“What?!” I asked, as she closed her eyes.
“Nothing, sorry,” she said, sliding a hand into her pocket. “Well, not nothing, it’s the pager. I forgot it was in my pocket, and it vibrated.”
My eyebrows went up. “It vibrated? Like with a message?!” I asked, taking the tiny device from her hand when she held it out.
“SOS received. Answer the knock at the back when it comes and follow instructions. He’ll get you out.”
“This is from Maddox? You paged him?”
Nadiah’s head bobbed. “Not when you first told me to – I came out when I heard my name. But when you sent me to pack the bag, I reached out. I guess he took a bit to get something arranged.”
“But he’s sending someone. Okay. Okay, this seems a little less awful now,” I said, pushing out a deep breath. “Okay. Okay…okay. Shit.”
“What?” Nadiah stepped in front of me, eyes wide. “What is it?”
“Gran. We can’t just leave without her. We can’t abandon her here.”
She nodded, again. “Right. But we can’t take her, either. Like we literally can’t, not without a discharge order, and she’s sick, Aly.” She let out a deep, shuddering breath as her gaze dropped to the floor. “Okay, lets page Maddox back. Tell him it’s fine. We eat dinner, we go to sleep, and in the morning I report for duty. It’ll be fine. I’ll be fine.”
“Have you lost your mind, Nadiah?”
“No, I have it right here,” she countered. “I’m using it, instead of letting us push forward with an idea that will get one of us hurt!”
I scoffed. “We’re already hurt, Nadiah. Already terrified. Already on the edge of falling into line, defeated. There is no part of me that believes they will ever let you walk out of that place once you’re in.”
“They could’ve taken me today,” Nadiah argued. “Or any other time. They’re letting me come in by myself.”
“Under threat of having you brought in anyway,” I growled. “Yes, they are still holding on to the edges of civility now – giving you the appearance of a choice in the matter – just like that scholarship. My best bet is that they didn’t want to be seen dragging you out of here because it's bad PR.”
“So what would you have us do? Huh? What is the right answer here?”
“Not making this shit easy for them, at least! I don’t want to leave Gran here alone either.” I let out a hard breath, remembering how I’d left things with her that morning. Everything that had gone unsaid. “Lets call, okay? She deserves to know what’s going on.”
I hadn’t told Nadiah about that conversation yet – I’d intended to bring it up over dinner, knowing she could help me hash it out. But in the back of my mind, I couldn’t help wondering about the words she’d spilled when she thought I was Mari.
Specifically, the concern about my parents getting in trouble with the APF again.
Again.
That meant that my mother and father had been on their radar before, for reasons unknown. It couldn’t have been too serious, or we’d all have been carted off, but it still left a lingering question.
Were Nadiah and I marked?
Had we always been?
“Okay,” Nadiah agreed. “We can call. How did she seem when you saw her this morning?”
“Talkative.”
If she found my reply strange, she didn’t say so, just moved to where that interactive panel was. I took a seat at the counter while she dialed, dropping my head into my hands. For the past few weeks, I’d been thinking the trip into the Burrows to retrieve Nadiah was the most excitement my life would ever see.
What a shitty thing to be wrong about.
“What the hell?”
Nadiah’s exclamation brought my eyes to the screen just in time to see it flicker out, before it could connect to the care facility. That had never happened before, and the timing was too convenient for this to be any coincidence.
Sure enough, as I stood to move to Nadiah’s side, the screen flickered again, filling suddenly with Adam Bishop. Those steely eyes narrowed as he lounged backward into the obvious comfort of a luxury vehicle.
“Going somewhere, ladies?” he asked. “Looks like you’re heading out.”
Shit.
I didn’t have to move my eyes from the screen to know he was referring to the jackets we’d donned, because we were heading out.
“Just going to see our grandmother,” I lied, without an errant blink. “We were calling ahead.”
“You’ve already seen her today, haven’t you?” Bishop’s gaze didn’t falter. “You signed in at the care facility just this morning.”
“Alone, yes. But as I’m sure you know, she’s not in great health. Nadiah wanted to share her good news about accepting the scholarship.”
Beside me, Nadiah tensed, and I willed her to keep her cool. On sight, it was easy to recognize that Adam Bishop was a dangerous man, and a smart one too. Even the slightest falter, and he’d see right through this – already shaky - ruse.
“This late in the day? It would be nightfall before you arrived, and more dangerous later. I could send someone to escort you,” he offered, in a honey coated tone I knew not to believe.
“No, you’re right. We can just tell her the news over the phone and celebrate another day. We’re hanging up now, so we can call the care facility. If you can turn off whatever rerouting service you’ve placed on our panel, we’d be grateful.”
Bishop stared for a long moment, then smirked. “No. No, I don’t think so. We’ll be seeing you ladies soon.”
The screen went black.
“Okay, we’re getting the hell out of here,” I told Nadiah, snatching my backpack from the counter to pull it on. “Now. Get your bag.”
This time, she didn’t argue. She picked up her bag to zip it closed and then followed me to the back door. I took a deep breath, glancing at Nadiah to make sure she was ready to do this. Whatever the hell this was. She nodded, and I opened the door.
To an APF officer standing on the other side.
Fourteen
My heart stopped.
For longer than a heart is supposed to go without beating.
At least, that’s what it felt like.
Time stopped too – nothing moved, nothing made a sound, I couldn’t bring myself to blink.
“Aly.”
That didn’t come from behind me, from Nadia. It came from the black-clad man in front of me, as he lifted the wind guard on the mask all the APF officers wore, revealing brown eyes that were warm.
And familiar.
“Are you coming or not?” he asked, his voice too muffled by the mask to make a connection in my mind.
I didn’t need it though.
The eyes were enough, though I hadn’t looked into them since the night I offered someone my body for the first time.
“Prince,” I breathed, hardly believing he was standing in front of me, in an APF uniform, at that. “What are you doing here?”
“Saving your ass,” he replied. “Adam Bishop will be back at your door, in…” —he raised his arm, checking the display on his wrist – “Eight minutes. Throw some shit in a bag and let’s go.”
“We already have bags,” Nadiah chimed.
“Even better. Follow me.”
“Wait,” I hissed, holding up my hands to stop her. “We can’t just follow him! My high school boyfriend shows up at our back door after who knows how many years and this shit doesn’t seem like a trap to you?!”
Not to mention “conveniently” running into Isa…
“Aly, chill – Maddox sent me. He put out feelers, and I happened to be here, so I said I’d help. Seven minutes now. Are you coming, or not? Maddox is my boy, but I’m not about to let you get us killed.”
I let out a breath, looking back and forth between him and Nadiah before I nodded. “Fine. Let’s go.”
He reached into a pocket, pulling out two large black satin scarves.
“Cover your hair, then follow me.”
It only took
a glance at Nadiah to realize what he meant was, “cover your braids” – the easiest way to make us less distinctive. We did it, and then followed him, sneaking up to the main road behind our house. He escorted us up the sidewalk past other APF officers and civilians, leading us to a marked APF vehicle. The alarm on it chirped as he unlocked it, then gestured for us to climb inside.
I didn’t breathe until we were all in, and he pulled onto the road.
Once he was driving, he tugged his mask down, displaying the face I recalled all too well – just older now. Gone was the baby-smooth chin and sparing mustache – he had full blown stubble now that made him look like a man.
Not the boy I remembered.
“So you joined the APF, huh?” I asked from the back seat with Nadiah, trying not to sound as bitter about it as I felt. I was hoping he’d tell me this was just an elaborate costume, that he wasn’t one.
But he nodded, meeting my eyes in the rearview mirror. “Yeah, Division Eight. At risk of sounding like an apologist though, you should know, the APF isn’t the same everywhere. These motherfuckers in Three… I wouldn’t trust us either.”
“As long as you understand,” I muttered, looking away from him to check our surroundings, on all sides. I didn’t know where he was taking us, but it wasn’t towards the ruins, or the wall that separated the Mids from the Burrows.
“Thank you for helping us,” Nadiah said, pushing her knee into my thigh as a way of scolding me. And maybe she was right – maybe I was being rude, but as far as I was concerned, these were extenuating circumstance.
“You’re welcome, Nadi,” he told her, shooting her a grin in the mirror. “Man, last time I saw you, you were in elementary school?”
“Middle school,” she corrected. “Still a long ass time ago.”
“Right,” he laughed. “I guess y’all have had some adventures since then, if you know Mad.”
“How do you know Maddox?” I redirected, glaring at him. “You’re a Division Eight APF officer – how the hell do you know an enforcer from the Burrows?”
“Aly!” Nadiah hissed, kneeing me again, which I ignored.
“It’s a fair question,” Prince conceded. “I know Mad because I needed extra money. He needed information, eyes on the ground, somebody in a position to do a favor here and there. We could help each other out.”
I snorted. “So not only are you a cop – you’re a dirty one. Got it.”
“Call me what you want, but you’ll call my family alive,” he countered, with a shrug. “It’s the world we live in – I’ve done what I had to do to make sure my people were taken care of, and I wouldn’t take it back. Not ashamed, either.”
I pushed out a breath, letting his words process before I responded. “Sorry. This is all just throwing me for a loop. Today has been a lot to absorb.”
“I can imagine,” he agreed. “And I get that you’re scared, but you don’t have to fear me. I will get you two out of here, then get back to where I’m supposed to be, before somebody notices.”
Nadiah leaned forward. “Where are you supposed to be?”
“Patrol. We got called in as reinforcements, something about increased unrest around here. Officers from all nine other divisions got diverted here – I was one.”
I chewed at the inside of my lip, thinking about what Isa had mentioned earlier – the undercurrent of frustration among the residents of the Mids.
Was that what the increased police presence was responding to?
“You’re not going to end up in trouble, are you?” I asked.
Prince shook his head. “Not if I can help it.”
He pulled off the main road, heading down an alley where he parked in the lot of a warehouse. He instructed us to stay in the car while he pulled a huge side door open, then drove the car inside, leaving us there again while he pulled the door closed, bathing us in darkness. When he got back, he gave us flashlights.
“Come on,” he said, motioning for us to follow him through the abandoned building. Flashlights in hand, we did as instructed, following him down a ladder into a defunct, dry drainage system. “Okay,” he said, once we’d both made it down. “You’re on your own from here.”
“What?!”
Nadiah was the one to say it, but I echoed her sentiments. I had no idea where the hell we were, and though the bright concrete reflected the flashlights enough that we weren’t enveloped in darkness, it was still creepy down here.
Really creepy.
“You cannot be loud down here,” Prince warned, his voice low. “There’s an echo. By now, Bishop has every cop in the Mids on high alert, looking for you. I don’t think anybody will come searching the tunnels, but just in case, you need to be moving. Fast.”
“We don’t know where we are,” I said, grabbing his arm. “What are we supposed to do?”
Prince grinned. “That’s right, sweet little Aly, never would come exploring out here with me,” he said. “I found these tunnels back in high school – too scared to take it all the way myself, but I know now that it opens in the Burrows. Follow it this way,” he pointed. “Don’t take any turns, just stay straight.”
“Okay, how will we know we’re there?”
“A couple of years ago, I marked it – from the Burrows end. A big red ‘B’ in spray paint. Can’t miss it.”
I shared a look with Nadiah that must have been a little too worried, because Prince took me by the shoulders.
“Listen – I know we’re not seventeen anymore, you got a new man now, all that – but I promise you, I would not send you down this tunnel if I wasn’t confident you’d make it where you’re supposed to go. And if you don’t believe I’d do it for you, know I’d do it for Mad. Ain’t nobody trying to get on that nigga’s bad side, trust me.”
I shook my head. “It’s not that. I mean, this tunnel isn’t welcoming, no, but it’s… everything. This is too much.”
“But you’ve got it. If you don’t have it for yourself, I know you’ve got it for Nadiah, so there you go. Get your sister to safety.”
Him putting it that way put an infusion of steel down my spine. Even if I wanted to be a coward, or sit here and whine, the fact remained that Nadiah wasn’t safe in the Mids, not anymore.
We had to go.
“Are you going to be okay?” I asked, and he nodded.
“Yeah. The tracker is stripped off that car, and I’ll toss this gear somewhere – it’s not mine anyway. Mine is with my car, but I’ve gotta get back to it. And y’all need to go. Now.”
“Okay.”
I turned away, but he caught me under the chin, taking a second to examine my face.
“Damn,” he muttered. “Still pretty as hell. Prettier. You know I hoped you would get ugly, right?”
My face pulled into a frown. “What?!”
“It made it easier to have to leave,” he laughed. “Moving away from you broke my little teenage heart, but I convinced myself you would get ugly as you got older, so it wouldn’t hurt so bad.”
“So you’re still the same damn fool you always were, is what you’re telling me.”
He grinned. “Exactly.”
“So,” I asked, stepping back as he dropped his hand. “Are you heartbroken all over again now?”
Prince bit down on his lip, giving me a once-over before he grabbed the first rung of the ladder to get back to the surface. “Maddox is a lucky motherfucker. I’ll leave it at that.”
“Bye Prince,” Nadiah called, as he headed back up. Once it was just me and her, she nudged me, with a little smirk. “You’re gonna get in trouble. Flirting with your boyfriend’s friend who happens to be your ex-boyfriend.”
“Maddox is not my boyfriend,” I said, starting down the tunnel. “And I wasn’t flirting.”
“Denial is more than just a river in what used to be Egypt, I see,” Nadiah teased, catching up to walk beside me. “You know damn well—”
“We have much more important things to talk about. Quietly,” I reminded her. “Like, how w
e’re going to get to Gran, like what the Apex wants so badly from you, like how our parents used to attend secret meetings that might get them in trouble with the APF.”
“Wait, what?” Nadiah asked, eyes wide as she stopped moving. “Where in the world did you find that out.”
“Gran,” I told her. “This morning. She thought I was mom, so she started talking. Rambling, really. And then after she realized I was me, we kinda went back and forth a little.”
Nadiah coughed. “You. And Gran? Back and forth?”
I nodded.
“Okay...,” she followed my urging to move again, but only after one more declaration. “Talk. And tell me everything.”
I should have asked how long the tunnel was.
Not that we had any real way of keeping time, other than estimating the fatigue in our lower backs and heaviness of our legs.
Judging by that, we’d been down here for hours.
When Prince told us to “keep straight”, I couldn’t help wishing he’d explained that “straight” was relative. The dark, winding tunnel kept forcing shifts, taking us back and forth in what at least seemed like one general direction, as long as we avoided the branching paths that would turn this little adventure into a maze, when it was already difficult enough.
As dry as the tunnels had seemed at our entry point, we’d long discovered that wasn’t the case throughout. In more than one place, we’d had to trudge through unidentified filth, deep enough for our boots to sink in, too wide to step over. The foul odor was enough to make us thankful for the dinner we never had eaten – it meant there was nothing on our stomachs to throw up.
The inverse of that meant we were running on fumes, and afraid to be already breaking into the stash in our bags, because what if we were already lost?
What if we were stuck?
An odd sensation made me stop moving to glance behind me. I moved the beam from my flashlight around, my gaze intent as it bounced off the walls, illuminating the thick gauze of cobwebs we’d just passed, the layers of dust we’d disturbed, and nothing else.
“What is it?” Nadiah whispered, looping an arm through mine.
I shook my head. “Nothing. Let's keep going.”
Wonder Page 17
