Rebel, Bully, Geek, Pariah (27 page)

 

35

“I GOT IT, I got it!” York said, to calm my panic.

I had desperately scribbled everything I could remember of the directions onto a page of Andi's sketch pad, but I'd missed at least three turns.

York snatched the pen away to stop my frantic scratching. “I know the area he's talking about. Just drive.”

I turned the key without hesitation now and threw the car into gear.

“Wait, wait!” Boston cried as I hit the gas. “Let's talk about this for a second!”

“Can we get there in an hour?” I asked York.

He nodded. “Yes, if we don't stop, but . . .”

“But what?”

“This is way beyond—it's more than . . . maybe we should just call the police.”

“They
are
the police!” I shouted. “Didn't you hear him? He was practically bragging about it.”

“So what?” Boston pulled himself into the space between York and me. “Not every cop is crooked.”

These guys were more than crooked. They were completely broken. Drugs did that to people. It didn't matter whether you were a user or a seller; somehow, you got messed up either way. I knew one end of the spectrum was waiting for me back home, but that problem seemed hopeless. I couldn't fix Mama, but I could do something about this.

“The police will believe us now,” Boston insisted. “This is too crazy to make up.”

“I know they will,” I admitted. I adjusted my mirrors without slowing down. “But that's not the point anymore.”

“Sam,” York started, his tone urgent but gentle. “We could be driving into some damn serious danger.”

“Could be,” I echoed. “But Andi is
definitely
in danger.”

Both boys started to talk at once, but I cut them off. “All I know is this: if we go to the cops, and
if
they believe us, and
if
they go straight to check this place out, we'll still have wasted time, and by then, Andi could be . . .”

I didn't want to think about what Andi could be.

There was a hitch in my voice when I spoke again. “But if we just do this now—
right now
—there's at least a chance to get her out of there. And
then
we go to the police,” I promised.

“Slow down,” York said.

“Just listen to me!”

“No, slow down! This is the turn!” He pointed up ahead at an unmarked road, and I hit the brakes, making the tires squeal.

We were thrown to the right as I skidded left onto new, uneven blacktop.

“York, what are you—” Boston started.

“Listen, B.” York turned to face his brother square. “If something happens to her, it's my fault.”

“How is it—”

“
I
took the car.
I
hit that cop.
Me
.” He gave Boston a sad smile. “That's what you said, right? That none of us would be here if it wasn't for me.”

“I didn't mean . . .”

“Sure you did. And it's okay; you were right. But it's on me, not you. So you don't have to come.”

“What?” I jerked the wheel in surprise. “But they said all three of us—”

“I don't care what they said,” York growled. “I screwed up, and I owe it to Andi to help, but I'm not risking my brother's life for her or for anyone. If he wants out, we let him out.”

I slowed the car to a crawl. I didn't like it, but the compromise seemed fair, and I would rather have at least York with me than no one.

Boston took an unsteady breath and rubbed a hand over his face. Then, to my eternal surprise, he looked York straight in the eye and shook his head.

“I stay with you,” he said. And he flopped back in his seat and didn't speak again.

Turn by turn, York directed us to a spot about ten miles downriver from where this had all begun. The fastest way to get there
would have been to drive straight into River City and follow the well-traveled highways that snaked along the riverbanks, but the directions seemed deliberately designed to keep us on back roads instead—a circuitous route meant to help us avoid police.

Help us? Or help them?

“We never figured out how much the drugs are worth,” York said during one long straightaway between turns. “It must be a lot, for them to . . .”

He didn't say “to kidnap and possibly torture a girl,” because he didn't have to.

I gripped the wheel tightly as I navigated around a pothole. “I think it's—I mean, I'm not sure, but—it could be close to a million dollars.”

The boys shot up straight.

“Wow.”

“Seriously?”

I worried the high stakes would change their minds, but York only said, “We should ask them for a cut.”

“Yeah, right.” Boston rolled his eyes.

“No, really. Promise not to go to the police if they deal us in.”

His halfhearted smile said he was only kidding, just trying to lighten the mood to help us through this drive into hell, but I suspected there was something legitimate behind the joke.

I glanced over long enough to catch his eye. “You know money won't keep you from being that guy on the toilet at the end of the world.”

He laughed. “Yeah, but maybe if I invest it right, the toilet will be made of gold.”

York twisted in his seat to look at Boston. “And you can go to Harvard.”

“Yale,” Boston answered.

“You decided?”

“Best law school in the country.” Boston's voice was monotone. “So I can send guys like them to prison.”

York nodded. “I hear bad things happen to cops in prison.”

“I hope so,” Boston said.

I set my lips in a thin line. It was hard to wish that kind of thing on anyone, but the only people who had ever treated Mama worse than the cops were the lowlifes who sold her drugs, and the people waiting for us were both—the lawmen and the lawless.

“Bad things happen to just about everyone in prison,” I said. “Trust me.”

The boys were quiet for a moment, then York said, “That phone call. Your mom . . .”

“Yeah.”

“Was she . . . ?”

“Yeah.”

The SUV bumped along on the uneven blacktop as the wind rushed in through the windows, a few of them broken and the rest rolled down because the assholes had somehow taken our air-conditioning, too.

“I thought she was clean now,” York said. “When you talked about her last night, I thought—”

“She is.” I bit the inside of my cheek. “She was.”

“You think she fell off the wagon because she was worried about you?”

“If she was struggling, she should have gone to a meeting,” I said. I hoped the conviction in my voice hid the guilt.

Boston leaned forward. “Like an AA meeting?”

“NA.”

“What's that?”

“Narcotics Anonymous.”

The boys waited for me to say more, but I just shrugged. “They take the same twelve steps.”

“Drag,” York said. “How long was she clean?”

“Four years today.”

It hit me then—just
bam
!—hit me so hard I had to slam on the brakes to keep from driving off the road. The SUV skidded to the side, and I heard a twin
thunk-thunk
as the boys slammed back into their seats.

I barely heard their shouts of “Whoa!” and “What the hell?!”

Zero days clean. Four years wiped out in one night.

I opened my car door and leaned out to retch.

“Gross,” Boston said behind me. His comment was followed by a yelp of pain and the sound of a car door opening and closing.

My eyes were still on the sick I'd left on the pavement, and York's shoes suddenly appeared in my field of vision. He crouched down in front of me, careful not to step in my mess.

“You want me to drive?” he asked, pushing a curl out of my eye and tucking it up under my hat.

I nodded and shimmied over to the passenger side so York could climb into the driver's seat.

“You're probably dehydrated,” Boston said. “When's the last time any of us had water?”

Dehydrated, devastated. Both good reasons for losing your lunch.
Not that we'd had any lunch. And now it was well past dinnertime, too. The leftover sick taste in my mouth begged for food and water.

“We're close now,” York promised as he pulled back onto the road.

“How do you know?” I asked.

“I detassel corn every summer. I've worked these fields.”

The farmland soon fell away, replaced by unplanted stretches of  land, wild with overgrown weeds and speckled with occasional trees. The forest loomed in front of us, and beyond that was the river, where an
X
marked the spot we were speeding toward.

 

36

THE LAST TEN minutes of the drive were almost unbearable.

York hummed “Unfortunate Addiction” as he drove, while Boston played with the buttons for the back windows—up up down, down down up, up up down, down down up. It was maddening, and I interrupted as often as possible to ask York when we would get to the next turn. Soon we were rolling through a narrow break in the woods, the SUV aimed directly at the river.

The first signs of life were draped over low-hanging tree branches. Damp shirts and shorts, towels, belts, and gun holsters hung like limp welcome signs as we pulled into a small clearing along the water.

“What's with the laundry?” Boston said.

“Uh, what's with the tents?” York pointed at the makeshift camp around us.

Small pup tents ringed a fire pit built up with rocks. Between the tents, broken-down cars in various stages of
repair sat rusting, their hoods studded with beer cans. More cans and other trash littered the site, stretching from the fire all the way to the water's edge, where a long speedboat had been dragged halfway onto the shore. More laundry was draped across its nose, drying in the last rays of sun as evening turned to night.

“What is this?” York said. He parked the car but kept the engine running, his hands tense on the wheel.

“They're camping out, I guess,” Boston said.

I peered through the windshield at the mess in front of us. “For how long?”

“Longer than just since last night,” York observed.

“Where are they?” Boston whispered.

I opened the door to find out, but York grabbed my elbow. “Be careful.”

We left careful back in that broken-down taco shop lot outside River City Park.
Every decision since then had been crazy.
Mad
.

I pulled out of York's grasp, and he killed the engine and followed me out of the SUV with Boston close behind, each of them shouldering a pack with our half of the trade.

“This doesn't feel right,” he said.

No shit.

From the center of the camp, with the fire pit at our feet, everything became a little clearer. The cars weren't being repaired so much as stripped for parts. Various pieces of metal were divided by size and shape into individual piles, and a fold-out camping table held an array of electronics similar to the ones that used to fill the SUV.

“That's a cop car,” Boston said, pointing to one of the rusty vehicles. “A real one. Not undercover.”

I had no idea what to make of that. Did they steal it from their own department? Or maybe it was a discontinued model? It was hard to think with my nose full of the sickly sweet smell of old beer warmed by the sun. This place was disgusting, and it had clearly been this way for a very long time.

York spoke, his voice low. “I'm starting to think these guys are more criminal than cop.”

“Where's Andi?” I said, kicking a beer can in frustration. “Where's
anyone
?”

“Maybe they didn't expect us to get here so soon,” Boston said. His voice sounded small, and I noticed he was standing very close to his brother.

I jerked my chin toward the water. “You think that's the boat they had at the dock?”

We walked as a group toward the speedboat, and as we drew closer, I realized with a start that the clothes drying on the bow were not your average duds. They were all black—pants and button-down shirts, the collars pierced through with small gold stars, thick patches stitched onto the short sleeves.

River City police patches.

“This is wrong,” I whispered.

I didn't care where these guys did business—or their laundry, for that matter—but I doubted this was how any cop, crooked or not, took care of his uniform. The edges of the pants were frayed; some of the shirt seams were pulling loose; and the gold plating on the stars had worn thin in places to reveal plain, dull metal underneath.

Grandma always said things were clearer in the light of day. She was usually referring to Mama sleeping off a bender, but it seemed to apply here, too.

“Very wrong,” I said again. “We need to get out of—”

A car engine cut me off—or, more accurately, a truck engine.

We turned to see the pickup that had found us at the cabin and had sped away with Andi emerging from the trees. The driver maneuvered deliberately, parking the truck at an angle that blocked our road out of the campsite.

I felt the boys' shoulders bump into mine as our group instinctively pulled together.

The truck doors opened and closed, and three men hopped out, all of them long and lean, with smirking, unshaved faces. But only one of those faces was familiar.

He stepped forward as the other two circled carefully to either side until we were surrounded. The familiar face motioned for us to come closer, and I saw he was beckoning not with a hand but with a gun.

“Welcome!” His voice was booming and almost buoyant, but no smile touched his lips. “Welcome to my office. Please, have a seat.”

He gestured around at the various tree stumps and broken lawn chairs that had been stationed by the fire. His words were inviting, but when none of us took him up on his offer, he pointed his gun and turned it into a command.