Project Paper Doll: The Trials Read online

  “Who?” I asked, holding my breath with dread. Had he dragged my mom or Quinn into this mess again?

  “My mother.”

  I blinked. “Who?” As far as I knew, Ariane’s only family had been her adoptive father, Mark Tucker.

  She shook her head. “I don’t have time to explain. You need to get out of here. Forfeit, run away, have them send in that other…Adam. Whatever you need to do to leave the competition, do it. Go home and hope they all forget they ever saw you.”

  I stared at her. “I can’t leave without you.”

  She gave me a sad smile. “There is no way out for me. Things have changed. I don’t belong out there. I’ve…done things.” Her gaze skittered away from mine, something like regret washing over her features, and I strained to hear her thoughts, but anything coming from her was lost in the noise.

  Then her expression turned fierce. “But you need to leave. Ford is right. If I’m caught between two competing priorities, she’ll find a way in, and she’ll hurt you.” She checked her phone again, her posture determined, unyielding.

  “I have a solution,” I said recklessly. Justine would kill me if she found out I’d been this direct.

  Ariane froze.

  “But not here.” I jerked my head up toward the ceiling and the security cameras overhead.

  MEET ME AT HOLE IN ONE. BAGEL PLACE. TWO BLOCKS OVER AND THREE DOWN. TRACKER WON’T BE A PROBLEM. I focused on the words, picturing them flowing out from me to her, stock ticker style.

  Ariane frowned, tipping her head to one side, as if hearing something just out of range.

  Damn it.

  Ariane. Did you hear me? Trust me. PLEASE.

  Keeping her hand at her side, she flashed two fingers and then three rapidly.

  Then she shook her head. “I’m done, Zane. I’m sorry, but I can’t. I hope you’ll take my advice. Go home, be safe, have a good life,” she said, louder than before and with the almost robotic inflection I’d come to associate more with Ford than with this girl.

  Then she spun around, her hair flying out behind her, and headed back the way she’d come, moving without hesitation. At the last second, before she vanished around the corner, she signaled me with two fingers and then three.

  That had to mean she was coming, right?

  My heart crashing against the wall of my chest, I waited ten seconds, just to make it look good, like I was stunned by what she’d said. Some of it might not have been acting.

  Then I pushed out through the west doors onto the sidewalk.

  “Took you long enough.” Adam greeted me at the opening of the designated alleyway. The narrow gap between a bank high-rise and a rundown-looking restaurant offered a fairly invisible meet point. No security cameras, according to Justine, who’d done the recon. It also reeked of rotting grease and old food; nobody would be lingering any longer than necessary.

  “Shut up,” I muttered. I slapped the phone into his hand, slowing down only enough to make sure he didn’t fumble it. I still had to cover a couple more blocks, and I didn’t want to risk Ariane arriving too much ahead of me and deciding not to stick around.

  But Adam grabbed my shoulder with his free hand as I passed, his fingers digging in.

  I shook him off. “What the hell, dude?” The leftover adrenaline and aggressiveness from my encounter with Ford rose to the surface in a heartbeat, and I clenched my fist.

  “You want to go? Ready to take me on?” Adam sounded amused. “Thought you had better things to do today.” He was in a much better mood, for some reason.

  “What do you want?” I asked through gritted teeth. I didn’t like Adam, never had. He enjoyed all of this too much. He and Ford were perfect for each other. God, there was a terrifying thought.

  “The vitals monitor.” He nodded at my chest.

  Reflexively, I clapped my hand over the black plastic triangle that clung tightly to my skin, thanks to about four pounds of adhesive on its reverse side. “They’re using the phones to track us, not these.” Supposedly. It was hard to know what information to trust. But Emerson had said nothing to me this morning about giving the vitals monitor to Adam.

  Adam snorted. “Right.”

  Okay, maybe he had a point. No matter what they’d told Emerson, it was better not to take chances.

  I tugged down the collar of my shirt and flicked at the edge of the monitor experimentally. It was, as I’d suspected, pretty solidly attached. “We have to be careful. It might send off an alert if we mess—”

  Before I could stop him, Adam reached over and ripped the leach free, along with a good chunk of skin, or so it felt like.

  I shoved him, my eyes watering. “Asshole.” My chest was red and raw where the monitor had been, but it wasn’t openly bleeding, at least.

  “Don’t be such a princess,” he said with a smirk as he tugged down his shirt and slapped it into place.

  I held my breath, waiting for lights to flash or a beeping to emerge from beneath the fabric. How many seconds had been lost in the transition? Two, maybe three?

  But nothing happened. On our end, anyway. Who knew what the Committee saw. Emerson wouldn’t be expecting to have to cover for that. Hopefully, if it was noticed at all, it would be written off as a random blip and nothing more.

  If not, there wasn’t anything I could do about it now.

  Well, there was one thing.

  I hit Adam, my fist connecting hard with the side of his face.

  Caught off guard, he stumbled a step back, his hand flying up to his mouth and coming away red.

  He looked from the blood on his hand to me. “You are so dead, kid,” he said with a disconcertingly wide smile.

  I flexed my hand; the skin had split over the knuckles, but nothing was broken, as far as I could tell. “Not today,” I said, shifting forward, my weight on my toes.

  He pushed up on me, getting in my face, and I braced myself for impact, to roll and turn his momentum against him. I’d had years of practice, between lacrosse, my dad, and my older brother, Quinn. My dad and Quinn were built like Adam but on a smaller scale. Everything was on a smaller scale compared to Adam.

  But the anticipation surging in my veins, that was new. I’d always gone into any fight or clash on the field with jaw-clenching determination, but that was different than enjoying it.

  I wanted him to take a swing at me. I wanted to feel the impact of his fist. It would fuel the fire burning in me to stand over him and howl in triumph.

  But then, as if he could read my mind and sense my eagerness, Adam grinned at me, his teeth bloody from the cut on his mouth. “Even better. It’ll be a surprise.”

  He turned and jogged out of the alley, heading away from the bagel place, as was the plan. Which was probably better because, as he’d pointed out, we were already running late, and Justine would not put up with that.

  “TBD, bro!” he called over his shoulder to me.

  I exhaled slowly, trying to quiet the thundering drum of my pulse in my head.

  Fucking Adam. I wasn’t sure how Justine or Emerson were compensating or rewarding him for his reduced role in all of this. More steroids or whatever he was already doing, maybe?

  I hoped whatever it was involved permanent ball shrinkage.

  My hand starting to throb in time with the raw patch of skin on my chest, I hurried out of the alley and the remaining blocks to the restaurant.

  It didn’t take me long, under five minutes. Hole in One was a small place, taking up a corner in the lobby of another skyscraper. Through the windows, I could see that the half-dozen booths appeared occupied, and the line of caffeine and carbohydrate-deprived businesspeople snaked out through the door and onto the sidewalk, where damp metal tables sat under closed café umbrellas, waiting for the lunch crowd.

  The popularity of the eatery was, I had to guess, part of Justine’s plan to make Ariane feel less exposed.

  But there was no sign of Ariane in the window-facing booths as far as I could tell without going inside, and I
had a hard time imagining her joining the line of coffee seekers.

  I turned and checked the sidewalk in both directions, hoping to see her approaching, her white-blond head tucked down against a nonexistent wind, just as I had seen it innumerable times at school.

  But no, she wasn’t in sight. And she should have beaten me here.

  The worry I’d felt at the hotel, that maybe she’d been saying good-bye for real, returned with a vengeance, until the pain in my hand was nothing more than a vague memory. I crossed the sidewalk and pushed my way in through the door, earning more than a few glares for stepped-on toes and a few mumbles about “the back of line is that way.”

  Inside, it smelled of coffee and fresh bread and a not-unpleasant mix of colognes and perfumes from the impatiently waiting patrons. On any other day, I might have appreciated it more, my stomach rumbling for food.

  But today I barely noticed, my focus pulled elsewhere.

  A quick look around didn’t reveal anything that I hadn’t seen from the outside, except that the line of waiting people was even longer than I’d realized. It zigged and zagged through a series of a poles and ropes, like the ones they use at amusement parks to keep the line under control, with a set of bakery racks on the right side to box everyone in.

  Ariane wasn’t here.

  Then, with a sinking feeling, I realized, neither was Justine.

  I looked for her dark red hair in that tight ponytail—when you’re tall, that’s how you recognize people, by the tops of their heads—but no luck.

  What did that mean? Had I missed them both entirely? Had Justine been able to convince Ariane that quickly and without me present? That didn’t seem likely.

  Or was this meeting an elaborate trap I hadn’t seen coming, Justine in league with the other government people and hiding it for some reason?

  Maybe they’d already hauled her away, drugging her so she wouldn’t protest. I’d seen it happen before, the night I first learned who she really was and what she could do. GTX security had shot her with sedative darts outside a party at Rachel Jacobs’s house and then carried her off to a van.

  Crap, crap, crap.

  I forced myself to slow down, take a breath, and pay attention to the room. No one here had the ruffled, excited air of someone witnessing a possible abduction or a girl fainting for unknown reasons and someone carrying her off. All I could see was boredom, irritation, and possibly the need for the bathroom from a couple people unwilling to give up their place in line, even as they shifted from foot to foot.

  So probably I’d missed something. That was all.

  With that in mind, I started looking again. And this time, on a second, more thorough search, weaving in and out of people, I caught a glimpse of pale hair, that unique shade that belonged exclusively to her and, well, Ford and Carter, through the shelves of muffins and bagels on the bakery rack marked “to go” in the ordering area.

  My heart leaped with relief. Thank God.

  I squeezed through the line, ducking carefully around the rack, and found a small seating area. Three tables were pushed against the rear wall, well out of the traffic pattern and visible only to those entering from the skyscraper lobby rather than the street. In other words, it was as private as you could get in a situation like this.

  Which was probably why Justine had picked it. She sat facing me at the second table, wearing another of her soccer mom outfits, a Mustangs sweatshirt. Her expression was strangely strained, her cheeks flushed and her eyes wide with surprise…or alarm. A paper cup lay tipped over on its side, coffee slowly leaking out of the plastic top, forming a steaming puddle on the table while she made no move to address the issue.

  Ariane stood at the edge of the table, partially turned away. I could see only her profile, but that was enough for me to recognize the forbidding set of her features. Oh boy, I’d seen that look before. She was not happy about something. I couldn’t read her thoughts or Justine’s at the moment, but I didn’t need to. Waves of tension emanated from both of them.

  Then I noticed Justine’s hand locked on Ariane’s arm, her fingers in claw mode around Ariane’s wrist.

  Oh, shit.

  THIS IS A MISTAKE. This is a mistake.

  The words ran over and over in my head, my logical side lecturing me again. You know this is a mistake.

  Yeah, I did know that, and yet my feet kept moving, following the directions Zane had given me. They were taking orders from the emotional part of me that was still, insanely, harboring hope.

  Hope for what, I had no idea. The smartest, safest thing I could have done for Zane was to stay away. To let his plan, whatever it was, fall apart while I hunted down the target and incapacitated Ford in whatever way necessary. I needed to win this thing, now more than ever.

  But here I was, heading away from the tourist locations, where I would most likely be able to catch up with the target, and heading instead deeper into the business district to meet with Zane.

  I shook my head. Ridiculous. I had no way of knowing if he was even capable of taking care of the tracking issue, except that he said that he could, and I believed him.

  I wanted to believe him. And that was incredibly dangerous. No matter how fiercely he proclaimed otherwise, he had changed. He’d been seconds away from attacking Ford, a cry for help at best and a suicide attempt at worst.

  I didn’t know what to make of that, but I needed to find out.

  Plus, as grateful as I was to find Zane alive, there had to be a reason for what St. John had done beyond compassion. And I couldn’t figure out what that would be. Whatever it was, I did not want it to bite me in the ass when I was least expecting it.

  Hole in One was exactly where Zane said it would be, though on the opposite side of the street. I darted through a gap in the traffic and slipped inside, gritting my teeth against the brush of so many bodies in close proximity.

  Zane was nowhere in evidence at the front of the restaurant, as far as I could determine, and his height usually made him fairly easy to find, so I wormed my way in deeper.

  It was possible that I’d arrived ahead of him, in which case it seemed wise to stake out some small piece of real estate where we could talk in relative privacy. A crowd would certainly help hide us, but it also made having a conversation without being overheard trickier.

  Then again, anyone bored enough to eavesdrop on us today would likely assume we were (a) crazy or (b) working a bizarre creative writing project.

  Ha. I wished.

  In the far corner, I found a small, secluded seating area: a single row of three tables with chairs instead of the more prominent booths in the front by the windows.

  Two out of the three tables were occupied. At the closest, a college-aged guy demolished a bagel while he thumbed through something on his tablet, his lips moving as he read. The woman at the second table with the painfully tight ponytail was glaring at her phone, her coffee forgotten in her annoyance.

  I started for the last table in the row, which also offered the advantage of the corner. I could put my back to it and know that no one would be sneaking up from that direction, unless someone decided to leap over the ordering counter and come through that way.

  That seemed like something Ford might do. But not today, I hoped.

  As I passed the second table, the woman with the phone looked up suddenly. Her gaze passed over me from head to toe, lingering an extra second on my hair and my face, with frank curiosity.

  “Wait,” she said, holding out her free hand, palm out, as if to prevent me from passing her by.

  Her interest immediately set off an alarm in my head. Nothing about her seemed inherently dangerous, though, except that she was sitting up straighter and paying more attention than she should have been.

  That, in and of itself, wasn’t exceptional. Occasionally I’d had strangers—women, usually—stop me before. It never failed to send me in a panic in Wingate. But running would have broken Rule #4, keeping my head down and being as inconspicuous as possible,
so I’d stood my ground, trying to keep my shaking from being obvious.

  It had always turned out to be innocuous. Most of the time, they wanted to know if that was my natural hair color, and if not, who did it for me. Sometimes one of them would cluck over my thinness and ask, “Isn’t anyone feeding you?” as if I were a stray animal.

  I’d always given the answers as quickly as possible. “Yes, it’s natural. And yes, I’m fed well at home. I just have a small frame.”

  Responses that would ring true and encourage no further dialogue.

  So, more out of habit than intention, I paused, those old phrases leaping to mind in preparation.

  But then she spoke again. “Ariane,” she said with a big smile. “Right?”

  My field of vision narrowed to the woman’s face, panic blocking out everything else. The intense interest in her expression was familiar in a very specific way. I’d seen it from Dr. Jacobs repeatedly, every time I’d achieved another level of accomplishment in his experiment. It was an eagerness born of the desire to obtain, to own.

  This woman, whoever she was, knew not only who I was but what I was. Worse yet, I couldn’t get anything from her thoughts, which meant she’d had training and knew exactly what to expect from me.

  Suddenly, the air felt suffocating, the warmth and smells that had seemed so pleasant a moment ago now seemed to cling to my face, like plastic pressed against my nose and mouth.

  Get out. Now. A scene in here with all these people, that would only draw more attention to me, which was the last thing I needed. I didn’t know this woman, but if she knew me, that could only mean that she was somehow involved in this mess.

  I spun around immediately to return the way I’d come.

  “Don’t.” As if she’d anticipated my reaction, the woman’s hand landed on my arm before I got more than a step, jerking me to a stop.

  NO. Even before I consciously made the decision to defend myself, power rose up in me and flooded outward, surrounding her.