The Outliers (The Outliers, #1)(84)
No, I shouldn’t let myself do that. Pretend that Cassie is alive. It will be worse to have to remember that she really is gone. That all of it really did happen. I know that. Cassie and my mom are both gone and I am all alone. I don’t know what I will do without them. Can’t imagine how I will survive. But I have to focus on the here and the now: my dad. We need to warn him. Need to make sure that he doesn’t go to Camp Colestah. Doesn’t go where his supposedly dear old friend Dr. Simons has convinced him he needs to be. Because maybe I should be angry enough not to care what happens to him, but all I can think about is how badly I need for him to survive.
Inside the rest stop, there’s a woman at a table near a McDonald’s holding a sleeping baby in her arms while trying to get the tired little girl across from her to eat some more of her chicken nuggets. She looks right up at me when I step inside. Like I’ve tripped some kind of alarm. Concerned in that motherly way. For her own children. For me. It’s hard to tell.
But she will say yes about the phone. I feel sure of it. She will do her best to help. Still, she grips her baby a little tighter when I head her way. Leans in closer to the little girl. It’s hard to blame her. I can only imagine what I look like. Exhausted, filthy, covered in soot. Like a liar. Because that’s the reality: my truth has become the sum of so many lies.
“Do you think I could borrow your phone?” I ask her. “It’s an emergency. I lost my cell phone and I need to call my dad.”
“Um, sure,” she says. Definitely nervous, though, as she pushes her phone quickly across the table to me, flicks her eyes toward her daughter, who is sitting just inches away from me.
“Thank you.” I step away, which seems to make the woman relax a little. “I’ll be quick.”
I hope she doesn’t notice my hands, trembling as I dial my dad’s cell phone number. I take a couple more steps. Not so far that she thinks I’m taking her phone, but far enough that she won’t overhear every insane word I’m about to say. But my heart catches when the call goes straight to my dad’s voice mail. Not even a single ring. Is he close to the camp? Is he already on borrowed time?
“Are you okay?” the woman asks, so much like Lexi. “Do you need help?”
When I look up, she’s staring at me. Yes, I want to say. I need so much help.
“Can I just make one more call?” I ask, moving back to her. “To my house. My dad’s cell phone is off.”
“Sure.” She shifts the baby to her other leg, glances in the direction of Jasper, and then over to a security guard near the door. She knows there’s a lot I’m not saying. She can tell. Maybe because she’s just a nice person. Or maybe because she’s an Outlier. And maybe she’ll never even know. “Go ahead.”
I’ve only got one more chance—one more call before she’ll at least insist on getting “help.” Gideon is my only option. My face feels hot as I dial his cell number, hope that I can get through to him. Hope that he’ll do exactly what needs to be done.
“Hello?” Gideon answers before I can move out of earshot again.
“Gideon, it’s Wylie. You have to listen to me,” I say, and my voice cracks. But I can’t fall apart, not yet. “You have to call the police in Boston. Tell them something has happened to Dad. That he’s in trouble. Someone—” What can I say that won’t sound insane? That Gideon can tell the police so they go looking for a grown man gone only a few hours? “Dad was carjacked, in Boston. Some man with a gun came and took him and his car. He called me once. He said they were near Camp Colestah in Maine.”
It doesn’t make a lot of sense, but it’s not a terrible lie, either. When I look down, the woman with the baby is staring at me with her mouth open—the talk of guns, the police. I can’t blame her. But I need to finish before she can have her phone back. Before she can be rid of me.
“What the hell are you talking about?” Gideon asks. “And where are you?” Now he sounds actually worried. “You can’t just take off without telling anybody. Whose phone is this? And what do you mean that Da—”
“Gideon!” I shout, and too loud. I can’t even bring myself to look at the woman now. I grip the phone hard so no one can rip it away. “Please, just listen to me. I have to get off this phone now. Just call the police. The Boston police. Tell them to look in Maine for Dad’s car, somewhere on the highway between Newton and Camp Colestah in Maine. Or something really bad could happen to him. It already has happened, I mean.”
“Why don’t you just talk to Dad yourself?”
“I can’t talk to Dad, Gideon. That’s the whole point. He’s not answering his phone. He needs our help.”
“Um, yeah, except you can talk to him. He’s sitting right here next to me.”
They send the police. All sorts of police, to all sorts of places. To the camp. To us. Even to Officer Kendall, not that they can find him. State police. The FBI, too, because Quentin took Cassie across state lines. I don’t explain all the details to my dad on the phone, just enough for him to understand. To know that something terrible has happened and Cassie is gone. And that the local police near the camp can’t be trusted. And he says enough for me to know that he didn’t send any of the texts I got after our argument when I was at the Freshmart. The fact that they’d come from his phone number instead of his name in my contacts was a sign, just not the one I thought it was. And the texts he did send, the voice mails he left, had—without my dad knowing—been blocked from ever making their way to my phone. Level99 might not have known who they were really helping or why, but apparently they were very good at their job.