Return to Paradise

CHAPTER TEN

I STAY HOME FOR THE REST OF THE NIGHT. I don’t really have a choice. Nana sits in a chair at the bottom of the stairs, with one eye on my door and another on my truck outside—Dad’s personal sentry. I have no doubt that if I take one step outside the house, there’ll be an officer ready to pick me up before I even make it to the street. The last thing I need is to get thrown into a holding cell—even though it’s possible that would actually put me closer to Sarah.

Sarah. She’s all I can think about. In the upstairs office, I drive myself crazy pacing back and forth, hoping that she’s all right and that if things got bad, John at least was able to keep her safe. As much as I hate it, I have to believe that no matter what, he’d protect her. I text GUARD and tell him that shit’s going down in Paradise, but he doesn’t text me back. Of course this is the one night he’s not glued to one of his screens.

I text Dad about a thousand times, at first apologizing and then asking what’s happened. He doesn’t respond, until finally I ask him just to tell me that Sarah is okay and he replies with a single magic word: “yes.”

At least there’s that.

As I pace, I listen to my dad’s old police scanner, which I grabbed from his room. There’s so much yelling and chatter that I can barely make anything out. There’s something about a suspect being in custody, then a lot of static. I hear Sarah’s name and someone mention the Paradise station, and then someone says something about a “Dumont” facility. After that all the messages stop. Radio silence.

Someone must have realized that the police radios weren’t secure enough. I imagine Agent Walker pulling a giant plug that disables the entire radio system, even though I know that’s not how any of this actually works.

An internet search of “Dumont facility FBI” brings up some articles about some huge, strictly off-limits FBI compound in Dumont, Ohio, about two hours away.

If Sarah has been taken in, I have to believe that she is being detained in the station jail and not being shipped out to some secret FBI prison. And so at dawn I take a chance and head downstairs and out into the front yard. Nana’s no longer at her post, so I guess her orders were just to make sure I stayed in through the night. I jump in my truck and head into town. Dad’s phone’s going straight to voice mail by now. I park across from the station, watching, trying to get a look at Sarah or anyone else coming in or out. Every time the front door swings open, my chest pounds, only to be disappointed when someone other than Sarah walks out. Each time this happens, I get a little more worried.

It’s a little past 8 a.m. when Sarah comes outside, and I feel so supercharged with happiness and relief. She’s still here. They’ve let her go. Maybe this will end up all right after all.

Sarah looks a little scared, and it’s my first instinct to jump out and sprint straight to her. Instead, I drive along beside her as she walks down the street.

“Sarah,” I say as I pull up to the curb. The whites of her eyes are red, like she’s been crying recently. “Get in.”

“My parents are coming,” she says. “They came to the station when they realized I wasn’t at home and stuff was going crazy outside, but the agents at the front desk made them go back home—threatened to have them arrested if they stayed around asking questions about what happened. I told them to pick me up at the grocery store down the street so they wouldn’t have to come back in. They’re going to have so many questions.”

“Tell them I’m taking you home.”

“My cell phone’s gone.”

“You can use my mine,” I say, leaning over and opening the passenger-side door.

After a short phone call—lots of “I’ll explain in five minutes when I’m home”—she hands me back my phone and lowers her head into her hands.

“What are you going to tell them?” I ask.

“I don’t know. I’ll figure something out. Maybe I can tell them I need some sleep before we talk.”

“Are you okay?”

“No,” she says through her fingers. “John came back. I got super emotional and weird with him because I was feeling so crappy about everything before he just magically showed up, and then the FBI tackled me. I don’t know where John is now, and I am officially pegged as a person who is somehow connected to all this. I’ve been sitting in an interrogation room for the last three hours.”

“What’d you tell them?”

“Nothing,” she says. “It was that Walker agent and a few other people. Noto. And some guy named Purdy.”

I note the name—the agent GUARD talked to on the phone. Is he the one in charge of everything going on in town?

Sarah continues.

“They wanted to know why John came to see me, and I told them it was because we made out a few times before he went crazy and he probably thought that I’d do it again if he showed up and threw pebbles at my window like we were in some kind of rom-com. I just pretended to be dumb.”

“And they believed that?”

“No, I don’t think so. But they let me go, at least. They have John. I think that’s all they really cared about. They just told me to make sure I didn’t leave town or there’d be trouble.” She shakes her head. “I’m on a freaking no fly list they said, as if I’d try to skip the country or something.”

“Shit.”

“I know.” Sarah pulls the edge of her gray sweater over her fingertips. “I feel so stupid. This is my fault.”

“No, it’s mine. My dad saw the text you sent. I shouldn’t have let that happen.”

She looks surprised about this for a second—even happy that what happened last night might not have been her fault. Then her face falls.

“They were probably watching me anyway. I should have told him, but instead I just ran outside. I was so happy to see him.”

“You don’t know that they had eyes on you.”

“I don’t know what they’ve done with him,” she says. Her voice is about to crack. “John . . .”

“I think he’s in Dumont. There’s some kind of FBI facility near the state border.”

“What?!” she practically shouts, jumping in her seat and straining against the seat belt. “We have to go. I have to talk to him. I have to explain to him that I didn’t—”

“No way, Sarah. You were just held and interrogated for being caught with him. You may not realize this now, but they could have arrested you for helping a criminal. The dude is on the most-wanted list, Sarah. I’m not taking you to an FBI prison so you can get yourself in more trouble. It’s not what he would want.”

The words come spilling out of me. Suddenly I’m hearing John’s voice in my head. That I have to make sure she’s kept safe. And right now, that means keeping her as far away from the Loric and the Mogs as I can.

“Besides,” I say, softening up a little. “He has superpowers. Do you really think he’s going to stay locked up for long?”

“I guess you’re right. Sam was with him, but Six wasn’t. She’ll track them down if he’s in trouble, I bet.”

“I’m sure. She’s one girl I’d hate to have mad at me.”

Sarah scowls a little, but I can’t decipher what the expression means.

“I’ve got to buy a new phone,” she says. “Or try to get mine back from the FBI.” She gets quieter. “Like that’ll ever happen.”

“You should buy a burner phone.”

“A what?”

“You know,” I say. “Like they have in shows about drug dealers and stuff. A prepaid cell phone. You know the FBI’s going to be tracking every text message and call you get on your old number.”

“God. Are we like drug dealers now?” she asks, staring out the window of my truck like I’ve watched her do a thousand times. “How is this our lives?”

“Don’t blame me,” I say. “Blame the impending war for our planet between the humanoid aliens and shark-faced bastards with magical swords.”

When I drop her off, her parents are waiting on the front porch. I watch as their expressions run the gamut from worried, to relieved, to furious, then some weird mixture of all of them. I stay in the truck, but her dad makes sure to shoot me a glare that tells me in no subtle way that he’s blaming me for whatever happened to his daughter. After all, I’m the party-loving ex they had to pry her away from over the summer to begin with. My chest falls a little. Maybe dropping her off wasn’t the best idea. Her cell phone’s gone. If I’m lucky, she’ll be able to keep her computer for “study purposes.” Otherwise, there’s no way the Harts are letting me see or talk to their daughter.

It’s late in the afternoon when I finally hear back from Dad, who’s been at work since he caught me in his office. He calls while I’m deep into researching a series of crop circles a few counties west of us, though I’m pretty sure that they’re just hoaxes and have nothing to do with actual aliens.

“Hi,” I say when I answer the phone. I’m not sure whether to expect to be yelled at or apologized to. Probably the first one.

Instead, I hear a long sigh on the other end of the line.

“Oh, thank God,” Dad says.

He sounds so relieved—what did he think had happened to me?

“What is it?” I ask.

“Where are you?”

“At home.”

“Good. Have you talked to Sarah?”

“Not since this morning.”

“Listen.” He pauses for a moment and then starts talking quieter. “Stay where you are. You can’t leave the house. I assume the agents took Sarah’s phone away from her for evidence, but if you can, get her a message telling her to stay put too. She’s a good girl. I always liked her. She shouldn’t be wrapped up in all this.”

“Dad, what’s going on?” My imagination is suddenly going wild and picturing Mogadorian ships landing all over Paradise—though I have no idea what they would even look like.

“I can’t really say. But something’s happened that’s causing the FBI to go crazy. It’s possible there might be one or two people we recently detained who are now unaccounted for. Seems like some weird stuff is going on over in Dumont where they were taken. I just want to make sure neither of you kids got any bright ideas of running away with your classmates if they wandered back through town.”

John and Sam. They’ve escaped.

That didn’t take long.

“I’ll stay here, Dad.”

Even as I say my good-byes, I’m on my computer, emailing Sarah.

Her response is an entire page of exclamation marks.

GUARD is the next person I contact. I’ve told him that one of my friends was brought in for questioning and that one of the Loric has been taken into custody. He’s happy to hear that John has escaped.

GUARD: AWESOME news. We need more good aliens out there.

JOLLYROGER182: DEF!

GUARD: I guess this means we know who the Feds are working for.

JOLLYROGER182: what do u mean?

GUARD: If the FBI was working with the Loric, he wouldn’t have had to escape, right?

I lean back in my chair. He’s right. Of course he’s right. If the FBI took John into custody and interrogated Sarah after the fact, they definitely aren’t working on our side.

JOLLYROGER182: shit

GUARD: You said it was Agent Purdy who was in on the investigation?

JOLLYROGER182: and some others. a woman named Walker too

GUARD: Sounds like it’s time for me to amp up my investigation into Purdy.

JOLLYROGER182: i thought u said u found everything you could

GUARD: There are other ways.