Incognita Read online

  And now he’s making his way toward me.

  No, I’m imagining that.

  He’s just chatting with people as he walks across the room. But he is coming this way. An impromptu receiving line is forming, and I’m right in the middle of it.

  If I bolt now, I’ll draw attention to myself. So I stay frozen in place. He won’t recognize me. At least, he shouldn’t. Hodges went out of her way to get rid of me so he’d never even know I existed, and Virgil has been very careful to keep us from meeting. There are no images of my face floating around on the Internet—no social media profiles, no close-up photos snapped by admirers during my lawbreaking days. Still, Erskine Claymore is a man with astronomical resources at his disposal. I’m about to find out whether he’s somehow managed to discover who I am.

  He reaches out for my hand and gives it a squeeze.

  “Lovely to meet you,” he says as his gaze drifts toward the next face.

  As soon as my grandfather is a few feet past me, I look around, but Thomas is gone. Or at least I can’t see him among all the people bumping into me as they shuffle to get near Claymore. I move toward the stairs as fast as I can, swimming upstream against the flow of people.

  Thomas told me to meet him on the starboard side, and it’s only just occurring to me that I have no idea if that’s the left or right. I figure I’ve got a fifty-fifty chance and go to the left side of the boat, lower deck. It’s so crowded I can hardly make my way through the clusters of people, all of whom are glinting with jewels.

  Five minutes becomes ten. Then fifteen. I lean over the railing and look up at the buildings, several of which are probably owned by Erksine Claymore.

  Still no Thomas.

  My shoulders sag and the shawl slips down on one side. Behind me, I hear a girl’s voice say, “So. You a friend of Thomas’s or something?”

  Startled, I turn around. Standing on the deck is a girl my age in a bright yellow cocktail dress. She has wavy blonde hair with streaks of dark blue. Her full, round cheeks and slightly upturned nose make her look a little younger than she probably is, but her raspy voice makes her sound like an old blues singer.

  “I noticed him searching for someone in the crowd while I was talking to him. Are you dating or whatever?”

  Her expression is at once sneering and wounded. I immediately wonder if she’s an ex-girlfriend.

  “Who wants to know?” I ask.

  “I used to go to school with Thomas.” She puts out her hand for me to shake. “Cassidy Hicks. Resident mean girl of Dorchester Academy. That’s a fancy private school in Connecticut, in case you haven’t heard of it.”

  I actually have heard of it. I went to a fancy private school too, not that I’m going to bother mentioning this to her.

  I ignore her outstretched hand. She lets it drop but turns up the wattage on her sneer. “I didn’t think Thomas went for exotic types.”

  My eyes automatically narrow. “Exotic? Is that a code word for something?”

  “Oh, relax. If I wanted to insult you, I’d just do it.”

  Yeah. Definitely a mean girl.

  Good thing I’m a scary girl.

  I smile. “And if I wanted to snap you in half and toss you into the river, I’d just do that too.”

  I step around her, but before I can get very far she says, “Well, in case you’re curious, I just saw Thomas leave with a couple friends.”

  I turn back. “What did the friends look like?”

  She shrugs, twirling a piece of her hair. “Just two guys in suits. They were propping him up as he walked so I figure he sneaked too many drinks.”

  “When was that?”

  “I don’t know. Like five, ten minutes ago maybe.”

  As I push past her, my shawl falls even farther down my shoulder. I hear her give a little gasp, but I don’t have time to dwell on it. A very bad feeling is swelling inside me. I climb the stairs to the main deck and thread my way through the crowd. When I’m back on the deck near the yacht entrance, I take my phone out and dial the number Thomas last used to call me.

  No answer.

  I rush down the gangplank as fast as my sky-high shoes will allow. A security guard lifts a rope to let me out. Some photographers are still milling around. They snap a few shots of me before deciding I’m not anyone tabloid-worthy.

  “Excuse me,” I say to the security guard, “there was a guy in a tux, red hair, with two other men. They just left a few minutes ago. Did you see which way they went?”

  He blinks rapidly and without looking at me says, “No, sorry.”

  Judging by the flat tone and the lack of eye contact, the people who took Thomas slipped this guy some money and told him not to mention seeing them.

  “That kid with the red hair? His mother is on the board of trustees for this event. Do you understand what I’m saying? Rich, important people will want to know where he went.”

  After a second he tips his head to the right and covers his mouth like he’s coughing. “Toward the parking garage near the south dock.”

  “The guys with him, what did they look like?”

  He ducks his head and says, “Tall, dark-haired, pale skin, spoke with some kind of accent.”

  I almost blurt out a “thank you” but decide he doesn’t deserve such politeness. I rush down the sidewalk and back onto the street. High heels and cobblestones are a bad combination, so I reach down and slip my shoes off one at a time, carrying them in one hand as I rush down the street. I hold my dress up a little so I can jog.

  “Thomas!”

  His name echoes off the brick buildings on either side and bounces back at me.

  There’s nothing going on down here at this time of night. No restaurants or bars open. This is a place for tourists and right now, it’s empty. I pass the parking garage the security guard mentioned, but the gate is down.

  The lapping water and distant horns of the city make me feel even more alone. And scared. I know Thomas wouldn’t leave without telling me. Not unless he was trying to protect me. And the Feds wouldn’t hustle him away like that, right out from under his parents’ noses—plus I’m pretty sure most FBI agents do not have accents. Something is very wrong.

  The wind makes my dress flap violently, and I have a hard time keeping my shawl from blowing away. Where could they have gone? Manhattan ends right here at the water’s edge.

  I see a crumpled cocktail napkin near the entrance to the south dock and dash toward it. A tall metal grate covers the entrance. There’s no way someone could have gotten around or over it, and even if they did, there’d be nowhere to go except into the East River. The only two boats tied to the dock are small, empty tugs that are both dark and empty.

  I stoop to pick up the napkin. It’s got the Metropolitan Museum logo on it.

  “Thomas! Thom—”

  Something loops around my neck, rough and tight, choking me.

  My eyes water as I gag and struggle to tear the rope away from my throat. The next thing I feel is my feet lifting off the sidewalk. Someone hustles me toward the river where the two tug boats are knocking against the dock. The water comes at me fast. I plunge into a sudden coldness.

  I’ve gone under. I look up and glimpse one of my high heels floating on the top of the water above my head. I try to swim toward the surface, but the rope tightens and something drags me farther down into the greenish-black depths. I think it’s an anchor.

  Chapter 4

  The rope squeezes my neck, and the world stops.

  It’s not death, yet. It’s that moment people talk about when everything you feel and remember and wanted but didn’t get is crushed into a split second that cannot possibly hold it all. And yet it does. All your life is pushing up against your death like it’s trying to get the last word in before falling silent forever.

  I feel no cold, no anything. The rope constricting around my neck seems to pause. I’m suspended in liquid like some lab specimen in a jar, trying to keep my eyes open in the dark, dirty water.

&
nbsp; My brain is searching, processing, trying to calculate my options and coming up empty. I continue to sink and the rope continues to tighten. Bubbles rise in front of my face—the last of my air fleeing my lungs like rats leaving a sinking ship. My Velocius abilities have kicked in to sustain me, helping me last a bit longer than I might otherwise, but they can’t make me immortal. And the person who put this rope around my neck knows that.

  I look up. The last bleak ball of light recedes.

  Good-bye, Thomas.

  Good-bye, Virgil.

  Good-bye, Mrs. Fitzgerald.

  Are these are my only good-byes? Am I leaving only three people behind? I feel like someone is missing . . .a friend I’ve never said good-bye to . . .

  Someone I’ve forgotten.

  Did the surgeries erase this person from my memory, from my life?

  No . . . I think this might have been a friend I lost even before I ended up in that hospital. I remember nothing about her except a feeling of betrayal. But who betrayed whom? I don’t know. Doesn’t matter. Forgiveness is easy when you’re dying.

  Just as my mind starts to transition to resignation that this is the end, I feel the rope constrict once again. My sinking halts and starts to reverse. I’m going back up. At first I think I’m imagining it, but the light above me is growing brighter and less fuzzy. I ascend toward life, toward air. With the last bit of strength I have, I reach up, grab the rope, and pull, which takes some of the force off my neck.

  A moment later, I burst out of the water and take my biggest breath since the day I was born. I land on my side on the dock, my hand underneath me awkwardly. My wrist turns too far, and the pain shocks me into full alertness. My neck burns. I pull the rope up over my head and toss it away. The anchor takes the rope back down again, and I see that it’s attached to the nearby tug.

  I can’t see anything at first. I lie on the rough concrete, my dress like plastic wrap around me. And clear plastic wrap at that. Fortunately someone puts a jacket around my shoulders. I look up into a face I recognize. It’s the boy I’d seen watching me as I arrived at the party.

  “You gonna live or what?” he says in a heavy Brooklyn accent as he smacks me hard on the back.

  I cough the last of the river water from my lungs. “Thank you,” I blurt out. My eyes are finally able to focus.

  He’s my height, thin but muscular and his arms seem almost as long as his legs. He’s coiled-spring tense and fidgety but yet still . . . genial? Shy? I can’t quite get a read on him. It’s like his body language is telling me two opposite things at the same time. What I first took for shadows around his eyes are actually purple-turning-green bruises, and there’s a deep cut on the bridge of his nose and a dozen other small, partially-healed nicks on his chin, cheeks, and forehead. He looks as if he recently flew through a windshield.

  “Who—are—”

  “We’ll get to that in a minute.”

  He pulls me to my feet and though I’m still drenched and dizzily gulping air, I try to assess what kind of threat he might be. I suppose his saving my life wins him a lot of points, but following me around for days set him back a bit.

  “Come on,” he says. “Let’s get out of here before those goons come back and try to give you another taste of the East River.”

  “Friends of yours?” I ask.

  “Never saw ’em before.”

  “How many were there?”

  “Two. And they might be back, so I don’t suggest staying out in the open like this.”

  “What did they look like?”

  “Big. Now come on. We gotta get moving.”

  The wet satin plastered to my legs makes it hard for me to walk. I lift the skirt and take a few confused steps, not sure if I want to go with this kid or run the other way. I look down at my wrist and see that my watch has stopped. I wonder if the panic button will still work . . . My gaze drifts down into the water, knowing that my phone, even if I could retrieve it, is ruined. The thought strikes me that I’ve now lost the only way I had to reach Thomas. Terror unspools in my chest along with a flush of guilt. I feel like somehow I made this happen just because I’d dared to be happy.

  “I said, come on!” When I look up, the kid is starting to jog toward the nearest shadow provided by a blocky brick warehouse. He motions for me to follow. I raise my skirt almost daintily and run to catch up, my wet feet making a slapping noise on the street as I go. The jacket the kid gave me has quickly turned into a sopping towel and there are streaks of blood and snot on the cuffs, but at least it’s keeping me covered.

  “What’s your name?” I ask as I trip along behind him.

  He doesn’t answer. His head is whipping back and forth, his arms pumping at his sides. He seems to be heading back in the general direction of the yacht.

  I try another angle. “Before you saw me get thrown into the river, did you see anybody else around here? A redheaded guy, my age, and a couple of other guys?”

  “Nope. Just you and the guys who tossed you off the dock.”

  He turns sharply into a narrow passage between two warehouses that are probably a hundred years old. Everything down here has a faint, fishy scent, like it’s been baked into the bricks and the sidewalks. By now it’s dawning on me that he’s not taking me toward Thomas. “Where are we going?”

  “We need to lay low for a bit.”

  I stop running. “Um, no, I don’t think so.”

  He skids to a halt and looks back at me. “Look—”

  “I appreciate your help, but I have no idea who you are or why you’ve been following me”—his eyes widen, like he didn’t expect me to recognize him—“and you don’t seem keen to tell me. So if you can’t explain what’s going on, frankly, I have other things I need to deal with right now.” I take his jacket off and throw it back to him. He looks confused and even a little hurt, like I’m abandoning him, but every moment that passes is time I’m wasting. I turn around and walk back toward the street. I don’t know how I’m going to track down Thomas, but I’m going to start by finding someone who can lend me a phone. I need to call the police, and then I need to call Mrs. Fitzgerald so she can alert the Feds . . .

  I’m shivering. Maybe from fear, but mostly from exposure. I might as well be walking around in my underwear right now. Wet underwear, to be exact.

  “Wait!” the guy calls out.

  But I’m not going to wait. That dunk in the river has washed away all illusions I might have had about building trust and taking an ordinary approach to life. This moment, this frenzied fear and anger I feel—it’s like I’ve been thrown back in time, to a person and a place I once knew far too well. A girl who understood how life really works. People like me have to fight for every scrap of happiness and even then, it can be taken away in a matter of moments. Maybe people like me don’t get happy endings.

  I feel a tug on my arm. “Hold on a second—”

  “No!” I shout. “Just leave me alone.”

  He withdraws like I slapped him across the face.

  We hear a screech of brakes and turn to see a white delivery van pull up near the dock where I was so recently tossed into the water. Both of us instinctively step back into the safety of the shadows.

  “Those are the guys,” he says. “Told you they’d probably be back.”

  We crouch behind a couple garbage cans. I glance back and forth between the kid’s face and the van. The kid looks more afraid than angry, which is the direct opposite of how I feel right now, even if the effect is the same: We wait and watch, both of us rigid and intensely focused.

  I’m wondering if maybe we’re cut from the same traumatized cloth.

  Someone in the van leans out the window and shines a searchlight around near the dock gate. I feel like some deep sea fish, watching the lights of a submarine cutting through the ocean gloom. After another minute, the van pulls away slowly and drives off.

  I stand up and succumb to a post–“close call” bout of shivering.

  “Looks like we’re cl
ear,” the kid says, his voice soft and sad. “You know, if you want to go now.” He puts his hands in his pockets and looks down, doing his best impression of a freshly kicked puppy.

  I take a few steps out onto the sidewalk. Then I spin and sigh. Might as well try this one more time.

  “Can you at least tell me why you’ve been following me? And why you pulled me out of the river?”

  He probes one of the cuts on his upper lip with his tongue as he thinks about answering. His shirt is pretty wet, and I notice I’m not the only one shivering.

  “I’ve been following you because I was hoping you could help me. And obviously I pulled you out of the river because I figured if you died you weren’t gonna be able to do that.”

  “What? How am I supposed to help you?”

  “I need some answers.”

  “From me? Answers about what?”

  “I don’t even know,” he says. “I came here two weeks ago because of this.” He reaches into his pocket and pulls out a phone, which he hands to me. “Took this off a guy who—let’s just say we weren’t pals. It’s dead now, but there was this weird text message on it about dry cleaning.”

  “Call me crazy, but I’m not seeing an obvious connection to me.”

  “It was a code. If I had a way to charge the phone, I could show you, but I think I remember it pretty well. Something like ‘When you’re ready to pick up the dry cleaning, it’s at . . .’ and then it gave an address. So I went to that address a couple weeks back and saw you coming out.”

  I gape at him. “What?”

  “Yeah. The apartment building on Riverside? That’s where you live, right?”

  No one knows that address except me and Virgil and Mrs. Fitzgerald. And Thomas.

  Plus the Feds, of course.

  And those are all people I’m supposed to trust.

  But if someone mentioned the location of my apartment in a coded text, that means . . . what? That even more people are watching me? And what do those people want with me?