Haunted (14 page)

“Yeah,” the woman answered. That was it. Just yeah. Thanks for being so freakin’ friendly, Anthony thought. Man,
she was clutching the edge of the door as if he and Rae were about to storm the place.

“Is Frank around? Since we’re here, might as well say hi,” Anthony continued.

“No, he’s working late,” she said. “Look, my little boy has a fever. I have to go check on him. Call first next time,
okay?” She shut the door, and Anthony heard it lock.

“Well, that was informative,” he muttered.

“Let me try,” Rae said. She ran her fingers over the side of the door, biting her lip in concentration.

“She was lying,” Rae said. “She has no idea where Frank is. He’s been gone for more than a week, hasn’t called or
anything. She’s afraid he’s gotten himself into some kind of trouble again.”

“So our guy has been gone for pretty much the same amount of time Jesse has,” Anthony commented.

Rae ran her fingers over the doorknob and grimaced. “What?” Anthony demanded.

“Sticky,” she answered. She sniffed her fingers.

“Grape jelly. From the little boy, I guess. Blocked out any thoughts I might have gotten.” She dug around in her
purse, found a tissue, and wiped her fingers.

Anthony would have just used the side of his jeans.

“If I’m going to get any more, we’d have to get inside.”

“That’s not going to happen. At least not tonight,”

Anthony said. “If we stay out here on the porch too long, she’s probably going to call the cops. Come on.”

“I guess I can put the Mush back on my fingers,”

Rae said as they headed to the car. When she got there, she gave the door handle a quick wipe with her sleeve,
then pulled it open. “Oh God,” she whispered.

Anthony was back around to her side of the car in half a second. He had to pull her away so he could see what
she was staring at. When he saw it, his body went cold.

A knife. A knife plunged deep into the back of the passenger seat. None of the blade was visible, only the shiny red
handle.

The sour taste of bile crept up Anthony’s throat. “I think I recognize that knife,” he managed to get out. “I think it’s
Jesse’s Swiss Army. It was a birthday present.”

“So… so whoever has Jesse-Frank or whoever-must have put it there. Like as a message to stay away,” Rae said.

They’d been up at the house for only a few minutes. That meant whoever did this was probably still very close.

Anthony scanned the street. It was empty.

At least it looked empty. But that didn’t mean someone wasn’t watching them right now. “Let’s get out of here.” He
wanted Rae somewhere safe, somewhere where he had a better chance of protecting her.

“One second,” Rae said. She reached out, fingers trembling, and touched the hilt of the knife.

In the dim glow of the closest streetlight Anthony could see her face turn pale. Even her lips lost their color. A
shudder rippled through her body, then she slowly pulled her hand away.

“The thoughts are all from Jesse,” she told Anthony, her voice trembling. “He’s being held in some kind of
warehouse. He thinks it’s about a half an hour from the skateboard place in Little Five Points. He can hear the trains
from where he is. And sometimes-” Her voice caught. “Sometimes there’s a smell of tar.” She swallowed hard.

“Anthony, he has three guards on him. And they have guns.”

I’ve been watching you, Rae. That’s part of the game. And I’ve noticed something about you. Sometimes you open
doors with your elbow, and you use your sleeve to polish things before you touch them. I find this interesting.

Pathetic, but interesting.

I think your power is connected to the sense of touch. I haven’t figured out exactly how it works. But I’m hoping
the little surprise I left you will start making it clear. I’m hoping it will make our game more fun, too. Has anyone ever
told you you’re not very fun, Rae? You should work on that. If you end up having the time.

*

*

*

Rae sat at the kitchen table, a mug of hot chocolate cradled in her hands. She didn’t really feel like drinking it, but
the warmth was comforting. She glanced at the clock on the microwave. After eleven. But Rae couldn’t even imagine
falling asleep. I bet Anthony’s still awake, too, she thought.

She hesitated a moment, then stood up, grabbed the cordless phone off the wall mount-and realized she didn’t
know Anthony’s number. Even with everything they’d gone through together, she’d never called him at home. Never
even been to his house.

Anthony was very… compartmentalized. Rae hesitated again. But she really needed to talk. And Anthony was the
only one she could talk to right now.

Yana had called before, and Rae’d told her some of what was going on. Yana, being Yana, had immediately
volunteered to help them look for the warehouse the next day. And it had helped. It had helped a lot. But Rae still
couldn’t sleep. Her mind was whirling with questions.

Oh, just do it, she ordered herself. She punched in 411, got Anthony’s number, and called. I’ll just let it ring three
times, she promised herself. She didn’t have to wait that long. Anthony picked up on the first one.

“I just keep thinking about the knife,” Rae blurted out. “I know I’m the one that said it was a warning for us to mind
our own business. But now-I don’t know. I just don’t know. Maybe someone else knows what I can do. Maybe the
info from the knife is going to lead us into some kind of trap.” Rae drew in a deep, shuddering breath.

“Can I talk now?” Anthony asked.

The sound of his voice was better than the hot chocolate. Much more calming. Rae sat back down.

“Please. Talk.”

“I’ve been thinking all the same stuff,” Anthony admitted. “And I’m as confused as you are. One thing’s for sure-that feeling you’ve had of being followed is on target. We were only away from the car for a few minutes. Somebody
had to have the knife on them. And they had to have been waiting for the chance to leave it for us.”

“Frank?” Rae asked.

“Maybe,” Anthony answered.

Neither of them said anything for a long moment.

“When you said you’d been thinking the same stuff I’ve been thinking,” Rae finally said, “did you mean the part
about someone knowing about my fingerprint thing?” She stood back up and started pacing around the kitchen.

“Yeah,” Anthony said. “I did think about it. Because all those stories we got in Little Five Points… that’s too random
just to be-”

“People’s bad memories or-I can’t even think of anything else,” Rae interrupted. She crossed over to the kitchen
door and made sure it was locked. She’d checked it so often, she was wearing the Mush off her fingers.

“I can’t think of anything else, either,” Anthony admitted. “Even though it’s freakin’ bizarre, somebody had to have
done something to those people.

Which I guess means they have some kind of, uh, ability, too.”

“And that someone, that someone who has powers, they know the truth about me,” Rae said. She checked the
lock on the kitchen window.

Anthony let out a sigh. “Seems that way. Or maybe they just did it to confuse anyone who would be asking about
Jesse. Even if you hadn’t been able to check out what they were really thinking, it would have gotten us-or anyone
else-totally off track.”

“Oh God, I’m so confused.” Rae groaned. She felt like her skull was too small for her brain, like the bone was
pushing down so hard, it was causing thought malfunctions. “If someone knows the truth about me-then they’d
know I’d get info from the knife. So why leave it unless they wanted to… to lure us someplace?”

“It’s the best reason I can think of,” Anthony said.

“ If they know about you.”

“And… and the best reason I can think of to try and get us to some deserted warehouse is because it would be a
great place for someone to try and kill me again,” Rae blurted out.

Anthony was silent for a moment. “I think it would be better-safer-if I look for the warehouse myself,” he began.

Rae winced. He wasn’t telling her she was wrong. “Tomorrow I’ll-”

“I’m going,” Rae interrupted. “Trap. Warning.

Assassination plot. Whatever the deal is, I’m going.

We’re getting Jesse back, together.”

Anthony cruised slowly down the dark, empty street. “Anyplace around here would fit what we got from Jesse,” he
said.

“We’re close enough to the tracks to hear trains.

We’re about a half hour from the skateboard place.

And they’ve been doing repairs a few streets over, so Jesse could have smelled tar.”

“Thanks for the recap,” Yana teased. “I think I missed something when-oh, wait. I’ve been here the whole time.”

Anthony shot her a dirty look, but Rae didn’t mind having someone around who was attempting to lighten the
mood a little. It wasn’t that Rae didn’t care what happened to Jesse or that she’d magically forgotten that she could
be walking into a trap. All the nerves in her body felt like they’d had a curling iron used on them until they were
singed. Having Yana around just made the stress almost bearable.

Anthony turned right. “Why this way?” Rae asked. So far Anthony’d been completely methodical, going down
each street until they were two miles away from the skateboard shop, then turning down the next street and going
all the way back to the street the shop was on. Now he’d suddenly changed his pattern.

“I just remembered there’s an old fire station a couple of blocks over,” he answered. “When I was around seven,
one of my mom’s boyfriends used to work there. She has this fireman thing. Anyway, he brought me there a couple
of times. It’s big enough that it might seem like a warehouse to Jesse, and it closed down more than six years ago
when they built a new station on Meridian.”

“Definitely sounds worth checking out,” Rae said.

“A thing for firemen, huh? Your mom sounds cool,” Yana added.

Anthony just snorted in response. He made a left and parked the car. It wasn’t hard for him to find a spot. They
were almost the only ones around. There were a couple of teenage guys drinking beers out of paper bags on the
corner, and that was it.

“So what now? Do we try and look inside?” Yana asked.

“We wait. We watch,” Anthony answered. “If this is the right place, there are guys with guns in there.”

“I don’t get how Jesse was even able to call you guys with that many guards,” Yana said.

“Maybe they locked him in a room that somebody had accidentally left a cell phone in or something,”

Rae answered quickly, wanting the lie she’d told Yana to make some kind of sense. More and more, she thought
Yana would be able to deal with the truth without freaking. But Rae just wasn’t ready to risk it.

Yana was the only real girlfriend she had. And how could she exist without one solid girlfriend to cover her back
and talk bad about the guy who broke up with her? “Probably,” Anthony agreed, his eyes locked on the abandoned
fire station. Rae focused her gaze on it, too, searching for a flicker of light or a fast movement in front of one of the
dark windows.

“Do you think they’re planning to send a ransom request to Jesse’s mom?” Yana leaned her elbows on top of the
front seat and propped her chin in one hand.

“Jesse’s mom doesn’t have any money,” Anthony answered.

“So why the guys with guns?” Yana asked slowly, clearly thinking out loud. “I mean, there are lots of reasons for a
kid to get snatched. But not that many for being held under an armed guard. Do you think hat whoever could think
Jesse is somebody else?

Some rich brat?”

“Maybe,” Rae said. “Except then wouldn’t they have already contacted the rich parents-and found out their kid
was still all safe and sound at home?”

“Yeah. You’re right.” Yana slumped all the way back into her seat.

Rae shot a quick look over at Anthony. She was surprised he hadn’t joined in the conversation. But it was like
every part of his attention was on the fire station, like he didn’t even realize she and Yana were in the car anymore.

“Yana, I appreciate you being here. But you’re not forgetting the guns part, are you? I mean, this could end up
being really dangerous,” Rae said, feeling a spurt of guilt for agreeing to let Yana come with them. “If you want to
bail, it’s-”

“Oh, shut up,” Yana said.

Rae turned around and smiled at her. “Okay,” she answered. She rolled the window down a little farther, keeping
the end of her sweater over her fingers since she’d decided not to wear her Mush tonight.

The cool night air would help keep her awake. And maybe she’d hear something that told her someone was inside
the station.

Yana followed Rae’s lead, going completely silent. They all watched. They all listened. An hour went by. But they
got nothing. No hint of what was going on inside. No hint if they were at all close to finding Jesse.

When another half an hour had passed, Anthony let out a growl of frustration. The sound made Rae ache inside,
as if she was absorbing his pain and anger into her bones.

“What if I-” Rae began. “What if we, I mean,” she corrected herself. “What if we get a little closer?