“I know enough,” I proclaimed, determined to get out of Barrington as soon as possible.
“So do I,” Jackson shot back at me, abruptly turning and walking off in the opposite direction.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” I asked, charging after Jackson, refusing to let his cutting remark just fly by unchallenged.
“That Nica always takes off and leaves when the going gets tough. Just like her mom.” He turned to look at me. His steely blue-green eyes stared disapprovingly.
I stopped dead in my tracks, blinking back tears. Jackson’s stinging insult had wounded me and I wanted to run away. But then I looked around the seemingly endless landscape of forest and realized I had no freaking clue where the hell I was. The woods were dense with thicket and had no real trails. I’d be completely lost without Jackson.
Silently repeating Master Kru’s mantra to myself, I focused on the bed of dry, decaying leaves lying on the ground beneath my feet. No way was I going to let Jackson see me lose my shit. No way was I going to let him see me cry. I didn’t want him to know how stung I was by his hurtful appraisal of my character and my mother’s. I felt crushed. No one—not even my mother—had ever said anything that harsh to me . . . or that truthful.
“You can leave and do whatever the hell you want,” Jackson scolded, continuing to let his anger rip. Clearly determined to speak his mind. “But no way will I ditch Oliver. Or even Maya. They’re my friends.”
“They’re my friends too,” I snapped back, feeling my rage bubbling to the surface. “Think I don’t care about what happens to them?” I was now so furious that I felt my whole face flush hot and turn bright red. My hands were even starting to disappear, and I couldn’t have that.
“It’s not the same,” Jackson blurted back. “You weren’t raised here. Barrington’s my home. My family has lived here forever.”
“And what? Growing up here gives you authority?” I was so upset with Jackson that I hadn’t even realized I’d started to cry until I felt a warm, salty tear roll down my cheek and hit my lips. I wiped it away with the back of my right hand, determined to not be the girl who wept when the going got tough. “This affects me as much as it affects you.”
“No. It doesn’t,” he replied, quickly tempering his attack on me. “It just means . . . I can’t pick up and leave. Not when Dana’s still missing.” His eyes flashed with regret and vulnerability.
I nodded absently while a sharp pain jabbed my already tender heart. I felt as though all the air had been punched out of my lungs. I took in shallow breaths and felt lightheaded. But I refused to collapse into a blubbering ball of self-pity. Despite how wounded I felt by his brutal honesty, I managed to hold it together and not disappear.
“We better keep moving,” I said, trying to deflect my emotional state. “Get out of this dead zone.” I waved my cell phone and picked up my pace, walking on ahead of Jackson, not wanting him to see my pain.
“Follow that path,” Jackson advised. “There’s a clearing not too far off. Service should be better.”
I followed the narrow dirt trail, my mind still reeling from what he’d said. So that was what this fight—if not our entire relationship—was really about: Dana Fox. Even though Jackson hadn’t mentioned her in some time, it was clear she was always in his thoughts. I realized that was why whenever things threatened to get too dangerous between us, Jackson would deliberately push me away. The tremendous guilt he obviously suffered over Dana’s disappearance would never allow him to be with me. Not as long as she was still missing. He needed to keep me at a safe distance—physically and emotionally.
Deep down I’d always suspected that until Dana’s whereabouts were definitively known—whether she was dead or until she’d been found—she’d be the wedge between Jackson and me. Dana would always be first in his heart. And I’d always be the proverbial gate crasher in the relationship. That was a painful truth for me to accept.
Jackson and I silently made our way through the brush. The only sounds were from the cracking and snapping of small twigs beneath our feet as we walked. I felt Jackson’s eyes on my back as I led the way, but I wouldn’t turn around to look at him. I was afraid I’d lose what little composure I had remaining and say something stupid I’d regret.
“Sorry,” Jackson mumbled as we finally emerged from the woods toward a sloping hillside clearing, which led to the edge of town.
“About what?” I replied, acting like I didn’t have a clue what he was talking about.
“Before. I didn’t mean to be so harsh.” He couldn’t get out the rest of his words, so I jumped in to fill the void.
“You were right.” I shrugged. “I was being a jerk. About everything.” I eagerly took the blame, desperate to leave all my messed-up feelings behind in those woods.
“No. I was the jerk.” Jackson’s voice was insistent but also tinged with regret.
I turned around, feeling incredibly remorseful. “You were just being a friend.”
All the steeliness had drained from his face. What remained was vulnerability and sadness in his eyes. I wanted to take his hand, to touch him. But I held back and kept my distance, just nodding instead.
Suddenly my cell phone beeped, pulling me back to the crisis at hand. Cell-phone service had finally returned. We were back on the grid. I quickly dug my phone out of my back pocket. Five missed text messages from Oliver flashed across my screen.
“Oliver?” Jackson asked, angling next to me to sneak a peek.
I nodded, showing Jackson the screen as I scrolled through Oliver’s numerous texts. “Says he’s okay. Wants to meet us.”
“At his house?” Jackson asked, already hurrying ahead through the field toward a one-lane fire road that would lead us back to town.
“No,” I called out, charging after him. “At Maya’s.”
Jackson shot me a troubled look as I caught up to him. I could tell he was wondering why Oliver would go to Maya’s unless she was in trouble or something had happened to her.
I marched alongside Jackson with a fresh sense of purpose and resolve. Humbled by his fierce determination and loyalty to his friends, I realized that I would not be leaving town either. Not that day, at least. No way would I let my friends down. Not when they needed me.
16. PLAN B
* * *
Keeping mostly to the back roads, Jackson and I avoided passing through the center of town, which appeared to be on major lockdown. Shops and businesses were all shuttered. Signs in the windows blatantly lied: CLOSED DUE TO EXTREME WEATHER. Sidewalks were mostly empty. Gone was the normal hustle and bustle of people going about their daily business. The only signs of life were Bar Tech Security patrolling the streets. I didn’t know if they were still looking for Oliver or for Jackson and me, but I wasn’t going to risk exposure to find out.
Anyway, my mind was focused elsewhere. I felt awful. In all the confusion of the pulse hitting and the emotion of the morning, I’d almost forgotten that Maya had been a no-show at school. Then I remembered that the day had started badly with the unsettling news that Chase was lying comatose in the hospital. Had Maya really been responsible for almost killing him?
Fortunately, Jackson was already an old pro at lying low and sneaking around town. He and I managed to dodge the patrol cars and weave our way over to Maya’s house without tripping any alarms or alerting Bar Tech Security to our whereabouts. Still, it was a surreal experience for me. In all my travels to unfamiliar countries I’d never had to worry about being hunted down by the authorities. Here in my home country I suddenly felt like a fugitive because of who I was and what I’d become. I was even afraid of letting my own father know where I was hiding. He’d been calling and texting and leaving me messages, but I hadn’t called him back. If my darkest fears and suspicions about his collaboration with Cochran and Bar Tech were true, then I certainly couldn’t trust him.
The unpretentious, cream-colored ranch house was less than two blocks away from where Dana Fox lived. A large, Tuscan-
inspired residence, Maya’s house was comfortably set back from the road. It had a beautifully manicured lawn studded with pink and white rosebushes and perfectly trimmed shrubs. And it looked like one of those upscale home-magazine covers presenting the ideal American home. It cried out perfection. No surprise that this was where Maya Bartoli lived.
But curiously, there was no sign of her, or anyone else at the house for that matter. Not even Oliver. In fact the house projected an eerie, vacant feeling . . . a stillness that I found worrisome.
“He did say to meet him at Maya’s house?” Jackson asked, scanning the vicinity, as we hid among the orange and red maple trees that ran up the long brick driveway.
“In black and white,” I whispered, showing him Oliver’s most recent text on my cell-phone screen.
“Let’s check around back,” Jackson whispered, motioning toward the rear yard.
Using the trees for cover, Jackson and I crept up the driveway toward the garage, always keeping our eyes on the street, too, in case any Bar Tech guards were lurking around. Just as we were circling around the side of the house, something leaped down thirty feet from the top branches of an enormous oak tree. Jackson whipped around upon hearing the noise. I flinched and muffled a scream as a figure landed in front of me.
It was Oliver, his arms spread wide, with a theatrical “ta-da!” for maximum effect. “Hey, bitches,” he said, grinning proudly over his nimble feat.
“Oliver! You trying to give me a heart attack?” I snapped back, punching him in the right arm.
“Ow! That hurts,” Oliver responded, grimacing and rubbing his arm.
“Lucky I didn’t throw you,” I replied, shaking my head, relieved but annoyed.
“And you’re both lucky I didn’t zap you across the street,” Jackson interjected, stepping between Oliver and me. “Can we get down to business?”
“Right. Sorry. Reboot,” Oliver responded, taking a deep breath.
“So? Tell us what happened,” I pressed, anxious to hear exactly what had transpired since we’d fled school a few hours earlier.
“Well, as you both recall, yours truly was being chased through town by our good friends at the Bar Tech goon squad,” Oliver began quite dramatically.
“Yes, we remember it well. Mind fast-forwarding?” Jackson gestured wheels spinning, stressing the urgency of our situation and the moment.
“Absolutely.” Oliver nodded, continuing: “Anyway, I’m literally flying over people’s backyards and through trees. Yada, yada. Even racing after me in their souped-up squad cars these bozos were having a tough time keeping up. It was actually kind of awesome. Well, I didn’t want them following me home, so I circled back through town, when all of a sudden I get this urgent 911 text from Maya. I mean, I couldn’t exactly reply midair—”
“And what did she say?” I nudged him along, hoping he’d get to the point.
“Just this.” Oliver fished his phone out of his pocket and showed Maya’s text to us. Jackson and I looked at the screen.
“Bar Tech,” I uttered, reading the two-word message aloud and exchanging worried glances with Jackson before looking back at Maya’s house.
“That’s exactly what Dana texted me. They were here,” Jackson added, walking toward the house. “They knew about her.”
“How?” Oliver asked, looking at Jackson and me.
“Her wig-out with Chase yesterday morning at school,” I reminded him. “Chase narced on her to his father and mine.”
“Think they’re watching us?” Oliver questioned, looking around the property and brazenly flipping the bird for the imagined cameras.
“I think they’re long gone,” Jackson responded, already peering in through the first-floor windows to see what was happening inside the Bartoli residence.
“They were long gone by the time I got here,” Oliver responded, following after Jackson. “I tried texting and calling Maya, but . . .” And then he shook his head gravely, indicating he had never heard back from Maya and didn’t know much else.
“They could’ve taken Maya anywhere. Or worse,” I reflected solemnly, trying to fight off my increasing frustration at not being able to do something about Maya’s disappearance.
“I don’t think they did,” muttered Jackson, his eyes gazing far off into the distance. I watched him and could almost see the gears spinning in his brain. He knew something.
“Meaning . . . ?” I asked, curious to hear his theory about where he thought they might have taken Maya.
“Meaning I don’t think they moved her too far away. Too much could go wrong. Not to mention too many prying eyes. I think Maya’s still in town. Somewhere close by,” Jackson declared with conviction. Which got me wondering . . . where would I take someone if I wanted to hide her in Barrington?
“The city jail?” Oliver speculated with a shrug.
“No. Too public,” I interrupted, studying Jackson’s determined expression. I thought I knew him well enough by now to be able to decode his thought process. “Somewhere right under our noses. Like Bar Tech headquarters.” I blurted out my epiphany as if I’d stumbled across a treasure map.
“Yeah.” Jackson nodded, surprised that I’d arrived at the same conclusion that he had but giving me props. “Like Bar Tech.”
Jackson shot me a half smile, impressed by my perceptiveness. I looked back at him, acting all nonchalant and cool, while inside I was beaming.
“Genius,” Oliver remarked, nodding as he absorbed the inherent logic of Jackson’s and my claim.
“You know,” I piped up very matter-of-factly, “I’ve always wanted a tour.”
“No time like the present,” Jackson responded glibly, shrugging why not.
I looked back at Jackson and cracked a big smile. He smiled back, then began walking toward the driveway and the street. Was he thinking the same thing I was thinking?
“Well, what are we waiting for?” Oliver chimed in, following Jackson back toward the street. “Maya needs us.”
Oliver gestured for me to follow him, which I eagerly did. I knew our mission was completely crazy. Maybe it was even what the Navy SEALs call a suicide mission. What made us ever think we could take on a powerful corporation like Bar Tech? They were secretive and dangerous. Not to mention they might actually be responsible for people disappearing—like Maya and Dana. And yes, maybe even for killing Mrs. Henderson. But for once I wasn’t second guessing myself or doing the rational thing. I was throwing all caution to the wind. I was trusting my gut instinct, as well as trusting Jackson’s. Logic and reason didn’t concern me. Because I was with my friends, and I wasn’t afraid.
• • •
Oliver, Jackson, and I spent the rest of the afternoon hiding out in some random family’s garden shed in their backyard on the outskirts of town, not too far from Bar Tech headquarters. We were strategizing and planning our assault on the fifty-two-acre Bar Tech compound. Jackson knew it was protected by an extremely high-tech security system.
“Which means they’re protecting some pretty big secrets,” Jackson emphasized for effect.
“So what you’re saying is, all we have to do is infiltrate one of the more sophisticated security systems imaginable,” I stated, amused that we were even discussing something so outlandish.
“Every system has its weaknesses,” Oliver chimed in, agreeing with Jackson. “Vulnerabilities.”
“Trick is to just figure out what they are . . . and exploit them,” Jackson stressed. “We’ve got a precious few hours remaining before our collective powers disappear. What better use than to break into a high-security compound?”
Meanwhile my father had sent several increasingly insistent texts to find out where I was and if I was all right. He never directly mentioned the pulse or what had happened at school but demanded I come home immediately.
I ignored his demands and wasn’t about to go home—not yet. Instead I sent back an ambiguous but hopefully reassuring text: All well w/friends.
I had no idea whether my dad wo
uld believe me or flip out for defying him, because then Jackson ordered Oliver and me to power off and disable our phones. He worried that Bar Tech might be able to track us using their sophisticated GPS. Not to mention other more sophisticated technology that we didn’t even know about. But at the very least we could prevent our phones from betraying us.
“Seriously?” I asked, slightly skeptical.
“Seriously,” Jackson replied decisively.
As if to prove his point, he then removed the SIM card from the back of his phone and smashed it on the floor of the shed with the heel of his boot.
“It’s the only way to be sure,” Jackson said.
Oliver looked at me and shrugged. He popped out his SIM card and smashed it too.
Which left me standing there, hesitant and alone. I was the only one whose phone was still activated. No matter where I traveled, I never went anywhere without my trusty smartphone. It had always been my connection to the outside world, my communication lifeline. No matter where in the world I was living, it was my constant companion—the only thing that never changed. Whenever I was lonely or bored, I could always whip it out, text Lai or other friends, or find a thousand other activities on it to entertain me. And now Jackson was asking me to actively cut off my sole means of communication outside Barrington. It was like asking me to go without clothes. Still, I knew Jackson was right about this, as he had been right about so many other things.
I stared at my phone and sighed in resignation. Even though I knew I could always purchase a new SIM card (exactly when, I didn’t know, since I was on the run . . . but theoretically I could), it was the act of severing my connection with the outside world that filled me with anxiety. On the other hand being with Jackson and Oliver gave me strength. It meant I was a part of something that mattered more to me than some stupid phone.
So I popped out the SIM card, tossed it to the ground, and then smashed it to smithereens with the heel of my shoe. And I was pleasantly surprised that I actually felt pretty good destroying it.
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