When my eyes finally shut and I drifted further down that tunnel, I could still feel his fingers against my skin.
22
Zane
THE PLASTIC ZIP-TIE RESTRAINTS WERE digging into my wrists, rubbing the skin raw.
It probably would have helped if I could have stopped pacing the tiny and overly warm motel room, but sitting still was beyond my capability at the moment. At least my hands were bound in front of me instead of behind my back. Small favors.
I’d been stuck in here, pacing at the foot of the queen bed with its dingy flowered bedspread, for hours. But it felt like days.
Just as Dr. Jacobs had promised, a van carrying two members of a GTX retrieval team had rolled into the Linwood Academy parking lot promptly, less than half an hour after I called. They must have already been near the border. And speeding.
Even though I’d held my hands up and offered absolutely no resistance, the retrieval team guys had taken me down to the ground in a chest-crushing set of moves and bound my wrists together before hustling me into the van. From there, we’d gone to a cheap motel, not too different from the one Ariane and I had spent the night in. Except, of course, she wasn’t here.
Ignoring the ache in my chest that was more than likely cracked ribs from my sudden collision with the asphalt, I counted off the ten steps to the edge of the chipped tile floor in the bathroom. And then the ten steps back to the mysterious red Tweety Bird–shaped stain near the bolted door to the outside.
The two retrieval team agents had taken up positions on either side of the room, one near the door and the other leaning against the wall next to the bathroom.
They didn’t say it, but I knew they were blocking my escape routes.
Like I was going anywhere. I was waiting for the moment when the call would come, anticipating and dreading it.
Every time one of them so much as shifted toward the phone on his belt, my heart stopped.
I’d given up pestering them with questions about an hour ago. The two agents—a blond guy with a mustache and another dude with a graying buzz cut—just ignored me, though the older guy seemed annoyed with my restlessness.
Or maybe it was because moving around was only making it warmer in here, and they were wearing infinitely more layers with their bulletproof vests, heavy boots, and utility belts with every device known to mankind.
SWAT guys on private authority. Yeah, that wasn’t terrifying. I wondered if they’d known Mark Tucker. If they knew about Ariane. If they knew what I’d done.
My stomach churned. But I kept pacing.
I had my back turned, heading my allowed ten paces to the bathroom, when I heard the rip of Velcro followed by a gruff “Yes?”
I spun around so swiftly that the blond agent lurched forward at me, his hands out as if to tackle me again.
“Understood,” the older agent said into his phone, and I couldn’t breathe for waiting.
But he said nothing more. Just hung up and tucked the phone into the designated pocket on his belt. Avoiding my gaze, he gave a curt nod to the blond guy next to me, who immediately reached out and grabbed my shoulders.
I had a flashback to every mob movie I’d ever seen. I did, after all, know too much. But what good would killing me do? Even if I told the world what I knew, who would believe me? I had no proof. And my story sounded plenty crazy enough to be a hoax, some kid looking for attention.
He shuffled me forward, as the older agent unbolted the door. We were leaving. To a hidden spot in the woods where some hunter would stumble over my body in a few months? Very possibly.
“Where are we going?” I asked, stumbling over the threshold as I tried to twist to look at them. “Did they find Ford? Did Dr. Jacobs talk to Laughlin?”
I got the same answers as before, which was to say, none. And their expressions, beneath the aviator sunglasses that seemed to be standard issue, were carefully blank.
I let them load me into the van again—as if I had a choice—as a sketchy-looking couple in a battered Crown Vic next to us stared.
Watching out the tinted window, it didn’t take me more than ten or fifteen minutes to figure out we were heading north. Back to Wisconsin.
My stomach clenched with dread. What did that mean? Did they have Ariane already? Had they made the exchange? Or had they just given up? I didn’t bother asking this time, knowing it was useless. Either they didn’t know anything or they’d been instructed not to say anything.
Frustration at my powerlessness swelled inside me. Ariane would have been able to pick at their thoughts, to listen in and know something, anything.
I shifted in the seat, twisting my wrists around within the binding, trying to get the plastic away from my fraying skin. But everywhere it touched, it hurt.
My thoughts were in similar condition. No matter who I thought of—Ariane, Quinn, my mom—there was pain or shame or despair.
What if my GTX-provided babysitters were just driving me home? What if they’d received an all-clear signal and I was going to be dumped off at the foot of my driveway in Wingate, like nothing ever happened?
That was almost as bad as my death-in-the-woods scenario.
I’d wanted a moment, a few minutes with Ariane. A chance to explain, even though I knew it wouldn’t make a difference.
But you didn’t bargain for that, scolded an inner voice that sounded like a perfect replica of Ariane’s.
Stay calm, be confident, and ask for more than what you want, she said in my memory. It was good advice. I wished I’d remembered it before now. It didn’t take long, forty-five minutes or so, before I saw a sign welcoming us to Wisconsin. I didn’t recognize these back roads; this was not the way Ariane and I had come.
We passed through several small towns, each nondescript in its small-townness—one gas station, an old brick courthouse, and a smattering of Victorian houses in various states of disrepair and peeling paint.
Until finally, after one last turn on another county highway, the van slowed.
A lake, complete with a parking area and picnic benches, seemed to spring up from nowhere on the right side. The sun was sinking into the tree line, turning the water into a brilliant orange slash of light that made my eyes water.
To my surprise, the lake was deserted, except for one guy in a bright yellow jacket fishing from a pier on the far side. The light turned him into little more than a shadow with rumpled hair.
Unlike the lake, the parking lot was quite full. A pair of black luxury SUVs on one side faced off against two black vans, identical to the one I was in.
I couldn’t imagine what anyone driving by would think. The world’s most depressing family reunion? A mob picnic? Maybe a lost Secret Service convoy.
But it wasn’t, of course. It was GTX in the vans and Laughlin in the SUVs. And maybe, somewhere in one of them, Ariane.
I sat forward on the seat, as if that additional few inches would allow me to find her behind the tinted glass of one of the other vehicles.
We pulled into the lot and stopped, the agent placing our van between the two lines of vehicles. Like someone about to step between two dueling parties. That couldn’t be good.
My dad’s SUV, dark blue and emblazoned with WINGATE CHIEF OF POLICE, was directly across from us. I could see my dad sitting stiffly in the driver’s seat. He wasn’t happy about this. Well, who the hell was?
For several long moments, nothing moved in the parking lot except a few dead leaves and a paper cup lifted by the breeze. Tension seemed to seep in through the van’s air vents until I couldn’t breathe.
At some signal I didn’t see, the blond agent cut the engine, and the older one turned to me. “You’re here to keep things calm during the exchange.”