“I think I am,” I said.
“But here’s what’s going to happen. I’m going to talk to your detective, and I’ll be in charge of things from now on. And you are going to stop whatever you’ve been doing and start acting like a regular high school student, or as regular as someone can be when they have to go to Prescott. Because I really, really don’t want to have to worry about you being run over or anything like that ever again. Do you understand?”
“I understand,” I said.
“Good,” she said. Then she exhaled a long breath and leaned back in her seat. “I can’t believe I just talked to you like that. Ugh. I sounded like someone’s mother.” She said “mother” like she was talking about cockroaches or snakes.
“It was pretty impressive,” I said. “I never would have guessed you were an amateur.”
We were both silent for a bit as the cab made its way through traffic. Then Charley spoke again. “Look,” she said. “Not to get all soppy and everything, though it’s probably already too late for that, but I’m figuring this whole thing out in real time. So if you think I’m not getting it right, you need to let me know. Patience wasn’t completely wrong. That Chia Pet did die on my watch, and you’re the first living creature anyone’s trusted me with since. And sometimes I do wonder what your mother was thinking—the last time she saw me, I was ten and throwing a fit because Old Addie wouldn’t let me wear my Batgirl outfit to her college graduation. But for whatever reason, she trusted me with you. I’m doing my best not to betray her trust, and I promise to do my best not to betray yours, either. Okay?”
“Okay,” I said.
She exhaled another long breath. “So, now that we’ve got that settled, I’m thinking it might make sense to skip dinner and go straight to ice cream. How does that sound to you?”
Twenty-nine
The painkiller the doctor gave me in the emergency room started to seriously kick in soon after we arrived at the loft, and I was too tired to stay up even for ice cream. I barely remembered getting into bed, and I definitely didn’t remember falling asleep, but I woke up a little after midnight. My side throbbed a bit, but mostly I was thirsty. And when I thought about getting a glass of water, my limbs felt too heavy to possibly move.
The door to my room was ajar, so I could hear Charley in the living room. She was on the phone, speaking in a low voice.
I called her name, but my throat was so dry it came out sort of whispery. Then I tried again, and she still didn’t hear me. But I could hear bits and pieces of what she was saying.
“…tomorrow…does she…tell her…so disappointed…best option…secure enough…the risk is…the right time…now that we know…”
I wanted to hear more, but the medicine was pulling me under again, despite the thirst. My eyes closed, and when I opened them again, the sun was streaming in and I was definitely late for school.
When I came out of my bedroom, Charley was sitting at the round table with the phone and a cup of coffee, flipping through the pages of a magazine.
“What are you doing?” she asked in surprise when she saw me all dressed in my uniform. “You don’t have to go to school today. That’s the silver lining to this whole thing. You’ve missed the entire morning anyway. You might as well miss the afternoon, too.”
“I want to go,” I told her. “Otherwise I’ll just be sitting around waiting to hear from Rafe and losing my mind.”
“Oh. I wanted to talk to you about that. You did hear from him,” she said.
“I did?”
“Last night, while you were sleeping. I hope you don’t mind—I answered your phone—it was so late that I didn’t think anyone would call unless it was important.”
“No, that’s fine. What did he say?” I asked eagerly.
“Do you want anything to eat?” she asked.
“I’m not hungry. What did he say?” I asked again.
“He was catching a flight out of Santiago, but he said he’d call when he landed in New York this evening.”
“That’s all?”
“Well, no. We discussed it and agreed it made sense to suspend his investigation at this point. That’s why he’s coming back. Are you sure you don’t want anything to eat?”
“What do you mean, suspend?” I asked.
“We decided that we needed to, uh, regroup.”
“Regroup?” My voice was suddenly coming out an octave higher than usual. “I don’t need to regroup. None of us need to regroup. We need him to find T.K. and figure out what’s going on so that she can come home.”
“Delia, Rafe was very distressed to hear about what happened last night, and right now the most important thing is to make sure you’re safe. That’s why we need to take a step back and—”
“So you called him off.”
“No, that’s not it. Rafe agreed with me about this—it was actually his idea—”
“Rafe’s idea?”
“Yes,” said Charley.
But—how could Rafe stop investigating now? How could the investigation be at an end if he hadn’t found T.K.?
There was an obvious answer to that question. But I refused to even form the words in my head.
Because it couldn’t be true. It couldn’t.
There was a ringing noise in my ears again, and the floorboards seemed to sway beneath my feet.
“Delia, listen to me, this is the best course. Just wait until Rafe gets back and you can talk to him—”
The rest of her words faded away, because I’d already grabbed my bag and my phone and was running out the door.
From the moment Thad and Nora told me about T.K., the stress and confusion and general feeling of being lost had been a constant, always there in the same way that I knew my own name—even when good things were happening, like kissing Quinn. The only thing holding me together had been my confidence that my mother was coming back.
Now that confidence was shaken, and I was dangerously close to completely losing it.
I needed to talk to someone who still believed. Someone who would agree with me that Rafe was giving up too soon, and that person clearly wasn’t Charley.
I rode the subway uptown like a zombie. If anyone had been out to get me, this would have been the perfect opportunity. I was so out of it I almost missed my stop. And when I emerged, I saw that several messages had accumulated on my phone while I was underground.
All but one were from Charley, and I didn’t want to hear anything she had to say. Patience’s personal assistant had left a message, too, requesting that I go to my aunt’s apartment for a meeting after school, but that barely registered.
I reached Prescott just as one period ended and before the next period started, so the hallways were filled with kids moving from class to class. There was enough buzzing around me to guess that the story of my brush with death had made the rounds. But I didn’t pay any attention. I needed to find Natalie, so that she could remind me, in her crisp, logical way, about all of the things we knew that proved T.K. was alive.
It was our lunch period, and Natalie was at her usual table in the cafeteria, reading while she ate. “Hey,” she said when I sat down beside her. “I heard what happened. Are you all right?”
And before I could answer, she told me about how she’d made Dr. Penske bring everyone in advanced physics outside to calculate how jumping the curb would affect a car’s trajectory based on different velocities and rates of acceleration before and after the moment of impact. They’d proved with ninety-nine percent certainty that the driver must have accelerated after he jumped the curb and that he would’ve had to purposely turn the wheel to keep the car headed directly at me. Now they were focusing on analyzing some chips of black paint that the SUV might have deposited on the fire hydrant.
And it sounds bizarre, but her words were exactly what I needed. Listening to her explain in excruciating detail the measurements they’d taken and the calculations they’d done and the conclusions they’d drawn was more soothing than I ever would hav
e thought listening to something like that could be.
Because as she talked, it was just like all of the other times we’d puzzled over the things we’d discovered, turning over pieces of evidence until we could decipher what they meant and where they fit in. And Natalie had seen all of the evidence I’d seen, and she knew everything I knew, and she’d put her scientist’s stamp of approval on it all—well, maybe not Carolina, but the rest of it—and Natalie’s stamp of approval was the next best thing to T.K.’s own stamp of approval.
Anyhow, as Natalie pulled out a piece of graph paper so she could diagram something for me, I felt the panic start to melt away and my confidence come flooding back.
Everything was going to be okay.
I just needed to figure out what I could do now that I no longer had Rafe’s help.
I spent all of Modern Western Civilizations and precalc evaluating my options, and I was still trying to decide which one was best when I got to drama. My confusion from the previous day about what I’d say to Quinn was pretty much the furthest thing from my mind.
Once I saw him, though, it was hard not to notice how strangely he was acting. He sat next to me while the people who were up that day performed their scenes, and in the moments between scenes he asked all about how I was feeling and everything—but I felt like he was reading lines instead of actually talking to me, and he wasn’t playing the part anywhere near as well as he played Romeo.
So, it was sort of a relief when class was over. But when he heard I was going to Patience’s after school, he insisted on taking me there himself.
He hustled me through the hallways, out the door, and into a taxi with cool professionalism, like he was the Secret Service and I was the president, chatting the entire time about the performances we’d just seen. And since somehow that couldn’t fill the three minutes it took to arrive at Patience’s building, he started talking about the weather.
“How long do you think you’ll be?” he asked as he paid the driver and walked me inside.
“I don’t know. An hour, maybe?” I wasn’t sure what Patience had in mind.
“Okay. I’ll wait for you down here.”
“You don’t have to,” I said. “I mean, I’d like to see you and everything, but if it’s not convenient…”
“I promised Charley I’d take you home myself,” he said. “She called me before.”
“Oh,” I said. Now I understood.
Quinn hadn’t up and decided to do bodyguard duty on his own. He was here only out of a sense of obligation.
And whether his father was a bad guy or not, obligation wasn’t exactly what I’d been hoping Quinn felt.
Thirty
Upstairs, the door was opened by a different uniformed maid than the one who’d served dinner the last time I had been there. She took me to Patience’s study and told me that “Madame” would be with me shortly.
I’d still been plotting my next move, but now I was upset about Quinn, too, so I was sort of distracted. I heard the doorbell ring, but I didn’t give it much thought.
Patience came in a few minutes later, and as usual she launched right into conversation. “You’ll never guess who’s in town and agreed to meet with us in person,” she said. “I must say, I’m looking forward to giving him a piece of my mind.”
“Who?” I said. Charley would have asked what piece, but I was just relieved that nobody had told Patience about my little accident.
And at that moment the maid ushered Thad into the room. “Here’s Mr. Wilcox,” the maid said to Patience. “Also, Mr. Babbitt’s asked for a word with you. He’s in the library.”
“Hello, Mr. Wilcox,” said Patience, shaking his hand. “Will you excuse me for a moment? I’ll be right back.” And she followed the maid out, leaving me alone with Thad.
The amazing thing was, he acted like nothing was wrong. He even tried to hug me in his own stiff, weaselish way, though I managed to slip out of his grasp.
“What do you think you’re doing?” I demanded.
“What do you mean, Delia?” Thad asked calmly, settling himself in an armchair and crossing one leg over the other, taking care not to spoil the crease of his pants.
“What do I mean? Are you seriously asking me that?”
“Delia, you seem very emotional. Do you want me to get your aunt?”
“No, I want you to explain a few things to me. Like why you erased T.K.’s hard drive, for starters.”
“Somebody tampered with your mother’s computer?” he said, not blinking an eyelash. It was like he’d been taking lessons from Gwyneth.
“You were the only one who could’ve done it,” I said. “What was on there that you didn’t want anyone to see?”
He chuckled. “Your mother always said you had an active imagination, but I don’t think she knew the half of it.”
“What really brings you to town? Are you meeting with Trip Young and all of the other oil executives in his little club? Are you part of this whole plot?”
There was a subtle change in his expression, so slight that it was barely noticeable, but he stood up to face me. Which actually meant tower over me, since, like just about everyone else in the world, he was far taller than I’d ever be.
“Delia, I’m telling you this for your own good. You don’t know what you’re talking about, and if you’re not careful, you’re going to cause a lot of people a lot of trouble. Including yourself. So, if you’re smart, you’ll do what I say and stop nosing around in other people’s business.”
He managed to be condescending and menacing at the same time—and it was definitely the closest I’d ever seen him to having a personality. “Are you really threatening me?” I asked, astonished.
“Of course not,” he said smoothly as my aunt’s heels sounded in the corridor, signaling her return. “Ah, Ms. Truesdale-Babbitt, there you are. Shall we see if we can come to an agreement on those proposals I sent?” He returned to his armchair like I’d imagined everything he had just said to me.
There was no way I could sit there while they deliberated in legalese. Not when Rafe was coming back without my mother, and Charley wanted to regroup, and Quinn was acting like a watchdog instead of the guy who’d held my hand all through Romeo and Juliet. And now Thad had essentially confirmed everything I already knew and threatened me to boot.
It was all too much.
But I suddenly knew exactly what I needed to do.
I excused myself, and Patience and Thad were so busy with their documents that I didn’t think they even noticed when I slipped out of the room and out of the apartment.
Downstairs, Quinn was playing cards with the doorman. “Oh, hey. That was quick,” he said, folding his hand.
“Uh-huh,” I said, brushing past him and out into the street. I didn’t need him to do me any favors, not if the only reason he was doing them was because Charley was making him.
Quinn followed me out. “Delia, wait,” he said.
“I can’t talk right now. I have to be somewhere,” I said, looking up and down Park Avenue for a cab.
“Where do you have to be?” Quinn asked.
“Chile,” I said.
“Seriously, where are you going?”
“I told you,” I said.
“You’ll have better luck if you go over to Lexington at this time of day,” said Quinn. “And since when do you take cabs?”
“I’m in a hurry,” I said, heading down the block. “Besides, I don’t know how to take the subway to the airport.”
“You can’t just go to Chile.”
“Why not?”
“Because—because it’s Chile.”
I reached the corner and stuck my arm out into traffic.
“That’s not how you do it,” said Quinn. He put a thumb and finger to his lips and let out a piercing whistle, and a yellow cab swerved to a halt in front of us.
“Thanks.” I ducked into the backseat.
“Move over,” said Quinn.
“You’re coming with me?”
But I moved over and he shut the door. “Kennedy Airport, please,” I told the driver while I checked my bag to make sure I had my passport and emergency credit card. Surely it would cover one plane ticket, and I’d be long gone before Patience ever saw the bill. Then I pulled out my phone, called information, and asked for the airline Rafe had taken to South America. I was in luck, for once—there was a direct flight to Santiago leaving in a couple of hours.
“Am I allowed to ask why you’re in such a rush to get out of town?” Quinn asked after I’d finished making my reservation.
“Rafe suspended the investigation. So I need to pick up where he left off.”
“Did he tell you why?”
I couldn’t answer that without saying what I didn’t want to say, but the question still made me think what I didn’t want to think. That thick feeling was back in my throat. “It’s not important why he stopped,” I said. “He just stopped.”
“And that’s all you can tell me?”
I swallowed and nodded. The driver was taking us over the 59th Street Bridge, reversing the route the cab had taken that first night in New York. I stared hard out the window, trying to ward off a looming meltdown.
But I wasn’t the one who melted down.
“WHAT IS WITH YOU?”
I flinched and even the cabdriver, who must see and hear all sorts of things every day, glanced back at us in the rearview mirror. I wondered if he knew the cabdriver Charley and I’d had the previous night.
“Wh-what do you mean?” I asked.
“You’re the first girl I’ve met around here who’s real, and who cares about things and likes to do things. But half the time, you decide the conversation’s over in mid-sentence and take off. Or you ignore me when we’re at school and other people are around, and you tell your cousin that there’s nothing going on between us and that you’re not interested in me at all.”
“Me? What about you?” I demanded.
“What about me?”
“You’re the master of saying one word and disappearing. And you have all these things that you care about, like Bea and Oliver and surfing and acting, but most people would never know that. Your father thinks you can’t wait to be a banker and all your friends think you don’t care about anything. And meanwhile you’ve gone from being a person who acted like he cared about me to a professional bodyguard doing a favor for my aunt. I mean, what is the whole Secret Service act about?”
And Then Everything Unraveled Page 16