Page 64 of No Capes
The man remains on the dim sidewalk and holds a phone to his ear.Who is he calling? Phil?Phil couldn’t have known that I’d overheard Arielle’s friends talking about her in the rose garden, but he must have warned everyone he could think of that Arielle or I might swing by.
I slide down in the seat. The leather feels smooth against my clammy hands.
Fox clears his throat. “That was, you know, kinda odd.”
My adrenaline is coming down. Fox’s sarcasm helps. “That guy definitely didn’t want us to find Arielle.”
“Alright, next question,” says Fox. “Since you’re besties with that Super, why isn’t he helping? And where the heck is Golden Ace when you need him?”
“That’s two questions.” At the mention of Golden Ace and Dark Static, I want to deflect and ignore Fox. I crack the window to get some air.
“Oh, you’re going to be that guy, huh?” Fox checks his blind spot as he merges into downtown traffic. Halloween night seemsto be a busy one, with cars backing up the intersection for about a quarter mile.
“I’m a girl.” I drink some water and gather my loose hair back into a ponytail to help me focus. “If you must know, Golden Ace is looking for Arielle too. As for Dark Static, well, let’s just say he might be one of the bad guys after all.”
“Is that so?” Fox asks, in the same way a dentist would ask about how your summer is going—not wondering about your vacation, so much as the amount of sugar that you ate. Here, the amount of sugar I had eaten was my comment about Golden Ace. “What makes you think Golden Ace is also looking for Arielle?”
Red and blue lights flash from the start of the traffic jam—that can’t be just because of extra busy streets. “Because there’s a blockade,” I say.
“There are tons of people out tonight, a lot of partying. It makes sense if they’d want to close the main roads.” Fox shifts into park because we’ve been idling for a few minutes.
“That’s what a normal person in a normal situation would say, isn’t it?” I open my door and step out of the unmoving vehicle. I want a better view of the blockade. “But we’re not regular people having an ordinary night. The mayor’s wife is missing, and the police are closing streets? How is that helpful?”
“Because they want to contain a kidnapper.”
If you’re about to be kidnapped, do everything you can to stop them from taking you to a second location.
“Or they’re keeping tabs on us.” A shiver pools at the base of my neck, and that’s when it hits me, as if my brain had been moving so fast I overlooked the obvious. “It’s a coincidence.”
“The blockade?” Fox repeats. “Yeah, they do it on holidays sometimes.”
“No. Thinking Arielle was kidnapped. Phil is freaking out because he can’t find her. And Dark Static said he was supposedto make people think someone had kidnapped her, but she was gone before he could, and so he assumed someone got herfor real. What if she wasn’t captured? What if she figured out she was going to be, and she ran awayfirst?”
“And Bridges asked you to find her because he thought you’d know where she went, so he could follow you.”
I don’t respond. I don’t have to. Fox and I are on exactly the same page. I look behind our car at the line of traffic piled up, and sure enough, on the street are sleek, unmarked vehicles, exactly like the ones I’ve seen chauffeur Phil and Arielle.
“Phil’s team is behind us,” I say.
Fox motions for me to sit. He taps his steering wheel, seemingly unphased. “I can lose them. What about Arielle?”
I draw my knees into my chest. Fox doesn’t order me to get my sneakers off of his leather seat, which I interpret as a sign of being friends again. This causes a drawer of knowledge to open in my brain. I know where Arielle is.
“Cool,” says Fox, after I tell him where to drive. “Time to break out this bad boy.” He presses a button on his stereo, and flashing blue and red lights envelop us.
“This used to be an undercover cop vehicle? Where did you get this? This issoillegal.”
Fox winks at me. “Maddragon, you gotta risk it to get the biscuit.” The traffic in front of us pulls over like a zipper coming undone, and Fox and I sail through. “Comes in handy, right?”
“Unbelievable.” Yet, it works. As we tear through the heavy traffic, Phil’s posse does not.
The historical house where Arielle and I grew up is a straight ten-minute shot away. As one of the first houses ever built in Capital City, it has amazing alcoves for secret meetings. After my mom died, we sold the house to a young couple with a dog. There’d been a crazy amount of offers for it, which I remember because the real estate lady was overjoyed about hercommission, but my dad and I didn’t want to sell to someone who would only knock it down. We didn’t want to lose that last piece of Mom. Then, a young couple—the new owners—promised they wouldn’t change the house or knock down its history, so our memories of living with Mom could still live in that house, even if we didn’t.
The car’s tires whisper as Fox pulls past the house and parks a few buildings down. The lights are off and the driveway is empty, which makes sense, because the new owners are hip and probably at Hallowfest. The neighborhood shows no signs of Arielle’s car or her belongings. I don’t really expect it to, because Arielle isn’t stupid—but a long crack slices the house’s front window, and the door is slightly ajar. Someonedidtry to find her here.
“Ishouldn’tcall the police, right?” asks Fox, eyeing the broken window and unlit rooms. “Are you sure she’s there? There’salotof broken glass.”
“She’s here,” I respond. “You remember playing hide and seek with her. Finding Arielle is impossible in this house, even if you know she’s here.” Once, she’d hidden from my parents, and the police had to bring over their dogs to recover her. All that did was disturb our neighbors and give Arielle a smug satisfaction when she finally came out. Phil Bridges was right—I know her best hiding spots.
