The Stolen by Celia Thomson Page B

“locked” Word documents, confirmed that it was
the
Brian that Chloe had been interested in.
    Amy then signed off and switched Hotmail over to one of her own alias accounts—one that she used when she didn’t want to be found, for contests and spam and mailing lists and stuff—and sent Brian an e-mail. Early on, Amy had decided to handle everything Chloe from foreign computers, not her own, in case someone was capturing her IP address.
    Brian: This is from one of Chloe’s friends. Where is she? Can you help us? Alyec seems to know something but won’t tell. E-mail me ASAP
.
    Then she made sure it sent properly, deleted it out of the sent mail, and purged the trash. She checked it again to make sure it was really gone, cleared Explorer’s cache for temporary files, and started to even defrag the hard drive—to
really
make sure all the information was gone—but looked at her watch and realized it would take twenty minutes. So Amy shut down, mission accomplished, and prepared to sneak back out.
    Just like out of the movies, she was halfway down the stairs when the phone rang. Amy froze, flattening herself against the wall so hard that static electricity lifted her frizzy red ends straight up against the wallpaper and her shoulder almost dislodged a picture. She waited, frozen, knowing intellectually that it was okay to move but unable to make herself. She scanned the room until voice mail picked up, counting the seconds.
    She noticed something that she wouldn’t have if she had just snuck immediately back out.
Nothing in thehouse looks moved
. Like for a while. There was a stillness to it, and though there were no layers of dust, there was a palpably stale feeling about the place. It even smelled a little old, like the garbage had been sitting there for just a day or two too long; there was no tang of cleaners or soap or perfume or anything that connoted movement or life in a house of two women.
    Shaken by this realization, Amy left the house less carefully than she’d entered—after all, she was only human, which was exactly what the people watching her exit the house wanted to be sure of.

A new loving family, a secret race of people like her, no more school ever again, and all Chloe could think about was how bored she was. Her “internship” at Firebird mainly involved stuffing envelopes, making copies, collating large stacks of contracts, and taking orders from the obnoxious Mai receptionist.
    While she was waiting for a stack of … something, she wasn’t sure what, from Igor, Chloe thought about her and Amy’s dream of setting up a shop somewhere. Amy would design the clothes and Chloe would run the business. Assuming the two didn’t kill each other, it would be a match made in heaven.
    Igor must have seen the look on her face.
    â€œYou should become a full-time paralegal,” he said, smiling.
    â€œWow. This for a living,” Chloe said deadpan, tapping the stack he was adding to. “That would be just great. For my
entire
life.”
    â€œRemember, it is hard for people like us to integrate completely,” Igor said seriously. “That’s why it was so good for Sergei to set this up here.” He was wearing khakis, a button-down with a fashionable tie, and suede shoes. The way he leaned back in his chair and clasped his hands behind his back made him look like any young professional: a little bit arrogant, but bright eyed and smart.
    Pity about the name. Maybe assimilation would have been easier if the Mai hadn’t named their kids after horror film characters
. With just a slight tilt of her nose to the air Chloe could tell he was Mai. It wasn’t a smell, exactly, but a feeling.
    â€œIs this why he’s pride leader?” she asked, waving her hand around the office.
    â€œHe is pride leader because when the previous one was killed, he bravely took up her mission of trying to reunite the Eastern European