The park was surprisingly well-lit for what amounted to a grassy field with roughly carved benches strewn about. An overflowing trashcan stood on one end of the entrance, abutting the street. Fireflies circled around the electric lamps that dotted the park.

Victoria had made it to their rendezvous point first. She looked up at the sound of footsteps, and waved to Jane. Jane was panting and her lungs were burning. She had run the entire way from the parking lot. No mean feat for a couch potato like her.

"How'd it go? I was texting you," Victoria said, scooting over to give Jane space on the bench.

Jane collapsed into the seat with a sigh. Her eyes were drawn to the fireflies as she thought of how best to phrase her experience.

"It was... scary," she said.

Victoria chuckled. "Did you find out whatever it was you needed to find out?"

"Yeah," Jane said. From her pocket, she produced the thumb drive with the intact copy of Beatrice's information.

Beatrice's weakness notwithstanding, Jane's mind flitted to the other tidbit of information she'd found.

"It wasn't what I was hoping for," Jane admitted, perhaps to herself.

"Why not?" Victoria was watching her closely.

Jane thought her friend seemed strangely invested in this, almost as much as Jane herself was. Or perhaps it was just curiosity. "Ryder's in on it. I think. Or, at least his dad is."

"His dad?" Victoria's eyebrows raised in surprise. "Sounds serious. What are you gonna do?"

Jane turned her eyes to the floor, thinking.

"I don't know yet. There's something more going on," Jane said.

"So does that mean you're gonna cancel?"

"Cancel what?"

"You know, your date. With Ryder." Victoria wiggled her shoulders in a cartoonishly suggestive way. She looked positively ridiculous.

Jane giggled, and poked her. The giggles abated as she considered Victoria's question seriously.

There was no doubt that the school would be alarmed now, especially with what amounted to vandalism of the principals office. If the school was alarmed, would Ryder's organization be as well?

How deep did this go, if adults like Ryder's father was involved? Who could she trust to help her, if she needed it?

Jane was chewing her lower lip. "What do you think I should do?"

Victoria smiled. "You should absolutely go! Maybe you could use it to get intel."

The giggles returned to Jane. "Intel?"

Victoria crossed her arms. "Yeah. Intel. What's wrong with that?"

"Okay, G.I. Joe," Jane teased.

"Ha-ha," Victoria said, sarcastically. "But hey, promise me something."

Jane looked up. "Okay. What is it?"

"Ask me for help if you need it. Come on, we've been friends for months. And you didn't tell me anything at all. Well, until today."

"I know. I'm sorry, I just..." Jane trailed off as she realized she didn't have a valid excuse. At least, one that didn't make her seem completely paranoid.

"I'm not blaming you," Victoria assured her. "I just wanna be in on this. With you."

Wordlessly smiling, Jane nodded.

Then Victoria inhaled, her chest puffing out. She whooped loudly, her voice carrying across the park. Jane could hear her inarticulate shout echoing through the trees.

"What are you doing?" Jane asked, mortified.

Even if they were the only people in the park, she still felt a tinge of embarrassment.

"Come on! We did it! We pulled it off!" Victoria whooped again, this time louder than the first.

Somewhere, a pair of pigeons flew off in surprise. The fireflies continued their aimless dance, unbothered by the noise.

Almost unconsciously, Jane found herself shouting along with her friend, a cathartic expulsion of wordless sound. Even with the effort of howling her lungs out, it felt like her exhaustion was filtering out through her mouth. She felt alive.

"Yeah!" Victoria cried.

Jane's breathing was heavy from the effort. She pulled her phone from her jeans and checked her notifications.

Worried texts from earlier tonight. That would be from Victoria.

A social media alert. And another text from her mother.

She bit her lower lip. She'd forgotten about her mother's errand.

The clock in the corner of her screen read that it was nearly midnight. Any second now, the high school's servers would wipe the camera recordings with their faces in them. They would have escaped without a trace. A perfect job.

Well, mostly perfect.

Jane rose to her feet, arms stretching overhead. "Man, I'm tired."

Victoria stood with her, noticeably less out of breath than she was. "Okay. I'll walk you home. It's on the way, anyway."

"Catch you at school tomorrow?" Victoria asked as they drew close to Jane's lawn.

"Tomorrow's Saturday," Jane replied.

Victoria must have incredibly been exhausted, much like Jane herself was. Their eyelids practically drooped.

"Oh yeah..." Victoria said. She moved a strand of hair from her eyes.

Jane stopped, turning to her friend beside her. They'd nearly reached her house.

"Hey, Vicky... thanks," she said.

"For what?"

"I never would've pulled it off without you," Jane said, truthfully.

She wasn't sure if she would have been brave enough to do it at all, if not for Victoria.

"Aww," Victoria crooned. Without warning, she squeezed Jane into a hug.

Jane's shoulders tightened instinctually for a moment. Slowly, she relaxed into Victoria's arms. She was surprisingly warm.

"I gotta get home. My parents are gonna kill me," she said, after a pause.

Victoria let her go. Jane looked up at her, grinning.

"Hey, don't forget the make-up tomorrow, okay?" Jane said, voice raised.

Victoria was already at the other end of the street, heading in the direction of her house.

"I won't!" she called. A dog barked in response, somewhere in the neighborhood.

Jane watched her go from the sidewalk, reluctant to return to her own house. To her dark room, to the smell of booze, to a cold shower behind a faded curtain.

With a sigh, she turned parallel to the sidewalk, resigning herself to trudge back home. In an instant, a dark SUV swerved around the corner, its windows tinted. The driver of the vehicle had his high-beams on, and Jane squinted at the sudden burst of light.

The car stopped next to her on the street, tires bouncing from the abrupt cessation of movement. With a squeal, the passenger-side window descended into the smooth metal of the door.

"Jane," a rough voice said from inside.

Eyes still recovering from the flash of light, Jane could barely make out the shape of a burly man from within the car. His leather jacket creaked as he reached across the seat and opened the passenger door.

"Back off. Don't- don't come close!" Jane's voice was a squeak, high and tight. She was already backing away from the curb.

Should she run? What was happening? Maybe she could scream. Maybe Victoria hadn't gotten that far. Maybe she would come back to help her.

The SUV's engine growled as its driver pressed the gas pedal.

"Jane. I said we need to meet. This was all the time I could get away from them," the man said.

Her eyes adjusted once more to the dark, she could make out the tattoo on his neck. A spiderweb, with an expletive overlaid atop it. The same man from earlier that day. Her legs, somehow, felt like jelly, yet were completely immobile. She could not bring herself to move them in any drastic capacity.

"I'll scream! Go away, please!" Jane said, managing to find a breath.

The man's bushy eyebrows furrowed. He scratched at the scruff lining his jaw with a single tattooed finger.

With a flick, he removed the keys from the ignition and shut off the engine. Free of the engine's guttural rumbling, the night sounded far too quiet. Far too isolated. Claustrophobic.

The door banged as the man exited the vehicle. Jane took another involuntary step back. Beads of sweat had begun to form on her palms, rapidly cooling in the breeze.

"Relax, I'm not gonna hurt you," the man said.

He raised his hands above his head in a gesture of harmlessness, though this succeeded in only terrifying Jane further. Her eyes flew to a leather holster, hidden beneath his jacket. The metal of a well-polished gun shone with the light from the street lamps.

"My house is just down the road, don't- don't do anything," Jane stuttered out.

The truth was, she didn't think she could outrun the man if she tried. Or outrun a bullet, for the matter.

He glanced in the direction of her house, then back at her. "Yeah, I know. Your boyfriend had a few words for me."

"My boyfriend? Wait, what do you want from me?" Jane asked.

He seemed surprised at that. As if out of habit, his hands reached into his pocket, making Jane flinch. She was relieved to see that he was only withdrawing a packet of cigarettes.

"The Jackson syndicate. Whatever you're doing, you got 'em spooked. They're digging up everything they can about you, as quietly as they can," he said. With a deft movement, he flicked a cigarette from the carton and lit it.

Somewhere, behind her sense of immediate danger, in the back of Jane's mind, she couldn't help but feel vindicated. She wasn't entirely paranoid, then. Of course, all that she had dug up confirmed she was right, but it was still nice for someone else to acknowledge it.

"But why? What are they?" she asked. She realized she could feel her legs again. The unsteady, jelly-like feeling had dissipated.

The man gestured expansively, his arms wide. The gun glimmered beneath his jacket again. "They're everything. You name it. Drugs, guns, hell, people sometimes."

"People?"

"Oh yeah, people. The real bad stuff. Things only the cartels are crazy enough to do. And they only do that outside of the States. Jackson is pure scum."

Jane blinked. She'd known they were doing illegal things, but not to such an extent. Was she in over her head?

"So who are you?" she asked.

"I'm- sorta a cop," the man said. "My name's Watson."

Jane blinked again. It was such an ordinary name, it hardly fitted him at all. Her palms had stopped sweating. The night breeze, though it had made her shiver earlier, she no longer noticed. Her mind was zipping though conclusions and questions once more.

The man continued his explanation, filling the silence. "I'm embedded with them. Just low level stuff. I can't get near Jackson, or his associates. But I'm in deep enough to notice their movement. When they hide, when they run. That sorta thing."

Jane nodded, following along. She wasn't entirely sure she believed him yet, though.

"Thing is, I haven't seen 'em scared like they are of you. They're thinking you got info that could hurt them. Bad. They'll come for you."

Alarm bells went off in her head at the warning, but Jane only shrugged, racking her brain for anything she might have missed. "I don't have anything on them. I just heard a conversation between Ryder and Beatrice. Nothing else."

The thumb-drive practically burned in her pocket. An overheard conversation, and the only intact copy of Beatrice's emergency contacts. That was the extent of what she had. Was that really enough to put Jane on their radar? What was it about Beatrice's contacts that they wanted to cover up so badly?

Watson took a puff of his cigarette. "A conversation, huh? With Ryder? Jackson's kid?"

"Yeah, I think he's involved, somehow. I don't know for sure, yet."

The tattooed man nodded, slowly. He seemed to be deep in thought.

"Makes sense. Keep the kids hooked and you got the whole town under your thumb," he muttered to himself, almost too quietly for Jane to hear.

"He wants to see me. Tomorrow. Er- I mean later tonight," Jane said.

Now Watson focused on her fully, his eyebrows heavy over the cigarette. "See you? What do you mean?"

Jane looked away, her cheeks coloring somewhat. "I think he just wants to hang out. Like, as friends. Or something."

The man nodded again. "That's good. Friends, or something. That's good, we can use that. Find out what he knows. You need to act before they close in. It's the only way to surviv-"

Jane cut him off impulsively. "I know. That's what I was planning."

For the second time, the policeman looked surprised. "Huh. You're something else, aren't you?" He seemed to be reappraising her. "Why are you looking into them? Shouldn't you be studying for exams or something?"

Jane looked away, finding she had no response to the question. "Why should I trust you, anyway? How do I know you're not gonna rat me out?"

This gave him pause. He scratched at the stubble on his jaw. "You don't need to trust me, or even work with me," he said. "But, look at it this way. You're just some computer-whiz kid. There's things I can do from the inside that you can't. We can help each other out."

The wobbly feeling was returning. "How do you know about the hacking?" she asked.

He paused mid-inhale, as if caught. "Like I said. I'm in with them. I hear what they hear."

Jane kept her face as straight as possible, though she felt anything but calm. There was the feeling again, a warning bell going off in her mind.

She was so sure she'd covered her tracks. As far as she could tell, there was nobody as good as her in Alexander. Nobody that could possibly sniff her out. Asides from her stunt tonight, she'd remained as incognito as possible. Completely under the radar. How would they have 'heard' about her activities?

"So, are you in or what, Jane?" the man said. He was checking his watch, as if he had somewhere to be at nearly one in the morning.

She didn't trust him. Not one bit.

But he was right. She was just a skinny teenager with a laptop. She was, undoubtedly, in over her head. Watson looked like he could handle himself, if she needed him to. She dearly hoped it would never come to that.

"Okay. I'll help you," she said.

Watson smiled, though he seemed a tad confused. "Well, that was easier than I thought it would be."

Jane crossed her arms, her messenger bag hugging her waist. "On one condition."

His smile grew wider, as if he had been expecting that. He nodded, slowly. "Yeah, sure, what is it?"

"I'm gonna need access to police equipment. And every file you have on the Jacksons."

He cleared his throat. "Look, it's not going to be that easy. How am I gonna explain to the other cops-"

"You know, I could walk away. I'm just a kid, you can't legally make me do anything," Jane said, interrupting him. She was surprised at her own daring, but kept her poker face intact.

He sighed. Cigarette spent, it fell to the pavement.

"Alright," Watson said. "I'll get you what you want."