You Won't See Me Coming Read online

  I open my eyes again and stare at the empty inbox. I hit refresh every few seconds and finally give up, opening a new window and logging onto Twitter to read Harper’s latest tweets.

  Last exam taken! Last paper in! So this is what freedom feels like?

  In a post-all-nighter haze. Could someone come to my dorm and just pour coffee into my mouth?

  Tomorrow, please come. I can’t wait another day.

  What does that mean? I click into the replies.

  Finally!! I cannot wait to hear about him.

  Mateo Day! I demand a full report over lunch.

  “Shit, shit, shit,” I whisper to no one, my heart straining, unable to get out a full beat. I open up my email, my hands furiously typing out a note to Cam.

  Dude! What did you find out? Harper just posted on Twitter all giddy about meeting Mateo tomorrow. I’m starting to FREAK OUT over here.

  My fingers hit send. My legs bounce up and down involuntarily beneath the table as I stare at my empty inbox, willing for a quick, “I checked. He’s real. You have nothing to worry about, you psychopath” response from Cam. Sixty seconds later, the satellite phone rings.

  “Please say you have good news,” I say.

  “I’m sorry,” Cam answers, slightly out of breath. “I have no news.”

  “What?” I say loudly, my free hand slamming down onto the table.

  “Reagan, chill. I’m sorry, things are crazy here,” he answers with a sigh. “We’ve been in training all day. I haven’t had a moment to check. I’ve got his details. I’m going to do it right now. Just go to bed, I’m sure you have nothing to worry about.”

  “How can I go to bed?” I ask, standing up from my seat at the table and pacing around our tiny kitchen.

  “It may take me some time,” Cam says. “What do you think us hackers do? Just like pound out a little code and boom, we’ve got a full profile with the headline ‘Bad Guy’ on it?”

  “No,” I say. Yes, I think.

  “Look, give me a couple hours,” Cam says and I can hear him tapping away on his keyboard. “I promise you. The second I figure out if this guy’s a liar or not, I’ll call you, okay?”

  “Fine,” I answer, and the restlessness that started in my legs climbs up to my torso and down my arms, forcing me to cradle the phone in between my cheek and shoulder to shake out the crippling nerves.

  “Get some sleep.”

  Highly unlikely, I think as I hear Cam click off on the other side.

  * * *

  I pick at my chapped lips as I stare at the digital green numbers of my clock. I taste metal on the tip of my tongue, a sure sign that I’m bleeding, as the clock switches from 2:41 to 2:42 a.m. It’s been over two hours since I hung up with Cam and I have yet to fall asleep. Not that I thought I would.

  I roll onto my back and stare at the shadows on the ceiling. I close my eyes and force my hands away from my bleeding lips. I fold my hands across my chest and repeat my selfish prayer.

  Please be nothing. Please be nothing. Please God, be nothing.

  More than anything, I want Harper to be safe. But it’s more than that. I want her to be happy too. She got so screwed over by the last guy she dated at New Albany. Chad. Ugh. He was a senior when we were juniors. He treated her like a princess. Or so we thought. A few months into their fairy-tale relationship (complete with lovey-dovey texts, sweet romantic dinners, and even the occasional bouquet of flowers), Malika caught wind he was banging half the lacrosse team. Sure enough, Harper showed up unexpectedly at his house and caught him with his pants down (literally) with the team’s captain. She cried every day for a week. Malika and I took turns supplying her with cookie dough ice cream and reruns of Friends. Ever since, she’s been so guarded. She said she’d never be made a fool out of again. Even if Mateo is everything he claims to be, I’ll freaking cut him if he hurts my girl.

  The high-pitch shrill of the phone fills my room and I lunge for it on the nightstand.

  “What did you find out?” I say and sit up straight in the bed.

  “You were right,” Cam says, his voice breathy with panic. “He’s claiming to be a junior at the University of Pennsylvania but he’s not. I hacked into school records; he’s not listed as a student there. And his IP address isn’t in Philadelphia. It’s in Colombia.”

  “Shit,” I say and jump out of the bed, sheets and blankets still tangled around my body, causing me to fall forward. My free hand braces me against the cold wood floor. “I knew it. What else do you have? Think it’s one of Torres’s guys?”

  “I think so,” Cam answers. “It took me a long time to break through. They have his computer firewalled pretty well. But he’s definitely not the international studies major he claims to be.”

  “When are they meeting?” I ask as I flip on my light and start running around my room, furiously tearing off my pajama bottoms, and throwing on a pair of jeans.

  “Tomorrow morning at eight thirty for breakfast at some café in Greenwich Village,” Cam says. “You’ve got to figure out a way to warn her before morning.”

  “I know, but her phone is probably tapped,” I reply, cradling the sat phone in my ear as I pull on a pair of mismatched socks, my heart beating so loudly in my ears I can barely make out my own words. “I can’t call and warn her. They’ll hear the call and then figure out some other way to snatch her earlier.”

  “And they’ll find you too,” Cam says, his voice weighty with worry in my ear. “What are you going to do?”

  “What choice do I have?” I ask, throwing my sheet and blanket off the floor and back onto my bed as I search for the sweatshirt I had on earlier. “I’ve got to get down to New York and stop her.”

  “But your cover,” Cam says. “This could expose you.”

  “Well, I don’t have a lot of options here,” I snap, opening up a black backpack and sprinting around the room, picking up a pair of jeans, a few T-shirts, underwear, pajama pants, and socks, and throwing them inside. “You’re the only one who knows about the Torres threats. The Black Angels are done with me. There’s no way they’re going to pull together some type of middle-of-the-night operation for a friend I haven’t seen in over a year. Who I’m not supposed to even be in contact with anymore.”

  “Maybe if I explained—” Cam begins.

  “No way. I don’t trust them,” I cut him off, my shaking hands searching the bottom of my closet for a baseball cap. “Someone on the inside was working with Torres before he died.”

  “What? How do you know?”

  “Because he practically told me before I killed him,” I say and take in a sharp breath. “Look, I don’t have time to explain. But if the mole finds out, they’ll just tip off Fernando, and Harper could get taken now. We can’t risk it.”

  “You really think so?”

  “Absolutely. There is no one in that bunker I trust except for my father and you. I’ve got weapons. I’ve got a car. I’ve got to do this on my own.”

  “At least bring Luke with you,” Cam insists. “You cannot take on a team of assassins by yourself. Unless you want both you and Harper to die.”

  He’s right. Someone needs to grab Harper while the other stands by as the getaway driver. This is a two-person job. I don’t want to force Luke to go rogue again. And I certainly don’t want to put him in danger. But I can’t do this alone.

  “He’s going to be pissed,” I say quietly.

  “Not as pissed as he’d be if he woke up to some note saying you were gone,” Cam says.

  “Fine,” I answer, getting down on my knees and pushing down on one of the old floorboards in my room. The plank moves with ease, revealing an envelope filled with one hundred twenty-dollar bills. I hope we can make this quick and clean. Grab Harper and get her to safety. But if we’re spotted, if Torres’s team intercepts us, we might have to run. And we’ll need cash. “Will you get me all the details about Harper? Where she lives, where she’s staying tonight?”

  “On it,” Cam says. “You need to get on
the road now. If you don’t leave soon, you’ll never make it.”

  I pull back my curtain. Shit. It’s snowing. Even on a clear day, it’s at least a four-hour drive to New York City.

  “Okay. Talk to you soon,” I say and hang up. I throw the phone on my bed and walk across the hallway. I open Luke’s door without knocking and flip on his lights. His eyes, groggy with sleep, squint up at me as I hover over his bed.

  “Get dressed,” I say, tossing him a sweatshirt off the floor. “We’re going to New York.”

  FIVE

  Swish. Swish. Swish. Swish.

  The windshield wipers of our SUV are on full speed, pushing fast-falling snow out of the way as Luke steers the car off the treacherously icy Vermont back roads and onto Interstate 87 south as we race toward Manhattan.

  Well … as fast as you can race in a snowstorm.

  I look over at Luke as he grips the steering wheel, his knuckles white, and his mouth pressed into a straight line. He hasn’t said a word since we left the house. I gave him a three-minute briefing. Told him about Mateo. That Harper was being targeted by Fernando. That she was heading into a trap in the morning and we had to stop her before she left her dorm. He listened, nodding intently. I braced my body for an argument. But there was none. Harper and Luke have been close friends since the Weixels moved to New Albany in middle school. There’s a long history that predates my move next door to Luke on Landon Lane: splashing together at pool parties and sharing a freezing bleacher seat at football games, long talks, and winding walks on neighborhood paths.

  “Let’s go get our girl,” he said as he climbed out of his bed and began quickly packing his bag. We loaded weapons cases, a computer, and two satellite phones into the car and were gone in under five minutes.

  Despite finally being on a highway, we still face snow-covered roads. At four a.m., there’s almost no one on the roads. We don’t even have tire tracks to follow.

  Luke gently pushes down on the car’s accelerator but the car fishtails, spinning to the right.

  My left hand automatically grips the center console.

  “Shit, shit, shit,” Luke whispers harshly under his breath. He spins the wheel, trying to correct the car’s dangerous maneuver. He pulls us out of the spin and lifts his foot off the accelerator, decreasing our speed. I take a breath but feel little relief when I look at the clock: 4:14. God, I hope we make it to her apartment before eight.

  “The things I get you involved in, right?” I say, filling the car with some of the first words of our drive.

  “It’s like you can read my mind,” Luke says, shaking his head, his eyes fixed on the road. I stare at him, waiting for him to tell me he’s just kidding. He doesn’t. Because he’s not.

  Finally, I turn away and begin counting the large lights that line this stretch of highway.

  One. Two. Three. Four.

  “I wish you all had never met me,” I say softly as I stare out the window.

  Five. Six. Seven. Eight.

  Luke clears his throat and shifts awkwardly in his seat, unsure of what to say. But his silence says it all.

  He wishes he’d never met me either. And I don’t blame him one bit.

  I grip my tongue between my teeth to stop the tears that threaten to rise from the base of my throat. Since Indonesia, so many conversations I’ve had with Luke have left me teetering on the edge of tears. I hate it. It makes me feel so weak. But more than feeling guilty over all I’ve done, I’m just … so sad. There’s really no other way to say it. Luke used to be the hand that pulled me out of the darkness. But now, he’s the hand that pushes me down.

  “I wish you’d gone to AP bio that day,” I continue, still staring out the window.

  “What are you talking about?” Luke asks.

  “The Monday after I kissed that soccer player at Mark Ricardi’s party,” I answer and close my eyes, picturing a sullen Luke walking toward me on a windy New Albany High School quad. “I skipped AP bio to avoid you. But you skipped too. You found me sitting outside. And then we heard the scream. We saw someone trying to take that girl. And I raced home knowing my parents were next. I think about that day a lot.”

  “I’d never skipped a class before,” Luke answers quietly.

  “I know. And think about how different your life would be. If you were in class that day, you wouldn’t have seen that happen so you’d never have followed me home. You wouldn’t know who I really was or about the Black Angels. You wouldn’t have followed me down to Colombia or to Qualifiers or to that warehouse in Indonesia. You’d be at West Point. You’d be living the life you were supposed to.”

  “But I’d never know what happened to you,” Luke answers, glancing over at my side of the car. “You’d have just disappeared on me.”

  “But maybe that would have been best.”

  I look over at Luke. He pushes his full lips to one side, a pensive quirk of his. “Maybe,” he finally admits. “It’s funny how one choice that seems so insignificant in the moment can change just … everything.”

  “The butterfly effect.”

  “The Reagan effect.”

  I turn away, staring back out the window, unsure of what that means but unwilling to ask. All I know for certain is if Luke and Harper had never met me, their lives would be better. Their names would never have been on Santino Torres’s lips.

  They would be safe.

  * * *

  I cannot stop my knees from bouncing. I look at the clock for what must be the hundredth time in the last ten minutes: 7:53. Knowing Harper, she’ll leave her dorm early to be sure she makes it to her 8:30 date on time. We only have a matter of minutes to get to her dorm and run interference before she walks right into Fernando’s perilous setup. I know these people. She’ll be kidnapped at best. Killed at worst. Used as a pawn to pull us out of hiding. And as I think about Harper dotting her lips with pink gloss, getting excited about her date, having no idea she’s in danger, I’ve never hated myself more.

  My fingernails dig into the skin of my palms, trying to draw pain. Stop me from feeling sorry for myself. There’s no time to wish for another life when the most important thing right now is saving Harper’s. No amount of self-pity can undo all I’ve already done.

  I glance at the clock again: 7:54. I pick at my lip until I taste that metallic rush of blood on my tongue once again. I force myself to stop looking at the clock and stare outside.

  We pass by low-rise buildings, different-colored bricks breaking them apart. Deep red, then cream, then gray. Air-conditioning units stick out of random windows and metal fire escapes climb up the sides. My Black Angel mind has always been trained to be observant, but an architecture class taught by Victoria Browning, a senior leader at CORE and the one in charge of all of us trainees, must have really seeped into my subconscious. Because now when I look at buildings, I look at the materials and details that tell the story of each structure, but I also look for the escape routes and potential hazards.

  Please get there. Please get there. Please get there, my mind repeats its silent prayer as we pass by more apartment buildings with delis and bodegas and dry cleaners in the commercial spaces below.

  I pull down on my Columbus Blue Jackets baseball cap and look at the car’s navigation. Four minutes until we’re in front of Harper’s dorm on Eleventh Street and Third Avenue.

  “I have never been so happy for a snowy Saturday in my life,” Luke says as he pulls down Second Avenue with an ease I wouldn’t expect to find in Manhattan. There are still cars and cabs on the road, of course, but not as many as I thought there’d be. Most New Yorkers must have looked out the window and opted to stay in bed, wait out the snowy morning under the covers before heading out to brunch or last minute Christmas shopping.

  The phone rings.

  I grab it before it can even finish its first ring, answering it on speaker. “So what’s the word?”

  “Okay, you’re not going to like this one,” Cam says as Luke slows the SUV at a stoplight, still four b
locks away. “There are two entrances to this dorm. One on Eleventh Street and one on Twelfth Street.”

  “God damn it,” I reply and slap my hand against my jittering knee. “So how are we going to know which entrance to park in front of?”

  “A coin flip?” Cam suggests.

  “You’re right,” I answer with extra bite in my voice. “Life-or-death decisions should be decided on a coin flip.”

  “Hang on. I’m pulling up some satellite images from the building,” Cam says and I can hear him typing on the other end of the phone. “Okay … looks like the Eleventh Street exit is a lot more popular.”

  “But which way is the café?” I ask and hear Cam on his keyboard again.

  “It’s near Washington Square Park,” Cam answers. “So she’s going to have to walk south and west. So, logically, she’s going to leave out of the most southwest exit.”

  “Unless her dorm room is closer to the Twelfth Street exit,” Luke interjects as the light turns from red to green.

  “Thanks, Cam,” I say. “We’re almost there. We’ll figure it out.”

  “Coin flip,” Cam says again. “Call me after you grab her.”

  “Will do. Thanks, Cam,” I reply and hang up the phone.

  “What do you want to do?” Luke asks, stopping at another stoplight. We’re just two blocks away now. I bite down on my ragged thumbnail and look out the window just as a gust of wind opens an old woman’s long winter coat.

  “Eleventh Street,” I finally answer as I watch the woman struggle to pull her coat back together. “Harper is a total baby when it comes to the cold. Even if her room is closer to the Twelfth Street exit, she’ll walk to the Eleventh Street one just to skip a block in the snow.”

  “I sure hope you’re right,” Luke answers with an annoyed sigh as I eye the clock: 7:58.

  “Me too, Luke,” I reply quietly as we pass by Twelfth Street, now one block away. “Me too.”