Return to Paradise by Pittacus Lore Read Free Book Online Page B

something about a “Dumont” facility. After that all the messages stop. Radio silence.
    Someone must have realized that the police radios weren’t secure enough. I imagine Agent Walker pulling a giant plug that disables the entire radio system, even though I know that’s not how any of this actually works.
    An internet search of “Dumont facility FBI” brings up some articles about some huge, strictly off-limits FBI compound in Dumont, Ohio, about two hours away.
    If Sarah has been taken in, I have to believe that she is being detained in the station jail and not being shipped out to some secret FBI prison. And so at dawn I take a chance and head downstairs and out into the front yard. Nana’s no longer at her post, so I guess her orders were just to make sure I stayed in through the night. Ijump in my truck and head into town. Dad’s phone’s going straight to voice mail by now. I park across from the station, watching, trying to get a look at Sarah or anyone else coming in or out. Every time the front door swings open, my chest pounds, only to be disappointed when someone other than Sarah walks out. Each time this happens, I get a little more worried.
    It’s a little past 8 a.m. when Sarah comes outside, and I feel so supercharged with happiness and relief. She’s still here. They’ve let her go. Maybe this will end up all right after all.
    Sarah looks a little scared, and it’s my first instinct to jump out and sprint straight to her. Instead, I drive along beside her as she walks down the street.
    “Sarah,” I say as I pull up to the curb. The whites of her eyes are red, like she’s been crying recently. “Get in.”
    “My parents are coming,” she says. “They came to the station when they realized I wasn’t at home and stuff was going crazy outside, but the agents at the front desk made them go back home—threatened to have them arrested if they stayed around asking questions about what happened. I told them to pick me up at the grocery store down the street so they wouldn’t have to come back in. They’re going to have so many questions.”
    “Tell them I’m taking you home.”
    “My cell phone’s gone.”
    “You can use my mine,” I say, leaning over and opening the passenger-side door.
    After a short phone call—lots of “I’ll explain in five minutes when I’m home”—she hands me back my phone and lowers her head into her hands.
    “What are you going to tell them?” I ask.
    “I don’t know. I’ll figure something out. Maybe I can tell them I need some sleep before we talk.”
    “Are you okay?”
    “No,” she says through her fingers. “John came back. I got super emotional and weird with him because I was feeling so crappy about everything before he just magically showed up, and then the FBI tackled me. I don’t know where John is now, and I am officially pegged as a person who is somehow connected to all this. I’ve been sitting in an interrogation room for the last three hours.”
    “What’d you tell them?”
    “Nothing,” she says. “It was that Walker agent and a few other people. Noto. And some guy named Purdy.”
    I note the name—the agent GUARD talked to on the phone. Is he the one in charge of everything going on in town?
    Sarah continues.
    “They wanted to know why John came to see me, and I told them it was because we made out a few timesbefore he went crazy and he probably thought that I’d do it again if he showed up and threw pebbles at my window like we were in some kind of rom-com. I just pretended to be dumb.”
    “And they believed that?”
    “No, I don’t think so. But they let me go, at least. They have John. I think that’s all they really cared about. They just told me to make sure I didn’t leave town or there’d be trouble.” She shakes her head. “I’m on a freaking no fly list they said, as if I’d try to skip the country or something.”
    “Shit.”
    “I know.” Sarah pulls the edge of her gray sweater over her