Delusion Road (30 page)

Keegan flushed, embarrassed. “Yeah, well, I was wrong. She’s a lot more than that.”

The teacher gave him a wan smile. “Most people are. It’s in our nature to project the persona we most want others to see. We play our cards close to our chest, keep the innermost parts of ourselves hidden. We all have secrets. I’m sure you do, too.”

Keegan flushed again, but not from embarrassment this time. He said nothing, letting the teacher’s observation hang in the air.

Richardson didn’t seem to notice, his eyes returning to the pen in his hand. “It’s unprofessional of me to be talking with you about another student, but I think it’s warranted in this case. That scene in the hallway this morning raised a red flag for me. I think Wynn’s dangerous.”

Keegan cleared his throat. “Look, I understand your not wanting to get on his bad side—”

It’s not me I’m concerned about, Keegan. I wouldn’t be much
of a teacher if I let a student’s intimidation keep me from doing the right thing.”

Afraid he’d offended the man, Keegan was about to apologize when Richardson continued, “I’m way out of line telling you this, Keegan, but there’s something I believe you need to know.”

G
riff hated the car he was driving, its cherry-red exterior almost as loud as its sound-enhancing muffler. He’d have preferred stealing something far less flashy, but there were too many people coming and going in that airport parking garage for him to be choosy. He’d checked out three different levels but grew worried that his continued circling of vehicles would draw the attention of whoever was monitoring the surveillance cameras, so he’d settled on the car parked farthest from the elevator on the third level, a Dodge Charger that looked—and sounded—like something out of the
Fast and Furious
film franchise. It had power to spare but it rode like a bitch, thunking along as though suspension had been an afterthought. Of course, the condition of the highway didn’t help, one section of it so rough Griff felt like he was navigating an obstacle course as he swerved to avoid potholes. Apparently, whatever passed for public works in Nova Scotia didn’t earmark much cash for road repair.

Listening to the throaty rumble of the muffler above the whine of pavement beneath the tires, Griff let his mind roam back over the events that had brought him to this point. Last night when he’d confirmed his facial recognition algorithm had gotten its first solid hit, he’d read and reread the Facebook page
the software had pulled up and wondered what the fuck any of it meant. At the same time, he’d cursed himself for not considering the possibility that the target and his sons had left the country. After they’d vanished, Griff had scoured only American employment and education databases; if he’d widened his search to include similar databases in Canada, he might have located them long before this. He blamed this oversight on his FRA’s failure to ping their passport photos when they crossed the border, but he could guess now why that had happened: high-level intervention. He wouldn’t make that mistake again.

He’d been pissed at having to postpone meeting Talia, but finishing this job was a priority so, sitting there in the Cheesecake Factory, he’d pulled up on his laptop all the airlines with flights departing to Halifax from O’Hare. There were no seats available on any of the direct routes, but an Air Canada flight to Toronto was leaving in just over an hour, and he could continue on to Halifax in the morning. He hated the delay, but he’d booked the flight anyway, paid for his dessert, and then called a cab to take him to the airport.

He hadn’t had time to return to his apartment to pack anything, but he’d learned early in his work for Morozov the importance of keeping a set of fake IDs on him, complete with passport and cloned credit card, so he’d had no problem boarding the flight as Leo Forrester from Dixon, Illinois. He’d gotten some strange looks from O’Hare Security when his only luggage was his laptop case, which contained an interesting item in addition to his computer, but no one commented on it, and he had Morozov to thank for that, too.

While waiting for his taxi outside the Cheesecake Factory,
Griff had called Morozov to update him and, at the same time, raise the issue of his firearm. In the past, he’d never had to travel more than a couple of hours to perform a hit, which meant he’d been able to take his Smith & Wesson with him in whatever car he’d stolen. Griff thought of that gun as a natural extension of his body, and he didn’t like the idea of going after the target without it. He could, he’d told Morozov, leave it in a locker at O’Hare and steal a gun in Nova Scotia, but that would almost certainly increase his kill time, especially since he’d heard that firearms were harder to come by in Canada. There were, of course, other options, but there was no longer any point in trying to make the hits look like accidents—the distance between Illinois and Nova Scotia meant that local authorities wouldn’t immediately connect the killings to Morozov, and Griff planned to make the bodies unidentifiable once he was finished with them anyway. After all, the target’s prolonged vanishing act had caused Griff considerable misery, so payback was going to be a bitch.

As Griff had expected, Morozov was thrilled to learn the target had been located—so much so, in fact, that his voice had briefly taken on an almost human quality. Even more surprising was his offer to handle the problem of the firearm, which he did by making a phone call. It turned out that his “well-placed associate” had the means of adding an interesting credential to Leo Forrester’s profile: air marshal, one of those in-flight security officers whose position entitled him to carry a gun on a plane. Grateful that he looked old enough to hold a position like that, Griff couldn’t help but wonder who the hell this associate might be and what hold Morozov had over him. It had to be more than money that got co-operation like that. Blackmail? Probably.

After purchasing onboard Internet service with his cloned credit card, Griff had spent the first leg of his journey checking out his destination. He was pleased to learn that Brookdale, located in western Nova Scotia, was a small town—good news because Griff had no specific address for the target. But since everybody would know everybody else in a community that size, finding him there wouldn’t be too big an obstacle.

Griff had worried he might have a problem with his Smith & Wesson at Toronto’s Pearson Airport—security at international arrivals was understandably tight—but Morozov’s associate had come through again. A customs official checked the digital document on Griff’s phone and compared it with what appeared on her computer, then waved him through, even thanking him for the important work he was doing keeping people safe. It was all Griff could do to keep from busting a gut.

He could have checked into a hotel but chose, instead, to spend the night in the airport. He figured he wouldn’t get much sleep anyway—he was pumped about finally getting to off the guy he’d been tracking for months—so he’d stretched out across five seats in the departure lounge, the gun hidden beneath his left arm. Surprisingly, he dozed fairly well until his usual nightmare yanked him trembling from sleep. But he would’ve had that regardless of where he was.

He’d been relieved when his flight out of Toronto left on time and, shortly after takeoff, he’d again purchased Internet service, this time to check out upcoming events at the Garfield Park Conservatory. He was hoping to find something he could take Talia to see there. Then, his mind already on flowers, he’d googled plants native to eastern Canada and was surprised to learn that
lady’s slippers were found in undeveloped areas across the region. In fact, Prince Edward Island, a tiny province in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, had chosen the lady’s slipper as its official flower.

Reading that, Griff had sat back in his window seat staring out at the clouds and thinking of Clovis Lafayette. Apparently, he’d up and vanished from Camelot Trailer Park and was never seen again. The police had come to the Idlewood Home for Boys a couple of times shortly after Clovis’s disappearance and asked Griff about him, having learned they were friends, but Griff had just shrugged, said he hadn’t seen the old guy for a while. Which was, in fact, the truth.

Griff’s plane had arrived in Halifax a few minutes early, one o’clock Chicago time but three o’clock local time, and fifteen minutes later he was on the road. Driving west along Nova Scotia’s Highway 101 now, he allowed his thoughts to return to Clovis, the only friend he’d ever had. Surely the presence of lady’s slippers in Nova Scotia was a sign, a good omen of sorts. His mind leapfrogged from there to the lady’s slippers he’d planted behind the dumpster on Roundtable Road, and he wondered if at least one of them had survived somehow, defying the odds of alkalinity. And then he thought about the grave he had painstakingly dug that night in the soft earth.

Hopefully, by this time tomorrow he’d be digging three more. But not before he’d had his fun.

“Y
ou sure your parents won’t mind me being here like this?” asked Keegan as the garage door closed behind the SUV.

“This from a guy who was ready to go World War Three at school this morning?” she teased.

“Wynn was asking for it,” he said. “Parents I don’t like to piss off. I want to be invited back.”

“Don’t worry,” she grinned. “While I was waiting for you to come out of the school, I texted my dad that we’d be here, and he messaged back it was okay.”

“Your mother still in Halifax?”

“Still,” she said, the word sounding more injured than she’d intended.

Keegan reached across and took her hand. “None of this means they’re breaking up.”

“Maybe not, but you haven’t seen them together. Lately, they—” But she didn’t want to finish that thought. “Did your mom and dad argue much before she left?”

He looked down at her hand in his, the expression on his face suddenly sombre, and she regretted asking. Of
course
his parents had argued. They’d divorced, hadn’t they? “Never mind,” she
said. “Besides, I didn’t bring you here to sit in the garage.” She opened her door and slid out, and Keegan did the same.

“Wow!” exclaimed Keegan when he saw the gleaming kitchen cabinetry and the polished quartz countertops that bounced sunlight from the large windows onto the stainless steel appliances.

In the past when a visitor saw the kitchen for the first time, Willa always took pride in the Ferrari workmanship and unique design. Now, though, she just saw how over-the-top it all was. “Want something to drink?” she asked quickly. “There’s soft drinks, juices, stuff like that.”

“Water’s fine,” he said.

She got glasses from a cupboard and placed them in the refrigerator’s automated dispenser, a sensor adding crushed ice and filtered water, then carried them both to the enormous island, where she sat on one of the sleek air-lift counter stools that were as much modern art as furniture. Keegan sat on the one next to hers, and in that moment she noticed something. “Keegan, do you dye your hair?”

Keegan flushed, and he dragged a hand through the long black strands that hung to his eyes.

“Your hair’s brown, isn’t it?” she asked, looking at the roots now visible in the bright light pooling around both of them.

“Yeah,” he replied. “I thought new school, why not a new look?” He picked up one of the glasses and took long swallows, seemingly intent on draining it.

Willa could tell he was embarrassed, although he had no reason to be—lots of guys coloured their hair. She was just surprised she hadn’t noticed it before.

She hated the awkwardness that seemed to have settled around them, and she groped for something to say. “You think Wynn will be back in school tomorrow?”

Keegan nodded. “I meant to tell you. Richardson asked to meet me after last class. That’s why I was late getting to you.”

It was Willa’s turn to flush as she remembered their first few minutes in the SUV after school. They hadn’t spent them talking. “What’d he want?”

“To tell me what was happening with Wynn.”

Willa nodded. When they’d gone to homeroom that morning following the altercation in the hallway, Wynn was still in there with the teacher. She couldn’t hear what was being said, but it was the first time she’d seen anything that looked like worry on Wynn’s face, and she guessed it had to do with his getting pulled from the sports program. “What’d he say?” she asked.

“That he’d given Wynn his final warning.”

She frowned. “I’m surprised he gave him a second one.”

“I was, too. At first.” Keegan looked at the now-empty glass in his hand, set it down on the countertop, then turned to her again. “He said that Wynn worried him.”

“Richardson’s afraid of him?”

“Not in the way you think.”

“What other way is there?”

“He thinks Wynn’s dangerous.”

Willa’s eyes widened. “You didn’t tell him about—”

“No. I
wanted
to, but I didn’t.”

“So he’s basing this on the fight he broke up this morning? Teachers break up fights all the time.”

“It’s not just that. He told me about a student he taught a couple years ago in Ontario.”

“What about him?”

“Really popular guy. Not athletic like Wynn, but active in student government, drama, debate club, stuff like that. Richardson called him charming.”

“What’s this have to do with Wynn?”

“Richardson said he had a bad feeling about the guy from the beginning, that there was something off about him somehow. None of the other teachers seemed to see it, but he looked into his background anyway, even spoke to the school’s guidance department about him. All their files showed he was the real deal, the kind of guy parents would love to have their daughters bring home.”

“I still don’t see what—”

“Two weeks later, he took a baseball bat to his mother.”

“
What
? Why?”

“Richardson didn’t go into all the details, but it boiled down to her not giving him permission to do something he wanted. The thing is,” Keegan continued, “he has the same feeling about Wynn, that something’s off somehow. And not just because he wants to beat the crap out of me. Richardson’s worried there’s something darker there.”