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Even the Institute had been glad there had been only one Wendy. She'd be ten this year. I'd seen what she could do at seven. I didn't want to know what she could do now.

But I could do something too. It was more mundane and might not work as well, but if it got the SUV off our trail, that was good enough. “Hold the wheel again,” I heard Stefan say as I dived back into the backseat for one of my bags this time. “Let me take a few shots at the son of a bitch.”

With this being more of a hiking trail than a road, we were bouncing roughly up and down. Stefan was a great shot, but under these conditions, it would be hard to make a shot that would count. Luckily, I had something that took less accuracy than a bullet. “Wait,” I said as I unzipped the bag and pulled out two gray cylinders. “I have something better.” I dropped one into my lap, rolled down the window, leaned out, set the detonator, and tossed the first one. It blew up one of the back tires of the SUV. The second one took out a front one. First, the vehicle spun, sending clouds of dirt and clumps of grass into the air, before tipping over on to one side. No one got out as long as we were in sight, but the shadowy figure inside was moving. If he was Hugo Raynor, with his impressive resume, I assumed he'd have more guns and be better with them than the sandwich guy who obviously had worked for him. Without a better view of what Raynor was doing and how he was armed, we were best to leave it and be happy with one SUV dead in the water.

I smiled in satisfaction. “Guns are for boys. High explosives are for men.”

Stefan didn't seem as satisfied.

“Bombs? You were making pipe
bombs
?” he demanded incredulously as he drove on.

“Garages don't blow themselves up,” I pointed out with some exasperation at his lack of gratitude. “And they're not pipe bombs so much as proactive explosive measures. Little pipe bombs,” I emphasized. “You know . . . just in case.” With electrical detonation devices—very simple. Military detonation cord wasn't as quick as I might need it to be. “They're really quite easy to make. Too easy. They should be more responsible with the information on the Internet. . . .”

“You told me that equipment was for your genetic research”—I think he hit a rock on purpose as my head smacked the inside roof of the car—“to find a cure for the rest of the kids. You lied to me, Michael Lukas Korsak.”

“I didn't lie,” I shot back. “I said that the equipment was to help me find a cure. I didn't say
all
the equipment was to help me find a cure. Some of it could be used to save our lives too.”

“And you didn't think that was worth mentioning? You running an armory behind our house?” Stefan gritted his teeth. “I swear, when we switch cars, I'm going to take a minute to beat you like a redheaded stepchild.”

“I didn't not mention it. It didn't come up, that's all.” Yes, a fine line, but it was my line and I was stubbornly walking it. “And why do people have a dislike for people with red hair? I've heard that saying once or twice since moving here. Why would their hair color make them the targets of violence?”

“Not the time, and you know it's just some old saying. Don't think I don't recognize your version of smart-ass, Michael.”

“Misha,” I insisted again.

“And what's with that? We're running from who the hell knows and you're worried about your nickname?”

“Michael is the Institute. Misha is free. I'm free and I'm staying that way. I'm a man now, a new person, and Misha will remind me of that. I don't want their name anymore.” But I couldn't go back to Lukas. That would be as wrong. I wasn't ever going to get my memories of Lukas's first seven years back, not to mention what I'd discovered in my research. I couldn't be that person. I couldn't be Lukas. I was Misha and only Misha now, for good. I was me, finally finished, finally recovered from the Institute, finally real. They weren't getting me back and they could keep their damn Peter Pan name.

“Fine. Misha the Mighty.” The car bounced again and I heard the muffler hit one rock too many and it was gone behind us. “You got it. Now put that mighty brain to use and figure out how Raynor, and whoever the fuck he works for, found us.”

I didn't have to put my brain to work. I knew. In a flash of inspiration . . . and subconscious brilliant deduction—a given—I knew. “Anatoly and you, Stefan. You both told him where we were.”

Raynor was smart all right. Too smart. And we hadn't tried to finish him off when we had the chance. It was a thought I wouldn't have had three years ago—when I hadn't known what it was to have a real life. I wasn't ashamed I had the thought now. I'd learned a lot since that time. Life and death . . . It was the cycle of the world. For someone to live, someone had to die—especially if that person was trying to take your life, be it mental or physical.

And me?

I wanted to live.

The hell with the Institute and their lies about what I was and what I could never be.

I wanted to live.

“W
e need to take the 84. We're heading southeast toward the Burns Paiute Indian Reservation,” I told Stefan. I had the route memorized, but I handed him the map from the glove compartment. Stefan didn't like GPS. He thought all the voices were annoying, and when I programmed in HAL from
2001: A Space Odyssey
, he tossed it out the window and drove over it. I'd known Stefan wasn't technically . . . adept. That was the best and politest way to put it, but I didn't know he was afraid of killer computers.

I thought they were rather entertaining myself. There was no explaining taste.

He snatched the map. “Burns? Why the hell are we going to . . . wait. What the fuck. How did Anatoly and I give away our location? How the hell did you come up with that?”

Burns was one of my nine—technically, ten—backup plans if Canada didn't work out, but Stefan didn't seem in the mood to appreciate that right now, and I couldn't blame him. “Raynor must've found Anatoly,” I said. “And as smart as he appears to be, Anatoly was smart too. It must have taken Raynor about”—I calculated—“up until four weeks ago to find him. Almost three years.”

“But I told you, kiddo, I made sure Anatoly never knew where we were. Never knew where our money was, didn't know our account numbers in the Caymans. Raynor couldn't have found us through him.” The car bumped again and I thought I heard something else fall off. I let Stefan's “kiddo” go. He was running on autopilot, but that would have to change in the future.

“But he did know one thing . . . all the properties he owned and used to hide in. He knew about the beach house where we were shot. Raynor must have gone to every one of them once Anatoly told.” And anyone would tell eventually, no matter how
Mafiya
tough, when a saw was cutting through their bone. I cleared my throat. “Raynor would've gone to every single one and dusted for prints, then entered them in AFIS.” This was a collection of fingerprints from a number of criminals and certain occupational workers.

How he became fixated on Anatoly to begin with was a mystery, unless he hung around Miami at the time of my rescue. While Jericho chased us, he'd investigated how the Institute had been discovered to begin with. With his clearance, he could've gone from the police to the FBI to see if anything peculiar had happened at the same time Stefan had taken me. He could've heard about a certain mob assassination, a missing mobster named Stefan Korsak. Stefan hadn't killed his boss, but everyone thought he had. There would be boards covered with pictures, family connections, and maybe the mention and photo of another Korsak brother, long gone—a little boy with bicolored eyes.

Blue and green, like all of Jericho's children.

If Raynor was as smart as I thought he was, he might have taken a chance on a wild-card hunch like that. “He would've kept them classified,” I went on about the fingerprints. “He's Homeland. He can do that. But he would've had them, just waiting for one to pop up.”

“Ah, shit.” Stefan pounded his head once against the steering wheel. “And my stupid ass fucks up trying to blend in and be Harry-the-Handyman, good guy, up for a bar fight, who gets arrested and printed. Two weeks. Two goddamn weeks and he's probably been here watching us at least half that time. Brought along a buddy, not Homeland, but trained. That shithead was trained to fight and kill. He sends him in to annoy you day after day to see what you'll do. Make sure he has the right kid.” I had changed a lot in the past three years—I had my contact that changed the color of my one blue eye to match the green. I was taller, my hair darker, enough for there to be some initial doubt, although with my living with Harry/Stefan as my brother, not more than a molecule of it. “He did it to see if he could trigger you.”

“And he did,” I said quietly. “That means I fucked up too and maybe worse than you.”

“I don't think so”—he gave my shoulder a light push—“but if you want to share, let's say we both screwed up and you tell me why the hell we're going to the Burns Indian Reservation. Assuming the car holds together to make it to the interstate. The pipe bombs we will talk about later—I haven't forgotten. But why the reservation?”

“Oh, the reservation?” Actually, he probably was going to forget about the pipe bombs. “That's where the plane is. Didn't I mention that before?”

“Plane? What plane?” he demanded.

“Our plane.”

“Our plane? Since when do we have a plane?” His fingers were slowly beginning to whiten as his grip tightened on the steering wheel.

“Since I bought one,” I replied as if it were the most obvious of answers.

I could see his jaw tightening now as he tried to hold on to his temper. In the beginning, when he'd rescued me, taught me how to live in the real world, taught me . . . hell . . . everything (even cursing), he was nothing but patient. He was the most patient, protective ex-mobster you could find, because he knew how damaged I was, which I think might have been only marginally more damaged than he was from guilt and despair. Not once in almost two years did he ever snap or lose his temper with me, even if I deserved it—
especially
if I deserved it. But after two years, he went from treating me as a phantom brother who would disappear at any moment and started treating me like a real brother.

It turned out that I liked that. After two years, I wanted to be given a verbal ass kicking when I deserved it, I wanted to pay off the half-blown-up garage with my paycheck from the coffeehouse, despite our having money in offshore accounts, I wanted all of that. Why? Because that meant no matter how annoying I was and how quickly Stefan would make sure I paid the price, he always had my back. He protected me from anyone and anything.

Blood is thicker than delinquent behavior.

And while that wasn't one hundred percent correct, I took it. Good, bad, and all that came between, Stefan would always be my brother, my family, and that was something. . . . That was really something.

“Since you
bought
one? Why did you buy a plane? How did you buy a plane? Who's going to fly the plane if we need a plane?” Stefan demanded. Now I could hear his teeth grinding at the end of the last question. I tried not to smile, but it was entertaining . . . just a little. That didn't make me a bad person. I simply found amusement where I could. That made me emotionally healthy and I could write a two-hundred-thousand-word paper to prove it.

“I bought one in case some of our other backup plans didn't work, and Raynor cancels out at least three of them. I bought it with the money from the Caymans. Who does our banking, remember? You're horrible with numbers. That was why that old lady hit you with her cane when you were in the ten-items-only line with sixteen items.” I crossed my arms and Godzilla came slithering out from under the seat to paw at the glove compartment. He knew where the goodies were. “Besides, it's only a Cessna.”

“Only a Cessna? Damn it, Michael, Misha, whatever. The government tracks that sort of thing, especially since 9/11.”

“No problem. It was a totally illegal and untraceable purchase. I have quite a few friends of that sort on the Internet, but that time I went to your friend Saul. I told him not to tell you, that it was a surprise. He thought that was pretty hilarious.” “Goddamn fucking hilarious” was what he'd actually said. “Then I found one of my friends from the Net who said there were a few people with flexible morals at the Burns Indian Reservation who would hide it for us in case we needed it.” Like now. With Raynor, we definitely needed a plane, because he was going to the same place we were: the Institute. Not that he'd think we'd go there. I imagined he thought that was the very last place we'd go. A man like him wouldn't understand trying to save what you could own instead. No, he knew it was the best place to get his own fresh-fromthe-oven baked assassin, a special one, because he'd seen what I could do when merely annoyed by a fake tourist. He wanted to be prepared. He didn't know I wouldn't use what I had in me to kill . . . that I wasn't like him or Jericho.

I hoped.

“
What?
They're hiding a plane? Jesus, they'll think we're terrorists, and hauling around pipe bombs isn't going to help with that impression.” His knuckles were bone white now, and he was going to get hoarse soon if his voice became any louder.

“No, don't be ridiculous. I thought about that, so I told them we're drug dealers,” I said with the complacent certainty I had in any of the plans I'd thought up. The Institute had taken my life, but they had taught me to plan like a son of a bitch. More cursing. It seemed I only needed adrenaline to bring it out in me. I probably shouldn't have been pleased by that accomplishment, but I was.