Page 49 of No Hope of Rescue

He nods.

΅

Kelly escorts me inside and plunks herself down on the sofa with a cup of tea. Codie’s room is two doors down on the left. I tap first and then hear a weak, “Come in.” As I enter, it’s followed with a whispered, “Shut the door.”

The room is painted lavender, with posters on the wall from two local bands, Falling Rock and Riptide Over Land, who both obviously used the same printer/designer. The neon banners against the soft lavender doesn’t work as well with the art on the wall as it does with the faint smell of vanilla candles and patchouli oil.

Codie’s sitting up in bed, three pillows with tiny red roses printed on the sleeves behind her.

“Hey,” I say. “Did you sleep last night?”

She shakes her head. “They kept coming in and waking me up for stuff.”

I sit on the edge of the bed and touch her thigh. She shifts away from me.

“Listen, I don’t know what happened out there, but you can always tell me. You know that, right?”

She nods. Her dark hair gleams in the bright morning light.

“You want me to close the blinds?”

She nods again. “Thanks.”

As I’m turning the wand to close the thin venetian blinds, she asks, “Do you still have it?”

I slip the phone from my pocket and leave it on the bed. This time, she doesn’t move away. But she doesn’t pick it up either.

“Is this about a boy, Codie? Are you pregnant?”

Clearly startled, she glances up at me. “No!”

“Then what?”

She lowers her lashes and looks at her hands. “You have to promise me you aren’t going to tell anyone.”

I can’t do that. If she’s in trouble, I owe it to her to be an adult. “I can’t promise that. What I can promise is that I will do everything I can to help you.”

“I know you will.”

I wait a beat. Teenagers are like wild horses. They’ll bolt. I should know. It’s what I did.

Despite her exhaustion, she’s tense, muscles locked.

“You don’t have to say anything—”

“I’m so stressed out,” she blurts. “I don’t know what to do. And I have to tell somebody, even though they told me not to.”

They. I get a chill as a picture suddenly emerges. “You mean those men?”

Her eyes are wide in the twilight of the room. “They let me go. When they heard the helicopter, they got into some huge fight, and then one of them came to where they had me and took out a big knife and cut the ropes on my ankles and wrists. They told me to go out the window and run.”

I reach for her hand, but she keeps it tucked under the covers.

“Why?”

“Then this other guy, I think the boss of them or something, comes in and gives me that.” She glances down at the phone. “He says they have a contact or someone in town they’ve already talked to, and this guy knows where we all live.”

Now my heart beats hard. Part of me doesn’t want to know where this is going.