Tempest: The Scarab Beetle Series: #6 (The Academy)

by C. L. Stone

  “I didn’t know you had a cousin,” I said as he flicked open the menu. He wasn’t really reading it close, as his eyes seemed dazed and glossy. He was trying to control himself.

  Like I was.

  “He’s only fourteen” he said. “I’d been trying to work with him since his dad is a lot like mine. Just not as extreme. I’d contacted him within the last twenty-four hours of Blake’s phone falling in with Alice. He had recommended we all do similar, keep them safe. Anyone we’ve talked to in the last twenty-four hours, find them first, get them safe…” He grumbled out a gravelly sounding sigh. “Bringing them in together wasn’t enough. She took them. Even with our people watching them.”

  “Who was there?”

  He sighed. “A couple of people I’m not sure you’ve met yet. We had them staying in the apartment with them. If Alice took them, she was good, and fast, and had enough people to get them all out. We weren’t but a few minutes behind and they were gone. It must have been a lot of them. And no warning…” He paused. “Maybe they tried. Gretta’s phone…”

  “She probably has Gretta too?”

  “No way to know,” he said. “But I’m thinking she used Gretta to get in the building and then got to the first apartment. We must have crossed paths or something when we got into the elevator, and they got out quick enough…something like that. I feel like somehow Gretta’s phone signal was a warning for us. If it hadn’t been for that, we would have remained in the other apartment and they would have taken us, too. We got stuck in the elevator.”

  “Where would she take them?”

  He grunted. “With that many people…” He paused and dropped the menu as the waitress came over for an order. “Coffee and the eggs special.” He pointed to me. “Coffee and the pancakes mega platter.”

  “I’m not hungry,” I said as she walked away. I hadn’t gotten to Marc’s omelet, but I was way too angry to eat. “I want to leave. I want to find her.”

  “We’ve no starting point. Trust me, it’s my priority, too. I told my contact we won’t start until essential people are out of the city. That might take two hours. The rest can follow later, if we don’t find them by then at least.”

  “We can’t just sit here.”

  He leaned over the table, his palms clasping together as he looked over them at me. “Just until the thrift store opens. We’ll need supplies. New clothes.” He squinted at me. “We need to do something with your hair. Different appearances. The police will be looking for us even if we’ve destroyed the apartments. They’ll want to question us and the others, so the whole city will be looking for them. If we’re going to stay and look for them, we have to change and be as lowkey as possible. We also need as much energy as we can get. Starving only helps her to get what she wants.”

  At the thought of that, I was suddenly very hungry. He was right. This was going to take a while.

  “She’s not going to murder them…at least not yet. She’s got at least ten people in one swoop. She’ll want them alive to lure us out.” He considered this. “If she transported that many people out of the building, then she needed a really big vehicle. We might have gotten lucky there…” He trailed off.

  I hoped he was right. Only, I didn’t trust Alice. “She probably gave them all a needle right off.”

  “Which means we have to do this today. We need to get them to a hospital. Especially Blake’s sister-in-law. A baby couldn’t handle it.”

  It was hard not to leap from the table and go tear a blazing trail through all of Charleston just to find them, to rip out Alice and whoever had done this and get them.

  It was Axel who put a calm, steady hand over mine, drawing it partway across the table, holding on to it.

  “I know,” he said. “And we’re going to.”

  WAITING IS THE WORST

  When our food arrived, I shoveled everything at first until Axel told me it wouldn’t help if I threw up from eating too fast.

  I started taking a bite and then taking a breath. “Maybe they all got out,” I said. “Marc was awake. He was waking up the others. Corey might have figured it out.”

  “Maybe,” Axel said. “It’s best case scenario. We can’t take the risk and expose ourselves.”

  “Not even to check in and see?”

  “I did just now on the phone, but we can’t keep checking in.” He sipped at his coffee. “We need to prepare first. And we do it for the worst case scenario.”

  I was mostly a space case, contemplating what to do next. When the coffee finally hit and the food started working to fuel me, I was annoyed with the waiting.

  “Did you tell Jack?” I asked. “Did you tell him why he had to be there?”

  “I said there was a gas leak in his neighborhood. We were giving him a place to stay until it was cleaned up.”

  I made scratch marks into the table with my fingernails. “He believed it?”

  “I don’t know. But the next step was offering a better job with a better place to stay. Somewhere else.”

  This made me uneasy. Just when he was getting on his feet, with help from them, they had to take it away. It was cruel. And now he might just be with Alice somewhere. The only thing stopping me from going crazy was that they could be with Raven, Corey and the other Academy guys somewhere. Even if she took them all…they were together and could fight.

  The more I thought, the deeper I made scratch marks.

  His strong hand covered mine, getting me to stop instantly.

  I lifted my head. “What are we doing?”

  “Waiting,” he said.

  “For what?”

  “We need a change of clothes and some supplies. The thrift shop doesn’t open for another fifteen minutes.”

  It’d been a while since I’d been in a thrift store. Mostly because you need extra spending money to go, and I didn’t have it most of the time. Plus, the one on my side of town was more expensive than just going to a discount box store and getting a shirt for a dollar. “Why are we at this one?”

  “I just know it doesn’t have any security cameras and they have cell phones and will take cash. And on this side of town, they’ll have what we need.”

  When it did finally open, he seemed to know his way around the shop. He found us a set of backpacks for carrying everything. We picked out just a couple of shirts, pants, a pair of boots for me.

  He found a bedroll and a selection of camping gear: metal plates and a canteen, flashlights and one Swiss army knife. There must have been a campground around here or camping was a really popular local hobby.

  I picked up something that looked like a shovel packed into a carrying case. I was oddly enthralled with it. “Do we need a shovel?”

  He took one look at it and seemed to debate on it. “It looks nice. But cash is limited.”

  I grumbled, and before I put it back on the shelf, I opened the case it came in and the little brochure for it came out. “Oh man, it’s got a harpoon. And flint and steel for fire…and a whistle. And the blade is an axe.”

  “I know what tactical shovels are,” he said without turning around to look at it. He was pilfering through some other supplies in a bin marked half off.

  I was imagining harpooning Alice in the face. “So is laying low camping?”

  “It might be, or we might hobo it around town. I don’t know yet.” He looked up shortly from sorting toward the registers. “They keep the phones behind the counter. I need one to check out the police scanner without being traced back, but we need to be prepared to hide for a while.”

  “Is carrying a harpoon being prepared?”

  “We need to be on the move,” he said. “The police are corrupt, at least one of them is. We know this.” He paused his sorting again. “We’re going to need more cash. I have to lose my wallet eventually, especially when we might get caught.” He looked at me pointedly. “I never ever wanted to ask you to do this again.”

  I frowned but nodded. It’d come to this. Back to being poor and stealing to survive. “Not
here.”

  “No, not here,” he said. “But that’s our next stop. We should keep some cash on hand.”

  We got into line for the cash register with our gear.

  “So do we try to find Marc and the others first, or go after her?” I whispered to him, not trying to alert anyone else around us.

  He frowned. “We have to find the others, that is a priority, but if she has them, we waste time not looking for her. There’s a meetup spot my team is aware of for emergencies, but they know better than to show up this soon so they can’t be tracked. We check the police records to see if they were brought in. But either way, I need to take care of her immediately.”

  I frowned. “Lure her? Or you mean get her to talk to us? And by us, I mean you and me…”

  “They did enough to you.”

  I got louder. “You mean us, yeah?”

  He turned and glared at me, avoiding looking around to some people I’d startled. “Stop it.”

  “No,” I said. “She gets to us by separating us. So no one goes alone.”

  “We might not have a choice.”

  “If she has the others, we’re just the last pieces she needs to finish the job. What stops her from just shooting us on sight?”

  He growled at me. “If she has them, they might already be dead. If we’re lucky and I find her…”

  “You think you can stop her? Or she’ll stop at you? If you’re dead, how are you going to help me get rid of her and protect everyone else?”

  He fumed where he stood. “Either way, I’m going after her first. I’ve had enough of this.”

  I tightened my fists as I focused on the line ahead of us at some woman buying twenty pairs of sneakers at once, grumbling, wanting things to hurry along. If we were going to do this, get rid of Alice, we needed to move fast. I had a feeling this was a get her before she got us scenario.

  I was preparing for the reality. That Axel was planning to kill her.

  We’d become murderers.

  He sighed as he watched me make that connection without uttering a word. “I should never feed you. Then you can’t cause trouble.” He took the stuff from my arms. “Go get your damn shovel.”

  I went for it, regretting finding it because now all I could imagine was the many ways I could hurt Alice with it, which wasn’t practical in any way. It wasn’t realistic. I wasn’t going to harpoon her in the face.

  But I got it anyway.

  He paid for everything with what cash he had. We took everything outside with us and sorted it.

  The supplies we put together in our backpacks. Once he folded down the bedroll and put it between his pack and his back, it looked like an ordinary, slightly full backpack.

  Except for my shovel. That kind of stood out, but I angled it in its container between my back and the backpack.

  “It ends up looking like an instrument or something?” I asked him.

  “Sure,” he said. “Just never take off your bag, ever.”

  “What about that other team? The guy on the boat?” I drifted as the name slipped my mind for a second. “Liam.”

  “Him?”

  “Yeah. Where are they?”

  He shushed me by putting a fingertip to my lips. However, he didn’t say anything for a minute. Eventually, he lowered his finger. “I don’t know. But they should be taken out of the city if they aren’t targets right now. They’ll make that determination. From this point on, no more talking about anyone else.”

  Right. We weren’t safe anymore. Maybe they couldn’t hear us inside the Sargent Jasper, but out here, we couldn’t take chances. We had to forget they existed for a while.

  We were alone from this point out.

  It was better that way. No witnesses.

  THIEVING NEVER CHANGES

  The Citadel Mall was a location I hadn’t been to in a while but was the closest to where we were. Which meant an inexpensive bus ride. The mall was also smaller, with fewer crossways to duck into in case I made a mistake.

  Still, it would have to do.

  Axel worked with the cell phone he picked up. He was wearing a faded local softball T-shirt and jeans. He wore a baseball cap, too, mostly hiding his face from cameras where possible. Wearing all this, his features somewhat changed. His body was masked by the bulk of the out of shape T-shirt, and the cap hid the length of his hair and changed the angles of his face. Some of the scruff on his face was growing out, as he hadn’t shaved that morning. He blended in pretty well.

  “There’s reports about a fire at the Jasper,” he whispered to me. “No arrests, just questions.” He lifted up his head, squinting to look out the window. “The police don’t have them.”

  “So they got away or…”

  “That was over ten people,” he said. He counted on his fingers. “Our people, your father… the guards, maybe Gretta. All of them.” He shook his head slowly and then waved the phone in my direction. “No reports about missing people. None.”

  My heart raced. “Like they disappeared?”

  “How do you get rid of that many people?” he asked. “No witnesses, no one asking where they are now.” He blew out a short breath. “They do have them. It’s the biggest cover up I’ve ever seen. She must have more on her side within the department than we realized.”

  I absently scratched my arm, looking around the bus at a few other people. Most looked asleep or had headphones on or their cell phones in their faces. “So we need cash to help us get to her?”

  “Yeah.”

  We arrived at the mall and walked in quickly along with a few others who had gotten off the bus with us. We got away from them as quickly as possible.

  “What do you need me to do?” Axel said.

  “Ideally?” I said. “Turn off the cameras and send the guards home. Maybe even turn the lights off on cue. Or make everyone pass out.”

  He coughed shortly once. “I can do one of those things. Stay here.”

  I sort of hoped he was going to make everyone pass out. Picking pockets of people who were unconscious would have been so much easier.

  When he returned, he motioned to me to walk with him down another hall. “We’ve got maybe an hour before the security guard catches on that the cameras stopped recording. Maybe more if he’s super lazy today.”

  I wanted to ask him how he’d done it, but it didn’t matter. “If you can keep an eye out for guards…”

  “I’ve got your back.”

  With Axel as my lookout, I kept an eye on people, watching them open their wallets for whatever they bought. If they used a card and I couldn’t spot any green, it wouldn’t do any good to waste a lift. Some card users never carried cash.

  It was getting harder for cash-seeking pickpockets these days. I’d forgotten how long it took to spot a potential mark. And when I spotted my first one, I followed him, looking for an angle in.

  This was going to be harder to do with a shovel on my back. I was heavier, bulky. Slipping along quietly and going along unnoticed was going to be difficult. I rubbed my hands against my thighs, trying to stop my shaking.

  I couldn’t remember being this nervous before. Maybe it was knowing Axel was watching. It served as a reminder that this was wrong.

  When I checked behind myself, looking for Axel, I didn’t spot him. Wherever he was, I hoped he wasn’t too far. If this guy caught me…

  I tried not to think about that.

  I walked right behind the guy and waited for him to pause.

  He did just in front of a mall display to look at some sales banner.

  I collided with him.

  Bump.

  Lift.

  I put my other hand on his back, trying to look surprised.

  He turned and blinked repeatedly at me, seeming annoyed. “Watch it.”

  My heart raced, and I almost stuttered a surprised remark back at him, until I remembered I wasn’t wearing what I usually did, a low-cut top to help out. I wore just a T-shirt and jeans and boots, and my hair was up in a cap. I probably didn�
��t look exceptionally distracting. I might even have looked like a boy.

  Without being too obvious, I darted away from him, and when I could, ducked into a shop to get out of eyesight. I slipped the wallet behind the backpack and jarred up with the shovel.

  Because I was in a shop, I waited, ready with the wallet in my back pocket. Unfortunately, without a cross hallway in this mall, I was stuck with a lot of waiting and hiding, hoping he didn’t put two and two together with my face.

  Normally, I’d wait, then put the wallet in the food court where security could find it after I took some cash out. Usually, security found it before my mark even noticed it gone, and by the time they found the security office, it was already there waiting for them. They got so relieved, they didn’t even notice a twenty or two taken out.

  Today, I had to leave it in this store and not in the food court. Walking around with it too long… I tried not to think about getting caught.

  I pulled some cash out, just sixty out of over a hundred, and left the wallet on the floor near the men’s section in the back of the store.

  I needed to get to the other side of the mall and find Axel. And then I realized our problem. This was all we could get today. They’d notice the cameras were off once he reported his wallet missing. It would take too long to locate the wallet stuck inside a store somewhere. They’d turn the cameras back on quickly and they wouldn’t find the wallet before the guy left the mall.

  We had to leave. A second attempt, a bump from me being suspicious, with a second report, we’d be toast.

  I was rusty, unprepared. We needed another location.

  ♠♠♠♠♠♠

  As soon as I found Axel, I told him as much and we were on the first bus outside the Citadel heading into downtown.

  “It’s not much,” I said, holding out the set of twenties. I’d taken my hat off and tied back my hair in a bun at the base of my skull to keep it out of my face and to give myself a different look.

  He flipped his hat around to get the bill out of his line of site. It was weird seeing it like that on his head. He took the cash from me. Then from his back pocket, he pulled out another wad of cash, a few hundred dollars in twenties. “It’s enough.”