“So…are you guys like star-crossed lovers on the run?” The blond girl asked with a hopeful smile.
“Emphasis on star,” I said before I could stop myself, the absurd urge to laugh returning.
“Something like that,” Zane said.
“Can I at least have my phone back now?” Elise asked, her expression troubled.
“Yeah, I’m guessing that scavenger hunt thing was bull.” Teri sounded offended.
Zane looked down at the device in his hand, obviously having forgotten about it. “Oh. I don’t know if—”
“Wait,” I said, a vague, niggling concern bursting forth from the dark corner of my brain as a full-fledged and ugly worry.
I fumbled and pulled my phone from my pocket and clicked the home button. The screen was as blank as the last time I’d checked. No missed calls, no texts, angry or otherwise.
A slow creeping dread rose over me, like sinking into a tub filled with cold water.
There was nothing from Jacobs.
“Give it to me,” I said to Zane.
He hesitated, which told me all I needed to about Carter. “Ariane…”
I swallowed hard. “I need to talk to him. Now. I think we’ve got a problem. Another problem,” I amended.
Zane handed me the phone this time without argument. But the call had ended.
“Hello, can’t you use your own phone?” One of the formerly bored girls snapped at me.
“I’m going to see if I can find security or something. Come on.” Teri turned on her heel and started deeper in the park.
I ignored her, every passing second somehow confirming my worst fear. “It’s Ariane,” I said to Adam when he picked up.
“It doesn’t matter what scheme the two of you have cooked up.” Adam sounded out of breath but alarmingly cocky. “Like I told him, you can’t distract me with this crap. It’s bullshit. And messing with my sister? How did you even find her? That only shows what kind of amateurs—”
“When was the last time you heard from St. John?” I demanded.
“What?” he asked, confused.
“Have you been in contact with St. John or any of the others?” I asked.
“Yeah, they confirmed my target.”
Carter. My heart gave a painful throb, but I forced myself to focus. “When was that?”
“I don’t know, about an hour ago.”
“Nothing since?” I pressed.
“I…no. I’m still waiting for further instructions.” He sounded puzzled and much younger suddenly. “Why?”
“Listen to me,” I said quickly. “This is not a trick or a ploy to get ahead. I think we’re in trouble.”
“Like I care about what you guys—” Adam began.
“All of us,” I hissed. “We’re exposed. Someone went to the media. The game is up.”
At this point, Jacobs and company only had two choices: try to hide the evidence or destroy it.
And we—Adam, Zane, Ford, Carter, and me—were the evidence.
They’d invested millions of dollars in us. But if they were caught with us—living proof of illegal experimentation on humans, extraterrestrial life, and years of government deception—the damage would be far worse than anything you’d see on a balance sheet.
They were going to burn it down and salt the earth, just to be safe. They had to.
“But that’s what I’m trying to tell you. It doesn’t matter. I won,” Adam crowed in my ear. “I found my target; the deed is done.”
Even though I’d suspected that already, hearing it was much, much worse. “You killed Carter?” I asked, my voice cracking. Carter with his shy smile and his earnestness. He hadn’t deserved this, not that kind of death, not this kind of life.
Adam made a sound of disgust. “I did my—”
There was a strange, loud pop, and then a rustle of clothing and a loud clattering as if Adam had dropped the phone and it bounced a couple of times before landing.
“Hello?” I asked, a chill skittering over my skin. “Hello?”
There was no response but the wind moving over the microphone for a few seconds and the faint sound of people talking and laughing.
“Hey, hey, buddy, are you okay?” A tentative male voice, not Adam’s, came through the cell, but it sounded distant, as if the guy was near the phone but not speaking into it directly.
Then a woman started screaming, panicked and screechy.
I jerked my head up at the sound. It wasn’t just coming through the phone pressed against my ear but through the air as well. Fainter but still recognizable.
He was here. Adam was in the park somewhere. Or, at least, that screaming woman was, and I had a very bad feeling I knew what that meant.
I ended the call, taking the extra step of deleting it from the list of recent numbers, and then turned in a circle until I could pinpoint where the noise was coming from. There, from the northwest, the direction the cab driver had told me to go to find The Bean.
“Stay here,” I ordered Elise and the others, and tossed her phone to her before bolting in the direction of the screaming woman.