She walks slowly up the ramp and inside the big rig’s trailer. It’s empty and has railings running along each side to secure cargo. She feels the slightest shift in the floor as the agent climbs into the trailer. She keeps her back to the entry, giving him plenty of time.
“Turn around slowly,” the voice demands.
Haley twists around. “Oh my god, you scared the crap out of me.” She smiles.
The agent stands, jaw tight, hands gripping his service weapon. “Put your hands up.”
Haley smiles again. “Are you serious right now? Is this a joke? Did my sister put you up to this?”
“This is no damn joke: Hands up, on your knees.”
Haley’s eyes widen. “Okay. You don’t have to be rude about it.”
She raises her hands, lowers to her knees. The agent keeps his gun trained on her. With his left hand he reaches around for cuffs strapped to his belt. She didn’t know FBI agents carried handcuffs.
You learn something new every day.
“Turn around,” he commands.
“How am I supposed to do that? I’m on my knees and—”
“Do it!” A tinge of fear creeping into his voice.
Haley makes an exaggerated shuffle on her knees and puts her back to him again.
“Hands behind your back!”
Before she moves them, there’s a loud buzz, and a scream. Haley turns her head and the agent is sprawled on the bed of the trailer. Casey’s holding the stun gun and still pressing it against the nape of the agent’s neck.
“Careful with that thing,” Haley says. “You hit the metal and you could zap us all.”
“Wouldn’t that be something.”
“Your face … what the hell?” Haley says, examining her sister.
“Chloroform burn.”
The agent groans. They drag him to the side, use his own handcuffs to secure him to the rail.
Standing before him, Haley says, “You ever watch the Spider-Man movie where three Spideys from different multiverses meet?” she asks the agent.
He doesn’t respond.
“Yeah, well…” Haley points to her sister, then herself. “Here’s the bad news: Both versions of us are evil.”
CHAPTER SIXTY-NINE
DONNIE
Donnie doesn’t recall the last time he’s been this angry. When his blood has been so hot that he wanted to punch something, someone. In this case Nico Adakai. The betrayal nearly demolishes him.
Nico and Benny were friends. They all looked out for one another. They loved one another. How could he? And blackmail? Nico would be risking himself if he ever told what Benny—what they all —did on that rainy night.
He’s going to drive back to the hotel to kick the shit out of Nico, then get the hell out of Pennsylvania. But after the half-dozen drinks, he can’t get behind the wheel, something he damn well should’ve thought about before stopping at a bar named Drink. He needs to think more, grow up, stop acting like some stupid kid who can drink himself into a stupor and sleep it off in the car.
Agent Rodriguez rattled him. The FBI man knows there’s a skeleton with a bullet hole in the skull. Knows that someone—Nico—was blackmailing Ben with those photos. You don’t have to be frickin’ Sherlock Holmes to figure out what happened twenty-five years ago on that knoll. The agent’s so close. Why would Nico do such a thing? Donnie doesn’t know or care.
He thinks about the blackmail message. Saying that Nico had DNA from the teeth. Mr. Brood did bite Artemis in the struggle. Is that possible? Extracting DNA from teeth buried for a quarter century?
The message also said that the blackmailer had the gun. That doesn’t make sense: Ben hid the gun near the tree fort in Donnie’s secret spot.
Holy shit.
Donnie remembers the day. It was after they went to find his mom, before they caught the bus to Philly, that Ben hid the .22 in his spot in the woods. Benny knew about the place because it’s where Donnie hid his booze and anything else he didn’t want Mr. Brood to find or Derek and his goons to steal. The first time Donnie showed the secret spot to his friend, Benny said, That’s some Boo Radley shit. Donnie had no idea what Ben was referencing, which wasn’t all that unusual, and it’s probably why he didn’t remember it until now.
Donnie’s wrenched from the thought by a woman’s voice. “Are you Donnie Danger?”
The barfly is standing at his table now. “That’s me, darlin’。” Even now he carts out Rock Star Donnie. He’s so pathetic.
“Can I buy you a drink?” She bats her bloodshot eyes.
“Sure, beautiful.”
She sits, asks for a selfie with him, and he obliges.
After, he says, “Can I ask you a favor?”
“Of course.”
“You have Uber?” he asks.
“Pardon?”
“You got a ride app on that thing?” He gestures to her phone.
“Yeah.”
“Tell you what: You get me a car and I’ll give you cash for the fare and get you backstage passes next time we play in Pennsylvania.”
“Can I come with you wherever you’re going?”
“I’m sorry, beautiful, but you don’t want to go where I’m goin’。”
CHAPTER SEVENTY
JENNA
Jenna and Nico have been inside the ramshackle property across the street from Savior House for nearly three hours and the smell is starting to get to her. The sun is coming down and the entire neighborhood has an eerie end-of-the-world feel. She studies Nico. He’s predictably grown into a handsome man with broad shoulders and chiseled features, the archetype of modern beauty standards.
But she can’t help seeing the boy he was, the sadness in his eyes, which she finally understands.
He notices that she’s gazing at him.
“Can I ask you a question?” he says, then looks back outside through a crack in the boarded window.
“Sure.”
“Do you think there’s any chance she’s still alive?”
Jenna looks at him and knows he means Annie. His features are those of a teenager again, a lovestruck, heartbroken kid. Abandoned a third time in his life: first by his mother, then by his father, then by Annie. Jenna suspects there’s been more abandonment in his life since then.
“I honestly don’t know.”
“If the others weren’t taken by the people who took you, then where could they be?”
Jenna doesn’t answer. If Mr. Brood was willing to hand Jenna over to The Corporation, then he probably was willing to let others go with even more questionable caretakers. Could The Corporation have recruited Annie or the others at Savior House who disappeared? And if so, where are those girls now? Living normal suburban lives like Jenna? The most likely answer, as much as it roils her insides, is that they were sold into the sex trade, and the life span for trafficked victims isn’t long.
Her thoughts are interrupted by the buzz of her burner phone.
“Hey,” she says.
“Hey,” Simon says back.
She’s glad to hear his voice again. To talk before she and Nico go into the house of horrors across the street.
“I got the information you needed.”
“That was fast.”
“I’ve taught the girls to play poker, read Congress’s thousand-page new tax bill, watched seven episodes of Backyardigans with Lulu, and witnessed Willow mope around about not seeing a kid named Billy.… So your research project was the best thing that’s happened all day.”