Wake Up Missing (13 page)

“Your hobby's catching on around here, Cat-Girl.”

Ben came, too. Quentin had talked with him, told him everything we heard. I don't know if Ben believed it all, but he came. We'd have to worry about Trent later.

“How are we going to find Molly?” Sarah asked as we untied the kayaks. Blood whooshed in my ears when I bent down, and I had to grab the edge of the dock to steady myself. Quentin and Ben pushed off in the first kayak and waited for us. “Do you know where she lives?”

“No. But I know where she stops to get dinner.” I took a deep breath and lowered myself into the boat. When Sarah climbed in behind me, the kayak dipped under her weight, and I winced. But then it steadied, and I took a deep breath and paddled toward the mangrove tunnel. After a few strokes, the rhythm of dipping right, then left, came back to me and calmed my churning stomach.

“It's this way.” I led Sarah through the mangroves. It was shady with the sun so low in the sky. Branches stretched above us and cast shadows like thick water snakes under the surface.

Sarah's voice came from behind me. “Where are we going?”

“When Molly brought Ben and me here, she showed us these blue crab traps she sets.” My paddle snagged on a mangrove root; we had to backtrack to free it. “She said she checks them around sunset. Maybe she'll be there.”

“Maybe.” Sarah didn't sound convinced, and her voice sucked the hope out of me. I'd been holding on to the idea—
maybe she'll be there
—but it seemed unlikely now.

When we came out of the mangroves, the sky was tinged yellow-pink. Quentin and Ben were waiting in the clearing.

“It's this way.” I pointed to the left. Ahead of us, a mangrove island grew, thick and green, wild limbs reclaiming what must have been a small camp, pulling its boards apart, down into the mud. Soon, the whole thing would be part of the swamp again.

“Wasn't that big alligator around here?” Ben asked, holding
his paddle above the water, drifting. My eyes searched the shadows along the shoreline. I didn't see the gator, but a little green heron fluttered up out of the reeds, wings splashing.

“There!” Sarah pointed up ahead on our right, where One-Eyed Lou guarded a messy nest of sticks and grass. Three yellow-and-black-striped babies rested on her back.

“Give her plenty of room.” I paddled hard on the right so the kayak turned left, and we swung a wide circle around Lou and her babies. She watched us through heavy-lidded eyes, her thick front legs spread over the nest, clutching the sides.

“Molly's crab traps were up here on the right, I think.” I was pretty sure, but it was so easy to get disoriented, to lose track of all the turns of the grassy river's bends, which side of which dotted island we were on.

We paddled close to the shore, ducking under tree limbs, and spiderwebs brushed my face and arms. “Here's one.” I remembered the mangrove tree; its roots splayed out into the water like umbrella spokes in a perfect dome. The metal-caged trap rested on the shallow bottom nearby.

“Has she been here already?” Quentin asked, leaning over to peer into the water.

“I don't think so.” I could make out ghostly white crab shapes in the trap and a flash of blue when one turned a fat claw.

“Okay.” Sarah dipped the end of her paddle in the water, pulled it out, dipped it in again. “So we just . . . wait?”

“I'm not going to sit here all night.” Ben slapped a mosquito on his arm. It left a splotch of blood. “Let's paddle around and see if we find her.”

Ben started pushing forward, but Quentin stuck his paddle in
the water, and their kayak slowed. “We can't go far,” Quentin said. “Maybe around this curve, but after that, the river branches all over the place. We don't have a map or GPS or anything.”

“What's that?” Ben pointed through the trees at a flash of light ahead. Late-afternoon sun reflected off something metallic.

We paddled around the bend and found Sawgrass Molly's airboat tied up to the trees.

“See!” Ben said. Molly was nowhere to be found, but there was a hint of a trail leading through the brush.

I pointed it out. “Maybe she's at one of those old camps.”

We paddled the kayaks to the edge of the mangroves. Oozy mud sucked at my sneakers when I climbed out.

“Come on.” Quentin offered Ben his hand. Ben ignored it and almost fell in the water, but he caught a branch and started up the trail. It didn't go far before the brush filled in, and we were climbing over snapping branches and mangrove roots thick as my arm.

“Did you hear that?” Sarah grabbed my arm. We stopped and listened.

It was quiet.

I looked at Quentin. His eyes narrowed, and I could tell he was thinking what I was thinking.

It was
too
quiet for the Everglades.

A minute earlier, we'd been paddling through the steady whine of millions of tiny insects, the buzz-saw hum of cicadas, the peeping and chirping of frogs, the looping call of a whip-poor-will, over and over and over.

Now there was nothing.

Except . . . “That!” Sarah whispered. “Did you hear that?”

There was a rustle, the crack of a branch. It was close.

We could have run, but we wouldn't have gone five feet without tripping over roots.

Another crack. Was it off to the left?

Silence.

Then the unmistakable slide-and-click sound of a shotgun.

I turned slowly.

It was pointed right at us.

“What in a gator's dream are you thinking?” Sawgrass Molly lowered the gun.

“We were—”

“Shh!” With the gun at her side, she reached out, grabbed my arm roughly, and pulled me through the brush. A weathered wooden shack stood in the middle of a clearing, leaning as if the lonely cracked window on one side might pull the whole thing to the ground.

“We were looking for you,” I whispered as the others climbed through the weeds to join us.

Molly half laughed. She creaked open the door to the shack, disappeared inside, and came back with four bottles of water. “Here.” She shook her head again. “Don't you think you have enough troubles without traipsing off into the swamp, in the dark, without supplies or any idea where you're going? How'd you even find me?”

“The crab traps,” I said. “We remembered the traps you told
us about coming in. And we were careful.” I felt defensive all of a sudden. “We stayed way clear of that alligator, Lou, and—”

Molly snorted. “Lou's the least of your troubles out here.” The roar of an airboat, far away, mixed with the returning buzz of insects. “You get lost after dark, you're liable to run into poachers and drug runners and all manner of people who'll do you as much harm as the ones you're with at the clinic. I told you I was going to get you out of there, and I told you it needed to be done before anybody—”

“But you quit!” Sarah blurted. “We didn't know if you'd come back!”

“Who told you I quit?” Molly's eyes were fierce.

“Dr. Ames,” Ben said.

Molly turned to Ben with narrowed eyes. “Your Dr. Ames,” she said, “hustled me down to the dock soon as we walked out of that hangar, and the second he stepped off the boat in Everglades City, he fired me. Told me that if I came back, if I breathed one word about anything I'd seen—”

“Does he know you saw Trent?” I asked.

She paused. “I don't know. What I do know is that it's not safe for you to be here now.” The roar of the airboat was getting louder. “You need to go back.”

“Go back? Can't you take us?” Sarah sounded like a little kid.

Molly shook her head. “Dr. Ames has eyes all over this swamp, and he has connections. If dinnertime rolls around, and you're all missing, he'll have somebody after us before my boat's halfway to Everglades City. Like it or not, you need to return to the clinic
and pretend everything's fine while I get things in place for later. Now get back there and act like the model patients you're supposed to be.”

My stomach twisted. “But they're going to—”

“They're not doing anything tonight. In the morning, you'll be gone, and you'll be with people who can keep you safe.” She stopped, listened hard to the sound of the boat. It was closer. She squatted in the dust and motioned for us to get down with her. “At midnight,” she whispered, “you meet me at the docks. Bring nothing; if anyone sees you, it needs to look as if you've simply gone out to get some air. I'll have the boat, and I'll have help. We'll take you to a safe place, and
then
. . . once they can't get to you . . .
then
we'll let someone know what's going on.” She looked at us, hard. “We get one chance at this. I don't care if you need to lie, break a window and run. . . . Do whatever you need to do to get there.
Midnight.
” Her eyes rested on Ben for a second. “
All
of you.”

“What about Trent? And Kaylee?” I asked.

“I'll take care of them. You take care of yourselves.” Suddenly, she stood, but she motioned for us to stay down while she listened. The airboat roar had died. “Go.” She waved frantically down the path we'd come. “Get away from here quick as you can, and then get out your binoculars and start talking about all the birds you've seen and what a lovely paddle you had. I'll see you tonight.”

The others started down the trail, but I didn't. I didn't want to leave. I'd known that something was wrong, but now, even
being
at the clinic felt dangerous.

“Go!” Molly shoved me roughly, and I stumbled and turned.

“I'm afraid.” My eyes burned with tears.

She didn't hug me like Mom would have, and her face didn't soften. If anything, it got harder, and her eyes burned darker. “You should be afraid. Now go.”

Ten minutes before midnight, I raised my hand to knock on Kaylee's door. I'd never seen her go in or out. I'd never even met her, but her chart was there at the door. So I knocked—even though the sign read DO NOT DISTURB.

I knew what the doctors had said about Kaylee—that her injury was more serious, so she'd take longer to recover. Now, I wondered if that was true, or if the treatment had made her worse.

I knocked again. Would Kaylee still be Kaylee when she opened the door? Or would I find a twelve-year-old Marie Curie inside her room instead?

I knocked once more, but there was no answer, and the door was locked.

“Molly said she'd take care of the others.” Ben's voice was sharp, too loud for midnight.

“Shh.” I stepped away from Kaylee's door. “I thought . . . I thought we should try.”

Quentin and Sarah's doors opened at the same time. Quentin's hands were empty—
bring nothing
—and he looked lost, clenching them into fists at his sides. Sarah held her Frisbee.

“Seriously?” I hissed. “Tell me you don't think you're bringing that. I left my mom's photograph here. I left my clay birds and—”

“It's cover. In case we get caught, we can say she dragged us out to play,” Quentin whispered. “Everybody ready?”

The outside air was heavy and thick when we opened the door. Our sneakers squished into the wet lawn.

It had rained after dinner. Ben had been playing badminton with Dr. Ames, and they came running for the door when the thunder rumbled, but by the time they got in, they were soaked, T-shirts dripping on the floor, and laughing. I don't know how Ben could stand to look at him across the net, talk with him as if everything was fine, but I guess it was a good thing. Dr. Ames had said good night to us like always and disappeared to his office.

“I don't hear anything,” Quentin whispered as we approached the dock.

I heard things—but not what we were listening for. Not the roar of the airboat fan. Only our footsteps thumping quietly on the wood, the rising and falling of insect buzz, the rustle of dry grass—a raccoon or possum?—in the brush.

A light glowed in one window of the old hangar across the lawn. What was Trent building in there? Was he sleeping on that cot or working through the night? Did he remember that he used to be a Knicks fan from Queens who sculpted potato volcanoes and snorted milk out his nose? Did he remember holding Sarah's hand?

Thunder growled in the distance. Then there was a different rumble.

“Listen,” I said. “She's coming.”

It was an airboat. But as quickly as the sound had surfaced in the night air, it faded away. Whoever it was never came close to our dock.

“What time is it?” Sarah whispered.

“Quarter after,” Ben said. “I bet she's not coming.”

“She'll come.” I remembered the intensity in her eyes, back at her beaten-down camp. I trusted her. She had to come.

The thunder grumbled closer. Lightning lit up the dock, flashed on the water, and rain pelted the kayaks with cold, plunking drops.

“I'm going in,” Ben said. “I never should have agreed to this. That lady's a freak, and this whole thing is—”

“There you are!”

My heart almost stopped.

Dr. Ames hurried across the lawn, barefoot, wearing torn gym shorts and a faded red T-shirt. “Olga and Sergei came down to check on the monitoring equipment—the storm caused a power surge—and found your rooms empty. What are you
doing
out here? Don't you know that more people are struck by lightning in Florida than any other state?” He stepped toward us.

My breath froze in my chest, and I couldn't speak; I felt like I was suffocating, like he was squeezing all the air out of me, just by looking at me.

“Sorry, Dr. Ames.” Sarah stepped forward and wiped her wet bangs from her eyes. “It was my idea; I thought it'd be awesome to get a game of midnight Frisbee going, and then when the rain
started, we came down here to see the storm coming in over the water.” Thunder clapped, and she jumped, then gave a sheepish grin. “I guess we weren't really thinking.”