Going Rogue (12 page)

The longer I stared at them, I realized that something wasn’t right. There was an egg in the row that didn’t look quite like the others. It was the same size, but it seemed a
tiny bit brighter and bolder than the others. It was a deep golden color, set atop a little wheeled cart pulled by a dark blue figure. It looked bizarre, but no less ornate than the other eggs. From a distance, it sort of looked like a hot-air balloon, and it kept calling to me the way safes call to me just before I break into them.
I have a secret, Maggie. Aren’t you just
dying
to know what it is?

And then the cuckoo clocks went off again, signaling eight thirty, and I almost fell out of my perch.

Apparently they scared Dominic, too, because I heard his glass tumbler suddenly shatter against the floor. “Damn!” he cried, and I stayed absolutely, perfectly, painfully still. He stood up and I could hear him muttering to himself in the kitchen, “Where the hell is the broom?”

This was my chance.

I shimmied out of the crawl space and lowered myself to the floor, trying not to make a sound. (Stupid boots!) There was scotch and glass all over the floor and I leaped over it, nearly losing my balance but righting myself just as Dominic came out of the kitchen.

It’s times like this that my brain just shuts off. I don’t know how else to explain it. It’s like I’m thinking about nothing and my body moves instinctively, going where it needs to go in order to protect me. In a similar way, I do the same thing with Jesse. It’s like I know just where to kiss him, when to hug him, almost like we share the same thoughts, the same wants.

I ducked against the staircase, hiding in the shadows as I heard Dominic’s shoes crunch into the glass. If he turned,
he would see me. If I breathed, he would hear me. All the muscles in my leg were starting to cramp but I bit the inside of my cheek and ignored the pain because there was no way that I was going to be caught in this job and disappoint everyone and ruin my parents’ careers. If my boyfriend was going to be angry with me for missing dinner with his mother, I had better have a good reason why I was so late.

Dominic swept up the glass as I crouched not ten feet away from him. I could see only his back, but he looked a bit older than my parents, his shoulders a little stooped and his hair thinning on top. If there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that criminal masterminds are the most boring-looking people in the world, and Dominic Arment certainly fit that bill.

I spent fifteen of the most painful moments of my life kneeling against that staircase, waiting for the second those cuckoo clocks sounded so I could escape. My heart was racing so fast that I could feel my pulse throughout my body and when I blinked, I could have sworn that I heard my eyelashes tap against my skin. No matter how good a spy you are, you cannot control adrenaline. Your body will always win. All you can do is ride out the rush.

“CUCKOO! CUCKOO!”

“CUCKOOCUCKOOCUCKOO!”

“COOO! COOO! COOO! COOO!”

“HOOOONK!”

I seized the moment and rushed the front door. Dominic couldn’t hear my boots on the floor through the incessant noise, nor could he hear the turn of the door, but I knew
he’d feel the draft as I shut the door behind me, holding the knob tight in my gloved hands so that it wouldn’t click shut. My legs were shaking so badly that I was afraid I’d collapse, but I ducked past the window and vaulted myself out of the gate and around the corner, my lungs taking in huge gulps of air. I knew that Dominic would investigate and I had to get out of there before he came looking for me.

I headed out onto Ninety-Fourth Street, turning on my phone as I did. My breath was still pretty ragged and my legs were going to be sore for days, and when my phone flickered on, I had eleven text messages from Jesse, all variations on the same question:

WHERE R U?????

There was also a missed call from Angelo, which didn’t surprise me. He must have heard about the bad intel, but he would never leave that message on my cell phone. Roux had sent her own text message, a photo of her and her doorman, Harold, in the lobby of her apartment building. She had a huge grin on her face, the kind that only meant trouble, and Harold looked like he was praying that wild hyenas would storm through the building and eat him alive. “Harold says hellooooooooo!” the text read.

I called Angelo first.

“Your intel was bad!” I shouted as soon as he answered. Now that night had fallen, the streets were busier than ever and I didn’t have to worry about being discreet. To be honest, it felt good to yell. Spending two and a half hours coiled up in a tiny space had left me with too much potential energy and unused adrenaline. I probably could have
bounded from building to building like Spider-Man, that’s how high I was.

“It was
bad
!” I shouted again, not even giving him a chance to speak. “He was in the house the whole time!
The whole time
!”

“I know, my love. I found out right after you left. I tried to tell you but it was too late.”

“And did you know that he has a cuckoo clock collection?” I cried, even though that wasn’t really a detail that Angelo needed to know. “He’s pathological, Angelo. Who collects those things? A maniac, that’s who!”

“Slow down, darling. Are you all right? Did you get—?”

“Of course I didn’t get anything!” I turned on Broadway, heading toward Ninety-Fifth Street. The nearby subway station looked vaguely like a spaceship, all sleek surfaces and new design, and I wished that I could just climb into it and fly back in time, back to when things were normal and my family was safe and I knew what I was doing.

“I couldn’t get anything because he was in the living room!” I told Angelo. “I got trapped in a crawl space! Who gave you that intel, Angelo? Because they turned on us!”

“I know. We talked about this earlier, love. It’s getting harder to tell who’s on our side.”

“
Why
, though? What’s going on?”

“We can discuss later. Did you see anything? Anything weird or different?”

“You mean besides a cuckoo clock collection?”

“Maggie.”

I stopped on the corner and rubbed my forehead. I was
exhausted, had a headache, and I knew the night was only going to get worse.

But I had a job to do.

“There’s an egg,” I said. “A Fabergé egg. It’s … I don’t know if it’s fake or real. It just stood out. Dominic has seven of them, but this one is different.”

“That’s good, that’s very good.”

“But there’s also tons of books and figurines, too. The whole house is like a museum, Angelo. Those coins could be anywhere.” Someone jostled my shoulder as they walked past me and I flinched, instinctively turning to protect myself and my backpack.

“And he never saw you leave?”

“I’m sure he felt the air when I opened the door, but no. He didn’t see me.” I closed my eyes briefly, forcing myself to focus. “Listen, Angelo, I have to go. Jesse’s been waiting for me for over an hour. I was supposed to have dinner with his mom and him.”

“Wait, Maggie,” he said, but I interrupted him.

“No, Angelo. I need. To go. I’ll talk to you tomorrow.” And then I hung up and yanked out my SIM card before tossing my phone into the trash as I stepped out into the street and raised my arm. A cab sidled to my side, the one stroke of luck I had had all night, and I casually dropped the SIM card on the street as I climbed in and began hurtling toward downtown to find my boyfriend.

It was 9:30 by the time I made it to Bond Street, the sushi restaurant where Jesse had wanted me to meet him and his mom. I was breathless after leaving the cab stuck in traffic and running the last two blocks, shoving my way through crowds of people and throngs of bridge-and-tunnel tourists, and when I got inside the restaurant, I completely ignored the maître d’ and stormed into the elevator to take me to the second floor.

It was dark and moody upstairs, the air heavy with the sound of silverware clinking and clattering against plates, the snap of chopsticks echoing right behind. “I’m meeting someone,” I said to the second maître d’ (seriously, how many do they need?) and went into the dining room.

Jesse was sitting at the table alone, a coffee cup in front of him. The plates had been cleared, a little soy sauce stain on the tablecloth the only evidence that dinner had been eaten, and I came to stand next to him. “Hi,” I said. “I am so,
so
sorry.”

He looked up at me with angry, hurt eyes. “You missed her. She left to catch her train ten minutes ago.”

I sank down into the chair across from him, adrenaline leaving my body with such a
whoosh!
that it felt like it had taken my bones with it. “I’m so sorry,” I said again. “I got stuck, I couldn’t call. I’m so sorry. Did you have a nice time?”

“No, I didn’t have a nice time!” he exploded, and the table next to us glanced over. “You were supposed to meet me here ninety minutes ago! You didn’t return any of my texts! I didn’t know if you just didn’t care or if you were working—!”

“Of course I was working!” I shot back. “Why else would I have missed this? I didn’t have a choice, Jess! You think I didn’t want to be sitting here with you and your mom instead of being trapped in some guy’s house?” I bit my lip, stopping myself from saying too much.

Too late.

“Wait, you went into someone’s house while they were still there?” Jesse said. “Do you know how dangerous that can be? You’re not invincible, Mags! People could really hurt you!”

“You,” I pointed at him, “do not get to tell me about danger, okay? I know. I’m all too aware of how dangerous this is. That’s why I can’t tell you anything!”

“Your eyes are huge, do you know that? You look like you’ve been dropping E all night.”

“It’s just adrenaline,” I told him, wondering how disheveled I looked next to all of the other classy diners. “It’s fine, it’ll go away.”

“So you couldn’t answer just one text?” he asked, ignoring my response. “Not even one? I even called your parents and they had no idea where you were!”

“You called my parents?” I screeched, and now diners really were paying attention to us. “You know what? We need to go outside. I can’t have this conversation in here.”

“Fine by me,” Jesse said. “I was just getting ready to leave anyway.”

We both stormed downstairs, my boots very loud and heavy on the floor compared to all of the high heels, and I was all too aware of my T-shirt and messy hair. I’ve never been embarrassed by how I looked before, but now I stood out for all the wrong reasons.

The minute we got out on the street, our fight resumed.

“You can’t just call my parents!” I yelled. “They don’t know about this, either! Oh my God, they’re probably freaking out right now.”

“What do you mean, they don’t know?” Jesse said. “Shouldn’t you tell them, Maggie? I thought that was your deal with them! The last time you tried to do something on your own, you almost got all of us killed!”

The air left my lungs. If Jesse had punched me in the stomach, I don’t think it would have felt worse than what he just said.

“I’m sorry,” he said, his face immediately apologetic. “I didn’t mean it like that.”

“Yes, you did,” I said. “You don’t just say something like that and not mean it!” I felt hot tears pricking at the backs of my eyes, but I ignored them. I was too angry to
cry. “And I can’t tell my parents because this
involves
them, okay? If they knew what I was doing, they would try and stop me and if they stop me, then we’re done.”

“So you’re willing to risk your life and their lives just to be right?”

I took a deep breath, steeling my nerves. “If memory serves,” I told him, “you were just fine with me risking my life when I was saving
your
dad’s ass. And now that I’m trying to save my parents, you suddenly have a problem with it? Wow, thanks, Jess. Thanks for being such a supportive boyfriend.”

I spun on my heel and started to walk away, but Jesse caught up with me in three steps and took my arm to turn me around to face him. “That is not fair—” he started to say, but I cut him off again.

“This isn’t about fair!” I yelled. “If this was about fair, then I would be a seventeen-year-old girl having dinner with her boyfriend and his mom, not spending my Friday night squeezed into a crawl space on the Upper West Side, okay? You don’t get to talk to me about fair! All you have to do is be normal! I’m the one who has to do all the work here!”

“And you think it’s fun to just sit around and wonder if your girlfriend’s going to wind up dead or missing?” Jesse yelled back. “You think that’s fair? Because it’s not, Maggie! It’s hell. You’re out there doing God knows what and I’m just hanging out. I can’t even
help
you and it makes me crazy!”

I pressed my fingers against my eyes, so mad that I wanted to punch something. “This is how it is,” I told him,
and my voice was so cold that it scared me a little. “You’ve known this from the very beginning. This is who I am. I can’t change and I won’t change, especially not right now.

“And if you can’t handle it, then you need to go.”

I regretted the words as soon as they were out of my mouth.

Jesse’s eyes widened in surprise, and then his face smoothed out into something I had never seen before. “That’s the thing, Mags,” he said, his voice strained and sounding nothing like him. “I can’t go. I’m always going to worry about you. Even if we break up tomorrow—”

“You want to break up?”

“No, I’m just saying! Even if we did, I’d still worry about you. I’m going to worry about you for the rest of my life because of this insane job of yours. I can’t stand that you’re out there risking your life and I can’t protect you!”

“Why? Because I’m a girl?”

“No, because I love you!” Jesse suddenly covered his mouth with his hand and turned away from me. His shoulders were bunched together, the tension running down his spine. When he turned back, there were tears in his eyes.

“That’s what people do when they love each other, Mags. They protect each other. You looked out for me and Roux, and now you won’t let us do the same for you and it makes me
crazy
.”