“NO! We have to go to her. Todd, man, take me to Sarah’s. You have to take me to Sarah’s right now. Go, go, go.”
“The only place I’m taking you is home.”
I keep beating on the metal until blood starts to trickle from my knuckles and Todd slams his own fist against the grate, yelling at me to shut up, then muttering profanities to himself. I’m frantically texting Sarah as he says: “And I thought the explosion at the Goodes’ place was going to be the highlight of the night.”
The Goodes’ place. Explosion.
My head tries to put everything together, ignoring the pain in my hand and the blood beating in my brain.
John’s here. He’s in Paradise, probably with Sam and Six. There was an explosion at Sam’s house. All the cops were called out to it. If there was an explosion, that must mean there was fighting. And the only people John would be fighting . . .
The Mogs.
The Mogs are here. They’re after John. And John’s with Sarah.
CHAPTER TEN
I STAY HOME FOR THE REST OF THE NIGHT. I don’t really have a choice. Nana sits in a chair at the bottom of the stairs, with one eye on my door and another on my truck outside—Dad’s personal sentry. I have no doubt that if I take one step outside the house, there’ll be an officer ready to pick me up before I even make it to the street. The last thing I need is to get thrown into a holding cell—even though it’s possible that would actually put me closer to Sarah.
Sarah. She’s all I can think about. In the upstairs office, I drive myself crazy pacing back and forth, hoping that she’s all right and that if things got bad, John at least was able to keep her safe. As much as I hate it, I have to believe that no matter what, he’d protect her. I text GUARD and tell him that shit’s going down in Paradise, but he doesn’t text me back. Of course this is the one night he’s not glued to one of his screens.
I text Dad about a thousand times, at first apologizing and then asking what’s happened. He doesn’t respond, until finally I ask him just to tell me that Sarah is okay and he replies with a single magic word: “yes.”
At least there’s that.
As I pace, I listen to my dad’s old police scanner, which I grabbed from his room. There’s so much yelling and chatter that I can barely make anything out. There’s something about a suspect being in custody, then a lot of static. I hear Sarah’s name and someone mention the Paradise station, and then someone says something about a “Dumont” facility. After that all the messages stop. Radio silence.
Someone must have realized that the police radios weren’t secure enough. I imagine Agent Walker pulling a giant plug that disables the entire radio system, even though I know that’s not how any of this actually works.
An internet search of “Dumont facility FBI” brings up some articles about some huge, strictly off-limits FBI compound in Dumont, Ohio, about two hours away.
If Sarah has been taken in, I have to believe that she is being detained in the station jail and not being shipped out to some secret FBI prison. And so at dawn I take a chance and head downstairs and out into the front yard. Nana’s no longer at her post, so I guess her orders were just to make sure I stayed in through the night. I jump in my truck and head into town. Dad’s phone’s going straight to voice mail by now. I park across from the station, watching, trying to get a look at Sarah or anyone else coming in or out. Every time the front door swings open, my chest pounds, only to be disappointed when someone other than Sarah walks out. Each time this happens, I get a little more worried.
It’s a little past 8 a.m. when Sarah comes outside, and I feel so supercharged with happiness and relief. She’s still here. They’ve let her go. Maybe this will end up all right after all.
Sarah looks a little scared, and it’s my first instinct to jump out and sprint straight to her. Instead, I drive along beside her as she walks down the street.
“Sarah,” I say as I pull up to the curb. The whites of her eyes are red, like she’s been crying recently. “Get in.”
“My parents are coming,” she says. “They came to the station when they realized I wasn’t at home and stuff was going crazy outside, but the agents at the front desk made them go back home—threatened to have them arrested if they stayed around asking questions about what happened. I told them to pick me up at the grocery store down the street so they wouldn’t have to come back in. They’re going to have so many questions.”
“Tell them I’m taking you home.”
“My cell phone’s gone.”
“You can use my mine,” I say, leaning over and opening the passenger-side door.
After a short phone call—lots of “I’ll explain in five minutes when I’m home”—she hands me back my phone and lowers her head into her hands.
“What are you going to tell them?” I ask.
“I don’t know. I’ll figure something out. Maybe I can tell them I need some sleep before we talk.”
“Are you okay?”
“No,” she says through her fingers. “John came back. I got super emotional and weird with him because I was feeling so crappy about everything before he just magically showed up, and then the FBI tackled me. I don’t know where John is now, and I am officially pegged as a person who is somehow connected to all this. I’ve been sitting in an interrogation room for the last three hours.”
“What’d you tell them?”
“Nothing,” she says. “It was that Walker agent and a few other people. Noto. And some guy named Purdy.”
I note the name—the agent GUARD talked to on the phone. Is he the one in charge of everything going on in town?
Sarah continues.
“They wanted to know why John came to see me, and I told them it was because we made out a few times before he went crazy and he probably thought that I’d do it again if he showed up and threw pebbles at my window like we were in some kind of rom-com. I just pretended to be dumb.”
“And they believed that?”
“No, I don’t think so. But they let me go, at least. They have John. I think that’s all they really cared about. They just told me to make sure I didn’t leave town or there’d be trouble.” She shakes her head. “I’m on a freaking no fly list they said, as if I’d try to skip the country or something.”
“Shit.”
“I know.” Sarah pulls the edge of her gray sweater over her fingertips. “I feel so stupid. This is my fault.”
“No, it’s mine. My dad saw the text you sent. I shouldn’t have let that happen.”
She looks surprised about this for a second—even happy that what happened last night might not have been her fault. Then her face falls.
“They were probably watching me anyway. I should have told him, but instead I just ran outside. I was so happy to see him.”
“You don’t know that they had eyes on you.”
“I don’t know what they’ve done with him,” she says. Her voice is about to crack. “John . . .”
“I think he’s in Dumont. There’s some kind of FBI facility near the state border.”
“What?!” she practically shouts, jumping in her seat and straining against the seat belt. “We have to go. I have to talk to him. I have to explain to him that I didn’t—”
“No way, Sarah. You were just held and interrogated for being caught with him. You may not realize this now, but they could have arrested you for helping a criminal. The dude is on the most-wanted list, Sarah. I’m not taking you to an FBI prison so you can get yourself in more trouble. It’s not what he would want.”
The words come spilling out of me. Suddenly I’m hearing John’s voice in my head. That I have to make sure she’s kept safe. And right now, that means keeping her as far away from the Loric and the Mogs as I can.