Nothing to Lose (15 page)

“It's fine.”

“I saw the newspaper, Nick. I know the old man you were talking to yesterday is dead. I saw his picture.”

“You should leave, Robyn. Now.”

“I also know what's in the envelope. And it's not money.”

His expression was completely blank. How naive could a person be? I had learned my lesson about sealed envelopes thanks to Trisha Carnegie's stepfather, but it looked like Nick hadn't. He had agreed to do a favor for someone he trusted. He hadn't asked any questions. And it had never occurred to him to look in the envelope.

“It's a passport and a visa, Nick. You know what that means, don't you?”

Nothing. Not a word.

“You heard about those illegal immigrants, right? The ones they found in that shipping container down at the docks? What about the Chinese man who was shot a couple of days ago? The police think he had something to do with the immigrants. The people who bring illegals into the country charge them a lot of money. The smugglers get them forged IDs—like passports and visas.”

I could tell by the way he was staring past me that he wasn't listening. If he were six instead of sixteen, he probably would have jammed his fingers into his ears and started humming to block out my voice completely.

“Nick, if you were smart—”

“Right,” he said, giving the word a bitter flavor. “
If
I were smart. Obviously I'm not—not compared to you, right? I don't mess with your life, Robyn. How about you don't mess with mine either.”

“But if this involves illegal immigrants—”

“Do me a favor, Robyn. For once don't give me one of your big lectures about how you're right and I'm wrong. Just get lost, okay?”

“Come on, Nick. Think about it.”

“Get out of here.”

I stayed put.

“Look, Robyn, I know you said you'd help me. But you and I both know you were never going to do it.” I tried to look indignant, but it was hard because he was right. “You were probably going to call your mom or your dad. On top of that,” he said, “the envelope was sealed, but you opened it. So don't look all hurt and innocent, like you're some little angel and I'm the one who's doing something wrong, okay? Just get out of here and let me do what I have to do.”

It took a lot of wincing and maneuvering, but he managed to turn his back on me. Nick has a quick temper. It's gotten him into a lot of trouble over the years. So much trouble, in fact, that he had once been ordered to attend anger management counseling. I gave him a few moments to calm down before circling around to talk to him again. What a mistake.

“Just get out of here!” he said.

“Nick, come on. . .”

“Come on, yourself. Open your eyes, Robyn. You know when I called you yesterday and you complained you hadn't heard from me in weeks? Want to know why I didn't call sooner? It wasn't because I was busy. It was because I didn't want to. Because I'm tired of you always interfering in everyone's life. I'm tired of you being such a princess. You have it so easy. You never have to worry about anything, but you think you have the right to go around telling other people how they should lead their lives.” His eyes were as hard as amethyst now. “You were right last night. I called you because I needed you. Anybody seeing you in Chinatown would figure you for some uptown shopper. No one would ever think you'd be doing anything you weren't supposed to. And you know why? Because you never do. But I don't need you now, okay? I've got it under control. Happy?

“Why don't you go back to your mommy's big house or your daddy's big apartment or go hang out with your rich-kid friends? Do whatever you want. Just get out of here and let me take care of business.”

He might as well have slapped me. I felt bruised and hurt, betrayed and foolish. I told myself:
Don't cry. Don't give him the satisfaction
. But it took every scrap of strength that I had to keep the tears from dribbling down my cheeks. Nick had lied about why he wanted to see me. He had lied about what he was doing. He had lied about his job. He had probably even lied about loving me. I'd had to force the truth out of him—well, a little bit of the truth. I wished I hadn't.

My mom had warned me. She always claimed that she had nothing personal against Nick. She maintained that there was no such thing as a bad kid. “But he's not

like you, Robyn,” she'd said. “He's got a lot of baggage.”

Maybe she was right.

He turned away from me again. I stood in the cold for a moment, staring at his back but remembering the hard look on his face. I didn't want to believe what was happening, but facts were facts. And the facts were that he hadn't called me until he needed a favor and he hadn't been honest with me about what he wanted when he did call. And as soon as he suspected that I wasn't going to help him, he'd cut out on me. If Morgan were here, she'd say, “What part of
he doesn't want you around
don't you understand?”

Well, fine. Let him do his probably illegal favor. Let him get arrested for it. Let him get put into custody again, maybe closed custody this time, with a lock on the door and a guard at the gate. It wasn't my problem. At least, that's what I told myself.

I turned and I started to push my way out of the crowd, stumbling, blinded by my tears. I kept hoping he would change his mind. Then I heard it—someone called my name.

“Robyn! Hey, Robyn!”

But it wasn't Nick's voice. It was Morgan's.

“Robyn, hey, I've been looking for you. I tried your cell, but it's off. I called Henri and she said you and Nick were here.” She glanced around. “Where is he?” Then she looked at me again. “You've been crying. What happened?”

“What do you think?”

She sighed. “Nick?”

I couldn't help it. I started to cry again. Morgan rooted around in her pocket, pulled out a packet of tissues, and handed it to me.

“Did you two have another fight?”

“Something like that.”

She slipped an arm around my shoulder. “Guys! They can be such a pain, right?”

Then
I
glanced around. “Where's Billy? I thought he was bringing you to the parade.”

“He was—until he found out that one of the parade's sponsors is a cosmetics company—”

“That tests its stuff on animals.”

“You've got it,” she said. “We argued about it for a while. I always figured Billy was a pushover. But he really digs in. He absolutely refused to come. And, I don't know . . .” She sighed. “Billy and I are so different. Maybe it wasn't meant to be.” Then her eyes got big and she said, “Hey, that looks like your sweater.”

I turned in the direction she was pointing. It didn't just look like my sweater. It
was
my sweater. The handmade, robin's-egg blue sweater that my mother had brought back from England. It flashed at me from under a shabby, unzipped jacket. Whoever wore the sweater had a hat jammed down on his head, covering his forehead. He had pulled a scarf up over his mouth and the tip of his nose. And he had my backpack slung over his shoulder.

“Hey!” I shouted. “Hey, you!”

The thief's eyes met mine. At first he looked puzzled.

“That's my sweater,” I yelled, pulling at the front of my jacket so that he would understand what I was saying.

His eyes widened. He froze, and for a moment I thought he was going to oblige me by standing where he was until I could grab him and pull the sweater off him. Then I realized that he was looking somewhere over my shoulder. He yelled something that I didn't understand. A second guy yelled something back in Chinese. A number of heads turned in our direction—including Nick's. I turned away from him just in time to see the guy with my backpack run away from the crowd.

“Hey!” I yelled again. “Hey, stop!”

Of course, the guy didn't stop. If anything, he pushed himself even harder. By the time I had kicked myself into gear, he had cleared the side of the hospital, cut down an alley, and was heading toward Chinatown. Well, he had picked the wrong person on the wrong day. Maybe I had been stupid. Maybe Nick had used me. But there was no way I going to let this thief make off with my stuff a second time. I kept after him. I may not be a track star, but I'm in pretty good shape. So was the thief. For a little guy, he really flew. I had to sprint to keep him in sight. After a couple of blocks, I was gasping for air. The thundering of my heart and the pounding of my feet had drowned out the dozen or so marching bands in the background and the roar of the crowd. I think that's why it took me a minute to realize that Morgan was right behind me.

“Robyn, give it up! You're never going to catch him,” she said. At least, I think that's what she said. She was panting so hard that she swallowed half the words.

Then I spotted the thief speeding toward the end of a dead-end alley. He drew up short when he reached a brick wall.
A-ha
, I thought.
Trapped
. And
outnumbered
. There were two of us, and Morgan and I were both bigger than he was. I would get back my stuff for sure.

The thief turned to face us. He crouched, poised to sprint back past us. He started to bob this way and that, the way boxers do when they're trying to avoid a blow, or when they're trying to find an opening to throw their own punch. He seemed pretty confident for a small guy—at best, he came up to my shoulder, and I'm not that tall. He was slight, too, a scrawny little thing in too-big jeans. My sweater hung almost to his knees. He stared fiercely at me, ready to fight to keep what was rightfully mine.

“I don't want any trouble,” I said. “I just want my stuff.”

“You don't think he's armed, do you?” Morgan whispered behind me.

It had never occurred to me. I looked at the thief again. There was no weapon in his hands, and his hands were nowhere near his pockets. But that didn't mean that he wasn't carrying something lethal—a knife, maybe—and that he wouldn't use it.

“Look,” I said. “Just take off my sweater and throw down my stuff and I won't call the cops.”

He didn't answer. Instead, keeping his eyes firmly on me, he edged toward the building on the east side of the alley, running his hand along the rough, grimy brick as he moved.
Boomp
. His foot struck a big square of metal set into the ground next to the building. It made a hollow sound. An entrance to the sewer system? The thief stooped, still watching me, and pulled it up. He stood at the edge of the opening, slipped my backpack off his shoulder, and dangled it over the opening.

“Hey!” Morgan said, taking the word right out of my mouth.

“Don't do that,” I said. But he did it anyway. He dropped my backpack through the opening. Then he jumped in after it.

Morgan and I ran to the gaping hole and stared down into it. It didn't lead into the sewers—it led into the basement of the building.

“Now what?” I said. I turned to look at Morgan, but she was looking at something else—or, rather, someone else. A big, angry-looking guy. The same guy the thief had shouted to.

“Get away from here,” he said. “Get away from here now.”

Morgan stood her ground.

“You don't own this alley,” she said.

The guy shoved her.

“Hey!” I said. Then I saw something—a flash of color—at the mouth of the alley. The big guy must have registered my reaction, because he spun around. Someone ran across the alley entrance. The big guy turned again to face Morgan and me.

“Move, move,” he said. Only instead of trying to push us away from the entrance to the basement, he shoved us toward it. “In there, quick,” he said. When we didn't move, he pushed us again, hard—first Morgan, then me. I heard a yelp of surprise from Morgan just before I fell.

I
put my hands out to help break my fall. It didn't help. My right shoulder took a lot of the impact and my forehead smacked the floor. As I lay there, dazed, I heard a noise overhead and something—someone?—fell on top of me. I opened my mouth to cry out, but a hand clamped itself firmly over my mouth and nose. I couldn't breathe. I panicked and started to kick frantically. I heard someone say something softly in a language I didn't understand. Then the hand slid so that it still covered my mouth but not my nose. Lips pressed up against my ears.

“Be quiet, please,” a voice said. “I have a gun pointed at your friend.”

Gun?

Please?

A shadow moved past me. A hand reached up and I heard a muffled metallic
clank
. Someone was locking the entrance to the basement and trying not to make too much noise doing it.

I struggled for breath and tried to find Morgan in the gloom. I was pretty sure it was the big guy holding me, which meant that it was the little guy who was locking up.

“No noise, please,” the same voice said, softly. It occurred to me that he was afraid of being overheard. But afraid of whom? “If you keep quiet, we won't hurt you.”