Watched (The Watched Series)

by Cindy M. Hogan

  Good thing I hadn’t skipped out of this place with Alex.

  My delivery was flawless, as always, and it appeared to have excited a lot of conversation, especially the idea of letting other countries shoulder the risk for our farmers. The implication that they would also reap the rewards hung out there like a chandelier held up with a cotton thread.

  A line of kids assigned to oppose the legislation formed at the bottom of the stage. I sat behind the podium in a seat provided for the people who introduced bills. I closed my eyes and listened intently, for anything I hadn’t thought of already. It seemed like forever had come and gone when I opened my eyes and looked at the clock. It had been forty minutes—only five more minutes until I had to stand and give my closing remarks. The ten students who had expressed their opposition had given me nothing. Nothing new that is. I watched a short boy with extremely blond hair and glasses walk up to the podium.

  “Please, please, give me something, anything,” I said under my breath. I listened, staring at the back of his head. He did give me something. He talked about renewable resources and how our farmland was our only hope for our country’s future, especially when it came to energy. Oil wasn’t renewable, but things like bio-diesel and ethanol were. That was it. I felt all excited.

  Energy—it all had to do with energy. The terrorists didn’t need bombs, swords and missiles to bring America to its knees, it only needed its resources. Right as it got interesting, the moderator interrupted him and sent him to his seat.

  It was my turn again. I had to tout the bill and couldn’t blast it, so I decided to be sly in what I said. I would almost be sarcastic, pretending to sell the bill. Hopefully, the absurdity of what I would say would open the audience’s minds to the danger of it. Hopefully, they would go home and discuss what I had to say with their parents and friends and whomever would listen. Hopefully.

  My mind finished spinning the tale I was about to put out to the five hundred plus people listening. For the first time in a debate, I had an aching desire to have people really hear what I had to say, and it was late in the day. How could I make them listen?

  An amazing thing happened when I stood at the podium. Something incredible—It was like some powerful, unseen force gave me the words to say—like whatever or whoever guided me, didn’t want the terrorists to win either. The words flowed without effort from my mouth.

  When I finished, I stepped away from the podium and left the stage. Descending the steps, voices rumbled all around me. It seemed everyone was talking to someone. I turned toward the audience and five hundred pairs of eyes stared at me. I smiled despite myself. They had understood. They must have. I murmured my thanks to my unseen helper. The audience’s eyes followed my every step, until the Emcee announced the next bill.

  As I started up the aisle that led to my seat, I noticed a man by the doors, staring down at me. After what seemed a thousand steps, I could finally make out his face. Iceman. The terrorists were still out there. I guess the sting at the Pizzeria really didn’t have to do with them at all. I passed my seat and kept climbing. I zeroed in on his face and didn’t let my eyes wander. I sped up. His eyes locked on mine until I was only ten steps from him and he turned and ran.

  Something broke inside me, fury took over. If what I suspected the whole bloody ballroom scene was about, was correct, not only would the Middle East continue to tie our hands with their control of most of the oil we used in the U.S., but they would also bring us to our knees with the control of our farmland and our renewable energy sources, even though I didn’t know exactly how.

  Iceman rushed out the door of the auditorium. I wasn’t far behind.

  He ran fast. I blasted down the stairs, skipping as many as I could and plowed out the doors to the sidewalk. Out of the corner of my eye, I thought I saw his black jacket turn down an alley some way down the street. I ran flat out until I turned the corner. He wasn’t there. I walked full of purpose down the alley and found I could only turn left.

  He stood, facing me at the far end of the alley. Had I trapped him? I hesitated, but only for a second. I refused to be a victim any longer. I had control of my reactions and I would no longer be afraid. My heart stampeded out of my chest, and I pulled hard for air. Fists balled, I flew toward him anyway.

  At about the half-way mark, I started to shout at him.

  “Why are you following me and my friends? Why? Stay away from us!”

  He didn’t say anything, his face had a puzzled look on it—a curious look, and then he disappeared down another alley. He wasn’t trapped after all. I picked up the pace and tried to follow him. The alley led to another sidewalk and street. He was gone.

  I screamed as loud as I could, head back and arms stiff at my sides. I heard doors and windows open and saw faces looking through them at me. I didn’t even care. I stood there in all my indignant anger. I let it wash over me and if people hadn’t been staring, I probably would have dropped to the ground and bawled. I didn’t know what I thought I’d do to him once I got to him, but I hated him for intruding on my last day in D.C. The reality that the FBI hadn’t picked up the terrorists, pressed on me like a thousand pound weight and I realized we were still in danger.

  I walked slowly out of the maze I had blindly run into, surprised at the distance I’d gone. It hadn’t seemed so far moments ago. My pounding heart slowed as I got closer to the conference center I’d fled.

  I saw my reflection in the glass doors of the building. Yikes! I needed some touch up. Bathroom, here I come.

  I splashed water on my face and dabbed it dry, pulled at my hair and straightened it as much as I could. The hair next to my neck curled from the sweat that wetted it. I tried to dry it with paper towels and then fixed my clothes. My thoughts went wild.

  I chased Iceman. He could’ve killed me. How could I have been so reckless? Why had he looked at me like that?

  Walking out the door, a familiar face met mine. Nathan’s, one of the FBI guys. He swooshed his arms toward the boy’s bathroom.

  “Do you want me to—.”

  He nodded. I pushed the door open and went in. Jeremy stood there, shaking his head. He pushed a button on a little pen looking thing and then railed on me.

  “What were you thinking just now? Running after a crazy man can’t lead to anything good. He could have killed you, you know.”

  I did know.

  “Sorry,” I said. “I just lost it. I thought you guys got the bad guys last night at the Pizzeria and coming up those steps after discovering what the terrorists were really up to…. And I saw him looking at me and lost it—”

  “Pizzeria? What are you talking about?” Jeremy interrupted.

  Was he faking it or did he really not know what happened at the pizzeria?

  “You know, the raid. The one you all dressed up like DEA agents to carry out.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Really? I thought for sure it was you guys.” I wasn’t sure what to believe. The terrorists had me so paranoid, I’d never have a moments peace.

  “It wasn’t.”

  “Huh… Well, figuring out why they killed that guy Jonathan made me so mad, something flipped and I had to go after him. I refuse to be afraid anymore and I wanted answers.” My words made me seem braver than I was.

  “You figured it out, did you?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Are you going to make me drag it out of you?”

  “No. Sorry. This bill takes farmland and puts it into the hands of corporations, foreign corporations, instead of individuals. About ten companies are mentioned by name as the only possible purchasers of the land. It doesn’t seem so bad until you find out that they are companies whose owners are Middle Eastern with ties to their government. If they gain control of our lands, we would lose almost all control of our renewable resources.”

  “Hmpf,” he said.

  “It’s just a guess, but I bet I’m on the right track. Can you imagine what would happen?”<
br />
  “Christy, please, don’t worry about it, and don’t you dare do anything so stupid again.”

  “Okay. I’ll try, but it bugs me so much. We would be impoverished and starve. It would be like going back in time to before the industrial age. America would no longer be a superpower.”

  “Well, it’s a good thing you don’t have to worry about it, isn’t it? Leave this to us. Okay?”

  “But ….”

  “Okay?!”

  “Whatever, but I know I’m onto….”

  “Yes, but you are going to forget about that something and just enjoy your last day here—right? Right?”

  “Fine.”

  “Christy, we have it all under control. As soon as you guys are out of here, we’ll move on these guys and they’ll be gone for good. It’s not your problem anymore. Don’t make it one again. And it wasn’t our thing at the pizza place.”

  I just looked at him. I didn’t know what to say.

  He knocked on the door and waited. About a minute later, a knock came from the other side of the door, and Jeremy opened it for me. I walked out to find Nathan picking up a sign that said, Closed for cleaning. Smart move.

  “Now,” Jeremy continued. “Go have some fun!” He pulled out the pen-looking thing and clicked it again. I wondered if it somehow disabled any bugs near us.

  After finding my seat, the girl next to me handed me a note. It read:

  Guess you figured it out. Way to go. Thomas.

  I looked his way and he smiled at me. I nodded and smiled back. After folding the note, I shoved it into my pocket. As I did, I felt some paper in there and pulled it out.

  Pink paper. Oh yeah, the dry-cleaning receipt. How much had it cost me to clean Marybeth’s clothes? I smoothed it out on my desk. Twenty bucks. Uggh! That was so much money. I had to lean back in my chair to digest the information. I guess it had been worth it. I wanted to check to make sure I hadn’t read it wrong and picked it up to examine it again. Yep, twenty dollars. Unbelievable. Then I noticed something scrawled in the middle of the receipt. I had to look closely to read it with all the wrinkles in the paper. It read:

  Be careful what you say and who you say it to.

  I gasped.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Everyone filed out of the auditorium once the final debate ended. The air buzzed with excitement for tonight’s gala. How were they going to transform this place into a ballroom in such a short time? It didn’t seem feasible.

  I’d had almost an hour to digest and fret about the note. What had I been thinking trying to expose the Farmers’ Aid Bill here with five hundred plus students and at least one hundred adult political nuts in the audience? I should have just waited and told Jeremy. I’d definitely brought our little group into more danger now.

  With no way to erase the huge mistake, I wondered what might happen to us. If only I’d seen the note this morning, maybe I wouldn’t have worked so hard to call out the dogs on the Bill. I could’ve talked to Jeremy about it, too.

  When I got to the bus, I went straight for the back row. If only I’d kept my mouth shut. If, if, if.

  Wait a minute. He ran. Iceman ran from me. He must’ve heard everything I’d said in the debate, and yet, he ran. Wouldn’t he have done something to me in that alley if I’d crossed the line? Maybe I was overreacting. Maybe the weird look Iceman gave me in the alley came from fear. Maybe I put out enough information about them to scare them away.

  Rick squeezed past me to sit by the window on the back seat next to me. In a flash, he took the pink paper I still had clutched in my hand and started to open it.

  “Hey! That’s mine. Give it back,” I said. I didn’t want him to read it.

  “Oh, the way you were holding this little pink slip, made me think it was for me.” He smiled broadly, teasing, holding it away from me while continuing to unfold it.

  “It’s just my dry-cleaning receipt.” I insisted, pushing my way over him, my arm completely outstretched, trying to get it back. It was kind of fun to play this way, but I really didn’t want him to read the note, and what if Marybeth took notice? She thought she was safe.

  “Then it’s no big deal if I take just a quick look.” He laughed a little, keeping me back easily with one hand, holding the unfolded receipt with the other, staring hard at it, eyes squinting.

  The arm restraining me went lax, and I snatched the receipt from his hand just as the bus started to move. He didn’t resist. He merely sat upright and stared at me. He didn’t really look at me, though. He looked through me. Until he suddenly focused and asked, “Who wrote that? Was it the FBI?”

  I just stared—unsettled.

  He moved in close to me, his hot cheek pressed against mine as he talked directly into my ear.

  “Was it the bad guys? Have you been getting threats? What’s going on?”

  I could smell his spicy cologne and imagined we were somewhere else. I thought about when I told him about the guy at Georgetown, he had been masterful in the way he handled it. Maybe he could help me out again. I swallowed hard and took a deep breath before telling him.

  “The bad guys have been following us and listening to us since the ballroom. They keep warning me to be silent about what I saw. For the most part, they just make sure I know they’re watching.” I felt instant relief.

  “We’ve got to tell the FBI. This is crazy,” he said.

  For a second, I thought I should tell him I’d been talking to the FBI all along, but then I remembered my promise not to say anything.

  “No,” I said. “The bad guys would know if we contacted the FBI, and we’d be in more danger than we already are. We can’t contact them.”

  “We can get into contact with them,” he said. He sat up straight and looked forward.

  He sounded so sure that I wondered if the FBI had questioned him too, like me and Marybeth. I looked at him. His blue eyes sparkled with assurance. I leaned back into him and asked him flat out if he had been in contact with the FBI.

  “Yes,” he whispered.

  I took a deep breath and held it, thinking about this “little” revelation. For a moment, time was suspended. Why had they told me not to tell anyone, when it seemed everyone had been questioned? Why did they want to make me feel like I was alone? I felt a little sick. The bus moved into traffic.

  “They interviewed me about the murder,” he said, matter-of-factly.

  I couldn’t believe it. I started to feel a tightening heat in my chest. This really upset me. I’d worked so hard to keep my meeting with them a secret, and the secret weighed a ton, and they let me carry the burden without any help, when I could’ve had it. The punch in the FBI’s parking garage flashed across my mind, and I wanted another shot at Jeremy.

  “Did they interview you too?” he asked.

  “Yes,” I said, feeling no need to keep it a secret any longer. Really, I wanted to tell everyone, I was so mad. “We’ve met several times actually. They told me I couldn’t tell anyone. Why would they do that if they talked to you, too? It makes me kinda mad.”

  “I don’t know. They told me not to tell either.”

  “I want to punch Jeremy right in the face.”

  “Jeremy? Was your agent’s name, Jeremy?”

  I felt my face flash hot. “Yours wasn’t?” I asked, wondering what was going on.

  “Special Agent Todd Nills, I think.”

  “Oh. I would’ve thought they would’ve used the same agents for all of us.” It hadn’t occurred to me that there could be other agents questioning everyone else. Maybe there were a bunch of agents hanging out near us all the time, but I only knew Jeremy and Nathan. Maybe they didn’t want all of us to draw attention to them. Maybe that’s why it was all so secretive. It still made me mad. They should have told me everyone was talking.

  “Yeah, weird. Do you think they talked to everyone?”

  “Probably,” I said, a ball of fire rolling through my throat. “Okay, so how do we let them know about this note? I can’t stand the
thought of you being in danger.”

  I chuckled. If he only knew. “I’m not sure. For me, it’s kind of the luck of the draw running into them.” I was glad he hadn’t made the connection with Jeremy being the “college guy” we’d hung out with the last week and a half.

  “Me, too. They just kinda pop up every now and then. Hmm.”

  “We’re leaving tomorrow. Besides, it’s too late now, anyway. They meant for me to read the note before the debate today. Me and my big mouth. I just had to prove I was smarter than they were. Now I probably put us all in more danger.”

  “No, you haven’t.”

  “But I have. If I had seen the note before the debate, I wouldn’t have tried so hard to get people to pay attention to their bill. Now they know I know. What have I done?”

  “Stop it. You figured it out. That’s a good thing. We just need to tell the FBI.”

  I wasn’t so sure anymore. They made me mad. Anyway, what could they do now?

  “If we get the chance, we’ll tell them. But I’m not going to stress about it. Tomorrow we’re out of here, and it’ll all be a thing of the past.” I tried to convince myself what I said was true and took a deep breath, pushing against the back of my seat, looking down the aisle of the bus. My eyes met Alex’s. He was two rows forward, legs in the aisle, staring at me.

  My face got hot, and I shifted from side to side. I sighed, looking up and seeing Marybeth’s face looking down at me, grinning. She moved her eyes back and forth from Rick to me and made a kissing gesture. I wished I’d never told her about Rick kissing me. I shook my head, a minute movement, and narrowed my eyes at her. She gave me a pressed smile and then said, “The gala’s going to be amazing. Don’t you think, Kira?” Without looking at her, she nudged Kira, who got on her knees and turned around to look down, too. But it wasn’t me she wanted to see. It was Rick, and he looked at me.

  “My dress is amazing, Marybeth,” Kira said, still staring at Rick. “Wait until you see it. And my shoes are to die for.”