by Kieran Scott
“All right, all right. I admit it was far-fetched, but cut me some slack. It’s been a weird couple of days,” I said, straightening out my legs. Down below, the crowd cheered and whooped, probably for another in a long line of keg stands. “But I’m glad you told me the truth. And I’m glad you’re out here with me and not back in Charleston with…them.”
I looped my arm around his and pulled him closer. I was never going to leave him again. Not ever.
“Me, too.” He shifted his weight and pulled something out of his back pocket. Money. “I wanted to give this back to you,” he said, averting his eyes.
My whole body tensed. The cash I’d left in the car so he would leave. God, what an asshole I was. “No. You should keep it.”
“Kaia,” he said. “That’s a lot of money.”
“I know, but what if we get separated again? Or what if I get hurt?” I said. “You might need it in case I…in case something—”
“We’re not gonna get separated again.” He pressed the money into my hand. “I promise.”
He seemed almost relieved when I took it. I wondered if he’d still sound that sure if he knew how he’d come by that money in the first place. I shoved the cash into the outside pocket on my backpack.
“We need a plan.” He clapped his hands and rubbed the together. “Operation Find Kaia’s Mom.”
My heart skipped about a zillion beats. “My mom,” I breathed.
“Maybe she’ll know why all these random people are after you, and why they’re stalking your safe houses. And, you know, why we got shot at on a Friday afternoon.”
“She might even be able to protect us.”
“So…any idea where to start?” Oliver asked.
“Not a clue. She could be anywhere. Mexico is the most likely place, since that’s where I…where she was taken from.”
I looked down at my knees and extricated my arm from his, pressing my sweaty palms into my jeans.
“I wish she’d given me some kind of clue in that text.”
“The only thing she did say is not to come after her,” Oliver pointed out gently. “Are you sure you don’t want to listen to her?”
“Listen to the woman who’s let me think I was an orphan for the past year?” I scoffed. “Not likely.”
“Good point.” Oliver sighed. “It’s too bad I’m not Homeland Security. Then I would know some tech geek who could trace the GPS of the phone the message came from and triangulate your mother’s location or whatever. This is what I get for hanging out with doofs like Brian and Hunter. Not a brain cell to spare there.”
My entire body went cold. Triangulate her location. Why hadn’t I thought of that? I knew the answer almost before my mind had formed the question: I’d been too busy wondering why Mom would bail to really concentrate on how to find her. I scrambled to my feet, dragging my backpack with me.
I yanked the photo from my back pocket and stared at the smiling faces of my family.
“Oliver! You’re brilliant!”
“I am?” he asked.
I offered him my hand and pulled him to his feet. “Let’s get out of here.”
“Where’re we going?” Oliver asked, following me toward the steps.
I flashed him the photo over my shoulder. “We are going home.”
18 MONTHS AGO
There were footsteps on the walk outside, crunching through gravel and broken glass. My mother’s skin looked gray. I shoved my hands under her arms and started dragging her toward the end of the bed.
My mother took a sharp breath. “Kaia, you have to go hide. You have to get out of here.”
“Not without you,” I said, gasping for breath.
She was so much heavier than she looked.
The footsteps outside slowed. My mother reached up and grasped at my shoulder, then gripped the front of my T-shirt in her fist.
“Kiki, you know the plan, right? You know what to do?”
My chest constricted. “Mom, no. Don’t say that. We’re getting out of here together.”
The footsteps stopped. The doorknob jiggled. With a throat-tearing scream of pain and fear and effort, I pushed us both up off the floor.
chapter 15
Oliver
“Home” apparently meant Houston, Texas, which was a very good thing. Because if she’d meant we were going back to South Carolina, I wasn’t sure what I’d do. I mean, I would have gone. I would have done anything for her. But I wouldn’t have been too psyched about it. The longer I was away from Robin and Jack and that whole mess, the more sure I was that going back was not an option.
Trevor was going to be all right. I had to keep telling myself that until I believed it. And as for college… I’d figure something out. At least now I was safe. Sort of.
Crazy how I could feel safer on the run from unknown assassins than I did in my own home.
But I was so much lighter now that Kaia knew my secret. It was as if I had thousands of weightless bubbles fizzling beneath my skin. Giving her back her money had helped too. I’d felt conspicuous, walking around with all that cash. As if everyone knew what was in my pocket and were scheming to jump me for it. That’s what I thought was happening when the sorority chicks grabbed me. I’d thought I was being mugged.
The good news was, there were no more secrets between Kaia and me, and the freedom of that was incredible. It was like I could do anything, be anyone, go anywhere.
It even made the driving a little easier.
Instead of heading southeast toward the Carolinas, we were heading due south, straight through Illinois, and I was back behind the wheel. It was the middle of the night, and there were hardly any cars on the road, so the chances of me doing any real damage were slim to none. We were closing in on Missouri, Kaia sleeping peacefully in the seat next to me, when a pair of headlights flashed in the back window, so close I was blinded. I threw my arm up to block the light from the rearview mirror and the car slammed into our back bumper.
“What the hell?” Kaia blurted, startling awake.
The whole car shimmied.
“That guy came out of nowhere!” I shouted.
I gripped the wheel with both hands and jammed on the brakes.
“No don’t! Don’t slow down! Floor it!”
“What?” I screeched.
“Do it!”
I pressed the gas pedal toward the floor. All I could see was light. How could she have ever thought I was some kind of super spy? I could barely even keep us on the road.
Kaia rolled down her window and looked out, the wind whipping her hair into her face.
“What’re you—”
“There’re two guys in the car!” she shouted, sliding back against her seat.
“Is it Scarface?”
“I don’t know.”
I pushed my foot down on the gas even harder, sweat already pouring from my temples. Kaia fumbled in her backpack. I saw the barrel of the gun glint as she yanked it free.
“What’re you gonna do with that?” I blurted.
“What do you think?”
Kaia turned as if to aim out the window. Glowing mile marker signs flew by the car as the lights faded behind us. Maybe I was losing them. Maybe we were going to be okay and she wouldn’t have to—
The car behind me suddenly swerved and gunned it. It was coming up on my left side. They pulled up right beside me. Sitting in the passenger seat was a scrawny but vicious-looking guy with dyed orange hair like a Muppet.
“It’s not them!” I shouted to Kaia through my terror.
Muppet man shot me an evil smile and then their car slammed into ours.
“What the hell?”
I tried to straighten out the car, but they kept pressing. They were pushing us off the road.
“Oliver!” Kaia screamed, bracing her hand with the gun against her d
oor and grabbing my shoulder with the other.
There was no guardrail between us and whatever lay beyond the highway. My hands yanked on the wheel as if it could do anything to help us, and suddenly, we were airborne.
• • •
When I woke up, I tasted blood, and Kaia was crawling over me, shoving open the driver’s side door.
“Oliver! Wake up!”
She fell out onto the ground, hands first, and quickly righted herself. Nearby, I heard a door slam. Kaia reached over me and undid my seat belt.
“Come on!” she shouted in my face, gripping my shoulders. “We have to run!”
I felt as if my brains had been knocked loose by the impact, but somehow, I managed to get out of the car. We were at the bottom of an embankment that was covered in brown weeds. Kaia dragged me out of the car and around front. The bumper was gone, the grill dented, the hood flattened like a pancake. Above, there was a flash of light, and I saw someone skidding down the hill.
“Let’s go!”
Kaia pulled me into the shoulder high reeds that surrounded the car. I did my best to follow. My vision was shaky, which couldn’t be good. As Kaia ran ahead of me I felt like I was watching one of those low-budget horror movies filmed on hand-cams. Except this was real. It was actually happening.
“Where’re we going?” I asked stupidly.
“There’s a construction site up here,” she whispered. “Hurry up.”
I did my best to keep pace with her, but my mind felt like it was swimming through soup, and my ears were ringing so loudly it hurt. The brush got taller. It whipped at my face, leaving itchy trails across my skin. I looked behind us and saw nothing but the path we’d made through the reeds. We were alone.
“Kaia. I don’t think they’re following us. I think we’re—”
“You see ‘em?” someone shouted. It was impossible to tell from where.
“Over here!”
The second voice was so close I almost screamed. Instead, we ran, sprinting straight ahead for all we were worth. I could hear the men behind me, crashing through the reeds, and at every second I was certain a shot would ring out or a hand would grab me. Half a second or ten minutes later, we emerged from the brush and onto a flat stretch of land. There were about twenty yards of open space between us and what looked like miles of metal scaffolding stretching up against the night sky.
“Where are they?” one guy shouted.
“Just keep moving,” the other answered.
“Go! Go! Go!” I cried.
We ran at a crouch and had almost reached the front of a cement truck when I saw the first guy emerge from the weeds.
“There they are!” he cried. And his companion quickly followed.
“Hey you! Kids! Wait up! We just wanna talk!” one of them yelled.
Yeah, right.
Kaia tried the door of the truck, but it was locked.
“What do we do?” she asked.
I stared. She was asking me? I could barely see straight. I looked past her at the framework of the building. My mom and I used to visit my dad at his sites sometimes for lunch. I was always totally fascinated by the elevators that seemed to hang from nothing and the way men could carry huge pipes and rods on one shoulder while scaling ladders. And then, there was the garbage chute. More than anything, as a five-year-old, I had always wanted to slide down a garbage chute.
I grabbed Kaia’s hand. “I have an idea.”
This time, I took the lead. We ran over to the scaffolding. In the distance I saw a security light blazing from the corner of the foreman’s trailer. There was probably a guard in there. Someone who wouldn’t appreciate a couple of kids climbing all over the place. All I could do was hope that either (a) he was asleep or (b) he’d read the situation correctly and call the cops. The sight of flashing lights would probably send these guys running.
Actually…
“Call 911,” I told Kaia as we reached a set of metal stairs.
“What? I don’t even know where we are.”
I started to climb and tried to focus, but my vision was still screwy. “The job number. It’s on the placard nailed to the trailer. Give them that. Tell them…I don’t know…Tell them something.”
Kaia dialed as we climbed. There was a turn in the steps every ten stairs and every time we took one, I felt more and more dizzy. I could hear Kaia talking, but I couldn’t for the life of me make out her words. At the fourth floor, I had to stop.
“Are you okay?” Kaia asked, breathless.
“Not really.” A wave of nausea crashed through me. I gasped in breath after breath. “I think I have a concussion.”
I’d had them before. The worst one was during the semifinal game last year against Ridgefield. The world had spun for two straight days. It was the one time in my life Robin had taken real care of me, making sure I didn’t watch TV or play video games and that I rested and ate. But that was probably because my social worker was checking in once a day, like actually showing up on the doorstep, during my recovery.
“Shit,” Kaia said. “You shouldn’t be running around.”
I put my head between my knees and took a few deep breaths, hoping it would help. It didn’t. “Not like I have much choice.”
“Hey blondie! You dyed your hair, huh?!”
We both froze. The voice seemed to echo from everywhere. There was no telling where the guy was. Or his friend.
“Bad move, climbing up there,” he shouted. “Lotsa places your dispensable boyfriend can fall from.”
The nausea rose to my chest. So nice to know I was dispensable. How the hell had I ended up here? When I’d woken up on Friday morning, I’d thought it was going to be a normal weekend, and now I was climbing scaffolding, and some dude was out to murder me. I mean yeah, Jack could have done that a million times over by now, but he’d never shown up at the house with the goal of putting me in the ground.
At least, I didn’t think he had.
“Why, exactly, are we climbing?” Kaia whispered.
“Trust me,” I replied. “Keep going.”
She shook her head, but she went anyway. I climbed after her, closing my eyes whenever the world got too wobbly, which just made the dizziness worse. Near the seventh floor, we heard the stairs clang. Someone was running after us.
“Get off here,” I told her.
“Whatever you say.” She sounded dubious.
We turned the corner, and Kaia stopped. I almost ran right into her.
“What?” I asked.
“It’s all beams and plywood.”
“It’s okay,” I told her. “The workers walk across these all the time and they weigh twice as much as you do. You see the yellow chute on the other side of the building?”
“Yeah.”
“You want to get as close to that as possible.”
There was a pause. “You can’t be serious.”
“As a concussion,” I joked, squeezing my eyes closed. When I opened them again she was even more out of focus than before.
“Hold my hand,” she said, reaching back for me.
“Oh, honey, are you afraid of heights?” I joked, as my temples throbbed with pain.
“No, honey,” she said sarcastically. “I’m afraid that you’ll take one wrong step and plunge to your death.”
“Oh.” My throat went dry. “Good point.”
We started across one of the plank walkways. It bowed just a touch, but not too bad. When we got to the center of the floor, Kaia stopped.
“What now?”
“Listen.”
The stairs were still clanging. “What?” I said again.
“Only one set of footsteps. Where’s the other guy?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “But I like our odds better now.”
Kaia kept moving. I followed her as closely
as I could. We were nearing the far side of the building when a shot rang out.
My next footfall hit the edge of a plank, my shoe scraped down, and my fingers slipped from Kaia’s. Suddenly I was falling.
“Oliver!” Kaia screamed.
My face collided with the wood plank and my arms instinctively clung to its sides, the edges cutting painfully into the skin inside my elbows. My left leg dangled free while my right was splayed out across the walkway. I could hear someone running. Kaia lunged for me, but before she could touch my shoulder, a gun was trained at my ear.
“I got ’em!” the man shouted. I had no idea whether it was Muppet Man or not. “Freddy! I got ’em!”
Every bone in my body ached, and my lungs were gripped with fear.
“Good!” the other guy shouted back. “Then bring them the hell down here and let’s go!”
“What’re you gonna do?” Kaia asked.
“Well first, I’m gonna blow this kid’s brains out, and then, I’m taking you with me.”
A click sounded in my ear. Every muscle in my body tightened. I saw my mom in her hospital bed smiling at me through tears. I saw Trevor cheer the first time he scored a goal while we played soccer in the backyard. I saw my dad on Christmas morning, presenting me with a red bike. And I saw Kaia. A million different memories of Kaia.
I don’t want to die! my brain shouted. I don’t want to die I don’t want to die I don’t want to die.
“No!” Kaia screamed.
She moved. I felt it more than saw it. Heard the plywood creak.
“What the fuck’re you doing?” the man demanded.
I opened my eyes. Kaia had climbed up onto one of the beams at the edge of the building. Her heels dangled over the edge.
“Kaia, no!”
“You hurt him and I jump.”
“What?” Me and the guy both asked at the same time. My heart slammed in my chest.
Get down, I thought, staring at Kaia as if she could read my mind. Get the fuck down.
“I’m serious. I have no parents. I have no grandparents. He’s my family. You kill him, and I have no reason to live,” Kaia said. “So put the gun away or I go splat.”