Concrete Underground, Moxie Mezcal [best books to read for teens .TXT] 📗

kid, though, really got her life together, and now she works there. Even with that crazy hair of hers - you'll never guess what color it is."

"Purple," I said barely audibly.

"Yeah, how'd you guess? You must know her, huh?"

"I thought so, but I'm starting to realize she's not exactly who I thought she was."

Stella patted me on the knee. "Ain't that just the way of the world?"

Meanwhile, a team of men dressed in black Asterion jumpsuits entered the building next door and found Garza on the floor, bleeding profusely and wishing I'd finished him off.

36. If I Had Been Paying Attention

Once I recovered enough to get on the move, I raced to the Motley Fool as fast as the Volvo would take me, darting in and out of traffic as I careened down Highway 77.

I opened the door to find Violet laying on one of the beds, bound, gagged, and blindfolded. I flew over and helped her get free, then yelled, "What happened?"

"That man just burst in here and hit me, knocked me out. When I came to, I was like this. Where's Col, is she alright?"

"She's gone, they took her," I replied. "Who was it?"

"I think it was the man you talked about before, the one with the scar who wears the long coat and hat."

"Fuck!" I screamed in frustration, then took the Russian doll out of my coat pocket and showed it to her. "He had this. He wanted me to know they had her."

Violet's face sank as she turned the doll over in her hands. "How did they find her? We were so careful."

"I don't know," I admitted. "But we've got to come up with a plan before--"

"Wait, listen," she cut me off, then shook the doll. There was definitely something rattling inside.

We pried the two halves open, revealing a smaller version of the same doll nested inside. We opened that one up, and then another, peeling through several layers of ever-shrinking replicas until finally we opened up the last one and found a micro-SD memory card.

Violet and I made it about three paces into Max's office before we both froze in our tracks as Max's chair swiveled around to reveal Saint Anthony sitting behind the desk, grinning from ear to ear.

I drew the Browning and leveled it at his head. "Where's Max?"

A voice behind us called, "Hail, hail, the gang's all here."

I spun around and saw Max perched on a stool at the wet bar, reading Crowley's Book of Lies. "To what do I owe the pleasure?"

"We need your help," I replied, keeping the gun trained on Anthony. "The blackmailers have Columbine."

"Fascinating," he said with a yawn, then looked down at his hand and started picking miniscule specks of dirt out from under his fingernails. "What's it got to do with me?"

"She's your friend, too," I said. "Don't you want to make sure she's safe."

"She's a plucky gal with a strong sense of adventure," Max replied distractedly.

I set the gun down on Max's coffee table and produced the micro-SD card from my pocket. "You might be interested in hearing what's on this."

He took it from me, then walked over to the wall and pressed lightly on a panel. It slid open mechanically, revealing a flat screen hidden inside.

A video flashed on, showing a deformed, wretched figure that might have at one time been Ben Garza strung up like a side of beef, howling in agony while a group of men in black jumpsuits tortured him. But the image quickly flickered and changed to a computer desktop display as Max inserted the card into a slot on the side of the screen.

He shot me a sideways grin, looking very pleased with himself indeed.

Meanwhile, Violet had stealthily moved to pick up the Browning where I left it. Anthony noticed, however, and as soon she raised it, his hand was gripped tightly around her wrist, digging his thumb into a pressure point until she dropped it.

"Nice try," he muttered quietly to her.

Max and I were oblivious to all this. If I had been paying attention, I would have realized that Violet was not trying to aim the gun at Anthony.

Meanwhile, the screen displayed the memory card's contents, which was a single audio file. He tapped the file's icon, and the recording started to play. It was a man's voice, very deep and digitally processed like a cheap movie effect, so as to obscure the speaker's identity.

"If you want to see your friend again, meet me the San Hermes Park tonight. At the eastern end of Millennial Bridge, 3:30 am. Bring Dylan Maxwell with you. Just him, no one else, and come unarmed."

After it finished, it automatically looped and repeated until Max touched the screen again to silence it. "Intriguing choice of a location," was all he said.

"Why's that?" I asked.

"That's where we held the memorial service for her mother after she died." He paused briefly, then added, "You know, the first time she died."

I arched an eyebrow. "Wait, what do you mean?"

"The 'boating accident,'" Max replied, using his fingers to draw quotation marks in the air as he spoke.

Suddenly, it felt like the ground had dropped out from under me. I was dumbfounded. "You mean Jacinda Ngo?"

Max's eyes grew wide with surprise and a smile spread across his face. He looked over my shoulder to Violet and started to laugh.

Violet stared at me with her mouth hanging open. "I assumed you knew."

I was reeling from this revelation. Why had Columbine kept that from me? Was her connection to Jacinda the reason she had been targeted?

Max clapped his hands together once to get our attention and then tapped on his watch face. "Well, time's a-wastin'. Not that I don't love savoring D's utter humiliation, but we're about to walk into what is absolutely guaranteed to be a trap, and we have very little time to devise a proper strategy of attack."

37. Past the Point of Pretenses

Max, Violet, Anthony, and I rode together in the Volvo, while an armored car carrying a detail of Abrasax security guards followed behind at a decidedly indiscreet distance. I had seen them loading up before we left and knew they were packing enough firepower to make a Michigan militiaman blush. Somehow this knowledge was not the least bit comforting to me.

Anthony drove with Max riding shotgun and Violet and me in back. We decided to approach the Millennial Bridge from the north, since that would be least visible route and therefore the best bet for concealing the cavalry. This meant taking the winding, heavily-forested roads down Hermosa Ravine. As we entered the park, Max was finishing up on the phone with the two man scout team he had sent ahead of us.

"That's good," he said into his cell, "just make sure you guys pull back far enough to stay out of sight. They probably won't show if they see you there."

"Everything okay?" I asked.

"Well no one's there, so presumably they're waiting for you to arrive first so they can be sure the coast is clear. Once we get there, I'll have the A-Team hang back until they crawl out of the woodwork." He had a gleeful twinkle in his eye, like a kid unwrapping a Christmas present. "This paramilitary stuff is fun. It's giving me all sorts of ideas for games at the next Highwater party."

"Lovely," Violet grumbled to me. "He's gonna get us shot while he's playing commando."

We pulled off the main road onto a narrower dirt road that followed along the top edge of a steep embankment. We were still five miles from the turn off that would take us to Millennial Bridge. I looked out the rear driver's side window and saw how the ground dropped away sharply and disappeared into the darkness.

Suddenly, I heard another motor roar to life. I looked around but couldn't see any other car, save for the one keeping pace behind us.

"Where is that coming from?" Violet shouted.

"I don't know. I don't see anything," Anthony replied as the sound grew louder.

"There!" Max yelled and pointed out the window. There was a dark shape tearing through the trees off to our right, several yards ahead of us, a car with its lights off. Even though I couldn't make it out clearly, I didn't really need to; I knew exactly what car it was. And at the speed we were going, we were headed right for a collision with it.

Anthony slammed on the breaks, but the blue Chevy swerved toward us to compensate for our sudden deceleration. It hit us square in the front passenger side, sending both cars crashing down the embankment.

I woke up upside down and covered in glass. Turning to my right, I saw that Violet was still strapped into her seat, unconscious. Up front, neither Max nor Anthony was anywhere to be found.

I tried the seat belt, which was jammed. Digging in my pockets, I found my knife and managed to cut myself free. The window next to me was already mostly broken, so I twisted myself around and kicked the remaining glass out of the frame.

I crawled free of the wreckage and slowly, painfully clambered to my feet. It took a moment for my head to stop spinning enough that I could get my bearings. I looked back up the embankment that we had rolled down and saw no sign of the armored car that had been following us. They were probably continuing along the road we had been on, trying to find an access way that would lead them down to us. I figured that gave us maybe five or ten minutes until they would catch up, which was obviously the point of the ambush.

Scanning the area, I saw the blue car sitting a couple yards away from the overturned Volvo, positioned between it and the river. Looking behind me, I found Max was staggering along in a daze about ten yards away, just before the treeline. He looked disoriented and shaky, but at least he was on his feet. I circled around the car to the driver's side and climbed halfway into the back to cut Violet free.

Suddenly I heard a gun shot. After pulling myself back out of the car, I looked up to see that Max had frozen in his tracks and was staring past me. I followed his gaze to the driver climbing out of the blue car with an old WWII Luger drawn. The tail of his trench coat fluttered behind him in the night air, and he tore of his wide brim hat that had fallen forward and obscured his vision. This gave me a clearer view of his face, which looked like it was literally about to fall off of his skull like leprous skin.

The muzzle flashed and another shot rang out as he darted past me. The second shot stirred Max from his stupor, and he quickly spun around and took flight into the treeline.

I sprang up and tried to intercept the man in the coat, but was tackled myself by Saint Anthony, who pounced from out of nowhere. He was on top of