by Ryan Decaria
“He’s turning west.”
“I’ll pick him up,” Em said. “Go north another street.”
Missy sped past as he turned and took the next street, which angled north. The streets here made no sense, but she found them charming.
“Got him,” Em said.
They took turns following at a distance until he pulled into the long driveway of a village house on an isolated street outside of town. Missy sped onward, eventually, pulling her moped into the brush and leaving it there. Em joined her and they crept toward the house. They kept their helmets on to mask their faces. Daylight faded as they snuck from tree to tree. Two cars sat in front of the house, including Mr. Edward’s car.
Whatever they’d find here, it was likely the key access point, and also the most dangerous. Missy’s heart beat wildly, and she grabbed Em’s hand. Her sister would be feeling the same. They laid at the edge of the trees as the night settled in around them.
A huge man with muscles stretched across his body in massive ripples exited the house and walked around checking the grounds. He stopped and stared out the driveway. After a minute, he went back inside.
Em flipped up her visor. “Did you see his gun?”
“He had a gun?” Missy pulled off her helmet. “I couldn’t get past his biceps.”
“It was tucked into his pants behind his back. We should get out of here.”
She knew Em was right, because that was her first instinct as well. She’d also be thinking that this was why they’d come to France instead of going to Hawaii and hiding out on a beach. They had a mission and owed Anika for leaving her behind during their heist at the laboratory. She’d forgiven them, but they still wanted to make it up to her. Following Jackie’s dad through Europe seemed like fun, but their current situation was getting out of hand.
“We need to peek inside,” Em said.
“I’m thinking of a number from 1 to 10.” It was a dumb joke, but they both laughed. Even after three years, they almost always chose the same number. Didn’t matter who went. A risk to one was a risk to all. Missy scrambled to her feet. “I’ll do it.”
She crept across the thick grass and flattened herself against the house. She slid to the window and listened. She heard muffled voices. Angry voices. She took a deep breath and held it. She peeked inside the kitchen window.
The muscled man stood over a woman chained to a chair and struck her face with his fist. Blood splattered against the flowery wallpaper. Mr. Edwards stood in the doorway, his face aghast, but he did nothing to stop the man as he hit her again. “What did you see?” the man yelled. “Who did you tell?”
She had dark brown hair with highlights and wore a rose-print dress, torn in several places. Blood oozed down her face, which was a lumpy mess. She passed out, her head flopping to the side. The man slammed his fist on the counter and pushed past Mr. Edwards farther into the house.
Mr. Edwards stepped up and lifted her chin. Satisfied she was still breathing, he turned toward the window. Missy barely ducked before he saw her. She hoped he hadn’t seen her, at least. She took a breath. Water ran into the sink inside and then stopped. When she finally peeked back in, the woman was alone, bleeding from her nose, and still unconscious. Her face looked more hamburger than flesh.
She was chained with a single lock, a rusted piece of junk, but solid enough. The kitchen was a normal French country kitchen. A rack of spices, pots, pans, bread on the counter. A cutlery set sat near the stove. Well, normal except for the handgun by the toaster.
Missy listened a moment to the still country air. A bird warbled. She darted for the tree line and fell beside Em.
Em waited for her to catch her breath.
“They have a woman chained up in the kitchen. The brute beat her up real bad. Knocked her unconscious. We have to rescue her.”
“What? Why? We should call the police.”
Missy put her hand over her sister’s. “This might sound crazy, but I think it’s Anika’s mom.”
“What?” Em peered across the lawn. “How can you tell?”
“Anika hasn’t heard from her in weeks, right? She actively fights against Dravovitch’s goons. Who else could it be?”
Em couldn’t think of anyone. Missy knew because she couldn’t either. They sat in silence for a few minutes. A chipmunk scurried by, hesitated when he heard them breathe, and sped up the nearest tree.
“This is a stupid idea,” Em whispered. “We need a plan.”
“So, let’s make one.” Missy pulled on her chinstrap. “We got to get her out of there. I think I can pick the lock.”
“You think?” Em asked. “You’re going to bet our lives on you think?”
“Yes. It’s an old lock, so it shouldn’t be a problem, but I’ll need time.”
“Can you pick the lock to the back door?”
“That part’s easy, if they even locked it.”
“What if they walk in on us? That guy is huge. We can’t get caught. Or killed.”
“We shoot them. He left his gun on the counter.”
“Do we shoot Jackie’s dad, too?”
“If we have to.”
“You mean that I have to shoot him. You’re going to be picking the lock.”
“Is that a problem?” Missy knew what she was going to say.
“Nope.”
“How are we going to get her on the moped?”
“Worse. How are we going to keep her on there?”
“We need to wake her up.”
“How?”
“Do you have any smelling salts?”
“No. Why would I have smelling salts?”
“Google smelling salt. Maybe we can make some.”
“We’ll need a diversion.” Missy sneaked back to the mopeds. “We’re good at that, right?”
“Wait,” Em said. “What kind of diversion? We can’t use any stage magic. That might give away who we are.”
“Oh, right.” Missy put her moped into neutral. “We’re going to have to try science.”
She pushed her moped through the brush as quietly as possible toward the house. Em followed with her moped.
“This is our worst idea yet.” Em said.
“I know.” A grin crept onto Missy’s face.
Missy and Em rolled their scooters to the back door with their helmets still on and listened for voices. When she didn’t hear anything, Missy crept to the door and peeked into the kitchen. The woman, hopefully Anika’s mother, was still unconscious. The kitchen was otherwise empty. She nodded to Em, who scooted around the house for a view inside the living room.
Crouching by the door, Missy flipped up her visor. As inconvenient as the helmets would be, they decided discretion was more important. She checked the handle, flipped out her lock picks, and had the door open in seconds. She pushed the door open, hoping for slick hinges.
The door creaked.
Missy crawled forward to the chair and examined the lock, which was old and a little rusty, but it was sturdy enough she couldn’t break it. Not quietly, anyway. She inserted the first pick and explored the mechanism. Time to see if luck was on their side.
Em prowled inside, sneaking around the island toward the gun which she slid off the counter. She rifled through the contents under the sink.
The lock proved difficult. Missy cursed under her breath. Em crept beside her, arms full of stuff. She held the gun out with two fingers and set it into the woman’s lap. She then poured a little cleaner inside a cup. The smell of ammonia covered up the metallic scent of drying blood. She found a salt shaker and opened the lid, pouring a generous amount into the cup.
Not exactly smelling salt, but they had little to go on.
“Hurry,” Em said.
The brute burst into the kitchen, his eyes taking in the scene, anger bubbling into his pretty face. Em thrust the cup under the woman’s nose.
“What are you doing?” he yelled.
Missy steadied her hands and twisted the picks.
The brute char
ged.
Em screamed.
Just as the lock clicked open, the woman yanked on the chain, grabbed the gun in her lap, and fired. The chain ripped across Missy’s hand, slicing into her palm. The bullet struck the brute in the chest, sending him flailing backwards.
Blood splattered across the walls.
Missy gawked as the gun went off again and again, each striking the man’s chest, as he backpedaled out of the kitchen.
He crumpled to the floor as the door slammed closed.
Missy studied her hand. Blood dripped from the gash onto the floor.
The woman rose to her feet and Em grabbed her before she collapsed.
“Come with us.” Em helped her toward the door.
Missy stared at the blood. Her blood. Even with a few drops, she knew her DNA would betray them. She grabbed a rag and wrapped it around her hand. With another rag, she wiped down the lock. She took the cleaner and doused the lock, the chain, and the floor, before running to grab the woman’s other arm. The girls helped her to the scooters.
“Oh, crap! Crap, crap,” Mr. Edwards said from inside.
Missy started her moped as Em helped the woman get on behind her.
“Go!” Em yelled.
Missy sped away from the house.
“Turn around,” the woman said.
Missy slowed and turned back toward the house. Mr. Edwards held onto Em’s jacket as her sister tried to ride away. The woman raised the gun, her hand shaking wildly.
It was Jackie’s dad. Jackie might not care if he dies, but they needed him to find a cure for her. “Don’t kill him!” Missy yelled.
The woman lowered the gun and shot him in the leg. Mr. Edwards screamed, releasing Em as he fell to the ground. Em sped off. Missy got her moped turned around again and followed. The woman wobbled, tossing the gun into the shrubbery. Missy took a moment and wiped blood from her visor, but instead of cleaning it, she left red streaks.
Halfway to the main road, the woman passed out but still managed to stay on the scooter. Her weight pushed Missy forward, but she was determined to get her somewhere safe. They still had so much to do to cover their tracks.
Leave no trace. The motto was scorched into their head. To become the most amazing magician in the world, they needed absolute invisibility. And Mr. Edwards was smart. A terrible father, but crack whip brilliant. He would check the places that rented mopeds. Would he know they were girls? They were tall enough to pass as women, or even boys if they weren’t wearing such stylish jackets.
Then he would check the local motels, hotels, and hostels with a description of two youths on scooters. Em sped on ahead, and Missy knew what she was planning. She would arrive near their motel and stash her moped in the parking garage across the street. Then she would hit the kiosk around the corner and buy supplies they would need—some first aid equipment and a sheet of plastic. It was dangerous to buy anything if the bad guys traced them to the right neighborhood, but it was a risk they had to take.
Missy just had to keep the woman who could be Anika’s mom from falling off the moped. Keep driving. She pulled off the main road and took the back streets. The bad guys might have more men searching the main roads. The back streets had fewer cameras, too. Cameras were the worst.
She wished Sasha could have been there to block out the cameras, and well, to do the dangerous stuff. And the lifting. Her shoulders ached from driving with an unconscious woman leaning on her the whole way.
After an hour, she wheeled into the parking lot. Em was waiting in a boy-wig and a slick red raincoat. Missy pulled right in front of their door. The woman fell into Em’s arms. Em dragged her inside. Missy shut the door behind them. As Em helped the woman onto the plastic-covered bed, Missy stripped out of her clothes, tossing them into a plastic bag.
“What took you so long?” Em asked.
Missy didn’t answer. She pulled on the clothes Em had laid out for her, grabbed the gloves and wipes from the table, and slipped outside. She wiped the seat clean and walked it toward the shadows, glancing up at the camera. A black bag covered it with a string hanging to the ground. Missy slipped underneath and pulled the bag off.
She drove to a secluded spot in the woods nearby and rigorously cleaned the moped. Her arms drooped, and her feet ached. Missy drove the moped to a parking garage a few blocks away and waited for the morning bus.
Em had the hard job—cleaning up the woman’s wounds and making sure she didn’t die in their room.
The town began to wake as the bus rolled in. Missy smiled at the driver as she boarded the bus and headed to the back.
In the morning, Anika found a large manila envelope and a Boulsour special sandwich on the passenger seat of Boulsour’s Mini Coup. Judging from the minuscule dip in his countenance, he didn’t seem to know anything about the envelope. Curious.
Inside, Anika found detailed notes about George Copeland’s insectile situation. Anika did her best to rifle through them as Boulsour race through the streets of Moreau.
Boulsour dropped Anika off in front of the high school. On her way to Calculus, Anika finished the last of the chocolate chip, peanut butter, banana, and applesauce bacon sandwich Boulsour made her for breakfast. His effort wasn’t lacking, but his culinary skills were problematic. At least he stopped burning the toast.
Mrs. Pankina, the new acting principal, in all her hairy-lipped glory, stood guard at the office, glaring at the kids as they shuffled past. Pankina had taken over when her predecessor, Mr. Esposito, took a sudden sabbatical to Hawaii. The lies people lived with in this town were ridiculous, but his disappearance wasn’t something Anika had time to investigate.
The last time anyone had seen Esposito was the night Anika had taken Victor out of the picture and had saved Blake. Victor could have gotten to him. Or Blake could have eaten the principal while still a bug. Or perhaps another wayward experiment or nefarious personality. Hard to tell. In Moreau, anything was possible.
Pankina smiled at Anika, which was in all parts creepier than her usual scowl. Anika nodded and shuffled around the corner. As Anika stuffed her books into her locker, B-14 rushed up and tried his locker combination twice before flinging the door open. He pulled something from a black bag and tossed it inside.
B-14 sneered at her. “What are you looking at?” His plaid fedora hung at an angle. He smelled a little like gasoline. In the month she’d been in Moreau, she’d never learned his name.
“Nothing.”
“You think you’re so smart,” he said, “but you have no idea what’s really going on.”
Anika held back a snicker. “Oh yeah? What’s really going on?”
“Like you could handle it.” He slammed his locker closed and sauntered away, a little awkward swagger in his step.
Anika smiled. The kid was odd, but those were usually the best kind. Perhaps if she ever got a little free time, she’d investigate his situation and see if she could help him out. Perhaps his parents were experimenting on him, too.
As she passed the nurse’s station, someone grabbed her arm and yanked her inside.
Anika whipped around and screamed at her assailant, pushing her against the poster of the smoker’s lung. “Stop it!”
Sasha blinked, mouth ajar, her metal spikes on her leather jacket digging into Anika’s hands. She wore a matching barbed choker, purple eye shadow, and a metal skull belt buckle.
Anika took a deep breath through her nose and shoved Sasha a second time. “I’m sick of people pushing me around!”
Sasha glanced over Anika’s shoulder. Anika turned toward an audience of her friends, all staring at her, aghast. Misty sat in the nurse’s examination chair and Billie, Yoko, and Linh sat around her. They’d fixed a magnifying glass above a table in front of Misty. On the table were a lighter, Betadine antiseptic, bandages, and a jagged piece of metal.
“Ladies,” Anika said between deep breaths as she tried to slow her racing heart. “What’s going on?”
Linh, sitting behind her laptop, smile
d, which was more unnerving than Pankina’s. Her dark hair bore intricate braids and her Vietnam Veteran T-shirt and green army jacket were a little unusual for a petite girl from Vietnam. Billie was definitely having an influence on her, which Anika wasn’t sure was a good thing. Linh’s unprecedented hacking skills and backdoor access to her parent’s unscrupulous software were invaluable.
Billie wore a flowery pink blouse and pink skirt with nylons and platform sneakers. Her wig was braided into pigtails. Either she was taking the undercover thing a little too far or Linh was punking her with her wardrobe purchases from Norway.
Yoko wore her traditional Japanese school outfit, complete with tweed jacket and a red bow around her neck. Her red-metal drone-racing goggles rested on top of her shiny black hair forcing her bangs to curl up. Down her lapel were a dozen metal robotics pins. She rested a protecting hand on Linh’s shoulder, which Linh tolerated even though she rarely let anyone else touch her. Yoko’s face was turning a little green like she was going to throw up.
Misty, a few inches taller than the other girls, had opted to go without her wig since her sisters left town, and she was loving it. Her blonde, spiky hair had bangs twisting in a sort of swirl. She wore a frilly red shirt and a black bowtie, as close to an homage to a stage magician as one could get during an ordinary day in High School. Her sleeves were rolled up as she held out a photograph of someone’s hand with a deep, gnarly gash across the palm.
The hairs on the back of Anika’s neck rose as she examined the table. More pictures of the hand lay scattered, showing the wound in various stages of first aid. “I don’t understand.”
Misty’s hand wavered as she set the photo down and picked up the jagged piece of metal. She cringed as she offered it to Anika. “I need you to match the cuts on my sisters’ hands.”
“What?” Their game was going way too far. Pretending to be the same person might work for a while, but matching scars? Anika’s stomach soured, and suddenly Boulsour’s inventive breakfast threatened to make a second appearance. “That’s stupid. You think a scar on your hand is going to make a difference?”