CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

After our phone call, I’m ready to try to explain, ready to say something to prove who I am. But tears are brimming in my mother’s eyes as she rushes forward with her arms outstretched, closing them around me.

“My baby girl,” she whispers, her tears joining my own as she holds me close, heedless of the blood covering me, both mine and Vanik’s. “I thought I’d lost you.”

“I know,” I whisper back. “I thought I’d lost you, too.”

And then Riley’s long arms are around us both, the three of us crying until we start laughing.

It takes minutes before we pull away from each other, but when we do, I wipe under my eyes and ask, “How did you find us?”

It’s not my mum who answers.

“Come on, JD. Haven’t you ever heard of GPS phone tracking?”

I whip my head around only to see one of the camouflaged Speakers pull his ski mask off, revealing a familiar grinning face.

“Enzo!” I cry, leaping forward to embrace him. But then a realization hits me—it was his voice that I heard when the van pulled up outside the zoo and the SCARS members retrieved Riley. “Wait—yesterday—it was you!” Realizing something else, I turn to Arryn and say, “And you were touching Ward the whole time—you were protecting them from my words so they could get away!”

She offers me an apologetic look, but after everything we’ve been through, I don’t have it in me to feel anything other than relief. Relief that we’re all here, that we all survived. No matter how underhanded some of their tactics were.

“You can forgive us later,” Enzo says, slinging a heavy arm around my shoulders. “We almost didn’t make it here tonight, not with the decoy Vaniks running around, so let’s just be thankful and leave all the finger-pointing for another day.”

“Decoy Vaniks?” Smith asks, squinting through his cracked glasses.

“Projections. At least five of them in different ghost tour groups, sent out as diversions to lead us on a wild goose chase,” Enzo says, pulling a disgruntled face. “Jeremiah was clever. We didn’t even realize who the real threat was until we finally made it here and overheard him and Kael gloating to you about what they’d done.” He nudges Jeremiah’s shoe with his booted foot. “If these two had been less chatty, they might not be in this position right now.”

Cami steps up beside me—sending Enzo a look that says he’d better explain his outfit and his company very soon— and points to the duo at our feet. “What’s going to happen to them?”