Out of Control by Alderson Sarah

Author:Alderson, Sarah [Alderson, Sarah]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781439143803
Publisher: Simon & Schuster UK
Published: 2014-05-22T00:00:00+00:00

24

We stumble out of the apartment, ushering Mrs Francis ahead of us. My mind is whirring, frantically trying to process everything. Nothing is making any sense and I can tell from Jay’s brooding silence that he can’t make sense of it either but that he’s assuming the worst. I want to take his hand, tell him it’s going to be OK and that we’ll figure it out, but we’re both holding guns and Mrs Francis is staring at us like we’ve got horns growing out of our heads.

‘We’ve got to get out of here,’ I tell Jay. ‘You never know, they may come back. They might be watching the place.’

Jay barely responds. He looks utterly defeated, so I grab him by the arm and start yanking him down the stairs. Mrs Francis stands at the top, holding on to the banister, making that sucking noise through her teeth and muttering something about the youth of today.

Halfway down the stairs I think to ask Jay whether he wants to get anything while we’re here – clothes or money – but he just shakes his head dumbly at me.

I lead him back into the basement and find a dark, dusty corner that stinks of mildew. I pull up two old boxes and Jay slumps down on to one.

‘Who do you think they are?’ he asks in a voice that makes me want to lean across the darkness and take his hand.

‘I don’t know,’ I answer. ‘But let’s not jump to conclusions. At least it wasn’t the others. If they’d got there first, well . . .’ I break off. I don’t need to spell it out to him, he’s already seen what would have happened.

‘What if those agents – Agent Kassel and the other one – were sent by your dad? You ever think of that?’ Jay asks. ‘What if you were wrong and your instinct was off? I mean who else could they be? They knew your name. They turned up on the street corner you told your dad you’d be waiting at.’

‘They pulled a gun on me.’

‘Yeah, there is that,’ Jay admits, frowning at the ground.

‘Look, I’m still wondering about them too,’ I admit. I mean, while she did try to force me into the car at gunpoint, they did also come to my rescue and ram that cop’s car.

‘She said she was an agent. What does that mean? Are they FBI, do you think?’ Jay asks.

‘I don’t know.’

‘But why would they come here?’ Jay asks. ‘To where I live?’

‘They must have figured out that we were together – maybe from the phone call you made from my dad’s or maybe they have CCTV footage from the police station? Who knows.’

‘But what would they want with my mom?’

I shake my head. Nothing makes sense and sitting here in the dark is only making me feel more lost and confused. I have a sudden urge to be outside, to be back on the High Line again in the sunlight, licking ice-pops, lying next to Jay, not having to think about any of this or deal with any of it.

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