“Don’t look.”
Against his wishes, Quinn, Caleb, and I whip our heads toward the back window. Through it, a black SUV trails us. The tinted windows, along with the glare of the sun on the windshield, make it impossible to see who’s inside.
I can barely breathe. “How long have they been following us?”
“I think since we left the deli,” Leo replies. Another harsh turn sends my ribs into the console between us. Quinn and Caleb groan. “You might want to hold on.”
“Hold on to wh—?” Caleb’s panicked voice breaks off into a yelp as Leo jerks the van off the road and between a gap in the trees. The ground turns rough beneath the wheels, the terrain that makes up the edge of town wooded and rocky. There’s a slim path for us to squeeze through, and I scream as we soar so close to a massive trunk that the side-view mirror gets smacked off.
“Shit,” Leo mutters.
“They’re still following us,” Quinn urges. “Gun it!”
“I am! It’s an old van!”
“We should surrender,” Caleb suggests, fingers clenched around his backpack like it’s the only thing tethering him to earth. “Maybe they’ll let us go if we give them what they want.”
“We did not make it this far to surrender,” Quinn argues.
I grab Leo’s piece of map from where he left it in the cupholder. “Beyond the trees are the train tracks that line the border of town, then Creekson beyond it,” I say, attempting to conjure a plan. “If we can make it outside of Rosetown, maybe we can lose them somewhere in Creekson.”
My words are punctuated by a branch whipping into the windshield hard enough to crack it. We all scream, and Leo somehow manages to keep his hands on the wheel and continue narrowly dodging trees.
“Did I lose them?” Leo asks.
“Not even close,” Quinn replies as the whistle of a train sounds. It nearly drowns out the roar of the engine. “This is some Fast and Furious shit.”
“More like Grand Theft Auto,” Leo counters, fingers flexing over the wheel. “But don’t worry. I’ve got a plan.”
“If it’s anything short of making this thing fly, I don’t want to hear it,” Caleb says.
“You won’t want to hear it anyway.”
There’s a gleam in Leo’s eye, a daring spark that’s somehow attractive and terrifying at the same time. The train whistle blows again as we burst from the cover of the trees, the tracks on the other end of the stretch of tall grass field.
“They’re gaining.” Caleb’s voice is more like a screech. “Pull over, we need to sur—”
“Bullshit!” Quinn cuts him off. “There’s a hockey stick in the back, right? Let me at them. I’ll smash their fucking brains—”
“They could have guns!”
“And I have fists and unbridled rage.”
“Leo.” I stare at him, cutting off the arguments behind us. Leo’s gaze doesn’t waver from the tracks we’re barreling toward and the train peeking from around the bend. “Leo.”
“Do you trust me, Lily Rose?” he asks.
I think of him last night, lying to his mom to cover for me. The Cheez-It separating us. Waking up in his bed alone. “I—”
“I don’t!” Caleb cuts in, gripping the back of the seat. “You see that train, right? Tell me you see that train!”
“And I thought things couldn’t get any more interesting,” Quinn says, her typical sarcasm twisting with a vine of fear.
“If anyone’s into praying, now’s the time,” Leo suggests.
“You’re not serious,” I say. “Leo, stop!”
He goes faster.
“We’re going to die.” Caleb sounds faraway, like he’s already on his way to the great unknown. “That train is going to hit us. We’re—”
“I would love some encouragement,” Leo says.
“We’re going to get smashed into pancakes.”
“Unfortunately, I’m more of a waffles guy.”
“Leo, it’s right—” My voice disappears into a shriek. We’re at the tracks now, and even if he did slam the brakes, it would be too late. He could jerk the wheel, but the van would flip. I wonder if Gram knew the boy pulling her weeds is a maniac with a death wish.
I feel the moment the wheels hit the tracks because the van literally gets air. Caleb takes Leo’s suggestion, muttering a string of Hail Marys. Quinn’s urging Leo faster, faster, faster. I look to my right. And suddenly—there it is. Time slows as the face of the train charges toward me. The heat makes it warped, like it’s part of a mirage. Will Daisy miss me? Probably not. I hope Dad and Gram might be waiting on the other side.
And then, nothing but grassy green fields again. It takes a disorienting moment to realize we’re across the tracks, the whistle of the train behind us as it zips past. I barely make out the SUV on the other side of the train. Cut off from us.
Quinn’s maniacal laugh is the first sound to break our stupor. “Holy shit, Frat Boy! You actually didn’t kill us.”
“I knew we’d make it,” Leo says, a victorious grin splitting his face as he whoops. “Probably.”
“I’m going to puke,” Caleb groans.
“It could be worse—we could have ended up like Lily’s cannoli,” Leo says. I look at my hands, realizing I had clenched my fist around the cannoli Nonna had given me. Shards of the shell litter the floor, and the thick ricotta filling seeps between my fingers, coating my tampon bandage. I hadn’t even realized I still held it.
I open the window and rid myself of the sticky mess, then peel off the makeshift bandage and fold it in a few Burger King napkins from the glove compartment. My cut looks better in the daylight, just a thin stripe of red from the base of my thumb to my pinkie.
“That was unhinged.” I can’t help the laugh bubbling up as we leave the field and Leo pulls onto a dirt road. I think I lost my mind on the other side of the tracks.
“Maybe, but we left those ass wipes in our dust. You all can send your thank-yous as an Edible Arrangement to my new mansion once we find the money.”
“Oh jeez, Brains is actually gonna spew,” Quinn says, pounding on the back of my seat. Caleb’s eyes bug, his lips pressed together. “Pull over!”
Caleb spills out of the van as Leo stops on the side of the road, chunks of his omelet leaving his lips as he hunches over the hot asphalt. I grab some napkins to hand to him as the rest of us get out to assess the damage.
“My dad is going to slaughter me.” Leo releases a long breath. The van is wrecked. Aside from the passenger-side mirror having been smashed off, and the cracked windshield, it’s full of scratches, some enough to chip the paint and others deep gouges. It looks awful, and that’s saying something considering it certainly wasn’t a looker before.
I peer toward the direction of the field. We’re out of eyeshot, but we shouldn’t stay here long.
Quinn reads my mind. “Do you think they’ll come after us?”
“Wouldn’t you if millions of dollars were on the line?”
She huffs. “’Nough said. We’re fucked.”
“Wait, look at this,” Leo says, his phone in his hand. He turns the screen toward us. I squint against the glare of the sun.
It’s a TikTok of Daisy. She stares at the screen with her face flushed, brown eyes wild. “Hey, garden gang, I have an update for you on the wild Rosetown shit,” she says. Garden gang is what she calls her followers. I bite back a gag at the cliché.
“I just drove through town in my new Mercedes—” Had to drop that in there. “And I’m actually getting scared now. I almost got hit by a creeper van in a street chase with an SUV.”
“What are the odds?” Caleb mumbles, done puking and now watching with us.
Silently, I hold out the napkins. Quinn offers a crumpled stick of Extra gum that she must have taken out of one of the many pockets on her cargo pants. He takes both.
“Small town,” Leo says.
“And that’s not the only weird thing going on,” Daisy says to the camera. “Someone broke into the conservatory last night. My dad blames it on me because people are coming to Rosetown to look for the fortune thanks to my viral video. But this news was bound to get out. And another thing: a friend from school sent me a vid taken at the Rosetown Museum of Fine Art yesterday of a random electrical outage.”
“That was literally us!” I exclaim.
Nobody listens, eyes glued to Daisy’s face as her expression sobers.
“These all sound random, don’t they? But I’m convinced they’re not. Someone is messing with Rosetown while looking for my gram’s money.” Daisy’s voice drops into a conspiratorial whisper. “And I don’t think these are your regular tourists.”
I might have to agree with her on that.
Daisy sighs, blowing a chin-length chunk of hair from her eyes. “I’ll share more details as soon as I have them. You know I’ll keep my garden gang in the loop.” She throws up a peace sign, and the video goes back to the beginning.
“We can’t go back to Rosetown,” Caleb says. “Not if all that stuff is going on.”
“Half that stuff was our fault,” Quinn reminds him.
“We have to go back.” I pull out my section of the map from my crossbody bag, gesturing for them to hold theirs up too against the battered side of the van. “If we take the long way, we’ll end up near the back of the Ivy.” I trace Quinn’s piece with its jagged etching of rocks and water signifying the coastal edge of town. “We sneak in, find the next clue, and get out before we’re seen.”
“Do you think we could do that?” Leo asks Quinn.
“Normally, yes,” she replies. “But with the Hyacinth Ball tomorrow, my mom’s going apeshit at the Ivy trying to get everything perfect. People will be setting up all night, and they’ll definitely recognize me. You too.” She nods at me. “Plus, a ton of people come to town for it. Add that to the people already coming for the hunt, and that’s going to plug up the main roads.” She draws a circle with her pointer finger around the Ivy, then fans out to show the four main roads in Rosetown leading to it. She’s right. They’re backed up on good days, so I can only imagine what kind of traffic a ball and rumored treasure are bringing.
“Also, now the people following us know what the van looks like,” Leo adds. “Staying away from main roads when we go back is big. They’ll be looking for us.”
We stare at the map, each piece held up with one of our hands. “There is a way into town that might work.” Caleb points toward a tiny sliver of road starting on Leo’s northeastern piece and running along the very edge of the harbor on Quinn’s. “This road isn’t used much by the public because it’s one of the oldest, from before the mains were built. It goes all the way to the harbor, past the lot, and ends at the boat graveyard at the most southern point of Rosetown. If we go this route, we’d have to backtrack on foot to get in, but it could work.”
My mind whirls as a plan begins to form. “Quinn, isn’t the theme for tomorrow a masquerade?”
She nods.
“So maybe we don’t sneak in at all. Well, we’ll probably have to take a back door, but let’s be just another guest. With masks on, nobody should think it’s us, or have any reason to assume we’d be there. It’d probably be the safest place in town with heightened security.”
“I like where you’re going with this.” Leo’s eyes light up. “Sounds like we need aliases.”
“Don’t even start,” Quinn groans. “But I guess I see how this might work.”
“Say we see the clue. How would we get it? If it’s hanging from a chandelier and we’re in a room with hundreds of people, that doesn’t leave us much room to be inconspicuous,” Caleb points out.
“We wait till the end when everyone’s gone?”
“No,” Leo denies me. I know his plan is diabolical from the way his mouth tilts. “We cause a diversion.”
“Fire?” Quinn asks, a little too excited. I wonder how long she’s dreamed of destroying the Ivy, the one thing her mother cares about more than anything else.
“Fire alarm,” I correct. “We’re not trying to kill people. Just get them out.”
“That means we’d have to stall until tomorrow,” Leo says. “Which might throw our stalkers off our trail.”
“There’s something off about that,” Caleb says, leaning against the side of the van. “According to the paper, lots of people are coming to Rosetown, but I feel like most of them aren’t seriously thinking they’ll find a fortune, more just want to act touristy and see what all the talk is about, like Daisy said. And I doubt any of them are willing to stalk a bunch of teens over it. But I think the people who just followed us have been following us and are the same people who targeted you last night, Lily. I’m pretty sure I saw that same SUV yesterday when we were leaving the museum.”
A memory sparks. “Wait, I did, too.”
“I think I might have seen it pass us when we left the conservatory,” Leo adds. “I remember thinking it was weird that there wasn’t a license plate.”
“Yeah.” Quinn nods. “I just realized that.”
Caleb sucks in a breath. “I don’t think we’re dealing with amateurs here. There are people who take shit like this super seriously. Like, legit treasure hunters. They’ll probably go as far as grave robbing, shoot-outs, art heists, you name it.”
“So if the people who targeted me are the real deal, that makes sense, doesn’t it?” I ask. “They probably thought the clue we found led to the conservatory, since that’s where we stopped before you left me at my uncle’s. Then they trashed it while looking. When they couldn’t find it, they came to find me.”
“How would they know where you are?” Quinn asks me.
I shrug. “Everyone knows I’m banned from the manor thanks to Daisy. My uncle is the only person I have left to live with. Plus, he said he was going to stop by the conservatory on his way to Boston. Maybe they saw that he was there and figured nobody would be home with me. They might have even watched Daisy leave and waited until they thought I was asleep.” My neck prickles at the notion that somebody has been watching me.
“Or maybe someone told them,” Caleb says. “I noticed your cousin didn’t get a piece of the map.”
He raises a good point. My knee-jerk reaction is to defend her, but then I remember this morning how Kev said she was busy—doing what? “No, she didn’t.”
“Daze wouldn’t do this,” Leo counters. He looks at Quinn. “Back me up.”
She shrugs. “I don’t know. She’s always been pretty clever. Good at twisting things to get the result she wants.”
The double meaning isn’t lost on Leo. He looks at the ground.
“If she somehow figured out that we all got clues leading to the fortune and she didn’t, it’s not all that out there that she’d find some pros to find it for her,” I say.
“It doesn’t matter if she did or didn’t. These attackers pose a bigger problem. Now, instead of hunting the treasure, they’ve started hunting us,” Caleb concludes.
A thick silence falls. Hunting down a fortune is hard enough. But being hunted? There’s no way Gram anticipated this turn of events.
Quinn breaks it first. “So what do we do? Go back tonight and they hunt us down all over again?”
“If I go back home, I might not be able to get back out for the ball. Especially if my parents find out I was at the deli today, which is doubly bad, since I’m grounded,” Leo says. He glances at Caleb suggestively. “Unless—”
“Absolutely not,” Caleb beats him to it. “I am not taking you to my house. I can’t put my sisters and dad in danger like that. I won’t.”
“I don’t want to, either,” I agree. “I’ll be in a similar boat once my uncle sees what happened to my room. He texted on our way to the deli that he’s heading back from Boston, so I don’t have much time. We can’t go home until we find the money and end this.”
“If we don’t go back, how will we get clothes for tomorrow’s party?” Quinn asks.
My beautiful crushed-velvet dress from my favorite vintage thrift shop comes to mind. The shop is a few hours away and probably won’t be open by the time we get there, but we’ll have plenty of time to stop tomorrow. Plus, getting as far away from Rosetown as possible seems like the best course of action. “I know a place.”
“Then it’s settled.” Leo gives the busted van a smack as he saunters back to the driver’s door. He flings it open, casting a grin at us over his shoulder. “For tonight, we’re fugitives.”