The Girl in the Wall Page 4

  I am nauseous.

  “Are you sure?” The Assassin shoves him and he stumbles. The Assassin raises the gun and releases the safety, cocking it like he is about to shoot Mike.

  People gasp, a few girls cover their faces. I think my heart has officially stopped beating.

  “I don’t know anything, I swear,” Mike says, tears making his voice ragged.

  The Assassin reaches for him again, this time shoving him back toward the seats. Mike falls wordlessly into a chair and puts his face in his hands. I exhale loudly, my chest light again. Hudson squeezes my hand and I can’t believe how reassuring the tiny gesture is.

  The Assassin watches Mike for a moment, then whips around and presses the gun to Cassidy’s head. “What about you? What can you tell us about your missing friend?”

  “Nothing,” Cassidy says.

  She is extremely polite and her eyes are downcast, but she’s not terrified in the way Mike was, or the way I’d be if that gun was pointed at me. Cassidy is made of tougher stock than the rest of us. Her father is a senator who weathered not one but two political scandals that crucified the entire family in the national press. I guess if you can get through that when you’re ten and twelve, a few armed agents aren’t going to scare you.

  “I mean, it’s Ariel’s house so she probably knows hiding places we don’t,” she adds.

  “But you’ve been here before, no?” he asks, gun aimed at her temple.

  “Yes, I think most of us have,” Cassidy says. “But we just hang out and watch movies or go swimming. I don’t know anywhere she’d hide. If I did I would tell you.”

  She would, for sure.

  The Assassin seems to be able to tell this as well because he lowers the gun.

  But then Cassidy speaks again. “You should ask Sera,” she says, looking over at me with a silky smile. “She used to play here when she was a kid and she knows this house better than any of us.”

  I freeze as my classmates turn to look back at me. My heart is in my throat, threatening to choke me.

  “Sera, stand,” The Assassin orders, lifting the gun.

  I stand, light-headed and trembling. I feel like a spotlight is shining on my left arm where the phone is hidden and I press it against my body, praying that now is not the moment it rings. I don’t even realize that Hudson still has my hand until he squeezes it, hard. He’s not letting go.

  “What can you tell me?” The Assassin asks.

  Tears swim in my eyes. He’s barely even pointing the gun at me; I guess he can tell he doesn’t have to, I scare easy. But despite what Cassidy said, I don’t backstab, not like this.

  “I don’t, I mean, I don’t know,” I babble. I have to say something. “There are closets and stuff obviously. And like there’s an attic. You could hide behind boxes and stuff up there I think.”

  The Assassin nods curtly. “Attic,” he says with a wave of his hand, and two of the agents take off. “Anything else?”

  I shake my head.

  He pauses for a moment, then lowers the gun to one shoulder. “Let me urge you all to think long and hard,” he says coldly. “Anyplace she might be, any way she might try to escape, anything at all that occurs to you, let us know.” He looks at me. “And anyone who helps her will be shot.” He gives a flick of his wrist and walks out, most of the agents following behind.

  The few agents left spread out, guns held loosely in their hands. My body sags in relief. I don’t even realize that I’m leaning against Hudson until he shifts slightly.

  “Sorry,” I say, sitting back up.

  “That was intense. Are you okay?”

  “I don’t even know what that means right now.” My voice is still unsteady.

  Sweat is running down my arms and I’m worried it will make the phone slippery. Plus I just realized what I should have said: the basement of the garage, which is actually some kind of bomb shelter a former owner had built in the fifties. You can only get to it through a panel in the floor and if you don’t know it’s there, you’d think it was just a slightly misaligned floorboard. That would have kept them off her trail longer.

  “Did you slash that girl’s tires or something?” Hudson asks, looking at Cassidy. “Because she has it in for you.”

  “That she does.”

  “So the phone,” he says softly.

  I shake my head. “Can we not talk about that yet? I just need a minute of not thinking about life-threatening things.”

  Hudson nods, then looks around the room. Most of my classmates have migrated back to the sofas and chairs outside the study. They sit close together, some with arms around each other, others sitting on the floor and resting against someone’s legs. They talk in low voices, heads bent toward each other, supporting and comforting each other.

  “This reminds me of going home,” he says.

  “What?” I ask, so thankful for the change in topic that I could hug him.

  He nods toward my classmates. “This kind of loathing. This is how my brothers and sisters act when I make the mistake of coming home. They want to make sure I don’t forget how much they hate me.”

  “Why do they hate you so much?” I ask. And then something else occurs to me. “I thought you were an only child.”

  I’ve read enough about Hudson to know he grew up in a Boston suburb, the only child of a baker.

  He smiles a bitter smile. “That would be your answer. I sold my soul to the gods of the record companies and changed my past.”

  “So you’re not the only son of a baker from Newton?” I ask. I can almost forget the phone in my curiosity. Almost.

  “I’m the son of an unemployed coal miner from Appalachia,” he says, rubbing his thumb against his face for a moment. “And the youngest of seven very pissed off siblings.”

  “What’s the big deal? I mean, who cares where you’re from when you can sing like you do.”

  “It was bad advice,” he says simply, looking down at his hands. “My first manager thought it would make me more appealing. By the time I actually got good managers, people who would have made my story sound like some kind of living fairy tale, I was already stuck in the lie.”

  “So now it’s the lie that matters, not what your past actually was.” I realize that’s probably why he comes across as such a snob in interviews: He’s lying.

  “Yup,” he says. “That’s my big secret, not that I’m a poor kid from Appalachia but that I’m a liar. And there’s no spinning that one to make it a fairy tale.”

  I think about this for a minute. “You’re really trapped,” I say, feeling bad for him.

  “Kind of like we are right now in this house. Except you have something that might help us.” He leans forward, those hazel eyes staring at me intently. “So now that I told you my secret, trust me and let’s use that phone.”

  Of course this was where it was going. He’s smart because calculated or not, him telling me his secret really does make me trust him more.

  Hudson is looking at me steadily. “That phone is our ticket out of here.”

  “It would be if we could use it,” I point out. “They monitor us everywhere.”

  Hudson considers. “There has to be a way we can check out if it works. Let’s go back over to the sofa and sit so you’re facing the wall.”

  “But it’s practically out in the open. An agent could see us. And that guy said anyone with a phone will be shot and two other people too. It’s too big a risk.” I cast around for other ideas. “Won’t there be someone checking up on you, seeing how the concert went? Maybe when they can’t get in touch they’ll send the police to see what’s going on.”

  Hudson shakes his head, his expression rueful. “I don’t get checked up on after concerts. That’s when I need downtime, not babysitting. My manager learned that lesson long ago. So unless your parents or someone else’s decide to check in early…”

  I slump back against the cushions. “Not likely.” There’s no reason for anyone to assume there’s anything wrong, not when we w
ere invited to a weekend-long party with nonstop fun planned the entire time.

  “So we’re back to the phone,” Hudson says. “I get that it’s a risk but what choice do we have? This situation has already started to go south and we need to do anything we can to get out of here, before it gets worse.”

  I know he’s right but I so don’t want to do this. I don’t want to be brave and risk my life trying to make a secret call. But it seems so cowardly to say that and really, why did I pick up the phone if I wasn’t somehow thinking about using it?

  So I follow him and sit down so that I am facing the wall, Hudson across from me.

  “Where is it?” he whispers.

  I turn my arm just so he can see the outline against my sweater.

  “Okay, just slide it out and pass it to me,” he says. “Or do you want to try and text 911?”

  I am thinking random things, like is it even possible to text 911 and wondering if my sweat might have broken the phone. But I still manage to slip it out from my sleeve, my skin warm where I had it pressed for so long, and it rests on the sofa between us. I pull it close to my body, then pull my knees up so unless you are sitting on one of our laps or standing right above us, you can’t see it.

  For a moment we just stare at it, a small black rectangle with a shimmery top.

  “He probably had it on vibrate, right?” Hudson asks. “Because of the concert?”

  He’s right. Mr. Barett would never turn the phone off but he’d have put it on vibrate for his daughter’s birthday concert. I wish I’d thought of that earlier so I wasn’t panicked it might ring.

  “I’ll cough just in case,” I say.

  I take a deep breath, let out a short cough and stab the on button at the same time. The screen lights up soundlessly and Hudson grins at me.

  “Awesome,” he says.

  He sounds as joyful as I feel and for a second I can already see the police streaming in, The Assassin being led off in handcuffs, Ariel coming out of hiding, and all of us living happily ever after. Or at least getting to go home.

  But then we look down at the screen. It’s a soothing midnight blue with the words “please enter code.” It’s like getting punched in the chest.

  Because after all this, the phone is completely and totally useless.

  CHAPTER 6

  Ariel

  I am on the floor of the tunnel, far enough from the living room grate that I’m not worried about being seen but close enough that light from the chandelier creates faint shadows on my dress. I was so sure The Assassin was going to shoot Mike or Cassidy—I still can’t believe they’re alive. But they’re in danger. When I fled here, into the tunnels, I wasn’t thinking about that. My disappearance has made the agents angry and they were already capable of murder back when things were going their way. I don’t want to know what they’re capable of now. And Sera didn’t tell them where I was though she has to know. Or did she just forget about the tunnels like she forgot about what it means not to be a backstabbing traitor?

  Whatever, I’m not going to waste time thinking about her now. Uncle Marc is going to be here soon and if I can get to him before the agents do, he can get help and stop Abby from coming here. It’s a long shot but the one thing I have on my side is surprise: They won’t know he’s coming. I head back toward the stairs. I’ll go to my room and change into something more practical than my short pink party dress, something dark that will help me hide in shadows and allow me to move quickly. I should have done it before but Milo was there. Then I’ll see if there’s any way I can get up to the roof, to the helicopter pad where Uncle Marc will be coming in. It’s probably too much to hope that a helicopter could land unnoticed, but maybe I can hide on the roof and figure out something.

  I am close to my room when I hear the noise. Glass shattering, something falling on the floor, drawers being opened, more stuff falling on the floor.

  The light is on in my room and I see movement. I tiptoe up as quietly as I can, then have to cover my mouth to keep from gasping out loud. They are ransacking my room.

  My china lamp, the one that’s been in my family for generations, is in chards on the floor, the bits getting crunched as agents step on them. Every drawer has been taken out of my beautiful desk and overturned, several cracked down the middle in the process. My computer is long gone but now my papers are being spread about, read, then tossed on the floor. The little keepsakes I had on the desk and my dresser—the princess drawing Abby sent me last week and the photo of the junior class trip to Paris and the tiny Eiffel Tower Bianca gave me as a joke—are being crushed underfoot. We almost left it at the café we went to after the Eiffel Tower but at the last minute I remembered and went back for it. Now it’s in jagged shards on my floor. Someone is actually slicing my powder-blue armchair and stuffing is flying everywhere. Clothes are being pulled out of my dresser and tossed on the floor. Someone else is going through my jewelry box, slipping bracelets and necklaces—some of the only things my mother left me—into his or her pockets.

  My stomach heaves and for a moment I worry I might throw up. It’s just stuff but seeing it manhandled like this makes me feel naked and violated. And angry. These people are animals.

  Then I notice one person doing what he can to quell the damage. He is picking up keepsakes, placing drawers back carefully, putting clothes back on hangers. It’s Milo of course. For a moment I just feel scornful—what difference does it make if my clothes are wrinkled or he keeps the Eiffel Tower from being broken into even more pieces. But I have to admit there is something soothing about seeing him do what he can to protect my things. He may be annoying but he’s also a nice guy, the kind of guy who ends up crushed like my lamp, with people grinding their heels in as they walk right over it. But seeing him now I realize that if I need it, he will help me.

  And before this night is through I may well need it.

  I back away from my room. My uncle is coming in less than an hour and I need to be waiting for him. I walk away from the sounds of destruction, closing it off from my mind. It’s done so what does it matter? All that concerns me now is what’s going to happen next.

  CHAPTER 7

  Sera

  We can’t break the code. I mean, we’ve only been trying for about ten minutes but I’ve used everything I can think of: Mr. Barett’s birthday, his anniversary with Ariel’s mom, our zip code, his cell phone number. I can think of a lot of other things it might be, like the zip code from his hometown, Pittsburgh, or the license plate of his first car, but without using the Internet on the phone, I can’t find out what those things are. And we’re trying to be as subtle as possible, though the agents are mostly staying in the doorways, not coming close enough to see what we’re doing.

  “This sucks,” I say through clenched teeth after the numerals that correspond to the name Barett fail.

  “Let’s take a break,” Hudson says. “Sometimes what you’re looking for doesn’t pop into your head until you stop looking for it.”

  I let out my breath in a frustrated rush. Maybe he’s right. I slip the phone back up my sleeve. I wish I’d worn looser pants so I could put it in a pocket. “Is that what you do when you’re writing songs?”

  He smiles. “Yeah, it is. I think about something totally different, like if I’m writing about a breakup I go online and check football scores.”

  That makes me smile. “So what totally different thing should we talk about?”

  He glances at my classmates, all fifteen of them hanging out together. “Tell me why everyone in your class hates you.”

  The words sting, though of course he’s noticed. It’s not possible to miss. “I think I’d rather drive myself crazy thinking about the code.”

  He laughs but then looks at me, waiting.

  I take a deep breath. What does it matter if I tell him?

  “Last spring break Ariel and her dad went to Mexico,” I begin. “And while they were there this group of guys attacked Ariel.”

  It doesn’t sound so b
ad when I just say the words. It didn’t even sound that bad when she texted me about it, after the fact, when she was in the airport coming home. She said they had just broken into her hotel room and started hitting her when they were caught, so it seemed like maybe it was scary but not that big a deal, at least not when you figured they were there to rape and maybe even kill her.

  But then she came home and I saw her.

  “They beat her up,” I say. “Bad.” Her eyes were both purple, the flesh around them spongy and swollen. There were scratches on her face and neck that she couldn’t hide with makeup, no matter how much she put on, and greenish-brown bruises on the insides of her arms. “But that wasn’t even the worst part. It did something to her. It was like you’d look in her eyes and no one was there. She started being destructive, cutting school and picking fights with anyone she could.”

  “It sounds like she had some kind of posttraumatic stress syndrome,” Hudson says. “That happened to my brother who was in the Army.”

  I nod. “Yeah, that’s what the psychiatrist said.”

  “So at least she was getting help.”

  “No,” I say, the word a rock in the soft part of my belly. “She didn’t want help. She kept saying she was over it, not to worry. I practically begged her to tell someone what was going on but she wouldn’t and she made me swear I wouldn’t.”

  I kept my promise too, until the day I saw that she had been taking a razor and slicing up her inner arms, harsh red lines across the pale skin.

  “I told the counselor at our school,” I said. “And they reported it and all these social workers came to her house and she had to go to a facility” (mental institution but I can’t say those words) “and have mandated therapy.”

  “And I take it Ariel didn’t appreciate you doing that.”

  The first couple of days I knew she’d be mad but then I figured she’d see my side, know that I did it to help. I was so wrong.

  “You have no idea,” I tell him, staring out the window.

  Hudson reaches across the sofa and rests his hand on my shoulder. I’m shocked that even under these conditions I feel a tingle from his touch.