Page 75 of If Anything Happens To Me

“Minerva helped convince him.”

“Minerva?” I asked.

Matt nodded. “You know I was looking everywhere for you at first—with Fitch. At that point, he seemed to be on our side, genuinely wanting to help Iris. I had no idea what his real goal was. You mentioned when we saw you outside Mermaid’s Pearls?”

“Yes, when Fitch tried to grab Iris.”

“Well, I didn’t see that. All I saw was you and Iris running away—I had no idea why. We drove all around, trying to find you. When we didn’t, Fitch said he had to get back here to the Miramar. He didn’t tell me why, but it seemed important. I dropped him off and was on my way back to the waterfront to look for you when I saw Fitch’s cousin parked outside the library.”

“Minerva.”

“Yes. We’d met once before, at Fitch’s house. This time, she seemed scared of me, and I didn’t know why. Eventually we figured out what was going on, and she knew I was frantic to find you—for good reasons, not Fitch’s. Minerva said she’d dropped you off here. And we began to put it all together. She can’t stand her cousin, Oli. She told me Fitch is sick. Maybe so, but he’s also evil.”

“He is,” I said.

“So Minerva and I came up with a plan. We came back here, separately, and she stayed hidden,” Matt said. “I found Fitch standing outside his van, in the parking lot. I started to talk to him—I told him what Minerva had said. But I put it in a different way from what she meant, so he would think I admired him. So he would trust me.”

“Admire him for what?”

“Trying to cure his sister, even if it meant kidnapping girls. I played on his ego, on all his science stuff, told him that I believed he was doing important work. And that I really wanted to help him. He likes flattery. It made him susceptible, and he believed me.”

“And then what happened?” I asked.

“I messed up, Oli. My timing was off by just a couple minutes. I left Fitch in the parking lot, and I saw you and Iris on the porch, talking to an old lady. I didn’t speak out loud, because I knew Fitch was nearby, and I didn’t want him to hear. I just wanted to get you both out of there without him trying to stop me.”

I thought back to how it had been, how Daphne said a boy had beckoned to Iris.

“I gestured for you both to come inside,” Matt said. “I was going to take you out the back way so we could escape. But only Iris saw. I rushed her into a vacant room, to hide her, and by the time I returned to get you, you were gone.”

“Fitch got to me first,” I said.

“Oli, that was the worst moment of my life,” Matt said. “Knowing he had you.”

His expression was intense, and in that instant, all doubt slipped away: I knew with everything I had that Matt had gone along with Fitch so he could save me—save us.

“It killed me to fake being on his side,” he went on. “I would have bypassed him completely, but Minerva told me this place was a maze. I didn’t know if Fitch had you tied up, locked in somewhere. I couldn’t take that chance—I needed him to show me where you were.”

I stared into Matt’s eyes and saw anguish; I could see what it had cost him to play along with Fitch—a boy he had thought was his friend.

“He could be coming back at any minute,” I said.

“We have a slight reprieve,” Matt said. “I left him outside on the porch, talking to that old lady. His great-aunt or something. She was telling him a story about their ancestors, how the good ones prevailed.”

“Daphne,” I said, looking over at her painting on the panel. “She’s one of the Sibylline sisters.”

“I had the strangest feeling,” Matt said, “that she knew what was going on. That she knew I was here to help you, and she was keeping him occupied till I could get you and the others out.”

“She’s a sibyl,” I said. “She doesn’t know the details of what Fitch has been doing, but I think she has a sense that he’s bad. She can see things the rest of us can’t.”

“Well, let’s hope she senses that we need some time,” Matt said. “Oli, we have to get those cameras right away.”

“They’re up so high,” I said, studying the ceiling.

“I know,” Matt said. He explained how Fitch had told him he’d hidden the cameras in the two raptors—owl and kestrel. How Fitch thought it was funny, so ironic, that people thought of him as a birder, someone who cared about birds.

“Once we knock the cameras out,” Matt explained, “Fitch will hear an alarm, even if he’s still on the porch.”

“How long will that give us?” I asked.

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