Prisoner (Werewolf Marines) (29 page)

“Yeah, I know. I wouldn’t put it past them to
try, but they’re civilians with zero training. They’d probably get
themselves killed too.”

DJ bought his phone. In the parking lot, he
said, “I’ll call from the hotel. Let’s go to a cool one.”

“Is a giant black pyramid that shoots a beam
of light to the mother ship every night cool enough for you?”

DJ grinned. “My first choice would be the
mother ship itself, but sure. Let’s go to the Luxor.”

Echo booked the rooms at the Luxor, since DJ
was busy prowling around the lobby and gawking at everything. They
rode up the side of the pyramid in a slantwise elevator, which DJ
was delighted to learn was called an inclinator. It was only when
they entered their room that Echo realized that she’d automatically
booked one similar to the apartment they shared, a suite with two
beds. She easily could have gotten two singles.

But DJ didn’t mention it. Instead, he ran
around touching everything and admiring the view, then threw
himself down on a bed and dialed his cell phone.

“Do you want some privacy?” Echo asked.

“Doesn’t matter.” His face lit up with joy.
“Five! I’m calling from a disposable phone. You won’t believe where
I am. Guess!”

There was a pause, then he said, “No, I
haven’t escaped. Yet. Sorry, I should have said that first. They
let me leave the base, but I have to come back. Now guess where I
am!”

Looking at Echo and grinning, DJ said, “Nope!
I’m not locked up in a dog kennel. Thank you very much, Five,
that’s very flattering.”

He again met Echo’s eyes, letting her in on
the joke. “No. I am not in Paraguay to assassinate the president
with a fork. Make a real guess.”

DJ listened, then rolled over on to his back.
“And no. I’m not in DC to put a hit on a senator. Come on, Five,
you know I wouldn’t do that.”

There was a long pause. “Give up? Okay, here
comes. I swear I’m not making this up. I’m on an all expenses paid
vacation in Las Vegas, courtesy of the evil scientists!” As DJ
cracked up, Echo couldn’t help laughing too.

He gave his sister the run-down on absolutely
everything. It was like the way Echo and Charlie talked. Like the
way she and Brava and Della and Althea used to talk, leaving
nothing out. DJ told his sister about Roy and asked her to see if
she could dig up any info on where he might be held. He told her
about Match and his breakdown, and the promise he’d made to the
pack. And he told her one lie: that he’d flown in.

But Echo realized that he was leaving
something out: her. He told Five that he had a partner and that she
was with him, and credited her with saving his life. But he
disclosed absolutely nothing else: not that she was a clone, not
that she had a sister, not even that they were roommates.

When he finally hung up, Echo said, “You
didn’t tell her about me.”

“I thought you might not want me to. Should I
have?”

“No.” On impulse, she added, “Let’s not tell
anyone what we do this weekend. Not Five. Not even Charlie. Just
once, I’d like to have something that’s private.”

“What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas,” DJ
promised her. “Now let’s go exploring!”

For the first half of the day she let DJ lead
her around Las Vegas as the fancy took him, to casinos and dancing
fountains and the Pinball Hall of Fame. But by the afternoon, she
got tired of being pulled every which way and started taking him
places, to a dessert bar with a floor-to-ceiling chocolate
fountain, to a volcano that erupted every hour outside of the
Mirage hotel, and finally to a quiet bar where she convinced him to
try her chocolate martini.

DJ made a face, said it tasted like a melted
Hershey bar, and, with a mischievous glance at Echo, asked the
bartender to fix him something manly. Either the bartender had a
sense of humor or everyone had a different idea of what manly
meant, because DJ was handed an elegant concoction of red shading
into gold, adorned with a curling strip of orange peel and a
maraschino cherry.

“Classic Manhattan,” said the bartender.

DJ took a sip, seemed to approve, and set it
beside Echo’s martini for comparison. “Mine’s prettier.”

They’d had the place to themselves when
they’d arrived, but several more customers came in and sat down at
the bar. Without even having to look at each other, Echo and DJ
grabbed their cocktails and moved to the empty back room.

“Do you go to Las Vegas a lot, Echo?” DJ
asked, sipping his Manhattan.

“I used to.” She could have stopped there,
but she went on, “This is the first time I’ve wandered around the
Strip for fun since Brava died. She was a bit like you,
actually.”

“I like her already. How?”

“Funny. A little hyper. Really physical. We
used to spar together, and she loved dancing. She liked to dress up
in steampunk outfits, with ruffled skirts and fitted leather coats,
and go to clubs and flirt— with men and women. She colored her hair
every couple months and wore nail polish that matched. Hot pink,
leaf green, silver. When she died, it was sapphire blue.” Echo made
herself look him in the eyes, refusing to let feelings get the
better of her. “She never gave up.”

She expected him to change the subject. This
was supposed to be their fun time, their relax-and-forget time. DJ
had certainly thrown himself into the fun.

“You want to make a toast?” DJ too seemed to
be forcing himself to meet her gaze, and his eyes were very bright.
“Raise a glass to the people we lost, who died too young?”

Echo nearly spilled her martini.
“Seriously?”

He nodded, not breaking eye contact. “I’ll
tell you something about mine. You tell me something about yours,
like you did with Brava. And then there’ll be one more person in
the world who’ll remember them.”

Echo used her bio-control to ensure that her
hand didn’t tremble, lifted her glass, and clinked it against his.
She couldn’t believe DJ had talked her into toasting her sisters.
It was as if she was under an enchantment.

“To my sister Brava,” Echo said, and they
drank to Brava.

DJ raised his Manhattan. “To Frank Alvarado.
He was a squad leader who lost two men on a patrol. It wasn’t his
fault, but they died under his command. It broke him. He was
jumping out of his skin all the time, he couldn’t sleep, and he
started drinking. They finally had to ship him home. To get
treatment, they said. I don’t know whether it didn’t work or he
didn’t show up or what, but two months later he drank a bottle of
whiskey and drove his motorcycle off a cliff.”

“Do you think it was suicide?”

“Who knows?” DJ swirled his drink into a
sunset-colored whirlpool. “If it was an accident, it was the sort
you have when you don’t care if you live or die. I don’t know what
anyone could have done differently, but I can’t help feeling like
somehow, we let him down.”

He clinked his glass against hers, and they
drank to Alvarado.

“To my sister Della,” Echo said. “She was
seventeen when she died. It was completely unexpected. She went to
sleep one night and she never woke up. Della was a sweetheart. Like
Charlie, but less sneaky.”

“Charlie’s sneaky?”

Echo had barely had three sips, but she felt
like she was already drunk. The sort of drunk she didn’t get, where
you’d say anything. “Maybe sneaky’s the wrong word. Charlie
understands people. She can get them to do things without them ever
realizing she’s the reason they did it. If she thinks you’re an
asshole, she’ll plant an idea in your head that’ll convince you to
do something stupid, and next thing you know, you’re fired or your
girlfriend dumped you. If she likes you and you’re down, she’ll
know exactly what to say to make you feel better.”

DJ cocked his head at her. “So this morning,
she thought I needed distracting, huh?”

Echo nodded. “Della was like that, too. But
not so calculating. She liked listening to people’s stories and
trying to solve their problems. She’d have made a good
therapist.”

No one was within earshot. Still, she lowered
her voice. “She’d have made a fucking terrible assassin, so maybe
it’s just as well she didn’t live long enough for them to send her
on missions. She’d probably have drunk a bottle of whiskey and
driven her motorcycle off a cliff.”

She stopped abruptly, tears stinging her eyes
despite her bio-control, and clinked her glass against DJ’s. Echo
blinked hard as they drank to Della.

“To Jose Suarez,” said DJ. He swallowed
before he could go on. “The thing about Suarez— God, this is the
thing about Alvarado too, it’s like a theme— is that what sticks in
my mind isn’t who he was, it’s how he died. He was shot in the head
in the same ambush where I was burned. If I’d been killed, I’d hate
to have the thing people remember about me be that I was blown up
by an IED.”

DJ stopped for so long that Echo said, “What
was he like?”

“Well, he was nineteen. And he was a bit like
me when I was that age. Enthusiastic. Eager to please. A Scottie
dog. He was thrilled to bits to be a Marine, and he absolutely
loved it. Had a family he adored, half of them in Mexico, half in
New Mexico. Roy was from New Mexico too, and they both said it was
a weird, weird state. Suarez used to live next door to a guy with
an alien landing pad on his roof. He picked up a rock once and said
he was going to give it to his neighbor and claim it was from the
secret Marine mission to Jupiter.”

DJ lifted his glass. “I hope someone mailed
that rock to his family with a note telling them what to do with
it. Suarez would have gotten a kick out of pulling a prank from
beyond the grave.”

He touched his glass to hers, and they drank
to Suarez.

“To my sister Althea,” Echo said, holding up
her martini. “But it’s like you said about Suarez. I remember her
dying better than I remember her. She was sick off and on her
entire life. Whenever she was well enough, she was in the gym
practicing martial arts. When she was in the hospital, she watched
sports and travel shows on TV. She hated knowing that she’d been
made to go on adventures— that was what they called it when we were
kids— but she’d never be strong enough. I think that bothered her
more than knowing that she’d die young.”

“How old was she when she died?” DJ
asked.

“We were twelve.” Echo failed to prevent a
tear from slipping out. “Goddammit.”

DJ touched her face, but not to catch the
tear. His finger drew a line down her other cheek, marking the path
of the tear she hadn’t shed. “She sounds worth crying over. All
your sisters do. I’m sorry I’ll never get to meet them.”

Another tear met his finger as Echo touched
her glass to DJ’s. Then his hand fell away as they drank to
Althea.

“Okay, I’ve got one more,” DJ said. “He’s the
guy I was thinking of when I started this. But I realized I’d start
crying if I said his name. So I thought, well, I’ll drink to
Alvarado first, I’ve talked about him before and I know I can do
it, and by that time I’ll have pulled myself together. But it
wasn’t happening. So I thought, well, I’ll drink to Suarez next,
and by then I’ll have pulled myself together.”

“No such luck, huh?”

DJ shook his head and smiled a little, but
his lips were quivering. “And now I’m thinking, if I do cry, who
the fuck cares?”

He leaned in close and spoke softly. “Wolves
cry. There’s no point refusing to show an emotion that everyone can
feel in the pack sense anyway. Never crying is a one-body thing.
Marines don’t cry, so I don’t cry in front of Marines. But you
don’t care, do you, Echo?”

“Of course not. I just cried in front of
you.”

DJ lifted his glass. “To Justin Graham.”

He choked up more and more as he went on. “I
didn’t know him well. Just for seven hours. But he was brave and
determined and he deserved a whole lot better than he got. Every
time I listen to Kanye West or Eminem, I’ll think of him.”

DJ clinked his glass to hers, so hard that
she was surprised it didn’t break, and tossed back his drink. Echo
finished her martini as well, drinking the last strong, sweet drops
to Justin.

Echo’s tears had dried up, but DJ put his
face in his hands and sobbed, noisy and unashamed. Echo knew how
much he was comforted by touch, so she put her arms around him. He
leaned into her, and his hot tears ran down the bare skin of her
shoulder.

“I tried so hard to save him.” DJ’s words
were ragged. She could feel his lips moving against her body. “I
gave him everything I had, and he fucking died anyway. I’ve always
believed I could do anything if I just tried hard enough and didn’t
give up. Either that’s not true or I fucked up, and I don’t know
which is worse.”

Echo lowered her head to touch it to his. His
hair was soft against her forehead. “You didn’t fuck up. It was
impossible. I’ve always known there were things I couldn’t change,
no matter how hard I tried.”

“Yeah. I can see how you’d feel that way. I
might have become a totally different person if Nutmeg had
died.”

“I don’t know about that,” Echo replied. “I
can’t imagine you being anyone but you.”

“Thanks,” DJ mumbled. “I think.”

His tears stopped, but he didn’t move away.
His head rested against her shoulder as if they’d been made to fit
together, like a magazine clicks into a pistol grip. She tightened
her arms around him and hoped he’d stay where he was, at least for
another minute or so. This was the only way she’d ever get to touch
him for more than a second’s worth of playful scuffling.

Echo’s wistfulness flamed into anger. Why
couldn’t he see her as anything but a good friend? Why did he have
to go? Why couldn’t Echo be like Charlie, and find appealing
qualities in men who were actually available? Why did her sisters
have to die? Why did Alvarado and Suarez and Justin have to die?
Why did the only person in the world who loved her have to be
dying? Why didn’t she get to have a future? Why was everything in
her life always so utterly and completely fucked up?