Page 36 of Five

He shakes his head as he takes my hands. “I don’t know.”

“You know more than you’re saying. That’s for sure. And I want to know what you do, Five Aston. Right now.”

He pulls me towards him and hugs me close. “If I had anything to tell, I would. I swear.”

“Why are you doing this?” I ask.

“Me?” Five pulls back to stare me in the eyes. “I’m not doing anything. These people—”

“Who?”

“Look,” he says, exasperated. “Right now, it doesn’t matter who. It’s a guy from school, OK? Just some guy from school and his bizarre invitation to join some exclusive club.”

“Oh, God,” I groan. “Invitations to exclusive clubs are never good.”

Five laughs, breaking the tension. “No shit, Princess. I’ve been trying to stay away from this guy for years and now he shows up here? I don’t get it. And I’m not trying to be a chauvinistic dick about this by being vague, I’m just seriously confused.”

“Maybe we should call our parents?”

“Nah,” Five says. “That’s a shit storm we don’t want to start. If we tell our parents, they’ll come home from Florida and put everyone in lockdown mode.”

“Or cart us off on some yacht to live with Uncle James and Aunt Harper in the middle of the ocean,” I add.

“Or that.” He laughs. But then his smile falters. “Jesus. They might seriously do that. Do not tell anyone, OK, Rory? I mean it, we don’t need to start a panic. This might be nothing. It might just be a few rich assholes trying to broker better business deals and nothing more. We shouldn’t automatically assume everyone is living a secret life just because we are.”

True. He’s got a point there. But then I remember something he said earlier. “Why do our families go to Disneyland every year? If it’s not because my mom is obsessed with princesses?”

“It is. I was kidding. How many times have you been to Disney World?”

“God, I dunno. Every year since I can remember. Even when my sisters were small babies.”

“See?”

But I don’t see. Not really. Because yeah, our families have gone to Florida every summer since I was a kid. But every now and then, when we were down there, my parents would take off for a few days and we’d stay with Sparrow’s family. Or Five’s. Or their parents would take off and they’d stay with us. One summer, the last one I spent with them, all the adults disappeared and Kate, Sparrow, and I watched the younger kids for a few days.

Where did they go?

I always assumed it was the spa. That’s what they told us, and why would they lie? But in light of this new information—that command central secret hideaway Ford has down in the garage basement—I have to wonder.

“Come on,” Five says. “Let’s go out to the farm and swim.” Then he smiles and waggles his eyebrows at me. “Bathing suits optional.”

It’s a thirty-minute drive out to my family’s farm in Bellvue. Five talks the whole time. About London, and his new business. Robots, robots, robots. I appreciate the white noise, but my eyes are glued on the passing landscape out the window and my mind is consumed with all the possible reasons life seems to be going sideways at the moment.

But as soon as we pull onto our private road I smile when I read the street sign.

My dad paid good money to choose his own name for this road. It used to be called Private Road 13 back in the day and then he had it specially named Bombs-A Way. This is a story he told often when I was a kid. Mostly as a way to placate my bombshell of a mother when she was in an explosive mood.

It worked every time.

They cannot be terrible people.

Can they?

My father is the best. I’m such a daddy’s girl. And yes, Five did make the princess name stick, but I was a princess the moment my father laid eyes on me. There’s a picture hanging in his office of him and my mom just minutes after I was born. I see the love in his eyes.

How can that man be a bad guy?

And my mom. She’s raised six kids. She makes breakfast every morning and dinner every night. She carted us all around to gymnastics, and horse shows, and karate lessons.