The Fallout (23 page)

“I’m not sorry,” I said. “You deserved it.”

He shrugged. “Probably. Depends on whose side you’re on.”

I frowned. “You’re admitting there are sides?”

“Aren’t there?” He tilted his head slightly.

I nodded. “I think so.” I held up a hand. “This place…” I wasn’t sure what I wanted to say. I knew I couldn’t trust him. But if he’d had anything to do with the island, which I strongly suspected he had, he would probably drip his own praises from his mouth without much coaxing. “It’s beautiful,” I finished.

“Yes, it is.” He straightened up a bit. “Took me awhile to get it ready. But Rex was pleased when he arrived. Definitely pleased. We’d been up and running for about a year when you all finally got out.” He noticed me watching him. “You know I disagreed with that.”

“What?” I asked.

He looked out to sea, shading his eyes with a hand. “The whole underground thing. While it was being built, I thought it was brilliant. Think about it.” He turned to look at me. “When the world descends into chaos, your family is set to ride it out.” He put a hand to the side of his mouth, and lowered his voice. “Honestly, I rather hoped I’d get an invite if there really was an apocalypse.” He breathed deep and it came out loud, almost like a sigh. “But when he told me what he meant to do, that you were all going under, with no plans to come out, well…” He shook his head. “I’ll admit that I’ll do just about anything for money, but there’s not enough in the world for me to go in there, and live in that situation.”

“Smart,” I said.

He turned his back to the sun and faced me. “I did try to change his mind, you know.”

What?
My heart began to pound. “About taking us into the Compound?”

“No.” He shook his head. “It was once you were in. Those first couple of days after your brother was left on the outside. I told Rex how devastated that kid was. There was still time, before the world found out. I was the one with the lies to spin into a truth the world would believe. I told Rex that he could fix it, let you all out, tell you all that it was some kind of drill. A test to see how the Compound worked. Everything could go back to how it was.”

“He didn’t listen,” I stated.

“No, he sure didn’t.” Tony held his arms out to the side. “Instead, it was on to the next thing. Build him this place. That’s probably why I felt I should take care of Eddy all those years. Since I’d failed at getting you guys back for him.” He dropped his arms. “You know it really threw Rex when you figured it all out.”

“How to open the door?”

He nodded. “I never heard him as frantic as he was that night.”

I thought of the phone that had sat on Dad’s desk in the Compound. “So he did call you from there.”

Tony looked almost guilty as he nodded. “Every day. No different from when he called me from his office at YK.” He started drawing in the sand with a toe. “I hoped we could go back to that. Once you all were out. I wanted to go back to just being his right-hand man at YK. Meetings. Business trips.” He stared out at the sea. “You might not believe it, but kidnapping kids and trapping people underground are not what I signed up for.”

“You had no problem with the age reversal.”

He whipped his face around toward mine. “You think I wanted to be a guinea pig? I had no choice in that! Rex
owns
me. Everything, every single dirty thing I’ve done for him, is documented.” His shoulders slumped. “I knew it from the start. I knew what I was getting into.” He put his hands on his face. “I never expected to be an experiment, though.”

He didn’t say anything else, and the breeze and waves were the only sound.

I shrugged. “You make a pretty good teenager. You fooled me. Fooled Eddy and Lexie.”

He smirked. “It has been kinda fun. Being a kid, yet being able to afford all the toys.”

I rolled my eyes. “That Camaro was totally yours, wasn’t it?”

He laughed. “Well, it belonged to Philip A. Whitaker. Tony the teenager would have had a hard time explaining that.”

I smiled. “I gotta say, it’s much harder to hate you as Tony. Phil was such a prick.”

Tony laughed. “I deserve that. I mean
Phil
deserves that.”

I pointed at the house. “It’s yours?”

“Of course.” He smiled. “There are perks to being a henchman. Mine include room and board with oceanfront property.”

“What’s next?” I asked.

Tony quickly turned and looked out at the water again. He shrugged but didn’t say anything.

I needed to know, and I felt like he was going to open up to me. So I kept at him. “Tony?” I couldn’t get myself to call him Phil, even though I knew that’s who he really was. “What’s next? What’s the plan?”

Finally he turned back around and met my eyes. “Eli, you know what’s next. You know what has to happen.”

“I don’t,” I said.

He let out a breath. “Think about it. Think about what Rex wants.” He held up his hands, palms up. “What would make this paradise complete for him?”

I started to say something, then I stopped. I knew my dad, how he thought. There was only one thing that would make the island complete.

“My family,” I said.

Tony nodded. “They’re next.”

My father wanted us all on the island. To keep. To control. Just like he told me when we were still in the Compound. Only once we were back in Seattle, I had thought we were safe.

I was so wrong.

“But Dad said we were all flying home tomorrow.”

Tony frowned. “He did? In those words?”

“Yeah, he…” I trailed off and looked down at the sand as I tried to remember. What had he said? “I told him I wanted to go home and he said that wouldn’t happen before tomorrow.” My heart sunk as I realized it meant nothing of the sort. “He’s not letting us go.”

Tony shook his head slightly. “He has no intention of letting you go now that you’re here. At least, not all of you.”

I blurted out, “But my mom will never come here. She’ll never let him bring the others here. She won’t let him.”

Tony said, “Really? There’s nothing on earth that would get her to change her mind?”

“No, she—” I stopped. Dad would use us. Me, Eddy, Lexie. “He’ll use us. He’ll use us to get her here.”

Tony nodded. “He’s going to send you. Alone. I’ll be flying you out tomorrow. And he knows if you ever want to see Eddy and Lexie again, you’ll bring the rest of your family back.”

I studied his face. There wasn’t a trace of smugness in his face or the tone of his voice. So what was left? Could it be remorse? Guilt?

I said, “I can’t let him do this to us again. Make us prisoners in his private world.”

And then I did something I never thought possible. I dropped to my knees in front of Philip A. Whitaker and begged, “Please help me stop him before it’s too late.”

CHAPTER
THIRTY-THREE

“Oh, God, kid, don’t do this.” Tony reached out and grabbed my elbow, pulling me back up to my feet. “Get up. You know I can’t help.”

“Why not?” I grabbed him by the arms so I was right in his face.

“You know why not.” He tried to push me away, not unkindly. “You know my loyalty lies with him.”

I dropped my arms and stepped back. My hands turned to fists at my side. “Why?” I asked. “Why do you have to be loyal to him? The rest of the world thinks my father is dead. Eddy and I are set to inherit everything.” As much as it disgusted me to say it, I did. “We could give you a permanent place at YK, just like you wanted. You could have your job like it was. I would see to it.”

Tony stepped back, shaking his head. “That’s not what you want and you know it.”

I clasped my hands at the back of my head and looked up at the sky. “What I want is to be back in Seattle with my family. My whole family.”

“And Rex? You want your dad, too?” he asked.

That was the worst part. I wanted what any son wanted: a father to be there for me, pick me up after my failures, feel pride at my successes.

I dropped my arms and faced him again. “That man … is not my father. Not the father I knew. That man … that man … is a
monster
.”

And in that moment, I knew how Lexie felt, knowing the truth about her birth mother and the atrocities she’d committed. Powerless. I knew my dad’s genes were coursing through my own body, my own brain, and I could do nothing about it. Rex Yanakakis, and everything he was, was what I came from.

The difference was that Lexie had the comfort of knowing she had not been raised by her biological monster, that our mother had been nothing like that.

But everything I was—everything I knew—had been affected, cultivated,
bred
by my monster. Nature
and
nurture. There was no escaping that fact. Which meant the only chance for me was to escape
him.

I asked, “What time do we leave tomorrow?”

“Long flight. Would rather get an early start.” Tony glanced at his watch. “About eight?” His eyes were wary. “Listen, whatever you’re planning, I can’t help you—”

“I know.”

He watched me for a moment. “So you’ll be ready to leave at eight?”

“Yes.” And then I added, “You’d better have the jet ready to go.”

So I would be flying out the next day. Without Lexie and Eddy. I would be the one sent to bring back the whole family. But I would never do it. I would never allow Mom and the others to get on a plane and come and be prisoners again. But the only way to prevent that would be to get Eddy and Lexie on the plane with me.

Back at the house, Eddy, Lexie, and our father were seated at the table. They had all showered and changed as well. Eddy wore board shorts and a T-shirt, while Lexie wore a flowered dress.

“Sorry,” I said. “I wanted a walk on the beach before dinner.”

Dad smiled. “It’s lovely, isn’t it?”

I answered honestly. “Most beautiful beach I’ve ever seen in my life.” I slid into a chair next to Eddy and he handed me a plate with rib eye steaks on it. I stabbed one with my fork and set it on my plate, then passed them on to my father.

He took one and set the plate down. “I thought we could all walk the beach after dinner.”

I dished up some salad and asparagus, then started eating. I was starving and had eaten half my plate before I set my fork down. “So are we leaving tomorrow?”

Dad paused, his fork in midair. “I’ll make sure the jet is ready.”

Eddy said, “But we just got here.”

“Yeah,” added Lexie. “I wanted some time on the beach.”

Dad smiled. “You two are staying. Eli will go back and get the rest of the family.”

Eddy sat up. “They’re all coming?”

“Everyone will be together?” Lexie asked. She glanced at me. “Mom is on board for a vacation?”

“It’s not a vacation.” I turned to my father. “Isn’t that right, Dad?”

He looked slightly uncomfortable before catching himself and putting a smile on his face. “We all belong together, and this is the most beautiful place I could find.”

How was I going to convince Eddy that he and Lexie needed to be on the plane with me? He was so happy; he’d just gotten his father back, and the island was paradise.

The rest of dinner was small talk, and then Dad stood up. “Should we take that walk now?”

We all went out on the beach, Lexie in front, then me, then Eddy and Dad, all of us walking on the wet, hard-packed sand, leaving footprints that washed away as soon as each wave came in. Behind me, Eddy told Dad, with a slight wobble in his voice, “It is so wonderful to be back with you.”

Dad put his arm around Eddy’s shoulder. “I missed you, son. Leaving you out of the Compound was the hardest part of the whole thing.”

Did he say
leaving him out
? I forced myself to keep walking, pretend I wasn’t listening.

Dad continued, “But one of us had to stay in the real world, keep the name going. Otherwise YK might have been broken up, gone downhill.”

I whipped around, standing in their path and forcing them to stop. “You’re a liar.”

Dad’s lips trembled for a moment before he forced them into a smile. “It’s been a long time, Eli. It’s probably hard for you to remember.”

I shook my head. “No, I remember it like it was yesterday. And it was not part of your plan to leave him out!”

Eddy said, “Dude, just chill. You were a little kid and—”

“No!” I shouted. “I remember it like it was yesterday because I thought about it every frickin’ day for six years! Dad didn’t plan it! He was shocked when he closed the door and you weren’t there. I remember!”

Dad said, “Son, you may not have known it at the time, but leaving Eddy out was definitely prearranged.”

“No, it wasn’t!” I screamed at him.

Dad looked as if I’d hit him.

Eddy turned from Dad to me, and then asked, “How are you so sure?”

I stood there, trying to catch my breath. My heart pounded and my face burned. “I know, because…”

Lexie came up beside me and put a hand on my arm. She knew my secret. I’d told her and Mom in the Compound when we thought Dad was dying. She said, “Tell them.”

I looked at Eddy. “It was my fault. I did it. I was the reason you were left out.”

CHAPTER
THIRTY-FOUR

Visions of that night, the night of our ninth birthday, all came back to me.

Our ninth birthday. We were excited to be almost in double digits. The annual big party was held the day before, so we could head to the cabin on the actual day. Dad’s acreage in eastern Washington was huge, with a ten-room log house we called the cabin. We had an RV, too, which we used to drive farther into the wilderness to go camping. Not that an RV was roughing it, but that’s what we called camping anyway.

Gram came with us, sort of. She followed the RV with the Range Rover. She said she always liked to be prepared for emergencies. Although to her, an emergency might constitute running out of marshmallows for the s’mores we made over the campfire. A trip in the RV wasn’t a trip without Gram driving back to the cabin at least once.

As we drove along, Dad told us he had a big surprise for us. And he did. He’d just bought a new two-seater airplane. It went along with the new landing strip in the middle of the property, which is where we went with the RV. It was already dusk when we reached the site, so Dad promised we’d go flying first thing in the morning. We’d flip a coin to see which birthday boy would go first. Of course, I wanted it to be me.