Drop of Doubt (13 page)

Silas sat back, pressing a palm to his forehead. “That’s what I wanted before.”

“Huh?” I asked, thinking he’d wanted me to bump into his face.

“
M'aresei o tropos pos gelas.
I love the way you laugh.”

My breath caught, cutting off the roll of giggles. I couldn’t stop grinning, but my heart was thundering at his words.

The sound of a car distracted me from what I was about to say. Lights appeared down the road.

Silas picked me up off of his lap to place me in the middle seat beside him. “Let’s let Victor do his thing. Maybe then we can go home.”

“Sorry,” I said again.

Silas smiled. He picked up my hand, held it to his lips and kissed the back of it. “I’m not.”

We focused on the car moving toward ours. Silas felt for the lights, and he flicked the bright lights on quickly as a signal to Victor.

The car slowed. When it got close, it pulled in front of ours. It was another sedan, but his lights were still on so I couldn’t see past the glare.

Silas held his fingers in front of his eyes. “Kill the lights, Vic,” he said to the windshield.

The car stopped a few feet from ours, front bumper to front bumper. It stalled there. The lights still shining into us. “What’s he doing?” I asked.

“Don’t know,
aggele mou
,” Silas said. “Give him a minute I guess.”

The phone in the passenger seat buzzed to life where I’d dropped it.

“Answer it,” Silas said.

I picked it up to find a text message.

––––––––

S
ang: That’s you in the car under the tree?

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I
smiled at the phone. “Are the car windows tinted? He couldn’t tell it was us.”

“Might be hard to tell, I guess,” Silas said. “He’s trying to make sure it’s us and not someone else. Not that there’s anyone else out there.”

“It’s dark out here,” I said. I wrote back.

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S
ilas: Yes.

Sang: Do you want to hop over here?

Silas: You want me to get in your car?

Sang: Come on over.

––––––––

“H
e wants me to get in his car.”

He glanced out at the car, trying to glance around the lights. “Okay,” he said. “Go on. He’s probably got something he wants to try.” He shrugged, hitting the unlock button on the doors. “Let’s go see what he wants.”

I gave Silas back his phone, and opened the passenger door. I stepped around it, stumbling over the uneven ground. The cool grass met my feet. I’d forgotten to slip my sandals back on, but I didn’t want to go back for them since it was a short distance.

Silas had his door open. He paused in the seat and he pick up his phone again and checked the screen. Victor must have sent in another message.

I crossed between the two cars in front of the lights. I was slower since it was hard to see in the blinding beams. The passenger door opened as Victor pushed it open from the inside. I blinked as my eyes adjusted after being in the beam of the headlights, trying to catch a glimpse of Victor’s face inside the windshield, but colors washed over my eyes still from the brightness.

Silas opened the door wider and got out, stretching. He patted his pockets, and then leaned back into the car for the keys still hanging in the ignition.

I reached the passenger door of the new car when another car turned the corner down the road. The engine in the oncoming car revved louder as it raced toward us. Curious at the sight of another car, I stopped, watching it.

“Sang,” a voice called to me from inside the car. “Get in. Hurry.”

But he sounded different. What was wrong with Victor’s voice?

The car zooming toward us flashed bright lights in our direction. A blaring horn filled the night. Someone in the oncoming car was leaning on the horn.

“Sang!” Silas called. I turned. He slammed the car door and raced toward me. “Get away from that car.”

“Don’t listen to them, Sang,” the voice from inside the car called. It was male, but was filtered somehow. It didn’t sound natural. The tone varied in pitch, and carried a strange mechanical sound to it. “I know what they do to you. Get in the car and we can run for it.”

I turned toward the car. The darkness inside made it impossible to see who it was. The dashboard lights didn’t work, and the front windshield was tinted. I just caught the outline of a shape. “Who ...”

I stopped short when the figure leaned forward, and instead of seeing a face, I saw a white mask, with slits cut out for the eyes; everything else was a blank canvas. It startled me enough that I staggered backward.

The flashing lights and the blaring horn sped closer. The car angled toward the stranger’s.

Silas’s arm caught me by the waist. In a quick motion, I was hauled up over his shoulder. He turned away, leaving me to dangle over his back as he started jogging toward the field, away from the cars. I managed to push against Silas’s back, holding myself halfway up so I could see what was going on.

The stranger’s car thrust into reverse without closing the door, but it was too late. The oncoming car met with its rear fender.

The cars crunched. They twisted around until the new car was facing parallel to the masked guy’s car. Someone inside was laying on the horn. A warning.

The masked man’s car was facing the road. The engine gunned. Wheels started spinning and then it lurched forward, zooming off back toward the city.

The new car was turning around, rolling forward as if to make chase, but stopped suddenly short.

“Silas,” I called. Silas stopped and shifted me until he was holding me in front of him, hugging me close.

The new car’s driver’s side door flew open.

Victor stepped out.

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“W
ho was that?” I asked from inside Victor’s BMW. Victor had left the other wrecked car by the side of the road. They had hustled me into the car and sped off without talking. Silas held me in his lap on the passenger side and his grip was tight enough to almost cause bruising, but I didn’t want him to release me. Victor’s face was unreadable as he drove on toward town. I’d been biting my tongue with my questions until I couldn’t stand it.

“I don’t know,” Victor said. He’d been tense before. I was worried he’d been injured when he’d smashed his car, though I didn’t see any blood and he wasn’t wincing. “But I know why you weren’t getting messages now. He’d cloned your SIM card.”

“What?”

“The data in your phone. He made a duplicate. He was catching all of your phone’s text messages and phone calls.”

Silas grunted. His arms were unrelenting around me. “It was him all along?”

“I couldn’t figure out why you all weren’t texting and responding. I checked the incoming data from the network. At whatever point he turned on his phone, all incoming messages started moving to his phone instead of yours. He’s been intercepting all of them.”

“You were right about him being able to track us,” Silas said. “He found us pretty quickly.”

“I couldn’t track Sang’s phone because there were two different pinpoints so the GPS was giving me an error.”

“How’d you know we were out here?” I asked.

“I had to lock onto Silas’s phone. I came to find you when I couldn’t get a response. When I saw the second car, I knew it was him.”

“Wait a second,” Silas said. “How did he manage to get a clone of her SIM card? Wouldn’t that mean he had to have taken her phone at some point?”

“She had to have set it down at school, I guess,” Victor said, his hands twisting at the steering wheel.

“He couldn’t have,” I said. “I keep it in my bra most of the time. I think I would have noticed if someone had taken it.”

“Can you promise me you do that? Can you tell me you’re sure you knew where your phone was all the time this week?”

I stiffened. “Kota had my phone for a while earlier today. Before all this started.”

“There might be other times, too, where it was out of sight. I don’t think Kota would have left your phone anywhere, but we’ll ask to see if he might have put it down for a moment. We need to get to another phone and let them know they might be tracked. We’ve all got to get new phones. We can’t risk using these any more. He’s able to track us too easily with them.”

“Did you get a plate number?” Silas asked. “Did you see who it was?”

“There wasn’t a plate. He’d thought ahead enough and took it off I guess.”

“We could track the make and model. Did you get a good look at it?”

“It was light blue,” I said softly. “Four doors. It looked like a Corolla. I’m pretty sure it was. My dad used to have one.”

Victor smiled. He reached over with one hand and squished my cheeks until I made a kiss face. “I knew we kept you for a reason. I can find all the cars in the area that match that. There might be a lot, but we could probably narrow it down to students going to Ashley Waters.”

“Some of us could go back tomorrow,” Silas said. “We can watch the parking lot for that car.”

“It also might belong to the parents of the kid,’ Victor said. “But we need to check in with the others and put together a better plan.”

I pulled my arm out from Silas’s vice grip around me so I could rub at my nose. “He was wearing a mask. A white one. The dashboard’s lights were off. He said something about ... he said not to listen to you guys and to get into the car.”

“Of course he did,” Silas said. “He was trying to kidnap you.”

“He said, ‘I know what they do to you’.”

Victor frowned. “He thinks we’re doing something to you? Hurting you?”

I swallowed. “I think he thinks you might be. I don’t know how or why. But why wear a mask? Why try to track me down like this? It’s not like I’d get in the car once I realized it wasn’t you.”

“He assumed a lot,” Victor said. “He may have thought you were trying to get away from us and would have willingly jumped in the car to escape. But this might make things harder. He’s not just a nut; he’s a nut who thinks he’s helping.”

“Can’t we send him a message?” I asked. “Can’t we text him and tell him I’m not hurt and he needs to back off?”

“He’s already proven to be unstable,” Victor said. “We’ll talk to him, but not until you’re out of range. You’re staying at my house tonight.”

“I’m staying, too,” Silas said. His arms wrapped around me a little tighter.

“Right,” Victor said. “I don’t care if everyone stays over tonight. I’d probably feel better if they did. He’s already manipulated us once.”

“Silas,” I squeaked. I tapped at his forearm. “I can’t breathe.”

He huffed but let go. “Sorry.”

I stayed in his lap, but relaxed against the door frame, sucking in air. “We need to call the others quickly. We can’t let them think I’m texting them if that’s what he’s doing.”

Victor nodded, punching the gas pedal. I avoided looking at the speedometer and crossed my fingers a cop wouldn’t pull us over.

♥♥♥

W
hen we got to Victor’s house, I followed the boys up the back stairs. I heard voices deeper in the house as we entered, but Victor nudged me onward.

“They might have guests,” Victor said. “I don’t want them knowing I’m here. I don’t want to entertain right now.”

We snuck up as quietly as possible. On the third floor, Victor opened the door he’d said earlier was his bedroom. He stepped inside, finding a light switch.

This room was bigger than his office. A white marble fireplace, unlit and clean, took up one edge of the back wall. The large bed and several overstuffed chairs matched white plush rugs. All the white was a sharp contrast against the dark wood floors. The walls were a mix of a dark gray along three walls, with one wall on the far side being an almost silver matte.

A baby grand piano took up an entire section of one of the rugs. The key cover was pulled down.

I recognized Winter by Vivaldi on top of a pile of other sheet music clustered together on the piano. The bent in the pages of Winter where Silas had creased it were still there. My heart warmed at seeing it but it also gave me a flashback to that time long ago, that felt like years instead of just a couple of months.

The bathroom door was open. I padded over to take a peek. The stone tiles looked to be hand carved as there wasn’t any sort of standardized shape. There was a glass-walled shower, with an overhead showerhead built into the ceiling. In the far corner of a bathroom was one of the biggest bathtubs I’d ever seen. It was a perfect circle, big enough for at least three people, although I didn’t imagine he bathed with anyone else. Even though the tub had three faucets, I imagined it took a lot of time to fill up. Still, I was tempted to try it tonight. A long bath in such a big tub would settle my nerves after such a crazy day.

“Are we going to be okay here?” I asked. Somehow looking in at his rooms had me wondering and worried about the masked man finding us. “If he could track your cell phone, wouldn’t he already know where you live?”

Silas and Victor laughed. “He won’t be able to get through security,” Victor said.

“What security? We got in without anyone seeing us.”

“There’s security. Trust me.”

“Couldn’t someone just scale the wall and walk in the front door?”

“They wouldn’t make it over the wall. The only reason you got in was because you were with me.”

“What if I scale the wall?”

“Please don’t scale the wall, Princess.”

I sighed, turning around.

Silas sat in one of the overstuffed white chairs by the fireplace. He was pulling off his shoes and socks. “Did I leave a replacement school uniform here by chance? Just in case we get called in.”

“I’m pretty sure. Check the closet,” Victor said. “I’m going to contact the guys.” He left the bedroom, going across the hallway toward his office.

Silas got up, walking to the closet door and twisted the handle. When it was open, I expected a short, shadowy space. Instead it opened up to what looked like a room the size of my own at home. I tiptoed behind Silas, peeking around his arm. The walls were lined with various levels of shelving and places to hang clothes. There were racks of shoes ranging from waist to eye-level along one wall. Most of the clothes near the front were white Armani shirts and dark slacks like those Victor wore most often.