Subject Seven (10 page)

“Four days?!?” Frost crawled through his veins at the idea.
Four days? What the hell happened to me?

His mother's voice broke. “We thought you were dead, baby. Oh Lord, we thought you were dead!” She sobbed against him and held him even tighter. His dad moved from one foot to the other, his big hands balling up into fists and loosening again and again.

“Son, we're going to have a long talk about this.”

“Dad, I don't know what happened! Honest! I don't know!” He felt the panic coming on now, a cold fear that made what he'd felt when the goon platoon was after him feel like the calm before a bad storm.

Four days?
He closed his eyes and took comfort from his mom's arms around him, even from her tears on his shoulder and the feel of her breathy sobs.

He couldn't think anymore. Four days had disappeared from his life and he had no idea how to handle it. Cody had lived a sheltered life, never wanting for anything and always aware of how much his parents loved him. Nothing he'd ever experienced had prepared him for the idea of disappearing for over half of a week.

His dad led them both from the room. There'd be arguments later. He'd have to explain whatever he'd done to end up in a jail cell. But right now, it was all he could do just to move. Panic was sinking jagged teeth into his body and shaking him like a dog working over a favorite chew toy.

It was a new experience for him and he hated every second of it. All he'd ever wanted was to feel safe, so he basked in the feel of his mother and father protecting him.

It would be the last time he felt safe for a long, long while.

“YOUR PARENTS ARE GOING to have a fit.” Uncle Robbie's words were slurred, but not enough for Gene to worry about anything. Robert Stein was a family friend. He'd been the best man when Gene's parents got married and he was Gene's godfather, which was one more reason Gene prayed nothing ever happened to his family. The last thing he needed was to be raised by a man who bordered on being an alcoholic.

Not that he could say that. His dad would go through the roof if he ever thought about saying something like that in public.

“You hear what I said?” Rob was talking again. He looked away from the road ahead of them and his eyes sort of swam from side to side in his head. Oh yeah, this was going to be a fun trip. Gene double-checked to make sure he'd fastened his seat belt.

Gene had called Robbie when he couldn't get hold of his mom or his dad, except for their answering services. Mom was probably due in court and Dad, well, Dad had his medical practice to take care of and that had to come first. It was the emergency room, after all. He was in charge of the whole department, so he couldn't exactly skip off to find his son some forty miles from home on a school day.

That left “Uncle” Rob, the closest thing his family had to a drunk embarrassment, at least as far as Gene was concerned. He had to curb his dislike of the man. They'd been close once, before Gene realized that the man liked whiskey too much. That was back when Rob cracked jokes and told the greatest stories. Something had happened a while ago, though, that changed the way the man felt about Gene. Not about the rest of the kids, but he could feel it, the way that man avoided looking at him when he'd had too much to drink.

“Yes, sir. I hear you.” What else could he say? Of course his parents were going to have fits. He was having fits. He still didn't know how he'd gotten to Brooklyn or where his clothes were or anything. He'd had to beg the lady at the muffler shop to let him use the phone and she'd acted like he was taking food from the mouths of her babies the whole time.

He bit everything back, of course, because that was what he did. If he was worried or scared or angry, he took after the examples his mother had presented and held it all in check. Bottle it up, let it out when you are on your own and no one has to deal with your problems but you. That was the way he had been raised and it worked just fine in his book.

At least Rob hadn't started his favorite rant, the one about how—

“You know what the problem here is? You don't know how good you've got it. That's what the problem is.” Rob's voice grew louder, like Gene had set out to ruin his otherwise perfect day and now he was going to yell and scream until he could no longer keep his audience captive.

Perfect,
he thought.
Just what I need. Another sermon from Revrund Robbie.
There was a rhythm to Rob's words, like a dance. Once you learned it, you could slide through his sermons and come out of them with only half your mind melted.

He tried to work it out again. In bed, sleeping, and the next thing he knew in an alley watching a big freaking rat chow down on breakfast. Somewhere between the two memories he'd either been abducted by aliens—not even remotely likely—or he'd been kidnapped—almost as crazy—or he'd been sleepwalking. Hell, maybe he'd accidentally knocked back a few of Uncle Rob's gin and tonics when he wasn't looking.

“And that's the part you don't get, Gene.” He was brought back to the present by the use of his name. Normally when Robbie called on a person by name, he was rounding up for the final pitch and ready to win the game. “You might think this is all just fun and games and that you don't owe your parents anything, but where would you be if they hadn't adopted you? You'd probably be living in some dive near where you called me from, that's where.”

His stomach froze solid. His ears rang with a high, clear note, and all the spit in Gene's mouth vanished.

“Wait, what? Adopted?” His normally calm surface broke and his voice cracked harshly as he looked toward Robbie.

Robbie weaved the car wildly across a lane of traffic and just managed not to kill them both as he stared at Gene, his eyes going wide. In that second Gene understood the truth. The man had opened his mouth too far and spit out a secret that Martin Rothstein had trusted him with, a secret that Gene was not supposed to hear. Gene stared at him, trying to find more words, wanting to vanish because what Robbie had said had to be a lie. It HAD to be! His parents had always told him the truth, had always pushed hard at how important the truth was, how it was more valuable than gold or any other commodity.

“Oh, hey, Gene, don't listen to your uncle Robbie . . . I'm just . . . I'm just messing with your head.” Weak. His voice was faint and lacked any conviction. He was lying, trying to backtrack from what he'd just revealed, and both of them knew it was too damned late.

“What do you mean I'm adopted?” His voice was louder than he meant it to be, but the ringing hadn't left his ears and all the sounds beyond that continuous note sounded like they were muffled by cotton.

“Gene . . . ”

Gene held up his hand to gesture for silence. Normally the idea of trying to get Robbie to shut up was crazy, but the man listened. “I can't talk to you, Uncle Rob. I can't talk to you right now, okay?” He fought back the tears that burned at his eyes.

Damned if he'd let the drunk loser see him cry.

TINA CLIMBED FROM THE train and hauled her duffel bag with her. If anyone was amused by the skinny little girl carrying a sack almost as big as she was, they didn't show it. Back in Camden they would have, so she kept her peace and made sure to look every last one of them in the eyes. Never flinch and never show fear.

And she was absolutely terrified. The train had stopped in Wilmark, New Jersey, just across the Hudson River from upstate New York. She'd planned on heading into New England, but her eyes were aching and her head felt like it wanted to explode and she needed to rest in a safe place and call home, call her mom and get everything worked out.

Mom would be worried. At least she thought so. Mom worried when she, well, when she was sober.

At first she'd considered going back to Camden. She'd even started walking in that direction, but the farther she walked, the more she realized she might be in deep trouble if she came home. She'd taken the time to count the money. It was almost two million dollars. Too much to hide, too much to carry and too much to leave behind. So she went up north. That was all the reason she needed. She wanted to get some distance from Camden and the guys there who might really own the money she was carrying around. Because if she went home, if she got stupid and walked back into her old life with that much money and it belonged to Tony Parmiatto or any of his buddies, she was as good as dead and she'd have bet every dollar she had on her that it would be a slow death and very painful. You don't steal from the mob; you don't borrow from the mob without their permission. It was likely that somebody was dead because of the blood she'd been covered with. That somebody was connected to the money. That meant the money was blood money and the mob always collected on those debts. Always.

The mob was not forgiving. She'd learned that when she found out the truth about why her father disappeared. Do the wrong things to the Mafia and they returned the favor. She didn't know if she had done them wrong or not and wasn't sure she wanted to find out, but she wasn't gonna take chances until she talked to someone.

Her legs still ached a little from the long run to jump onto a CSX car as it slowly rolled past. She'd had to run hard, and yeah, running in flip-flops, not such a great time, slinging the bag with every step. Then the bag went onto the car and she followed it. She slipped once and there was a line of red flesh along with a few scrapes to show where her shin had banged against the steel edge of the train car's wide door.

There hadn't been anyone in the car already so she hadn't had to fight anyone. The sort of people that jumped trains, according to her mom, were the sort that would kill you as soon as look at you. Having seen a few of the men in her time, she could believe it.

She took the time to count the money while she was traveling. Then she counted it a few more times to be sure. Just a little under two million dollars. Crazy money. The sort of money the mob would come for. She wanted to scream. She wanted to cry. She wanted to laugh because it was all so damned crazy.

Once Tina was clear of the railroad tracks and the commercial yard where she'd climbed free, she headed down the closest access road. It followed next to I-95 and let her keep her eyes on the prize, as her mom liked to say.

While she walked, she thought about Tony. He was cute and sweet in his way and she didn't like the idea that he might be the one that the money belonged to. She'd have to call him. She had to know what was going on and how deep she'd stepped in it.

Half a mile farther along she came across a motel. The sign said there were vacancies, and she sat outside in the bushes and watched for a while before going in.

The man behind the desk looked at her through the bulletproof glass that separated them. “Help you?” He looked about as interested in her as he was in watching mold grow on old cheese. That suited her just fine.

“Me and my mom, we need a room.” She'd told more than her share of lies since she was old enough to walk.

“Got any ID?” He took the time to look at her for a second, like it was a big favor.

She crossed her arms and gave him a look that said he was wasting her time.

“Then you'll have to pay a security deposit. A hundred dollars. It'll have to be cash.”

The room cost twenty-eight dollars a night. She'd seen the sign from the road. But she knew the deal well enough. A hundred dollars was a fortune, literally more money than she'd ever held in her hand until earlier that morning, but it was also enough to guarantee that the man didn't care about her and her mom. He probably thought she was there to hook or to meet up with some guy she'd met on the Internet. From the look in his eyes, he'd forget about her for a hundred extra.

She needed his amnesia, so she reached into her pocket and fished out the small stack of twenties she'd put there earlier. He took the money and slid her a room key. “Checkout's at ten in the morning. Leave after that, pay for another day.”

She took the key and grabbed her duffel bag and found her room.

Before she did anything else, Tina took a shower. She felt filthy. The blood was long gone, rubbed off by her hands, but she felt dirty, so she used the little bar of soap they offered in the dingy bathroom and scrubbed until her skin felt raw. Then she got dressed in the same oversized clothes, hid her bag under the bed and walked two blocks to the closest convenience store. Forty dollars bought her a disposable phone. Twenty more bought her enough time to make a few calls on it. They had a microwave, so she heated up three burritos and took those along with the biggest Pepsi they had back to her hotel room.

It was time to make some phone calls.

She ate on the way back to the room and killed most of her Pepsi too.

Five minutes after that the phone was activated—she lied about her name and address, but mostly because she was scared it might lead Tony to her somehow—and she was ready to make her calls.

That was the plan. She was asleep before it could happen, exhaustion and nerves getting the best of her.

HUNTER LOOKED AT THE diner up ahead and felt his stomach kick and roar. He'd been walking for hours, never slowing, never stopping because if he did, he might disappear again and he couldn't stand that thought anymore.

He'd lost the bloody button-up shirt, using one sleeve to wipe the sweat from his face for a while before he tossed it into the trash can in front of the diner. His wrists were still red, but not nearly as bad looking as they'd seemed earlier.