by Meg Cabot
"Seth Blumenthal," he said, heavily. "We missed him, Jessica."
I felt something inside my head explode. The next thing I knew, I was screaming into the phone like a maniac.
"What do you mean, you missed him?" I shouted.
It was only when I saw the expressions on Mike's and Claire's faces that I realized what I'd just done.
Outed myself. Officially. To the head of the psychic network of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
I felt all the blood run out of my face. Could my day, I wondered, possibly get worse?
"The officers who were dispatched to the scene," Dr. Krantz was saying, in my ear, "were unprepared for the amount of resistance they received from the—"
"Resistance?" I blurted, once again forgetting, in my indignation, that the call I'd made concerning Seth Blumenthal was supposed to have been anonymous. "What are you talking about, resistance? All they had to do was go in and get the kid and come out again. How hard is that?"
"Jessica." Dr. Krantz sounded strange. "They were fired upon."
"Well, of course they were," I practically shouted. "Because the people who took Seth Blumenthal against his will are criminals, Dr. Krantz. That's who tends to kidnap kids. Criminals. And that's what criminals do when the police show up. They try to evade capture."
"You failed to mention," Dr. Krantz said, "that Seth was being held against his will when you spoke to the nine-eleven operator, Jessica. You failed to mention—"
"That he'd been tied up and gagged and shut up in the linen closet of a double-wide? I guess I did fail to mention that, didn't I?" I could feel tears welling up beneath my eyelids. Crying. I was crying. "Maybe because I had to keep that call short, in the event it was traced. Something I wouldn't have to do, if you people would leave me and my family alone."
"One of the officers," Cyrus Krantz said, completely ignoring my barb, "was critically injured in the exchange of gunfire." I realized then why it was his voice sounded strange. He was frustrated. I had never heard Cyrus Krantz sound frustrated before. I was surprised. I have to admit, I thought of him as one of those Energizer bunnies. You know, that he just kept going, and going. . . .
"The perpetrators got away," Dr. Krantz went on. "With Seth."
"Shit!" I yelled. Claire, on Michael's lap, opened her eyes very wide, but I didn't care. "Can't you people do anything right?"
"It's a little difficult, Jessica," Dr. Krantz said, "when you insist upon playing these childish games with us, claiming you no longer have your psychic powers."
"Don't you go blaming me," I yelled into the phone, "for your incompetence!"
"Jessica," Dr. Krantz said. "Calm down."
"I can't calm down," I shouted. "Not when that kid's still out there. Not when—"
My voice caught. Because, of course, it was all coming back. The fear and terror I'd felt in my dream—my dream about Seth.
Only it hadn't been a dream. Well, to me it had. But it was Seth's reality. A reality that had gone spinning out of control the minute he'd been snatched off his bike in the synagogue parking lot the day before. Who knew what all he'd endured since that moment? All I could see—all I could feel—was what Seth was seeing and experiencing at the exact moment my mind, expansive in sleep, reached out to him.
And that was the cold confinement of the closet he'd been locked into. The throbbing pain of the ropes cutting into his wrists, cruelly tied behind his back. The rough gag biting into the corners of his mouth. The muffled but still terrifying sounds he could hear outside the closet door.
That was Seth Blumenthal's reality. And my nightmare.
The fact that that nightmare was ongoing was almost more than I could bear.
"Jessica," Cyrus Krantz was saying. "I know how you feel about me, and about my organization. But I swear to you, if you would just give us another chance—one more chance for us to work together—you won't regret it. We need to find this boy, Jessica, and soon. He's in danger. Real danger. The people who have him are animals. Anyone who would torture a twelve-year-old—"
"What?" I'd been pacing up and down the hallway with the cordless phone gripped in my hand. Now I froze. "What do you mean, torture?"
"Jessica," Dr. Krantz said. "Haven't you realized by now that all of this—Nate, the synagogue, Seth—is connected?"
"Connected?" Something was buzzing inside my head. "To Seth? Connected how?"
"How do you think the people who set that fire at the synagogue knew where to find the scrolls?" Dr. Krantz asked. "Think about it, Jessica. Who would know exactly where those scrolls were kept? Someone who would have been reading from them on his birthday today."
Seth. Seth Blumenthal.
I couldn't believe it.
He didn't wait for the information to digest. Dr. Krantz said, quickly, "That's why I called. We desperately need your help, Jessica. Listen to me—"
"No, you listen to me," I said. "I tried to do things your way, and all it did was get a cop shot. We're going to do things my way now."
Dr. Krantz sounded more frustrated than ever. In fact, now he sounded kind of pissed off. "Oh, yes? And how, precisely, are we going to do that?"
But since of course I had no idea, I couldn't answer his question. Instead, I pressed the Talk button, ending the call.
"Whoa," Mike said, looking at me from over Claire's shoulder. She sat, seemingly frozen, in his lap. "Are you … are you okay?"
"No," I said. I lifted a hand to my hair, then noticed that my fingers were shaking. Slowly, I began to slide down the wall, until I was sitting in the middle of the hallway. "No, I'm not all right."
That's when I heard a voice calling from the phone, "Mastriani? Mastriani!"
Like someone in a dream, I brought the receiver to my ear. "Hello?"
"Mastriani, it's me." Rob's voice sounded irritated. "Remember? You put me on hold."
"Rob." I had completely forgotten about him. "Rob. Yeah. Sorry. Look, I can't go out tonight. Something came up."
"Something came up," he repeated, slowly.
"Yes," I said. I felt as if I were underwater. "I'm really sorry. It's Seth. The cops couldn't get to him, and there was a shootout, and now one of them is in critical condition, and those people still have Seth, and I've got to find him before they kill him, too."
"Whoa," Rob said. "Slow down. Who's Seth?"
"Dr. Krantz thinks there's a connection," I said. In some distant part of my brain, I realized I must have sounded to Rob like I was babbling. Maybe I was babbling. I just couldn't believe it. A cop. A cop had been shot. And Seth was still out there. Seth was still in danger. "A connection between Nate, Seth, and the synagogue."
"Wait a minute," Rob said. "Dr. Krantz? When did you talk to Krantz? Was that him just now?"
"I'm sorry, Rob," I said. I could see Mickey and Claire looking at me with growing concern. I knew I'd have to pull myself together soon, or Mike would go get my mother. "Look, I've got to go—"
But Rob, as usual, was already taking charge of the situation.
"What's the connection?" Rob wanted to know. "What does Krantz say?"
All I wanted to do was hang up the phone, go upstairs to my room, and climb into bed. Yes, that was it. That was what I needed to do. Go back to sleep, and wake up again tomorrow, so that all of this would just seem like a bad dream.
"Mastriani!" Rob yelled in my ear. "What's the connection?"
"It's the symbol, okay?" I couldn't believe he was yelling at me. I mean, I wasn't the one who'd shot a cop, or anything. "The one that was on Nate's chest. It's the same thing that was spray-painted onto the headstones at the synagogue."
"What does it look like?" Rob wanted to know. "This symbol?"
Look, Rob is my soul mate and all, but that doesn't mean that there aren't times when I don't feel like hauling off and decking him. Now was one of those times.
"Jeez, Rob," I said. "You were there in that cornfield with me, remember?" This caused a pointed look to be exchanged between my brother and his girl
friend, but I ignored them. "Didn't you notice what Nate had on his chest?"
Rob's voice was strangely quiet. "No, not really," he said. "I didn't … I didn't actually look. That kind of thing … well, I don't really do too well, you know, at the sight of …"
Blood. He didn't say it, but then, he didn't have to. All my annoyance with him dissipated. Just like that.
Well, love will do that to you.
"It was this squiggly line," I explained. "With an arrow coming out of one end."
"An arrow," Rob echoed.
"Yeah," I said. "An arrow."
"An M? The squiggly line. Was it shaped like a M, only on its side?"
"I don't know," I said. "I guess so. Look, Rob, I don't feel so good. I gotta go—"
Then Rob said a strange thing. Something that got my attention right away, even though I was feeling so lousy, like I was going to pass out, practically.
He said, "It's not an arrow."
I had been about to press the Talk button and hang up the phone. When he said that, however, I stopped myself. "What do you mean, it's not an arrow?"
"Jess," he said. The fact that he used my first name made me realize the situation was far from normal. "I think I might know who these people are. The people who are doing this stuff."
I didn't even hesitate. It was like all of a sudden, the blood that had seemed frozen in my veins was flowing again.
"I'll meet you at the Stop and Shop," I said. "Come pick me up."
"Mastriani—"
"Just be there," I said, and hung up. Then I threw down the phone, got up, and started for the stairs.
"Jess, wait," Michael called. "Where are you going?"
"Out," I called back. "Tell Mom I'll be home soon."
And then, after struggling into my hat and coat, I was tearing off down the street. I couldn't help noticing as I jogged that while our own driveway was still full of snow, the Thompkinses' driveway had been shoveled so clean, you could practically have played basketball on it. All the snow that had been shoveled away was piled along the curb, as neatly as if a plow had pushed it there.
But it hadn't been the work of a plow. Oh, no. It was the work of a person. Namely, my brother Douglas.
Love. It makes people do the craziest things.
C H A P T E R
10
Chick—owner and proprietor of Chick's Bar and Motorcycle Club—looked down at the drawing I had made and went, "Oh, sure. The True Americans."
I looked at the squiggle. It was kind of hard to see in the dark gloom of the bar.
"Are you sure?" I asked. "I mean … you really know what this is?"
"Oh, yeah." Chick was eating a meatball sandwich he'd made for himself back in the kitchen. He'd offered one to each of us, as well, but we'd declined the invitation. Our loss, Chick had said.
Now a large piece of meatball escaped from between the buns Chick clutched in one of his enormous hands, and it dropped down onto the drawing I'd made. Chick brushed it away with a set of hairy knuckles.
"Yeah," he said, squinting down at the drawing in the blue-and-red neon light from the Pabst Blue Ribbon sign behind the bar. "Yeah, that's it, all right. They all got it tattooed right here." He indicated the webbing between his thumb and index finger. "Only you got it sideways, or something."
He turned the drawing so that instead of looking like it looked like .
"There," Chick said. There was sauce in his goatee, but he didn't seem to know it … or care, anyway. "Yeah. That's how it's supposed to look. See? Like a snake?"
"Don't tread on me," Rob said.
"Don't what?" I asked.
It was weird to be sitting in a bar with Rob. Well, it would have been weird to have been sitting in a bar with anyone, seeing as how I am only sixteen and not actually allowed in bars. But it was particularly weird to be in this bar, and with Rob. It was the same bar Rob had taken me to that first time he'd given me a ride home from detention, nearly a year earlier, back when he hadn't realized I was jailbait. We hadn't imbibed or anything—just burgers and Cokes—but it had been one of the best nights of my entire life.
That was because I had always wanted to go to Chick's, a biker bar I had been passing every year since I was a little kid, whenever I went with my dad to the dump to get rid of our Christmas tree. Far outside of the city limits, Chick's held mystery for a Townie like me—though Ruth, and most of the rest of the other people I knew, called it a Grit bar, filled as it was with bikers and truckers.
That night, however—even though it was a Saturday—the place was pretty much devoid of customers. That was on account of all the snow. It was no joke, trying to ride a motorcycle through a foot and a half of fresh powder. Rob thankfully hadn't even tried it, and had come to get me instead in his mother's pickup.
But he had been one of the few to brave the mostly unplowed back countryroads. With the exception of Rob and me, Chick's was empty, of both clientele and employees. Neither the bartender nor the fry cook had made it in. Chick hadn't been too happy about having to make his own sandwich. But mostly, if you ask me, because he was so huge, he didn't fit too easily in the small galley kitchen out back.
"Don't tread on me," Rob repeated, for my benefit. "Remember? That was printed on one of the first American flags, along with a coiled snake." He held up my drawing, but tilted it the way Chick had. "That thing on the end isn't an arrow. It's the snake's head. See?"
All I saw was still just a squiggly line with an arrow coming out of it. But I went, "Oh, yeah," so I wouldn't seem too stupid.
"So, these True Americans," I said. "What are they? A motorcycle gang, like the Hell's Angels, or something?"
"Hell, no!" Chick exploded, spraying bits of meatball and bread around. "Ain't a one of 'em could ride his way out of a paper bag!"
"They're a militia group, Mastriani," Rob explained, showing a bit more patience than his friend and mentor, Chick. "Run by a guy who grew up around here … Jim Henderson."
"Oh," I said. I was trying to appear worldly and sophisticated and all, since I was in a bar. But it was kind of hard. Especially when I didn't understand half of what anybody was saying. Finally, I gave up.
"Okay," I said, resting my elbows on the sticky, heavily graffitied bar. "What's a militia group?"
Chick rolled his surprisingly pretty blue eyes. They were hard to notice, being mostly hidden from view by a pair of straggly gray eyebrows.
"You know," he said. "One of those survivalist outfits, live way out in the backwoods. Won't pay their taxes, but that don't seem to stop 'em from feeling like they got a right to steal all the water and electricity they can."
"Why won't they pay their taxes?" I asked.
"Because Jim Henderson doesn't approve of the way the government spends his hard-earned money," Rob said. "He doesn't want his taxes going to things like education and welfare … unless the right people are the ones receiving the education and welfare."
"The right people?" I looked from Rob to Chick questioningly. "And who are the right people?"
Chick shrugged his broad, leather-jacketed shoulders. "You know. Your basic blond, blue-eyed, Aryan types."
"But …" I fingered the smooth letters of a woman's name—BETTY—that had been carved into the bar beneath my arms. "But the true Americans are the Native Americans, right? I mean, they aren't blond."
"It ain't no use," Chick said, with his mouth full, "arguin' semantics with Jim Henderson. To him, the only true Americans're the ones that climbed down offa the Mayflower … white Christians. And you ain't gonna tell 'im differently. Not if you don't want a twelve gauge up your hooha."
I raised my eyebrows at this. I wasn't sure what a hooha was. I was pretty sure I didn't want to know.
"Oh," I said. "So they killed Nate …"
"… because he was black," Rob finished for me.
"And they burned down the synagogue …"
"… because it's not Christian," Rob said.
"So the only true Americans, according to Ji
m Henderson," I said, "are people who are exactly like … Jim Henderson."
Chick finished up his last bite of meatball sandwich. "Give the girl a prize," he said, with a grin, revealing large chunks of meat and bread trapped between his teeth.
I slapped the bar so hard with the flat of my hand, it stung.
"I don't believe this," I yelled, while both Rob and Chick looked at me in astonishment. "Are you saying that all this time, there's been this freaky hate group running around town, and nobody's bothered to do anything about it?"
Rob regarded me calmly. "And what should someone have done, Mastriani?" he asked.
"Arrested them, already!" I yelled.
"Can't arrest a man on account of his beliefs," Chick reminded me. "A man's entitled to believe whatever he wants, no matter how back-ass-ward it might be."
"But he still has to pay his taxes," I pointed out.
"True enough," Chick said. "Only ol' Jim never had two nickels to rub together, so I doubt the county ever thought it'd be worth its while to go after him for tax evasion."
"How about," I said, coldly, "kidnapping and murder? The county might think those worth its while."
"Imagine so," Chick said, looking thoughtful. "Don't know what ol' Jim must be thinking. Isn't like 'im, really. I always thought Jimmy was, you know, all blow and no go."
"Perhaps the arrival," Rob said, "of the Thompkinses, the first African-American family to come to town, offended Mr. Henderson. Aroused in him a feeling of righteous indignation."
Chick stared at Rob, clearly impressed. "Ooh," he said. "Righteous indignation. I'm going to remember that one."
"Right," I said, slipping off my barstool. "Well, that's it, then. Let's go."
Both Chick and Rob blinked at me.
"Go?" Chick echoed. "Where?"
I couldn't believe he even had to ask. "To Jim Henderson's place," I said. "To get Seth Blumenthal."
Chick had been swallowing a sip of beer as I said this. Well, okay, not a sip, exactly. Guys like Chick don't sip, they guzzle.
In any case, when I said this, he let loose what had been in his mouth in a plume that hit Rob, me, and the jukebox.