Sealed with a Lie (5 page)

“On
me
?” My hand, the one clutching the receiver, drips sweat. I wrap my other one around it so that I won’t drop the phone on the floor. As if from a long way away, I notice that my knees are shaking. Actually, it’s my entire body. I struggle to hold the phone next to my ear.

“If you want to see your brother alive again, Karina, you will do exactly as we tell you.”

I swallow, trying to drag some common sense up from the vortex of fear that’s consuming me. “How do I know you really have him? How do I know he’s alive?”

“Kaaaa-rrrriiiii!” Charlie shrieks into my ear. “Kaaari,” he sobs. “Helllp! Come get me!”

Then I hear a smack and a howl.

“Stop it!” I scream. “Don’t you dare hit him! I will
kill
you if you touch him again.”

The voice on the phone laughs, and it’s not a pleasant sound.

“I’ll kill you!”
My hands convulse around the hard plastic, and because it’s slick with my sweat, the phone shoots up and out of my grasp, crashing to the floor. I panic and throw myself after it, scrabbling madly to get it once again to my ear. “Hello? Hello!”

“Get hold of yourself, Karina,” the voice snaps. “Or it won’t go well for your brother.”

“Okay, okay . . . I am. I mean, what do you want?! You can’t hurt him,
please
—”

“If you want to see Charlie alive again, you will do two things.”

“What?”

“And you will not tell the authorities. You bring cops into this, Interpol, any type of law enforcement entity, and we will send you Charlie’s head in a box.”

Dear God, no.
My stomach lurches, and I almost throw up just thinking about that image. Sweat pours down my face and back. I sag against the kitchen counter.

“Tell me what I have to do.”

“You will go to a small town in Germany. There you will spring a young thief, Gustav Duvernay, from his confinement in a juvenile detention facility. Gustav will be familiar with the details of your next little project. You will work with him to see it to completion.”

“What little project?”

“Stop asking questions and listen, Karina. You will have exactly one and a half weeks to accomplish your task. Your deadline is midnight on Day Ten. For every hour past midnight that you are late . . . you will receive a small gift from us: one of Charlie’s fingers.”

I can’t help my swift, audible intake of breath.

“Do you understand?” the voice asks as I lean weakly on the sink.

“Yes,” I manage.

“Good.”

Then the caller gives me an address in Murnau am Staffelsee, Germany. He suggests that I arrive there by tomorrow evening. He suggests that “I bring my A game.”

I have a suggestion for him too. But I am smart enough not to voice it. And to be honest, I’m too desperately afraid to make threats.

I’m tossing random clothes into my battered blue duffel when I hear the front door open and close, then Evan’s footsteps on the stairs. Agent Morrow’s are lighter, and she wears heels a lot. Evan takes the steps two at a time, with a heavy, masculine tread.

He stops on my floor and pokes his head into my room. “Hi.”

“Hi,” I say, my voice taut. My back is to him; my laptop is open on the bed; on the screen a message flashes that my e-mail has been sent.

“I’d ask how your day was, but . . .” He laughs ruefully.

“Worst. Day. Ever. Now, if you don’t mind . . .”

“Bugger off?”

“Pretty much.” I won’t even look at him.

“Why are you packing?”

“Going on a trip.”

“Where’s Charlie?”

I don’t answer.

“Kari?”

I toss a jacket, a climbing harness, and my set of lock picks into the duffel.

“Hey.” He crosses the room, puts a hand on my shoulder, and forces me to face him, to look up into his level gray eyes. His perfect hair is dark with sweat—he’s probably done an extra workout this evening. And
a muscle jumps at his jaw. “What’s going on?”

“Nothing.” I jerk away and pull open a dresser drawer, tossing three pairs of socks into the bag.

“Damn it, Kari. Talk to me!”

But I’m hearing that horrible, distorted voice again in my mind.
You will not tell the authorities. You bring cops into this, Interpol, any type of law enforcement entity, and we will send you Charlie’s head in a box.

Pressing my lips together, I slam the sock drawer closed, then open the one containing jeans and toss two pairs of those into the duffel.

“Where’s Charlie?” Evan asks me again, his eyes narrowing.

“I don’t know.” My voice breaks, to my shame.

“What do you mean, you don’t know?” Evan’s own voice is brittle.

“Someone has him. That’s all I can tell you. Or they’ll kill him.”

Evan’s eyes widen. “Who? How? Why?”

I shake my head. Then I open yet another drawer and throw a pair of black pants and a black turtleneck into the duffel, followed by a pair of black sneakers. “All I know is that one minute he was in the backyard, and the next he was gone. Then I got a phone call.”

“They rang the house? We can trace it,” Evan says. “I’ll call Interpol.” He pulls his cell phone out of his pocket.

“No!” I yell, knocking it out of his hand and jumping on it.

“Bloody hell, Kari.” He stares down at me. I’m still hunched over on the floor, my body shaking. He crouches
down and puts his big, warm hand on my back. “You’re upset.”

“No, really?” I shrug off his hand.

“Look, we’ll call Rebecca. She’ll know how to handle this.”

“We
won’t
!” My voice has become a scream.

Evan looks as if I’ve slapped him. “But—”

“They said they’d send me
his head in a box
. In a
box
, Evan. Oh, God . . .”

He sits down on the floor and pulls me onto his lap, into his arms. Tucking my head under his chin, he strokes my back and rocks me.

Is this really the guy who choked me out this morning? Humiliated me and dropped me to the floor?

Part of me wants to sob, but I can’t—I’m too much in shock. Part of me wants to hug him back. But I also want to flatten him, because I don’t have time for comfort. And he’s not Luke . . . and even though I’ve broken up with Luke, it was accidental and this feels like cheating on him.

What is wrong with me? Why am I even thinking about stupid stuff like boys when Charlie has been kidnapped?! I struggle out of Evan’s arms and stand up, even though he’s still got hold of my hand.

“Hey,” he says. “It’s going to be all right. We’ll find Charlie. I swear to you.”

“There’s no ‘we’ about this,” I tell him. “I have to do this alone. They said no cops. No Interpol. No nothing. Or they will hurt my brother. Get it?”

“I’m not a cop. I’m not Interpol—” He breaks off as I snort.

“Last time I checked, GI stood for Generation Interpol, Evan! So I’ve probably endangered Charlie’s life by talking to you. They’re probably watching—”

“GI doesn’t officially exist, Kari. They can’t know about it. So they saw me come home. Big deal. They think we live as . . . as brother and sister.”

I think about this for a moment. “But they must know Rebecca is Interpol.”

He shrugs. “Maybe. So we won’t call her. We’ll handle this on our own. But I am with you on this. I won’t let you go by yourself.”

“You’re not my boss, Evan. You have no way of stopping me.” I toss a hairbrush and my toothbrush into the duffel bag and zip it closed with finality.

“Don’t make me call the police, Kari,” he says quietly.

“You’ll get Charlie killed!” My voice rises on a note of hysteria.

“Then don’t make me do it.” Evan’s face is like granite. Unyielding.

“You
asshole
. I can’t believe you’re threatening me.”

He sighs. “It’s only because I care. Not just about Charlie, but about you. Please, Kari. Let me help.”

Can I risk it? Working with him? I don’t have a lot of time to decide. It’s yes or no. Life or death. I close my eyes and pray fervently that I’m making the right call. I open them and stare daggers at Evan. “Swear to me on the soul of your mother that you won’t tell anyone, especially not Rebecca.”

He nods. “I swear.”

“Fine. Get packed. We’re leaving in five minutes.”

Evan sprints for the stairs. “Think about something while I get my things together. Consider telling your parents.”

My mouth drops open. “Are you high? Are you nuts? Or are you just stupid?”

“No,” he calls from the landing above.

“You’re all three!” I follow him up to the attic while he rummages around and throws things into—what else?—a Prada weekender. Evan Kincaid is the only seventeen-year-old guy I know who’d own such a thing.

His room is nicely decorated, too, with black-and-white photographs that he’s taken himself and a couple of framed art posters: Magritte and Picasso. The bedding is stark white and ridiculously expensive—I can’t remember the name of the designer and don’t care, but it’s a Name. Evan’s dresser is silver and black, and on top is a photo of his parents and a black leather box where he keeps watches and rings. The guy has more jewelry than I do, of course.

“Think about it, Kari.”

“No. My parents are liars and traitors. They’re despicable.”

“Maybe. But they love Charlie—and they’re very good at what they do.”

“I will never speak to them again as long as I live.”

“Fine. Don’t. Send them an e-mail.”

“That’s traceable.”

“Do it from an Internet café.”

“I hate them!”

“Understandable. Yet you could use their help. So could Charlie.”

I glare at Evan, who shrugs and continues his packing.

“They’re not the authorities,” he says in a mild tone.

I don’t reply.

“Kari?”

“Drop it, Evan! I wouldn’t even know how to get in touch with them if I wanted to, and I don’t.”

Evan walks over and puts his hand on my shoulder again. The heat of it burns through my thin sweater. “Remember the envelope taped to the back of the painting you burned?”

I hesitate, then nod. I set a family portrait on fire after I found out about my parents. There was some kind of letter attached to it, but I refused to even look at it. Evan pulled it from the flames before it got destroyed.

“Well, it contained information on how to get a message to them.”

“I don’t care,” I say, moving away from his touch. “They’re dead to me.”

Evan sighs, then changes the subject. “So where exactly are we going, Kari? And what are we going to do once we get there?”

I fill Evan in about our new buddy, the thief. Gustav Duvernay is being held at a juvenile detention center in Murnau am Staffelsee. While it’s probably not a maximum security facility, it will definitely be guarded and no cakewalk to get into. We certainly won’t be able to waltz in after signing up for a guided tour.

We’re going to need some help, and Evan convinces me that it’s not practical to run out the door within five minutes. We’ll need to take a train in the morning.

Since I refuse to even consider contacting my parents, we decide to call Matthis. He’s brilliant, resourceful, and capable of keeping his mouth shut.

Matthis arrives within a half hour, looking rumpled and almost as stressed as I am. Charlie is really his only friend, and he’s beyond worried.

In the meantime, after a huge debate with myself
about the risk, I have called Kale on Rebecca’s secure line and told him to ditch class, then find a way of getting Rita out of Kennedy Prep for the afternoon. We may need them both in order to break out this Gustav person—Kale for his muscle and knowledge of martial arts, and Rita because she has hacking skills that Matthis may not.

I have Matthis do a sweep for monitoring software, then install an encryption program for messages and files on all our cell phones. He also puts extra security on all our laptops. We comb the Internet for information on Duvernay, and find that he is a world-class cat burglar. Then I hold my breath and pray that I haven’t made a huge mistake as Rita and Kale Skype in from his apartment in Washington, DC.

“Hey, Kari.” Kale looks the same as always, compact and muscular with his black hair short and razor cut, his handsome Japanese features set in calm lines. The only indication that he’s worried is in his left fist. He keeps clamping it around his thumb, then releasing it and doing it again.

Rita sits down next to him on his bed, which is covered in a pale blue spread. Behind them is a landscape of ducks flying low over a river. She waves, somberly. The usual spiky ponytail rides high on her head, and she’s got on dark green Calvin Klein glasses that match her sweater. Rita’s got an entire wardrobe of the coolest designer frames, all made to order in her prescription.

“Hey,” I say, knowing I don’t look anywhere near calm.
“You remember Evan, right? And this is Matthis, a friend from the Paris Institute. He’s Charlie’s buddy.”

“Hi, Matthis,” Kale says. He turns back to me. “So who are these people who have Charlie?”

“We don’t know. I couldn’t even tell if the caller was male or female.”

Rita asks, “What do they want you to do for them?”