B003J5UJ4U EBOK (29 page)

Cheater walked past me. I froze Bowdler’s other arm, and his legs, so he couldn’t do anything.

“I don’t even need to read his mind,” Cheater said. “He’s a lousy bluffer. His right eye twitches every time he lies.” He moved closer and leaned toward Bowdler. “Yeah. Total bluff. And such a filthy mind. You wouldn’t believe the names he’s calling you.”

Cheater backed away. Bowdler glared at me. “If you love your country, you’d come with me.”

“I love my country. I hate what you’ve done in its name. Kidnapping. Fraud. Lots of stuff I don’t even know about. All for money. You’re just as bad as our enemies. Maybe worse.”

“We need to find the pin,” Flinch said.

“Now who could do that?” Martin walked up to Lucky, took him gently by the arm and led him away from Bowdler. “How you doing?”

Lucky groaned, then said, “Not too good. Kinda fuzzy. He made me drink some stuff before we came here.”

“You think you could find something for us?” Martin asked.

Lucky nodded, then staggered past Bowdler. He walked four or five feet to Bowdler’s left, then bent over and reached down to the grass. He brought the pin to Martin, who put it back in the grenade.

I yanked the grenade from Bowdler’s hand. I didn’t want to have to worry about it, so I moved it all the way across the field, raised it high in the air, then pulled the pin again and let go of the handle. The grenade exploded instantly.

“Cool,” Torchie said.

“Not cool if it happened near us,” Martin said.

“You loved that, Eddie,” Bowdler said. “You like destroying things. And you’re a natural at it. That’s why you need to come with me.”

“I don’t need to do anything. It’s over. You’ve lost.”

Bowdler shook his head. “It’s not over. You haven’t won anything. Face reality, Eddie. You know you have no other choice.”

“Shut up!” I lashed out and snapped his nose. I’m not sure which of us was more surprised. His body jerked, but I held his hands out to either side.

Through gritted teeth, he said, “You’re just like me.”

“No I’m not!” I broke his left thumb. It made a louder snap than his nose. As he winced, I thought about the scanner I’d pulled apart in that office building.

“Just like me …” Blood flowed from both nostrils.

“No way.” I broke his right thumb. A body isn’t held together any better than a machine. I glanced at the guys. I could tell from their faces that they’d stand by me no matter what I did.

“Like me …” Bowdler said.

“No …” I stood on the verge between violence and mercy. I wanted to hurt him a lot more. I wanted to pull every joint in his body out of its socket and make him my marionette.
Dance for me, Bowdler.
I wanted to pay him back for all that he’d done to me and my family.

But the desire itself made me feel sick.
Count the cost.
That was one of my father’s favorite expressions. In all his years of buying companies, in all the business deals he’d told me about, he’d never cost a single worker his job. Maybe, some day, if the time ever came to share my secret with my parents, I’d tell him about this moment. And before I even reached the end of the story, he’d know what I’d decided. The cost was too high.

“Torchie, stop the bleeding.”

Bowdler shuddered again as Torchie cauterized his nose.

“So, what do we do with him?” Flinch asked.

“I don’t know.” I couldn’t kill him. It’s one thing to lash out in anger. It’s another to become an executioner. I couldn’t turn him over to the police. There was no way I could testify against him without revealing my own secrets. I couldn’t let him go. If he ever got his hands on me, or the guys, he’d do far worse to us than snap a bit of bone and cartilage.

“We have to make sure he never has a chance to hurt any of us again,” I said.

“I’ve got the video,” Flinch reminded me.

“We’ve got a lot of documents,” Martin said.

“That’s good, but it’s not enough,” I said. I’d seen it on the news. People did all sorts of bad stuff and never got punished. I had to find some way to show that Bowdler had been behind my fake death. And we had to deliver him to the right place, in the right way. I needed to cover him with so much dirt that he’d never get clean.

“We have to take him to Washington,” I said.

“All right!” Martin said. “Road trip!”

“No way. You’re not driving any of us anywhere until you get your license.”

“Then how?” Flinch asked.

I looked over my shoulder and shouted, “We could use a hand.”

“Who are you talking to?” Cheater asked.

“You’ll see.” Earlier, when we were walking across the field, I’d caught the tiniest motion out of the corner of my eye. He wasn’t being sloppy. I figured he wanted me to know he was there.

A moment later, someone came shuffling out of the shadows.

Torchie yelped when he recognized Thurston. The rest of the guys gasped. I wasn’t surprised, but I was glad.

“He’s dead,” Torchie said. “I saw it myself.”

“You think we’re the only ones with a hidden talent?” I asked.

It had to be that way. No normal person could have survived what I did to him. When I first saw him alive, back when we were locked in those cells, I’d been so happy to
learn he wasn’t dead—to learn I wasn’t a murderer—that I hadn’t let myself think too much about it.

“You are a tough old coot,” I said when Thurston got close enough so we could speak without shouting.

“But a careless one,” he said. “I should have searched our captive more carefully for weapons. If I’d found the other knife, he wouldn’t be dead, now.”

“At least you’re alive.”

He nodded. “A stab wound heals a lot quicker than a chest full of broken ribs. But I wouldn’t recommend either one.”

“Sorry about that,” I said.

“No hard feelings. We all strike back when we’re attacked.”

I pointed past him. “Were you just going to stand there in the dark and watch?”

“You seemed to be doing fine.” He pulled a plastic strip from his pocket, then walked over to Bowdler and fastened his wrists behind his back. “Douglas, we need to rethink our partnership.”

He patted Bowdler down, pulled a knife from a sheath on his ankle and a gun from a holster on his hip, then said, “I’m not making that mistake again. Fool me once …”

“I think I know what to do.” I told him my plan. “What do you think? You’re the expert.”

“I like it. Our friend with the knives lived near here. I’m sure I can find some evidence of his part in faking your death. Guys like that always dream of writing a novel or a film script. He’ll have left a paper trail. On a happier subject, this afternoon my contacts in Belgium put your parents
on a plane back here. They’ll be landing at Philly in about two hours, overjoyed at the news that you’re alive.”

Thurston led us to the side of the school, where a large, dark car was parked. He popped the trunk and pushed Bowdler toward it. “You don’t get to ride with the cool kids.”

Bowdler, for once, was silent.

We got in the car with Thurston. “You don’t mind dropping him off?” I asked.

“It would be my pleasure. As for you, back to Chinatown?”

“Yeah. Thanks.” I didn’t bother to ask him how he knew where we’d gone. “Are we really safe?”

“For now. Until you slip up again.”

“Maybe I won’t. You’ve kept your secret, right?”

“Mostly. The time or two when someone found out about it, they never got a chance to spread the news.”

I didn’t follow up on that. I’d had enough espionage and death for the moment. But I could just imagine the surprised look on some bad guy’s face when he discovered how hard Thurston was to kill.

Instead, I asked him something I’d been wondering about ever since he’d told me he’d been part of a government project. “Why did you get involved with the search for psi in the first place?”

“What better way to keep a secret than to be the one hunting for it?” Thurston pulled over by the restaurant.

“I’ll get the files for you. It’ll just take a minute to burn a disk.” Cheater hopped out of the car and raced up to the apartment.

“Your parents are on flight seven from Brussels, coming in at eleven
PM
,” Thurston said. “I assume you can find your way back to the airport.”

I started to answer, then just smiled and nodded. I guess he knew how I’d gotten Bowdler’s attention. Maybe he’d followed us the whole time. I reached out to shake his hand. His grip was firm. As we shook, he stared right in my eyes. I felt he was looking deep down inside of me, to see whether he could trust me with his secret.

The grip tightened briefly. Then he let go. “Take care of yourself, Edward.” He glanced over his shoulder to the back seat. “You fellows, too. Don’t worry. Our friend in the trunk isn’t going to be in any position to bother you again. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have some documents to forge, an apartment to search, and a long drive ahead of me. After which, I suspect I’ll have to take a serious look at planning my retirement.”

We waited until Cheater came back. Then we got out of the car, and I watched Thurston drive off. As we walked into the apartment, I asked Lucky, “Did the voices ever go away?”

“Yeah. When I was with that guy at the field,” he said. “But they came back after the girl ran up to us. I hope she found her dog. She was kind of cute.”

“No she wasn’t!” Torchie shouted.

While Flinch slapped out a small fire that had burst into life on the living room table, I pulled the disrupter out of my pocket, switched it on, and put it in Lucky’s pocket, along with the remote switch. He blinked. Then his jaw dropped.
He looked around, as if something had been snatched out from under his nose.

“Gone?” I asked.

“Yeah.”

“Good. Don’t worry. This time, they’re not coming back.”

winding down

I HAD A
little time before I had to leave for the airport. “I still feel bad,” I said. “If I hadn’t been fooling around at the bank, nobody would have ever known about us.”

“Hey, it worked out fine,” Martin said. “If you hadn’t been fooling around, Lucky wouldn’t have the disrupter.”

“Any of us could have messed up,” Flinch said. “Don’t blame yourself.”

Torchie picked up his accordion and squeezed a pathetic gasp of a note from it. “I mess up all the time. My whole family does. But things come out okay. I just wish I could make some music.”

We hung out, talked, and promised to do a better job of keeping in touch. I gave Cheater money to help replace the appliances we’d fried. Cheater told Torchie he could stay with him at the apartment instead of living in that lousy hotel room while he was at accordion camp. And he told Lucky he could make him another disrupter if this one ever broke. Flinch promised to get us all front-row seats the next time he performed. The four of them said they’d bring Lucky back to the hospital since he was still feeling a little shaky about
facing the world right away. We all swore we’d always be there for each other. There was no need to make another oath. Enough blood had already been spilled.

We were interrupted by a light knock. Then the door opened and Livy poked her head inside. “Hey, Dennis, is your cute friend still here?”

Five minds filled with fantasies. I’m ashamed to admit I actually briefly wondered whether I had to meet my parents’ plane, or just catch up with them after they got home. Before she could turn me into the worst son in the world, Livy walked over to Torchie, smiled, and said, “Hi. I felt bad that your accordion was broken. I know how important music is. I went to the pawn shop to look for one, but they didn’t have any. So I got you something else.” She held up a large box.

Torchie reached inside and pulled out a bagpipe. “Awesome!” he said. “Let’s figure out how to play it.”

“Cool,” Livy said.

Torchie and Livy started talking and examining the bagpipe. Flinch slipped over to the table next to Torchie and removed several magazines that had begun to smolder while I stamped out a couple small sparks that had appeared on the rug. Then Flinch came over to me and whispered, “Maybe I should add music to my act.”

“Maybe we all should.” I realized I was in no danger of missing the plane. I wasn’t the guy Livy wanted to hang out with. But apparently, neither was Torchie. After they’d chatted for a couple minutes, she walked over and tapped Martin on the shoulder.

I glanced over at Torchie. He seemed to be perfectly happy
squeezing a cloth bag under his arm and filling the air with the sound of dying cattle.

“So you like to play video games?” she asked.

“Love them,” he said.

“Me, too. I usually don’t play with guys, because they can’t stand losing to a girl. But you’ve been so nice.” She flashed him that smile that made all of us melt. “I think it’s so cute the way you keep bumping into things. Most guys try to act so tough and macho, it makes me want to scream. Hey, wanna play some games tonight?”

“Sure,” Martin said. “I just have to say goodbye to my friend.”

I realized he was right—it was time to say goodbye. It was tough to leave, but I was pretty sure I’d see each of them soon enough.

“It’s been awesome,” Cheater said as I headed out the door. “All of us together. You know, six is a magic number. It’s equal to the sum of its divisors. Not counting itself, of course.”