The Rose Ransom (Girls Wearing Black: Book Three)

by Baum, Spencer

  She hit send and went to bed. On Wednesday morning she went straight to her computer looking for a response. There was none.

  “Okay, this is starting to piss me off,” she muttered. “Where is everybody?”

  That evening she tried calling Phillip. No answer. She sent a text message to Alvin. No response. She tried logging into the servers in Colorado to see if she could chat with Alvin, who was certain to be online.

  Her password had been changed.

  “What the hell?” she said, and immediately began a text message to Alvin.

  I can’t tunnel into the server. No one’s talking to me. What’s going on out there? Is everything alright? Could somebody please talk to me?

  After school on Thursday, still having heard nothing from anyone, Jill began typing a new message.

  I’ve been thinking, and I’m guessing you all aren’t talking to me because Code Orange has been called and I’m still here. You’re afraid that anything you say to me might get spilled to the vampires since there is danger of my cover being blown.

  So let me reiterate. Bernadette Paiz tried to look in my mind and failed. My position is perfectly secure. The vampires think they already know what’s in my head, and even if they decided to have another look, I think they would fail again. I was able to resist Bernadette because of a hypnosis session with Gordon Krause. It was a very powerful experience. I’d like to talk about it with someone.

  I’m feeling totally alone out here. Everyone I was working with on the mission is gone. My boyfriend is gone. My friends are…

  She stopped typing. She was thinking about Ryan, who might be dead because she had encouraged him to place a bid on Nicky at the Date Auction.

  She went back, erased the last few lines, and started again.

  I discovered something about my own family last week. Going through the data we stole from Tremblay Property Management, I learned that my mother was born on the Farm, and my father purchased her from Melissa Mayhew.

  I took my mother to Gordon a few days ago to try and have her reprogrammed. He wasn’t able to do it. He needs to know the original commands Melissa used to enslave her. Gordon and I both think Melissa wrote those commands down somewhere—perhaps they are stored in the data from TPM. I tried a search query there but came up empty. I tried searching the servers from my father’s company but found nothing. Now I can’t even get into the Network database because Alvin has changed my password.

  It’s fine if you don’t talk to me. I’ll keep doing what I think is right. But if anyone out there has any ideas on how to find the commands used to enslave my mother, I’d appreciate your help. I’m at a loss on where to go from here.

  I’ll keep sending reports of anything interesting I see at school. I hope that at some point in the future I stop getting the silent treatment.

  The next morning, Annika stopped her in the senior parking lot before school.

  “I need to talk to you,” Annika said. “It’s important.”

  “Okay, I’m listening,” said Jill.

  Annika looked around nervously. “Not here,” she said. “Let’s get in my car.”

  “Annika, class starts in four minutes.”

  “This is urgent, Jill.”

  Jill looked over Annika’s shoulder at their classmates heading towards campus.

  “So I guess we’re ditching first period,” she said. Without meaning to, she thought about Ryan, who, as a freshman, left her in his car after breaking up with her. She missed first period on that day too.

  Annika already had the passenger door open for her. “Yes, we’re ditching,” she said. “Get in.”

  With the rest of the senior class heading off towards campus, Jill got into Annika’s car and the two of them drove away from school.

  “I got a call from Shannon this morning,” Annika said.

  Shannon. So much had been happening in Jill’s life she had completely forgotten that she promised Annika she would get a new ID for Shannon, who had been on the run from Melissa in Brazil.

  “Annika, things have changed,” Jill said. She wondered how much she should tell Annika. “Shannon’s situation may not be as urgent as it was a few days ago.”

  “Like hell it isn’t! You know what she told me? The people she was hiding out with robbed her blind! Took everything she had! Her passport, her credit cards, all her money…she’s lost in Rio with absolutely nothing. She had to call me collect using a pay phone in a bar!”

  “Wow, that sucks,” Jill said.

  “It more than sucks! She’s roaming around in the slums with nothing! How long do you think she’ll last there?”

  “I don’t…geez, that’s rough. You know, she should go back to her house. If she goes in the daylight she’ll be fine. Melissa isn’t looking for her anymore.”

  “What do you mean Melissa isn’t looking for her?”

  Jill looked out the window. They were driving along the river on Clara Barton Parkway. Traffic was light on their side of the road but heavy going towards DC.

  “I can’t tell you what I know,” Jill said. “It wouldn’t be safe for you. Just tell Shannon she’s okay to go back to her house as long as it isn’t nighttime.”

  “I can’t even get in touch with her!” Annika said. “She has no phone. They took that too! I’m flying out tonight. She and I made plans on where I’m going to meet her. I need you to get me an ID for her. I can’t get her out of the country without one.”

  “Annika, I can’t get you a Brazilian passport in a day,” Jill said.

  “You said you were working on it.”

  “I am! These things take time! My connections…they haven’t been speaking to me lately.”

  “Well get them to speak with you!”

  “I’m trying! It’s not that easy. These people get spooked sometimes.”

  “This is just terrible,” Annika said. “What are we going to do?”

  “She needs cash and a place to stay,” Jill said. “Get her both and she’ll be fine.”

  “I don’t know how to get her a place to stay. I don’t even speak the language!”

  “Just get her a hotel room if you have to. Rent it under your name. Pay cash.”

  “Yes, I suppose I could do that. God, this is such a mess.”

  “You’ll be fine, Annika. You’ll get her someplace safe for now. We’ll get an ID made. You’ll go back later with it, and the two of you can ride off into the sunset.”

  “Wouldn’t that be nice?” Annika said.

  “You know, if you’re feeling like it’s time for you and Shannon to get on with your life, don’t stick around here on Nicky’s account,” Jill said.

  There was so much more she could have added. So much more she wanted to say to Annika, like, Nicky’s not coming back from Italy. All of us who supported her are screwed.

  But she said none of it. Every word she told Annika was something that could be used against them both if a vampire looked in Annika’s mind. It was good that Annika was going to Brazil—if Bernadette was going down a list of Nicky’s friends, Annika’s name would come up soon enough.

  “I wish I could stay gone,” Annika said. “But I can’t. I’ll go get Shannon set up and then I’ll come right back home.”

  “Why can’t you stay in Rio? If I know where you are, I can get the ID’s to you.”

  “It’s more than the ID’s. Jill, my eighteenth birthday is in December.”

  “Why does that matter?”

  “My trust fund,” Annika said. She said the words like they should have been obvious to Jill.

  Annika, like almost every student at Thorndike, including Jill, had a large sum of money floating in her name that became her property when she turned eighteen. For most Thorndike students, the trust fund was just a small perk, another piece of the good life that you didn’t think about that much because it was always there.

  But for someone like Annika, who was planning on getting out of DC and starting a new life away from the wealth and security of
her family name, the trust fund was a big deal. Once she and Shannon disappeared, there would be no inheritance. There would be no monthly allowance. No new cars on her birthday. No houses handed down, tax shelters to join, cushy jobs thrown her way.

  “You and Shannon need that money, don’t you?” Jill said.

  “I don’t know what else we’re gonna live on,” said Annika. “Shannon’s got nothing left.”

  Jill looked out the window and rubbed her hand across her chin.

  “What are you thinking about?” Annika said.

  “A lot of things,” Jill said. She was thinking about Annika and Shannon, about Melissa Mayhew, about Nicky and Ryan, Gia, Dante, and Kendall. She was thinking about how the Network was giving her the silent treatment, how she really could use some help finding the command that held her mother hostage.

  She was thinking about Zack.

  “Can we go back to school now?” Jill said. “I don’t want to miss second period too.”

  That night, Jill sent an email to Alvin begging him to talk to her. She mentioned Shannon and her need for a new ID, and told him she really wanted to get at the TPM data.

  After she hit send, she opened the bottom drawer on her desk and pulled out the statement for her own trust fund.

  One and a half million dollars. It was money her dad had set aside for her when she was born, before either of them knew they would hate each other by the time she was a teen. It was a fully revocable trust—if she ever angered her dad enough he could take it all away.

  But he never would. He still held out hope that one day she would work for Black Dart Enterprises, and he could have not one, but two, stellar programmers doing his dirty work.

  Her eighteenth birthday wasn’t until the spring.

  I’m just like Annika, she thought. Hanging on, waiting for the right moment to make my escape.

  Unlike Annika, Jill didn’t have anyone to escape to. A vampire had wiped her clean from her boyfriend’s memory. She went to bed that night thinking about Zack, wishing things were different.

  Hours later, a hand touched her face and startled her awake. She sat up quickly in bed and tried to scream, but found the same hand covering her mouth so tightly she could only get out a muted moan.

  “It’s okay,” whispered a man’s voice, then, his lips right up next to her ear. “I’m from the Network.”

  She allowed her shoulders to relax, and the hand came off her face. The man was a silhouette in the darkness of her room.

  Jill reached for the lamp on her end table. Half-awake and disoriented, she missed, and sent the lamp tumbling. The man caught it before it hit the floor. As he set it back on the table, he turned it on.

  He was a young man, just a few years older than Jill. He had brown, curly hair and dark eyes. He was wearing a white shirt and black slacks.

  Jill’s first thought was that he looked like a slave from Renata’s mansion.

  “Get dressed and meet me at your back door,” he whispered. “It isn’t safe to talk in here.”

  Not safe to talk in here? Jill wanted to ask him what he meant, but before she could, he was already on his way out. Rather than exiting through the door to her bedroom, he climbed to her window, which for some reason, was wide open. He hopped on the trellis and looked back at her, whispering, “I’ll find you at the back door.”

  Jill made a mental note to double check that her windows were locked next time she came to bed.

  She put on a robe and slippers, then made her way downstairs and to the back door. She half-expected him to be gone, to get down there, find no one, and realize this was just a weird dream. But when she opened the door, there he was, standing in the shadows, his arms folded across his chest. Getting a better look at him now, she was certain his outfit was exactly the same as those worn by Renata’s servants.

  “Close the door behind you,” he said, quietly. “We’ll walk in the woods.”

  Jill did as he asked. They said nothing as they walked down the path behind the house and into the surrounding forest. It wasn’t until they were past the treeline that he spoke again.

  “My name is Tarin,” he said. “I am working undercover as a servant in Renata’s mansion.”

  “I thought that outfit looked familiar,” said Jill. “I didn’t know we had anyone working at Renata’s.”

  “We didn’t until yesterday,” he said. “Renata has been out of the country this week. We took advantage of her absence, and of the confusion we sensed among the clan. With Melissa dead, the Farm is disorganized. I was able to present myself as a new slave and was accepted at Renata’s mansion.”

  “But why? What do they have you doing in there?”

  “My mission at Renata’s is to prepare for your arrival.”

  “My arrival?”

  “At the Rose Ransom kickoff party on Sunday night,” Tarin said. “You do intend to be there, don’t you?”

  “Yes, the whole class has to be there,” Jill said.

  “I am learning my way around the mansion as we speak,” Tarin said. “I have keys and alarm codes that can get you access to some of the more hidden areas.”

  They were coming up on a clearing now, the same clearing where, days before, Jill had confronted her mother about working for the immortals.

  “You’re telling me I’m going to sneak away from the party on Sunday and do some sort of break-in,” she said.

  Tarin nodded. “Half-way through the cocktail hour, when the vampires go outside to play one of their games, you’re going to slip away from the party. I will find you in the hall between the ballroom and the kitchen. From there, I will lead you to a secure location and give you Renata’s phone. You’ll have twenty minutes to hack it.”

  “You want to listen in on her calls?”

  “And her emails. And her texts. Can you do this?”

  “Well…yeah, I’ve done hacks like that before. I’ll need a laptop with me when we do it.”

  “Put everything you need to do this hack on your back porch before morning. I will take it to Renata’s and you will have it for the job.”

  They were walking through the clearing now, the moon hanging high above their heads.

  “Tarin, this assignment is a big deal. It’s the sort of thing I might spend months prepping for.”

  “You are ready to do it now. It’s no different than any of the other hacks you’ve done since you came to Washington.”

  “But, the plan…it seems like there are so many variables. I have to sneak away from the party. What if I can’t do it?”

  “You can and you will. I will have it all under control by Sunday.”

  “That sounds great and all, but I don’t know you. We’ve never worked together before.”

  Tarin stopped walking. He looked right at Jill. The moon was bright enough that she could see him clearly. His eyes were intense, a deep brown with a confident strength behind them.

  “You might not know me,” he said, “but I know you. I know all about you, Marsh Hawk.”

  Jill felt exposed hearing him use her online handle.

  “What did you say?”

  “I can’t begin to tell you what an inspiration you’ve been to me for the past three years,” Tarin said. “I was in a dark time in my life when the Marsh Hawk showed up on the message boards.”

  “You shouldn’t know my screen name,” Jill said. “We’ve never worked together before.”

  “Every mission we were doing back in those days failed,” Tarin said. “Agents were dying faster than we could replace them. I was ready to quit. It was your words that inspired me to stay.”

  “How do you know I’m Marsh Hawk? Who told you?”

  “The strategists told me, Jill. They told me because it was the only way to make me do this crazy assignment. When I got a call saying I had to break into Renata’s mansion, establish myself among the slaves, and lay the ground work for some hacker to crack Renata’s phone, I told them no way. I told them it was sheer madness. But then they told me the h
acker was you.”

  “Tarin, I’m flattered, really. But I don’t like that you know my handle. I don’t like that you just showed up in my room tonight and --”

  “The world is out of balance,” Tarin said. “The vampires are growing in strength and numbers at a pace that is sure to be the end of humanity.”

  He was reciting her own words to her now. Words she had written when she was a hot-headed thirteen-year-old who hated her parents and took to an illegal message board to vent.

  “You don’t have to do this,” Jill said. “I don’t want--”

  “It was one thing when they hid in the shadows and picked us off one at a time to feed their hunger,” Tarin continued. “But to affix themselves at the top of human society, to make us all their slaves—it’s unconscionable.”

  The words made Jill cringe. She had been so sure of herself back in those days. So confident in her angry diatribes and certain that she had the courage and the skill to back up the words she wrote on the Internet.

  “By the time they kill us we are already dead,” Tarin went on.

  “Please,” Jill said. “Just stop. You’re embarrassing me.”

  “Everything that makes our lives worth living has been stolen away.”

  “I get it, Tarin. I used to go on the message board and write these essays--”

  “--to reclaim our freedom we must fight! If we run, or worse, if we acquiesce, we have accepted our fate as their slaves. I want none of this. I want to take the war to them. I want the predators to become the prey!

  “Do you know what those words meant to me, Jill?”

  “I’m glad you liked them,” Jill said. “But I was thirteen years old when I wrote that essay.”

  “You were our voice! You gave us confidence to continue the fight when all seemed lost. Your words changed everything!”

  Jill didn’t know what to say. She remembered writing those diatribes and enjoying that other people on the message boards spoke highly of them.