“I’m committed to making sure all of our state’s beautiful resources are around for all of you, and even your future children and grandchildren, to enjoy,” the woman with the long black hair said. “We cannot allow science deniers to hold back climate regulations and policies designed to protect our world from climate change. That’s what I fight for, and when you are in politics, it’s things like that you get to fight for. You get to have a positive impact on the world.”
“You know what I want to fight for? The right for my kids or grandkids to protect themselves, like the Second Amendment gives them the right to do,” said Maddie. On the inside, she was smirking. She ignored the bug-eyed stares directed at her from the outside.
Professional as always, the speaker, who Maddie assumed was Congresswoman Murphy, addressed her declaration with smooth precision. “No one wants to take American gun rights away. That’s just spin from my colleagues on the right. It’s a shame that trying to put in place commonsense gun laws to protect people from criminals has become politicized.”
Maddie folded her arms. “Do you mind giving me an example of one of these,” Maddie said, throwing her hands out to make air quotes, “commonsense gun control laws? And don’t say background checks. I know for a fact we already do those.”
“My, it is so good to see young people engaged and informed on national issues. And I can tell you have passion. I like that. I think there are more loopholes we could close, but to answer your question, I’m proud that when I was a local representative, I and colleagues representing districts adjacent to Edgewater increased the number of gun-free zones. There are just some places you do not need to have a gun present. See. . . .”
The congresswoman was talking, but Maddie could not hear the words. Something she had said sent an irrepressible itch up Maddie’s back. Her was mind trying to work it out. Why does that remind me of something—
“Wait! What do you mean you expanded gun-free zones? Expanded them where?” Maddie blurted.
The congresswoman pursed her lips at the rude interruption, but answered, “All schools and government buildings, of course, but in certain parks and community areas as well. In fact, we had a nice bipartisan accord that allowed the passage of an ordinance like the one in New York that restricts handguns to homes and cars for personal protection but does not allow them, say, in a park.”
The gears in Maddie’s head finally clicked. She narrowed her eyes so fiercely that the look shattered the pontificating politician’s train of thought. “How many?” Maddie hissed. “How many communities adopted that rule?”
“Fifteen. Maybe more now.”
“You damn idiots!” Maddie did not stay to see the congresswoman’s response. Instead, she twirled to grab Aden’s arm and yanked him away. “Come on. I need to find Tommy.”
“Hey!” yelled Dorete. Maddie’s sudden pull on Aden’s arm had dragged her along. She had apparently slipped her arm around his at some point.
“Dorete, get lost. You already have a boyfriend.”
Aden allowed himself to be led away, but he shot Dorete a look of sorrow and mouthed a silent “sorry.” He shifted his feet in line with Maddie’s, then retrieved his arm from Maddie’s tightened hand. “Um, what’s going on?”
“I need to find Tommy now.” Like a squirrel caught in an open field looking for predators, Maddie scanned the gym. Aden tried to keep up with her as she moved with purpose, passing through throngs of fellow students at the fair. He finally caught up when she stopped long enough to stomp in frustration.
“Stop running around,” he said.
“Didn’t you hear me? I said I need to find Tommy, like right now. Actually like three minutes ago.”
“Yeah, I got that part. But use that brain hidden inside that thick skull of yours. What’s the fastest way to find Tommy?”
Maddie scrunched her face in confused annoyance before it dawned on her. “Oh crap. You’re right. I’m an idiot.” She reached into her bag and pulled out the phone Tommy had given her. She punched out a quick text, directing Tommy to meet at the exit right away. She hit send, then stuffed her phone into her pocket. “Come on.”
Aden was still confused over the sudden urgency, but he followed her nonetheless.
Tommy poked his head through the exit doors as Maddie and Aden reached them. She unceremoniously grabbed Tommy’s hand as she breezed through the door. “I need your help. Right now.”
“Uh, sure. But do you have to drag me along like a cat with a bird?”
Maddie did not break stride or let loose his hand. “That depends. Can you keep up with me?”
Tommy glanced over at Aden, who shrugged back his own confusion. “Probably not,” Tommy answered.
“Then no.”
“Where are we going?”
“To the library. I need a computer.”
The reveal made Tommy plant his feet and yank his hand free. “Hello! We have smartphones. They are computers,” he said, clearly annoyed.
Maddie stopped, turned around, and leaned into Tommy’s face. “But I need to see something on a screen bigger than two inches squared. OK?” She grabbed his hand again and resumed dragging him after her.
By the time they reached the library, all three were walking briskly enough to be considered racewalkers. As they entered, their pace drew the immediate attention of the librarian. “Madison, is everything OK?”
“Five by five, Miss Jackson,” answered Maddie without slowing down. She made a beeline for an empty computer station in the corner. She pulled the chair out, indicating that Tommy should sit. Without another word, he slipped into the chair and signed into the computer.
“OK, what do you need?”
“Do a search that cross-references Congresswoman Gail Murphy with local gun-free zone ordinances. Wait, she wasn’t in Congress then, so just use her name instead. I need the ordinance number.”
“OK,” answered Tommy, but his tone made it clear he was lost.
After a moment, Tommy clucked his tongue. “Here we go. It’s a bit on the nose if you ask me. Section 357.”
Maddie rolled her eyes. “Jesus freakin’ liberals. OK, can you bring up a map that shows all the local areas where the ordinance is in effect?”
“Sure,” said Tommy as his fingers clicked on the keyboard. “But it should be everywhere. I don’t know much about guns, but I do know that schools, hospitals, and government buildings are all considered gun-free zones.”
“Forget about those areas. I want to see the communities and parks that adopted it.”
“Oh, that might take a minute or two.” Tommy wrinkled his brow and turned his attention to the task at hand.
“Maddie, what’s going on?” whispered Aden.
Maddie bit her lip. “I’ll tell you as soon as I’m sure. I could be wrong. I hope I’m wrong. I’m probably not.”
After what felt like an hour, but was only fifteen minutes, Tommy raised his hand to signal he was finished. “Assuming that by communities you mean subdivisions and park areas surrounding them, the communities that have all accepted without a fight are in red. Edgewater is here,” he continued, pointing to a spot on the screen. “The parks are, well, in green.”
“Is there a way to send that and the mapping parameters to a phone?”
“Sure, there’s a share button right here. You want me to send it to your phone?”
“No, another—shit!” her exclamation was a little too loud. A few studious students shot them dirty looks and shushed at them. Maddie lowered her voice. “I don’t know the number.”
“Weren’t you just making fun of me last week for not knowing your number by heart, and now you’re telling me—wait do you mean that number?”
Maddie bent down. “Yes, that number.”
“What in God’s angry ass are you two prattling on about? What’s going on, Madison?”
The shushes were louder and more insistent this time. Aden turned and glared at all the kids in their immediate area. None met his eyes. He turn
ed back to Maddie and Tommy. Despite the look he shot toward them, he lowered his voice. Without being told, he sensed that they did not want Miss Jackson walking over to them. “Can you please inform me as to why we practically ran here to look up some stupid law that you don’t like?”
“You probably don’t need his number. You can probably take a photo and send it. I’m blowing up the map so the park names and subdivisions are easier to see.”
Maddie nodded then reached into her bag for the sleek black phone Rhee had sent her. She looked around to make sure no one was watching them before taking a picture of the computer screen. She popped her head up again to look around, then she hit the redial button.
Rhee picked up after seven rings. “Madison, is everything alright?”
“Yes, maybe. Probably not. Listen, I’m going to send you a screenshot. Do you think you can send it back with all the areas a missing girl has been reported?”
There was silence on the phone. “Madison, did you get this screenshot through some sort of shenanigans?”
“What? No! Since when do I get into shenanigans?” The second the words were out of her mouth, Maddie raised a middle finger on her free hand and moved it from Tommy’s face to Aden’s. Into the phone, she said, “I made”—seeing the look on Tommy’s face, she changed her words—“we made it at the library. I’m going to send it now.”
Maddie looked at the phone as her finger wandered over the screen. When it became obvious she did not know how to send a photo while still on a call, Tommy snatched the phone in exasperation then handed it back to her.
“OK, we just sent it.”
“Give me a few minutes, and I’ll text it back to you.”
Maddie hung up, switched the ringer to vibrate, then let out a long breath. Aden was the first to speak.
“Who was that? And what’s this about missing girls? Do you mean the one whose mother we met after the . . . incident?”
“Incident? Really? What are we living in, a retro episode of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.? What the heck are you two talking about?” asked Tommy.
“A few weeks ago, we had to help out at a Habitat for Humanity build,” said Maddie. “We met a woman who was passing out flyers for her missing daughter. I remember hearing about others on the news. The police don’t think it’s anything serious, but I think I just figured something out.” She bit her lip again.
“Putting aside the question of why you’re playing detective, what’s the ‘incident’?”
Maddie looked at Aden, then looked away. Aden brought his hand to the back of his head, scratched it, then looked in the opposite direction. Tommy looked from one to the other.
“Is this avoidance of the question because it involved the smacking of lips in a hidden corner between sworn enemies?”
Maddie reached out and pinched Tommy’s arm, hard. “Don’t be disgusting,” she hissed.
“Oh, thanks a lot, Madison Jennings,” said Aden.
“You know what I mean.”
“Sure.”
A further response was cut off when Maddie felt her phone vibrate. She looked at the screen and saw that Rhee was calling instead of texting. A boulder dropped in her stomach.
“Hello?”
“Madison, this is not good.”
Maddie pulled her phone away from her ear, silent curses surfing through her mind.
“Tell me.”
“There have been a few more developments back here. I can’t get into them with you. I’m only telling you this because I want you to be careful.” He paused, then said, “When I factor in age and the data I could glean from that map you sent . . . well, this is what we get.”
Maddie felt another buzzing vibration, this time from a text message. She clicked it open and saw the same map she had sent to Rhee, but now there were stars added to it. Nearly ten of them formed an almost perfect circle. Maddie brought the phone back to her ear. Her hand was shaking.
“OK, I see it.”
“Then you see the weird circle. But the main thing is that the overdose deaths are in the same areas as the girls reported missing and still unaccounted for. All those girls have past drug problems and were last seen in those new gun-free zones. Every. Single. One.”
“If they have drug problems, no one is looking for them.”
“That is correct. But here is why I need you to be careful: To complete that circle, only a couple of more girls would need to be taken—and one of those gun-free zones is your city, subdivision, and parks.”
Chapter Fifty-Eight
It took a moment for the information to sink in. Then Maddie dashed out of the library. She ignored the shouts of Aden, who was running after her, and the cries of teachers demanding she stop running.
Finally, she reached the girls’ locker room. She ducked inside to elude Aden, though a part of her was certain he would follow her in. Instead, he banged on the door and demanded she come back out. Positive the noise would attract a teacher, she strode to the back of the locker room where the showers and bathroom stalls were located. She walked into a stall, closed the door, locked it, then sat on a toilet with her feet raised so that no one would know she was there.
Sure enough, a few moments later she heard the squishing sound of someone walking in brand-new sneakers toward the toilets. The sound went past Maddie, then returned. “Madison?” a tentative voice called out. “Madison?” When no answer was forthcoming, the speaker’s steps retreated. Maddie waited till she could not hear the noisy sneakers any longer before releasing a long sigh.
Aden and Tommy thought she had run because she was upset—as in boo-hoo, she wanted to cry. What she wanted was to howl in anger. There was a pattern—one easy to see if the police, the FBI, or anyone with a brain bothered to look. Young women with a habit of drug use and avoiding family and friends for extended periods of time were the targets. They were attacked in gun-free zones, where the chances of them or anyone close being armed were negated and made them easier targets. It was no coincidence, Maddie was sure of that. What she did not know was how they had been selected or why.
The only bodies that had been found were from overdoses. The news had not reported anything that indicated an attack on them though Maddie accepted that perhaps they were not releasing that information. Then she dismissed the notion. Rhee would have told her.
Maddie was no cop, but she was sure whatever was going on was not the work of a serial killer—unless, of course, the missing girls were dead and mass buried some place no one had discovered. She had seen enough episodes of American Justice to know it was a possibility. A serial kidnapper? The moniker sounded ridiculous. She was pretty sure that was not a thing. If it was, it had to be for some sort of murder plot. Another sigh hissed through Maddie’s throat. Murder plot? I sound like an episode of Criminal Minds.
What other possibilities are there? Sex-slave ring? Snatched to be forced into work as drug mules? Some form of modern slavery? Maddie hung her head. All the possibilities seemed as farfetched as the ability of a fourteen-year-old high school freshman to figure something out no else had. The thought of speaking to Aden’s dad surfaced, but she waved it away. He would wonder how she knew he was an FBI agent. If Mr. Kent would not tell his own son, that meant he wanted to keep it a secret. He would demand to know how Maddie had found out, which could lead to the discovery of her own little family secret. No, talking to Aden’s dad was not an option.
Maddie did not know what to do. She just knew she wanted to scream in frustration and hit something. She wanted to hit something hard.
The notion brought a new thought, one that would resolve her need for violence as therapy and would make sure she would be able to avoid Aden and Tommy for the rest of the day. She put her feet back on the floor, grabbed her phone from her bag, and pulled up the city bus website. The disappointment was immediate. No buses came anywhere near her community’s protected enclave.
She had a twenty in cash for emergencies, but a quick perusal on a few taxicab sites proved that her
destination would cost more than twenty dollars to reach. Maddie clenched her fists in anger, but then remembered the two gift cards the naval recruiter had given her.
She pulled one out and activated it via the web on her phone. Then she created an account with a ridesharing company. Uber was the big dog, but now that they had gotten big enough to go public, they were tighter on following certain regulations—like not giving a ride to someone under the age of eighteen without a parent confirming permission. She hoped the newer ones were not quite so strict.
Maddie exited the stall and moved over to the bathroom door. She snaked her head around to make sure no was in the locker room, then she headed in the opposite direction toward the back entrance. The back door was set to ring an alarm if opened during school hours, but a line of windows above the back wall lockers could be opened from the inside.
Maddie climbed up, opened one, slipped her backpack out, then slithered through the window. Ten minutes later, she was in front of a convenience store and getting into the car she had requested. The driver hesitated when he saw her. She handed him a crisp twenty to erase his concern.
Maddie exited the ridesharing car twenty minutes later and strode into the dance studio. She was happy to see that the place was empty. The sound of the bell attached to the door brought Vaska out from his office. When he saw Maddie, he froze.
She ignored the pointed glance he gave his watch and headed up the stairs to the second floor. “I need to train. And I don’t mean no damn pirouettes.” She did not slow her stride to see his response but stomped to convey her mood. She turned to face Vaska when she reached the top step. “Do not call my mom, not without talking to me first!” she yelled then disappeared around the top-floor landing.
Vaska waited a full ten minutes before appearing upstairs. He held a cordless-phone handset. Maddie had kicked her sneakers off and put on her protective gear. She remained in her school clothes.
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