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“For the most part, yes,” he said. “Lots of tests. Taking some computer science stuff.”
I tried not to show surprise here. He hadn’t been to school. The Academy brought me there to look in on him, and he’d been basically signing in at school and leaving, not showing up for classes at all.
Buble looked from me to Wil and back. “So we’re all here, normal people, with no connection? So why would they put us in a room together?”
“Someone knows something,” I said. “They’re waiting for one of us to say what they want.”
Buble nodded. “So we don’t talk. If we don’t say anything, we have a better chance to someone looking for us to find us.”
“Or we can just tell them something,” Wil said. “Anything we actually know. Maybe we don’t know what’s going on, but we could piece together information. Give them what they want.”
“So they can just shoot us?” Buble asked. “No. I’d rather not.”
I went to check on Raven again, kneeling next to him. I opened one eye of his, but it didn’t look back at me, still unconscious. “William,” I said. “Who…who else was around Alice?”
“No one,” he said. “She always came around alone.”
“No one else?”
“No.”
“Not some people who spoke German?”
He blinked at me. “No.”
“She didn’t tell you her real name?” I asked and turned to look at him. “Anja?”
He seemed surprised by this. “What?”
“Or that she almost married Ethan Murdock, the son of the old Mr. Murdock, head of the Murdock empire? His father and Anja, which was Alice’s real name, tried to take over his son’s secret experimental cell phone network to use for nefarious reasons, at least until it was turned over to authorities. Not to mentioned kidnapping, attempted murder…”
Wil shook his head, his lips sucking in with a heavy breath. “I think we have the wrong person. That’s not her.”
I was livid, because if it was the same person—and I was pretty sure it was—she did get to him. He was here now, possibly because of her connection to him.
Maybe this wasn’t about us… Maybe it wasn’t about the Academy at all…
I looked over at Buble. “You know, I haven’t heard one peep from the older Mr. Murdock after he disappeared. Just Alice. Just people that scammed a lot of money out of the Murdock corporation and invested it with them, supposedly with her as the investor. If there were two billion dollars at stake, hidden by an investor, people would be looking for that, wouldn’t they?”
Buble tilted his head, considering what I said. “And maybe…maybe to access that two billion dollars, they need Mr. Murdock? Because he was in charge of the whole thing.”
Wil scrunched his eyebrows together. “Two billion? Where do you get two billion dollars from?”
“Fixing the books of several companies from around the city,” I said. “I was looking for it, too, to get it back into the company.”
“But when other groups hear about two billion dollars up in the air,” Buble said, “they’re going to come out of the woodwork. They want it, too.”
“Including this Academy?” Wil asked.
I turned on him, twisting around while sitting close to Raven. “Why do you keep bringing it up?”
Wil shrugged. “You’re talking about groups. It’s one that’s involved. They aren’t trying to get in on so much money? Like you all said, anyone would make an attempt.”
Something in the way he was talking made my heart hurt, maybe because I didn’t believe that to be the case, and it felt like Wil was accusing them. Not once, not one minute I spent with that Academy team did they indicate they wanted money.
But they got it from somewhere. There was an entire hospital, right? They bought out entire neighborhoods to fix them up.
Yet, it didn’t seem to be the case. The guys lived in an apartment together. They helped people who were abducted…or like my father and that entire neighborhood they redid to help people like him. Greed didn’t seem to be the motivation for anything they’d done, so two billion, while it would help a lot of people, it didn’t seem likely they’d kidnap and torture people to get to it.
“It wouldn’t matter if this Academy group were interested in the money or not,” Buble said. “Without the elder Mr. Murdock, everyone would be out of luck.”
“But if he’s missing…” Wil said. “I mean, just think. Who has him? You said he’s been missing.”
I wasn’t sure how many lies Alice had told him, but I needed one little detail to prove something.
Avery said that the police had been close to finding Mr. Murdock, they were on his trail.
I got up, leaving Raven to move to the camera.
“What are you doing?” Buble asked.
I picked it up, looking right into the face of it. “Someone come in here.”
In just a few minutes, the tired guard came in. “Yes?”
“What’s your name?”
He seemed surprised by this. “Joe.”
“Can I come out and talk to you, Joe?”
“What are you going to tell him?” Buble asked. “We shouldn’t—”
“We don’t need to talk,” Joe said, cutting him off.
I raised an eyebrow. “What?”
“We don’t need information. We have a lead on who we want. Now we’re just waiting.” He smirked. “We’ve got more people, we just needed to find one who would crack. And we did.”
“Who?”
“Natalie wasn’t doing so hot,” he said. “So he traded information for getting her to a hospital. Her brother-in-law. And his friend. The guy we brought you in with.”
Axel? And Blake? “What are you talking about? Where are they?”
He put a hand on his chest. “Swear on my life, we’ll find the guy and everyone gets let go. Just give us some time. If they were right, we’ll be gone soon. Just go sit down.”
“Wait a second,” I said, and gripped at his arm before he could shut the door.
He shifted quickly, taking just my pinkie and pinching it in a way that felt like it was going to break in half. He twisted my wrist until I was on my knees on the floor trying to relieve the tension. I cried out, wanting to bite at him, but I couldn’t get an angle in close enough.
“I don’t need any trouble,” Joe said.
“I just wanted to know if you really have Alice,” I seethed out. “Or if you really work for her? And let me go.”
“She doesn’t know where he is,” the guy said. “She’s been lo
oking for him. Thought you all had him.” He tightened the pinch until I squealed. “Now you get back in there or…”
There was shuffling behind him. “Let her go,” a familiar, stoic voice said.
I was released and was on my knees on the ground. But I knew the voice.
Behind our guard was Axel. He was clothed, in basic jeans and a clean T-shirt. He had a cut across his left eye, taped together for it to heal. He had bruises across his arms.
“Look, she was causing trouble,” our guard said. “I didn’t hurt a hair, just like I said.”
“I’ve changed my mind,” Axel said. “She’s coming with us.”
“What? She’s a liability.”
“She’s too smart to leave here,” Axel said. He looked in at the others. “And you should tranq the big guy again before we leave. Don’t let him wake up. Maybe even the kid, too.”
“He hasn’t done anything.”
“It’s her brother. He’s smart, too.” He nodded toward Buble. “We don’t need him. We can use her. She’ll help.”
I was stunned into silence. I refused to understand that this was him, that he was giving up information. But if Joe wasn’t lying to me, then this was a third party, some other group who was after the two billion dollars.
It was why Alice was hunting us. It was why she hadn’t killed us. She thought we had Mr. Murdock somewhere. We didn’t.
So where was he?
“Your brother?” Buble said behind me in a surprised tone. “You said you didn’t know each other.”
“And you said you weren’t in the Academy,” Wil said. “I know who you are. So we’re all lying here.”
“Enough,” Joe said. He grabbed me by the shoulder and pulled me out of the room. “You’re with us. The rest of you, just shut up.” He closed the room door.
Axel yanked me out of the guard’s grip and pulled me into him. “I’ve got her,” he said. “Get her some clothes.”
“You don’t think she’ll just run off first chance she gets?” the guard asked.
“No, she’ll go with us.” His hand around my arm tightened like he wanted me to pay attention to this part. “Trust me. I know what I’m doing.”
“Look, as long as we find Murdock and we get what we’re promised, like I said, no one gets hurt.” Joe waved us off. “She doesn’t cooperate, it’s on you.”
