A Map of Days (Miss Peregrine's Peculiar Children #4) - Ransom Riggs Page 0,128
us.”
There was a moment of tense quiet as the clan leaders digested this, then looked at one another.
“You say she’s new?” said Dogface. “You mean . . . uncontacted?” He leaned back on his heels, his voice rising from a snarl back to normal.
“That’s right,” said Emma. “What’s it matter?
Angelica was shaking her head, rainwater dripping off her chin. “That’s bad.”
“Damn it!” said Wreck. He punched the air. “Damn it, I really wanted the fiery one on my crew.”
“What are you talking about?” said Bronwyn.
“Yeah, what just happened?” said Noor.
Frankie started laughing. “Oh, you’re in trouble,” she said.
“You shut up,” said Emma.
“Kidnapping an uncontacted peculiar is a serious crime,” said the tutor. “A very grave offense.”
“No one’s kidnapping me,” said Noor.
“You’re outsiders,” said Wreck, “and you’re transporting an uncontacted across territory lines. And that means—” He let out a loud breath and stamped his foot. “I hate this!”
Dogface stood up and brushed off his hands. “We’ve got to turn you in,” he said. “Or we’ll be accessories to the crime.”
“Must we?” said Angelica. “I like them more and more.”
“You must be joking.” Dogface started pacing nervously. “If we don’t report this and Leo hears about it? Our lives are worth nothing. Less than nothing.”
“I thought you weren’t afraid of ‘nobody, no man, no nothing,’” Angelica said.
Dogface spun toward her and yelled, “Only an idiot wouldn’t be afraid of Leo!”
Wreck turned away, and when he turned back he was holding something that looked like a small cell phone. “I hate to do this. I really do. I was looking forward to working with you. But I’m afraid I have no choice.”
He punched a few buttons on the device. A moment later, a siren began to blare. It seemed to come from everywhere at once—the walls, ceiling, the air itself. My friends and I looked at one another, then at the Americans, who had lowered their weapons and were no longer making threatening moves toward us at all anymore. They just seemed disappointed.
Emma let go of Frankie. She fell to the floor. “Where’s our friend?” she shouted at the girl. “What did you do with Enoch?”
Frankie scurried away toward the Americans. “He’s part of my collection now!” She peeked out between Wreck’s knees. “You’re not getting him back, either!”
With that, there seemed no reason left to stay, and nothing compelling us to. The siren blared. My friends and I looked around.
“I think we’d better go,” I said.
“You don’t have to tell me twice,” said Emma.
Emma, Noor, and I helped Bronwyn, who seemed almost her old self again but was still a little woozy, and we ran down the stairs and up the aisle toward the back exit as fast as we could—which wasn’t very. Neither the Americans nor their flunkies made the slightest attempt to stop us. We burst through the doors and out into the fading day.
Running toward us were a half-dozen men in 1920s-era suits carrying antique machine guns. They raised them and shouted for us to stop. A spray of bullets ricocheted off the concrete behind us.
One of the men kicked my legs out from under me, and then I was lying facedown on the pavement with a shoe grinding into the back of my neck.
A gruff order was given. “Wink ’em.” A hood was pulled over my head.
Everything went black.
I was hauled onto my feet and pulled along roughly, then lifted by my arms and thrown onto a metal floor. A door slammed. I seemed to be in the back of a vehicle. I couldn’t see anything through the hood they’d pulled over my head; I could hardly breathe through it. My chin ached where it had been ground into the concrete, and my wrists, bound again, chafed in their tight restraints. A big, many-cylindered engine chugged to life. I heard Emma say something, and one of the goons barked, “Shaddap!” and there was a slap, then quiet, as rage coiled in my chest.
The vehicle juddered and shook. No one spoke. Two things occurred to me as we waited for our fate to reveal itself: that these goons must work for Leo, the only person in New York everyone seemed to be afraid of, and that I’d lost my duffel bag. My duffel bag with Abe’s operations log in it. The only thing he’d bothered to keep locked in his secret underground bunker. Full of sensitive information. A near-full accounting of his years as a hollow-hunter. And I had lost track of it.