Pretty Crooked (32 page)

Everything had been destroyed so thoroughly I didn’t need to go in the other rooms to know that they probably looked much the same.

Our beautiful house. Completely trashed.

A chill danced up my spine, along with a sickening thought. This was the Glitterati’s revenge. It had to be. They’d found out I’d gotten out of jail and they’d come here to pay me back for my crimes themselves.

My mom wasn’t here, clearly. We needed help. Or at the very least, a witness. I went back to the front step and called out to Aidan.

“Can you come in here? I need you to see something.”

At the sound of my voice, the pantry closet creaked open. Footsteps clattered behind me.

Oh my God
. Someone was in the house. Fear blazed through me like sparks swallowing a fuse.

I spun around on my heels and caught a glimpse of the person’s back, a flash of flannel shirt, dashing out of the kitchen. Just when I caught up with what was going on, the intruder flung open the sliding glass door and was now running out into the backyard.

I took off after him. I could hear Aidan yelling for me as I sprinted through the house and outside to the patio. But by the time I got out there, he’d already leapt over
the fence into a neighbor’s yard.

Aidan was beside me, leaning in, his face full of alarm. “What the hell just happened?”

“Someone just trashed my house!” I gasped. “He got away!”

“Let’s follow him,” he said, grabbing my hand. “We can still find him if we hurry.”

We charged back to his car. Aidan reversed in a rocket blast down the driveway, sharply turned out, then accelerated forward into full-throttle speed down Morning Glory, all very calmly, like this was something he did every day.

“How will we find him?” I said, my heart pounding. “I don’t even know which way he was headed.”

We hit the cul-de-sac and Aidan deftly turned the car around. “Note the Mercedes’s superior turning radius. Where does your yard lead to?” he asked.

“It’s another street back there. Sierra Vista Road.”

He pulled out onto the main road and turned down Sierra Vista, where the walls of cacti on either side of the road seemed to be closing in on us. Zooming past in the opposite direction was a gold Chevy Tahoe.

I only got a blinking eyeful of the driver, but I thought I could see a plaid shirt. “That’s him, I think!”

Aidan slammed on the brakes and made a U-turn. Seeing us, the Tahoe picked up speed and we both careened out onto the main road, Aidan’s car following by about twenty yards.

“Where’s he going?” I asked.

“No idea. Do you know that guy?”

“I think it must be the Glitterati.”

“What? That guy? I’ve never seen him before.”

“I mean, they put him up to it,” I said as I thought it through. I couldn’t actually picture Kellie and Nikki stomping on my living room couch. “They hired him or something. They had to. They’d never do something like this themselves.”

“He’s heading toward town, it looks like.” Aidan stared hard at the car in front of us. “You really think it’s them?”

“Ever heard of an eye for an eye?”

“In the bible. And in action movies when someone is about to get a limb amputated,” he said with a sidelong glance.

“My point exactly.”

“I don’t know, Willa.” Aidan sounded skeptical.

“Why not?”

“Just, that’s a little extreme, even for them.”

“Okay, then,” I said. “Who else would be breaking into my house and ransacking our stuff? If you’ve got any other ideas, I’d love to hear them.”

“Do you have any other enemies?”

By now, with the Sly Fox story on the national news, I could have enemies in fifty states and Puerto Rico. From the emails, at least, it seemed like I had just as many fans, though. And who would go so far as to do
something like this? This person would’ve had to have our house under surveillance to know when we’d be out. That made us a mark. With the thought came a wave of nausea and dizziness so strong that I covered my mouth and hunched over.

“Are you okay?” he asked.

I nodded, trying to pull myself together. I took some deep breaths. There was no time to feel anything. We had to get this guy.

Aidan yanked on the gearshift and the car jolted onward. The race-car getup was starting to make more sense in this context. “All I’m saying is we shouldn’t jump to conclusions. It could be anyone, really. A local vigilante. A competing thief. The mafia.”

“The mafia? In Paradise Valley?”

“They’re everywhere,” he said. “Trust me.”

“But it doesn’t make any sense.”

We were heading toward the business district of the Valley, which meant we were hitting thicker traffic. It was nearing rush hour. Everyone had somewhere to go. The momentum on the road slowed as people changed lanes, and other cars kept threatening to come in between us and the Tahoe. More cars meant more obstacles and more potential to mess up.

“Don’t lose him!” I shouted.

“Get his license plate number just in case we do. Did you get his license plate number?”

“No. Do you have your phone?”

He dug into his pocket and tossed it over to me. I opened up a memo page and typed in the number on the Tahoe, which had California plates. That reminded me of the car Cherise and I had seen in the Target parking lot.

Which belonged to the guy my mom had met there. The one she clearly didn’t want us to see her with. Could this have something to do with her?

No. This was Kellie and Nikki, maybe Drew. California wasn’t that far away, I reasoned. There were lots of people driving around Arizona with California plates. Kellie herself was always going to some spa in Santa Barbara. If they’d hired someone, the guy could have easily come from there.

“So what are we going to do when we catch him?” he asked.

“Call the cops. I don’t know.”

“Just supposing we do that. How will we restrain him until they get here?”

I pictured it like a book I read once where the hero followed the bad guy to his safe house in the woods. In the story, they’d taken the air out of the tires so he couldn’t escape.

Only we were in the middle of the desert. There were no woods around. For all we knew, this guy could keep on driving back to California, or back to his mom’s house for dinner.

“You’re strong, right?” I asked.

He didn’t laugh. “Sorry, Willa. There’s no way I’m gonna wrestle with some guy who just trashed your house.”

I clucked my tongue with annoyance. Why was he turning back into a spoiled pretty boy—now, of all times?! “It’s probably some frat kid. If you’re too scared, I can do it myself.”

“I
am
scared. Dude probably has a gun. Besides, if I were you, I wouldn’t be so quick to pull the cops into anything right now.”

“Just forget it. I’ll figure it out.” My voice was high and indignant.

“Look, Willa, I’m not saying we should give up.”

I clutched at the door handle as we careened around a curve. “Then what do you suggest we do?”

“I don’t know. I need to think about this.” He chewed on his lip. “We can’t just throw ourselves into a combat situation, though. We need some backup. Some security.”

I considered his point. It was true that we didn’t have any kung fu moves. We didn’t have weapons. We didn’t have booby traps. All I knew how to do was pick pockets and break into places, and all Aidan knew was how to break down computers and score big on standardized math tests—none of which was much help right now. As much as I hated to admit it, Aidan was right. We needed a better plan.

We passed some gas stations and a shopping plaza
with a half-full parking lot. It was your typical suburban landscape, but the blue light of the November dusk—which was almost blinding in its sudden dimness—made it all seem ominous and unfamiliar. Within minutes it would be fully dark, and people started turning on their lights.

A VW Beetle to our left signaled to get into our lane, then aggressively pulled in front of us just as we were hitting a light.

“Dah!” Aidan blurted out.

The light turned yellow and the Beetle stopped, effectively trapping us.

The Tahoe sped off, leaving a few little puffs of exhaust that quickly evaporated into the evening air. And with it, our best hopes of finding out who was after me.

Aidan pounded the steering wheel in frustration. “Now what?”

On my side of the car I pressed my lips together, feeling the blood drain out of them. “Just take me home,” I said.

“Are you sure you want to go back there?”

I nodded. I stared ahead at the road, feeling more certain now in my gut. It was the crooked part of me, the part of me that could see a goal ahead and break down all the little barriers along the way. The fear and the dread had passed over; now there was just focus.

We would head back in the direction of my wrecked
house. I’d regroup. I’d start cleaning everything up. With or without anyone’s help, I would make sure that the Glitterati hadn’t gotten the last word.

Yes, I’d started this thing. But the game had changed. I was sure of that now.

And I wasn’t the type to give up that easily.

EPILOGUE

SO I’M NOT totally up on all the etiquette in a situation like this, but what exactly are you supposed to talk about on the ride home after a quasi-thug who just trashed your house and led you on a ten-mile car chase escapes into the night?

I got nothing, people.

I mean, at that point, Aidan and I may as well have been two zombies—well, two zombies in a luxury SUV. Up until the guy got away, there’d been this huge wave of adrenaline surging between us. Now it was barely a crackle. I could see it in Aidan’s face, the way his lids were hanging heavy over his eyes, the way his breath had deepened. My own head felt crispy, the beginnings of a headache crossed with a spacey emptiness. We were burnt out.

Aidan reached over and turned up the radio, playing more of his doom metal. That felt appropriate, at least. I
looked out the window without really looking. The moon had popped up and it was full and bright and exposed, almost vulnerable out there all by itself in the enormous open sky, dangling over the sharp peaks of the mountains. I shivered a little, thinking of what lay in store at home.

I just needed a shower, maybe, then a cup of tea. And then I’d figure out what to do with the mess. It would be fine, I told myself. I wasn’t terribly convincing at that particular moment—but I wasn’t such a great listener just then, either.

Aidan eased the car onto Sierra Vista and then onto Morning Glory. My street was quiet, no real activity except for a car passing us in the opposite direction.

A silver Nissan, I saw as it went by. With California plates. Like the one…

My heart lurched.

No, it couldn’t be
.

My mother’s mystery man.

I started calculating the possibilities. If there were a quota on how many weird things could happen in a day, I’d already hit it with the above-mentioned car chase and house-trashing.

So this was simply a coincidence. Right? Or maybe I was imagining things.

“What’s wrong?” Aidan asked, suddenly, turning toward me. He must have sensed the internal struggle I was having with my runaway brain. Either that or the way my knuckles had gone white on the passenger-side door handle.

“It’s nothing,” I said. “I’m just—I think my nerves are just shot. It’s been a bizarre day.”

“Well, I won’t argue with you there.” He shook his head and pulled into my driveway. Then he smiled, his eyes twinkling a bit as he shifted the car into park. “You really know how to liven up a Wednesday afternoon.”

“Oh, this?” I said, waving a hand through the air ever so casually. “This was nothing. You should see what I do on Thursdays.”

“Can I at least help you clean up?”

“No, that’s okay. My mom will be here soon.” I unbuckled my seat belt and let it slide into its retracted position. I had a funny feeling that she and I might get into another fight about keeping secrets. I definitely didn’t want Aidan to be around for that. “But thanks for helping today—with everything.”

Again with an etiquette quandary: How do you thank someone for possibly risking their life for you? It was impossible.

Best thing to do was get out of the car quickly, before we could have another awkward moment. Because, of course, in the middle of everything, I still hadn’t managed to forget the cringe-worthy botched kiss. Um, yeah. No chance of that. That was the kind of thing that would probably haunt me until I was fifty.

I sighed to myself and waved to him through the open passenger window.

Maybe it really wasn’t meant to be
.

He waved back and reversed his Mercedes out of the
driveway. Tiny pin-dot beginnings of tears welled up in my eyes. I was just overwhelmed, I told myself. Just tired.

And as I started up the walk, true exhaustion sank in—I could feel it hanging all over me like a heavy coat. I got out my key. Then I remembered that in our haste to catch the intruder we’d probably just left the door open. Not like it mattered, because everything inside the house was ruined anyway.

Still, a shiver ran through me—what if someone else was in there?

No. There’s a quota, remember
?

Just then, my eye caught on a corner of white paper tucked under the front door. I reached down to grab it.

It was a calling card.
Special Agent Jeremy Corbin
, it said on the front. Federal Bureau of Investigation, United States Department of Justice. Above the name was an official-looking embossed gold and blue shield, and below it, an address and phone number in Los Angeles.

Why was the FBI here? Had they known about the break-in, or were they here for something else? And when? I wondered. Had we missed the card when we came into the house earlier? It was possible, I guess.

I turned it over in my hand. On the opposite side, scrawled in blue ink, was a note:

Willa, I know you’re in trouble. And I can help you. Call me if you need anything. JC

No, it hadn’t been there before at all. Somebody had left it moments ago. I knew because I’d just seen him driving away from my house.