by Sam Sisavath
She pressed the answer button and moved away from the closest sleeping con, and half-whispered into the phone, “Hello?”
“Heard you’re in a bit of a pickle,” a familiar voice said.
Converse.
“You,” Zoe said, keeping her voice as low as possible.
“Yup, me. And oh, don’t worry about that camera in the hallway. Jack took care of that. It’ll be back up in about ten minutes, with no one the wiser.”
“Jack?”
“The guy who gave you the phone. Jack’s not his real name, of course.”
“How do you know where they’re keeping me?”
“Jack again.”
She glanced up the hallway, but there were no signs of the male guard. “Can Jack also get me out of here?”
“I’m afraid not.”
“So what’s the point of this call?”
“I thought you’d want to know why you’re being accused of murder. Was I wrong?”
Zoe didn’t answer right away.
“If I am, I’ll let you go back to sleep,” Aaron said.
“Are you saying you know?”
“I have a pretty good idea.”
“Why?”
“Me.”
“You?”
“Yeah, me,” Aaron said. “Not trying to make myself sound more important than I am or anything, but you found out something you weren’t supposed to. Namely, moi. The schoolteacher did, too; that’s why they killed her. Framing you for her murder is their way of getting rid of the both of you at the same time. They couldn’t just disappear you; you’re a reporter, with friends. Say, like the detective you were talking to earlier.”
He knows about Craig. How?
She glanced up the hallway, in the direction “Jack” had disappeared again, but like the last time there was no one out there.
“Also, you got really famous this afternoon,” Aaron continued. “But framing you for murder? That achieves essentially the same thing—taking you and everything you know off the board. Besides, that’s what they do.”
“I don’t understand…”
“Framing people for things they didn’t do. It’s kind of a Rhim specialty.”
“Rhim…” she whispered.
“R-h-i-m. The same people I told you about at the food court, that you didn’t believe in. I’m guessing you’re having second thoughts right about now, huh?”
Zoe didn’t answer him. Instead, she looked around the cell at the three women inside with her.
How did she get here?
Her career—her life—had been irrevocably changed in the space of twenty-four hours, and she couldn’t shake the unexplainable feeling that someone, somewhere out there was pulling the strings. That that same someone was expertly and effortlessly turning her life upside down.
And the question she had been asking herself, over and over: Why? Why was this happening?
“They’re trying to hide your existence, aren’t they?” she finally said into the phone.
“Bingo,” Aaron said.
“What’s so special about you?”
“Wow, that hurts.”
“I meant…”
“I know what you meant,” he said, and might have chuckled. “I’m just messing with you.”
I’m glad this is very amusing to you, she wanted to say but said instead, “So what’s the answer?”
“I have something they want.”
“The backpack.” Then, before he could answer, “It’s the backpack, isn’t it? Or whatever’s in it.”
“By George, the lady’s onto something!”
“What is it? What’s inside that backpack?”
“Something they want back.”
“‘Back?’ What did you do, steal it from them?”
“You say po-tay-to, I say po-tah-to.”
“I don’t know what that means.”
“Things aren’t always black and white when it comes to the Rhim.”
“But that’s why they’re framing me, isn’t it? So they can find you without anyone knowing you ever existed.”
“Now you’re getting it.”
“And it’s all because of whatever’s in that backpack of yours…”
“That’s the big enchilada, yes, but I also happen to know a few things they would like to pry out of me. Bottom line is, you got caught in the middle of this thing me and the Rhimmers have going on. I’d like to tell you that something like this rarely happens, but the truth is, it’s not rare at all. Most people who find out they exist do so accidentally.”
“Who are you people?”
“Me? I’m Aaron. But guys like Jack? They’re called the Sons of Porter.”
“Porter,” Zoe said. “John Porter?”
“Ding, ding, ding. Give the lady another prize.”
“All of this has to do with Porter, too?”
“What can I say? It’s Porter’s world; we’re all just trying to grab some nuts.”
“But Porter’s dead.”
The teenager chuckled. “I know. It’s a real trip. And I’m sorry to say, it’s just getting started for you. Even while your lawyers get ready to meet with you tomorrow, they’re building an airtight case against you. By morning, they’ll have everything they need to convict you for murder. Even if, by some miracle they fail at that, they’ll have discredited you. Forget ‘Zoe on the Case.’ That’s over. You have to concentrate on surviving this. And I mean that literally, not in the figurative sense.”
Zoe didn’t respond. She didn’t know how. His words were like sledgehammers raining down on her, and as much as she wanted to refute him, she couldn’t, because she knew he was right. He was right about everything.
Her career was over.
Her life might be, too, by tomorrow.
She leaned against the bars and ran her free hand over her face. “How do I survive this?”
“I don’t know yet,” Aaron said. “Give me until tomorrow. I should have some help by then.”
“Help? What kind of help?”
“You’ll see. Until then, don’t say anything to anyone.”
“My lawyers…”
“Forget about them. They can’t help you.”
“But you can?”
“I can try,” Aaron said, and he didn’t sound so young anymore. She had a difficult time reconciling the confident voice on the other end of the phone with the skittish skinny teenager from the mall.
“You’ve been through this before,” Zoe said.
“Let’s just say this isn’t my first rollercoaster.”
It feels like a rollercoaster, too. One that’s about to plummet me to my death.
“When are you supposed to meet with your shysters?” Aaron asked. “Excuse me, I meant, lawyers?”
“Probably sometime in the morning.”
“I’ll ask Jack to keep an eye on you in the meantime.”
She sighed and ran her fingers through her hair. Her legs were tired, but the need for sleep wasn’t there. Maybe it was the pounding headache, the dread of what was waiting when she opened her eyes tomorrow, keeping her alert.
“One question,” Zoe said.
“Just one?” Aaron chuckled.
“These Sons of Porter. How come I’ve never heard of them?”
“Because they didn’t want anyone to know. They’re very good at that, too. Coming up with a story and making it stick.”
“They,” Zoe said.
“Yeah, they,” Aaron said. “They, them. The funny thing is, the Rhim isn’t even their real name, because they don’t actually have one.”
“So where does Rhim come from?”
“Who knows where the word originated? Check that: I’m pretty sure there are a few people who know, but I’d rather not ring them up and ask. They don’t strike me as the conversational type.”
“This is all…too much.”
“This is just the beginning. It gets harder from here on out.”
How is that even possible?
“W
hat now?” she asked instead. “What should I do now?”
“You should grab some shut-eye while you can.”
“I’m not sure if I can go back to sleep, Aaron.”
“Try anyway. You might not get another chance for a while after tonight.”
“Is it really going to be that bad?”
“No,” Aaron said. “It’s going to be much, much worse.”
Chapter 15
Quinn
“This is a bad idea. Have you thought this through?”
“Of course.”
“And by ‘of course,’ how many times have you actually thought this through?”
“At least twice.”
Quinn sighed. “Twice? You thought this through twice?”
“What?” Aaron said. “That’s one more than I usually think about things before actually doing them.”
Quinn glanced over at Sarah and the others. She wasn’t sure if they were horrified or—Oh, who was she kidding. They all looked like they were regretting having ever made the trip down to Houston with her.
After the incident near El Paso, they had made it to Aaron’s current safe house—really a fast food restaurant that was under construction but for whatever reason had been abandoned. The area was closed off from the public, which was why Aaron had chosen it last night. There were booths covered in plastic in the back and windows to block out most of the elements. But there were no locks, which made getting into the place easy. Aaron had taken advantage of that, and judging by the junk Quinn had to step over on her way to the back of the place, so had others in the very recent past.
“Quinn’s right; this isn’t the time,” Sarah said. She sat in a booth next to the window, occasionally looking out at the two-lane road. There was a residential area farther down the street, but Aaron had chosen wisely, and there wasn’t a lot of traffic to notice them.
Rick could be seen outside the window, pacing the mostly finished parking lot. And though she couldn’t see him, Owen would be on the other side of the restaurant. They were far enough from any main highway that she wasn’t too worried about running into law enforcement, but even so, it paid to be alert. Especially back here in Houston.
“Whatever’s in that laptop is more important,” Sarah was saying.
“How’s that coming, by the way?” Quinn asked, looking over at Reiko, sitting on the half-finished counter behind them.
“It’s coming,” Reiko said. Two laptops rested on the countertop in front of her, connected by USB cables. Both were turned on, their screens showing identical images. “I should have the entire hard drive cloned in an hour or so.”
“Why’s it taking so long?”
“It’s a big drive.” She looked past Quinn at Aaron. “How long did it take you to grab all this?”
“Ten minutes,” Aaron said.
“That’s a lot of data for ten minutes.”
“Most of it was compressed, and I had to extract it later. The Rhim is nothing if not efficient.”
“That’s more important than this reporter,” Sarah said. “We should be concentrating on finding out what Red Sky is and how to stop it.”
“What do you think I’ve been doing all week?” Aaron asked.
Quinn thought he sounded slightly annoyed, even combative, which wasn’t something she was used to from the teenager. Even when he and Xiao threw insults at one another, Quinn never actually believed any of it. They always bickered, but they never really argued.
Xiao. She wondered how much of Aaron’s current short temper had to do with Xiao’s death. As hard as losing her had been to Quinn, it would be even worse for Aaron.
“We can’t save everyone, Aaron,” Quinn said.
“I don’t want to save everyone,” Aaron said. “But she’s not just anyone.”
“She’s just a reporter,” Sarah said.
“After that stunt she pulled yesterday, she’s a very famous reporter.”
“So?”
“He thinks she’ll be useful in exposing the Rhim,” Quinn said. “Right?”
Aaron smiled. “Exactly.”
And that’s it? Quinn wanted to ask him. That’s the only reason?
But she asked instead, “What are you thinking?”
“She’s got contacts, and she can get us answers from places we can’t go,” Aaron said.
“Before yesterday, I would agree with you,” Sarah said. “But that was before she killed that schoolteacher.”
“She didn’t kill the schoolteacher.”
“How do you know that?”
“I know, okay? All the evidence points to this being a Rhim hit piece. The schoolteacher and Zoe knew about me.”
“So did the kids.”
“Kids do as they’re told, and they’re easy to manipulate. It was always going to be hard for them to convince the teacher she didn’t see what she clearly saw.”
“So they killed the schoolmarm and framed hot blonde reporter,” Reiko said. “Boom, bang, bing—two birds with one stone.”
“Exactly,” Aaron nodded. “After what happened to her, Zoe’s ready for the truth. We’ve never had an SOP this close to the media before. Even burned, she can still be useful in exposing the Rhim, maybe even get us closer to finding Porter.”
“Porter?” Reiko said. “I thought he was dead.”
“Porter’s just a piece of the puzzle, and he came back home for whatever’s in that laptop,” Sarah said. “Looking for him is a waste of our already very limited resources. We need to focus on the right things.”
“Did you find anything about Red Sky since we last talked?” Quinn asked Aaron.
The teenager shook his head. “Nothing worth bragging about.”
“So you don’t know if it’s even in there.”
“Not a clue.”
“There is a lot of data here,” Reiko said, looking over her shoulder back at the laptops. “It’s going to take weeks to go through all of it.”
“Try months,” Aaron said. “I’ve barely scratched the surface.”
“But Reiko’s here now,” Sarah said. “She’ll make the search go faster.”
“So cut that time in half,” Aaron said. “It’s still going to take months.”
“Maybe weeks?” Reiko said.
Aaron shrugged. “A month. Maybe two.” He turned back to Sarah. “You’re daydreaming if you think even the two of us can make it go any faster than that.”
Sarah looked back at Reiko for confirmation.
Reiko shrugged. “He’s not entirely wrong.”
“Not entirely?” Aaron said.
“Mostly.”
“Even if that were true, we didn’t come back here for this,” Sarah said. “We need to prioritize. Going after a reporter, even if she was framed by the Rhim, is the last thing we should be doing right now. This was always about rescuing you, Aaron.”
“Who says I needed rescuing? I was doing just fine by my little lonesome. Quinn and I’ll be just fine when you go splitsville, too.”
Sarah looked over at Quinn, as if to ask for her help.
She’s right, Quinn thought. God, she’s right.
But she said anyway, “She can help us.”
Sarah frowned, like Quinn had just stabbed her in the back. “Maybe before yesterday, but not anymore. Right now, she’s a cause we can’t afford to fight. Finding Red Sky should be our only priority.”
“You don’t know Red Sky is even there to be found. All of this could be a wild goose chase.”
“It’s not. I’m even more sure of it now.”
“How?”
“Because they’re going through a hell of a lot of trouble to get it back,” Sarah said, turning back to Aaron. “The teacher, the reporter… The Rhim has resources—a lot of resources—but they’re finite. They don’t go around framing people for murder on a whim.” She nodded at the laptops in front of Reiko. “Red Sky is in there, somewhere, and they know it. That’s why they’re so desperate to find Aaron, to get back what Porter stole.” Sarah l
ocked eyes with Quinn. “You know I’m right.”
“I know,” Quinn nodded.
“So why are we even having this conversation?”
Quinn shook her head but didn’t answer.
She’s right. God, she’s right. We should be running as far away from Houston as humanly possible right now. We should—
“Quinn,” Aaron said.
It wasn’t just her name that got her attention, but the way he had said it, that made her look over and see the teenager in a whole new light. He seemed suddenly very grown up, and she thought, When did that happen?
“We need to help her,” Aaron said. “Zoe’s in the same position you were in just weeks ago. The same place me and Xiao were in before Porter saved us. Where would we be now if no one was there to lend a hand?” He paused before continuing, “They’re right; we don’t have to do this. We shouldn’t do this. Just like Xiao didn’t have to save you while you were running for your life. But she did. She did, Quinn.”
Yes, she did. She didn’t have to, but she did…
Quinn put a hand on Aaron’s shoulder and smiled. “I’m assuming you have a plan to get the reporter out?”
“This isn’t a good idea,” Sarah said as they watched a pair of trucks drive by on the small road next to them. “But you already know that, so why do I keep saying it?”
“You don’t have to be here for it,” Quinn said. She sat down on the curb and opened the brown paper box and took out the Big Mac that Rick had gotten for all of them.
Sarah remained standing next to her, nibbling on a long soggy piece of French fry. “That’s not the point.”
“Then get to the point.”
“It’s dangerous. It’s reckless. And most of all, it’s unnecessary.”
“Not to Aaron.”
Sarah glanced back at the building behind them. “He’s doing this because of Xiao, you know.”
“Maybe.”
“He is. And you know it, Quinn.”
“Maybe.”
“It’s up to you to stop him.”
Quinn took a bite out of the Big Mac and wiped at the sludge of condiment that dripped out between the buns and splattered one of her pants legs. “What if I don’t want to?”
“Why wouldn’t you want to stop him from making a huge mistake?”
“Because I think he’s right. This reporter could help us. Not just to expose the Rhim, but also to find Porter.”