Brady said.
Layla told him.
He ignored her, seeming to be composing mental to-do lists.
Hunt interjected.
Brady sauntered over to tap his fist to his shoulder.
His eyes on me, probably recalling the identical scene, Griff growled into our group chat,
Layla glanced at me, then to the others.
My friends’ attention shifted to me.
I shrugged.
How I’d feel about it later was an entirely different question, one I didn’t intend to ponder. What difference would it make how I’d feel later? This entitled prick was threatening me and my crew—my family—and he would pay the price for our freedom. He was, after all, the one imprisoning us within invisible bars.
Brady said, taking a seat opposite the coffee table from Griffin and me.
Griffin said,
Layla said.
I told her.
So next, as if we didn’t have one of the most significant and dangerous events of our entire lives to anticipate, we put on a performance about consoling our friend with an unexpected bun cooking in the Zoe oven.
8
Ever a Ray of Sunshine, I Love Me a Good Underdog Story, Better Than a Sob Story, No Matter the Oscar
After a cumbersome half hour of role-playing for the invisible spies keeping tabs on us—we had a megalomaniac to kill and no time to waste!—we’d resorted to more meditating-cum-
telepathic-communication. By the time we’d talked through our plans for attack, along with how to cover our tracks—there was no good way—and how to protect ourselves—again, there was no good way—we were twitchy. All of us, even Layla, yearned to go for a nice, long run to work off some of our pent-up energy. But it was dinnertime, and through all the many ruses, dinnertime remained a sacred event for the Rafferty household. The Celia Rafferty persona hadn’t let up on her demand that her two children be present for a family meal every evening.
Unwilling to separate with tensions so high, and too dark out for a run through the woods anyway, Griffin, Hunt, and I crashed dinner. Ever the chipper, fake hostess, Celia appeared delighted, trilling as she claimed she’d fortuitously made enough for leftovers so she’d have plenty of her spaghetti Bolognese for all of us despite the lack of warning.
I couldn’t help but wonder if she, one of the world’s foremost brain function experts, had somehow listened in on our thoughts and what we believed was a private conversation to receive notice of our arrival. It was still possible we were chipped. We hadn’t been able to research the science as planned. Hunt had been as careful as he knew how to be when he’d hacked into the lie-rents’ computer system. Even so, that night while we slept, we’d been drugged and moved, and almost certainly a reboot had been attempted. Was it because Griffin was finally healed enough to rejoin us? Or was it because Hunt’s hacking had been detected? Or perhaps both? Without any way to know, we had to be even more cautious, which meant no easy internet searches about chipping, dreamwalking, or anything else we might need to learn about. And if they were monitoring everything about us, they were surely tracking any visits we might make to Ridgemore’s library. It also ruled out our idea of finding a used computer at an off-the-beaten-path electronics repair shop. It was becoming frighteningly apparent that, somehow, Magnum and his peons were staying several steps ahead of us at all times.
We clung to the few advantages we did have like they were lifelines, a rope thrown to us on the open sea, able to lead us back to safety—whatever the concept would look like to us after this was all over.
I needed it to be over. I needed my crew to make it out of this alive, healthy and whole at my side.
