Return to Paradise

GUARD: Let’s do it. I’m emailing you an encrypted file. Password is a sea monster’s planet.

I know exactly what he’s talking about—this morning before I left for school, we’d made fun of an old article I found in They Walk Among Us about how sea krakens come from the planet Schlongda. It was maybe the first time I’d ever got a hint that GUARD had a not-so-serious side. Now that Sarah’s gone, he’s kind of the only person I can talk to about everything that’s going on. I know I haven’t met him in person or even talked to him on the phone, but he seems like the smartest person I’ve ever met. The things he can do with a laptop and internet connection blow my mind.

And when I get home and open the file he’s sent me on my computer, I am nothing less than astonished.

I’m staring at a text file that lists a ton of information on Agent Purdy. Not things like his bio or what he’s working on, but numbers that hold a much different power. Telephone numbers. Bank accounts. Passwords.

I message GUARD.

JOLLYROGER182: how the hell did you get all this????!

GUARD: I’m an internet wizard.

GUARD: Oh, and I’d print that out and then delete that file. IT WAS NEVER HERE.

JOLLYROGER182: can you get into his email and stuff?

GUARD: I’m trying, but it’s all intranet stuff. Heavy, heavy firewall. Lots of stuff off-line too.

JOLLYROGER182: what if we had his work computer?

JOLLYROGER182: would 1 of these passwords open it?

GUARD: That’s a different story.

GUARD: Wait. Are you about to do something really stupid?

I’ve been dying for a way to take action. I guess I just found it.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

BEFORE I LEAVE NANA’S I PUT A FEW NOTES ON my desk. If I’m caught, there’s a chance I’ll be shoved into a black van and never see the light of day again. That’s how the FBI and Mogs work, right? If that’s the case, I don’t want my family thinking that I ran away because of them or something. I want them to know that I didn’t just abandon them for no reason.

And if possible, that they should probably get out of Paradise too. This town is getting too dangerous. I leave a separate note addressed to Mom, telling her I’m sorry I haven’t called and that she should bring Dad and Nana up to Cleveland. That way they’ll be together, and out of Mog central.

I hope they don’t have to read the notes.

I set up an automatic blog post too with my draft from earlier on what had really happened at Paradise High. If I don’t log in and adjust the post time—if I get taken away—it will go live in a week. Maybe others can learn from what I knew. Maybe they’ll be able to find Sarah if I can’t.

I park my truck in an alley near the station where I can just see the front doors through a chain-link fence. There are a couple of agents milling about inside, but that’s all I can see. I message GUARD, who is acting as a diversion for me, calling one of the phone lines the FBI has commandeered and reporting to whoever answers that a teenager with glowing hands and the power to move things with his mind just entered a truck stop outside of town. Whatever he says, it must be convincing, because the agents fly out of the station, jumping into their black SUVs and disappearing down the dark streets. I wonder briefly if Dad’s being called in. I hope he’s in good enough shape to put himself together, if he has.

An agent stays at the front desk, but I’ve figured out a way around that already. There’s a window in the men’s bathroom with a latch that’s been broken since I was a kid. I remember once a rookie cop locked himself out of the station and got stuck climbing through it. But I’m more athletic than he was, and after crossing the street and skulking around to the side of the station, I’m bracing my arms against a porcelain sink as I pull the rest of my body inside, careful to close the window as softly as I can with my foot.

I’m in. Now I just have to stay hidden.

I walk out into the hallway where the bathrooms and some closets are and peek around the corner. There are a few rows of desks between me and the agent at the front, who seems glued to a computer screen. Dad’s office is across the station, twenty yards away. Just two first downs, I tell myself. It’s a cakewalk.

I’m halfway across the station when my dad’s office door opens.

It takes half a second for me to slam onto the floor and roll under a desk, where I hold my breath and try to fight off the trembling in my hands. I must have been fast enough, because the two men who walk out of the office don’t stop talking.

“I’m telling you, the situation here is under control,” a man’s voice says with a slight wheeze. “My agents are—”

“If things were really under control, Four couldn’t walk in and out of this backwoods town as if it was his own private warship,” the other man bellows, his voice like a bass drum. “I never should have left Paradise to someone who couldn’t handle it. From now on my soldiers will be taking over here.”

I flatten myself on the floor and press my face up against the bottom of the desk, which offers me an inch or two of room to see through.

“That’s not necessary,” the wheezy man says. His face is pink and piggish, with a big, busted nose that looks like he’s been tackled one too many times. I recognize him from the photo GUARD and I had found online: Purdy. At least that means Dad’s office is empty if they leave. If they stay—well, I’m completely screwed. The other man is a behemoth. He’s at least seven feet tall, with jet-black hair pulled back into a ponytail that disappears beneath his black coat. From the back, he’s a wall of a man. A mountain.