Chapter 10
Quill
Amint green minivan. A mint green minivan.
Fuck. What does mint green even look like?
I’m driving fast down the state road, but I still manage to whip out Piper’s phone and turn it on, typing in the code I’ve had memorized for the past four years.
There’s no point in using the internet on my burner phone. It’s way too fucking slow.
Tearing my eyes away from the road, I begin to type in the words.
Mint green.
But just then, a number calls the phone. I grit my teeth, first in annoyance, then in sudden hope as I wonder…
“Hello?”
“Uh… Piper?”
The voice at the other end makes me want to shoot someone.
Of course it wasn’t going to be Piper, though. She wouldn’t call her own phone. She’d call mine.
And my phone is in a fucking garbage can next to Devil Tower, because I’m an idiot and I followed Logan Colt’s instructions.
Why the fuck is Josh calling Piper’s phone at 3 a.m. anyway?
“It’s Quill. What the hell do you want?”
“Quill!” The fucker somehow sounds ecstatic to hear me. “Sorry to call so late. I’ve been trying to reach you nonstop. Is Piper okay? Did you find her?”
“Yeah.”
“Oh.” He shudders out a relieved breath, and I actually feel bad at what I’m going to tell him next.
“I lost her again.”
“Oh.” This oh is very different from the first. There’s a pause, and then he asks, in a much more subdued tone, “What happened?”
I can’t bear to answer him, so I focus on the road, still trying to catch sight of any minivan that might be painted the mysterious shade of mint green.
“Can I help?” he asks after another beat. “I want to help. What can I do?”
I roll my eyes, but then blurt out, “Do you know what mint green is?”
“Uhm. Mint green?”
“Yeah.”
“It’s, uh… kind of like turquoise, I guess.”
Fucking hell. Though I guess I haven’t seen a minivan yet, turquoise or otherwise.
“Where are you?” asks the fucking dweeb.
I have no idea why I answer.
“In fucking Oregon State. Hold on, I’ll send you my location.”
Defying common sense as I drive down the highway, I take my eyes off the road so I can do that.
“Why are you on a highway?” questions Josh.
“I’m looking for her,” I snap. “She was taken by two guys in a mint green minivan.”
“But do you think they’d be driving on the highway where anyone could see?” he argues. “I see on the map that there’s a ton of little country roads around that region. I bet they would have taken her down one of them instead. It would be a lot harder to track.”
“What are you, fucking Ned Nickerson?” I snort, hating myself for even knowing that name, but being around Piper, I’ve learned way too much about Nancy Drew over the years. Way more than anyone should know.
“Thanks,” he answers seriously, and I roll my eyes.
“A minivan—a mint green one at that—on a small country road would be noticeable,” I say, thinking through his theory. “A lot more noticeable than on the highway.”
“But a highway has cameras,” he argues. “It wouldn’t be so hard to hack into them.”
“Can you do it?”
“Huh?”
“Can you hack into the highway cameras?”
“Uhm.” I hear the idiot chuckle on the other end. He’s lucky I’m not in the same room as him, or I’d punch him in the face. Repeatedly. “This isn’t Mission Impossible. You can’t just hack—oh, wait.”
“Wait?” I growl.
“I’ll call you back in a sec.”
It takes a lot more than a ‘sec’ for Josh to call me back.
When he does, I’m still on the highway, stuck in traffic, my eyes peeled for a mint green car.
But it feels like searching for a needle in a haystack.
Especially because I don’t even know if I’m driving in the right direction. She could be anywhere.
But it feels even more impossible to start searching for her in the web of tiny country roads branching out from the highway. I’m starting to feel really hopeless when the phone rings again.
“Yeah?” I answer, realizing just how hopeless the situation truly is now that Josh of all people is my last chance.
“Okay, so, my big brother’s sister’s cousin’s fiancee—”
“Cut to the chase.”
“Right, right. Well, an, uh—acquaintance—actually works for some Silicon Valley start-up that—”
“I said, cut to the fucking chase!”
I may be miles and miles away, but clearly my voice is enough to freak Josh out. He gulps nervously and says, “Well, she’s a hacker.”
“Who?”
“I told you. My big brother’s sister’s cousin’s—”
“Got it! So?”
“Well, it took me a minute to reach her. Another minute to convince her to do it. A third minute for her to actually do it.”
“Fucking hell.” I wish I could reach through the phone and strangle the idiot. “So?”
“She hacked into the highway cameras!”
“And?!”
“No sign of a mint green minivan yet.”
I let out a shuddering sigh. “Seriously? You called to tell me, excitedly, that you failed?”
“Yeah, I guess I did.” He sighs just as loudly as I did, apparently realizing that that’s just what happened. But suddenly, he says, “Oh! My acquaintance is calling! Call you right back!”
He hangs up the phone again, and by now, I’m feeling more dead than alive as my hands clutch the wheel so hard that my knuckles turn paper-white. I can’t deal with anymore of this. I need my cricket so bad. I don’t know what I’m going to do if I don’t find her.
I always told her she was safe as long as she was with me. I always believed it, too. But she was taken from me right from under my nose.
I failed her. I fucking failed her.
If only I hadn’t been so cruel to her yesterday. If only I’d found the right words to say. If only I hadn’t hurt her repeatedly.
If only I’d tried to figure it out. Asked even a single question. Tried to understand why her parents died. Why she was in danger. Why Logan inexplicably helped her. Why that paper with her name on it was on my dad’s desk.
How the hell can I protect her if I don’t even know what I’m protecting her from?
Just as I start to really spiral, Josh calls me back, and as before, I pick up, my voice cracking, every thread of my being holding onto him as my last hope.
Josh the fucking idiot.
“Tell me,” I grit out.
“She found it.”
I gasp, nearly having an accident as I drive to the side of the road and stop. “Where? Fucking where?”
“It was the only mint green car in the past two hours or so, and it got off the highway not twenty minutes ago,” begins Josh, reminding me of Piper’s habit of speaking a paragraph when she could answer with just one word.
“My big brother’s sister’s cousin’s fi—I mean, my acquaintance found lots of green cars and blue cars, and even one or two turquoise ones, but just a single one that can be qualified as mint green.
It’s actually more of a light pastel green, if you’re wondering.
My brother’s sister’s—my acquaintance—said that it’s her favorite color and—”
“Josh,” I interrupt, doing my very best to stay calm, even though it feels impossible. “Where’s the car?”
“Oh, right.” He laughs nervously. “Hold on, I’ll send you the exact location.”
I wait impatiently for the message to come through, then hang up on him and speed the wrong way toward that direction.
Josh was right after all. The minivan turned into one of the small country roads webbing away from the highway.
As I bump along it, driving about twice the speed limit, scanning for the minivan, I instead come across a small gas station in front of which a crowd is assembled. A number of cars line the road.
My first instinct is to drive onto the grass so I can get around then, but then the thought worms its way into my brain that this might somehow be related to Piper. This road is so deserted something pretty extraordinary must have happened to explain all these people.
It feels like my heart is going to stop as I walk closer and notice the tell-tale signs of a dead body. Little rivulets of blood painting the dirt ground auburn. People all clustered around a single thing that I can’t see through the throng.
Fuck. It can’t be… it can’t be her, can it?
I try to brace myself for the worst as I push past the crowd, ignoring their angry glares, then feel my entire body relax as I look down and see a man.
His head is half hanging off his neck, but I still recognize him.
He’s one of the guys Piper was talking to last night.
My heart racing with a sudden suspicion, I kneel down and grab his wallet. In it is a slate-grey badge.
Fuck me. I know exactly who this fucker is.
After Angel fucked Devil over, they started giving their most important jobs to the bloodthirsty gang this guy belongs to.
I’ve heard it said that the Devil founders don’t trust their army of teenage soldiers with the most important jobs.
I’ve also heard that it’s because they don’t want the most important jobs being traced back to them.
And of course, when you know about the Devil Army, then you know when it’s a Devil kill.
Whatever the case is, I recognize this guy as being a Devil subcontractor. This badge proves it, because only those men get access to the top floor of Devil Tower when they’re on a contract.
So Piper’s a contract. A very important contract. Some of the Devils cared enough to go after her with a subcontractor, and Logan Colt cared enough to try to save her.
And I, being the fucking idiot I am, have no idea why.
I also have no idea where she is right now, or why the hell the subcontractor who got her is dead.
I’m starting to feel like I want to throw up again. Fuck.
“It was horrible,” I hear a woman say in the crowd. “We just stopped for gas, and there was this poor dead guy right out in front.”
“I called the cops as soon as I found him,” says the guy with her. “Crazy how a whole crowd of people have time to stop by, but they can’t be bothered.”
“They were already on the scene when it happened,” protests someone who looks like he tends to the store. He’s the only one not wearing a coat. “At least one guy was.”
I look up at the store clerk. “Yeah? What did you see?”
“A cop was running after her. I guess he alerted the other cops and they’re on their way. They won’t have an easy time passing with all those cars out front, though,” he adds, grumbling.
My hair is prickling at the back of my neck. “Her?”
“Yep. Redheaded freak with glasses. She killed him.”
I’m so surprised I don’t even get my usual urge to destroy the guy for talking about my girl like that. “How… how did she kill him?”
“Well, she slit his throat. His head nearly fell off. Psycho.”
My psycho, I think with pride, my heart beating hopefully. “And you saw this? She got away?”
“Yep. Right in front of me. Then the other guy ran after her. I guess he was a plainclothes cop.”
Yeah, right.
“Anyway he got her, and he drove off with her. One less criminal on the streets.”
FUCK!
I’m about to jump back in my car, my heart pounding wildly in my chest, when I hear a voice.
“Excuse me, but… are you Quill Nelson?”
I turn to face the guy who’s just spoken. He’s sitting on the hood of his car, looking very shaken. The kind of face my contracts have when they’re about to take a shit as their final act on Earth before I gun them down.
“Yeah,” I frown. “How the hell did you know?”
“I don’t.” He gulps, wiping the sweat on his brow.
“It was a shot in the dark. But you look like you knew this girl, whoever she is. And, well… I heard her cry out for help.” His hands are shaking.
“I’m sorry, I wish I hadn’t driven off. But the guy threatened me with a gun.
As soon as he was gone, I called the cops, and now I’m back. She’s in danger.”
I close the distance between us, the blood thundering in my ears. “What did you see? What did she tell you?”
“She was running for her life. Then the guy fell on top of her and she yelled… she yelled…”
“What?” I hiss.
“She said… ‘They’re going to rape and kill me at Devil Tower. The plane leaves at seven. Quill Nelson is the only one who can save me.’”
Everything suddenly feels like it’s going in slow-motion as I stare for a full minute at him in horror.
Fuck. They’re going to hurt her. They’re going to hurt my cricket.
I’m bending over again, trying really hard not to puke, wishing I could shake off this postdrome that is driving me nuts. What do I do now? What the hell am I supposed to do now?
“The plane leaves at seven,” I groan, facing the man again. “What plane? Tell me, what plane?”
“I don’t know. I’m sorry, I don’t know.”
I stumble back to the car, and the next minute, I’m driving like a madman away from the country road, back on the highway.