Meg Cabot - Ninth Key

CHAPTER 18

This was so not what I wanted to hear, I can't even tell you.

"Look," I said, quickly. "I think you should know that I left a letter with a friend of mine. If anything happens to me, she's supposed to go to the cops and give it to them."

I smiled sunnily at him. Of course, it was all a big fat lie, but he didn't know that.

Or maybe he did.

"I don't think so," he said, politely.

I shrugged, pretending I didn't care. "Your funeral."

"You really," Marcus said, as I was busy straining my ears for sirens, "oughtn't to have tipped off the boy. That was your first mistake, you know."

Didn't I know it.

"Well," I said. "I thought he had a right to know what his own father was up to."

Marcus looked a little disappointed in me. "I didn't mean that," he said, and there was just a hint of contempt in his voice.

"What, then?" I opened my eyes as wide as they would go. Little Miss Innocent.

"I wasn't certain you knew about me, of course," Marcus went on, almost amiably. "Not until you tried to run back there, in front of the school. That, of course, was your second mistake. Your evident fear of me was a dead giveaway. Because then there was no question that you knew more than was good for you."

"Yeah, but look," I said, in my most reasonable voice. "What was it you said last night? Who's going to believe the word of a sixteen-year-old juvenile delinquent like myself over a big important businessman like you? I mean, please. You're friends with the governor, for crying out loud."

"And your mother," Marcus reminded me, "is a reporter with WCAL, as you pointed out."

Me and my big mouth.

The car, which had showed no signs of slowing down up until that point, started rounding a curve in the road. We were, I realized suddenly, on Seventeen Mile Drive.

I didn't even think about what I was doing. I just reached for the door handle, and the next thing I knew, a guardrail was looming at me, and rainwater and gravel were splashing up into my face.

But instead of rolling out of the car and up against that guardrail - below which I could see the roiling waves of the Restless Sea crashing against the boulders that rested at the bottom of the cliff we were on - I stayed where I was. That was because Marcus grabbed the back of my leather jacket and wouldn't let go.

"Not so fast," he said, trying to haul me back into the seat.

I wasn't giving up so easily, though. I twisted around - quite nimble in my Lycra skirt - and tried to slam my boot heel into his face. Unfortunately, Marcus's reflexes were as good as mine since he caught my foot and twisted it very painfully.

"Hey," I yelled. "That hurt!"

But Marcus just laughed and clocked me again.

Let me tell you, that didn't feel so swell. For a minute or so, I couldn't see too straight. It was during this moment that it took for my vision to adjust that Marcus closed the passenger door, which had continued to yawn open, stowed me back into my place, and buckled me safely in. When my eyeballs finally settled back into their sockets, I looked down, and saw that he was keeping a firm hold on me, primarily by clutching a handful of my sweater set.

"Hello," I said, feebly. "That's cashmere, you know."

Marcus said, "I will release you if you promise to be reasonable."

"I think it's perfectly reasonable," I said, "to try to escape from a guy like you."

Marcus didn't look very impressed by my sensible take on the matter.

"You can't possibly imagine that I'm going to let you go," he said. "I've got damage control to worry about. I mean, I can't have you going around telling people about my, er . . . unique problem-solving techniques."

"There's nothing very unique," I informed him, "about murder."

Marcus said, as if I hadn't spoken, "Historically, you understand, there have always been an ignorant few who have insisted upon standing in the way of progress. These are the people I was forced to … relocate."

"Yeah," I said. "To their graves."

Marcus shrugged. "Unfortunate, certainly, but nevertheless necessary. Still, in order for us to advance as a civilization, sacrifices must occasionally be made by a select few - "

"I doubt Mrs. Fiske agrees with who you selected to be sacrificed," I interrupted.

"What may appear to one party to be improvement may appear to another to be wanton destruction - "

"Like the annihilation of our natural coastline by money-grubbing parasites like yourself?"

Well, he'd already said he was going to kill me. I didn't figure it mattered whether or not I was polite to him.

"And so for progress - real progress," he went on, as if he hadn't even heard me, "to be made, some simply have to do without."

"Without their lives ?" I glared at him. "Dude, let me tell you something. You know your brother, the wannabe-vampire? You are every bit as sick as he is."

The car, right at that moment, pulled into the driveway of Mr. Beaumont's house. The guard at the gate waved to as we went by, though he couldn't see me through the tinted windows. He probably had no idea that inside his boss's car was a teenage girl who was about to be executed. No one - no one - I realized, knew where I was: not my mother, not Father Dominic, not Jesse - not even my dad. I had no idea what Marcus had planned for me, but whatever it was, I suspected I wasn't going to like it very much … especially if it got me where it had gotten Mrs. Fiske.

Which I was beginning to think it probably would.

The car pulled to a halt. Marcus's fingers bit into my upper arm.

"Come on," he said, and he started dragging me across the seat toward his side of the car and the open passenger door.

"Wait a minute," I said, in a last ditch effort to convince him that I could be perfectly reasonable given the right incentive - for instance, being killed. "What if I promised not to tell anyone?"

"You already have told someone," Marcus reminded me. "My nephew, Tad, remember?"

"Tad won't tell anyone. He can't. He's related to you. He's not allowed to testify against his own relatives in court, or something." My head was still kind of wobbly from the smack Marcus had given me, so I wasn't at my most lucid. Nevertheless, I tried my best to reason with him. "Tad is a super secret keeper."

"The dead," Marcus reminded me, "usually are."

If I hadn't been scared before - and I most definitely had been - I was super scared now. What did he mean by that? Did he mean . . . did he mean Tad wouldn't talk because he'd be dead? This guy was going to kill his own nephew? Because of what I'd told him?

I couldn't let that happen. I had no idea what Marcus intended to do with me, but one thing I knew for sure:

He wasn't going to lay a finger on my boyfriend.

Although at that particular moment, I had no idea how I was going to prevent him from doing so.

As Marcus yanked on me, I said to his thugs, " I just want to thank you guys for helping me out. You know, considering I'm a defenseless young girl and this guy is a cold-blooded killer, and all. Really. You've been great - "

Marcus gave me a jerk and I came flying out of the car toward him.

"Whoa," I said, when I'd found my feet. "What's with the rough stuff?"

"I'm not taking any chances," Marcus said, keeping his iron grip on my arm as he dragged me toward the front door of the house. "You've proved a good deal more trouble than I ever anticipated."

Before I had time to digest this compliment, Marcus had hauled me into the house while behind us the thugs got out of the car and followed along . . . just in case, I suppose, I suddenly broke free and tried to pull a La Femme Nikita - type escape.

Inside the Beaumonts' house - from what I could see given the speed with which Marcus was dragging me around - things were much the same as they'd been the last time I'd visited. There was no sign of Mr. Beaumont - he was probably in bed recovering from my brutal attack on him the night before. Poor thing. If I'd known it was Marcus who was the blood-sucking parasite and not his brother, I'd have shown the old guy a little compassion.