“Whoa, hey, what’s going on?” Kenji asks, his body tensing. “What’s happening?”
Warner’s expression goes flat and cold. He turns to look at me with exaggerated reluctance, as if there’s a literal gun to his head. “I need to talk to you,” he says.
I’m rendered still, even as my heart starts hammering. “Why?”
“The girl,” he says, “is missing.”
5
James
Despite everything, my face splits into an enormous smile. Vindication soars inside of me. “Didn’t I literally just—”
“No.” Kenji points at me. “Absolutely not. This is not the time.Fuck.”
He immediately begins pacing.
Even now, Warner looks down at him with mild disgust. “Foul language is a cheap feast for an underfed mind.”
“Thanks, I love it,” says Kenji. “I’ll ask Winston to whip that up in needlepoint. What do you mean she’s missing? Missing how? Missing for how long? Did we catch her on camera? Did anyone see her leave?”
“No.”
“I just asked you five different questions, and you’re giving me a syllable in response?”
I look to Warner for his rebuttal, but he jumps off the outcropping and onto the sand, landing so suddenly and silently I recoil when I realize how close we are.
“No,” he says again, directing his words to Kenji. “No one caught her on camera. No one saw her leave.”
“How is that possible?” Kenji counters, stunned.
“If I knew that,” he says, “I wouldn’t be here right now.” And then, for the second time, Warner turns his cold greeneyes on me. “We’ve already dispatched units across the city—but I need to know, right now, whether she ever indicated what her plans might’ve been for that vial, or whether she was looking for any particular landmarks—”
“Wait,” says Kenji, frozen in shock. “Hold on a second. She took the vial?”
“She took what she believed to be the vial,” Warner says. “I’ve personally verified that the original is untouched in its secure location.”
Kenji exhales in relief.
“Don’t be so quick to celebrate,” says Warner. “The dupe had a tracker in it. We traced its location to a party supply store, where we discovered it stashed in the pocket of a mannequin.” He hesitates. “The mannequin was dressed as a clown.”
I laugh out loud.
“You think this is funny?” Kenji turns on me. “You think it’s hilarious that your girlfriend is pranking us on her way to kill everybody?”
Warner looks furious, but it’s the first time in days that I’ve so much as smiled, and it feels really good.
Apparently, Rosabelle has a dark sense of humor.
Leaving the vial with the clown was her way of saying she’d known it was a fake—that she took it only to buy herself time. While Warner was tracking a false lead, she got a head start disappearing.
“Yeah,” I say, fighting my smile. “I do think it’s hilarious. Except I don’t think she’s trying to murder anyone, soI’m not really worried about it.”
Warner turns his full and undivided attention on me. “A professed executioner of The Reestablishment has broken out of a maximum-security prison cell without a trace, and you’renot really worried about it?”
“She told you she’s an executioner?” I ask, still grinning. “Kenji said you couldn’t get her to talk.”
“I never said that,” Kenji says quickly. “In fact, I never said anything—”
