Chapter Twelve

Impatient Bait

“Months? It can’t take months. They’re the FBI!” I moaned to Grace as we made our way home along Luna Vista Drive. Maybe my dad was right when he grumbled about government inefficiency.

The sun was still out, but the wind gusted. I zipped up my hoodie. Grace had given up on the beret. Her black hair flapped behind her as she strode ahead of me. My legs felt too unsteady to walk any faster.

“Did you see her gun? I totally saw her gun,” Grace said, breathless. “It was, like, right there.”

I turned to look for the sedan. The road was empty. Then an engine rattled, and the familiar blue car rounded the corner and idled by a stop sign. I couldn’t quite get used to being reassured by it.

“Government sure gives them crappy cars, though.”

“Shhh!” Grace said as she twisted around to check for Ralston.

I rolled my eyes. “I don’t think her hearing’s supersonic.”

A basketball thumped behind the gate of a one-story Spanish-style house we passed. Shoes shuffled on concrete; someone laughed. Life moved on cheerfully here in Luna Vista among the flame-red bougainvillea and swaying trees. On the other side of the street, a dad pushed a stroller, cooing at his kid. He had no idea an FBI agent was playing cat and mouse with a fugitive right here in town.

“You think she’s a sharpshooter?” Grace asked. “She probably is. I wonder if she trained at Quantico.”

I didn’t know what Quantico was, and I didn’t ask. “I hope Ralston’s sharpshooting is better than her driving,” I said.

Grace prattled on as she kicked a pinecone ahead of her, offering up an endless stream of imagined run-ins between Ralston and mafia kingpins, drug lords, serial murderers, and kidnappers. “What do you think Agford did?” she asked before providing her own terrifying answers. I tuned her out. I had to—for my own sanity.

“Don’t you think they’d want to move faster?” I interrupted.

“You heard her. They don’t know that she’s definitely a fugitive, Sophie.” Grace sounded as reasonable as Trista, but she sure wasn’t.

“C’mon,” I argued. “The FBI is looking for her. She said, ‘If they find us, we’ll rip out their throats.’ And what about the wig? And the convertible?”

Grace slowed her pace and spun her beret around one finger. “Ralston’s been eavesdropping on our walkie-talkie sessions,” she said. “She knows what we’ve found. It obviously wasn’t enough. You heard her. The evidence needs to be airtight.”

“I just don’t understand how it can be that hard,” I said, almost under my breath. It wasn’t like Grace was listening. In fact, you’d have thought she’d joined the bureau ranks, the way she was acting. Apart from the beret spinning, that is.

“What if the FBI busts in and arrests some middle-school counselor?” Grace’s watches rattled on her wrist as she threw up her hands. A squirrel scurried up a nearby tree. “You think you have a public-relations disaster at school? They’d be dealing with worse than therapy and yard work, Sophie.”

“Wouldn’t it look worse if some innocent middle-school kid got butchered by a fugitive they were tracking?” I shot back.

Grace shook her head. She ran her fingers through her hair. “The FBI’s not going to let that happen,” she said.

“Grace, nobody but us knows the FBI is tailing Agford,” I said. “If Agford killed an innocent kid and they captured her after, it’d just look like the murder had tipped them off. They’d be heroes, practically.”

Hold out baits to entice the enemy, Sun Tzu said. The truth of my own words sunk in. Could we really be bait for Agford? The FBI could pluck a hair from Agford (maybe not from the wig, but still) and run a DNA test if they really wanted to know if they had their woman. Couldn’t they at least get fingerprints matched? Instead they were settling in for a months-long operation and hoping a four-foot-six twelve-year-old would Wild Goose Opens Wings her way to survival if the going got rough. Something else was happening.

“You’re talking about you and me, you know,” Grace said, her voice growing quieter. “We’re the innocent kids.”

“Exactly.” I looked up the road toward Agford’s. I couldn’t believe that tomorrow I was going to be there alone.

“But it goes against every protocol,” Grace continued. “I haven’t even read about one case . . .” She stopped midstride and turned to me, her eyes wide. “Oh my God. You think the FBI has accepted that that might be how this all shakes out? They’re just waiting until . . .” She clearly couldn’t bear to finish.

We stood in silence outside my house. The sky glowed pink. Behind us Mr. Valdez was out in his front yard with a hose, overwatering his lawn again. As usual Mr. Maxwell wore his short shorts and tube socks while he surveyed his geraniums.

“Nah, you’re right,” I said. “We’re just kids. The FBI wouldn’t let that happen.”

But I didn’t believe my own words. I pictured Agent Ralston’s eyes. They were such an honest blue, maybe I could have overlooked the worry that clouded them. Agent Ralston knew something we didn’t. Her fear ran deep. “This mission can’t fail,” Ralston had said. Were Agford’s crimes gruesome enough that Ralston’s higher-ups had decided they’d risk the worst to catch her?

“We can’t just stand by and let this happen,” Grace said, as if she’d heard my thoughts.

I looked behind us at the empty street, then at Agford’s house.

“No,” I said. “No, we can’t.”