“I’d let you crash at my place,” Brian said, “but I don’t think Dror would be too thrilled.”
Gary thought about Brian’s roommate. He wouldn’t be too thrilled staying with Dror, either.
“You can stay with us,” Stacy said.
He looked at Reyn. “Us?”
“She’s staying in my room. It’s too dangerous for her to be on her own.”
Gary shook his head. “No, thank you.”
“We’ll keep it quiet,” Reyn promised.
Stacy hit his shoulder. “Bring a sleeping bag. You can sleep on the floor.” She shot Reyn a look. “And there’s not going to be anything to keep quiet.”
Gary nodded his thanks. “Okay.” He tried to think of what he needed to bring with him besides a sleeping bag. Comb and toothbrush, for sure. A change of clothes.
“It is dangerous,” Brian noted. “I feel like I’m taking my life in my hands every time I walk out the door. I keep expecting to be jumped and taken prisoner.”
“I know,” Stacy said. “Me, too.”
Reyn looked over at Gary. “You must be really paranoid.”
“Yeah,” he admitted. “Kind of. But I think it’s time for us to stop running. We need to take the initiative.”
“What does that mean?” Stacy asked. “Hiring body-guards?”
“Yeah,” Reyn said. “What can we do besides wait for them to strike again?”
Gary faced them. “We can set a trap.”
He’d had a lot of time to think about this while he was on the bus.
The men who’d captured him might have looked like rubes, but either they or the people to whom they answered had to have been monitoring his phone calls, his computer use or both. They’d planned the abduction too perfectly. They had to have had access to inside information.
Joan.
Joan could have told them.
No, she wouldn’t have, and although he believed that completely, he was still very aware of how little he knew about her. He did know her on the deepest level possible, knew who she really was, but the peripherals were obscure, and his knowledge of the details of her life remained frustratingly vague.
Four and a half weeks.
They’d gone out for only four and a half weeks.
It seemed much longer, and the way he felt about her, it was as if they’d been together forever. But he could count their weekends together on one hand, and the actual amount of time they’d spent with each other was in reality very brief.
He recalled his favorite date with her, a trip they’d taken to Disneyland. The amusement park had been crowded, and they’d arrived too late to get on any of the big rides without waiting in a massive line. But she was like a little girl, and though they ended up going on rides like Snow White and Pinocchio, the Enchanted Tiki Room and Casey Jr. Circus Train, she was as delighted as a kid at Christmas. Her enthusiasm was catching, and he was just as excited as she was. They ended up staying at the amusement park until midnight, watching the fireworks and finally going on the major attractions like Space Mountain and Pirates of the Caribbean late in the evening after the families with children had started to go home.
They’d both been bone tired as they took a tram back to the parking structure, and Joan actually fell asleep on the ride over. It was late, and he didn’t feel like driving back to UCLA, so he’d found a nearby motel with a red Vacancy sign, and they’d spent the night in Anaheim, with a view of Disneyland through the window of their room.
The next morning, he’d gone to the lobby and brought back a continental breakfast, and they had stayed in bed until it was time to check out.
Gary felt himself tearing up. She seemed at once so close and yet so far—weren’t those the lyrics of an old song?—and he was suddenly filled with despair, certain that he would never see her again.
Anger kept him going. He had led everyone outside, and they were now walking slowly together across the campus. He hadn’t wanted to remain in his room in case it was bugged, hadn’t felt comfortable staying in any enclosed space, and even now his eyes were on the lookout for anyone dressed oddly or paying too close attention to their movements.
“They deleted my information, which means they had to access it, which means they know my class schedule. They know your names and faces from the photos on Joan’s Facebook and MySpace pages, from mine, too, and they’ve probably gone to your own pages and looked up even more about you.” Gary paused to let this sink in. “But they don’t know that we know, and we can use that against them.”
“How?” Reyn asked.
Brian was already one step ahead. “We construct a fake schedule for Gary or set up a fake meeting, something that will guarantee he’ll be alone at a specific time in a specific place. We talk about it on our phones, e-mail each other about it, and we make it so irresistible to them that they can’t not go.”
Gary nodded. “Then when they show up, we grab them.”
“You’re the bait?” Stacy said, shaking her head. “I don’t like it.”
“You guys’ll be there. I won’t really be alone.”
“She’s right. What if there’s a whole passel of ’em?” Brian asked.
Stacy raised an eyebrow. “ ‘Passel?’ ”
“It seems like an appropriate word under the circumstances.”
“We’ll need help,” Gary said.
“The police?” Stacy suggested.
Brian snorted. “Yeah. They’ve been such a great help so far.”
“I know it’s kind of out-of-the-box thinking,” she said sarcastically, “but since law enforcement agents deal with criminals on a daily basis…” She held up her hands. “I don’t know. It just seems like that might be a good choice.”
“I told Dror,” Brian said, ignoring her, “but I’m not sure he believed all of it. Or any of it. He’s a good dude, though. He’ll be there if we need it.”
“We need it.”
“The film society,” Reyn suggested.“I can get them. Or at least some of them. Ten to twelve people, probably.”
“No offense,” Brian said. “But they’re not exactly the football team. I doubt they’d be much help.”
“The more bodies, the better,” Gary told him. “Although we may not even need them at all. According to Greg and Matt, two Outsiders were sent to look for me. That’s probably what we’ll be dealing with. But there’s an intimidation factor with ten or twelve people that you just don’t have with four.” He nodded slowly, thinking, and as he looked at his friends he allowed himself a small smile. “You know,” he said, “this just might work.”
Afraid to use e-mail and not wanting to say too much over the phone, Reyn had assembled as many members of the film society as he could corral in so short a time by pretending as though this was the first meeting of the semester. They met where they usually did, in a screening room in the Film Studies department, and Gary was happy to see that of the students who’d shown, nearly all of them seemed able-bodied enough to help. Dror was there, too, Brian’s roommate, and Dror was more than able-bodied. A weight lifter, he looked as though he could take on five Outsiders just on his own.
Although Gary didn’t exactly get along with him, he was very glad that Dror had come along.
He looked out over the sparse audience. Over the past few hours, he and Reyn had discussed in detail how to broach the subject. Brian was right; this wasn’t the football team. The members of the film society were more watchers than doers, and there was no reason to believe that they were willing to participate in any sort of physical activity—particularly one that involved genuine risk. Gary had even suggested that they pretend they were making a movie, a Blair Witch–type improvisational film, and trick students into going along with their plan.