“I’m congratulating you for taking on such a dangerous person as a nemesis.”
I narrow my eyes. “Jack?”
“Jack,” He confirms. “I’m sure you got my email almost five months ago, with the picture of his hand on that baseball bat. I got it from a video, you know.”
“I know.”
“You do?” He quirks a brow.
“I know you hack. I know you stole that video from the feds.”
He laughs. “Steal? Don’t be stupid. Even I can’t hack into a federal vault. They gave it to me. Well, not me, but some friends of mine. We work together, you see, as freelance digital consultants. The feds contacted us, and gave us the video. They wanted us to enhance the video quality as much as we could, so they could identify exactly what happened.”
I swallow hard. Nameless smiles.
“And we did. But we never gave it back to them. Not yet, anyway. I wanted you to be the first one to see it, in all the enhanced glory.”
“Why?”
“I want you to see exactly who you were dealing with,” Nameless says smoothly. “Jack isn’t a nice guy. It’s a good thing you two aren’t speaking anymore, otherwise, you might’ve gotten hurt.”
A sick, dark fire flares up in my lungs. He hurt me. Not Jack. Nameless smirks at my impotent silence, then throws me a tablet with the play button smack dab in the center. My finger wavers, hesitating.
“Go on.” Nameless urges, smiling even bigger.
After months of sleepless wondering, infuriating hints, and half-truths, I have the whole story beneath my index finger.
I press play.
There’s two seconds of darkness, and then the sound of rustling leaves. The date in the lower corner reads 21:45:01, making it roughly nine at night, and 8/15/2007. I do the math – Jack was 13.
“Take the f**king cap off!” A voice that can only be Avery’s hisses. “God, for being such a huge nerd you’re kind of an idiot.”
There’s a muffled grumble I recognize instantly as Wren, a younger Wren with a higher voice but definitely Wren. The camera cap comes off, unveiling a leafy ground and tall trees that are so familiar. Avery, a young Avery with no curves yet, wears a tube top and a white skort and jelly sandals, looking imperious and bratty as ever. She grabs the camera and huffs.
“You hold it like this,” She points it at Wren. He’s so skinny and short, his glasses practically swallowing up his entire terrified, innocent face. His cheeks are still round with babyfat. He wears cargo shorts and a striped shirt his mom obviously picked out for him, and a massive watch twice the size of his tiny wrist.
“I don’t know if this is such a good idea,” He whispers. Avery zooms in on his face.
“If you chicken out, I’m going to tell everyone at school about your Mom cheating on your Dad. So you’re gonna stay here, and you’re gonna be the cameraman, if you know what’s good for you.”
Wren goes an even paler shade of white. The sun dips low through the trees, sunset just beginning. The camera focuses on Wren’s face, then goes dark. It starts back up again, reading a new timestamp; 22:07:15, or ten at night. It’s much darker, the sun long gone, and Avery swears.
“Shit. What’s taking them so long?”
“Does this thing have a…a light?” Wren asks timidly. Avery rolls her eyes but you can barely see it.
“Yeah, because we’re going to film secretly with a giant camera light.”
“Then how –”
There’s a jostling of the camera, and suddenly everything is night vision – green and shades of black and gray. Avery’s pupils are white, glowing eerily as she hands the camera back.
“Just stay focused on her, okay?”
The camera shakes, like Wren’s hand is unstable. “Avery, I don’t want to. I don’t want to do this anymore –”
“Shh!” Avery hisses, lying flat on the ground and pulling him down with her. “There she is. Just film.”
My breath catches. Wren zooms in on a pale figure cutting through the forest trees.
Sophia.
Thirteen-year-old Sophia.
Her hair is short, but the same color of winter moonlight. She carries a flashlight. She’s skinny, but much plumper than when I knew her – her cheeks are robust and filled out and her preteen curves are noticeable. A flush dons her face, and she skips. Skips! I never once saw Sophia go any faster than a floaty, leisurely walk. She’s wearing a sundress, floral and wavy around her calves. She looks around, calling out.
“Jack? Jack, where are you? C’mon, you’re freaking me out.”
“J-Jack’s not really here, is he?” Wren whispers.
“Of course not, idiot,” Avery scoffs. “I just forged a note from him and stuck it in her purse. They’re soooo in love, she’ll believe anything.”
The camera focuses on Sophia, now looking very scared. It’s eerie and heartbreaking all at once to see her alive on camera, and so happy. So different.
Her flashlight beam bounces around, landing in the bushes Avery and Wren are hiding in. They duck lower, and the beam passes as Sophia does a slow turn. She freezes, and then starts backing up.
“W-Who are you?”
The beam illuminates a beardy, middle-aged man with a cruel smirk. He wears overalls and an oily rag sticks out of his pocket.
“They’re just gonna scare her, right?” Wren whispers frantically to Avery. Avery doesn’t say anything, her attention rapt on Sophia. “Right, Av?” Wren presses. He swings the camera back to Sophia, his hand shaking harder and the camera shaking with it. Another man walks out of the trees, and another. Five of them. One of them has a baseball bat, another has what looks like a crowbar. The one in overalls talks in a low voice to Sophia as she backs up, into the trees, her face twisted with horror. Only Sophia’s high, panicked voice can be heard.
“Leave me alone! My friends are in the house! If I scream, they’ll call the cops!”
This earns a laugh from the man, and it spreads to the other men, until it resembles a ring of hoarse hyenas. She is so defenseless, I tremble with the urge to reach in and pull her out, pull her to safety.
“Av!” Wren hisses. “Call them off!”
Avery’s smiles just gets wider. “Not yet. They haven’t really scared her yet.”
“They’re going to – they’re not going to touch her, are they?”
Avery glowers. “No. I ordered them to just…just scare the shit out of her. But they can’t touch her. I told them they can’t.”
Wren swings back to the men, now so close they’ve formed a ring around Sophia. She tries to run, but one of them catches her and throws her to the ground in the center. There’s more laughter.
“Leave her alone!”
That voice is young, strong, angry. I’ve never heard I sound that way before, but I know who it belongs to by heart. Jack, proud and tawny-haired, draws all the men’s attention. His blue eyes aren’t icy, instead burning with white-blue fire. He still has baby fat on his cheeks, but the rest of him is tall, lanky; a boy-growing-too-fast kind of lanky. And he’s just as infuriatingly handsome. But he’s not the Ice Prince I know now – his expressions boil over, his emotions clear and legible in his every tensed muscle and flexing fist. He is a lion, a little king, angry and righteous and true.