The Taking (The Taking 1)

Slipping the rubber band free, I uncurled the sheet of paper and gasped.

I leaned in closer, to get a better look as a wide smile slowly drew my lips apart. It was incredible.

I’d been wrong when I’d assumed it wasn’t another chalk drawing, because it was. Only this one wasn’t drawn on the road. This one was so much more personal, and meant solely for me.

It was me.

Me, the way I’d looked the day I’d come home, when I’d first stumbled across the street and fallen into Tyler’s arms, still wearing my uniform, with the ribbons tangled through my hair.

He’d captured my image perfectly, with precision and depth and life. Somehow he’d made my eyes, which I’d always thought were too big, seem beautiful in a haunted kind of way; and I no longer questioned whether they fit my face. He managed to re-create the arch of my brows and the shape of my jaw and each and every freckle splattered across my nose.

Immediately, I texted him back: I love it. Thank you. Because what more could I possibly say?

CHAPTER EIGHT

Day Five

THIS WAS MY MOM’S FIRST DAY BACK AT WORK since I’d been home—probably the longest she’d been off work at one time since she’d squeezed out her new kid, so it hadn’t been hard to convince her I’d be fine and that I could fend for myself for a whole eight hours.

It was Thursday, according to my obsession with the calendar, which meant Tyler, the only other person who might’ve kept me company, was at school too. I was completely on my own for the day.

By 8:01 I was pacing the house.

By 8:16 I’d taken a complete inventory of the refrigerator, the kitchen cabinets, and the pantry, and noted the sad lack of nonnutritional, preservative-laden snack foods.

By 8:43 I was bored out of my frickin’ skull.

I finally settled down on the couch and started flipping through the channels, most of which were morning talk shows aimed at the stay-at-home-mom crowd. I paused when one of those talk shows was interrupted by a local news segment. My throat felt tight and scratchy as I stared at the familiar face on the screen.

I knew him. It was the lab guy who’d taken my blood at the hospital the night I’d come home. And according to the news report I was watching, he was dead.

I tried to read the ticker that ran continuously across the bottom of the screen, but I could only catch bits and pieces of it:

. . . A phlebotomist from Skagit General Hospital . . . found dead in his apartment last night by his girlfriend . . . hemorrhaging from his mouth and eyes . . . autopsy will be performed to determine exact cause of death . . .

I switched to several other channels to see if there were any other details, but when I couldn’t find anything, I gave up and decided to see if I could find anything online. Trouble was, the computer was password protected, and I would rather have been forced to wear my mom’s high waters every day until the end of time than to break down and ask her, even via text, what her password was.

I tried a few semi-obvious combinations: Password, Kyra, Logan (because it seemed logical), Supernova (which was far less likely), and my birthday. I would’ve tried “my brother’s” birthday, but I had no idea what that was.

After a while I got bored with that, too, and gave up.

Eventually I took a shower and started sorting through the clothes my mom had picked out for me.

I had to admit, and this was coming from someone with zero idea of what was in style anymore, I didn’t hate what she’d selected. I’m guessing she’d steered away from anything supertrendy, which was probably good since I doubted she had any better notion than I did what would rock the community college scene these days. But at least she’d remembered my size and that I liked vintage-style tees and jeans that felt broken in already.

I spent forty-three minutes unpacking and cutting off tags from T-shirts, underwear, pajamas, socks, tank tops, and jeans—everything a girl newly returned from a five-year hiatus could possibly need. I slipped into a pair of jeans and a worn-looking T-shirt with the Count from Sesame Street on the front and couldn’t help smiling just a little that my mom remembered, too, how much I’d loved the number-obsessed vampire when I was a kid.

When the doorbell rang, I stopped what I was doing and checked the digital alarm clock against my phone to make sure the two were still in sync. 10:06.

I slipped my phone into my pocket and went to see who it was.

The man standing on the front step looked like any other man who wore stiffly starched suits and stiff, plain black ties: Stiff. I couldn’t tell if he was a salesman or one of those church guys who goes around trying to convert people, but he definitely wasn’t a deliveryman, not in that getup.

I would’ve discouraged him right off with an immediate “My parents aren’t here,” but the first rule drilled into every latchkey kid is: never tell a stranger you’re home alone. So I waited to see what he wanted.

Shockingly, it wasn’t my parents he was looking for.

“Kyra Agnew?” His voice came out just as stiff as his suit. It was sort of daunting, the way he said my name—and the fact that he knew my name—with authority, like a principal or a coach, and I found myself standing straighter because of it.

“Uh . . . I . . . yeah . . . ,” I stammered, because sometimes when I was intimidated, I was smooth like that. My pulse sped up the tiniest bit.

He reached into his jacket and pulled out some sort of leather wallet thingie. It was black, too, like his suit, and when he flipped it open, there was a slick-looking badge inside. I focused on the golden beetle in the center of it while he said his name in that same no-nonsense manner that made me want to salute him. “Agent Truman. National Security Agency. May I come in?”