Return to Paradise

I shake my head. None of this makes sense. I talked to her just last night. She texted me. She—

The text. From a number I didn’t recognize. It could have been anyone.

A voice keeps repeating in my head. Sarah’s gone. Sarah’s gone.

“Nothing,” I say. “I mean, I don’t know. I haven’t talked to her since lunch yesterday. She took the bus home.”

Agent Walker nods. She seems satisfied with this answer. For a moment her face changes—like some kind of mask slips away—and she looks at me with concern. Maybe even pity, as if she wished she could do something for me. Maybe even give me a hug. But the moment passes, and her steely expression resurfaces, her mouth with a glued-on smile.

“We’ll be in touch,” she says, turning away from the door. And then she’s gone, into one of the ubiquitous black SUVs that have flooded our town.

Sarah’s gone.

I failed to protect her.

What am I supposed to do now?

No, that’s an easy question to answer. I find her.

But how am I supposed to do that?

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

IT TAKES A WHILE FOR ME TO REALIZE THAT John might have come for her, and so I sit glued to my computer and check my phone every two minutes, hoping that she’ll send me some sort of message telling me she’s all right. She must know that I’m going out of my mind, and she’ll let me know she’s safe.

Days pass without any word from her, and I realize I’m holding on to unfounded hope. If she was with John, she would have found a way to contact me. She wouldn’t have just left me behind.

It’s so easy for me to look at the day she disappeared and see the things I should have done. When she—or whoever it was—texted me from that strange number. I shouldn’t have ever even left her alone after what happened at Sam’s house with the black car. I feel like an idiot. I feel useless.

I have to do something.

I’m practically glued to the blog, but there’s only so much research I can do online. I can’t just sit around and do nothing. I’ll go crazy.

Something dings in the back of my head. Sarah saying that Sam probably knew more about what was happening with the Loric and the Mogs than any of us.

His backyard was a battleground. His mom is probably scared, not staying at the house. The back window has been blown out, covered only by a sheet of plastic.

It would be the easiest thing in the world to climb through it. If Sam had a better idea of what was happening between the Mogs and Loric, maybe he left behind some clues I can use.

It’s almost 2 a.m. when I sneak downstairs dressed in all-black clothes, cringing at every creaking step. No one wakes up to stop me except for the dogs—but I’ve prepared for them. A few pieces of beef jerky, and Abby and Dozer are as quiet as can be.

I keep my headlights off until I’m already on the road. I drive past Sam’s house a few times to see if I can spot anyone around it, but it doesn’t look like someone’s home. I park a few houses away just in case. There’s no car out front, and a quick peek in the garage tells me there’s no car in there either. I knock, just to make sure that no one answers. It’s dead quiet inside.

Bingo. Empty house.

I take a deep breath and psych myself up. I’ve snuck in and out of a few houses in my life, but I’ve never actually done any breaking and entering. I tell myself it’s no big deal. And I need to do this. Any info I get helps us. Any info I get helps me get closer to finding Sarah.

I push in the plastic and climb through the window in the backyard and end up in the dining room. It’s not hard to tell which room is Sam’s: the one with a sign that says ENTER AT YOUR OWN RISK. I cross the brown carpet covering the hallway and slip inside.

Sam’s room is covered in posters that remind me why we all thought he was a weirdo at school. Star Wars, Alien, Starship Troopers, and at least two different NASA flags. I imagine that wherever he is right now, he’s wearing the same old ratty NASA T-shirt.

After bumping my head against a bunch of painted balls hanging from the middle of his ceiling, I start looking around. I’m not sure where to begin my search, so I just kind of start moving things on his desk. The problem is, I could point anywhere in Sam’s room and my finger would land on something “out of the ordinary.” I sift through action figures, blurry pictures of the sky, and a telescope it looks like he was trying to repair. I accidentally break the arm off a model robot and feel bad for about a split second before I remember that Sam’s off somewhere with John and probably doesn’t even remember that the model exists. Finally, I come across something that gets my attention.

I take a seat in Sam’s desk chair and open up a copy of a little magazine called They Walk Among Us. It looks like a photocopy. It’s full of alien conspiracies, lizard men, and other crazy-sounding articles, like how the Loch Ness monster is really an extraterrestrial sea horse. I thumb through a few issues before I read a headline that causes me to shiver.

THE MOGADORIAN RACE

SEEK TO TAKE OVER EARTH

The article is little more than a teaser of a bigger story that’s going to run the next month, but I can’t find the next issue anywhere. I take a picture of the article and front cover of the magazine and send it in a message to GUARD. He’s going to flip out when he sees it. Maybe he can help me track down the people who wrote it—people who might know more about what’s going on and how I can find Sarah.

GUARD responds quickly.