The Rose Ransom (Girls Wearing Black: Book Three) (47 page)

The girl, speaking with as much
conviction as Renata had ever seen in a human, said, “It’s mine.”

“Really?” said Renata. “But
where did you get it?”

Again, this time with an air of
defiance in her voice.
It’s MINE.

The poor girl was nuts. Renata
leaned in closer to her face, looking directly in her eyes, and said, “This
necklace isn’t yours any longer. It’s mine now. And you will forget you ever
had it.”

The girl was breathing heavy.
There were scratch marks running down her cheek and her neck. Her lip was
bleeding.

“It’s….mine,” she hissed.

Renata clicked her tongue. “Such
a shame,” she said. “I was content to let you go. But if you’re not going to
listen to me.”

“It’s mine! That necklace is
mine! Give it back to me!”

Renata grabbed onto the girl’s
head with both hands and gave it a quick twist. The girl fell dead on the
ground.

Renata stood up and looked at
the bouncers, who were still held motionless by her command to be still.

“Have a good night,” she said.

We are on a bus headed south.
We’ll find a hotel and hide out until sunrise. Then we’re getting the hell out
of this town.

The text from Annika came at a
few minutes past one in the morning. It was over. The map on Jill’s screen had
Renata and Annika’s dots traveling in opposite directions.

Jill composed a return text.

Take care. Keep that ring
with you for awhile. I’ll get in touch with you if I hear anything you should
know.

A few seconds passed, then one
more message from Annika arrived.

Thank you, Jill. My girl
would be dead three times over if it weren’t for you. I’ll never forget what
you’ve done.

Jill closed the tracking program
and crawled into bed. She slept for the next ten hours. She woke up to find
Tarin seated at her desk, looking at the laptop.

“You’ve done it,” he said.
“You’ve finished the hack.”

Jill sat up.

“Yes,” she said. “We figured it
out.”

“What was it? What were we
missing before?”

Jill told Tarin everything she
knew, starting with a phone call from Nicky, going through the encryption
scheme, and ending with everything that happened after she cracked open the
phone.

“This is very good work,” Tarin
said. “You should be proud.”

Tarin unplugged the laptop,
folded it closed, and put it under his arm.

“What are you doing?” Jill said.

“Your assignment is finished,”
said Tarin. “I’ll take it from here.”

“But what about Nicky and Ryan?”
said Jill. “The third Ransom clue. I was hoping you came here because you
figured it out.”

Tarin smiled and shook his head.
“You heard what Renata said. The third clue is impossible.”

“Only because it leads someplace
where humans aren’t allowed to go,” Jill said. “But maybe one of her slaves is
allowed.”

“I don’t know the answer, Jill.”

“Well then you can’t take the
laptop. It’s our only chance of finding them. Renata and Falkon might say
something that tells us where they are.”

Tarin took a deep breath, then
he leaned over so he was staring right at Jill.

“Your work is done,” he said. “I
will take it from here.”

Jill was frozen in place for a
second, then she said, “You’ll take it from here.”

That makes sense
, Jill
thought.
Tarin solved the first two Ransom clues. He’ll take it from here.

“You can forget all about this
laptop and everything to do with Renata’s phone,” Tarin said.

“Yeah,” Jill said. “I’d like
that. You take the laptop. I’m tired of working on it.”

Now that she thought about it,
it was a great idea for Tarin to take it! What a relief it would be to have it
out of her sight. She had been so stressed about it. But she could just forget
it. Wouldn’t that be so wonderful?

Her work was done. Annika and
Shannon were safe. Her hacking assignment was complete. Tarin was going to take
care of the final Ransom clue.

Jill could just go to school,
live her life, and relax. For once in her life she could relax!

“You will wait to hear from me,”
Tarin said. “Until then, you will be quiet and well-behaved.”

“Nothing would make me happier,”
Jill said.

She watched Tarin walk out of
her bedroom, the laptop under his arm. He was all the way out the door when it
hit her.

Something didn’t seem right.

I will be quiet and
well-behaved? No, that’s not what I do. I do something else. I choose
something. Choose to do….

“I choose to do what’s right,”
she said. The words sputtered from her mouth before she could stop them, but
once she heard them, she remembered.
I choose to do what’s right!

“Tarin, wait!” she yelled. She
ran out of the bedroom. Tarin was already at the front door. How did he get
there so fast? He was pulling the door open, about to leave.

“Tarin, this isn’t right!” she
said. “I need you to come back so we can---”

An explosion, a bright light,
and the sound of machine gun fire, all at once. It sent Jill diving to the
floor.

She saw Tarin, driven back by
gunfire, his chest bursting with small, bloody explosions.

“Tarin!” she yelled. “The back
door! Use--”

But the back door was no good.
Men wearing black ski masks were coming up behind him with more weapons. They
were in her house! How did these people get in her house?

Three of them, each with a rifle
in-hand—they were spraying Jill’s house with bullets. Shots were blasting
Tarin’s chest and going right through him, the bullets smashing into the walls
after they exited his body. Broken glass, gypsum, splintered wood, and smoke
filled the air. Her body flat against the second-floor landing, Jill could only
make out bits and pieces of what was happening. There were bright lights
shining through the smoke now, lights that were bouncing everywhere, as if her
house had been filled with mirrors. The lights were hot and dangerous, at
least, that’s how they seemed. Tarin screamed in pain as he went through them.
His clothes burned. His skin singed and turned black.

And then a woman came running
through the front door, charging at Tarin, screaming a battle cry as she
wielded a giant sword. Jill could hardly believe it, but she was pretty certain
she recognized this woman. The woman was Helena Fischer, the Network agent who
had played Nicky’s mother until Code Orange was called.

Helena raised her sword above
her head, leaped through the air, and swung the sword as she came down. The
sword swiped all the way across Tarin’s body, chopping off his head as Helena
landed on the ground.

And then, in a moment that made
Jill certain she was in the middle of a massive hallucination—Tarin’s head
rolled to the stairs, coming to a stop against the bottom step, face up.

It was no longer Tarin’s head at
all. Somewhere along the way, as the head rolled across the floor, it
transformed itself, leaving Tarin behind, and turning into the head of another
vampire, one who had come to visit Jill some two months before.

“It’s okay, Jill,” said one of
the men downstairs. He laid down his gun and pulled off his mask.

“Phillip,” she whispered.

The others removed their masks
as well. Patrick Hall, Eve Belmont, Alvin Green…

And one woman who didn’t wear a
mask at all. Helena Fischer.

“What are you guys doing here?”
said Jill. “What’s happening?”

Phillip was the first to
approach.

“No, stay back,” Jill said.
“Something’s not right here.”

“Look at the vampire, Jill,”
Phillip said as he stepped towards the severed head at the bottom of the
stairs. “Do you know her?”

Jill glanced at the head, then
looked away. It was too disturbing to look at. Too strange.

“It looks like… Bernadette,
but--”

“It is Bernadette,” Phillip
said. “It’s always been Bernadette.”

“But Tarin--”

“There is no Tarin. You’ve been
compromised, Jill.”

Compromised?

“No,” Jill said. “That’s impossible.
I’m immune, just like Nicky. I’m immune because…”

Because I choose to do what’s
right?
Jill couldn’t even say the words. They sounded like such a lie to
her now.

Gingerly, Phillip stepped over
the head and onto the bottom step. “Come down and talk to me,” he said softly,
extending his hand.

He was speaking to her like she
had lost her mind.

“I don’t believe any of this,”
she said. “I’m just tired. I’ve been working myself too hard and I’m starting
to crack. It happened at the cemetery.”

“What happened at the cemetery?”
Phillip said, taking another step.

Jill shuddered as she remembered
that horrifying night. Tarin going off into the bushes, a man screaming, two
silhouettes in the darkness.

“You’re talking about
Meadlowlark Memorial, aren’t you Jill?” said Phillip. “The night you found the
first clue. Bernadette was with you then.”

“No she wasn’t. I was with
Tarin.”

She looked down at the head on
the floor. The head that, until recently, she thought belonged to Tarin.

“We were with you that night,” said
Phillip. “Helena and I were parked a block away, watching through binoculars.
We watched as Bernadette killed a man in the bushes.”

Phillip took another step up the
stairs. “She was with you when you went to the Monument as well,” he said. “How
do you think you got in there in the middle of the night, Jill? The park ranger
just opened the door for you both. Would he have done that if you weren’t with
a vampire?”

A vampire?
This was
impossible.

“Tarin wasn’t a vampire,” Jill
said. “He worked for the Network. He was my only contact. The rest of you
abandoned me. None of my emails went through. None of my texts.”

Phillip was only a few steps
away from her. He stopped and squatted down. He was treating her like she was
crazy.

Maybe she was.

“We got all your emails,”
Phillip said. “Every message you sent. We didn’t respond because you were
telling her everything. We didn’t want her to know about us.”

Her
. The head on the
floor. Bernadette. Phillip was telling her that all this time, Tarin had been
Bernadette.

“It’s impossible,” Jill said.
“Tarin knew things. He knew about the Network, about the mission. He knew about
me.”

“Bernadette knew things because
you told her,” said Phillip. “You told all of us, too. The night after Helena
and I left town, Bernadette came to your house. Do you remember that night?”

“Of course I do,” said Jill.
“It’s burned into my brain. I remember being frightened that this was the end.
I remember watching her brainwash Zack into forgetting about me. I remember
when she tried to talk to me—see, and this is where you’re wrong. Bernadette
tried to get in my mind and she failed. I was too strong for her.”

Phillip pulled a phone out from
his pocket. “You hit triple zero on your phone that night,” he said. “You
broadcast the entire exchange between you and Bernadette for the Network to
hear. It was good thinking, Jill. Had you not done that, we wouldn’t have known
what happened to you. And we’d probably all be dead.”

Phillip pressed a button on his
screen. A voice began playing out of the speakers on his phone. It sent a
shiver down Jill’s spine.

Jill, let’s make this easy.
Tell me why I’m here.

It was Bernadette. Hearing the
voice, Jill felt the fear all over again. She saw Bernadette staring her in the
face. She remembered trying all the tricks she knew to hold onto her own mind.

Now she heard her own voice
responding.

I have no idea why you’re
here, Ms. Paiz. I swear I’ve done nothing wrong
.

Jill felt vulnerable and exposed
as she listened to that recording. She felt like the severed head of Bernadette
Paiz was saying the words.

She sensed the presence of the
other Network agents, standing patiently on the ground floor, listening.

There is something I’d really
like to know about Nicky Bloom and you’re choosing to leave it ou
t, came
Berandette’s voice. Jill remembered this part. This was when her mind tried to
answer Bernadette’s questions, but her mouth stayed shut.
Tell it to me,
Jill.

She’s in the Network,
Jill
said to her
. I am too.

“No! It can’t be. I didn’t say
that!”

Phillip held up his hand, gently
encouraging her to listen.

I hacked the admissions
database to put her here,
Jill went on.
We want to win the Coronation
contest. We built a mansion so when Sergio comes to change Nicky into a vampire
we can kill him.

This wasn’t happening. How did
that voice get on the recording?

Jill remembered those words,
remembered them clearly, in fact. They had been in her mind. When Bernadette
was talking to her, she heard a voice yammering away in her brain. That voice
was saying these exact words. But Jill had contained it!

“I contained it,” she whispered.

Everything went wrong
,
the recording continued.
Melissa Mayhew found us out. She came to the
mansion. She killed everyone there. I saw the footage from the security
cameras.

And on it went. Every word that
Jill had heard in her mind that evening was captured on this recording, spoken
in her own voice.

Bernadette came back on, saying,
This is all very interesting. Tell me more, please
.

Phillip paused the recording.
“You broadcast that conversation to the entire Network,” he said. “It was how
we knew you had been programmed.”

“But I wasn’t programmed,” Jill
said. “Even if what you played for me is true, I wasn’t programmed. I just gave
away some secrets.”