No Easy Way Out (4 page)

“Again?”
Marco couldn’t help the gooseflesh that prickled out on his arms at the idea that one of the douches was contagious.

“I had the flu,” Ryan said, a touch of pride in his voice.

Marco took larger steps, tried to put a bit more real estate between him and the potentially infectious douche. “It’s not a bad idea,” Marco said.

“So who’s in the med ward?” Ryan sped up to keep pace with Marco.

“My girlfriend,” Marco said, wondering how hard to twist the knife and deciding the harder the better. “I think you know her. Shaila Dixit?” That took the jock down a few pegs. He stopped following for a moment, then jogged a few steps to catch up.

“Is she hurt?” Ryan asked.

Not the response Marco had expected, but he figured why not tell. “She passed out when she learned that her grandmother had died, at least that’s what the doctor told me.”

“I have to see her,” Ryan said.

“You have to stay hidden.” Marco kept walking. “People are looking for The Flying Kid.”

Ryan grabbed Marco’s arm. “I have to see her.”

Marco glowered back at him, not sure if Ryan could see in the dim light the amount of pissed-off-ness he felt. Ryan didn’t back down.

“It’s your funeral,” Marco said, and continued to walk.

Ryan stumbled slightly, trying to keep up—
aftereffects of the flu?
“So Shay’s your girlfriend?” he asked, panting as if walking was too much for him.

Marco tried to sound casual. “It started when she asked me to help her—you were in jail, I believe—but then her sister and grandmother got sick, and now I’m kind of all she’s got.” He watched Ryan’s face change. Watched the realization sink in.

“Does she know I was in jail?”

The douche looked like he was about to cry. Marco threw him a bone. “I didn’t tell her.”

Ryan nodded. “Thanks.”

Like I did it for you . . .

The med ward was now in Harry’s department store, according to the senator’s last announcement. Marco maneuvered through the service halls and between the empty stores with ease. Ryan followed silent as a shadow. They only communicated when Marco stopped in front of a door marked
HARRY’S, LEVEL 1
, and then Marco merely held his finger to his lips and cracked the door open.

The space before them seemed empty. It looked like some back area—shelves of shoe boxes lined narrow corridors.

“We’re clear,” Marco said. Ryan nodded and they both slipped into the stockroom.

They followed a path between the stacks of shoes to a swinging door, which opened onto the main level. What had been the shoe department was now lined with cots and walled off from the rest of the showroom floor by a curtain wall. A young guy with his arm in a sling dozed in a corner; otherwise, the room was empty.

“Must have been where they treated the riot victims,” Marco said, weaving toward the only space in the curtain wall.

“Why do you think that?” Ryan followed a step behind.

“No bodies.”

“I had the flu,” Ryan said. “I survived.”

Marco glanced back at him. “You’re lucky.”

Beyond the curtain wall was a makeshift hallway. The entire sales floor had apparently been divided into “rooms” using curtains salvaged from the PaperClips.

“Which way?” Ryan asked.

“Does it matter?” Marco said, feeling defeated. He turned onto the hall leading away from the front of the store, hoping security was stationed there and nowhere else.

They’d checked five rooms when voices reached them from another part of the curtain complex: “An unauthorized entry was logged through a door off the service halls. We’re looking for a fugitive.”

Ryan grabbed Marco and dragged him into the nearest room. Through some wonderful twist of fate, the room contained Shay and her sister, both asleep on hospital beds.

Ryan’s face fell. “Is she sick?” he whispered.

Marco walked to her side. “No,” he said quietly, willing it to be true. “At least, she wasn’t when I left her a few hours ago.”

Ryan stood on the other side of her bed. “She asked you to help her,” he said, staring down at her face. “Help her do what?”

“Escape.” Marco took her hand. If there was going to be some battle between them for her, he wanted to claim ground early on.

Ryan’s arms dangled at his side. “Did she say anything about me?”

“She never mentioned you.” Marco was being honest. Though of course he knew about them, had seen them all lovey-dovey outside the Grill’n’Shake. And he worried, or at least a very small part of him he was trying desperately to ignore worried, that if she opened her eyes right now and saw them both, she would choose Ryan.

• • •

Ryan was caught between kicking Marco’s ass for touching his girlfriend and concern that the dweeb had actually, through some horrible cosmic joke, won her from him. “You obviously didn’t help her escape,” he said. “What did you do?”

Marco raised his head slowly. “I was there for her when she needed someone. While you were off skydiving from the rafters, I saved her from being crushed in the riot.”

Ryan did not consider himself a particularly competitive person off the football field, but seeing Marco’s grip on Shay’s fingers filled him with a primal instinct. He had an inkling of the brain-space Mike lived in every day, a place where everyone was a threat or a target, where every move you made had better put you closer to your goal. Judging by Marco’s hold on Shay’s hand, Ryan sensed that there was little Marco wouldn’t do to keep her. Ryan decided that he had better play it conservative; after all, his survival and that of Mike and Drew depended on the weasel.

“If she’s not sick, then why is she hooked up to that machine?” Ryan asked, playing the safest card he could.

“I told you, she got crushed in the riot. I
saved
her.”

Footsteps stopped outside the curtain wall; Ryan dropped to the floor and crawled under Shay’s bed, sure they were looking for him. Yet when the guard stepped into the room, he said, “Marco Carvajal?”

Marco shifted his feet—that was all Ryan could see.

“Who’s asking?” Marco said.

Why would security be looking for
him
?

“The senator.” The guard stepped forward, but Marco went toward him without waiting to be dragged away.

Ryan was thankful that Marco did not alert the guard to his presence, and merely walked with the man out of the room.

He crawled back up to standing. Shay groaned softly. Was she having a bad dream? What horrible things had happened to her while he’d been running around like an idiot? He should have stayed with her. She needed him—not anymore, he guessed. Not now that she had Marco.

But Shay liked him. He was sure of it. Marco had to be a stand-in at best. Ryan would win her back. A part of him wanted to shake her awake right then and demand that she dump Marco and run away with him. They would hide out in some corner together. But he didn’t let himself do it. Instead, Ryan leaned forward and pressed his lips to her forehead like a promise.

“I gave her a sedative, so no matter how long you kiss her, Sleeping Beauty is not waking up.”

A large nurse stood in the “door” in the curtain wall.

“Sorry,” Ryan mumbled, jerking himself to standing. “I’m a friend.”

The woman folded her arms across her chest. “I would hope so.”

“I’ll go.” Ryan was ready to bust through the curtain to get out of there if that’s what it took.

The woman thankfully stepped aside. “Don’t let me catch you in here again.”

Ryan shuffled out, glancing behind him to see the woman disappear into Shay’s room. He debated eavesdropping to make sure Shay was okay, but not wanting to tempt the nurse to violence, decided to exit while he still had the option. He grabbed a bottle of pills from a tray—what kind of pills, he had no idea, but he figured he’d better return to the Grease’n’Suck with something or risk having to explain his failed expedition to Mike. Ryan had a feeling Mike wouldn’t have a lot of sympathy for his nearly getting nabbed while checking up on his would-be girlfriend. Especially when Ryan’s whole goal was to steal her from the only person in this mall Mike seemed to trust.

• • •

The security officer led Marco up to the third floor, then toward the skating rink, which was closed, according to a piece of paper taped to the door.
Weird . . .

This end of the third level was opposite the more exciting part, which offered movie theaters, a bowling alley, restaurants including the Grill ’n’ Shake, a bookstore, the arcade, etc. The officer stopped in front of a nondescript metal door with a pane of glass in the wall next to it, behind which sat a bored-looking guard. Marco’s guard nodded to him, the door buzzed, and the guy opened the door for Marco.

“After you,” he said.

Marco walked through, eyes wide and ears open. This was like the most wonderful, unexpected recon opportunity ever. Every question he had about what the hell was going on in the mall, the answers were somewhere in this cluster of offices. He tried to absorb the information through osmosis.

One room held cots, another had piles of what looked like weapons and shields, in the next an older guy was futzing with computer wires between four cubicles, the one after that, three cots. Opposite the computer room was a dark closet with flashing screens showing the feeds from the mall’s closed-circuit camera system. Then, at the end of the hall, the senator. She had a stack of paper on her desk. A heavyset man in a uniform sat on the other side of it.

“We’ve done all we can to convince people,” she said, setting aside a sheet. “It may take a few days, but they’ll see that this plan is going to work and get in line.”

“You’re the boss,” the man said, sounding like he was not sold on the idea.

“I am not establishing a police state,” the senator responded. “At least not as a first option.”

The man got up and left.

The senator waved at Marco. “Come in,” she said, pointing to the chair the heavyset man had abandoned. Marco sat. The senator folded her hands on her desk. “You know what’s stuck in my mind?”

Marco did not like the smug look she was giving him. He’d stared down enough authority figures at this point to know the palette of looks they displayed and what each one meant. You can only be in so many scuffles before you’re just hauled in every time there’s even a rumor of a fight. Not like Marco really had a choice in whether he got the crap beaten out of him.

Unsure of where the senator was hoping to lead him, he gave her a noncommittal shrug.

“How exactly did you get into the back of the PaperClips during the riots?”

This was not the question Marco was expecting. “I saw an open door and went through it.” He tried to be as vague as possible.

The senator’s eyebrows flicked up. “Interesting. Because it occurred to me that maybe you can answer not only this question, but the question of my missing security card key.”

Marco swallowed. This was not the usual interrogation session with a guidance counselor; this was like staring down a shark. He sensed that one false move and she would tear his head from his body.

His brain spun into high gear. He couldn’t afford to give up the card. It was the only bargaining chip he had in this place. Without it, he would lose Mike, lose any freedom he’d gained, forget being able to protect Shay. But they could search him and find the thing without his saying a word and where did that get him?

Better to play some hand than none at all. He slid his fingers into his pocket and felt around for his old card key. He pulled it out, leaving the universal card safely tucked away, and placed it on her desk.

“I only wanted to help Shay,” he said, trying on his most pathetic voice.

“And those Spider-Men who tried to get out to the roof.”

Motherfrakingcrap
.

She pushed the card back toward him. “Don’t hyperventilate just yet,” she said. “I have a job for you.”

Marco did not take the card back. What the hell did she mean by
job
?

The senator leaned back in her desk chair and stretched her hands behind her head. “I have a bit of a problem, Marco. There are around four thousand people in this mall and I only have a small private security force to control them. As we saw yesterday, when the people want to take over, they can.

“I am trying to pull this place together out of that chaos. But I can only do so much. People who don’t want to jump on my bandwagon? Well, I don’t have much of a way to get them on by force. So here’s where you come in.

“I have a hunch, and you don’t have to answer, but my hunch is that you know where my Spider-Men are. I don’t want to waste my precious police resources hunting and trapping them, so I am offering you the job.”

“You want me to hunt and trap the guys who tried to escape through the skylight?” He tried to play it as dumb as possible.

“No,” she said, smiling. “I want you to keep tabs on them and keep me informed of any future problems they plan on causing.”

“And I get to keep the card key?”

“You can keep the card key.”

This deal was like a freaking dream come true. Not only was he not in trouble, he was being ordered to do exactly what he was planning on doing anyway. His arrangement with the douches was now blessed by the cops, and Mike and the others would never be the wiser.

“Okay,” he said, taking back the card key.

The senator held out a hand. “Glad to have you on board.”

Marco took it. “No problem.”

“There better not be.” She gripped his palm and stared hard into his eyes. “I am trusting you to be on my side in this. Do not cause me to regret that trust.” She released Marco’s hand.

“I won’t,” he said.

“Come back here tomorrow after dinner to check in,” she said, then turned to a computer screen.

Marco assumed he was dismissed. The guard who had led him in was waiting outside the door. He shuffled Marco along the hall and let him out the front, depositing Marco back in the mall.

The hallway seemed brighter now. Maybe it was the late-afternoon sun coming through the windows of the food court, maybe it was the relative emptiness of this part of the mall. Marco took a deep breath, like he was sucking in the light, then trotted down the hall toward the escalators, his sneakers bouncing off the tiles like he was made of light himself.