Pretty Sly (14 page)

“No, it’s okay,” I said. We were strangely polite and formal, posed like two figures in a diorama. Maybe it was just that standing on the edge of a cliff in the middle of nowhere with our wrecked car seemed a bit surreal. Or maybe we were just in shock. Probably a little of both.

The rain clung to our eyelashes as we investigated the damage. The tree itself was nothing to write home about—a small squat thing with a spidery clutch of branches—but powerful enough to stop us. Powerful enough to drive a major dent in the front fender and crumple the hood, accordion-style, around its thick base. All of the front lights were bashed into uselessness. Steam rose from the engine, and the smell of burnt
rubber hovered in the air.

“Good thing we were in a Volvo, huh?” Aidan said, reaching out to remove the dangling grille.

I laughed weakly, feeling my ribs ache. “Safest car in its class,” I said, deliriously repeating the line from an ad I’d seen a million times on TV.

There was nothing to do now but try to reverse the car and detach it from the tree. We couldn’t call anyone for help, and we couldn’t just wait for someone to rescue us. Aidan said there were probably bobcats and bears up here in the mountains. Besides, there were bigger predators out there: men who wanted us in jail. We had no choice but to just get in the smashed-up hunk of metal and keep driving, which we did, wordlessly.

I felt the immensity of our situation then. How one little decision had spiraled into a whole mess of trouble. But I wiped my face and opened the passenger-side door. Robotically, almost.

Our fate was decided. For the moment, there was no other plan.

The engine, thankfully, turned on. The car creaked out of its accident position, rolled backward, and we were on our way with a new rattling sound.

A few hours later, the rain stopped and the fog lifted, and we found ourselves on a (thankfully) paved road again, driving through the Los Padres National Forest. It was a stunning landscape: the thick cover of pine trees on the curving mountains around us, the craggy rocks
sheeted in snow. Giant birds swooped overhead. All signs of life. Signs of hope, even.

Aidan seemed to have recovered from the accident just fine. He was still listening to his classic rock— unfortunately, the antenna was unaffected—and singing along at the top of his lungs to Steve Miller Band. “Woo! Woo!”

How could he bounce back so quickly?

He looked over at me, shocked, apparently, that I wasn’t joining in. “C’mon, Willa. Don’t you know this song? It’s, like, programmed in your head from birth, I think.”

“My head rejects Steve Miller Band.”

Now that we were safe, reality was coming back again. The numbness was wearing off.

I reached into the glove compartment for the printout of my mom’s painting. I unfolded the paper in my lap, willing it to tell me something, wishing it were a map that could show us where to go next. She’d been in Santa Barbara; we knew that. And now she was gone again. How were we going to find her if we were on the run ourselves?

I stared into the rendering of what I’d thought was a beach, the brown shapes intersecting with the blue ones, looking for any sort of clue I might have missed. But the image told me nothing. I folded the now-wrinkled paper back up again and sighed heavily.

Why did she have to leave me?

I tried to get into my mom’s head. What was she thinking about? Who was after her?

Ever since we’d moved to Paradise Valley, I’d been feeling the distance between us widening, the disturbing sense that there was much more to her than I knew . . . that maybe she wasn’t who I thought she was.

I bit my lip. This line of thinking was getting me nowhere.

Sure, I didn’t understand everything about my mom—and according to Corbin, there were lots of things in the unknown category. But I wasn’t about to start questioning the fifteen years of my life that I’d spent with her. No matter what sort of lies they told you, or what kind of secrets they were hiding, the essential truth of a person, and how you felt about them, was still there beneath it all, wasn’t it?

I had to believe yes.

“Aidan,” I blurted, interrupting his singing. Suddenly, it seemed important to know. Because there were things going on in his head that I couldn’t access. Because I already felt him drifting away from me, and right now he was all I had. Because we’d just almost died. And because I wanted whatever this thing was between us to grow. “Why did you get kicked out of Prep? What did you do?”

He groaned, dropping his head back. “This again.”

I had asked him repeatedly what had happened, why he got kicked out, and why he was sentenced to
community service. More and more, I realized how much this bothered me—that he didn’t seem to trust me enough to tell me what was going on. If he kept this a secret, what else was he hiding?

Then he faced forward again, gripping the wheel tightly. “You know I can’t say. As much as I’d like to, Willa, I can’t.”

“But why? I’ve told you everything,” I said. “I mean, this stuff with my mom is as personal as it gets.”

“I know. It’s not that I’m trying to be all secretive. Really. It’s just that some things are better left untouched.”

“Poison ivy, maybe, or sulfuric acid,” I said. “But we’re talking about the truth here. Isn’t the truth supposed to set you free? The Bible, and all that?”

“There’s another saying: The truth is rarely pure and never simple. Even if I told you the truth, you probably wouldn’t believe it.”

I looked at him plaintively. Why didn’t he see that I needed to know? “That would be for me to decide, wouldn’t it?” Why didn’t he get how important this was?

Now he shifted in his seat, impatient. He exhaled a forceful sigh. “C’mon, Willa. Stop, okay? I said I can’t.”

“Fine. Whatever.” And then, before I could help myself, the words slipped out. “Tre warned me about you, you know.”

His brow furrowed in surprise. “He did? I thought we were cool. What did he say?”

“That I shouldn’t get emotional about you.”

“Well, are you?” I felt his green eyes drilling right into me and I knew that my skin, my muscles, my bones were no cover at all.

“Not at all,” I said, turning away to look out the window.

By the time we got to Carmel it was late afternoon and we were running low on fuel. We’d traveled through the forest and back out to the ocean, silently winding around the rocky coastline. Our journey without the detour through the mountains would have been nearly two hours shorter, but hey, then we might not have had the opportunity to scale death-defying heights on dirt roads in the rain and/or decorate the Volvo with the latest in wood accessories.

In any case, the town was a beautiful sight to behold, all stone cottages and thatched roofs, Tudor-style storefronts and little manicured bursts of color in all the window boxes. I wish we could say we’d been smart enough to plan it, but our arrival here was purely by chance—and now we just had to get out of the jumbled-up wreck of a car. Plus we needed to do some more research, which meant finding an available computer.

“This is strictly a survival stop,” I warned Aidan. I didn’t want him to get too many ideas, even though I was light-headed about the possibility of another Sly Fox maneuver.
Pickpocketing is a gateway drug,
Tre had said.
If only he knew how right he was.

“Go up there,” I said, pointing to what looked like a residential street. We drove around for a little while, checking out houses. I was looking for something quiet, easy to get into, and obviously empty.

“What about that one?” Aidan pointed to a modern home that was all glass boxes.

“No way,” I said. “It’s like an aquarium. Think discreet.”

We debated the merits of trying a house for sale or a guesthouse on a larger property. Finally, we settled on a neatly kept yellow stucco cottage with blue trim and a rustic-looking wood garage door. It was the garage door I was counting on.

“You know best.” He winked. “I’m just the apprentice here.”

It wasn’t a vacation house like the place in Santa Barbara. But it looked like a risk worth taking. We parked at the end of the block.

In the passenger seat, I closed my eyes for a moment and tried to center myself to prepare for another break-in. This would take concentration and we couldn’t afford to make any more mistakes. No, from now on we needed to be superslick.

“Let’s take all of our stuff and ditch the car.”

Aidan slung his knapsack over his shoulder. All I had left besides my schoolbag, which was proving fairly useless to me at this point, was the pepper spray and the
papers with the painting and my mom’s email. I grabbed the bag, throwing the other stuff inside, and put on my mom’s jacket.

“Before we go I need something from the car,” I said. “Can you open the hood?”

Aidan frowned and reached over to pull the release lever. “I don’t know. This thing is pretty crunched up.”

We got out and he put his fingers underneath the hood to wedge it open. It took a few tries, but the thing finally gave, releasing a few more puffs of smoke that we waved out of our eyes. “What do you need?”

“That stick thingy for the oil.” I was not well versed in my car vocab.

“The dipstick?”

“Yeah.”

He reached in and pulled out the wire, giving me a funny look. “I’m not even going to ask why you want this.”

I grasped it between my fingers. “Then you’ll just have to watch.”

“Oh, I’m watching.” He tried to slam the hood closed but it bounced back up. “Ah, screw it.”

We walked quickly and purposefully down the street toward the house. There was a stone wall encircling the property, which we hopped over easily, and we stepped onto the paved stone circling in front. My body ached from the hours in the car, and the bruise radiated from my ribs down my torso, but it felt good to move again. I
saw that there were two newspapers on the front step— an excellent sign. And some weeds tangled in the bushes. Even better.

Don’t worry, lonely house. We’ve come to keep you company.

I peered in through the tiny porthole window on the side of the garage. No cars inside, either. And there was a little gray box mounted on the ceiling. Very good.

Now, it was onto the door. It was supposed to look like it was original to the house, with cutesy wroughtiron hinges and handles. But that was just for show. It was actually electric and probably only a few years old.

I bent the wire into a hook shape. “Can you lift me up?” I asked Aidan.

Aidan flexed his biceps, and I tried not to notice. “I can manage that.”

He leaned down to grab me by the legs and heaved so that my feet were at his chest and I could reach the crack between the garage door and the frame. I slid my wire up beneath the rubber flap concealing the opening and pushed it through, feeling around. It was a technique similar to the one I’d used to break into lockers at school. All I had to do was find the latch. . . .

“You’re getting heavy,” Aidan grumbled.

And how was it that a minute ago he was doing his Mr. Universe routine? Paging the men of the world: No girl ever wants to hear that she’s heavy, under any
circumstances—home invasions included.

I scowled and rotated my wrist so that the wire brushed against smooth plastic. That was the gray box—I was sure of it—and then, as I lowered the wire, a little lip. I hooked around the edge with the wire and pulled down, feeling the lever release. “Got it.”

Aidan lowered me and I pulled open the door. Triumph. Success.
Entrez.

“Damn.” He grinned. “You never cease to amaze me. What’s that trick called?”

“The Disable the Garage Door with a Dipstick? Don’t know. We’ll have to think of something catchier.”

We breezed by the pristine rows of shelving, the neat arrangement of tools hanging on the walls. “Whoever lives here does not use this stuff,” Aidan said.

He grabbed a wrench and an extra screwdriver.

“What are you doing?” I hissed.

“Stocking up for later. You never know when we might need it. This is a survival stop, right? Besides, these people aren’t using them.”

I shook my head and put my hand on the doorknob leading into the house. I was willing to bet it was unlocked—nobody kept the door between their garage and house locked—but I was also preparing to deal with another alarm system inside.

I looked at Aidan. “Ready, klepto?”

He nodded. I turned the handle. The door was open.

Awesome.

Unfortunately, there was a very large, very angry gray pit bull charging toward us, barking. Not so awesome.

We were already inside, standing in some kind of laundry room. Pride kept me from turning back. Also, the dog, which was jumping all around, circling both of us, and staring with his rheumy eyes.

“Down, boy!” I whispered loudly. I’d never had a pet myself. Other than my day at the animal shelter, my experience with the canine species was limited and I had no idea how to handle a mean and attacking guard animal. The dog seemed to know this, because he ignored my command and leapt on me, scratching at my legs and gnashing his teeth.

“Down! Down!”

“Uh, Willa? That’s not gonna help. Not now.”

“What do we do?” I yelped to Aidan.

“This way,” Aidan said, rapping the dog on the nose with the back of his hand. The dog let up for a few seconds, and Aidan pulled me into a powder room and slammed the door shut.

“Oh my God,” I said, reaching around to examine the tattered hemline of my shirt. “He bit me.”

“He just bit your clothes,” Aidan said. “Don’t be a drama queen.”

The dog was barking outside the door, clawing at it so his nails clicked on the wood. My heart was still racing wildly.

“We’re trapped in here. And he’s gonna keep barking
until the police come. Now what, dog whisperer?”

“At least there’s no alarm,” Aidan said, grinning.

“So our death will be silent and peaceful.”

“Calm down, Colorado.” He opened the vanity under the sink. “We need to confuse him. There’s gotta be something in here we can use.”

I folded my arms across my thundering chest. “I’m not going to poison a dog, if that’s what you’re thinking.”