“Well, you can’t be the only one who’s gone rogue, right?” Roux said. “Even the best companies have a few disgruntled employees.”
“Well, I’m sure people leave the Collective, but no one who does this would sell anyone else out.”
And then it hit me.
“I know who it is,” I said. “It’s Oscar Young.”
Roux and Jesse stared at me. “Are we supposed to know who that is?” Roux asked. “Because I’m behind on a few issues of People magazine.”
My mind was going so fast that I felt a little dizzy. “Angelo told me about him.” (I would have to explain Angelo to Jesse at a later time.) “He tried to kidnap me when I was four years old.”
It took a few minutes to peel Roux off the ceiling after that revelation. “It was a million years ago!” I assured her as she ranted about the FBI and sloppy police work and the importance of self-defense classes for women. “And Angelo said that his body washed up on shore in South America a few months later.”
Jesse looked unsure. “So you think a man has risen from the grave and has decided to sell your story to the highest bidder. Not really plausible.”
“People fake their deaths all the time, though!” Roux protested. “Don’t you ever watch TV? It’s really common, actually.” She crossed her arms like she was suddenly the authority on the subject. “Can we go to the police now?”
“No police,” I told her. “Spies, remember? We’re trying to keep this quiet.”
“Right, right.”
“Oscar must have the documents and is trying to sell them.”
“Oscar is dead,” Jesse said. “You said so yourself.”
“Nothing else makes sense, though,” I protested. “And he’s tried terrible things before. Now we just have to find out where the documents are.”
“You mean you have to figure out where Oscar lives,” Jesse corrected me. “And there are about ten billion places where he could be.”
You went to Gramercy Park by yourself at night?
Do you realize how dangerous that can be?
He was no knight in shining armor, that much I can assure you.
“I need a map,” I said, grabbing the laptop and pulling up Manhattan, searching until I found what I needed. “There,” I said, pointing at the screen. “He lives there.”
I was pointing at 36 Gramercy Park East.
It was a tall, imposing building with an actual red carpet that stretched down its front steps toward the street, and two oversized suits of armor standing at attention. “Trust me,” I said when Roux and Jesse just blinked at me. “I know this is it. I told my parents that we went there on our date and they freaked out.”
“Your parents are so cute,” said Roux, who has clearly never seen my parents freak out.
“Well, if I’m still alive at the end of this, I’ll tell them you think so,” I said, then started googling Oscar’s address. At that point, I would have given a million dollars to see Angelo and ask for his help, but I would have to make do with all the advice he had given me over the years.
“Hey, are you two willing to ditch school tomor—?”
“Yes,” Roux said. I knew I could count on her. I looked over at Jesse and he nodded. “Good. Because we’re gonna do some breaking and entering.”
Chapter 31
That night, I was a nervous mess, pacing in my bedroom and claiming that I had a ton of homework. “You know, honey,” my mom said at one point, “you don’t have to do the homework.” Both my parents had been super nice since I had come back home. Our fight seemed like it was eons ago, but they clearly remembered it.
“Just keeping up appearances, Mom,” I told her, holding up my graphing calculator. “I can’t flunk out. And it’s not difficult, just voluminous.”
I even waved off dinner, saying that I was swamped, but in truth, I couldn’t bear to look either of my parents in the face. They had no idea what I was planning, and I knew that if I were with them too long, I would blurt it out. It was better to hide away in my bedroom and pretend I was a regular, stressed-out student.
At nearly midnight, my civilian phone rang. I glanced at the Caller ID: Jesse.
“Hi,” I said, keeping my voice down and pulling the covers over my head so that my parents wouldn’t hear me. “I miss you.”
“I miss you, too. Here’s my question. Why would Oscar Young still be alive, in the same apartment, and no one in your Collection—”
“Collective.”
“—can find him?”
“I know.” I sighed. “That’s been eating at me all night.”
“It doesn’t make sense.”
“I’ve been here all this time in the city and he hasn’t tried anything?”
“Exactly!”
“Hold on, Roux’s calling me.” I clicked over to the other call. “Hi.”
“Hi. I’m so exhausted that my eyes hurt. Like, my actual eyeballs. Does that ever happen to you?”
“Roux, it’s midnight. What do you want?”
“Why the hell would Oscar Young still live in that apartment? Like, isn’t that the most dumbass thing he could possibly do?”
“Jesse just called me and asked the same thing. He’s on the other line right now.”
“Three-way me, baby.”