Rules for disappearing
by Witness Protection prisoner #18A7R04M:
Always act like you know what you’re doing. Even if you have no idea what you’re doing.
New rule by Anna Boyd:
Sometimes freaking out is okay.
and I suck at lip reading. Twenty minutes later I’m still trying to mouth that I have a dull, broken piece of glass in a pocket I can’t reach. He’s repeating a sentence over and over to me, too, but all I’m getting is something about a cup and a banana. I’m sure I’m getting it wrong.
This position is really no better than when my hands were behind my back. Now my hands are eye level and the zip tie is really tight so they’re numb again. All the blood has drained from my arms.
I struggle to a kneeling position despite the van pitching me around. Ethan mouths, “What are you doing?” Ironically I can read that and nothing else, but I shake my head. There’s no way to explain. It takes some maneuvering but finally I’m half-standing and some of the blood rushes back to my fingers.
Glancing to the front of the van, I hope to see Vader without the mask on. Since Thomas told him to notify Agent Hammond, I know he’s not the mole. Unless there is more than one mole.
But no luck; he’s sitting low in the seat and I can’t make out anything about him. My eyes move across the front of the van until they collide with Thomas’s in the rearview mirror.
“What are you trying to do?” Thomas yells from the front. Even when he raises his voice, it sounds controlled.
“I couldn’t feel my hands,” I yell back, even though I know I probably shouldn’t talk to him like this.
The van swerves off the edge of the road before coming to a swift stop. Ethan and I fly around like rag dolls even though we’re anchored near the van’s ceiling. Teeny whimpers but doesn’t wake up.
The back door opens and Thomas climbs in the van again, the knife at his side. He cuts me down, but keeps my hands bound together. There’s a faint red streak of blood still on the blade.
He cuts Ethan down then looks around the interior of the van. He must be searching for another spot to attach us. The back of the van is sparse—no seats, nothing soft—just metal from top to bottom. There doesn’t seem to be anywhere else to tie us.
He brings our faces close to his and says, “Understand that I will not stand for any foolishness.” He looks directly at me and says, “Remember what I told you.”
And my heart sinks. He’ll use Teeny to keep me in line.
He shoves our heads down and we fall back to the floor of the van. Thomas hops out of the van and back in the driver’s seat.
Like magnets, we’re side by side before the van gets moving. I burrow into Ethan. He can’t put his arms around me since his hands are joined together in front of us, so he throws one leg over mine and pulls my lower body in close.
Ethan whispers, “What was he talking about?”
I tell Ethan everything I know, including Thomas using Teeny as extra incentive for my cooperation.
He tries to pull me in closer and whispers in my ear, “We’ll figure some way out of this. Plus, our parents have to know we’re gone by now. Agent Williams probably has people out looking for us.”
I shake my head. “No. They can’t call him. And they can’t leave the island.” I tell him about the video and the white box. “He killed Agent Parker. He’s going to use us, and then we’re dead. No way he’s letting us live when this is all over. And that’s assuming Mateo doesn’t get to us first.”
I think about my dad stuck on that island and my mom stuck in the treatment facility and I physically ache to see them both. Especially my mom. It sickens me to think the last time I may ever see her was the night she was taken away. I’m scared and hurt and I know Dad’s probably going out of his mind right now. And the poor Landrys, too. They sure didn’t ask for this, and now their only son is tied up in the back of a van driven by a madman.
They probably started looking for us shortly after Thomas took us off the island. Did they find the white box immediately?
Ethan brings his hands up and traces the side of my face with one finger. “How bad is your cheek?”
“It’s got to be cracked. Or broken. My whole head hurts. I probably look like you did the first time I saw you.” An image of the ugly brownish yellow bruise that stained Ethan’s cheek for weeks after his fight with Ben, Emma’s boyfriend, fills my head.
He chuckles softly. “Yeah, I forgot about that.”
We’re both silent for a while. Teeny continues to moan and mumble, but I can’t see her. She’s behind me, toward my feet. Ethan lifts his head every few minutes to look at her.
“I know you want her to wake up, but I hope she stays knocked out until we get to where we’re going. We can’t do anything for her back here like this,” he says.
