The Affinities (33 page)

“It might be,” I said. “Except we have no reason to believe you. You say you won't hurt Geddy—”

“As long as Aaron isn't interfered with, you can count on it.”

“History doesn't bear out that assertion.”

“No idea what you're talking about.”

“I was on Pender Island a few years ago when one of your guys shot Amanda Mehta. Maybe you remember that. You'd been trying to squeeze information out of Rachel Ragland, looking to find something you could pin on me or Amanda or Damian Levay. Then you sent some asshole with a rifle to intimidate us. Unfortunately he was also an
incompetent
asshole.”

The Het guy seemed less surprised than I had hoped, though he sat in silence for a moment. Then he sighed. “That ‘incompetent asshole' was the father of three kids, did you know that?”

“Then he shouldn't have come hunting us.”

“Father of three kids. His body was dumped into Georgia Strait from a height, according to the coroner, though he was dead twice over even before he was dropped—a drug overdose
and
a gunshot wound. You people are thorough, I'll give you that. As for Rachel Ragland, all we did was ask her some questions. We didn't hurt her. Harmed not a hair on her head. Hell, Adam, we didn't even
fuck
her, unlike you. And unlike you, we keep track of the people we come into contact with.”

“Spy on them, you mean.”

“Whatever you care to call it. And according to our research, Rachel fell on some hard times after you left Vancouver. Moved in with a guy who had a pill and alcohol problem, which he was happy to share with her. Courts eventually took away that kid of hers—”

“Suze,” I said, involuntarily.

“Suze, who I guess was fostered out, but I don't know, our records aren't complete on that. The point is, you're in no position to be claiming the moral high ground. You don't trust us with Geddy? How about this: I promise not to shoot him, overdose him with narcotics, or push him out of a helicopter. So help me God.”

“At least,” I said, “we didn't kill Meir Klein.”

He laughed. “It was InterAlia that killed Klein, not Het. But yeah, we knew they were concerned about him going public. InterAlia's management trusted us with that knowledge, because we shared their concern. Het was thinking about the future long before you idiots started selling Affinity home-test kits, you know. The Affinities need real governance. If not InterAlia, then Het. If not Het, the government will step in and regulate us out of existence. We—”

A bare bulb in a ceiling fixture flickered to life. Everyone in the room paused to stare at it. Moments later there was a chorus of ringtones, including one from the phone in my pocket.

*   *   *

I ignored my phone, and the Het guy ignored his, but he waved permission at his people:
Go ahead, pick up.

A bad situation. But maybe not hopeless. Behind the buzz and tinkle of phones I heard another sound, one I liked a lot better: the wail of a distant siren.

That would be a truck from the Onenia County Fire Department, hurrying up Spindevil Road.

Part of our plan. By now some of the local Taus would have gathered just a few yards down the road, hidden from the farmhouse by the stand of oaks. The disposable Toyota would be there, too, with Trev at the wheel and a canister of gasoline in the passenger seat.

Dangerous as these Het enforcers were, they would have been instructed not to take any action that involved witnesses or would attract the attention of law enforcement. So what we needed was a way to take Geddy out of the farmhouse under civilian observation and without guns drawn. We needed a cat's paw, and it had been Shannon who suggested the local fire department.

The most dangerous part of this plan was the setup, which required Trev to drive the rattletrap Ford up to the farmhouse and exit the vehicle after spilling and igniting enough gasoline to generate a vigorous blaze. The arrival of the Onenia County fire truck would block the road, leaving the Hets nowhere to go, and Jolinda would tell the firefighters there were squatters living inside the farmhouse. Best-case outcome: firefighters would evacuate the house, including Geddy and me, and civilian scrutiny would prevent any violent interference by frustrated Hets.

The Hets
weren't
squatters, of course, and the owner of the farmhouse could testify to that, but by the time it was all sorted out Geddy and I would be safely elsewhere. The blazing Toyota would have to be explained, but the local tranche figured they could finesse that one. All good, then … assuming Trev could get the car close enough to the house to pose a plausible fire hazard.

The next thing we should have seen was the Toyota barreling down the lane.
Soon
, or the bluff wouldn't work. The fire truck couldn't be more than a mile or two away. We needed to make smoke.

But: nothing.

Radio silence.

And my phone had stopped ringing.

But the Het guy's phone buzzed again, and this time he took it out of his pocket and looked at the display and put it to his ear. He said, “Yeah.” He listened intently. Looked at me. Looked at Geddy. Listened some more. Then, “Yeah, okay.” He turned to the woman on the stairs. “Rev up the cars,” he said. “Time to go.”

The sound of the siren came lofting across scrubland and groves of wild oak and maple on rain-damp air, too loud to ignore. The Het guy frowned and told one of his people to stay on the window until the convoy was ready to go. “Everybody else,
move.
” He stood up and looked down at me. “
You
. Unless you want to come with us, tell me what that noise is all about.”

I couldn't help casting a glance at the dusty front window. No sign of the Toyota. “I don't know.”

He slapped me. Open palm, but a hard physical blow. My head rocked back. The pain was as sudden and astonishing. For a moment I couldn't see anything.

“Tell us what's happening out there,” he said, “unless you want to come along with us.”

I tasted blood, like salty copper. “Fuck you,” I said.
“I don't know.
” Which, at this point, was absolutely true.

“Fire truck,” the guy at the window said.

Tom turned. “What?”

“Looks like a fire truck up at the road.”

I could see it now from where I sat, a big fire-and-rescue vehicle, guys in yellow slickers climbing out of it. But no Toyota, no actual fire.

It wasn't hard to imagine what had gone wrong. As soon as the phones came to life, Trev must have called Damian or taken a call from him. Trev would have said the rescue was underway. And Damian would have told him there
was
no rescue, that I had been told to drop it, that the entire thing was a completely unauthorized clusterfuck, to be cancelled immediately, full stop.

“Help
,
”
Geddy said.

I guess it was the sight of the fire truck that set him off. Or the sight of the blood on my face. His voice was small at first, as if he couldn't collect enough breath to squeeze out the word. His second try was better, more like a bark: “Help!” Then the panic welled up in him and took a grip on his lungs: “HELP!
HELP!
”

Not that anyone outside could hear him.

He leaped off the sofa. The nearest Het tried to put a hand on him, but Geddy bulled past him. He was halfway to the door when the guard by the window tackled him and pinned him to the floor. Geddy kept shouting, though the sound was strangled now by the pressure of the guard's forearm on his throat.

I considered the window. Murky old glass. Maybe I could break it. And maybe that would attract the attention of the firefighters up the lane. But Tom had taken his pistol from under his belt, and he put it to my head. “Sit,” he said crisply. “Everybody else, out back and into the cars
now.
And secure that hostage!”

Three more Hets came down the stairs and headed for the rear of the house where the back door opened through the kitchen. The guard from the front window rolled Geddy over and tried to haul him to his feet. They were too busy to see what I saw:

The Toyota, at last, fishtailing around the rear of the Onenia fire truck, kicking up a plume of gravel as it steered wildly for the farmhouse.

“
Two
hostages,” the Het guy said. “Not your lucky day, Adam. Stand up.”

I stood up.

The car gained speed. I couldn't make out who was behind the wheel, but it wasn't Trevor Holst. Somebody smaller, somebody without the swirl of facial tattoos. The Het guy saw me looking and followed my gaze. “Shit!” he said.

The Toyota sped up as if the driver had no intention of stopping. And maybe she didn't. The car was close enough now that I recognized the halo of curled hair behind the steering wheel. It was Geddy's girlfriend, Rebecca.

The Het guy raised his pistol as if he meant to shoot through the window, and I grabbed his arm and put my weight on it, and we both fell to the floor. I felt more than saw what happened next. The car struck the farmhouse's ancient porch, bounced up the wooden risers, and toppled a wooden pillar; the roof of the porch collapsed around it, shattering the front window and filling the room with billows of plaster dust and shards of rotted wood.

The Het guy struggled under me, eyes wide with rage and frustration. I felt him trying to raise his right arm and I let my knee bear down on his elbow until he screamed. Through the dust I saw Geddy break free of his captor and lunge toward the gap where the window had popped out of its jambs. Glass crunched under his feet. The farmhouse groaned as if the rafters had been stressed to their breaking point, as if the roof might come down around us.

I managed to stand up just as Geddy pushed himself through the empty window frame into the tumbled ruins of the porch. The Toyota was obscured by dust and debris, but Geddy had recognized Rebecca behind the driver's-side window. He shouted her name. He used his hands to shovel away raw boards and broken lathing.

I looked down at the Het guy, who was trying to get up, but his injured arm wouldn't cooperate. His face was white with plaster dust, a clown's face. He met my eyes.

“You dumb fuck,” he said.

Then the room was full of Onenia County paramedics.

 

CHAPTER 24

Rebecca spent a night in the county hospital, under observation for the mild concussion she suffered when she drove the car up the farmhouse steps. The detonation of the airbag had left her with a pair of black eyes and a swollen nose worthy of a prizefighter, but she was basically okay. Geddy stayed at her bedside, apart from a brief interview with local police and a few hours' sleep at my father's house, until she was released.

I spent the night at the Motel 6. Telecommunications had been fully restored, but no one was returning my calls. Not Amanda, not Damian, not even Trevor Holst. By now, of course, they knew I had lied to them in order to get Geddy released, and I assumed they were working out some kind of appropriate response—whatever that might be. I did manage to get hold of Shannon Handy, but when I identified myself she said, “Uh, sorry, Adam—it's complicated, I can't talk,” and hung up.

So I watched the news, local and international. The end of the telecom blackout had produced a flood of footage from India and Pakistan, much of it terrifying. Mumbai had been hit by drone-delivered conventional weapons, not a nuclear device, but the destruction had been brutally widespread. No significant government building had been left untouched. A firestorm that began in the Dharavi slums had killed tens of thousands: the full accounting of the dead would eventually top one million.

Here in Schuyler, there was nothing about the events at the house on Spindevil Road. I guessed the local Taus, or Hets, or both, were well connected enough to shut down any real investigation. Rebecca had told the paramedics she couldn't remember how she had “lost control” of the car, and the Het owner of the property would have been instructed not to press charges.

In the morning I took a cab to the hospital, shortly before Rebecca was discharged. Geddy told me it was no use calling Mama Laura—neither she nor my father was in a mood to speak to me right now.

In other words, I had no reason to stay in Schuyler. I also had no ride home. The hospital rolled Rebecca to the curb in a completely unnecessary wheelchair, and Geddy helped her into their car. They were driving straight back to Boston. I asked Geddy whether he could drop me at the regional airport.

Rebecca leaned out of the passenger-side seat and said, “You'll need to take a puddle-jumper to some bigger airport. Why not come with us? Fly out of Logan?”

Geddy nodded vigorously: “Yes, come with us! Come with us, Adam.”

So I said yes. In part because I craved their company, in part because I didn't want to face the other big question: when I went home, would I have a home to go to?

*   *   *

Rebecca was intermittently groggy from the pain meds she had been given, and Geddy had never been especially happy behind the wheel of a car, so I did most of the driving, which was easy enough, the New York State Thruway to the Massachusetts Turnpike, clear skies and cool weather all the way. Driving provided an excuse for my lapses into silence, during which I contemplated and then tried not to contemplate what I had done.

Geddy chatted with Rebecca whenever she was awake. I had been afraid the events of the weekend had traumatized Geddy, but he spoke about them freely, and though he tensed up when he described how the Hets had surrounded his car and forced him into one of their vehicles, it seemed to have affected him no more or less profoundly than the bullying he had occasionally suffered at the hands of my father. Geddy had always seemed to shrug off those episodes … at least by daylight, though they came back, weightier and more terrifying, in his dreams. Rebecca might have to learn how to deal with his nightmares.