The Arsonist by Stephanie Oakes

Author:Stephanie Oakes
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Young Readers Group
Published: 2017-08-22T04:00:00+00:00

Molly

Dear Pepper,

I fiddle with my cell phone, dialing the number, then deleting it a thousand times. I have been debating whether to make this call, but after our fight, Pepper, and after meeting Georg, I am anxious to continue the quest. I need to find the answers.

I hit Call.

“I wish to speak to Heinrich Werner,” I say.

“Is that right?” Werner answers in his solid, German-tinged voice. I’m on top of the roof of my aunt’s house again, where I know I won’t be overheard.

“And who may I ask is calling?” he asks.

“Molly Mavity,” I say. “We spoke recently, outside your home.”

I hear Werner grunt. “Can I ask how you got my number?”

“The Internet,” I say simply. I had to use my aunt’s credit card to pay one of those creepy identity-selling websites to get it. “I wanted you to know that I met with Georg Winkler.”

“You are aware that you do not get a prize for collecting us all,” Werner says.

“Georg told me the knife belonged to Ava,” I say. “Explain.”

Werner chuckles. “I don’t have to explain a thing to you.”

“How did Ava’s own knife kill her?” I ask. “And why do you have it? Why did you say it was yours? Who are you protecting?”

He goes silent, and I fear that he’s hung up on me.

“Nothing is simple about East Germany.” His voice becomes quiet. “That is what the conspiracy theorists don’t ever understand. Do you know the expression ‘History is written by the victors’? That’s never been truer than in the GDR. We were the best secret police the world has ever known. The KGB? The SS? Bah! Sloppy imbeciles. To be a member of the Stasi was all I ever wanted, and now I’m supposed to look back at those years with regret? If I’d been born in America, I would’ve been the kind of cop you see on one of those TV shows. But I was born in the German Democratic Republic, and I became a villain.”

“You killed people,” I say. “You made them disappear, and didn’t even let the families hold funerals.”

“That was the machine, not me.”

“You were part of the machine,” I say.

I hear him sigh loudly from the other end of the line. “I really must be going now. Good luck with your goose chase. You ought to get out of the house. The bay is beautiful today.”

The line goes dead.

I stay on the roof, letting the sun beat down on my face, and I can practically feel it multiplying my freckles.

In my hand, my phone vibrates, and I think for a moment Werner’s calling back. But it’s not his name on the caller ID.

“Pepper?” I ask, my stomach clenching slightly.

“I’m at the boardwalk. You’ll never guess who I’m looking at right now.” Your voice echoes across the phone line, into my ear.

“Who?” I ask.

“Ava Dreyman.”

You tell me the rest in a blur. I climb down the roof in a way that can only be described as reckless, hanging from the gutter and

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