Page 102 of Bears Behaving Badly
Or had she?
Should’ve taken your vacation, Nadia, no matter whose side you’re on. One way or the other, I think it’ll be a while before you get another one.
Chapter 32
Pat put down the last pad, ashen. “Annette and David don’t know any of this.”
Caro, who had been still as a—well, not a mouse, exactly—while he read shook her head, her grave gaze never leaving his.
“Nobody knows. Except the people who”—there was a dry click as Pat swallowed—“sold you. To the people who did those things to you.”
Caro scribbled, held up the new pad:
What’s going to happen to A & D?
“They’re going to be arrested, Caro. But only if they’re very, very lucky.”
Dev had been watching the conversation for the perfect time to jump in, which he gauged was now. “Not if we help them! Well, they still might be arrested,detenido,arrestato, but the ‘sindicate’ won’t be able to kill them.”
“Think so?”
“We just need to buy her time. And then Annette can figure out what to do. And tell David, and, I dunno. Stuff will get done.”Sindicate: Caro’s deliberate, punny misspelling. It had seemed silly at first, a cute fuck-you from an impressively defiant teenager, but now he pictured it in his mind the way Caro had: withsinblackly emphasized. And it was much less cute.
Now it was Pat’s turn to say nothing, which Dev could only take for a few seconds.
“Guys! Why aren’t we calling for help? Or way, way better, why aren’t we in your car speeding to the rescue?”
“Because to do that, Caro has to tell someone in authority where the warehouse is and all that was done there. But she’ll have to break cover to do that, and if the sindicate taught her one thing in two years, it’s that breaking cover can be lethal.” Pat tapped his scar, baring his teeth in a humorless smile. “Take it from one who had his own teachers.”
“Yeah, but—”
“And by her own word she won’t speak until she’s free. But as long as people like her parents and Lund are out in the world, sheisn’tfree. Right, Caro?”
Scribbling.
How do I know A and/or D won’t screw me over?
Pat took a breath, then slowly let it out. “You don’t. I can promise you she wouldn’t, and I could assume David wouldn’t, and it would be the truth, but you can’t know that. I’m just the random guy you met a couple days ago.”
“Or random gal!” Dev piped up. “Depending on how you feel that day.”
“Thanks for the validation, Dev. But…yeah. You don’t know. There are no guarantees. And I wish I could tell you otherwise.”
Dev had watched Pat grow paler and paler the more he read of Caro’s horrible story, not that Dev blamed him. Dev already knew the story; he and Caro were siblings by choice and had no secrets. Well, no serious secrets. His stash of stolen ATM cards, his cache of lockpicks hidden all through IPA’s offices, and his crush on Ariana Grande—whohadto be a werehare—were his own business.
He and Caro were related because his mother had sold him for a week’s supply of carfentanil. And because Caro’s had sold her for $5,580: six months’ rent, with a little left over for a nice meal at Applebee’s.
He’d had options, at least. He’d been able to get away from his “owner,” which was why he’d been bouncing around the system like a fuzzy Super Ball the last couple of years. And why his mother was in prison.
Caro hadn’t been so lucky. No matter what they did, she wouldn’t break. And no matter how she fought, she couldn’t escape. Until the night she did, and crossed paths with Dev, who showed her his den on the outskirts of one of the homeless camps, and let her stay, and decided by the end of the week that they were brother and sister and dared anyone to say otherwise.
During the weeks of her (physical) recovery, she wrote it all down for him, including the part about how she’d refused to speak to her captors, how she realized this could only be happening if the system was in on it or turning a blind eye or just didn’t care, and how that led to her vow of silence. No talking until she was truly free. And no communication ofanykind with IPA until she knew she was safe.
As promised, he burned her story while she watched.
I won’t talk to IPA, Caro wrote.
“Understandable.”
