No Safety in Numbers by Dayna Lorentz Read Free Book Online

FUN”??? A kiss on the head? I’m not a freaking child!
    Dad watched the Senator as she wove her way into the herd in the hall. “Guess it’s just you and me, kiddo.”
    Lexi glared at her mother—the Senator was lying through her perfectly whitened teeth. She had to find out what was really going on.
    “Sorry, but Ginger asked me to meet her at Abercrombie,” she said, her tongue tripping over the lie.
    Her dad’s eyes lit up. “The girl from Irvington? From last night?”
    Arthur was way too excited. Like it was so unusual for Lexi to meet a friend somewhere. Like Ginger was so great.
    “Have fun,” he said, too quickly. “If you need me, I’ll be in line at the Pancake Palace along with the rest of themall.” He waved at the crowd forming in front of the restaurant down the hall.
    Lexi exited the store and followed where the Senator had gone. It didn’t take long to locate her. She moved with purpose while everyone else in the crowd rambled aimlessly across the carpet. Lexi guessed her mother was the only person who had anywhere to be.
    There were huge lines outside all of the restaurants, each monitored by a security guard. If the security situation was so serious, where were the real police? Why leave crowd control to the hack mall brigade?
    The Senator turned down a corridor toward the exits. Lexi hid behind a mall directory and watched where her mother went. Temporary walls had been erected around a store near the end of the hall, blocking it from view. Lexi checked the map and saw that it was a PaperClips. Or had been a PaperClips. She dashed down the hallway.
    There were few people in this area of the mall. Between the blocked exits and walled-off PaperClips, there was little else down this corridor but a Domestic Decor, and the only people in there were a couple of boys shooting zombies on the Xbox display. Lexi had beaten every level of that game—she could have pwned them right and proper. But she had other things on her mind.
    There were no guards at the flimsy wall erected around the PaperClips. It was made from sheets of thin pressboard, the stuff Lexi had seen kids make ramps out of for their bikes, covered in white paper with the words “Guess what’s coming to Stonecliff?” printed in a stylish blue font. A door had been cut into the boards, andLexi peered through the doorknob hole drilled into it.
    The PaperClips entrance was covered over with sheets of clear plastic. When the sheets flapped, she could see her mother near the cash registers. She was talking to a short guy in a bad suit—
the mall manager?
Other people in uniforms (mall security and what had to be maintenance guys) moved crates of paper and boxes of pens away from the center of the room. Why were they messing with the PaperClips?
I thought the security problem was in the garage…
    Lexi pulled on the door hole. To her surprise, the door opened—there was no lock. Her mother was trying to make this overnight transformation look as inconspicuous as possible.
Nothing to see here, folks! Just a complete redesign of a PaperClips in the middle of a mall crisis. Not strange at all.
    Lexi slipped through the door and pulled it closed behind her. No one seemed to notice. She crept to the store entrance. When the plastic flapped, she ducked inside and hid behind a display of markers and crayons.
    “So they’re sure it’s not a dirty bomb, but that’s about it?” the mall manager asked.
    Lexi’s heart skipped a beat.
Did he just say
BOMB?!?!?!?! She held her breath so she wouldn’t miss a word.
    “That’s what they’re telling me,” the Senator said. Her phone rang; she answered, then whispered to the manager, “They’re here.”
    The manager followed her to the back wall of the store and through the stockroom doors.
    Lexi could not get to the stockroom doors without beingseen. The guards were still clearing the main floor, pushing the displays against the permanent shelving along the interior walls. She’d have to