The Amanda Project: Book 4: Unraveled

by Amanda Valentino

  And then I put the camera down. Fast.

  I grabbed Callie’s arm. But when Nia said, “What is it?” all I could do was look at her and try to communicate with seriously raised eyebrows that something was very wrong. Which helped not at all.

  Because I had seen something. Or rather, someone. It was the jogger. She was close. She had seen us. And now she was headed straight in our direction.

  There are some situations were even all my invisibility tricks just don’t work. With my unobstructed view of the floor, I could see the jogger’s sneakers moving swiftly toward me. Purposefully striding. This was not someone pausing in the midst of a run to admire the monument’s grandeur. This was not someone stopped to stretch. This was no jogger.

  When I heard my name, I think I jumped out of my skin. “Zoe?” the jogger said, and as I looked up three things happened simultaneously.

  The jogger took off her baseball cap.

  I felt the words It’s okay, it’s okay, it’s okay pulsing into my brain like they would after you have a bad fall but realize you’re not bleeding and you haven’t broken anything.

  And I said, “Ravenna,” because I knew then who the jogger was. It was not someone to fear. It was one of the people we’d come here to find. And once I saw her without her cap, I realized it was someone I would know anywhere.

  I wondered how I could ever have been afraid of her. She looked so, well, so normal in her yoga pants and sweatshirt, her iPod buds hanging down from her shoulders, her dark ponytail springing to life now that her baseball cap was removed. Ravenna Bruyere. Robin Beckendorf. Amanda’s sister.

  Ravenna was the kind of older sister who had always made me feel like I was special. Back when I was ten, I thought she knew how to do everything my ten-year-old self thought a girl in high school should be able to do: track team, yearbook staff, algebra, field hockey. She’d been a cheerleader, an honor student.

  Compared to Amanda, she was resolutely normal. But there were also things about her that weren’t. When Amanda fell off her bike and gashed her knee, Ravenna spoke briefly to their mom on the phone, then scrubbed her hands very carefully, put on surgical gloves, cleaned out Amanda’s wound, injected a tiny shot of anesthetic and gave Amanda a stitch. What normal teenager can do that? What normal household has that on hand? Theirs did.

  “You know how to do that?” I’d said, my jaw hanging open.

  Ravenna had grinned. “Mom hates doctors,” she’d explained. Later, when I asked my mom and dad about it, they’d exchanged significant looks, sighed, and hadn’t answered my question.

  “Zoe Costas?” Ravenna called out now softly. She was speaking in a low voice and checking over her shoulder to make sure no one was watching, but she couldn’t keep the enthusiasm out of her voice. She opened up her arms and before I knew it, she’d pulled me toward her. “How are you? Girl, I missed you. How’s your mom? Iris? Pen?”

  I quickly told her that everyone was fine. I couldn’t stop looking at her, though. There were things she did—a way of crinkling up her eyes when she smiled, moving her hands when she talked—that reminded me of Amanda. And her smell—part drugstore hand cream, part musky body spray, reminded me of home and my life before Orion. Of my dad.

  “I’m so sorry about—about everything,” she said into my ear as she hugged me again. “Someday we’re going to have to talk all about it.”

  “Okay,” I mumbled. I didn’t trust myself to say much else without crying. In fact, I was already sniffling. I wiped a tear away with the back of my sleeve, hoping the others wouldn’t see. A totally ridiculous idea, as they were all staring at me.

  Though they weren’t staring because I was crying.

  “Um, Zoe?” Nia said. “Why are you hugging my brother’s girlfriend?”

  There was a second where I was so confused by Nia’s question I didn’t even understand what she meant. “Cisco’s girlfriend?” I repeated. “I don’t think so. This is Amanda’s sister, Ravenna.”

  “No it’s not,” Nia said. “That’s Rosie. Rosie O’Connor. She’s a college student in D.C. She met Cisco when he was at some soccer clinic near her dorm. They’ve been going out for months.”

  “Yeah,” said Hal. “I’ve met her.” He looked at Ravenna. “I mean, you.” He turned back to me. “At the As You Like It performance at school.”

  “She’s been to my house,” Nia said.

  Openmouthed, I turned to Ravenna. “Is this true?” I said.

  She nodded. And then she smiled. This huge, light-up-the-sky smile that made me remember why everyone had always wanted to be her friend. “My name is Rosie now.” She turned to Nia and Hal. “But Zoe’s right too. I am Ariel’s, I mean, Amanda’s sister.”

  “But how—?” I started.

  “The Cisco thing?” Rosie laughed. “I wasn’t looking for anything like that—it just happened.” Of course. Ravenna had always dated the cutest guy in her grade when we lived in Pinkerton. She had that wholesome, J. Crew, straight-A-student thing going on—no one had been able to resist it. Even in undercover mode, dating probably did “just happen.”

  “But you’re in college,” I said. “Aren’t you too old for him?”

  “My mom thought so,” Nia said. Hal snorted a laugh into his hand, pretending to pass it off as a cough. Mrs. Rivera is awesome—warm, protective, supportive—but if she doesn’t like something one of her kids is doing, she doesn’t make a secret of it.

  “Cisco’s only two years younger than I am.” Ravenna seemed not in the least bothered by Nia’s attitude or Hal’s barely disguised guffaw. “He’s a junior and I’m a freshman. And look—”

  We all turned to see Cisco climbing the last of the steps into the temple, leading a few teams of students, his face showing first surprise, then confusion, then confused happiness. “Guys,” he said to the students he was leading. “Go write down some quotes. I need to check in with my sister over there.”

  “Hey,” he said, shooting his butter-melting smile at Ravenna, then Nia, then the rest of us, then back to Ravenna. I’d never seen Cisco look at anyone the way he was looking at Ravenna. Wow, I thought, he really likes her. “What are you doing down here in tourist-land? I thought campus was way up there.” He gestured in a northerly direction.

  “Oh, you know,” Ravenna said. “Internship stuff.”

  “In your jogging clothes?” Cisco raised his eyebrows.

  “Cisco!” Nia said, her voice a whisper that was also, somehow, a shout. “Do you realize that your girlfriend also happens to be Amanda’s sister?” If she’d said, “also happens to be a two-headed bullfighting leprechaun,” she wouldn’t have needed to adjust her tone of voice.

  Cisco’s eyes grew wide. “Rosie?” he said. I don’t know what reaction Nia was expecting him to have, but Cisco seemed, more than anything, to be impressed. “Really?”

  She nodded. “Sorry,” she said. “I couldn’t tell you. You understand, right?”

  But Cisco couldn’t even take that question in yet. “Really?” he repeated. “You’ve been Amanda’s sister—” He paused. “The whole time?”

  “Well, since she was born.” Ravenna laughed.

  “I guess that would be true,” he mused, running his fingers through his gorgeous dark hair. “And you just happened to run into these guys? Because you’re working at your internship?” You could hear the doubt in his voice growing as the startling coincidences started to mount.

  “No,” she said, her voice serious now. She smiled at him. She held his gaze, making sure he knew she was sincere. “Of course not . . . you do understand?” she said. “You don’t think I was using you, do you?”

  Cisco ran his hand through his hair. “Look, Rosie. I don’t care what your name is, I know who you are.”

  “Okay,” she said smiling in relief. The two of them just stared at each other that way a couple of beats until Nia said, “Guys?”

  “Right,” Rosie said. She ducked her head, indicating that we should step out of the way. We followed her to
a relatively hidden spot to one side of Lincoln’s seat.

  “Is Amanda coming?” Callie asked.

  Rosie shook her head. “I don’t think so. She told me to find you at the World War Two Memorial, but when I got there and saw the guards, I followed you here.”

  “Amanda told you—” Nia said. “Does that mean you’ve seen her?”

  “No,” Rosie said. “I wish. She sends me notes. In code. I haven’t seen her since we chalked my dad’s car.”

  “That was you?” Hal said. “We saw another figure in the surveillance video, but didn’t know who it was.”

  “And hello?” Callie said. “Thornhill is your dad?”

  “You didn’t figure that out already?”

  “We knew,” Nia said. She doesn’t ever like to admit she doesn’t know something. “But we didn’t know know. I mean, for sure.”

  “What happened to your mom?” I said. “We saw a newspaper clipping about a car accident—was that real?”

  “It was,” Rosie said, swallowing hard.

  “Your mom was killed?” I said. “By the Official?”

  “For what it’s worth, I don’t think he meant to kill her,” Rosie said. I could tell that this was painful for her to talk about. She slowed down as if she couldn’t tell this story without going into all the details. “She was running. We were always running, except for the time we were in Pinkerton. There, we were happy. We knew we had to leave, but we didn’t want to. We stayed too long, and when we learned it was time to go, we didn’t want to leave. We waited . . . too long. We let the guys who were after us get too close. We got away that time, then later, they found us again. My mom was trying to lose the Official’s people one night. She was driving. It was late. Roads were slippery. I think her death actually set Dr. Joy back, because with Mom gone, Amanda just took off. She was just starting to come into her powers, realizing what she could do, and she freaked out. And of course, with her abilities, she was able to disappear totally. I think she would settle somewhere for months at a time, but then she’d take off again. Even knowing all the tricks my mom taught us over the years, I couldn’t find her. I’d get a clue as to her whereabouts, I’d come running, but it seemed that when I got to wherever she last was, the trail was always cold. So I set out to find my dad. That’s how I ended up out here.”

  “Do you think my dad was killed by accident too?” I said. “Or do you think—?” I could barely speak the words. It was something I hadn’t let myself say out loud before. I know it may sound obvious. If I was reading a book or watching a show on TV, I would have assumed that the bad guys did it. But this was my dad. My dad. The one with the saggy belly I’d laid my head against when I was sick. The one who used to sing “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot” when he washed dishes after dinner. The one who used to love to tell stupid jokes. How could he have been murdered? How could the life he was supposed to have, the life he deserved, how could that have been stolen from him? From me?

  Rosie put her hands on my shoulders, looked at me hard. I could see in her eyes that she understood what I was feeling. “All I know is something I heard my dad saying one time. He said there are lots of ways of making it appear as if someone had a heart attack, when in actuality he was poisoned. Also, he said your dad had to be killed. He said your dad was like him—a soldier. They’d been raised together. As a team, they would have been impossible to stop. For a long time, George didn’t want to get involved at all. He didn’t want to put you, your mom, and your sisters in danger. But in the year before he died, he and my dad had been in communication. They’d decided to work together. My dad said George had been getting ready to move your family underground, and then join him.”

  “So he was murdered,” I said. “And your dad—he’s in captivity.”

  “His life isn’t in danger yet, though. My understanding is that they want to study him.” Rosie’s pretty blue eyes had filled with tears. “Look,” she said. “There’s a lot I wish I could tell you about what my father believes is going on. But I’m worried about our time.”

  “Who’s following you?” Cisco looked protective. “Want me to take care of them?”

  Rosie smiled at Cisco wistfully and I saw in that smile that she really was older than him. Or maybe it wasn’t the years—it was what she had seen. “I want you to stay as far away from them as possible,” she said. “Believe it or not, my little sister is our best protection these days.”

  “Protection from whom, exactly?” Nia said. “This goes beyond Dr. Joy now, doesn’t it? Who is sending the goons after us today?”

  Rosie’s lips tightened into a narrow line. “You’ve heard of the Official, right?”

  “My dad said he was working with Dr. Joy to revive the C33 program,” said Hal.

  “That’s right.” Rosie sighed. “He’s in charge of the government agency where I’m interning. The agency is supposed to be monitoring the testing of experimental vaccines, but actually it’s administering a secret project with only a few top people in the know.”

  “You work right under their noses?” I said. “But the photos . . . the rangers . . .” Suddenly, I put two and two together. I put a hand up to cover my mouth.

  “You can’t go back there.”

  “Why not?” Rosie looked at her watch. “They’ll notice if I’m gone much longer.”

  “But the pictures,” I said. “They know.” Nia drew in a breath—just those few words were enough for her to connect the dots. “Did you by any chance get a look at the rangers’ clipboards back at the World War Two monument?” I said. Rosie shook her head, and I explained what I’d seen. I could see from the look on her face that she was starting to understand.

  “They must have known for some time,” she said. “Maybe that explains—”

  “Explains what?” Cisco said.

  She looked away from us, as if she had forgotten our presence, and was just thinking aloud. “Explains how I can’t get anywhere near whatever it is they’re really doing. I see Dr. Joy, but no matter how many excuses I come up with, I can’t even get into the hallway near his office.”

  “Rosie,” Cisco said, concern wrinkling his forehead—I caught myself wondering for an instant if anyone would ever look at me in the way Cisco was looking at Rosie now, like all he wanted in the world was to protect her. He put a hand on her arm. “Don’t go back there. It’s just not safe.”

  But Rosie didn’t even register his warning. “I’d been hoping to at least find out who the Official is. A name, anything. With Amanda on the run . . . it’s not right. My mom is gone and my dad is who-knows-where. I should be looking out for her.”

  “You are,” I said.

  Rosie smiled at me, back to being an older sister.

  “Have you seen him, at least?” Nia asked. “Thornhill told us he was in charge. Do you know what he looks like?”

  “I don’t,” Rosie said. “But I hear him referred to all the time. He has ties to the government, but I haven’t been able to figure out what the connections are.”

  “Wow,” I said, “I thought it was bad enough that Chief Bragg was involved. But now it’s like the actual federal government.”

  “Oh, no, not all of it,” Rosie said. “And you know, it’s funny. My dad suspected Chief Bragg of being involved but that was not confirmed—now, of course, who knows what my dad thinks. There’s something strange about the way the Bragg family keeps turning up. But anyway, the Official isn’t the president or a Supreme Court justice or anything. What he’s doing is illegal, and with the right kind of evidence we could bring him down. As long as he doesn’t get whatever it is before then—we think he will be harder to stop them.”

  “What is he looking for?”

  “I don’t know,” Rosie said. “I don’t think anyone knows for sure. And I guess now I’ll never find out.” The cloud of frustration reappeared on her face, and then she clearly willed it away. “Okay, let’s focus on what we do know. We know that whatever the Official is up to, it has something to do with Amanda
. Something to do with the way she is. Amanda told me that I should be watching you guys,” Rosie went on. “She said you might all be learning from her. Do you know what that means?”

  Hal blushed. Callie looked up at the ceiling. Nia looked down at the floor.

  “Sometimes,” I said. “We do things that we really shouldn’t be able to do.”

  Cisco was nodding. “Nia’s been telling me about this,” he said. “It’s crazy.”

  “You have powers like Amanda’s?” Rosie said. “My dad said you would.”

  “Mr. Bennett told us that kids of C33s sometimes have them,” I said. “Do you?”

  Rosie shook her head. “No chance. I’m adopted, as you know. But even if I weren’t, it’s more likely that children of C33s have no superhuman talents.” She smiled. “Cisco here . . . he’s just naturally handsome and athletic and charming.”

  “What?” Cisco said, his huge “Who me?” smile making us all relax.

  “What about Heidi Bragg?” Cisco said. “She’s always struck me as having some noteworthy . . . talents.”

  “Heidi Bragg’s an interesting case,” Rosie said. “My dad was trying to figure her out when he was abducted. Brittney was always a disappointment as a C33, but then Heidi emerged with her take-no-prisoners personality—but no one’s been able to figure out what, if anything, she can really do.”

  “How did Amanda know how to find us?” Nia asked. “Did she know what we were going to be able to do?”

  “No,” Rosie said. “Amanda knew the children of a lot of former C33s were living in Orion. So she went there, started school, and made friends with the kids she wanted to make friends with. She told me she was letting the friendships come to her, actually. And I guess yours did.”

  “I guess so,” said Callie.

  We were quiet a minute, letting all this new information sink in. I had to admit, I liked the idea that Amanda and I were friends not because she needed me, but because she liked me. She used her instinct for friendship as a divining rod.

  “Here,” Rosie said, passing two purple envelopes in our direction. “Amanda sent these to me. I have no idea what they are, but I think she wanted me to pass them on to you.”