Return to Paradise

When he’s done deleting things, he just stands there staring down at me for a minute.

“Go home, Mark,” he says, emphasizing every syllable he can. “And stay there.”

He starts to hand my phone to me when my text message sound goes off twice, so instead he turns the screen to see what’s on it.

That’s when his face goes white.

“What?” I ask.

He doesn’t respond, only reaches down and pulls me up to my feet, half dragging me out of the office.

“Todd!” he barks, and then Todd is standing by the front door. “Outside, now.”

“Dad, what’s going on?”

He’s still pulling me behind him. I could fight back, but I can tell he’s furious. Something’s wrong. Something bad has happened.

When we get to Todd’s police car, Dad pulls open the back driver’s-side door and shoves me inside. I manage to rip my phone out of his hands as I go in, and Dad slams the door before he realizes I’ve taken it. He yells at Todd.

“You take him straight back to my mother’s house. If he puts up any fight, arrest him.”

Todd looks at me, shaking his head as my dad runs to his patrol car, yelling something into his radio.

It’s only then that I look down at my phone. There are two texts from Sarah.

OMG John is here.

Don’t come but if something weird happens I’ll txt u.

Shit.

My mind starts to race as I figure out what to do next. I call Sarah immediately. When she doesn’t answer, I text:

DAD SAW THIS. HE’S COMING 4 JOHN. GET OUT.

And then I realize what this means. Dad’s calling in the FBI, the police—hell, the fire department. Everyone’s about to converge on Sarah’s house, and she doesn’t know. She’s probably making out with a fucking alien, and the FBI and weirdo Agent Walker are going to find her.

I start banging my fist against the metal separating the front and back seats in Todd’s car, shouting as he gets in.

“NO! We have to go to her. Todd, man, take me to Sarah’s. You have to take me to Sarah’s right now. Go, go, go.”

“The only place I’m taking you is home.”

I keep beating on the metal until blood starts to trickle from my knuckles and Todd slams his own fist against the grate, yelling at me to shut up, then muttering profanities to himself. I’m frantically texting Sarah as he says: “And I thought the explosion at the Goodes’ place was going to be the highlight of the night.”

The Goodes’ place. Explosion.

My head tries to put everything together, ignoring the pain in my hand and the blood beating in my brain.

John’s here. He’s in Paradise, probably with Sam and Six. There was an explosion at Sam’s house. All the cops were called out to it. If there was an explosion, that must mean there was fighting. And the only people John would be fighting . . .

The Mogs.

The Mogs are here. They’re after John. And John’s with Sarah.

CHAPTER TEN

I STAY HOME FOR THE REST OF THE NIGHT. I don’t really have a choice. Nana sits in a chair at the bottom of the stairs, with one eye on my door and another on my truck outside—Dad’s personal sentry. I have no doubt that if I take one step outside the house, there’ll be an officer ready to pick me up before I even make it to the street. The last thing I need is to get thrown into a holding cell—even though it’s possible that would actually put me closer to Sarah.

Sarah. She’s all I can think about. In the upstairs office, I drive myself crazy pacing back and forth, hoping that she’s all right and that if things got bad, John at least was able to keep her safe. As much as I hate it, I have to believe that no matter what, he’d protect her. I text GUARD and tell him that shit’s going down in Paradise, but he doesn’t text me back. Of course this is the one night he’s not glued to one of his screens.

I text Dad about a thousand times, at first apologizing and then asking what’s happened. He doesn’t respond, until finally I ask him just to tell me that Sarah is okay and he replies with a single magic word: “yes.”

At least there’s that.

As I pace, I listen to my dad’s old police scanner, which I grabbed from his room. There’s so much yelling and chatter that I can barely make anything out. There’s something about a suspect being in custody, then a lot of static. I hear Sarah’s name and someone mention the Paradise station, and then someone says something about a “Dumont” facility. After that all the messages stop. Radio silence.

Someone must have realized that the police radios weren’t secure enough. I imagine Agent Walker pulling a giant plug that disables the entire radio system, even though I know that’s not how any of this actually works.

An internet search of “Dumont facility FBI” brings up some articles about some huge, strictly off-limits FBI compound in Dumont, Ohio, about two hours away.

If Sarah has been taken in, I have to believe that she is being detained in the station jail and not being shipped out to some secret FBI prison. And so at dawn I take a chance and head downstairs and out into the front yard. Nana’s no longer at her post, so I guess her orders were just to make sure I stayed in through the night. I jump in my truck and head into town. Dad’s phone’s going straight to voice mail by now. I park across from the station, watching, trying to get a look at Sarah or anyone else coming in or out. Every time the front door swings open, my chest pounds, only to be disappointed when someone other than Sarah walks out. Each time this happens, I get a little more worried.