The Amanda Project: Book 4: Unraveled (17 page)

Chapter 20

To get away
from Heidi’s prying, we left lunch and started back on the hunt, all agreeing that what with its proximity to the Lincoln and World War II Memorials, plus its war/battle theme, the Vietnam Memorial would make the logical next step on Amanda’s Washington D.C. tour. We were just discussing our options when I heard a voice behind me.

“Hey, you up there, hold up!”

I felt like all the organs inside
my belly had been replaced with rocks. They’d found us. It had to be one of the guards from the airplane hangar.

So you will understand the enormous sigh of relief I breathed when it was just a guy in a suit, carrying a soft briefcase and a coffee in a to-go cup—clearly, a businessman. He was holding the scavenger hunt sheet. I must have dropped it, though I couldn’t remember doing that.

The
man must have noted that all four of us were smiling at him in relief, and he smiled shyly, raising his cup to us in a little toast, offering us the sheet in his other hand, taking a look at it and saying, “Field trip?” like we had a terrible disease he himself had just got over. I liked this guy right away.

He looked down at the sheet, where we’d circled the Vietnam Memorial. “The Vietnam Memorial’s
just up that way if you’re looking for it,” he said.

“Thanks,” I said.

“Is that where you’re heading?” the man pressed. “It’s definitely not one to miss.”

“Okay,” I said. There was something about this guy. Did I know him? I couldn’t look away from his eye. I wished I could spend more time with him. He just seemed . . . well, comfortable. Normal. He reminded me of how nice it would be not to
be running all over Washington, but to feel like a kid again.

But then Callie pulled at my arm. “We gotta go, Zoe,” she said. She smiled a nice-girl apology at the man.

I had to drag myself away. Something about seeing him was reassuring, a little slice of normal pie. But as soon as he was gone, I could feel our pace increasing.

The Vietnam Memorial was the first place we’d visited that day
that didn’t have columns and steps. It was just a slowly sloping wall inscribed with the name of every single serviceman who died fighting in Vietnam. As usual, we didn’t know exactly what clue we were looking for, and there weren’t any park rangers watching—or at least there weren’t any that we could see—so we wandered up and down the monument’s length, looking at the names. I took a lot of pictures.

And then suddenly I was looking at an inscription that made me stop. “Guys,” I called out to the others. “More highlighting.” The inscription read:

IN HONOR OF THE MEN AND WOMEN OF THE ARMED FORCES OF THE UNITED STATES WHO SERVED IN THE VIETNAM WAR. THE NAMES OF THOSE WHO GAVE THEIR LIVES AND OF THOSE WHO REMAIN MISSING ARE INSCRIBED IN THE ORDER THEY WERE TAKEN FROM US.

Only the words,
The
names
and
are inscribed
and
they were taken from us
were highlighted.

Nia reached out her hand to touch part of the inscription. All those lists we’d been seeing—of the C33s. Thinking about my dad. About Amanda’s mom. Mrs. Leary. The former C33 Mr. Bennett had told us about who’d left his Volkswagen at the side of the road, never to be heard from again.

Suddenly, Nia shivered. She dropped her
hands from the wall.

“She’s been here,” Nia said.

We didn’t need to ask who.

And we couldn’t if we wanted to, because suddenly, one of the guards we’d been seeing all day was strolling down the path toward us. “Don’t look,” I said. “Just turn slowly and follow me.”

Which they did. I scanned the simple wall and the path before it for somewhere for us to blend in and disappear, but there was
nothing. I could have really used some columns just about now. “Do you feel Amanda anywhere else?” Hal whispered to Nia as we continued to move slowly, walking away from the guard.

Nia put her hand out on the wall, touching names one at a time. “Here,” she said on the fourth name. “This one. She was here.”

The guard was closer. A few other groups from our school were standing on the path with
us, and I think their presence was protecting us from the guard to a certain extent. Callie waved to one of the girls from the mathletes, and when the guard saw this he slowed his pace.

“Zoe,” Callie said, speaking to me between nearly closed lips, not turning her head to me. “Is there anything more you can do to keep him from seeing us?”

“Not when it’s like this,” I said. “He already
has
seen
us. And he’s already really close.”

“Oh, no,” said Hal. We didn’t even have a chance for him to tell us what he saw before we saw it too. The other guard—the one who’d fallen asleep at his desk in the airplane hangar—coming into view from the opposite direction.

Nia had her hand on another name—Nia was like a bloodhound now, following Amanda’s path along the monument, touching every name Amanda
had touched. “She was here too,” Nia said, stopping in a new place. “I think more recently than the other ones. I think we’re close.”

“Do you think she’s here?” Callie asked.

“Or do you have a sense of where the trail is going?” Hal said. “Because I’m
not
getting a good feeling about the place we’re in right now.”

I turned my head fast—a bad idea, as I saw out of the corner of my eye the guard
who had newly appeared, the one with the tattoo on his face. He was taking a step closer to us, as if he was poised to pounce the second we made any gesture toward trying to run. Stay calm, I warned myself.

As Nia continued to lead us down the monument’s side, blindly feeling her way forward, Callie stood right behind her like she was going to shield her from whatever danger was approaching.
Hal looked stressed. He was probably having a premonition of what was about to happen to us, and from the look on his face, I had a feeling that whatever was in store for us would not be good. Hal’s fingers were drawn up into fists; even the muscles in his neck were tight. He swallowed hard.

“What do you see?” I hissed. The guards were getting close enough now that I thought they might even be
able to hear.

Hal just shook his head.

“Hold my hand,” Callie said to Hal. Without questioning her, Hal took it.

Hal flushed. Just the act of flushing made him look healthier. He looked at Callie. “Your strength,” he said. Callie smiled. Hal smiled right back her and both of them seemed to glow.

I saw what Callie must be doing. She must be using the connection that existed among the four of
us to pass onto Hal some of her own strength. It must work in the same way it did when we were all holding hands to share Nia’s visions.

Just to see what would happen, I put a hand on Callie’s elbow. I was suddenly flooded with a rush of something I couldn’t name, but it reminded me of being on the playground in elementary school. All I could think about was how great it would feel to run. I
remembered when I was a kid, running so hard I’d kick my heels into my thighs, and I’d never get tired.

And in this rush of energy I said, “We have to run. We have to get away from these guys.”

But at that same moment, Nia whispered, “Here! I have another one.”

“Too late,” I said. “This isn’t safe.”

Nia shot me a look. “I’m so close to getting something.” And then she put her hand on Hal’s
shoulder and suddenly, we could all see what she did.

It was Amanda. In the vision, she had her back to us, a shadowy figure in a hoodie, bending down in front of the Vietnam Memorial, touching the same name that Nia was touching now, then leaving something at the base of the memorial wall.

Nia lifted her hand off Hal’s shoulder. The guards were no more than ten feet behind us now. The groups
from our school were on the opposite end of the memorial—it was about to empty out completely except for the guards and us.

We looked down. There, at our feet, was a bouquet of dyed green carnations, wrapped in purple cellophane. Tied at the base of the bouquet was a card, and drawn on the card in purple ink was a coyote. Amanda’s totem.

She’d been here. Maybe only minutes before we’d arrived.

Chapter 21

Nia picked
up the bouquet and flipped the card over. We saw words:

Bear any burden—meet any hardship—support any friend.

“JFK’s inauguration speech,” Nia said. “The lines Cisco saw etched on his tomb at Arlington National Cemetery.”

“I guess we know where we need to go next,” Callie said.

“I don’t know if we’re going to be going anywhere,” Hal said.

Something happened. The last of the other tourists
and kids from our grade dispersed and the guards made their move.

Then Rosie was suddenly there. I don’t know from what bush or tree she must have jumped out, only that she and Cisco were running toward us and she was calling our names. It took me a second to even register that she was Rosie—her jogging outfit of the morning had been replaced by a tight ribbed tank underneath a slouchy green
shirt, dark jeans, combat boots, and a black pixie wig.

“Run!” Rosie shouted. But it wasn’t necessarily that easy. I hadn’t realized until we were inside it what a perfect trap the memorial makes—the sides of the wall converge into a V—the guards had set themselves up so that they were blocking us into the point.

I don’t know how we would have made it past them if Cisco hadn’t run interference
for us, using his soccer moves to literally block the guards. They could not work their way around his fakes. No wonder he wins national titles every year. “Go!” he shouted.

We did, following Rosie back out onto the Mall, heading north into the streets of D.C.

When I looked back, Cisco had climbed up and over the wall itself. He was sprinting away from the guards, headed south. They weren’t
following him.

Because they were focusing all their energy on chasing us.

We only had about five seconds of a head start on the guards, but Rosie knew the city well, and she led us down one side street after another until I was totally turned around and had lost track of where I was. We finally stopped running when we were sure we had lost them.

“How’d you find us?” I said.

“I was worried,”
Rosie said. “I went back in to get some files out of my desk. The office is crowded enough that I thought I could sneak back in with this disguise. I was on my way out the door, when I overheard someone talking on the phone. I heard them use the word “kids” and I started to listen—it was something about bringing you guys in. They were sending a van to the Vietnam Memorial. I called Cisco’s cell
and when he told me you had headed in that direction, I met up with him and we rushed over. Just in time, too, I guess.”

“Yeah, thanks,” Hal said. “While we were there, I was seeing what they had in mind once they caught us. I saw their plan all laid out. They had an unmarked van. They were going to inject us with tranquilizers. Scary stuff.”

I felt myself shiver. Callie hugged her arms across
her chest. Nia ran her hand through her hair.

“Turn here,” said Rosie, directing us down a narrow street, which led to a public square. We jogged across it. At the other side, Rosie dipped into what I thought was going to be a store—it was a doorway in the side of a building—but turned out to be nothing but an alcove with a huge escalator leading down underground.

“It’s the Metro,” Rosie explained.
“One of the greatest hiding places in Washington.” She passed us all fare cards. “These will get you in and out no matter what station we go to,” she explained.

But when we were about a quarter of the way down the escalator, I looked up to the top, and pointed. There, muscling their way onto the crowded escalator, were the two guards who had been chasing us. My heart sank. Was it possible we
would
never
get away from these guys?

We started to push our way past people who were standing on the escalator, reading their papers and checking their phones. The guards were gaining on us. We started to run, not bothering with the fare cards as we hurled our bodies over the turnstiles.

In front of us, another escalator led down to the train platform. We could see a train just stopping on
the platform below us.

“We’re not going to make it,” Callie warned in a low, shaking voice.

I checked behind us and saw that, in addition to the two guards chasing us, there was a third man I recognized from the airstrip. He had the husky body of a football player or former marine, and he was lumbering down the escalator toward us. Fortunately it was crowded, and our pursuers had to duck around
the other commuters in front of them and sometimes even wait, standing, impatient and furious.

Just as a warning bell let us know that the train doors were closing, Hal hit the platform at a sprint, with Rosie and Callie right behind him, then Nia and me tearing for the doors. Hal made it to the train doors just as they closed in his face. People just getting off the train streamed toward us.
We used them as cover, their bodies a human barrier between us and the beefy guard who had reached the bottom of the escalator.

“What now?” Hal asked Rosie, but I could see that she had run out of options. I remembered seeing the same look in my mom’s eyes toward the end of the year we spent driving around in the RV.

Hal took over. The crowd was heading back up onto the escalator, and I guess
for lack of a better idea, we followed. The men spotted us and got on the escalator again too, about ten feet behind us. We couldn’t push past people on the escalator now—it was far too crowded for that.

There was no way out. At the top of the escalator, we’d get nabbed like fish in a net. The way the security guys behind us were holding their bodies, you could tell they knew this. They were
relieved, confident. You could see it in their mouths—their jaws were set in a look almost of boredom, like they were just as convinced they only had to wait a few minutes and this would all be over.

I was just as convinced as they were that we were going to get caught. I mean, we were just kids. They were adults, trained for this sort of work.

I wondered where the guards would take us. That
van Hal had seen? Would Dr. Joy be waiting for us in the backseat? What would he do to us? I felt my skin recoiling against the idea that he would take blood from my veins and lock it into a refrigerated tank. I clutched the pendant holding my dad’s blood like it was a talisman, like he was here to protect me in some way.

Just then, I heard the squeaking whine of another train pulling in. I felt
every cell in my body jump at the thought that there was hope. Maybe we could evade the three guards—and get onto that train! But even as I was getting my hopes up, Callie was doing the math, estimating the number of seconds the train would take to stop, to unload passengers, to let passengers on, to close its doors—and she was comparing that number to the pace at which we were traveling up and
the pace at which we’d make our way down. “We can’t do it,” she said. “We won’t make this one either.” Hard to believe she could do this with mental math—that’s Callie for you.

But Rosie took Callie’s calculation and turned it on its head. Catapulting over the side of the railing, she landed in between the up and down sides of the escalator, balancing on the polished steel slope between them,
her knees bent like she was surfing a wave. Hal was right behind her, and then Callie, and me, and Nia. It was really hard to balance, especially as we were trying to get down the slope as fast as we could. We half crab-walked, half slid over to the down escalator.

At first, the guards who were on their way up the escalator seemed frozen in place. As I passed Falls-Asleep-on-the-Job I made eye
contact with him. He had piercing blue eyes and he was looking at me like there was a sheet of bulletproof glass between us, like if he tried to reach out for me, he would only hurt himself. Tattoo Face was quicker, but not quick enough. He reached out and he grabbed the tail of my shirt. But I yanked it out of his hand.

We stepped through the train doors, just as the chime sounded to let us
know they were closing. Our car was heavily graffitied—
S.HE.B.LIE.VD
was scrawled in spray paint across one of the windows. I looked back at where we’d come from—the guards were struggling to push their way down the up escalator. One climbed up onto the metal slide where we had gone. But he seemed unable to let himself tumble down the way we had, so he was too late. The doors had just closed with
a slap of rubber when the guards reached the platform edge.