I hug her tighter. “No, I think Henry showed up and took her back to England. And they had ten kids and lived to be ninety-two.”
She giggles.
Ethan shoves the money in his pocket and we’re on the move again. “Okay, this is what we’ll do. We’ll grab a cheap room for the night where we can shower, sleep, and decide what to do next. At least we’ll get off the street.”
“Food. Let’s get food, too,” Teeny adds.
“Anything you want, since you saved the day.”
Twenty minutes later, we’ve got a piping hot pizza, a bag full of touristy T-shirts and sweatpants, and we’re making our way to our room.
Rules for disappearing
by Witness Protection prisoner #18A7R04M:
If you have to get a job, do not make friends there. Don’t ask your coworkers about their boyfriend, girlfriend, dog, cat, latest fad diet, thoughts on global warming or anything else remotely personal….
New rule by Anna Boyd:
Make as many friends as you can. If you get in a bind and need help, at least there will be someone willing to come when you call.
shuts the bathroom door and starts the water for a shower. Ethan and I look anywhere but at each other. It’s awkward. And totally awful.
“Do you want to talk about it?” I ask.
He’s pacing the room, taking bites of pizza. We let him shower first since it would be his first since the island, and now he’s padding around in a Saints T-shirt and sweatpants, with fat wet curls. He looks adorable.
“I’m not sure I’m ready to talk about it. I’m still so pissed at Tyler. And Thomas. It’s making me insane.” He throws me a look I can’t read. “Let’s figure out what we’re going to do and we’ll figure out the other…part later.”
I swallow hard and try not to cry. “Okay, who do we call? No police. No parents. What are you thinking?”
“I don’t know….”
“Do you think Thomas has someone in Arkansas, watching them? How would he know what they’re doing?” I ask as I use my fingers to brush through the tangles from my wet hair. “Definitely no local police. What do you think about calling the police from a different city? What about Sheriff Pippin?”
“I thought about him, but I’m afraid to call him. He’s pretty tight with Agent Williams—what if he calls him even if we tell him not to? He would automatically believe that Agent Williams is a good guy and I’m not sure that’s true.”
I think about Agent Williams and his part in this. “I don’t think he’s a bad guy. I think whatever he did, if he did anything, was because Thomas had Noah.”
“Still doesn’t mean we want Sheriff Pippin calling him and telling him where we are.”
I pull the comforter off the bed and throw it on the floor. Teeny and I saw a show on TV once that did a story on really disgusting things found on hotel bedding and I can’t look at that faded paisley blanket without imagining what it looks like under one of those creepy lights. I climb on the bed and sit cross-legged on the scratchy sheets, but don’t feel like these are any cleaner.
Ethan throws the pizza crust in the trash and continues the pacing. “What part do we think Agent Williams played in this? You said Thomas took Noah away; where do you think he took him? I don’t think Agent Williams is on our side until he has his grandson back.”
“Me, either.”
“Are we sure Agent Hammond is the mole?”
“When I was crawling around the ceiling, I looked down into Thomas’s room right after I left yours. Tyler was in there, too. Tyler asked Thomas ifHammond was down here yet and Thomas said no, but it was okay because he didn’t need him until tomorrow.”
Ethan comes and sits on the edge of the bed, far enough away from me as he could get and still be on the bed. “We need to get out of New Orleans. Quick. We can figure out what to do later, but I think the most important thing is to get as far away from here as possible.”
“So how do we do that? And where do we go?”
And he’s back up, wearing a path across the thin brown carpet from one wall to the other. “We can’t go back to Natchitoches right now. We could go to Pearl’s camp, but the suits know about that place. I could call Will. Or Ben. I doubt Thomas is watching them. I get that he’s connected, but he can’t have an unlimited supply of people helping him. They could come get us and I could get word to Fred about our parents stuck on that island. Ben’s got family in Texas, an aunt I met a few years ago.”
Fred is Ethan’s aunt Pearl’s boyfriend she doesn’t think anyone knows about. And Will would come in a heartbeat, but the thought ofMateo harming him or Ben, just because of us, is frightening.
