The Rose Ransom (Girls Wearing Black: Book Three)

by Baum, Spencer

  But Analytical Jill was fading into the background, and another Jill, the one who kissed Zack on the Ferris Wheel two weeks before, who felt ridiculous, extraordinary joy at spending time with him, who loved to sit at the back of the bar and listen to his band play their noisy music, who wanted nothing more than to hit the snooze button and curl up in his arms all morning—that Jill was taking over. And with her conquest came a wave of emotion too great to stop, or even contain, and before she knew it, Jill had buried her face in Zack’s chest and was sobbing in great, heaving shakes.

  “Hey, hey, what’s going on?” Zack said.

  “They’re dead,” Jill whispered. “My friends. So many of them. Last night. They’re dead.”

  “Dead? What do you mean? Who’s dead?”

  “Gia and Dante and Kendall and maybe Nicky and Ryan.” The names came out so fast she could barely make sense of them. Apparently Zack couldn’t either.

  “What are you saying, Jill? Let’s go inside. Come with me.”

  “No! No, Zack. It’s my fault, don’t you understand? The mission happened because I was here. The Network thought they could do it because they had me on the inside.”

  “We really shouldn’t talk about this out here, Jill. Someone might be listening.”

  Yes. Yes, there were always people listening, and for all she knew she might have led one of them here. She was blowing it now. She was being weak instead of choosing to do what’s right.

  “No,” she said. She took a deep breath, then said it again. “No, Zack. This isn’t for you to bear. I’m sorry.”

  She pulled away from him, wiped at her cheeks, and steadied herself. “I didn’t come here to unload on you. I came here to tell you goodbye.”

  “Goodbye? Where are you going?”

  “Zack, my friends--”

  “Come on, we’re going inside right now.”

  “No! You will not make me stay. I will not do this to you!”

  She pushed against him, using his body to help her stand.

  “It’s over, Zack. Goodbye. Don’t call me anymore. Don’t come to my house. Forget you ever knew me.”

  “You know I can’t do that, Jill.”

  “You have to! They will kill you just like they’ve killed everyone else! Don’t fight me on this anymore! You’re just making it harder for me!”

  Zack looked at her, his electric blue eyes taking in what she had just said. She felt like he was about to make another plea for her to stay so she turned to leave before he could say anything.

  “Goodbye Zack,” she said as she went down the stairs.

  She raced along the sidewalk, imagining herself disappearing into the crowd. The tears were flowing now and she broke into a run, as if the sadness was right behind her and she could avoid it if only she moved fast enough. The rock band playing down the block, the drums echoing off the buildings, the chatter of thousands of people enjoying the evening, the ever-present rumble of traffic in the distance—the sounds were blending in her mind as she ran. It felt like a hallucination, one of those dreams where you have to run but your legs won’t carry you because they’re too tired to move. Push ahead, Jill. Keep running. Keep moving.

  She wasn’t fast enough. The sadness was overtaking her, from within and without. It was a weight pulling her down to the ground, telling her to stop running, to lay on the sidewalk and cry, to give up. It was also a hand reaching at her from behind. Fingers reaching at her hair, at her shoulders, at her arm….

  The hand grabbed hold of her wrist with so much strength she lost her footing, and would have tumbled to the pavement had the hand not held her up. She turned to look at it, saw that the hand was real, that it belonged to him, to those blue eyes.

  “Zack,” she whispered. “I can’t. You have to let me go.”

  “Yeah, fuck that, Jill. You’re coming inside.”

  He pulled her to her feet.

  “No!” she cried, trying and failing to pull free from his grip. “No, I won’t do this to you!”

  With a strong tug he pulled her close, then put one arm behind her knees, sweeping her off her feet. Her head fell back into his other arm and he lifted her off the ground.

  “Is everything alright here?” someone asked him.

  “We’re fine,” Zack snapped.

  And then they were moving. The voice inside reminded her that this wasn’t the plan, but her body had no energy to care. Lying back in his arms, Jill allowed Zack to carry her back to his apartment.

  They came inside and he placed her gently on his bed, where the creaky springs and musty smell took her back to a different time, a time when she and Zack laid together under the covers, drifting in and out of sleep as he hit the snooze button all morning long. The blissful memory was too powerful to resist, and within seconds, she was asleep.

  Chapter 10

  Beedledebeep.

  It was a glorious sound, made doubly so because she didn’t think she’d ever hear it again. Zack’s alarm clock, and his magnificent ritual of shutting it off only to allow it to come on again fifteen minutes later—Jill felt like she was home.

  Beedledebeep.

  Jill realized she was closest to the alarm clock this time. Perhaps she should reach over and—

  She was about to sit up and look for the snooze button when Zack’s long, tattooed arm reached across her body. His fingers came down like a hammer on the snooze button and it was quiet again.

  Zack left his arm draped over Jill’s chest.

  I choose to do what’s right, whispered a voice in Jill’s mind.

  “Oh shut up,” she muttered.

  “What was that?” Zack said, his eyes still closed, his lips barely opening to form the words. Jill found herself staring at those lips, imagining the teeth and tongue behind them. The morning light pressing from behind the blinds, the feel of the sheets on her body, the ever-present electrical hum that was as much a part of Zack’s apartment as he was…all of it came together to make a moment, and in that moment, she felt like she and Zack had floated into their own private space where none of the anguish and danger that had been chasing Jill could find them.

  She kissed him. His lips were slow to respond at first, but as she leaned into him, he woke up and pulled her close, deepening the kiss. He wrapped his arms around her and pulled her into the bed, kissing her cheeks, her neck, her chest. She arched her back and pulled her shirt over her head, throwing it to the floor, then dove down to take him in. She tasted his lips and remembered the cool autumn evening when he kissed her atop the Ferris Wheel. She listened to his heart and felt safe, like she did when he carried her to his apartment. She looked in his eyes, those stunning blue eyes that had flirted with her at the coffee shop, and she allowed them to see her. She wasn’t Jill the Network agent or Jill the computer hacker or Jill the wealthy daughter of privilege. She was just….here. Jill and Zack. In this moment. And the rest of the world went silent so they could be together.

  Later, as they lie in bed, their eyes still connected, reality still far away, she told him everything. She began with the story of a little girl whose curiosity led her to the most dangerous, illegal spots on the Internet, where she not only made friends, but admirers. She continued through her entire time at Thorndike, the genesis of the mission, the idea of getting close enough to Sergio Alonzo to kill him, Nicky Bloom…

  “Everything was going well until Saturday night,” she said.

  “Didn’t look that way to me when I found two vampire slaves chasing you across your lawn with syringes in their hands,” said Zack.

  “Yes, Melissa Mayhew sent those slaves. And later she came to the mansion we built and killed everyone inside.”

  “So you’re the only one left,” said Zack.

  “There are two others,” said Jill. “They’ve already left. I need to leave too. One of the most powerful vampires in Washington knows too much. If I stick around, eventually she’ll find me out.”

  Zack sat up. “I’m going with you,” he said. “When do
we leave and where are we going?”

  Jill shook her head. “It’s not that easy.”

  “I won’t be denied, Jill. You’ve seen what happens when you push me away. You’ve tried twice now. But here I am.”

  “You can’t come with me.”

  “Why not?”

  “It’s complicated, Zack.”

  “Then make it simple. I think your super-charged brain gets in the way sometimes.”

  Jill smiled. “Is that so?”

  “Yes it’s so. Just cut through the crap and the answer is obvious. You’ve got no life left here. I never had any life here until I met you.”

  “Not true. You’ve got your band and lots of friends.”

  “Fluff I used to push away the boredom, that’s all my life was. But we’ve got something real here. Let’s keep it. Let’s go where we need to go and do this together. I’ve got a hundred and fifty dollars in my wallet. We can get in the car right now.”

  “Zack, that’s just it. I can’t go right now. There’s something I have to do first.”

  “So do it and then let’s go!”

  Jill crawled out of bed. “You’re right. I should be doing it. I should be working on it right now.”

  She grabbed her panties and her shirt off the floor.

  “Wait a minute. You’re not leaving are you?”

  “Not unless I have to. How good’s your Internet, Zack?”

  “My Internet? It’s just the plain old Internet. How good is yours?”

  “No, I mean, what kind of connection speeds…oh don’t worry about it. I’ll get my laptop out of the car and we’ll find out.”

  It turned out the Internet in Zack’s apartment was quite good, with a T1 line running right down the middle of the street. Jill set up her laptop in his bedroom and, within seconds, had a secure tunnel built to the Network server farm in Colorado.

  “What are you doing?” said Zack.

  “A few weeks ago my friend and I stole some data from a company named Tremblay Property Management. I need info and I think it might be in there.”

  Her fingers were flying now, creating a search query that scanned all files looking for keywords like Carolyn and Walter Wentworth, Melissa Mayhew, command, human programming, and slave.

  “Perhaps I should leave you to it,” said Zack.

  “It will just take a minute,” she said. “The long part will be waiting for the search string to comb through all the data.”

  Jill finished the query and began attaching it to recognition software on the Network’s server. By the time she was done, her search query could scan handwritten documents and identify Melissa’s handwriting, look for Melissa’s face in video and photos, and listen for Melissa’s voice in audio recordings. If the command that enslaved Carolyn Wentworth was in the TPM data, this query would find it, even if it was stored in a voicemail, a photo, or a fax.

  She finished the query before noon, and they went out for pancakes while it ran. They came back to find it still searching, so they went for a ride in Zack’s Corvair, driving west until they were far from town. They parked next to the Shenandoah River, and spent a few glorious hours sitting under a tree, listening to the water flow.

  On the drive back to town, Jill checked her phone for any new messages. She had one from Annika asking for an update on the fake ID Jill had promised to make for Shannon. She had another from Phillip asking if she had gotten out okay. There were texts from Mattie and Jenny, wondering if she wanted to go shopping or see a movie. She wrote back that tonight wasn’t good for her.

  “Everything alright?” Zack said.

  “Yes, my old life wants me to keep on living it, that’s all.”

  They got back to Zack’s apartment to see that the query was done. The news wasn’t good. A single line of text on her screen.

  0 results found.

  “Dammit,” she whispered.

  “What does this mean?” said Zack.

  “It means the data I need isn’t where I thought it was.”

  “So where is it?”

  Jill closed her eyes and cleared her mind. There were two people who had an interest in storing the command that enslaved Carolyn Wentworth. Melissa Mayhew was one of them. Had she chosen to record the command for posterity, Jill would have found it on the TPM server.

  The other person who might have recorded it was her father.

  “We need to go to my house,” she said.

  Zack furrowed his brow. “Your house? I thought you were looking for data.”

  “I am. My dad’s company keeps a small server farm in our basement. It’s for my mom. She needs a ton of computing power for some of the testing she does. Her work is all classified, so those computers are walled off from the Internet. It’s a great place to store the sort of secret I’m looking for.”

  “Okay, so we go to your house. Shall we leave now?”

  “Not we, Zack. It doesn’t make any sense for you to come this time.”

  Zack smiled and shook his head.

  “You’re not letting me go alone, are you?” said Jill.

  “Nope.”

  Traffic was thick on every route to Potomac. They tried 495, then they tried the parkway. Zack even spent twenty minutes on surface roads Jill had never seen before. Nothing was moving. Late afternoon stretched to early evening as they crawled across town.

  By the time they pulled into the driveway in front of Jill’s house, the western horizon was glowing orange.

  “I’ll be right back,” Jill said.

  “I’m coming with you,” said Zack.

  Jill knew better than to argue with him. She pushed open the heavy door of the Corvair and ran to the house with Zack right behind her. Her intent was to go straight to the basement so she could install her program on her father’s computer and get out.

  But she found her dad inside waiting for her, standing directly in her way, a martini glass in his hand, a stern look on his face.

  “Dad, I thought you were still in Seattle?”

  “I got called back early. Some business to attend to tonight. Business that concerns you, actually.”

  “Concerns me? What are you talking about?”

  Jill’s father took a big gulp from his glass. His eyes were already glassed-over. He was in no condition for a business meeting. Something wasn’t right.

  Jill’s father turned his gaze to Zack.

  “Who’s this?”

  Zack, completely unfazed, stepped forward with his hand extended.

  “Hello sir, my name is Zack Lomax. I’m dating your daughter.”

  A stunned look on his face, Jill’s father allowed his right hand to fall forward so Zack could shake it.

  “Your name, sir?” said Zack.

  Jill’s father cleared his throat. “Walter Wentworth,” he said. Sliding free of Zack’s grip, Walter turned to Jill and said, “I didn’t know you had a boyfriend.”

  “Since when would I ever tell you about my personal life, Dad? Now, if you’ll excuse me for a moment, I have something to do. We won’t be long.”

  “Won’t be long? What does that mean? You can’t leave. Err…this boy can’t…”

  Walter’s eyebrows climbed up his forehead. He looked flummoxed by all this.

  “You go ahead Jill,” said Zack. “Walter and I will take this opportunity to get to know each other.”

  “Go ahead? No. What’s happening here? Jill, I want to talk to you.”

  Jill pressed her lips together as she charged out of the room. Her dad was following her with bumbling, drunken footsteps. She couldn’t go to the basement so long as he was behind her.

  She went down the hallway, towards one of the guest rooms, and ducked into the bathroom, careful not to shut the door until she heard her father enter the hall. He needed to see with his own eyes that she had gone in the bathroom and shut the door. No matter how irrationally drunk he was, no matter what sort of nonsense it was that he wanted from her tonight, he would wait patiently if he thought Jill was in the ba
throom. Walter Wentworth was raised with a Virginia decorum that prevented him from yelling across a bathroom door.

  This particular bathroom had two entrances: one from the hallway and one from the guest room. After she slammed the hallway door shut, Jill slipped her shoes off and tiptoed out into the guest bedroom. She stood in place, waiting to hear her father walk away.

  It took him forever to move. The bumbling fool was so drunk he didn’t realize what he was doing. They had a guest in the house and he was standing in the hallway while his daughter was in the bathroom.

  He probably wanted to talk about the Date Auction. Yes, the Date Auction and all the attendant chatter was enough to bring him back early from Seattle. Someone told him that Nicky won and was now millions of dollars ahead in the contest. Walter, who had been so skeptical of Jill and her support for Nicky, probably wanted to find out what was in it for him if the Wentworth family got behind Nicky Bloom.

  A couple slow, sliding footsteps told Jill that her father had finally given up and was headed back to the front room. As Walter moved, so did Jill, stepping softly on the carpet, slinking out of the guest room and back into the hall. Her father was slurring some nonsense at Zack now about how he had to go home, how it wasn’t a good time for company.

  Zack handled it like a champ.

  “We’ll be gone in just a minute,” Zack said.

  “No. Not we. You.”

  “Jill and I have plans tonight, Sir.”

  “What plans?”

  “We were going to have dinner at that new restaurant in Sterling.”

  “There’s a new restaurant in Sterling?”

  There you go, Zack, she thought. Keep the old man talking.

  She tip-toed behind them both, cutting under the staircase and down the far hall. The entrance to the basement was the last door before the laundry room. Jill put her hand on the doorknob and pulled.

  It was locked.

  “Dammit,” she whispered.

  There were two keys to this door in the house. One on Walter’s keyring; the other on Carolyn’s.

  Jill went back up the hall and into the front room. She made ever-so-brief eye contact with Zack, who now had Walter talking about different kinds of gin.