Chapter Twenty-seven
The Art of War
I flung open the blinds of my front window. The house across the street was dark. I took a deep breath. No jumping to conclusions. Not yet.
I reached for a black marker and flipped over my white poster board. HYPOTHESIS: I wrote in my shaking hand. CHARLOTTE AGFORD IS DEBORAH S. BAIN.
Eight teens were dead. Eight families’ lives destroyed. One of them Ralston’s. And the woman responsible? If I was right, she was on her way to Luna Vista Middle School that very moment. She’d used me to get Ralston alone. All she had to do was find her, and she could silence the truth. But if I was wrong . . .
I couldn’t get it wrong. Not this time. I raised my pen and tried to lay it all down in black and white:
FACT: CHARLOTTE AGFORD OWNS A PEN WITH THE INITIALS DSB.
FACT: DEBORAH SLATER BAIN’S INITIALS ARE DSB.
FACT: A WOMAN WHO WORKS FOR THE FBI THINKS CHARLOTTE AGFORD IS DEBORAH BAIN.
FACT: DEBORAH BAIN HIRED DANIEL SLATER FOR THE POOL WORK AT TILMORE HIGH.
FACT: CHARLOTTE AGFORD WAS TALKING TO SOMEONE NAMED “DANNY” ON THE PHONE.
FACT: DEBORAH BAIN’S BODY WAS NEVER FOUND.
FACT: CHARLOTTE AGFORD MOVED HERE ABOUT A MONTH AFTER DEBORAH BAIN’S DEATH.
I stared at my shaky black scrawl, heart pounding. That morning, in Charlotte Agford’s office, I’d made my biggest assumption to date. It had been reasonable to see smears of red and think it was blood. It had been reasonable to assume a woman with an FBI badge and email address was really the FBI. It had even been relatively reasonable to think a woman doing everything in her power to hide might be a fugitive. But it hadn’t been reasonable to assume Charlotte Agford was telling the truth. Especially when that truth accounted for the exact evidence we had collected so far. Wheel of Fortune and Grandpa had it right: A leopard cannot change its spots.
Charlotte Agford had changed her name and gotten plastic surgery. She wore a wig and had lied to everyone about who she was. These could be the actions of a mother desperate to avoid the Tilmore Eight media spotlight and start a new life. Or . . .
FACT: CHARLOTTE AGFORD’S ACTIONS COULD BE EXACTLY THE SAME IF SHE WERE A FUGITIVE.
I stepped back and looked at the board, dizzy from the marker fumes. Trista had been right from the start. There was always another explanation. What were the chances that “Cassie Ogden” just happened to have an ex-husband named Danny, as in Daniel Slater? I’d always hated the way a bad movie’s sound track swells at emotional moments to distract from the terrible acting and story line. How hadn’t I recognized Agford pulling the same trick? She had surrounded me with a symphony of sighs and sniffles. She’d hoped all her lectures on how preteen brains can’t perceive reality would finally pay off. And she’d gotten her wish. Until now.
I reached out my pen and made my final note:
CONCLUSION: CHARLOTTE AGFORD IS DEBORAH BAIN.
And she was on her way to Luna Vista Middle School to silence Louise Ralston forever.
There it was. Hypothesis, facts, conclusion. Three easy steps.
But the next part wasn’t easy at all. I whirled back to the clock. Ten forty-five. There might still be time to stop her.
I swung open my door and tiptoed to the cordless phone in the kitchen. Grandpa’s whistling snores drifted from his bedroom down the hall. My fingers shook as I dialed the police.
“This is Sophie Young,” I said in a surprisingly steady voice. “I’d like to report an emergency at Luna Vista Middle School.”
“Sophie Young?”
I recognized the gruff voice immediately. It was Officer Grady.
“Sure you don’t want to remain anonymous?” he asked. I could practically hear his smirk.
I paused to gather my thoughts. I wanted to list the facts clearly and calmly. Instead I rambled like a maniac about fugitives and FBI software programmers, yearbooks and plastic surgery, monogrammed pens and wigs. “Don’t you see?” I said, breathless. “She thinks Ralston’s the only person who knows the truth, Officer. You’ve got to get down there before she does something!”
Officer Grady didn’t try to hide his irritation. “You’ve been watching too many movies, Miss Young,” he said.
“Did Charlotte Agford call you today? To try to reach my parents at the missile station?”
Officer Grady sighed. “Not that I’m aware of. Miss Young, I think—”
“If I were wrong, she would’ve called! Will you call them? They’re at the AmStar test station off the coast. I’ll never be able to get through. Not right before the launch. But if the police called . . .”
Officer Grady hesitated. My hopes soared. After all, what kid wants the police to call their parents? But he just cleared his throat. “Get some rest now, Miss Young,” he said.
A dial tone hummed in my ear.
I looked down at my clothes. Dark blue sweats and a hoodie. That was as spy-stylish as it was going to get tonight. I slunk back to my room and snatched my walkie-talkie from the desk. Grace’s mom had surely confiscated hers. It was worth a try, though. “Grace!” I whispered. “Agent Yang, are you there?”
Static hissed like ocean waves.
I stared at Kai Li, smiling uselessly out at me from his two-dimensional poster prison. My wind chimes swayed gently. I had to think. What next? I’d call Trista. The police wouldn’t be able to ignore Trista Bottoms. I’d call Trista; then I’d go get Grace.
My heart sank as Trista’s phone rang and rang. I left a garbled message I wasn’t sure even Trista would be able to decode.
I clipped my walkie-talkie onto my sweats and ripped open my desk drawer. I grabbed the pepper spray Grace had given me the morning after our meeting with Ralston and, careful to dodge my wind chimes, dashed toward my closet. The trusty black rope waited hidden in the back, coiled and ready to strike. I pulled it out and lashed it to the bed frame, yanking it tight to check for safety before I snaked the free end down the side of the house. All systems go. No time for equipment and frequency checks tonight.
I pulled on my knit black gloves, grabbed the rope, and fell back into the night, free-falling for only a second before the rope held fast. I shimmied down and leaped over the roses to the lawn, my legs bending to break my fall as I landed with a quiet thud. I’d cleared the bushes by at least a foot.
Easy. Just like in the movies.
I sprinted across the dew-soaked grass to Grace’s patio door and pounded against the glass. Lucky’s green eyes glared out at me from the darkness. I thumped again. He disappeared with a flick of his tail.
Panic bolted through me. Where was she? I pressed my face against the glass. Her bed looked empty, but it was too dark to tell for sure. I tried to tug the door open. No luck.
Time was running out. It might be too late. If Ralston was early . . . if Bain was waiting already . . . Please, Agent Ralston, I thought. Please have brought Stone with you. But she wouldn’t bring backup when she was meeting a couple of kids at school, would she?
My reflection stared back at me from Grace’s patio door. With the darkness nearly eclipsing my tiny frame, my pale face looked as though it were detached from my body, free-floating. I closed my eyes and listened to the wind rustling through the trees. Sun Tzu never wrote about a general entering battle alone.
I took in a long breath. Gather energy like bending a thousand cross-bows, I imagined he might have said. I exhaled. And you will discover in yourself the force of an entire army.
I launched myself down the hill. Seconds later I was on my bike, zipping down Luna Vista Drive.
I pedaled as if my life depended on it. Tonight someone’s did.
Chapter Twenty-eight
Amazing Grace
On any other night, I would have marveled at the clear sky. With no marine fog blanketing Luna Vista, the Orion constellation blazed above me, his sword and belt shimmering as the wind whipped my cheeks and fanned back my hair.
I stopped half a block away from
school, stashed my bike in the bushes, and peered out. Neither the blue sedan nor Agford’s—well, Deborah Bain’s—convertible was in the parking lot.
I crept down the sidewalk, tiptoeing once I reached the main building. The outdoor campus was easy to enter, but that only meant it was even more likely that Agford lurked somewhere in the shadows. I pressed myself up against the science building, listened for a moment, then inched my way toward the central courtyard.
Dead leaves skittered over the concrete as the wind gusted. I kept my breath slow and steady. An electric hum startled me. A refrigerator in the cafeteria kicking into higher gear maybe? Ralston was nowhere. What if I was already too late?
As I rounded the corner into the courtyard, something scraped against the concrete in front of me. I stopped short. A large, black shadow flickered by the lockers.
I sighed in relief. Who’d have thought the bulky frame of Agent Stone could have been so reassuring? So what if he was some fly-by-night private investigator? Dressed all in black, he stood by a bank of lockers, sucking in his bulging gut as he tried to flatten himself against the wall.
“Pssst!” I hissed across the courtyard. “Bain knows! Get Ralston and clear out of here!”
Stone’s monobrow lifted in surprise. With surprising agility he jumped up and broke into a run. But wait—why was he—
Searing pain split down my side as Stone tackled me, sending me sprawling to the concrete. My walkie-talkie skidded into the darkness. I groaned in agony as he pressed his knee against my back and wrenched my arms behind me.
“One word and it’s over,” he whispered, his coffee and cigarette breath pouring over me. He tightened his grasp and yanked me to my feet. If this was how the FBI saved people, I couldn’t wait to see what they’d do to criminals like Bain.
“I think there’s been a mistake,” I croaked. It hurt to breathe, let alone talk.
A woman’s voice echoed from somewhere in the darkness. “You’re right, Sophie. There has been a mistake.” My veins turned to ice. I’d know that voice anywhere.
Charlotte Agford glided from the shadows into the hazy fluorescent glow of the courtyard light as though she were stepping onstage. Her auburn wig was surprisingly intact despite the wind, and she wore a striped Oxford shirt tucked into her ironed mom jeans. Her lips stretched into a gruesome smile while her eyes remained black and empty. How had I ever seen even a glimmer of warmth behind them?
“I see you’ve met my brother,” she said.
Her brother? I felt like my head was collapsing in upon itself as firework bursts of images exploded through it. Ralston. The blue sedan. The white truck. The heavyset man lumbering through the yard. For me, he’d always been one of Ralston’s men. First the FBI, then a PI she’d hired. I’d never even considered another possibility.
Bain stepped closer. “Danny, dear, everyone likes a firm handshake, but that’s a bit much.” She snorted.
Danny. Danny, as in “I’ll rip their throats out, Danny.” I pictured the grainy newsprint image of Daniel Slater and his bulging beer belly as he hid his face and pushed through the throng of reporters. Daniel Slater’s fingers—the same fumbling fingers that miswired the pool circuitry at Tilmore High School—dug into my arms. My own fingers grew numb, and my legs buckled. It was no wonder he had looked surprised the night before. His enemy had walked up and surrendered. No one had needed to spin a story to twist my assumptions. I’d done it all by myself.
Sun Tzu said that victory is certain only when you make no mistakes. I was going to prove the old philosopher wrong for once.
“I don’t want to cause any trouble for you, Doctor,” I said meekly, stalling. There was a slim chance Ralston had seen us already and radioed the cops. I scanned the courtyard. Daniel Slater tipped the scales at well over two hundred pounds. He was at least a foot and a half taller than I was. Even if I broke free, could I outrun them both?
Deborah Bain answered the question for me. She reached behind her creased mom jeans and pulled out a gun. Her wrist dipped with the heft of it as the steel glimmered in the night.
She clucked her tongue and tilted her head as she stepped in front of me. “Shame on you, Sophie. Lying? At your age? You should know better. If you didn’t want to cause any trouble, you’d have stayed home, just like I told you.” Bain waved her gun as if she were wagging her finger at me. “Now let me see. If you’re here . . . I suppose that means your parents didn’t believe you? And neither did the police? Shocking. Where do our taxes go?”
Danny let out a snort. Ah, there was the family resemblance.
“But I can tell you one thing, sweetie.” She hissed the word. “You’re certainly not going to cause trouble anymore.”
I stiffened. Breathe, I told myself. I had to stay loose. Strength wouldn’t win this battle. I had to watch and wait for the enemy to make her own mistakes.
“You want me to take care of her?” Danny asked, wrenching my arms back even more. I cried out.
Bain shook her head. “We need her as a hostage.” She turned and raised her voice, addressing the darkness. “Isn’t that right, Louise? Come on out, now. You don’t want this nice girl to get hurt, do ya?” Her voice reverberated against the lockers. She didn’t bother hiding her own Texas twang anymore. “That’s strange,” Bain said, wheeling back to me. “I guess she’s late for her big night.”
I closed my eyes and breathed as if I were sliding into my Embrace Tiger opening stance.
Bain must have sensed me gathering myself. Her eyes flitted around the courtyard.
“Careful, Dan,” she said. “Wherever there’s Young, there’s Yang.” She peered into the shadows by the lockers before sidling over to me. Her toxic perfume engulfed me as she leaned close. “Or maybe not,” she said, studying my expression. “What? Did Grace have to stay home and do her hair?”
I glared back.
“Oh! Look at that, Dan.” Bain smiled with all her teeth. “I nailed it!”
“Bravo,” grunted Danny.
“It’s brava, Dan-Dan,” Bain said in a tone that reminded me more than a little of Marissa Pritchard. “The feminine ending for ladies: brava. Right, Soph?”
I didn’t answer. Every move could give the enemy an opening. Engage only when necessary. I felt the hard cylinder of Grace’s pepper spray in my pocket. If I could just get my one hand free . . .
Deborah Bain sighed. “If you had always been this quiet, Sophie, we wouldn’t be standing here now.” She spoke with her hands, waving the gun around carelessly. “You have to know this isn’t easy for me. I never wanted anyone to get hurt.”
The wind howled through the archway behind us, sweeping a pile of leaves against the lockers. I shuddered.
“But, you see, Louise is probably off to get the police now. There’s not much time.” She pouted. “You almost won, Sophie Young. I’ll admit it. Right, Agent Stone?” she mocked.
Danny’s laugh burst from him like an explosion.
“Until you ran up to Danny here and spouted all that business about airtight evidence and needing to find Ralston, I hadn’t realized just how far you two had gotten.” She slipped into her fake Charlotte Agford soprano: “I’m just so proud of you, Sophie.” Her ensuing giggle came out as a series of snorts. “Drag her over here, Danny. Tie her up quick. She’s small but feisty.”
“Freeze!” screamed a voice from the outdoor hallway opposite us. Slater jerked up at the shout. My heart stopped. It wasn’t Agent Ralston. It wasn’t the police either.
It was Grace.
“No!” I shrieked as Deborah Bain swung around and pointed her gun into the darkness. It wasn’t supposed to happen like this.
Bain jogged toward Grace’s voice, gun raised. Any second she could pull the trigger. I had to—
There wasn’t time to think. When I felt Daniel Slater’s weight shift, I hoisted my knee up and rammed my foot down over his with the full force of my gathered chi. While he cried out and loosened his grip, I flung myself into Golden Rooster Stands on One
Leg and delivered a swift donkey kick square into his crotch. He crumpled, groaning. I grabbed my pepper spray, windmilled into Strike Tiger’s Ears, then pulled the trigger right into his eyes. Slater screamed. His hands flew to his face as he stumbled backward.
I ran toward the archway, then stopped cold. Bain crouched, the white stripes of her Oxford blouse eerily aglow. Was she leaning over Grace’s body? But she hadn’t even fired her gun!
I gasped. Grace had disappeared. Deborah Bain swung back toward me, gun in one hand and—in the other—my walkie-talkie.
She roared in frustration and hurled the little black box down the concrete hallway.
In the last instant before Bain launched herself at me, gun aimed, I saw a flash of pink by the French room and understood it all before it even happened. Grace must have seen my walkie-talkie in the hall and realized she could lure Agford in by radioing. But where had she hidden herself in the meantime?
Grace rippled into view now, like a mirage in neon-pink pajamas. She flung her leg out into a perfect imitation of Snake Creeps Down and . . . voilà!
Deborah Bain went flying, eyes wide and arms flailing, as her gun broke free from her grasp and clattered to the concrete.
“Run!” Grace shrieked as she burst out of the darkness and into the courtyard, Bain’s gun in hand. Her footfalls were heavy. I looked down. Her pink pajamas were tucked into—cowboy boots? She’d obviously had no time to plan her rescue outfit.
“That way!” I pointed to the archway opposite the main entrance. It led past the sixth-grade classrooms and, eventually, to the soccer field. If we could just get to the bluffs trail that led to the beach, we might be able to escape. I doubted Bain knew the path was there. Besides, it was hard enough to find in the daylight, let alone at night.
“Get them!” Deborah Bain’s scream followed us.
But we were already gone.
We sprinted down the hall as far as we could before needing to catch our breath. We listened for footsteps. It was eerily quiet. Where were they?
The Wig in the Window Page 20