When Bran pulled into the parking lot behind Rosa’s Trattoria, he didn’t see Rick at first. He got out of his car and walked across the parking lot and the darkened alley at his normal ambling pace, occasionally glancing up at the fireworks. July Fourth had always been his favorite holiday as a kid, and even though he would never admit it to Rick or any of his other macho friends, he loved watching the beautiful colors tracing across the sky.
He was almost to the back door of the Starlite when he heard the sound: a rhythmic thumping, like someone dribbling a basketball, with a few grunts and curses mixed in. His heart rate quickened, and he jogged toward the sound. There was movement in the shadow of a big green Dumpster and he hurried toward it, but the sight he witnessed there made him freeze.
It was Rick, and he was kneeling over someone. There was so much blood the guy’s face was unrecognizable, but whoever it was made no effort to defend himself. He just lay there, completely limp, no more animate than a pile of dirty laundry.
For a second Bran felt like his brain had come untethered from his body and he watched, frozen with a bizarre sense of horrified detachment, as Rick cocked his fist back and brought it down once more on the distorted, unrecognizable face beneath him.
Then Bran was moving, grabbing Rick from behind, yanking him hard enough to haul his much bigger frame halfway across the alley in one mighty heave. He was talking, too, though he didn’t remember when he’d started to speak: “Rick! What the hell are you doing? Stop! Stop! What did you do?”
Rick thrashed, but Bran was so juiced with adrenaline that it took Rick a moment to shake free of his grasp.
“Get off me!” Rick shouted. “That little Flats bitch had it coming, all right, for screwing around in my father’s business.”
Bran stared down at the figure on the ground. That was one of the Flatliners? The face was so bloody and broken he couldn’t tell which one it was.
His body shivered violently, and for a second he thought he was going to throw up. Fumbling in his pocket, he pulled out his cell phone.
“What the hell are you doing?” Rick demanded.
“Calling an ambulance—what do you think?” Bran shouted.
Rick grabbed him and started dragging him away.
“Let go of me, Rick!”
By now, Rick had hauled Bran into the dimly lit parking lot between his SUV and a big delivery van. Sheltered from prying eyes, he grabbed the front of Bran’s shirt and jerked him like a rag doll, so hard that his cell phone fell out of his hand.
“You listen to me, Bran. Listen carefully. You are part of this. Do you understand me?”
“We have to call, man. We don’t, and he’s going to die!”
“And what does that make you, tough guy? An accessory. Think about it. We have to get out of here.”
Bran was shaking his head.
“Yes,” Rick snarled. “We’re getting out of here.”
“No—Rick! We can’t leave him like this! What’s wrong with you?”
Rick jerked Bran again, so hard his teeth clacked together.
“You want to sell me out, Bran? You sure about that? You want your dad to lose his job? You want your parents to get tossed out of their house like a lousy Flats rat? And they’ll lose their son, too, because I’ll make damn sure everyone knows you helped me do it. Who do you think the police will believe? Jack Banfield’s son—or you?”
Bran felt a tide of remorse and desperation like he’d never felt in his life. He suddenly realized that he hated Rick, that he’d always hated him. Why had he ever been friends with this guy in the first place? Just because he could throw a football? Because he hung out with all the hot cheerleaders? At that moment, Bran would have given anything in the world for a button he could press to rewind his life, so he could do it all again and never talk to Rick Banfield. What would it matter if he never played football, or if he wasn’t popular? But there was no magical rewind button; it was too late.
And Rick was right. What good would it do anyone for Bran to end up in jail? For his father to lose his life’s work? The kid was already hurt—nothing was going to change that.
“Listen. Spike Ferrington is having a training intensive in Topeka this weekend,” Rick said. “We’re going down there until Monday when all this has blown over. Now, we’re going to stop by your house and drop your car off. I’ll follow you, then you get in with me and we roll to Topeka. Got it?”
Spike was Rick’s mixed martial arts instructor, Bran knew. He was one of the best in the state.
“Sure,” Bran said, so quietly he could barely hear himself. “But what about school tomorrow?”
“Don’t worry—my dad will work it out. Now go!”
As he pulled out of the parking lot, Bran looked back and saw the restaurant door opening, casting a puddle of warm yellow light across the concrete. Even from inside the car, he could hear the scream of whoever it was that discovered the kid Rick had brutalized. And he felt a measure of relief. It would be okay. Whoever it was would call an ambulance.
After they left his car in his driveway, parked next to his mom’s little Smart Car, Bran jogged over to Rick’s SUV and climbed into the passenger seat.
Rick, behind the wheel, was looking down at himself. “Dammit—would you look at this? I got blood on my brand-new shirt. Typical . . .” he grumbled.
“Who was it?” Bran asked.
“Who was what?” Rick seemed perfectly calm now—relaxed, even.
“The kid in the alley.”
“Oh—it was that fairy Emory. Look, man—it had to be done. He was messing up my dad’s business in the Flats. Somebody had to teach him a lesson.”
Bran stared at the dashboard. In the sky above them, one final firework ignited, its fast-fading glow drizzling across the windshield before disappearing again into darkness.
The worst part, Bran thought, was that he didn’t even know which Flatliner was Emory. As much as he’d hated the rival gang members and wanted to hurt them and blamed them for his and his friends’ problems, the sad fact was that he didn’t know them at all.
* * *
Clarisse hurried up the alley as fast as she could without breaking into a run.
After leaving Rick, she had doubled back to sit on the curb outside the parking lot, out of the reach of streetlights, and watch the door to Rick’s little upstairs lair. She knew they weren’t exclusive but somehow knowing it made her feel even more possessive, and she’d decided to spy on him to see if that conceited cheerleader Maggie was going to show up. The thought of catching Rick in a lie gave her a painful satisfaction, she thought, like when you wiggle a loose tooth with your tongue: even though it hurts and you can taste your own blood, somehow it’s impossible to stop.
When she had first started following Rick, if someone had asked her what the attraction was, she wouldn’t have been able to tell them. Sure, she’d always had a thing for bad boys—her fling with that drug dealer back home after Nass had moved to Middleburg proved that. Her relationship with Oscar Salazar had been sick—so sick that she’d scammed him out of a ton of money and had to flee Los Angeles in fear for her life. But never, even during her thing with Oscar, had she obsessed over a guy like she was doing with Rick.
It wasn’t just because he was hot or rich or because he was a football star. She liked those things, but they didn’t fascinate her. Rick had a certain indefinable primitive power about him, like some kind of exotic jungle beast. She liked the way he just grabbed her when he was in the mood to make out, without bothering to see if she was up for it. That, she just thought of as taking charge (which she really liked in a guy), but there was something more, something deeper in him that she was trying to discover. It was like . . . a kind of dark, uncontrollable energy bordering on violence that was always on the edge of erupting. And if she could discover what drove Rick, what gave him the brute strength that was somehow connected to the darkness, she might be able to control him.
She had been sitting there on the curb, in the shadows, thinking about all this when Emory, Myka, and Haylee had emerged from the car. She’d seen Rick come out of the doorway. She’d inched silently forward behind a row of hedges that formed one border of the parking lot, and from the hidden shelter of their boughs she’d watched what Rick had done to Emory. In the fleeting glare of the fireworks, she’d even caught a glimpse of the same thing she’d seen the night of the big fight on the tracks when she thought she’d lost her mind. The thing she watched for every time they made out, and both hoped and dreaded to see: Rick’s face transformed into that of a snarling demon.
That night, the sight had filled her with fascination that had quickly turned into lust, even though she had been sure she had imagined it. But tonight, she knew it was real. Maybe she should have felt revulsion after witnessing the beating he gave Emory, but her fascination with and desire for Rick hadn’t diminished at all. The truth was, it had increased tenfold.
After Rick and Bran took off, she lingered long enough to see Myka emerge from the back door of the restaurant. She heard Myka’s scream, and she saw her push Emory’s little sister back inside. She’d heard Myka’s words coming out in sobs as she called the ambulance. Then, as stealthily as possible, Clarisse split. If growing up streetwise in one of the worst neighborhoods in L.A. had taught her anything, it was the skill of selective amnesia. It was not a good thing to be the only witness to a crime, especially when the perpetrator was rich and well connected. No, she told herself, she hadn’t seen anything. If the cops ever found out she’d been with Rick that night, she’d make sure they knew she’d left Rick and headed straight home, and that she was blocks away when the fight had happened.
It wouldn’t be as easy to manage Rick as it was to manipulate Nass, she thought as she cut up the next side street toward the brightness and relative bustle of Middleburg’s main thoroughfare. She’d fallen for Rick because she thought he was dangerous. She was a little afraid of him, and the fear was delicious—and there could be a great advantage to having a demon for a boyfriend. If her plan worked out, all her problems with Oscar and his drug-dealing crew back in South Central would be solved—permanently.
* * *
The sound of the scream jerked Maggie out of her meditation and caused her eyes to snap open.
Just a few months ago, the idea that she would be happy sitting at home alone and meditating on Valentine’s Day night would have been completely inconceivable. But tonight, that’s just what she’d done. She had taken a bath, caught up on her homework, read a book for a while, watched some stupid videos online, texted back and forth to some of her friends to check up on their night, and then settled in for her daily meditation, just as Lily Rose and The Good Book had instructed her to do. The book the old woman had given Maggie not long after homecoming, when she’d felt so lost and confused, did give her comfort and guidance even though she didn’t quite understand how it worked. At first, she’d thought it was a Bible, but when she’d opened it she’d seen that it was something very different. Its blank pages were luminous, like clouds at night with the moon shining through them. And just when you needed an answer most, words would appear on those pages. But they hadn’t yet told her what to do about Rick.
A flower-delivery guy came by earlier with his pathetic bouquet, his attempt at maintaining the charade of their relationship. Even that hadn’t dampened Maggie’s mood. She had no idea what had made him relax his controlling attitude toward her over the last couple of months, but whatever it was, she was grateful. He still went through the motions. Sometimes he’d force a kiss from her in the lunchroom, where she wouldn’t be able to pull away without causing a scene. Sometimes he’d coerce her, with veiled threats about her mother’s health, into going with him to one of his Topper dinners at Spinnacle. But more and more he left her alone, and that was fine with her.
The only boy she really wanted to spend Valentine’s Day with had been vaporized on the old railroad tracks by a spectral locomotive. The memory sent a blinding howl of agony through her soul.
She didn’t know where Raphael was or what had happened to him, but for some reason she held out hope that somewhere, somehow, he was still alive. She’d seen enough magic in this weird old dump of a small town that nothing would surprise her. Sometimes when she meditated she could almost feel Raphael’s presence; it felt like if she just concentrated hard enough, she would be able to reach out her hand and find him there. She was having that extraordinary, heavenly feeling on Valentine’s Day night when her mother’s scream cut her meditation short.
Maggie galloped down the stairs and into her mother’s breakfast-room-turned-art-studio in seconds.
“What, Mom? What happened?” she asked, but as soon as the words were out of her mouth, she saw the answer.
The tapestry her mother worked obsessively on day and night was suspended in front of her, the fabric held taut by a huge wooden frame. And the part of the picture her mother had been embroidering was now covered in blood.
Violet sat in a chair in front of the tapestry, gripping her wrist.
“I—I didn’t do it!” she stammered as Maggie hurried over to assess the situation.
Her mother’s half-eaten New York strip steak sat on a plate nearby. The steak knife lay discarded on the floor near her feet. Even without picking it up, Maggie could see blood on its edge.
“Let me see,” Maggie commanded, gently taking Violet’s injured arm and pulling her fingers away from it. A thin stream of blood drizzled from the wound, and Maggie felt her stomach turn.
“Oh, Mom!” she shouted, and she grabbed the linen napkin off the table and hurried to bind up the cut.
“I wasn’t trying to hurt myself, Maggie. I swear! I fell asleep—I—and when I woke up, I was bleeding.”
“Mom . . .” Maggie began, but she didn’t know what to say. She wanted to chastise her mother. In the long progression of Violet’s mental illness, this was a new low. But what was the point in yelling at her? Violet had never understood or cared how her erratic actions affected Maggie, and anyway, the priority now was to get her medical attention.
“We have to get you to the clinic in Benton,” Maggie sighed. “I’ll get my purse.”
“No! Just call Master Chin.”
Maggie rolled her eyes. “He’s an old kung fu teacher, Mom. Not a doctor.”
“He’s a healer, and he’s better than anybody over in Benton,” Violet said defiantly. “And anyway, I’m not leaving. I have too much work to do.”
Maggie couldn’t keep the disdain out of her voice. “Work? On what, the tapestry? In case you didn’t notice, Mom, it’s ruined. Just like my night.” She tried to swallow the bitter thought: Just like all my nights, trying to take care of you.
At the mention of the tapestry, they both glanced at it. This design was huge. It was by far the largest tapestry her mother had ever undertaken, and she had been working on a small section in one corner when the “accident” had happened. As Maggie stared at the bloodstained cloth, a bizarre realization struck her. The scene her mother had been working on was of a young man lying prostrate in an alleyway. Violet’s blood had stained the canvas in such a way that it looked like the blood was seeping from the body, onto the ground beneath it. The design wasn’t ruined, Maggie realized with morbid fascination. Quite the opposite—the blood had completed it.
She knew from overhearing conversations between her mother and Master Chin that the scenes depicted in the tapestries sometimes seemed to reflect things that were really happening in Middleburg or things that were going to happen. And she didn’t care to imagine what ramifications this image might hold.
Maggie studied the creepy scene for a moment longer and then blinked and shook her head, as if trying to dislodge the image from her mind. “I’ll call Master Chin,” she said.
* * *
Zhai sat in the flickering candlelight in Kate’s train car. They’d finished the dinner she’d prepared on her new electric stove, talked for a while, and then Zhai had shown her how to load the dishes into the dishwasher he’d had installed as a surprise while she was staying at Lily Rose’s. He’d had the whole place decked out while she was away.
When he’d flipped a switch and the lights had come on (thanks to the gas-powered generator) her sudden, awed intake of breath was captivating. She squealed with delight when he turned on the faucet of the new sink and water flowed through it from a well he’d had drilled. She was thrilled with the stove and the small refrigerator, too. In her little living room section, he’d placed a Bose iPod SoundDock that played romantic music throughout their meal. He’d had a bathroom installed, complete with a shower, and there was even a 3-D HDTV mounted to the back wall of the car connected to a satellite dish affixed to the roof.
She’d been especially delighted with the television set, but they hadn’t turned it on yet tonight. Oddly enough, the only thing that fascinated Kate more than the TV was the dishwasher. As it churned away quietly in the kitchenette section of the train car, she kept glancing over at it with a look of wide-eyed, childlike amazement on her face. She hadn’t really believed him when he’d told her it was a machine just for washing dishes.
“To think!” she said. “’Tis a wonder, truly!”
Kate’s reactions to modern conveniences were not lost on Zhai. She also had a strange, old-world way of talking that was just as charming as her accent, and he had several theories about where she might have come from in Ireland. He knew from the Internet that there were Amish communities in Ireland, and there were convents; it was entirely possible that Kate had grown up in one of them.
So far, she had volunteered little information about how she’d come to America or what her life was like before she arrived, and Zhai respected their unspoken agreement by not asking too many questions. Still, he found her sense of wonder at the simplest things fascinating, and infectious.
“Really, Zhai, you shouldn’t have done so much for me. You’ve turned my little home into the eighth wonder of the world!” she exclaimed, and reaching across the table, she took his hand.
He felt his heart rate increase, and he took a deep breath, trying to steady himself. “It was nothing,” he said. “I still wish you’d think about staying with my family. The guesthouse is hardly ever used—” But Kate was already shaking her head.
“Thank you. You’re so sweet to me, but I’ve never been one to accept charity. And I don’t expect I’ll be stayin’ in Middleburg much longer. . . .”
Zhai looked into her eyes, and this time, for once, he didn’t let himself look away.
“Kate, I know we don’t talk about that much—why you came, when you’re going back—but if you’re having trouble getting home, if you need a plane ticket, I’d be happy to get one for you—round-trip, so you could come back whenever you like. Or I could loan you the money.”
Kate’s smile was sad and joyous at once. “Fly on one of those big silver monsters?” she exclaimed with a laugh. “Actually, I would love it, but I’m afraid it isn’t as simple as all that . . . I wouldn’t leave Middleburg at all if it weren’t for my family.”
Zhai nodded. “I just want to help you however I can. And when the time comes, I want you to do what you need to do to be happy. Even if that means going away from me for a while.”
Kate smiled; she looked radiant, and as always, it made him want to kiss her and never stop kissing her. He forced himself to continue.
“But in the meantime,” he said, his heart now beating out of control and beads of sweat slipping down his forehead and his sides beneath his shirt. “In the meantime,” he repeated, fighting to keep his voice steady, “I was hoping that maybe you might want to . . . to be my girlfriend.”
“I’ve been wondering when you’d get up the gumption to ask,” she said sweetly. “Certainly! Of course I will!”
Zhai was so delighted he laughed out loud, and Kate joined in. Her laugh seemed like music to him, and it was the most carefree sound in the world. It made him laugh even louder.
“Well, I expect you should kiss me now, don’t you?” she asked.
Suddenly serious, Zhai’s gaze softened and he leaned across the table. “Yes,” he whispered and his voice was steady and sure. “I believe I should.” Just as their lips were about to meet, something buzzed loudly in his jacket pocket.
“Just, um . . . just a second . . .”
He dug into his pocket for a moment before finally pulling out his cell phone. He was about to shut it off when he looked at the screen and saw that it was Master Chin. Phone calls from Zhai’s kung fu instructor where rare. If Chin called, it was usually for something really important.
“I should take it,” he said apologetically, and he answered the call.
The conversation was brief. Chin was at Maggie Anderson’s house, and he needed Zhai to come there right away; it was urgent.
“I’ll be there soon,” Zhai promised and ended the call. “Sorry,” he said as he turned back to Kate, who was eyeing the phone in his hand. They’d had a few conversations about how cell phones worked, but Kate was still almost overcome with wonder every time Zhai made or got a call. That would have to be his next gift to her, he vowed to himself: a cell phone.
“I really have to go,” he told her. “Master Chin is waiting for me in Hilltop Haven. I guess it’s something important. You can come, if you want,” he added hopefully.
“Oh, I’d love to, my dear—but if it’s all the same, I’d like to stay here. I can’t wait to see the dishes when they come out of the washer machine!”
Zhai laughed. “Okay,” he said. “You remember how to open it?”
She nodded.
“Thanks for being my valentine, okay?”
Kate beamed at him. “Always,” she said.
* * *
It was getting pretty late by the time Zhai got to the palatial Anderson house. He was surprised when Maggie answered his knock.
“Hey, Maggie,” he said. “I figured you’d be out with Rick.”
She gave him a mysterious smile. “Nope. He let me off the hook tonight. Come on in. Master Chin and my mom are in the sewing room.”
Zhai followed Maggie into the room and found Master Chin sitting with Mrs. Anderson, taping a fresh bandage on her arm.
“Zhai, I’m glad you came,” Master Chin said as Zhai entered the room. He finished securing the bandage and then stood and went to Zhai, speaking quickly. Whatever was going on, Zhai knew, it had to be urgent.
“Look at the tapestry with me,” Chin said, steering him toward the large expanse of fabric suspended within a wooden frame. It was a large swatch of heavy, off-white cloth, and about half of it had a scene embroidered onto it; the rest was blank. Chin pointed to the bottom right-hand corner of the tapestry, which had been completed, and Zhai’s gaze followed his gesture. The scene depicted a person lying face down in a pool of what looked to Zhai like real blood that had soaked into the canvas.
“This scene in particular,” Chin said. “I think it might have recently taken place—or it’s about to. Have you seen anything like this? Or heard about anyone injured recently?”
“No,” Zhai said, studying the picture. Staring at the image seemed to evoke a swirling of Shen energy, like a cold ball deep within his chest cavity. It wasn’t the normally warm, life-affirming Shen he was used to experiencing. This feeling, he was sure, was a warning—or a premonition.
“What about the rest? What does it bring to mind?”
Zhai squinted at the part of the tapestry just above the fallen person. It appeared to depict a different scene, this one of a darkened space with a bright, arched doorway leading out of it. In the center of the dark space there was a ring-shaped object—it looked solid at first, but upon closer inspection, it appeared as if it was broken and had been pieced back together.
As Zhai stared at it, the dark room on the tapestry suddenly seemed to shift, and his eyes picked out a pattern of threads that were a slightly lighter shade of black than the others. He was able to make out the outline of a person who floated, ghost-like, above the ring. The figure was featureless, but Zhai could see that it had broad, masculine shoulders and long hair. Raphael, he thought instantly. As his eyes traced downward, he noticed something else that hadn’t jumped out at first glance: a subtle pattern at the bottom of the embroidered room that looked like crossed railroad tracks.
“It’s Raphael,” Zhai said quietly. “Or his ghost. And it looks like he’s in the old rail tunnels, at the Wheel of Illusion. The ring is there too, and it’s been put back together. It’s like . . . like it’s making him materialize.”
Master Chin nodded eagerly. “I thought so too,” the sifu agreed. “Do you still have your shard of the ring?”
“Yes,” Zhai said.
“Meet me outside the east tunnel at noon tomorrow, and bring it with you. If you can get any other shards, bring those too—and I’ll bring mine as well. Perhaps there is still enough Shen in them to spark the Wheel back to life.”
“You think that’s what this means? That if we get the shards back together we’ll be able to bring Raph back from wherever he is?”
“I don’t know,” Master Chin said darkly. “But I think it’s important that we try.”
“Okay. Noon,” Zhai agreed.
“I’m coming too,” Maggie said quickly, and the guys both turned around and looked at her.
Zhai glanced at his sifu, expecting him to contradict her, but instead he said, “Good. Zhai will pick you up.”
It seemed like a surprising turn of events, until Zhai remembered the blast of Shen that Maggie had unleashed during the last battle at the tracks—the one that had sent the Obies’ Black Snake God flying. She had been wearing her homecoming queen crown, and some kind of energy had seemed to flow from it, and through Maggie, with incredible force. With power like that, no wonder Master Chin wasn’t too worried about her safety. Besides, Maggie had taken part in all the searches for Raphael so far. Zhai didn’t know why, but she seemed just as eager to find him as any of the Flats kids were. If she wanted to come along, Zhai would be glad to have her.
He glanced at his watch. “I’d better go,” he said. “I’m ten minutes past curfew. After Li’s illness and then my disappearing with those Black Snake guys, my parents get pretty jumpy when we’re late these days.”
“Zhai—one more thing,” Master Chin said as he gazed at the bloodstained cloth. “Keep your eyes open for this injured person, whoever he is. If there’s any way you can, try to prevent it from happening. I fear that once this event takes place, there will be no stopping what will follow.”
“And what’s that?” Maggie asked.
“Middleburg’s darkest destiny,” Chin replied.
* * *
Nass had been lying on the floor of the windowless interrogation room for hours, drifting in and out of sleep. This time when he woke up, however, something was different. There was warm air blowing on his face, and he could hear voices. They sounded like they were echoing to him from far away, but he could hear them clearly. It only took him a moment to determine that the two voices belonged to Agent Hackett and Detective Zalewski.
“Listen,” Z was saying. “These kids are full of crap. You saw their statements. They read like the freakin’ Lord of the Rings.”
“Thank you, detective, but I’ll decide that for myself,” Hackett replied, his voice icy calm.
“These kids are scum, agent. The dregs of Middleburg. We’re talking broken homes, alcoholic parents, flunkin’ out of school, getting into fights. They’d say Martians landed in Hilltop Haven if they thought it would get them off the hook for something. Their stories are nonsense.”
“Are they? What if I were to tell you that the National Ocean and Atmospheric Administration satellites registered a massive energy disturbance in this region at the exact time these kids are claiming their friend disappeared in an explosion? Would you still say they are all liars, detective?”
“Well, okay, sure,” Z stammered. “We noted some trees had been knocked down in the area. You’ll see that in the reports. Probably some stupid teenager’s cherry bomb or something. What does this have to do with your case, anyway? I thought you said this was a manhunt.”
Hackett’s voice lowered in volume, so that Nass had to inch toward the source of the sound in order to hear him.
“Detective, I’m sure you’ve heard in the movies where a spy says, ‘I could tell you, but then I’d have to kill you’? Well, I’ll tell you this, but it’s absolutely classified. So if you repeat it to anyone . . .”
“Understood,” Z interrupted gruffly. “I just want to be in the loop so I can cooperate with you, Agent Hackett, that’s all.”
There was a pause and then Hackett continued. “The guy we’re looking for is a Chinese secret agent, specializing in advanced energy generation and weapons system technology. He works completely off the grid, and his men are insanely loyal. According to our reports, they operate almost like a cult. Now as lovely as Middleburg is, I don’t think Feng Xu and his agents are here looking to take a five-star Kansas vacation.”
“So what are they after?” Z asked. “It’s not like we have any advanced energy generation equipment or weapons systems in Middleburg—do we?”
“That’s what I intend to find out, detective. One thing all these kids’ stories have in common is some treasure—a ring—that exploded, releasing so much energy that it was detected from space. Whatever it was, it sounds like it vaporized this Raphael Kain kid. And before this ring surfaced, Chinese agents were combing the town looking for it. I think you can connect the dots.”
“So . . . what? You stopped the demolition in the Flats because you think the ring is still hidden there someplace?”
“My mission isn’t to find the ring,” Hackett said. “The witnesses all say it was destroyed in the blast, anyway. All I care about is capturing Feng Xu. He’s clearly here because he’s after something. Maybe it’s some technology associated with the ring, maybe something else. Whatever it is, I won’t allow one scrap of evidence to be destroyed until I’ve got him. That means nothing gets bulldozed, nothing gets renovated, and no one leaves town. I’ve already got more men en route, and we’re setting up checkpoints on all roads in and out of Middleburg.”
“What about the Flats kid?” Z asked.
“I’ll worry about him. Your job is now PR. As the investigation unfolds, residents are going to call with questions. Your job is to BS them until they stop asking. Got it?”
“Whatever you say, Wade. I’m a team player.”
Nass heard a groan of chairs scraping across the floor, as if both men had stood up from a table. A second later, he heard the door open, and Agent Hackett entered and flipped on the lights.
Nass looked over and saw where the voices had been coming from: there was a hot-air vent in the floor right next to the spot where he’d passed out. The voices must have traveled to him through the heating duct. He was glad he’d heard the conversation, but he still wasn’t sure what to make of it—or what it would mean for him now.
Hackett sat down in the room’s only chair once again and calmly flipped through a file as Nass sat up and squinted at him, his vision adjusting to the sudden glare.
“What time is it?” he asked.
Hackett ignored the question. “The statements of several witnesses mention a glowing ring of some kind that was seen on the night that Raphael Kain disappeared.”
“Yeah, there was a ring,” Nass confirmed.
“And where is it now?”
“It disappeared. In the explosion.”
“Where there any remains? Any pieces of it left lying around?”
The knowing flared once again, an overwhelming feeling that urged Nass to keep silent. He could tell the truth about everything else, but something told him that telling this guy about the ring shards would be a bad idea.
He shrugged. “My friends and I walked all over those tracks while we were looking for Raphael. Maybe it vaporized.”
“Or maybe those Obies picked up whatever was left of it?”
“Maybe,” Nass said. “After the explosion I never saw the Obies again.”
Hackett’s shrewd gaze lingered on Nass for a long moment before he spoke again. “You remember that picture I showed you?” he said finally. “I expect you to let me know if you see that man or any of his minions again. I know you and your pals are out running the streets all the time. Keep me posted, all right?”
He handed Nass a plain white business card. It had his name printed on it, Agent Wade Hackett, and a phone number—nothing else.
“You help me out, I can be your best friend. If not, not. You feel me, Ignacio? Do we understand each other?”
“Yep. Got it,” Nass said, unable to restrain his irritation any longer. “Can I go now, please? I have a date. It is Valentine’s Day, you know.”
Hackett chuckled, glancing at his watch. “Not anymore, it isn’t,” he said.
* * *
Dalton sat on the edge of her bed, staring at a picture of herself and Nass from the Middleburg High School annual play. It was slightly warped from the spots where her tears had hit it, but it was dry now. She had finished crying a long time ago.
She heard her grandmother’s gentle knock at the door and looked up.
“Just wanted to say goodnight, sweetie,” Lily Rose said, peering around the edge of the doorframe. She moved to walk away, and then paused. “Don’t you worry, sugar. Nass is a good boy. If he stood you up, I expect he had a good reason.”
Dalton forced a sad smile. “He always does,” she said.
She knew exactly what her grandmother was saying: be kind, be patient, forgive and forget. But those were just words. Actions were what mattered. Nass had blown her off for Clarisse at the homecoming dance, and now he’d stood her up on Valentine’s Day. Of course she wanted to be forgiving, as her grandma always urged her to be. But she also knew that she deserved a guy she didn’t have to forgive all the time. And she was afraid she’d have to accept the heartbreaking fact that Nass wasn’t that guy.
Her grandmother’s sigh seemed to contain enough sympathy to match the pathos Dalton was feeling—and then some.
“Goodnight, little girl of mine. See you in the morning shine,” she said.
“’Night, Grandma,” Dalton said. And with a heavy heart, she reached over and turned out the light.