Watched (6 page)

Miranda was almost in tears. He couldn't say no—Jesse was her lucky thirteen. And she was out of time. When he finally called, she'd dared to hope…But maybe thirteen wasn't lucky, not for her. After all, one plus three added up to four. A bad number.

“Please,” she said, sniffing back her tears and hoping he didn't notice. “Please, Jesse. Don't hang up yet. Would you just listen? Just for a few minutes? You're the only one I can talk to, the only one who would understand.”

There was dead silence. Then the sound of a metallic snap. “What's that?” she asked. “Are you still there?”

“I'm here.” His voice sounded resigned. “Just lighting a fire. It's cold and dark where I am.”

She pressed her free hand against her own dark windowpane, the cold racing up her arm, down into her heart. “Where I am too.”

“Are you okay?” he asked, his voice hushed but with a spark of defiance in it. She remembered the look in his eyes and knew he wanted to rush to her rescue; he sounded like that kind of guy. A knight in shining armor. Or he would have been if the Creep—King, Jesse called him—hadn't beaten him down.

Miranda couldn't be angry with him for saying no. He had his little sister and mother to think about.

“I'm not okay,” she admitted. “But I'm safe, if that's what you mean. There's no pervert holding me hostage or anything. At least not physically.”

“Where are you?”

“Tyrone.”

“That's not too far. I'm just outside of Smithfield.”

She knew that; it was why she'd chosen him. But she didn't dare tell him that, not now. It was too soon.

Another pause but it didn't feel awkward. Then he asked, “What you said about your folks losing their jobs and moving because of what King did to you, was that true? They really did that?”

“He found us the first time we moved, when we were still in Pittsburgh.” Being bullied out of one school had been bad enough, but then to have the Creep cybersmash her again—this time with a fake porn video that went viral—that had been too much.

But she'd survived, which only gave the Creep another chance to destroy her family. “After that I left school; my folks gave up their jobs so we could move here, but I guess that wasn't enough fun for him. So last year for my birthday, he posted an ad online. Used my mom's picture and all her info along with a rape fantasy. Five thousand dollars to the man who made it come true and posted a video of it.”

Dr. Patterson would be proud of her, talking about that night so calmly. When the Creep contacted her, let her know it was all her fault and that he'd never stop hounding her and her family…They'd said she was lucky they found her before all the pills had gotten into her system. Miranda had decided adults had a warped idea of what lucky really was.

Jesse made a noise like he was ready to hit someone. “What happened? Was she okay?”

“My dad's a Pittsburgh cop—well, he used to be. Before…all this. But he's taught me and Mom how to take care of ourselves. When my mom walked out to her car that night and two guys tried to jump her, she pepper sprayed the hell out of them, kicked them in the balls, and when they ran, used the phone they'd dropped to video their license plate. Cops nailed them.”

“But not King.”

“No. And their lawyers got them off.” It'd been months later when they went to trial. She'd been so scared, testifying about why her mom was targeted, then when the judge dismissed the case on a technicality, her dad had gone after the men in the hallway, almost got arrested.

The thought of losing him—or her mom—had reduced her to a screaming, crumpled mess collapsed in the hallway of the courthouse. That night was the second time she'd tried to end it all. A razor blade that time. The ambulance ride was the last time she'd left their apartment.

“Your mom sounds pretty cool.”

“She is.” Miranda couldn't help but smile. Somehow he knew exactly the right thing to say. “She wants to be a poet—was in grad school and everything.” She sighed. “Now she works nights at the post office. They have a good health plan.” They needed every penny of it with the counselors and hospital and doctors. “And she teaches a few days a week, English as a second language classes, to bring in extra money. When I think of how perfect their lives would be without me—”

“Don't say that! You did the right thing. You stood up to King and his blackmail. How old were you?”

“Thirteen. It was my birthday and he grabbed video—well, you know as well as I do how he works.” King and the others like him. Hiding in cybershadows, waiting for people to make a mistake, a single slipup, trust the wrong person, get too close to the wrong camera, cell, or computer. Damn cappers. Made them harder to catch than the child predators who trolled, actively looking for victims. Those guys the FBI and cops were good at reeling in. But cappers? They were shadows, hiding in the dark crevices of the Internet, invisible until after they already had their prey trapped.

“Thirteen? And you went up against King all by yourself? And now you're trying to track him down, stop him?”

She thrilled to the awe in his voice. It was almost as good as when her folks told her how proud they were of her…something that hadn't happened lately, mainly because she hadn't done anything to make them proud. Instead, she'd retreated farther and farther away from the outside world. If she could just find the Creep and stop him once and for all, then she maybe she could face her folks again.

As it was, it was getting harder and harder to look at them—so tired and beaten down, their dreams destroyed, because of her—without wanting to die.

“Trying,” she said, her voice bitter. “Two years trying. And failing. You're the first who has even answered my message.”

“How many have you sent?”

“You're number thirteen.”

“How many kids do you think King has—”

“Tormented? Blackmailed? Bullied? Who knows…I've found kids stalked by other creeps online, been able to help a few, but he's the worst. His victims are too scared to do anything about him, and I can't do it alone.”

He was quiet again. She liked that about him: he didn't just jump in with false promises. Jesse thought before he spoke. She had the feeling he wouldn't make a promise he couldn't keep. Just like her folks.

All victims of King. Good people, their lives torn apart.

“If I helped you,” Jesse said, his voice dropping to a whisper, “what would you need from me?”

“Really?” Miranda's voice chimes out like a birdsong. Musical. Magical the way it trills through my veins, warming me despite the chill inside the dark trailer. “You'll help?”

I hear the happiness in her voice, can't believe I'm the one who put it there. After everything she's been through, how can I say no?

“First,” she goes on, as if she's worried I'll back out, “we have to make sure King doesn't know we're talking. We need to use secure communications like these old cells that don't even have GPS. And we can't use your real name,” she says, sounding much older and more confident than fifteen. “We have to create a persona for you to hide behind.”

Fine with me. Thanks to my uncle, I stopped being Jesse years ago—sometimes my mom has to shout my name over and over again before I realize she's even talking to me. And I hate being JohnBoy, wish I could leave him behind forever.

Maybe with Miranda's help I can.

A whisper of hope sighs through my body. I quickly douse it. Hope is too painful. It's all I can deal with handling what's right in front of me. I can't take thinking about the future. Instead, I focus on Miranda. “A persona. You mean like knights when they leave on a quest and get new names.”

“Exactly. Richard the Lion Heart.”

I shudder and crouch closer to the flames in the fire ring. “No. Not Richard.”

That's my uncle's name.

“But you have the heart of a lion.”

I do? Really? Miranda thinks that? I sit up straight, grip the phone tighter.

“How about Hawkeye?” I suggest. “It's from
Last
of
the
Mohicans
.” One of my favorite books—most kids think it's boring, stop reading before all the juicy stuff happens. But not me. I love those old books, have even read all six of the Musketeer novels.

“Oh, that was a great book,” she says in unison with my thoughts. Did I really hear her? Or was it a trick of that pesky glimmer of hope?

My chest does a weird thumpity-thump. My entire body feels light, and I look down at the floor to make sure I'm still all in one piece. I see the chunk of cinderblock I'm sitting on that's making my butt go numb. I should be cold, huddled here inside the unheated trailer, but I'm not. I feel very warm, like I have a fever or something. And it's not coming from the tiny fire I've built on top of the ashes of the first.

Miranda's still talking. “Hawkeye's not quite right. And not Athos or D'Artagnan,” she says without me even mentioning the musketeers. She pauses. “How about Griffin?”

“Griffin?” I try it on for size. I like the way the syllables roll off my tongue. If Miranda likes it, no way in hell am I gonna argue. Besides, at this point, I'm not even sure if I'm awake.

Maybe I'm imagining this entire conversation. It sure as hell doesn't feel real. I hold my hand over the tiny blaze I started. The warmth feels good—but Miranda's enthusiasm and faith in me feel a whole lot better.

“It's perfect. Heart of a lion and eyes of an eagle, wings to fly with and claws to fight with. Did you know the ancient Greeks considered the griffin their protector against evil? That's you.”

Again with that crazy flip-flop in my chest. I'm none of that, which sooner or later Miranda will discover. She'll hate me then, I know. But right now I'm overwhelmed and chickenshit and all I can say is, “Griffin it is.”

There's the sound of keys clicking faster than I've ever heard anyone type. “Okay, I've got you an account set up for email and IM. Don't use it from any of your home computers or your cell phone, otherwise King could track you. You don't need to actually send the emails—too easy to trace. Instead just create a draft. We can both access the account and see each other's drafts. The IM should be safe enough if you delete them and clear your history each time.”

“Okay.” I pause. “But what are we going to use it for? You do have a plan, right?”

“Before we talk about that, there's a guy,” Miranda says, sounding hesitant—so different from the confident girl I've been talking to. “In the videos. Looks like the same one in all of them—”

Right. She's seen the videos. I turn away, facing a corner even though I know she can't see me, wishing I could curl up in a ball and hide. It's hard enough to force myself to go through the motions with my uncle or when King has me do a solo show. Then it's almost like I'm not even there at all. I'm not sure where I go, exactly. Just away. I try hard never to think of anyone actually seeing the end product.

“I'm sorry,” she says quickly. “I shouldn't have asked. I just had to be sure—”

“Is that how you found me? Through the videos?” I'd thought King sold them to individuals, had hoped they'd be private—one perv at a time easier to handle than millions. But of course people have seen them—knowing King, he's sold them to every perv on the World Wide Web.

“No, no. The Creep—King—has clips out there, like a movie trailer. Nothing dirty, but you can tell there's the promise of more. Advertising, I guess. They're how I found you.”

“If you could find me, who else can?” I pace the trailer, the fire neglected. A sudden urge to run home takes over me. A need to make sure Janey and Mom are safe. Then I stop. “If you could find me, why haven't the cops?”

“I don't know. It wasn't easy to find you—like I said, I've only found thirteen of his victims and it's taken me two years to figure out how.”

“But you're just a kid—”

“I'm almost fifteen,” she says, obviously insulted. “And I'm really good with computers. I mean I was even before—but now I've had two years to learn so much more. I'm probably as good as the cops.” I smile at the pride in her voice, liking that Confident Miranda has returned. “And there are tens of thousands of videos like yours out there. Hundreds of thousands of still pictures. Maybe even millions. I guess the cops just haven't been able to get to all of them.”

“You said your dad was a cop, but he couldn't do anything about King.”

“Computers and my dad don't exactly mix. He's a patrol officer, likes working with people, taking care of the neighborhood. He had the detectives working on it, but there was no way to find King. He covered his trail too well. Even spoofed my ISP so for a while they thought I'd done it myself, to get attention. I had to prove my own innocence. How sick is that? Then we took everything to the FBI—they have a whole bunch of people working child pornography and cybercrime.”

“The FBI? And they couldn't find King? How the hell can we find him if the FBI can't?”

Her voice returns, stronger than ever. “The FBI doesn't care much about King—bigger fish in the sea, they told my dad. Oh, they'll try. But the stuff King and guys like him do, it's hit and run—they post something anonymously and it goes viral, passed device to device. Tracking it is like trying to track a flu bug back to the very first sneeze halfway around the world. Plus, since the victims help to create the content, they don't see it as a big problem, just a little cyberbullying and capping—”

“Capping?”

“Taking a screenshot capture of a photo or video without your permission, then posting it online.”

“There's so many other guys like King out there, they have a name for it?” I'm not sure if the burning in my veins is anger or disgust. Both.

“Are you kidding? They have societies and awards and entire websites devoted to these pervs grabbing photos and video. Guys vote on the hottest or cruelest or most disgusting. The adult ones aren't even illegal. It's called revenge porn. You trust the wrong person for one second, just long enough for them to snap a photo, and your life is ruined. Anyway, the cops have to focus on the really, really bad ones. Like the snuff porn and the baby porn and the torture porn—”

A stray flame leaps high and singes my palm. I jerk away. Doubt floods me. If King has that many partners in addition to all the people he can manipulate through blackmail… “We can't risk it. There's too many of them.”

Disappointment fills the silence between us.

“I mean, if even the FBI can't—”

“We're better than the FBI, Griffin.”

I can't help it. I love the way I feel when she calls me that, like I'm not even me, I'm someone bigger, better, smarter, stronger. But I can't waste time worrying about myself. “How can we keep Janey and my mom safe?”

“Are they safe now? I mean, the man in the videos, is he your father?”

Now I see what she's getting at. God, it's been so long since someone cared enough to ask the tough questions—myself included—that it takes me a while to realize she isn't curious; she's concerned. That should have felt good, I guess, but instead I feel like I've been sucker punched.

All these people in my life—my mom, teachers, the guys at the firehouse, the cops and paramedics my uncle hangs out with and who are always over at the house for cookouts and stuff—none of them ever cared enough to think twice about what my life is like.

But this girl, younger than me, a total stranger, she's risking everything. To help. Me.

I choke back my feelings as I squat in front of the fire and feed it more tinder. In return, it leaps and dances for me. I imagine I see Miranda's face smiling out at me from its soothing gold waves. For the first time ever, fire isn't pain and fury—it's hope.

“He's my uncle,” I say, my voice sounding like it's coming from somewhere else. “He took us in after my dad left us four years ago.”

She doesn't say anything, just listens as I pour out the whole story. About my mom and dad both losing their jobs, about him taking off to find work, leaving us and never coming back. About us getting kicked out of our apartment and my uncle taking us in.

“Without him, we'd have nothing.” My uncle is constantly saying that to me; my words emerge scorched with bitterness. I realize my hand is wrapped around the phone so tightly my fingers have gone numb.

“He uses that against you,” Miranda finally says. “He's as bad as King.”

Yes, yes, yes!
I want to shout the words. A spark flares to life at the thought that I'm not crazy, that this wasn't all my fault, that I didn't invite my uncle to do what he does. But I can't say anything, not without losing it. And I can't lose it in front of Miranda. I want—no, I need—her to like me.

“Jesse—Griffin,” she corrects herself. Griffin. It's a strange name, but she chose it and it feels right. And Jesse—he belongs to my uncle, like JohnBoy belongs to King. “Do you want me to try to find your dad?”

“Yes,” I say but immediately want to take the word back.

For four years, I've imagined my dad's life. Maybe he's got a new family, one that he'd never, ever abandon. One that he loves more than us.

He and Mom seemed in love. They fought, sure, but they were always kissing and hugging and holding hands. And Janey, Dad would always find time to play with her even when she was a little kid and whiny and sick all the time. Which left me…was I the one he didn't want to come home to? I loved being with him, the way he'd take time to teach me things, like how to bait a hook or what spark plugs were or why falling stars weren't really stars.

Maybe I was too much work, always asking questions, always wanting to hang out with him. Maybe I drove him away?

That's the nightmare scenario. Along with others, like him lying dead on the side of the road or him in prison or hit on the head and wandering around with amnesia. But after four years and no word from anyone, I've come to realize that the answer is probably the simple truth: he found a better life without us.

It's the same answer Mom finally accepted after the cops found no trace of him. The reason why she cries all the time and is so happy to see my uncle willing to spend time with me.

Funny how it all comes back to me. That's the real nightmare, that the life I'm living now is my own damn fault.

I shake away my thoughts as I realize Miranda is asking me questions. She sounds so excited to help that I answer automatically, giving her his name, James Timothy Alexander, date of birth, hometown, and everything I can remember. I'm surprised at how much I can't remember—like my life before my uncle was a dream that's slipped away.

A dream I'd give anything to get back.

“Okay,” she finally says. “I can work with this. But we still need a safety plan for your mom and Janey. In case your uncle—well, what if he—”

“He'd never hurt them,” I jump in. “He loves them.” Then I remember earlier. The way he said King's threat against them was my problem to solve.

“Love isn't always enough, Griffin,” she says like she's reading my mind. Again. “Some people only have enough love for themselves. I think your uncle might be like that.”

“And my father as well? That's why he left?”

She hesitates. “Maybe. I don't know. But we do know your uncle is willing to hurt you. And he's working with King.”

She's right.

“I can't trust him.” Which means I'm in this all alone. With Janey and my mom's lives in my hands. God, could they have found a worse person for the job?

“Griffin.” Miranda's voice is clear, like the flames stretching toward my hand—bold and bright despite the surrounding darkness. “You're not in this alone. Not anymore. We can do it.”