Episode 45: Fake Friends and Failed Escapes
- Crystal Crawford
- Apr 23
- 5 min read
Updated: Apr 24
I took off running for the side of the building that held the exit I’d seen Chloe go through in the video. I couldn’t see the exit from here, but it hadn’t been long since the video was taken. She might still be there.
“Aubrey, wait!” my dad yelled.
I felt bad ignoring him, but I couldn’t make my feet stop. I needed to know why Chloe was here—-why she seemed to be working with Vorcos. I didn’t even care if the firefighters or other Vorcos workers saw me running across the parking lot. I just needed to know.
Quick footsteps chased after me. “Aubrey!”
It was Collin.
I saved my breath instead of responding. I needed it for running; I was already winded.
He caught up to me quickly and didn’t say a word, just ran beside me.
We reached the building a few moments later and turned the corner.
Chloe was there, typing on her cell phone. The emergency exit door was propped open behind her.
She startled, looking up at me. “What are you doing here?” She backed quickly into the open doorway.
“No!” I said, heaving words out between breaths as I chased after her. “Why are you?”
Collin and I ran inside to find Chloe standing just inside the door, staring at us in horror from the smoky hallway.
I sucked another breath. “Here, I mean. Why are you here?”
Trenchcoat Man and the others—all of them—flashed up in the grass outside a moment later, then ran inside to join us. With the whole group of them there, the exit behind us was blocked even though it was still open. We took up the whole width of the hallway.
Chloe stepped further back into the corridor. “I—I just—”
“This can’t really be you.” I grabbed the pill-box from my pocket, grabbed the hourglass, and flipped it.
But nothing changed. No disguises vanished. Chloe still looked like Chloe. I turned to Trenchcoat Man. “Maybe it’s another kind?”
He shook his head. “No. I just tried.” He slid his hand out from his coat.
“It’s not an illusion,” I said, dumbfounded—and heartbroken—as I turned back to face her. “Chloe?”
Mom and Dad stepped near me. I felt terrible that I’d ignored my dad yelling after me, but he didn’t seem mad. He seemed sad.
“Chloe, sweetheart,” he said gently. “What’s going on here?”
Chloe glanced at him, then she looked back at me and her face softened. “I’m so sorry, Aubrey. They sent me to befriend you after Emery went off our radar, and… I do like you, Aubrey. I didn’t want to hurt you. But I—”
“You’re working with them?” Fury ripped through my chest. “With the people who took my sister?!”
“No,” Trenchcoat Man said thoughtfully. “She’s not working with them. She is one of them. It’s your father, am I right? He’s the one in charge, the one doing all this?”
Chloe’s expression shuttered.
“But Chloe doesn’t have a dad,” I said, glancing between the two of them. “He left before she was born, and she never…”
“That’s not true,” Chloe interrupted. “He came and found me a few years ago, and told me who I am. Mom doesn’t know. She still thinks he was a deadbeat who left us.” A bitter laugh escaped her as she gestured at the warehouse and building. “She has no idea I’m the heir to all this.”
I stared at her, fighting back tears. “Then our friendship was all a lie? The sleepovers, the study sessions… Devin at the ice cream place? All of it?”
Chloe sighed. “No, not all of it. I just—I didn’t expect to like being friends with you, Aubrey. I came here with a job to do, but I swear, once I got to know you I never wanted you to get hurt. I was just there to gather information, and to make sure you didn’t know too much… to make sure you wouldn’t get in the way.”
My fury spiked. “But all that time, you knew my sister was—” I clenched my fists and forced a breath. “Where is she, Chloe?” I growled. “What did you do with her?”
“No!” Chloe said. “I didn’t have anything to do with that. And I’m sorry—I don’t know where she is.”
I stared at her. She looked sincere… but then, what did I know? I’d thought she was actually my best friend.
“I really don’t know,” she said. “My father just told me to watch you and report back, and to make sure you didn’t question your sister’s death too much, or ever mention Vorcos. I’m not an idiot. I put two and two together enough to realize he must’ve been involved with what happened to Emery, somehow, but I thought maybe—”
“You thought maybe what?” Collin interrupted. “That your dad was completely innocent and you should lie to your supposed best friend about her sister and about who you were?” His voice was tightly controlled, but his eyes were blazing with anger. “For two years?”
“No,” Chloe huffed out. “I just—” She drew a breath, then turned back to me. “I thought maybe Emery was on the run and he was looking for her. I knew she’d been poking around, having visions, experimenting with her magic… I thought maybe she had information that could harm Vorcos and what my dad’s been working on. I mean, her death was just so suspicious—I thought maybe she wanted to be missing and that she and you were both safer if you believed she had drowned.” She looked down. “Then I found out what he’s actually working on.”
So Chloe knew about the magic, too. She’d probably known before I did.
I was so furious I couldn’t speak.
“What is your father working on?” Trenchcoat Man asked.
“Something terrible,” Chloe muttered, then looked up at me. “I’m so sorry, Aubrey. The moment we became friends for real, I should’ve told you what I knew, but—he’s my dad.” She sighed. “I did come to see you as a real friend, but by then, I was scared that if I told you anything, he would—” She stopped, and looked away again. “I just didn’t think I had a choice.”
“Of course you did,” Lockley said, glaring at her. “People always do.”
I stared at Chloe for a long moment, trying to reconcile the girl in front of me with the order-barking young woman I’d seen in the video… and with my best friend from the past two years.
It just didn’t fit.
“I am sorry, Aubrey,” she said again, then glanced down at her phone. “Oh,” she said in a sinking voice. “He’ll be here any minute.” She looked up at me. “Go. I won’t tell him you were here.”
“Why should I believe that?” I spat. “Nothing else was real.”
Her eyes fell shut for a moment. “I deserve that.” She opened them again. “But please, go. He’s already mad that I ran that day at the ice cream place instead of luring you there like I was supposed to. If he finds you here now—”
“Wait. You were supposed to what?” I asked, but she never got a chance to answer me.
A broad-shouldered, tall man in a dark suit rounded the corner from the other end of the hallway—flanked by two bodyguards who looked so similar to each other that they could be twins.
“Seal the door,” the broad-shouldered man said. “We don’t want our guests leaving before we’ve welcomed them.”
The exit door slammed shut behind us.
***
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