1st Case - James Patterson Page 0,80

your brother, right? Your younger brother. Talk some sense into him! Don’t you need to get away? Just … leave. Go. For your own sake.”

“I agree with you,” he said. “But tell that to him.” He thumbed at the Poet. “This is his operation. He calls the shots.”

“Wait,” I said, looking from one brother to the other. “He … what?”

It wasn’t an impossible idea, but it was so opposite what I’d been assuming, it seemed almost nonsensical for a second. This kid was the one in charge? Really?

“Oh, yeah. Once he gets his mind set on something, there’s no talking him out of it. He’s the genius, not me. But you knew that already, didn’t you?”

“Of course she did,” the kid said confidently. He’d started repacking his case, going about his business as if I weren’t right there, freaking out.

“Any other day, and you’d like him,” the older one said. “Swear to God. He’s very much your type.”

“Well, intellectually, anyway,” the Poet added, and stood up next to his brother. “Ready to go?”

A scream ran through my mind, but I kept it where it was. “This is crazy!” I said instead. “Neither of you are thinking straight. You can’t go to my house.”

“It’s a done deal, Angela,” the kid told me. “Come on. It’ll be fun.”

But the words kept spilling out.

“My family won’t even be there,” I said. “You have to know that. They’re off at some safe house by now.”

“In fact, they’re not,” the Poet said.

He was right. I was flailing for anything to say—and then doubled down on the lie, too, because there was no reason not to. “I’m telling you, they’re under federal protection. I swear!”

I didn’t expect it to get me anywhere, and it didn’t. All he did in response was turn his phone around to show me what he’d been watching all that time.

It was a video feed of some kind.

From my family’s house, I realized all at once.

There, on the screen, I saw my sister Sylvie. She was slumped on the couch at home, leaning over the camera in her own phone, obliviously texting away or playing a game. The app had been watching her, too. All this time.

“And let’s not forget Hannah,” the Poet said. He ticked something on his screen and the view switched. Now I saw my other sister from the vantage point of my mother’s laptop, which usually lived on the kitchen counter.

Hannah was in her pjs, eating a bowl of cereal at the table. She always ate cereal before bed.

“Looks like everyone’s hunkering down for the night,” the Poet said. “Think they miss you? Not that it matters. You’ll all be together again soon enough.”

His words blurred in the air. What little I could see in the gloom around me seemed to blur, too. And that scream I’d been holding down came up before I could stop it.

“Help!” I shouted. “Someone, please help me!”

“Don’t do that,” the older one said, but I couldn’t stop. It was like falling down a hole with nothing to grab on to. I knew it wouldn’t matter, but I had to try.

“There’s no way I’m going with you!” I told them. “You can just kill me right now and get it over with. Go ahead! Shoot me, you asshole! Do it!”

The words were coming with a clarity I didn’t even know I had. I wasn’t afraid to die anymore. Not in that moment. The thing that scared me most now was getting in that van and letting them take me where they wanted to go.

The older one leaned down and pressed both of my shoulders against the tree. I tried to push back, but it was an impossible situation.

“Help!” I screamed again. “Please! Someone!”

Then another stab of pain ignited under my arm, just like the last time. My mind fired up with a fresh wave of panic, mostly because I knew what was coming. It wouldn’t be long now.

The drug took hold almost right away. It started with the fuzziness around the edges. I think I might have mumbled one last protest, but then came the gray blur. The slipping away. And finally, the black.

CHAPTER 88

I WOKE UP in the van again. Not because we were moving, but because we’d just stopped. A single line of light was cutting between the back doors, and I could see Eve across from me.

Her eyes were open.

I bolted up and got caught short against my own bindings. My head snapped back against the wall of the van.