The uncomfortable feeling that had been creeping over me since I’d set foot in Dr. Alistair’s office got stronger than ever. And suddenly I knew what I had to do.
“If I’m not fired,” I said, “then I quit. Come on, Rob.”
Pamela looked stricken. “Oh, Jess. You can’t—”
“You can’t quit,” Dr. Alistair cried. “You signed a contract!”
He said a bunch of other things, but I didn’t wait to hear them. I left. I just walked out.
Rob and the others followed me out into the waiting area. The John-Waynish secretary was there, talking on the phone. She lowered her voice when she saw us, but didn’t hang up.
“Are you crazy, Jess?” Ruth wanted to know. “Quitting, when you didn’t have to? They weren’t going to fire you, you know.”
“I know,” I said. “That’s why I had to quit. Who would want to hang on to an employee like me? I’ll tell you who: someone with ulterior motives.”
“I don’t really understand any of this.” Scott, speaking for the first time, looked concerned. “And it probably isn’t any of my business. But it seems to me if you really do have psychic powers and all of that, and people want you to use them, shouldn’t you, I don’t know, do it? I mean, you could probably make a lot of money at it.”
Rob and I just stared at him incredulously. Ruth’s look was more pitying.
“Oh,” she said. “You poor thing.”
It was right then that the double glass doors to the administrative building blew open. We all backed out of the way as two people, holding dripping umbrellas, stepped into the office waiting room.
It wasn’t until they shook the umbrellas closed that I recognized them. And when I did, I groaned.
“Oh, jeez,” I said. “Not you again.”
C H A P T E R
14
“J
ess.” Special Agent Smith shook rainwater from her hair. “We need to talk.”
I couldn’t believe it. I really couldn’t. I mean, it is one thing to have the FBI following you wherever you go.
But it is quite another to have the people who are supposed to be anonymous tails come up and start talking to you. It simply isn’t done. Everyone knows
that
. I mean, how uncool can you get?
“Look,” I said, holding up my right hand. “I really don’t have time for this right now. I am having a personal crisis, and—”
“It’s going to become really personal,” Special Agent Johnson said—his lips, I noticed, looked thinner than usual—“if Clay Larsson gets his hands on you.”
“Clay Larsson?” I tried to think who they were talking about. Then it dawned on me. “You mean Keely’s new dad?” .
“Right.” Special Agent Johnson threw Rob a look. “His cousin’s mother’s boyfriend.”
Rob screwed up his face and went, “My what?”
I didn’t blame him. I was confused, too.
“After you left him this afternoon,” Special Agent Johnson explained, “Mr. Larsson rightly guessed that the person who had kidnapped his girlfriend’s daughter was someone who’d been hired by the child’s father. He therefore paid a little visit to your friend Mr. Herzberg, who returned to his office after his rendezvous with you at the McDonald’s.”
“Oh.” God, I’m a moron sometimes. “Is he … I mean, he’s all right and everything, right?”
“He’s got a broken jaw.” Special Agent Johnson referred to the notepad he always carries around. “Three fractured ribs, a concussion, a dislocated knee, and a severely contused hip bone.”
“Oh, my God.” I was shocked. “Keely—”
“Keely is fine.” Special Agent Smith’s voice was soothing. “We have her in protective custody, where she’ll remain while Mr. Larsson is still at large.”
I raised my eyebrows. “You guys didn’t catch him?”
“We might have,” Special Agent Johnson pointed out—rather nastily, if you ask me, “if certain people had been a bit more forthcoming about their activities earlier today.”
“Whoa,” I said. “You are
not
pinning this on me. It doesn’t have anything to do with me. I’m just an innocent bystander in this one—”
“Jess.” Special Agent Johnson frowned down at me. “We know. Jonathan Herzberg told us everything.”
My mouth fell open. I couldn’t believe it. That rat! That dirty rat!
It was Rob who asked suspiciously, “He told you everything, did he? With a broken jaw?”
Special Agent Johnson flipped back a few pages in his notepad, then showed it to us. There, in shaky handwriting I didn’t recognize—it certainly wasn’t Allan Johnson’s precise script—was Jonathan Herzberg’s version of the events leading up to his assault by his ex-wife’s boyfriend. My name appeared frequently.
The louse. The louse had ratted me out. I couldn’t believe it. After everything I’d done for him …
“Jess.” Special Agent Smith, in her powder blue suit, looked more like a real estate broker than she did an FBI agent. I guess that was the point. “Clay Larsson is not a particularly stable individual. He has an arrest record a mile long. Assault and battery, resisting arrest, assaulting a police officer … He is a very dangerous and volatile person, and from what Mr. Herzberg tells us, we have reason to believe that, at this point in time, he has a particular grudge against … well, against you, Jess.”
Considering the foot I’d smashed into his face, I could readily believe this. Still, it wasn’t as if Clay Larsson knew who I was, much less where I lived.
“Well, that’s just the thing,” Special Agent Smith said, when I voiced these thoughts. “He
does
know, Jess. You see, he … well, he pretty much tortured Keely’s father until he told him.”
Rob said, “Okay. That’s it. Let’s go get your stuff, Mastriani. We’re out of here.”
It took me longer than it had taken Rob to digest what I’d just heard, though. Clay Larsson, who clearly had even worse anger-management issues than I did, knew who I was and where I lived, and was coming after me to exact revenge for (a) kicking him in the face, and (b) kidnapping his girlfriend’s daughter, whom she, in turn, had kidnapped from her ex-husband?
How did I ever get to be so lucky? Really. I want to know. I mean, have you ever, in your life, met anyone with worse luck than mine?
“Well,” I said. “That’s great. That’s just great. And I suppose you two are here to protect me?”
Special Agent Johnson put his notepad away, and when he did, I saw that his pistol was in its shoulder holster, ready for action.
“That’s one way of putting it,” he said. “It is in the national interest to keep you alive, Jess, despite your assertions that you no longer possess the, er, talent that originally brought you to the attention of our superiors. We’re just going to hang around here and make sure that, if Mr. Larsson makes it onto Camp Wawasee property, you are protected.”
“The best way to protect Jess,” Rob said, “would be to get her out of here.”
“Precisely,” Agent Johnson said. He looked Rob up and down, like he was seeing him for the first time—which I guess he was, up close, anyway. The two of them were about the same size—a fact which seemed to surprise Agent Johnson a little. For somebody who was supposed to be inconspicuous, the agent was pretty tall.
“We’re planning on taking her to a safe house until Mr. Larsson has been captured,” he said to Rob.
“I don’t think so,” Rob said at the same time that Ruth, standing behind him, went, “Oh, no. Not again.”
“Excuse me,” I said to Special Agent Johnson. “But don’t you remember the last time you guys took me somewhere I was supposed to be safe?”
Special Agents Johnson and Smith exchanged glances. Agent Smith said, “Jess, this time, I promise you—”
“No way,” I said. “I’m not going anywhere with you two. Besides”—I looked out the double glass doors at the rain which was still streaming down— “I’ve got some unfinished business here.”
“Jess,” Special Agent Smith began.
“No, Jill,” I said. Don’t ask me when my relationship with Special Agents Johnson and Smith had graduated to a first-name basis. I think it was around the time I’d bought them their first double cheeseburger meal. “I’m not going anywhere. I have things to do here. Responsibilities.”
“Jessica,” Special Agent Smith said. “This really isn’t the time to—”
“I mean it,” I said. “I have to go.”
And I went. I walked right out of there, right out into the rain. It was still coming down—not as hard as before, maybe, but there was plenty of it. It only took a few seconds for my shirt and jeans to get soaked.
I didn’t care. I hadn’t lied to them. I had things to do. Finding Shane, wherever he was, was first and foremost on my list. Was he out, I wondered, as I stalked with my head bent in the direction of Birch Tree Cottage, in this storm? Had he found shelter somewhere? Was he dry? Was he warm? Did I even care? As many times as I’d wanted to wring his stupid neck—and I’d thought about it, fairly seriously, several times a day—did I really care what happened to him?
Yeah, I did. And not just because that oversized Mullet Head was capable of making such beautiful music. But because, well, I sort of liked him. Surprising, but true. I liked the annoying little freak.
Thunder rumbled overhead, though it was farther away than before. Then Rob came jogging up behind me.
“That was some dramatic exit,” he said. His shirt and jeans, I noted, were also quickly becoming soaked.
“My specialty,” I said.
“You’re going the wrong way.”
I stopped in the middle of the path and looked around, forgetting for a second that Rob had never been to Camp Wawasee, and so would have no way of knowing which way was the right way to Birch Tree Cottage.
“No, I’m not,” I said.
“Yes, you are.” He jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “The bike’s that way.”
I realized what he meant, then shook my head. “Rob,” I said. “I can’t leave.”
“Jess.”
Rob hardly ever calls me by my first name. More often than not, he refers to me the way he used to in detention, where we were, basically, nothing but discipline files, badly in need of sorting—by last name only.
So when he does call me by my first name, it usually means he’s being very serious about something. In this case, it appeared to be my personal safety.
Unfortunately, I had no choice but to disappoint him.
“No,” I said. “No, Rob. I’m not going.”
He didn’t say anything right away. I squinted up at him, the rain making it hard to see. He was looking down at me, his pale blue eyes filled with something I couldn’t quite put my finger on. Not love, certainly.
“Jess,” he said in a low, even voice. “You know I think you’re a pretty down girl. You know that, don’t you?”
I blinked. It wasn’t easy to look up at him, with all that rain coming down in my eyes. Plus it was pretty dark. The only way I could see him was in the light from one of the lamps along the pathways, and that was pretty dim.
But he certainly looked serious.
I nodded. “Okay,” I said. “We’ll call that one a given, if you want.”
“Good,” he said. The rain had plastered his dark hair to his face and scalp, but he didn’t seem to notice. “Then maybe when I say this next part, you’ll understand where I’m coming from. I did not drive all the way up here to watch you get your brains hacked out by some psycho, okay? Now you get that ass”—he pointed to the one in question—“on my bike, or I swear to God, I’m going to put it there for you.”
Now I knew what was in his eyes. And it wasn’t love. Oh, definitely not.
It was anger.
I wiped rainwater from my eyes.
And then I said the only thing I could say: “No.”
He made that half-disgusted, half-amused smile he seems to wear fifty percent of the time he’s with me, then looked off into the distance for a second … though what he saw out there, I couldn’t say. All I could see was rain.
“I have to find Shane,” I shouted above a rumble of thunder.
“Yeah?” He looked down at me, still smiling. “I don’t give a crap about Shane.”
Anger bubbled, hot and dark, inside me. I tried to tamp it down. Count to ten, I told myself. Mr. Goodhart had suggested a long time ago that I count to ten when I felt like slugging someone. Sometimes it even worked.
“Well, I do,” I said. “And I’m not leaving here until I know he’s safe.”
He stopped smiling.
I should have guessed what was coming next. Rob’s not the kind of guy who goes around saying stuff just to hear himself talk.
Still, he’s never gotten physical with me before. Not the way he did then.
I like to think that, if it had come down to it, I could have gotten away. I really think I could have. Okay, yeah, he had me upside down, which is pretty disorienting. Also, my arms were pinned, which certainly puts a girl at a disadvantage.
But I am thoroughly convinced that, with a few well-placed head-butts—if I could have gotten my head near his, which I am convinced I could have, given enough time—I could have gotten away.
Unfortunately, our tender interlude in the woods was interrupted before I was able to bring it to any sort of head-butting climax.
“Son.” Special Agent Johnson’s voice rang out through the rain and mist. “Put the girl down.”
Rob was already striding purposefully toward his bike. He did not even slow down.
“I don’t think so,” was all he said.
Then Special Agent Johnson stepped out from between the trees. Even though I was upside down, I could still see he had his gun drawn—which surprised me, I must say.
It seemed to surprise Rob, too, since he froze, and stood there for a second or two. Now that I was upside down, I began to realize that my previous assumption—you know, that I was soaked—had actually been erroneous. I was not soaked. There had been no rainwater, for instance, on my stomach.
But now that I was upside down, there certainly was.
And might I add that this was not a pleasant sensation?
“You,” Rob said to Special Agent Johnson, “are not going to shoot me. What if you hit her?”
“It would be unfortunate,” Special Agent Johnson said, “but since she has been a thorn in my side since the day we met, it wouldn’t upset me too much.”
“Allan!” I was shocked. “What would Mrs. Johnson say if she could hear you now?”
“Put her down, son.”
Rob flipped me over, and put me back on my feet. While this was happening, Special Agent Johnson came up and took my arm. He still had his gun out, to my surprise. But he was pointing it into the air.