint all over the alter. Racial profiling is running rampant in this city. All because someone blamed these murders on a Latino gang.”
I struggle to process everything she’s saying. Everything I missed. “I didn’t know.”
“Try reading an article that doesn’t have your name in it.”
She’s right. I didn’t know it was happening. I’ve not spoken out about what I saw. I’ve been quiet. To protect myself. But in doing so, innocent people—beyond the city’s gangs—are suffering the repercussions of my silence. I open my mouth to speak, but nothing comes out. I don’t know what to say.
Emi takes a deep breath and claps her hands together as if praying. Only there’s nothing divine about her. “I knew your father. I admired him and what he stood for . . .”
“You slandered him!” My voice shakes as I scream at her. “He was a good person and an excellent lawyer, and you shredded his reputation.”
Emi doesn’t flinch. “It wasn’t me.”
“You said he had an enemy list a mile long,” I say as proof.
“He did. Watch the clips. I never spoke against him.”
I try to remember who said what, which reporters said the worst things, but it all blurs together as the worst time in my life.
“Look, if we started working together, maybe we could get a lot farther than either of us has been able to do on our own.”
“Work with you? You’re a reporter.”
“And you’re sixteen. Not my idea of a perfect scenario, but neither is living in a city where organized crime controls mobs of teenagers who attack and kill people.”
I stare at her, trying to recall her speaking against my dad, the specific words she used that made me hate her so much. She hounded me for an interview, wouldn’t leave me alone, but I can’t think of what she said about my dad. My sense of reality tilts. First Ryan claims to have respected my dad, now her? How is there so much I didn’t know about my dad and who he impacted? I’m not sure whether to feel awed by his ability to motivate people or betrayed that criminals and reporters have insight about him that I don’t.
“Look.” Emi relaxes her face, like she’s trying to calm herself. “I know you don’t like me and probably don’t think you can trust me, but last time I checked there wasn’t a long line of people waiting to take on the Death Mob.”
“Why are you willing to help me? You said it yourself—whoever’s in charge is willing to kill anyone who gets in their way.”
“Because I have access to something your dad didn’t.” She smirks, pausing longer than she needs to, and I wonder whether she’s trying to be dramatic or if it’s just become innate. “A world audience.”
I scoff. “So this is about boosting your ratings.”
“It’s about being smart. Where else are you going to go with everything you know? I assume you were the anonymous call to the CPD. They didn’t exactly help, did they? The state attorney’s office is corrupt, same with the FBI, and at least half the networks that refuse to cover this. Your dad’s case stopped getting the coverage he wanted right before he died. Whatever we find out, we go through my contacts, and we report it to the world. That’s our best protection.”
I glare at her, wanting to find fault in what she’s proposing, but she makes more sense than I want to give her credit for. More importantly, she’s offering the one thing I could never envision—an exit plan. I have an incoherent string of facts that I can continue to collect, but I have nowhere to go with them. Detective Irving hasn’t exactly been reliable. And the more I collect, the more danger I’m in.
“How did you know about the attack?” Emi presses.
For several seconds, I say nothing. I’ve spent the last two years loathing this woman I’m about to trust. “Twitter. They used numbers: latitude, longitude, day, and time. They hashtag the number of the attack.” Trusting Emi tastes bitter in my mouth.
Her face scrunches in disbelief. “Death Mob kids understand latitude and longitude?”
“Type in coordinates to any search engine and you get the location.”
Emi stares off into the distance and nods.
“Any idea who sent the tweet?”
I shake my head. “Whoever set up the account did it at the Harold Washington. I figured out which computer they used, but there isn’t much I can do with that.”
Emi nods again as if agreeing it’s a dead end.
“What did the attackers look like? Hispanic? Latino?”
I shake my head again, slower. “Definitely not all of them.”
Emi puts her hands on her hips and looks to the sky.
“I’ll say it on camera. You can ask me what I saw. I’ll say it publicly.”
“I appreciate what you’re trying to do, but we need to protect you right now too.”
“My dad was in the process of linking all the deaths to people in Chicago.” I blurt it out like it makes up for my silence and everything I’m not telling the press. I hate giving it to her, but without protected Internet access, I can’t keep researching it anyway. “Jeremiah Dopney has to be connected to someone in this city.”
“We’ve already tried.”
“He is—I know he is.” My eyebrows pinch together, frustrated she isn’t taking me seriously. “Search harder.”
She nods. “I’ll look into it and get back to you.”
“The attack—it’s somehow tied to the Lakefront Project.” The words fall out of my mouth before I consciously decide to tell her.
Emi claps her hands and spins around, once again staring off into the distance. “I knew it!” When she turns back, her eyes are ignited. “Can you prove it?”
“I’m working on it.” The picture of Ryan’s dad with Bill Morrell and the others is folded in the front pocket of my backpack. Even though I’m sure one of them heads the Death Mob, showing her would incriminate Ryan. I’m not sure if she realizes he’s part of the Swarm or not, but I need to find out more before I hand over this piece of information.
Emi purses her
lips together as if she’s about to protest. Instead she nods her head. “Let me know what you find out.”
With so much laid out in front of us, I start to second-guess myself. Maybe it’s a trap. Maybe she’s a part of the Death Mob. She wants to see what I know. Why didn’t I consider this before I so willingly shared everything with the first person who showed interest?
“Okay then,” Emi says. She starts walking down my porch stairs, her head bent in concentration.
Anxiety stirs in my chest, tightening it. She hasn’t shared anything with me. I swing my bag around and begin rummaging for my inhaler.
“Lia . . .” Emi stops and turns. “I know you’re stubborn, but lay low.” There’s sincerity in her voice. When I glance up, she’s looking at me like she cares about what might happen. “Let me do the digging. I’ll come back to share it with you. I promise.”
She straightens her shirt and follows our stone path toward my back gate, her ridiculously high heels causing her ankles to wobble.
I want to believe her. But she is, after all, Emi Vega.
CHAPTER 20
Sitting on my mom’s white linen couch, I pick at a spot on the arm of the sofa where the fabric has pilled. Lip Spikes or Copperhead or Spider Tattoo may or may not be outside watching me. Stalking me. Waiting to kill me. And I’m starting not to care.
Meanwhile, I’ve aligned myself with a guy from the Swarm, the mayor’s self-absorbed son, and a reporter. Not just any reporter—Emi Vega. I can’t help but wonder if I’m caught in some sick and twisted Alice in Wonderland dream where my world has turned upside down and nothing is as it seems.
Upstairs, the floorboards creak with each step my mom takes. Her walk is methodic as she follows her nighttime routine. Work clothes off. Loungewear on. It never wavers.
I twist the threads between my thumb and index finger, listening for any sign she’s coming back downstairs, even though I know she won’t. Dinner was uncomfortable. We sat on opposite ends of the table in awkward silence, acting as if my dad’s murderers hadn’t resurfaced and neither of us was struggling to cope.
Every Stolen Breath Page 16
