Teen Killers Club Page 23

  “Hello?” I say into the phone.

  “Signal. Your kill switch briefly went off the grid. We’ve determined Dennis tampered with it. As a result, he has been eliminated.”

  My knees buckle and I sink to the curb, my hand over my mouth.

  “I am calling to let you know that your kill switch is once again traceable. We can follow your movements currently, and full function will be restored within a few hours.” The Director lets this sink in. “If you desert your route within that time and abandon your mission, your kill switch won’t go off. But Javier’s will.”

  My vision swims as I stare up at Javier, glowering at Erik. Erik is smiling at him triumphantly.

  “… You wouldn’t.”

  “Try me.”

  The call cuts off, and I lean my head on my fists, my whole body turned to lead.

  “What did he say?”

  “It’s Dennis. They killed Dennis. They killed him and it’s my fault.”

  A stunned beat, then Erik shakes his head. “No. No no no. There’s no way. He’s too valuable. Maybe I can still get in touch with him.” He holds out his hand. “I need to borrow your car. Just for an hour, so I can go find him online. I promise you, Signal, he’s alive!”

  “What the hell are you even doing here?” Javier yells at Erik.

  Erik ignores Javier and focuses on me. “I know how to reach him, Signal. There’s still a chance he could be free.”

  With a guilty look at Javier, I hand Erik the keys. “We need it back by dark.”

  “I’ll have it back,” Erik promises, his eyes darting between me and Javier as he opens the driver’s side door. “Maybe use that time to, uh, have a little talk?”

  Javier turns to me as the car pulls away. I wait for him to say something, anything, horribly conscious that my lips are swollen, almost bruised by the kiss he just witnessed.

  “Before you ran out on me,” Javier says, his chin high, his neck tensed, “you said being my girlfriend was the best thing that ever happened to you, correct?!”

  “Can I just try and explain—”

  “There’s nothing to explain.” Javier shakes his head. “You’re a cheater and a liar. Got it. Great.”

  “Javier, come on!”

  “It kills me that I was so wrong about you.” He turns and strides back up the path to our motel bungalow. I chase him back into our room, then freeze in my tracks.

  Who the hell is this dude?

  A tall, muscled man leans next to the window. He has a short beard, a black bandanna tied around his bald head, and a tear tattoo beside his eye just like Javier’s.

  “Ray, this is Jenny. Jenny, this is Ray,” Javier says in clipped tones.

  Oh right. The leader of the Death Heads.

  “The famous Jenny!” Ray says, voice low and even. “This one’s been praising you all day. You got him pretty whipped.”

  “Right.” I clear my throat nervously. “Javier, can I just talk to you outside for like five minutes?”

  “We need to focus on this right now,” Javier says coolly. “They’re expecting us over at Owl’s Nest for dinner.”

  “Six o’clock,” Ray adds. “We should head over pretty soon.”

  My stomach flips over. “My friend borrowed our car—”

  “Can’t use it anyway, they don’t let strange cars in the compound. No outside phones come in either. I rode my bike up here. My buddy rode another bike up for you two to take.” He looks at me, not smiling, just assessing. “We gotta keep our eye on this one, Javi,” he says at last. “She’s just Angel’s type.”

  “That’s the idea. We need her to bat her lashes at Angel, get him alone, get him to make a move so I can take him out. Think you can handle that, ‘Jenny’?” Javier’s face is stiff. “Think you can trick a guy into believing you’re into him, so someone else can come put a knife in his back?” He tilts his head back. “Yeah, I bet you can handle that all right.”

  “Javier,” I say through clenched teeth. “Do you even care what this afternoon has been like for me?”

  “Do you even care what this afternoon been like for me?!” Javier yells, his scarred fist landing so hard on the oak dresser beside him that a framed picture jumps forward and falls flat. “I spent the last hour telling the Director that you were right in front of me, asleep! I didn’t even know what I was covering you for! I didn’t know if you’d run away or if you were lying dead in a ditch! And then you finally come back with Erik?!” His mouth contracts, like it makes him sick just to say the name. “The same guy I’ve had to watch you flirt with every day—”

  “Flirt with Erik?!” I sputter. “I never flirted with Erik!—”

  “That’s why you were kissing him, right?”

  “Enough!” Ray barks.

  He takes two strides over to Javier and grabs his ear, forcing him to lock eyes. “Tonight is no joke. We’re about to go into a fortress. God knows I owe you, but I’m not taking you in there unless you go in like a soldier.” He looks at me, hard. “Both of you: soldiers. Angel is crazy, you get it? I’m talking mad-dog insane. And so is his little hippy army. So you settle this stupid high school drama, or I call this whole thing off right now.”

  “Got it,” Javier breathes, his hands still in fists.

  “Good.” Ray glares at me again. “We ride in fifteen. I’ll be out front when you two grow up.” He strides outside, shaking his head, slamming the door behind him.

  Javier opens his backpack and pulls out a change of clothes, turning his back on me.

  “So where were you anyway?” he says at last.

  “I was investigating Rose’s murderer. And to do that, I had to get Dennis to turn off my kill switch.”

  Javier turns around, his face stricken. “You what?! He did what?!”

  “He turned it off, remotely. But they caught him hacking it, and now he’s … he might be dead because of me.” He might. There’s still a chance he might be alive. I have to believe Erik is right: they can’t kill Dennis. They can’t.

  A vein flutters wildly in Javier’s throat. “Why didn’t you tell me?!”

  “I didn’t know if it would work.”

  “And if it didn’t, then what? You’d have been killed? Like Troy?!” The panic is hitting him after the fact, hard. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “I thought you’d try to stop me.”

  “Hell yes, I would’ve stopped you! Someone should have stopped you! I can’t believe Dennis went along with it!”

  “We thought if it worked, he could disable everyone’s kill switch.”

  “Signal …,” Javier sighs. “You should have told me.”

  I wrestle clothes out of my backpack, not answering him.

  “So what, you told Erik to meet you there?” Javier asks, pulling off his own shirt.

  “No, he just knew about this guy, and wanted to help me figure out what happened to Rose. And because of him, I think I finally know. And that’s …” My voice breaks and I have to clear my throat. “That’s the most important thing for me, okay? Figuring out what happened to Rose. Don’t you understand, to finally know what happened, what that means? I was so grateful—”

  “So grateful you let him kiss you?”

  “No! No, it had nothing to do with being grateful. We fought the whole drive back, but when he said goodbye, I thought I wasn’t going to see him again and … I don’t know, we kissed! I don’t know what else to say.”

  Javier stands in front of me, his expression soft. His bare chest is carved out of the pink dying light of late afternoon, his shirt clutched in one scarred hand. I can actually see him shake a little, like his heart is beating that hard. I have hurt him so terribly and all he has ever done is protect me. I reach out, wanting to comfort him, but he grabs my wrists to prevent me.

  “This isn’t just about you making out with Erik, Signal—though, trust me, it’s burned into my head for life,” he says furiously. “It’s also the fact that you didn’t tell me what was going on with you. I told you ev
erything, and you still held this back from me?”

  “I’m sorry.” I mean it. “But I knew you’d try to stop me.”

  “So what, you’d rather be with someone who doesn’t care what happens to you?” He stares down at me, restraining me from holding him and yet still keeping me close. “You think Erik cares about you?”

  His expression is almost pitying as he releases me.

  “We should finish getting dressed.” He turns away. “We’ll talk about it on the ride back.”

  As if there’s any chance of getting a ride back.

  * * *

  Standing in the small shower under the hot water, I watch the line of my dandelion fading, though I try to keep it out of the stream. I inhale the smell of the soap, the steam from the water, trying to anchor myself to the present instead of going crazy with fear.

  How have I managed to mess everything up so badly? Dennis could be dead and we’re next. Javier hates me now, I have no idea where Erik is, and I’m crying in the shower in what is possibly the last hour of my life. All this time I’ve feared an instantaneous death triggered by my kill switch. This afternoon, for a few brief hours I thought I’d escaped that dread. I’d seen years stretching ahead of me, a future as blank as a check. Now we’re back on course for certain death—the target’s, or our own.

  I’d comforted myself when we looked at the maps of the compound that I’d never have to actually go in. That if I died trying to escape, at least I wouldn’t have to go into the compound of a murderous cult, to do the unthinkable.

  And now I’m on the floor of the shower, rocking back and forth, and the moaning I hear is my own, echoing up the tiles. If I could just cling to this moment, if I could stay in it a little bit longer and hide from the future. But the water drains, and Javier knocks on the bathroom door, and the future has come for me.

  Shaking, I pull on high-waisted jean shorts and slim plimsolls, then position my knife sheath along the inside of my belt, tucking it into my shorts and pulling a tight tank top over to cinch it closer. I choose a loose blue cotton peasant blouse to help conceal the bulge at the small of my back. I line my eyes the way Jada showed me, stain and gloss my lips, pull my fingers through my dyed bronze hair, and practice looking normal in the mirror. But all I see in the mirror is fear.

  I step out into the living room and Javier’s eyes flicker at the sight of me.

  “He’ll want to talk to you, all right,” he says coldly. And then it’s time to go.

  * * *

  “We’re going to keep this simple,” Ray says before he gets on his bike, standing out in front of the motel. “I’ll ask the girls if you two can crash there tonight. Angel will come by to check you out. At some point during dinner, I’ll go walk one of the bikes to the back fence for you guys, and unlock it from the inside. I’ll come back in to say goodbye so you know that’s all set, then act like I’m taking off. But instead I’ll loop around and wait for you two to come through.

  “That’s all I need to know, and that’s all I want to hear,” Ray says, stomping out the tail end of a cigarillo.

  “Thank you,” Javier says, and he turns to me. “When you get the chance to talk to Angel, try and get him alone and keep him with you. I’ll be watching. As soon as you get him away from the main crowd, I’ll come find you. I should only be a few minutes. After,” he swallows quickly, “we hide his body as best we can. Then we go to the back fence and get the hell out of there.”

  I nod as confidently as I can. “Seems straightforward to me.”

  “Everything depends on you getting him alone.”

  I nod again, dully. Dread collects in the pit of my stomach like a knot of cold, slithering snakes.

  “All right.” Ray mounts his bike. “We seriously need to go.”

  Javier gets on the bike, and I clamber up behind him, and we’re off.

  The sun is setting as our bikes climb up the winding hill toward the Owl’s Nest compound. A wood rail fence runs alongside us, but otherwise the only thing for miles are rolling gold hills, with clusters of black, bent-sideways trees, trailing shadows of violet.

  Ray turns at an old billboard with “CIDER” printed on it in rust-red block letters, his bike disappearing down the sloping hillside, and Javier follows after him. The sycamore trees close around the single lane, their upraised branches the color of bleached bones.

  The red of Ray’s taillight glows brighter. I watch it over Javier’s shoulder to keep my nerves calm as we take the long switchbacks, veering left and right, left and right, winding along curves that leave me almost seasick. The asphalt goes from smooth to rough and patchy as we hit dirt roads, gritty blue clouds blooming from Ray’s back tire. The trees flatten into one dark shape, one endless void we’re flying into.

  And at last, straight ahead, there’s a rusted-out car in front of a tall wood fence, silhouetted by a motion light. Pasted on the fence are about a thousand glow-in-the-dark star stickers, and a handwritten sign that reads:

  PRIVATE PROPERTY

  TRESPASSERS WILL BE SHOT

  Ray’s motorcycle slows to a stop. Javier’s engine rumbles and chokes as he cuts it, hanging back as Ray waves at the car.

  “Ray! Hey, man!”

  “We didn’t miss dinner, did we?”

  “Nah, they’re just getting started.” A lanky barefoot kid unfolds himself from the passenger seat, a cloud of weed following him out of the car as he flicks on a walkie-talkie. Another motion light snaps on above us, illuminating the other side of the tall wood fence.

  “Three guests for dinner. Ray and uh …” He looks up at me.

  “Hector and Jenny,” Ray says gruffly.

  “Hey Hector, hey Jenny. I’m Cygnus.” He holds out an empty coffee can. “I’ll take your phones, thanks,” he says pleasantly.

  Ray shakes his head. “I told ’em no phones.”

  “That’s easy, then,” Cygnus says, eyes swooping over us. I’m so sure he’ll pat us down I almost step back. But instead he speaks quietly into his walkie-talkie, which beeps in response.

  Then comes a heavy creak of the metal fence. It cracks open and two girls step out into the road. “Ray! Long time no see!” A girl with long dark hair and a threadbare yellow sundress throws her arm around him, but she’s scanning me and Javier with cool wariness. “These are the guests you wanted to bring to dinner? Nice to meet you both! I’m Compass.”

  “I’m Starbrite, and I’m a hugger,” the other, in a long blue sundress says; she hugs me like we’re long-lost sisters. Her hands graze just inches above my sheathed knife. She smells like hay and something earthy I don’t quite recognize.

  “We should head up to the Big Sky Barn.” Compass brings her hands together under her chin. “Dinner is supposed to start soon. Cygnus, we’ll bring you down a plate after, okay?”

  Cygnus gives her a thumbs-up, folding himself back into the smoky car.

  We follow them into the compound, the fence closing heavily behind us.

  “Watch for crossing chickens!” Compass laughs, then points out where the guys can park the bikes, alongside a row of VW vans. The motion lights pinned up in the trees cast strange shadows on the dirt path that winds up the lawn. The trees are all strung with clothesline, from which hang not just drying clothes but bundles of herbs and flowers, knotted ribbons, and shell wind chimes. It makes a sort of web around the path that shields our surroundings from direct view.

  “What’s for dinner?” Ray asks.

  “We’ve been bringing in our vegetable harvest this last week. It’s incredible this year.” Compass plucks a dried flower from one of the clotheslines and tucks it behind Javier’s ear, then turns to me, smiling. “So you two are road-tripping?”

  “Yeah. On our way to San Francisco.”

  “Taking me to meet the family,” Javier adds.

  “Oh, so you’re college students!” Starbrite grins at me. “What school? What are you studying?”

  “USC. I’m an English major,” I lie quickly.

&n
bsp; “That was my major too!” She grins at me, her lanky tan arm threading through mine. She’s so close I can see the brush strokes of the teeny-tiny gold triangles painted on her forehead and neck and around her bright blue eyes. Compass has them too, like they’ve been doodling on themselves with a gold paint pen.

  “Cool!” I stutter. “But now you’re not in school?”

  “Nope! I’m a dropout.” She rolls her eyes and chuckles. “I gave up classes and trying for some corporate career to live the simple life. I want to do chores on a farm with my friends instead.”

  “Sounds fun?” I manage.

  “It is,” she says earnestly. “It’s the most fun I’ve ever had. Didn’t you feel a sense of relief and lightness just walking through the fence?”

  “Uh …”

  I’m thankful Ray’s voice cuts through our conversation. “Angel will be at dinner, right? These two need a place to crash. I wanted to ask him if that’d be cool.”

  “Oh, of course, of course.” Compass nods serenely. “He likes for us all to eat as a family. Everyone stops their chores, no matter how much work they have left to do, and comes together for dinner.” She gestures toward the huge, old-fashioned red barn a hundred feet ahead of us, its first-story windows glowing orange.

  Smiling girls dressed like Compass and Starbrite carry platters of food, jugs of water, or sheaves of flowers toward the barn.

  “Compass! There you are—” A girl hurries over.

  “You be copilot for a second?” Compass calls to Starbrite, who nods seriously.

  “Copilot?” Ray asks.

  “All first-time visitors need a copilot while they’re here,” Starbrite says, moving slightly in front of us so we can’t go farther up the path.

  “That’s new.” Ray lights up his cigarillo.

  “Don’t think you’re not welcome! We love visitors.” Starbrite bites her lip. “It’s just been necessary the last few months. We’re trying to put in some root cellars ahead of winter so we’re digging pits, and not everybody is great about roping those areas off.”