by Jo Holloway
“He knows,” Jenyx said, annoying her even more with his perfect composure. “If millions of years of life have not taught him patience, then neither will you or I.”
She almost missed the far-off crunch of gravel over the sound of her frustrated sigh.
Her head snapped up when the sound came again. Footsteps.
Wes and Jenner were already focused.
The plan. Move, Cara.
She was supposed to be ready to step out into the alley with Jenner to interrupt the guy if he made a move on Thomas. Wes slipped silently into position, creeping along the back of the garage to a spot where he could see out into the alley without being seen in return. Hoping this wasn’t another false alarm, she clipped a leash to Jenner’s collar and readied herself with a long, silent breath through her nose.
She prepared to act surprised to almost bump into someone while out for a stroll with her dog. She’d been pretending things for years. This shouldn’t be too hard.
“Looks like him.” Wes breathed the words behind her shoulder—too quietly to explain the clench of fear in her chest.
She nodded and leaned forward to peer around the corner of the garage. The guy was looking back over his shoulder, checking his surroundings. He turned to focus on Thomas, who paced across the opening again, pretending not to notice. A gap in the clouds made the world suddenly brighter, and he looked up.
Her insides lurched. Her stomach clenched. The flutter in her chest ached under her sternum.
Crap.
She couldn’t move. Diner guy was walking down the alley. Diner guy who wasn’t supposed to be the kidnapper. This had to be a mistake. She’d gotten a good feeling from him. She’d even thought he was cute. The idea made her squirm now. How could she be so wrong about someone? Her feet stuck in place, and she needed to move.
The guy closed in on Thomas, who sat down in the alley to lick a paw.
She sensed movement behind her a second before Wes went by, taking Jenner’s leash from her hand as he passed. He strode into the alley with his phone held out in front of him like he was messaging someone. She shrank back against the wall, horrified Wes had taken over her part of the plan. Thomas darted out of sight as they emerged.
Good thing Wes can think fast. What is wrong with you, Cara?
She peered around the corner again, still berating herself. Jenyx got Jenner to play his role, winding around the guy’s legs so Wes could stop to apologize while he untangled the leash. He fumbled his phone, and her eyes closed in disappointment. He wouldn’t be able to take the picture now. When she opened them, her stomach dropped again as she took in the guy’s face, his tall frame, and his poufy hair, trying to memorize as much as she could to make up for her critical mistake. She couldn’t breathe.
The sharp tones of their voices drifted to her hiding place. The guy was losing his cool with Wes and Jenner, and he’d be moving soon—toward her. Her brain was busy fighting the idea he could be evil, casting around for some other explanation. He was just a kid, like them. She remembered when she’d seen him over a year ago, thinking he was barely older than she was, but realizing he was sixteen when he got in the driver’s seat of the van.
The van . . .
She turned away and stifled a groan. How could she have missed it? That flicker of memory she’d had after Jory was knocked out at the mansion—when she ran outside and a dark van peeled down the slick cobblestone driveway—it finally burst into flame in her mind. It was him.
Gravel crunched again, louder this time.
“Sorry! Sorry again!” Wes’s voice called loudly down the alley.
It was the jolt she needed. By the time diner guy walked past the opening, she was safely tucked in behind the garage, out of sight.
Out of sight . . . and furious with herself.
That’s what you get for trusting your instincts.
Wes waited until the coast was clear and then slipped back into the narrow gap. He rounded the back of the garage to where Cara was hiding.
“He’s gone.”
She nodded, standing up from her crouched position and stretching her knees.
“I’m sorry, Wes. I froze. You shouldn’t have gone in my place. It was supposed to be me.”
Jory came dashing into the gap. “I saw. What happened to you?”
“I don’t know,” she mumbled. “I froze. Wes should never have had to go. I feel like an idiot.”
“Hey. It was fine.” Wes bent his head forward to urge her to look at him.
“It might not have been fine.” Her voice strained as she met his eye. She swallowed hard around the lump in her throat. “We know he has no issue attacking strong-looking guys.” She gestured toward Jory as a flashback of him lying crumpled on the tiles in the hall of Whalton Manor last year flitted through her mind. “He could easily have decided to attack you too. It should have been me. Chances are better he wouldn’t see a girl as a threat; he wouldn’t attack me. That’s what we all agreed. Ugh, I don’t know what happened.”
She rubbed her hands over her face. A wet nose bumped her leg, and Jenner gazed up at her with baleful brown eyes. Her hand reached down to pet the silky top of his head.
“Seriously, Cara. It was fine,” Wes said.
“It wasn’t. I messed everything up. Now we don’t even have the picture we need.”
“No, Cara, listen—”
“I know, Wes. I know you’re a Pyxsee and you probably noticed a lot about him. I tried to memorize as much as I could too. Maybe if we hurry while we still remember . . .”
She pushed past Jory out to the alley and started toward her house. They needed somewhere safe to start searching, though how they were going to find a specific person in all of Portland with only a fading image in their minds to go by, she had no idea.
She kicked at a rock. It skittered down the alley in front of her. This stupid alley had done it again. She knew it was jinxed. She had called it. The dark thought entered her mind like it had been waiting there the whole time. Her feet ground into the gravel as she trudged to the exit.
How could she have missed putting all the pieces together? They had all been right there in front of her. From Tolyx mentioning the poufy hair, knowing Tolstoy had been taken the same night she had seen the guy at the diner, the flicker of memory at the van . . . she wanted to smack herself. She had dismissed all of it simply because she had gotten a different vibe from the guy at the time. Somehow, she had let herself believe that actually counted for something.
“Let’s go.” She turned back to gesture to the boys. They still hadn’t moved past the fork in the alley where she’d left them. “Hey. Aren’t you coming?”
They looked over. Jory took something from Wes and jogged up to join her. He was grinning as much as usual, and she couldn’t understand it. Didn’t he see how wrong everything had just gone?
He held out the phone in his hand without a word. She eyed him suspiciously. “What?”
“Look.”
She took the phone, shielding it from the bright daylight with her other hand so she could see whatever it was. Her quick exhale made her step back as she took in the face on the screen.
“You got it?” She stared in amazement at Wes, who strolled up to join them with Jenner and Thomas behind him.
“That’s what I was trying to tell you,” he said.
“How? I saw you almost drop your phone. I figured that was when you were trying to get it. Mine was all ready to go, but you didn’t have time.”
“I was ready just in case. But he kept looking down. I needed a reason to lower the phone. So I pretended to drop it so I could take the picture with the phone angled up to catch his face.”
Cara’s jaw hung open as she gawked at her friend.
“Wow. Kid Genius—Tomyx was right. You’re amazing, Wes.” She threw her arms around him.
“Kid Genius?” Jory asked. “Did I miss something again?”
“No,” Wes wheezed. Cara released him. “Just Tomyx being sarcastic.”
“Okay, so we have the picture thanks to the amazing and brilliant acting chops of our very own Wesley.” She beamed at him. “Now what?”
“Food,” Jory said.
“Good plan.” Cara set off again. “My mom said she’d grill burgers for us tonight.”
Though her stride was light again, she was still glad to be leaving the alley behind. She stepped off the gravel onto the sidewalk and turned down the street. It could have been much worse. The old knot in her stomach twisted again, and she started to walk a little faster.
AFTER THEY FINISHED their burgers, they sat out in the backyard. Her mom had asked what they all looked so happy about when they had turned up for dinner, but Jory’s smiling comment about the beautiful day satisfied her curiosity. When her mom went inside, Cara sat forward in her chair.
“So,” she said to Wes, “did you have an idea of how we’re going to search for this guy? How do we put a name to his face?”
“We don’t have to,” Wes replied.
“I thought that was the point,” Jory said.
“It is.” Cara’s brow crinkled as she turned to Wes. “Isn’t it?”
“Yes. But we don’t have to search. I know his name.”
“What? When were you going to tell us?” Jory threw his hands up.
“I just did.”
“Um, no, you didn’t.” She leaned in. “So, who is he? And how do you know?”
“I recognized him as soon as I had time to focus on the picture,” Wes explained while he looked down at his phone. “After the night at the mansion in November, I researched everything I could about it. I wanted to figure out who would have access to the manor in case it was someone who worked there who would know the alarm code. I found out everything I could about the Whalton family and their employees.”
“And?” Cara was on the edge of her seat.
Jenner sat up, his ears pricked forward. Thomas sat stiffly beside him. Wes finished doing something on his phone.
A whooshing sound followed by two quick dings signaled he’d sent something to them both. Cara fished her phone from her pocket and checked it. The first image was the one Wes had taken of the guy in the alley. The second image was of two men in tuxedos. She recognized diner guy as the younger one on the left. The older man looked like he could be his father.
“That’s Rhys Whalton.”
She looked up. No one spoke for several moments.
“Did we actually not consider that before?” Tomyx asked, breaking the silence.
“Your guard raven . . . he’s been telling you no one else comes and goes from Whalton Manor except the dad and the son this whole time. Somehow we didn’t think of that?” Jory asked a moment after.
“It is the most obvious and reasonable answer, after all,” Jenyx said. “Somehow those are often the most easily overlooked. No one is at fault.”
Jory breathed a long sigh, still wondering how they had missed the obvious. “I think my parents know the Whaltons, but not well or anything. How did no one know the guy’s a Pyxsee, though?” He looked accusingly at the two animals like he expected an answer, even though he wouldn’t hear it.
From their silence, it was clear to Cara they had none anyway.
“Rhys . . .” She whispered the name, almost a question.
“Yeah, one of the Whalton kids,” Wes answered, looking at her with an odd expression. “That other photo was from some charity gala last summer. It was in the paper.”
“Oh.”
There really wasn’t much else to say. In spite of what Jenyx had said, it felt like her fault. All those trips down the path to the mansion had been telling her something. Maybe she did have the right instincts, after all. Maybe the flutter in her chest had been her body’s way of making her understand the mansion itself was connected. It hurt to feel that bond she had come to treasure be tainted this way. Her stomach clenched again.
She peered at the screen. “His eyes are half-closed here, and the newspaper photo is too far away to see them clearly.”
“I got a good look. Rhys is definitely a Pyxsee,” Wes said. “He’s got cold grey eyes, but there was gold there too. Plenty to be sure he can see and hear them like we do.”
“He could have seen that you’re a Pyxsee, too, then.” Cara searched his face, worried. “And Jenyx. He could have seen Jenyx in all the madness.” What had she been thinking using Jenner in this plan?
“Do not worry, child. Jenner’s eyes were on the ground the whole time. He could not have seen me,” Jenyx reassured her. “Wesley and I discussed this while Jory showed you the photograph. We do not believe this young man to be terribly well informed in matters of Pyx and Pyxsee. He showed no signs of recognition of Wesley. He focused on Thomas the entire time and did not stop to look for anything else.”
She breathed a sigh of relief. At worst, Rhys would think of them as the annoying guy and his dog who had stopped him from abducting a cat. That wasn’t so bad. But it didn’t answer the question they still needed answered. Why was he doing this?
CHAPTER 8
Seriously
CARA SLEPT BADLY THAT night after her mom drove the boys back to Jory’s house. She tossed and turned, wondering again and again how she could have missed all the clues pointing to Rhys Whalton. The image of his face in the photo from the alley swam across her mind’s eye all night.
By five o’clock in the morning, she gave up on sleep and pulled out her phone again. She typed in her search. Article after article on the Whaltons appeared in the results. As one of Portland’s wealthier families, they were in all sorts of social columns and posts about charities. Most of them related to their family’s foundation. Dr. Randall Whalton also turned up in a lot of articles about the hospital, as well as journals for neurosurgery. There were older results about his father, Randall Sr., including an obituary from twelve years ago. She even found one mentioning Scovell Academy and the land the Whaltons owned and leased to the school.
The word “disappearance” caught her attention, and she read all of one particularly long newspaper column from three years ago. It detailed what the journalist called the disappearance of Elizabeth Whalton, but was woefully lacking in detail. From what Cara could gather, Mrs. Whalton had been a prominent member of the social scene in Portland until she suddenly stopped attending every one of her usual high-society functions. She hadn’t been seen in public since.
The rest of the article was allegations ranging from addiction to some sort of psychotic break, and even cast doubt on whether Randall Whalton had been responsible for her disappearance, all quoted to sources in the community. The journalist was careful not to say anything to get her sued, but her dark insinuations were clear.
Cara was still busy wondering what was up with that whole situation when she found another column with an eerily similar tone. This time, it was about Elizabeth and Randall’s daughter, Olivia Whalton. This one said she was extremely ill and had withdrawn from Scovell Academy. Cara’s eye caught on the mention of her school, and she remembered overhearing some students in the dining hall last year, following the night at the mansion. Wes had phoned in a report of the intruder so the police would investigate, and the whole school had been buzzing about the break-in at Whalton Manor the next day. Rumors had been flying. One of the older students had mentioned the Whalton kids stopped attending all of a sudden in the spring of the previous year.
Seriously, what is up with this family?
Each time her eye caught the name Rhys in something she was reading, her chest tightened. The anxiety finally grew to be too much, and she crawled out of bed, reaching for her running clothes. Jenner jumped up, ready to go no matter the hour.
She laced up her shoes and set out with her dog. At the bottom of the street, she turned east and ran into the pink-and-orange-streaked sunrise. Focusing on the colors and breathing the morning air deep into her lungs as her feet beat out a steady rhythm, she finally started to calm down.
When she got home, daylight reflected
against the windows of the houses. She met her mom coming down their front steps.
“Oh, Cara. I didn’t know you were out already. Couldn’t sleep?” Sandra asked.
“Not really. I woke up early. I haven’t been running enough lately, anyway.”
“Do you want me to wait for you? You could come with me.”
Only a little over two weeks home from school and Cara had already lost track of the day of the week in that wonderful way summer days blended together. She had forgotten it was Saturday. She really should go with her mom. It had been months since she’d visited her dad’s grave.
“No, don’t wait. I have to shower now. I’ll take too long. Besides, I’m going to hang out with Wes and Jory in a bit,” she said.
“Sure, sweetie. You can always go with your uncle in the next couple weeks if you want to.” Sandra turned to climb into the car with a smile.
Another thing Cara had forgotten in all the excitement lately—Josh was arriving soon and staying for almost two whole weeks. She skipped up the stairs into the house with Jenner in tow.
“HE’S HERE!” SHE CALLED to her mom when the rental car pulled up to the curb on Thursday.
She rushed out the front door, leaving it hanging open behind her, and ran down the walk. By the time Josh got his car door open and ducked his head out to stand up, she was waiting out on the street.
“Hi!”
“Hiya, Care Bear.” His tired eyes lit up.
He scooped her into a big hug like he always had, even though she came up to his chin now. When he set her down, she stuck her tongue out at him for the ridiculous nickname just like she always had. They both grinned.
“Here,” he said, passing her a few of his bags from the trunk, “make yourself useful.”
Cara took his bags up to the guest bedroom and waited in the hall upstairs for a moment to give her mom and uncle time to say hello. She liked to avoid their first few moments together when their faces and voices reflected their shared grief, however old, over the loss of her dad, Jordan. It was always like that.