Pretty Wanted (25 page)

“So you finally decided to do the right thing, huh?” Chet asked.

“Yes,” I said, biting my tongue, trying to swallow my hatred of these people. Right thing? Whatever. Like he knew that that meant. And where was Granger? I looked around, but there was no sign of him. Was he out campaigning while these two handled his business? Pathetic.

“I’ll take that.”

He grabbed the bag and yanked both me and it closer. Before I knew what was happening, Bailey had a hand clamped over my mouth. He dragged me over the threshold.

Oh God.
I wasn’t supposed to be inside. Already I’d messed up. Could Corbin hear what was happening? Then Bailey lifted up my arms while Chet patted me down roughly.

I panicked.
Please don’t let them find the microphone or the transmitter.
It was small, the size of the most recent generation iPod, and clipped to my underwear, but still.

His hands slapped their way around my torso and down my legs and up again. I squeezed my eyes shut, willing this to be over. Not to mention trying to block out just how disgusting it was to have this pig touching me.

The bulletproof jacket was already crumpled on the floor. He found the phone first and handed it to Bailey. Then he lifted up my shirt and pulled out the transmitter, wound it back to the front of my body, and violently ripped off the microphone sensor.

He found it. Oh crap, he found it.
Chet threw the device at the wall until it cracked, the plastic chipping off in several pieces. “Get the kid and get rid of that phone.”

My connections to Corbin, to safety, were now gone. It had all happened so fast. My only hope was that maybe they’d heard something over the wire before it was destroyed.

Bailey thundered down a set of stairs that must have led to the basement. Chet’s fist closed around my bicep. I forgot how to breathe. With the pressure of his fingers, I imagined my blood slowing down, stopping. Bailey dragged Aidan up the steps to where we stood. He looked dirty, disheveled. His arms were hoisted behind his back. His mouth was covered up by tape. But he was alive. He was okay. For that I was immensely relieved. Our eyes met and I could see the alarm sparking in them.

“Take the money, let Aidan go. Let me go, and we can forget all of this happened.”

Chet reached out and slapped me. Blackness filled my vision, but not before I caught the violence in his face. The pure hatred. A chill curled up the length of my spine to the back of my skull.

The raw, burning sensation on my cheek came next, the pain so intense I could barely feel anything else. I crumpled, and my head hit the floor.

And then, blackness.

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

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EIGHTEEN

IT WAS LIKE
my eyes wouldn’t open, it was so dark. I wasn’t blindfolded, though. I felt the other restraints—my arms wound behind me. A piece of tape covering my mouth, so tight it was cutting off the circulation in my face. It took a minute before I completely understood that the reason I couldn’t see, the reason for this suffocating darkness was that I was actually staring at the inside of a car trunk.

A body shifted next to me, and I knew that it was Aidan’s.

“We’re screwed,” I said, beneath my gag.

I couldn’t exactly make out what Aidan was saying, as his words were equally muffled, but I think it was something to the effect of “Nice to see you, too.”

Things were looking bleak. I was pretty sure they wanted us dead. It was only a matter of time, really, and what method they chose. As the car swerved, the force of motion threw Aidan and me together and flung us apart again.

I had no idea where we were going or what came after that. Where were Corbin and Tre in all of this? Clearly, Bailey and Chet were trying to throw them off. We were on our own.

But that didn’t mean I was just going to sit here and wait for them to call all the shots.

No, my sister hadn’t raised me to give up. Ever.

First things first. I had to get the gag off, so Aidan and I could communicate. I tried using my shoulder with what little give the rope had, rubbing it against the smooth tape’s surface, hoping to roll or lift up a corner, but that didn’t seem to be working.

The only choice was to work from the inside. I started poking the tape with my tongue, trying to dampen the surface. It had a foul metal taste, but when the adhesive started to dissolve, I knew I had to keep going. After a few moments, the edges of the tape give way, the material softened and I was able to draw it between my teeth in small amounts at a time, chewing up the artificial fibers and then spitting out the destroyed bits on the floor of the car.

“Aidan! I got it off. Lick the tape.”

I couldn’t see him in the dark of the trunk, but I imagined his brow furrowing over the silver rectangle where his mouth would be.

“It’s gross but just do it!”

I heard him steadily working away for a few more moments until he had the tape off.

“We’re really in deep,” he whispered, and I was never happier to hear his voice, despite what he was saying. “What happened to you?”

“I was wearing a wire. They found it. Corbin’s out there somewhere.”

“But what you’re saying is he won’t be able to find us.”

“He might . . .,” I said, but I knew the truth. Sweat beaded on my neck and temples. How were we going to get out of here? “And you?”

“They found me on the street, dragged me into their car. Bailey must have been behind us the whole time, waiting. They took me here. Searched my wallet and everything. Then I guess they found out who my dad was, because they called him, trying to get more money. That was Bailey’s idea.”

The darkness of the trunk was impossible to penetrate; there was no adjusting to it. I could only feel his breath next to me and fill in the image of him with my memory. “They called your dad? Did you get to talk to him?”

“I was in the basement the whole time, but I could hear them on the phone. It sounded like he was ready to sell me out.”

“What do you mean?”

“They were bargaining. He wanted a lower price. For his
son
. Nice, right?” His voice faltered. It was the first time I could remember him crying in front of me. That was something the Aidan I’d known in Paradise Valley would never allow. I worried, suddenly, that there was no going back. That whatever he’d been through was big enough to change him forever.

And what kind of person did that to his son? “How could he be so cold?”

“I guess he decided I wasn’t worth that much to him after all. But if they have their way, they’ll get more out of this than they ever dreamed. Millions on top of millions. They hit the jackpot when they kidnapped me.”

“We can’t let that happen.” I explained to him everything we’d learned while he was gone.

“So they’ll kill both of us if they want to. No one would stop them. Granger wants us dead.”

We were in the same boat, really. Both of us had fathers who didn’t seem to care whether we lived or died. But that only made me angrier. Were we supposed to just accept this as fact? Because I wasn’t going to.

“Corbin and Tre are out there,” I hissed. “They’ll find us. They will—”

But the truth of it was we were cut off from them. My voice trailed off.

“Face it. We don’t have much time, Willa.”

What he meant was the air in the trunk was limited—I felt it dwindling as we filled the space with exhalations of carbon dioxide. The longer we were in here the harder it was going to be. I’d learned about suffocation in health class. We’d start feeling dizzy, then lose the ability to concentrate. Our hearts would beat faster as we gasped for air. Our extremities would turn blue, and then our vision would close in on us.

But I could still think. I had to snap into gear. “Look, we can’t just sit here feeling sorry for ourselves. We need a plan. How can we get out of here? How can we untie ourselves?”

“I’ve tried, Willa. Believe me.” His voice was quiet, defeated.

I struggled against the ropes, trying to find an out. They were too tight. We’d have to wait.

The car swerved again and I rolled on top of Aidan, which was strangely comforting. I couldn’t hug him, but I could feel the familiar topography of his muscles and bones under mine.

“I want you to know that I’m sorry,” I said. “We shouldn’t have let you walk off like that.”

“Willa, if we get out of this alive, that’ll be the least of our concerns.”

What could we do? Charge them when they took us out of the trunk? Try to grab their guns? That wouldn’t work. As long as our hands were tied, we didn’t have many options.

Another turn and we were thrown apart. The car pushed along a heavily rutted road, and every bump vibrated beneath us. Where were we going? Around a mountain? Around something. Back and forth, the car twisted, and with each curve, I felt the hotness of our breath filling the trunk, the frustrating distance between me and Aidan, the futility of our situation.

Dizzy. I was getting dizzy. My lungs drew up as much air as they could, but I could tell that between the two of us, we’d already hit the peak level of oxygen. Maybe that’s what they wanted. To kill us like this, a slow death in the dark. I closed my eyes and tried to think of other things, because the more I thought about breathing the harder it became. At this point, even speaking would be using up too much precious breath.

Finally, the car pulled over and came to a stop. The engine turned off.

We waited, clenched tightly, to see what would happen next.

The trunk’s lock released with a clink and then a tiny white crack appeared. A few seconds later, the crack widened, blinding us with the brightness of the sun.

“Time to get out,” Bailey said. In the flood of light he was a black silhouette, but his hands were rough as ever, pulling me to my feet.

“These two little punks got the gags off,” Chet said, grabbing me once I was upright.

Bailey dragged Aidan out of the car and held on to him by his hair. Aidan winced in pain. “Well, it don’t matter out here, do it?” Bailey said. “No one around to hear them scream.”

That’s when I saw where we were. Some kind of abandoned electrical plant along the river. At least I assumed the massive, angry body of water to our right was the Mississippi. On the other side, an ancient-looking structure towered over us, its railings, ductwork, and ladders rusted, the windows broken out, brick smokestacks crumbling from age. Whatever walls were left were covered in layers of blue and silver and red graffiti. Bailey wasn’t kidding. It was deadly quiet out here—noman’s-land. If there was a sound, you couldn’t hear it over the vicious rush of the man-made falls. I looked and looked but there was no sign of Corbin’s van or the other FBI vehicles.

I had no plan. For the first time since I’d become Sly Fox, I felt completely, utterly defeated. Terrified beyond my most harrowing nightmares. Because this was real. And death felt certain.

“What are we doing here?” I tried to shout over the water. But I knew. It wasn’t a place you brought your buddies for a picnic.

“You’ll find out on a need-to-know basis,” Chet yelled back.

They dragged us to the edge of the concrete, overlooking the falls. Chet slammed me down hard enough that my ribs banged against the railing and I cried out. Bailey did the same with Aidan.

I heard a length of chain unfurling behind us, then felt it winding, tightening around both of our waists, pinning us against the cold, rusted metal bar, so that we dangled face-first over the crashing water. The lock clicked shut.

I struggled, flailed, but there was no give, only metal cutting into me. “Just hang tight,” Chet said as he retaped our mouths and stepped away. “Your daddy should be here soon.”

Stunned, I stared into the river’s violent oblivion. We’d be powerless to swim against it, the strong pull of gravity sucking us in, churning us downstream. It would be days, weeks even, before our corpses floated to the surface. Blood rushed to my head and my heart raged. So Granger was coming here after all. And they knew he was my dad even though Bailey lied about it before.

I didn’t know what was worse—the crushing pain in my abdomen, the freezing wind and fantasies of drowning, or being forced to wait for Granger to show up. Why not just throw us in? This was torture.

I thought about Aidan, how sorry I was to have dragged him into my crazy life. How I’d never meant for him to risk his future for me. How love could be so damn twisted that it could end like this.

And my mom. I wondered how I could possibly love her, when she was the one who brought the situation on all of us. And yet, I knew I still did, in the softest parts of my heart. Mostly, I thought of Leslie, who was out there, safe, and who’d be horrified to know that despite her attempts to protect me all those years I was still going to die at the hands of these scumbags.

The screech of a car behind us broke through my thoughts. A door slamming. Close enough to hear over the water. Footsteps crunching on the gravel.

I tried to turn but couldn’t. That tiny, hopeful voice in my head piped up. Maybe it was Corbin. He’d somehow found us and he was here to rescue us. . . .

“You made it,” Bailey said.

“I’m not here to play games with you two degenerates.” A man’s voice. Familiar, Granger. Again I twisted my head—but there was no moving.

What I heard next came in fragments, the words only semidecipherable over the cascades.

“You told me she was Leslie’s daughter . . . until I get an email from Brianna’s old friend. . . .”

Was he serious? He didn’t know? I highly doubted it. He was a criminal and a world-class liar. The great mastermind behind Operation Sparrow.

What a joke. I thought of their rallies, the state motto that inspired their name. It was all BS. They’d stolen a serious concept of human goodness, an idea that was inscribed on buildings, for God’s sake, and appropriated it for their own selfish gain.

Then it hit me. The frieze at the City Museum. The City Museum admission tag—it was still in my jacket pocket. I reached up reflexively but my wrist was bound to my side.