The Rose Ransom (Girls Wearing Black: Book Three)

by Baum, Spencer

  “Yes, Master.”

  “And the mail! Grab all the mail so I can go through it. There’s a pile I brought home from Thorndike on the mantle. Don’t forget it!”

  An hour later, Frankie parked the car on the runway and loaded Renata’s luggage on the plane. He saw her off, then drove the car out of the airport. At the airport exit, he had a choice to make. A left turn took him back to Renata’s mansion. That’s where Frankie the slave wanted to go. A right turn took him to the house in Bethesda where he saw pictures of Nicky on the wall. The real Frankie wondered if he could seize control of his body and make the car go that way.

  I look out for Nicky and she looks out for me.

  He turned left. Frankie the slave won this battle. Today wasn’t the day he was meant to break free. He’d try again another time.

  *****

  “I’m in the air,” Renata said. “Thirteen hours and I’ll be in Rio.”

  “Wow, that was fast,” said Falkon.

  “I want to get this done so I can get back to work. I’ve got a party to plan. Speaking of, can we talk about the transfer of our two little prisoners? I’d like for Nicky and Ryan to arrive at my mansion the night before my party so I have some time to make them ready for their big reveal.”

  “That will be fine,” Falkon said. “I want nothing more than to get them out of here. What are you going to do with them when you have them? You need to be careful. Nicky is a crafty one.”

  “I’m putting them where the Ransom clue says they’ll be, of course,” said Renata.

  “You’re not putting them someplace where a student could find them, are you?”

  “Don’t be silly. The third clue leads to a place where no humans have ever been allowed. The clue is impossible for them to solve.”

  “All these hoops to jump through to get our hands on a little money,” Falkon said.

  “Don’t speak of it like it’s some chore you don’t wish to do! This year’s Ransom has been a thing of beauty! The party, my performance, the clues—with this Ransom, I am creating a piece of art that will be admired and remembered for generations. You should see the dress I have for Nicky to wear!”

  “I’m sure it’s lovely, Renata.”

  “It’s the same style of dress I wore for the very first Rose Ransom performance! I am bringing the entire event full circle! And I will kill Nicky with the same knife I used in the first play.”

  “It all sounds very symmetrical.”

  “It’s brilliant is what it is! Falkon, I need you to appreciate the beauty of what I’m doing. When we have our new clan, I want them to understand and admire the masterpiece I am creating here.”

  “I apologize if I’m not properly enthused. Right now, my mind is otherwise occupied. Sergio is somewhere in these mountains.”

  “Hiding always was his great skill,” Renata said.

  “I feel like he’s been hiding from me for centuries,” said Falkon.

  “I’ll let you go so you can continue your search. I’ve got work I should be doing anyway.”

  Renata ended the call and looked at the paperwork in front of her. She sighed. With all her focus on the Rose Ransom and the goings on in Italy, she had allowed a pile of mundane chores to grow. She couldn’t wait to break free from her life in the Samarin clan, not least because she was tired of running the school. Over the years, Thorndike Academy, the keystone of the Samarin empire, had turned into a monstrous generator of paperwork.

  She went through a stack of invoices first, then she read a proposal for a new teacher contract and made comments in the margins. She looked at minutes from the last three meetings of the Board, including an amusing section where they all agreed that, “Karmela Sweet is the ideal candidate to play the princess in this year’s Rose Ransom and, pending Renata’s approval, the board will initiate contact with her parents.”

  What a bunch of buffoons. How much better had the Ransom been this year because Renata had shucked all of them to the side and done it herself? How much smoother and more beautiful was everything at school now that Daciana was gone and Renata was fully in charge?

  She was ready to be done with all of them. The Regents, the teachers, the students, the Samarin clan. A mob of humans and vampires that was always up in her business—that’s what Daciana had created. That was the life Renata needed to blow up so she could start over again.

  She pushed the meeting minutes aside and dove into the mail. Bills, thank you letters, requests for recommendations, more bills….one after another she opened the envelopes and tossed them aside, coming eventually to a large manila envelope with a DC post office stamp and no return address. She opened it and poured the contents out on the table in front of her.

  Dear Ms. Sullivan,

  Enclosed you will find proof positive that Shannon Evans, who was pronounced dead last summer following a boating accident, is still alive. This photo was taken at the Praia de Sol hotel.

  She turned the letter over, looking for a signature or some other evidence of who sent it.

  There was nothing. The mailing was entirely anonymous.

  She laughed. Some enemy of Shannon’s had been playing spy. Probably a classmate who had her boyfriend stolen or something equally petty.

  She looked at the photograph. Yep. Clearly it was Shannon. But when was it taken?

  She found a time stamp in the bottom left corner. This photo was only three weeks old.

  She dialed Falkon. He didn’t answer so she had to leave a voicemail.

  “Hey, it’s me,” she said. “I got a very interesting package in the mail. It seems that when Melissa paid a visit to the Evans family, she left one of them alive.”

  *****

  Shannon Evans gazed out the window of her eleventh floor room at the Praia de Sol hotel.

  The last few months had been long and miserable, but life was about to change. Annika was coming.

  Shannon wanted to meet Annika at the airport, but Annika refused. We’ve worked so hard to keep you hidden, Annika told her. We can’t risk it! That moment when we are together again will be just as special in our hotel room as it would have been at the airport.

  Annika didn’t understand how maddening it was to be locked in a room all day.

  Still, Shannon agreed to stay in her room, and now she was counting the hours until Annika’s plane landed. While she waited, she stared at the open air nightclub on the beach.

  The Avalon.

  The people at the Avalon were young, wealthy, and beautiful. When she lived in DC, Shannon was one of those people. Now she was a hermit, frightened to leave her hotel room, entirely dependent on the money Annika sent her, interacting only with the waiter who brought her room service and the housekeepers who changed her sheets.

  Soon it will be over, she thought. Look out world, because Shannon Evans is coming back. And when she does, she’s headed to a nightclub just like The Avalon, and is going to party until the sun comes up.

  Bored, she started picking out the women who were dancing, one at a time, and imaging herself in their place.

  She saw a blonde holding her hands up while men danced on either side of her. Kind of fun, but not really Shannon’s style.

  She saw an older woman leaning on the railing, talking to a guy who was at least ten years younger than she was. You go, girl, Shannon thought.

  She saw a girl with black hair….

  “No way,” Shannon whispered.

  She leaned closer to the window, pressing her forehead against the glass.

  “No way in hell…oh, you little whore! You think you can come here! You think you can dance at the nightclub right underneath my window?”

  Shannon put on her shoes. Annika wouldn’t be here for another hour or so. There was plenty of time for her to go down to The Avalon and take care of some unfinished business.

  *****

  Jill sat at her desk, listening to the conversations between Renata and Falkon, furiously taking notes, trying to make sense of what she was hearing. />
  It sounded like they were sending Nicky and Ryan back to Washington. It sounded like the third Ransom clue would lead Jill right to them!

  But it also appeared that Renata had designed the third clue so it couldn’t be solved. Reading her notes, Jill underlined two sentences she had copied down, word for word.

  The third clue leads to a place where no humans have ever been allowed. The clue is impossible for them to solve.

  Jill reached for her phone. Hours had passed since she sent the first text to Annika with no response. Where was she?

  Jill sent her another message.

  Call me as soon as you get this. Renata knows that Shannon is alive!

  She put her phone down and began tapping her fingers on the desk. She didn’t know what to do next. She had all this incredible information and no one to tell it to!

  “Mom!” she yelled out. “Mom, can you come in here?”

  Her mother, who had finally left Jill’s bedroom after days camping out in there, didn’t respond. Jill got up from her desk and went to the hallway. “Mom! I want to talk to you!”

  Nothing. Where was she?

  Jill went up to the third floor study. No one was in there. She went downstairs. “Mom? Mom, are you in here?”

  Could she be asleep? Could she be asleep in her own bed? Jill went to the master bedroom and found that it too was empty.

  She decided to dial her mom’s phone.

  “Hello?”

  “Mom, where are you?”

  “I’m at the airport.”

  “The airport? What in the world are you doing there?”

  “We finished our task, Jill. I have nothing else to do until Tarin comes back.”

  “So you went to the airport?”

  “I called your father. He thought--”

  “Wait a minute. When did you call Dad? It’s like three in the morning where he is.”

  “He was happy to take my call,” Carolyn said. “I told him I was available if he had work for me. He asked me to catch the first flight to Seattle so I could meet his clients and discuss the job in person.”

  “No, you can’t go to Seattle! Mom, why would you do that? You don’t have to do a thing for dad anymore, remember?”

  “But I have nothing to do, Jill.”

  “There’s plenty to do! You’ve left me all alone in here when everything’s blowing up! I just overheard another phone call from Renata to Falkon. They’re bringing Nicky and Ryan back to Washington. We need to solve the third Ransom clue.”

  “Those little riddles are not my strong suit,” Carolyn said. “You know that.”

  “But it’s important! I’m just….God, Mom, it’s so…”

  Lonely. She didn’t finish the sentence because she knew her mother wouldn’t understand. Carolyn Wentworth didn’t know what it was like to be lonely. Maybe she never would.

  “If Tarin comes back, have him call me,” Carolyn said.

  “He doesn’t really call people,” said Jill. She almost added, and I don’t know if he’s ever coming back.

  “Well he is welcome to call me,” said Carolyn. “But I won’t wait around and do nothing. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m next in line at the ticket counter.”

  Jill ended the call with her mom and plopped down on the living room couch. Within minutes, she was asleep.

  She dreamed about the night she and Zack went to the carnival in Marlboro. In the dream, they walked into The House of A Thousand Frights together, holding hands, but in the darkness, they got separated. Jill called out for him, but he didn’t answer, and she was alone.

  I don’t want to be alone anymore! she screamed.

  And then she saw a small light ahead of her. It was shaped like a rectangle. The screen from Zack’s phone! She followed it. It was moving fast, but she was able to keep up. She followed it down rickety stairs, through a hallway of mirrors, and onto a twisty slide.

  At the bottom of the slide, Zack was waiting for her with a big smile on his face.

  “That was fun, wasn’t it?” he said.

  Jill punched him in the chest, playfully. “It was awful!” she said. “You left me all alone.”

  “But you used my phone to track me,” he said. “That was really smart.”

  He looked at her with love in his eyes, and kissed her.

  Jill woke up with a start.

  “The phone,” she whispered. “I could use the phone to track her.”

  She ran upstairs and got in front of the laptop, which was still showing a live stream from Renata’s phone. Jill brought up the system log to see what processes were running.

  No apps were open. No user inputs were happening. The phone was sitting idle, occasionally sending and receiving packets of data to keep itself updated.

  Sending and receiving packets of data to satellites, all of those packets stamped with her current GPS location.

  “Oh, you bastard, I’ve got you,” Jill said. “I’ve got you!”

  Jill pulled her own phone from her pocket and flipped through the screens until she saw a thumbnail picture of Karmela Sweet, with the words Karmela? Where Are You? written underneath.

  She pressed on Karmela’s picture, and Alvin’s tracking app opened up. A map of the world, with a blinking red dot flying down the eastern seaboard, Alvin’s app was tracking the replica of Karmela’s ring, which Annika was taking to Rio to give to Shannon.

  Annika’s plane was in the air and already an hour out of Washington. With this app, Jill would be able to track Annika everywhere she went.

  Adding Renata’s location to the same map would be simple, since Renata’s phone gave away its GPS coordinates every time it sent or received a packet of data.

  It took Jill less than an hour to modify the tracking app so that it followed both Karmela’s ring and Renata’s phone. Jill connected the app to her widescreen monitor and brought up the map. Now she had two blinking dots on the screen. The red dot was Annika, just off the Virginia coast, heading out into the Atlantic. The blue dot was Renata.

  The blue dot was already over the Gulf of Mexico.

  Jill opened up a new text to Annika.

  Did you get my messages? Call Shannon immediately and tell her to get out of that hotel and find someplace to hide!

  *****

  “I’m standing in the empty villa where the Evans family once lived,” said Renata. “Can you hear how my voice is echoing in here?”

  “Not really,” said Falkon.

  “Well it is! My voice is bouncing all over the place because there is no art on the walls, no furniture on the floor—there aren’t even any carpets!”

  “Huh?”

  “The place has been cleaned out, Falkon! Someone’s been here and took everything! All that’s left are some old magazines, a few stacks of paper, and lots of trash.”

  “What? Who would have done something like that?”

  “Burglars you old fool!”

  “But the necklace we need would have been in the safe,” said Falkon.

  “The safe has been pulled down and cracked open.”

  “Can’t be. That would mean--”

  “That we’re screwed? Yes, that’s exactly what it means. Our necklace might be for sale on some street market in the slums for all we know.”

  “Are you sure it’s not there? You’ve checked the entire house? We’re looking for a silver pendant with a black onyx in the center.”

  “I remember what it looks like, and yes, I’ve checked everywhere. It’s not in this house.”

  “Oh my. I don’t know what to do with this news. I don’t know that I can even hear it right now.”

  Renata shook her head. Sometimes, her partnership with Falkon felt like she had taken a job with her grandfather. Strong, smart, and worthy of her respect, but also old and tired. Falkon was even more weary of life than she was.”

  “Did you get my voicemail earlier?” she asked.

  “No.”

  “Well, it just so happens that on the plane ride over I op
ened a piece of mail from an anonymous source who wished to report that Shannon Evans faked her own death and is alive and well in Rio.”

  “Well, that was true for a time, but Melissa found them--”

  “Melissa found them and killed Shannon’s parents. As I think back on that final conversation I had with Melissa, I don’t recall that she ever said a thing about killing Shannon.”

  “So you think it’s possible Shannon is still out there somewhere?”

  “I know she is. The photo has a time stamp of just a few weeks ago. It was taken at the Praia de Sol hotel.”

  “Maybe she knows something!” Falkon said. “Maybe she’s the one who took everything!”

  “That’s what I’m thinking too. If nothing else, at least it’s a place to start.”

  *****

  Raquel was showing off her necklace to a man at The Avalon nightclub.

  “It’s beautiful,” he said. “It looks like the sun.”

  “Yes it does,” said Raquel. She twisted the pendant from said to side, allowing the onyx to glisten in the light. “I like to surf. The sun and I are good friends.”

  “What’s your name?” said the man. He had dark curly hair and a perfectly manicured beard. He wore a tight-fitting suit and a Rolex watch.

  “Teresa,” said Raquel. “Teresa Silva.”

  She danced a few songs with the man, then moved on to somebody else. She didn’t want to stay too long with any one person tonight. At least, not yet. She would find some sucker to latch onto later, after the booze really loosened them up. For now, she just wanted to enjoy the moment. She wanted to feel what it was like to be a girl at The Avalon.

  When her name was Raquel, she slept on dirt floors and didn’t have running water. She drank cheap beer, smoked cheap pot, and was frequently in trouble with the law.

  But her name wasn’t Raquel anymore. Now she was Teresa Silva. Her passport said so. As did all three of her credit cards.

  Of the many treasures Raquel stole from Shannon, none had proven more valuable than her alias. Raquel would never know why a girl named Shannon Evans had a second identity as Teresa Silva, but she was thankful for it. It turned out that Teresa Silva was a valuable name to have. Once Raquel adopted the identity for herself, everything changed.