The Lost Saint(47)

“Yeah,” I said, and picked up the form with the essay questions.

Dad stroked his hand over my hair and then squeezed my shoulder. “Don’t know how we’ll manage without you here.” He picked up his planner from the kitchen counter and headed to his study.

I glanced over the essay questions. The first was the less difficult of the two: “Which artist has influenced your work the most, and why?” I could easily write up an essay on Renoir or Cassatt—if I could pick between the two. But the second question made me pause. Stumped me, actually. “How will you use your talents to make the world a better place?”

I was still mulling over the question when my ears pricked up at the mention of something on TV. I stood up from the table to see the screen better. A reporter interviewed a woman in a torn red shirt who looked vaguely familiar.

“I would have died,” the woman said. “The man with the gun said he was going to kill me. But then there was this rush of movement, and this other guy came out of nowhere and pulled the masked man off me. He told me to run, so I did. There may have been a girl there with him. I didn’t get a good look at either of them, but they saved my life.”

The camera cut back to a reporter standing in front of a news van parked outside that alley on Tidwell Street. “After being saved by an unknown person or persons, Ms. Taylor ran all the way to the police station. When authorities arrived on the scene, they found one of the alleged attackers tied up and unconscious beside a Dumpster. Authorities have not yet been able to identify or question the man, but they hope to interrogate him about a series of similar attacks in the city over the last few weeks. Police think he may have been involved with the murder of Leanne Greenwood, the waitress who was found dead near this same area last month. Although only one of Ms. Taylor’s alleged assailants was apprehended, city police are relieved that at least one dangerous criminal is off the streets tonight.”

The camera cut to an anchorman—the same one with the poufy hair from the other night. “Thank you, Carlos. And it sounds like we may have a Good Samaritan or two to thank for this arrest?”

“Yes,” the reporter in front of the van said. “Captain Morris said that this isn’t the first report of an unknown citizen helping to stop a crime in the past few weeks. Perhaps there is hope that the crime wave that has the city gripped by fear has an end in sight.”

“That is good news, Carlos,” the anchor said, and then the station cut to a commercial.

A warm feeling rushed through me. My fingers trembled as I gathered up my application papers from the table. I looked over the second essay question one more time before I slipped the forms back into the envelope.

How am I going to use my talents to make the world a better place?

I carried the packet up to my room and placed it on my desk next to my more-than-ancient computer. I pulled the khakis I’d been wearing earlier in the day off my chair and stuck my hand in the front pocket. My hands still shook as I dug out the crumpled slip of paper and dialed the number written there into my cell phone.

It rang four times and then someone picked up.

“Hello?” a guy’s voice said. My sensitive ears picked up music and what sounded like shouting in the background. He must have been back at The Depot.

“Talbot? This is Grace.”

“Hey, kid. What’s up?”

I sucked a deep breath in and blew it out and then said, before I could change my mind: “I want you to train me. I want to find my brother—and hopefully take down that gang that’s been terrorizing the city in the process.”

Talbot laughed. I could hear the smile in his voice when he said, “I thought you’d never ask.”





CHAPTER FIFTEEN


Test



TUESDAY AFTERNOON




“You ready for this?” Talbot asked as I climbed into the van.

“Ready as I’ll ever be.” I plopped my backpack on the seat between us and pulled out my running shoes from deep inside my bag. I kicked off my school flats and changed into the sneakers.

“So where’s your partner? Ditching out again?”

I smirked. “I arranged for him to find twenty dollars in quarters on his bus bench. That should keep him busy at the arcade for a few days.”

Talbot laughed. “I like the way you think.”

“So what’s in store for today? Are we going to have any time for, you know, training?”

“I actually took care of our assignment before I got here. Plus, we’ve got an extra hour before the bus returns, so we’ll have plenty of time for going over the basics.”

“What basics?”

“You’ll see,” he said.

We drove into an area called Glenmore on the outskirts of the city, a neighborhood that had probably been nice in the mid-twentieth century but now was a weird mix of low-income apartments, the original homes of elderly grandparents, and old houses that had been turned into stores. We were only a couple of blocks from the highway when Talbot pulled the van over near a pawnshop called Second Chances. The first thing I noticed about it was the X of police tape across the doorway, and another one over the shattered storefront window.

Talbot grabbed his large backpack from behind his seat and got out of the van. I followed. He walked right up to the storefront. Talbot looked back and forth along the street and then twisted hard on the door handle. I heard a pop as the door unlocked and opened. Talbot pulled the police tape aside and gestured for me to go inside the shop.