The Program (47 page)

They made love deliberately, taking nothing for granted. Each touch seemed heightened -- she shivered when he kissed the edge of her wrist, the inside of her elbow, the point of her jaw.

They fell asleep in a warm tangle.

Chapter
forty-one

The phone rang at six-thirty, jerking Tim from a deep sleep. He'd no sooner pressed the receiver to his ear than the marshal let loose with a string of Mediterranean expletives. After a few disoriented seconds, Tim caught up with his stream of discourse.

"This morning I find my niece -- God bless her -- zoned out on the couch, phone bleating in her hand and Betters's video in the VCR. She called in and signed up for the Next Fucking Generation Colloquium -- put two grand on my wife's goddamn Visa."

Tim sank his teeth painfully into his lower lip; a chortle here could prove fatal. Beside him Dray shifted and groaned unhappily.

Tannino didn't pause long enough for Tim to respond. "Bring me something back, Rackley, however small, to get us on that fucking ranch. Once we're there, we're gonna go full bore on his ass."

Looking crisp and mean in her uniform, Dray stood in the driveway as Tim backed the Hummer out of the garage. The steam from her coffee mixed with her clouding breath to shroud her face. A furious knocking on the passenger window made him punch down on the brakes. Leah gestured emphatically at him, running around to the driver's side.

When Tim rolled down his window, she said, "I want to go. The mail goes into TD's cottage, and only Lilies, Protectors, and Stanley John are allowed in there. You can't get your hands on that stuff. You need me."

"It's not safe for you up there."

"You don't get to decide that for me. You said it was my choice. I trusted you."

"Leah --"

"No, wait a minute. Since I've been off the ranch, I've been mostly upset and scared. But you know what? I'm sick of it. And the more I think about it -- him, everything -- the more pissed off I get. Now I want to go back there. And you can't stop me."

In the rearview, Tim noted her taxi pulling away from the curb. "No," he said. "I can't."

"What about Will?" Dray asked.

"I left him and Mom a note explaining."

"A note," Dray said. "Swell."

The Hummer idled and shot exhaust. Leah appealed to him with earnest eyes.

"Get in," Tim said.

Leah fidgeted in her seat, her foot twisting around the back of her calf as if scratching an inextinguishable itch. They passed a long school bus filled with chanting students waving pennants -- just another away game in paradise. Leah watched it recede into traffic. "Do you know what it's like? To leave something that means everything to you?"

His back pocket still felt empty without his badge. It had been presented to him on a Georgian dais at FLETC graduation, and he'd silently pledged to hold and honor it until it was sunk in Lucite and holding down the stubs of his pension checks.

The clouds broke furiously, unleashing torrents of rain. They fought through clots of traffic and minilagoons, moving from one freeway to another until they finally exited. Leah's silent discomfort grew more pronounced as they neared the Radisson.

She let out a terse little laugh, then stared bitterly at the dash. "When they make you smile all the time, you know what? You start to believe it."

Wet gusts buffeted the windshield. Tim turned right into the circular driveway. Up ahead, a familiar, disproportionate form cut a block from the gray downpour. As the Hummer crept near, ducked valets scurrying alongside it, Randall appeared -- the large head, the swollen arms, the jagged mouth with spaced, glinting teeth, so much like a child's sketch.

He raised an arm in silent greeting, and they stepped out into the deluge.

Chapter
forty-two

Through the welcoming fanfare, through the full-body hugs and Skate's rooting in their pockets and bags, through the ceaseless kettledrum, the age regressions to abysmal childhoods, the group breathing, the weepy confessionals, Tim and Leah kept close, their shoulders brushing when they stood, their heads pressed together during floor-squirming exercises, Leah panting and sweating and pressing her nails into the soft underskin of her arm, Tim's voice staying slow and steady beneath the wails and shrieks and the low-resolution rumbling of the storm outside. In fine form, TD strode the stage, his voice a teasing build of outrage that roused the crowd to spurts of chanting, until all at once the spotlight plucked Tom Altman from the profusion of bodies writhing and twisting in orgiastic frenzy. Sean, Esq., bore the documents to him, overlapped on a silver tray like a spread of hardwood-smoked delicacies, and as Tim bent to press the tip of the fountain pen to paper, the crowd climaxed into riotous applause.

When the sweaty burden of continual embrace at last lifted and the fluorescents flickered on, Tim stood stunned and blinking, his clothes gripping him like a cowl of seaweed, Leah going pale at his side as if she were barely holding on.

She laced her hands behind his neck, doing a drunken girl's slump into his arms so he bore most of her weight. Her mouth found his ear, whispering between pants, though he couldn't make out all the words.

"...couldn't...without you...don't know...hold out long..."

At once Janie was by her side, prying her off, sliding her neck beneath her arm. "You two are mighty close now -- great Gro-Par bond. Someone taught you well."

Tim met Janie's silent-comedy wink with a weak smile. When he turned, he nearly collided with Randall's chest. Skate slid around to his other side.

"TD wants you in DevRoom A," Randall said.

Leah looked panicked at the prospect of his leaving, but he tore his eyes away and followed the Protectors.

Neither touched him, but they trapped him in the space between their bodies as they escorted him from the auditorium. They threaded through several paired Pros exuberantly rehearsing their recruitment tactics for the Next Generation Colloquium.

"I bet you never got anywhere by turning down new opportunities!" an East Asian girl implored her role-playing opposite.

At the far wall, Stanley John berated a muster of Pros for being brainwashed idiots -- desensitization training to make them impervious to future persecution.

Skate led them down the hall. When he pulled the door open, Tim stepped inside, unsure what to expect now that Tom Altman had ostensibly signed away control of his holdings. TD awaited him, his armchair pulled in to a card table, a deck in his hands.

Always a shtick.

The door eased shut behind him. The Protectors had gone.

"Please." TD shuffled the deck, cut it one-handed, then shuffled again. "Sit." His hands blurred, and the first two floors of a house of cards appeared. "You're now a true member of the Inner Circle. A founding father."

Tim did his best to plaster a pleased smile across his face.

"Let me tell you what you have here." Even as he turned his gaze to Tim, his hands moved swiftly, confidently -- within seconds eight more cards held firm in a tilted lean. "Endless possibility. Zero boundaries. Success -- you know as well as I do -- is a house of cards." As TD spoke, he pointed to each level in turn. "Belief is on the bottom. Then actions. Then emotions. Then thought. And finally...the result. But" -- his finger snapped upright -- "the minute you have a doubt..." His eyes staying on Tim, he flicked a bottom card, and the impressive structure tumbled. TD's pupils were like obsidian -- compressed darkness, sleek and impenetrable. Tim felt them probing his brain, and he broke eye contact, though the heat of TD's glare didn't subside.

"That will happen to The Program if we flinch. It would have happened to your company if you showed weakness. It could have happened at any point during your negotiations to sell, right?" He looked to Tom for an answer but continued talking. "The Program is reaching critical mass. It can grow five times, ten times faster if you and I run the business aspect of it together."

He directed his attention back to the cards, which drew themselves into his hands like metal shavings before a magnet. "Give it some thought."

Chapter
forty-three

Though the storm had quieted, the sky stayed murky, like churned-up water. Leah followed Randall down the curving trail, her adrenaline quickening.

Every step brought her closer to TD's bed.

Her mind was clear, but her body had shown itself willing to betray her. In the Growth Hall, her breath had moved through her as if directed by another entity. She'd grown sweaty and languorous, desirous of dissolution. Swept off by the rising trumpets, she'd almost surrendered to the thunderous chants, the lulling monotone. The stronger she'd fought, the more painful it had felt, like flailing offshore with a cramped leg.

After dinner she'd managed only a few minutes alone with Tom in their room before Randall's summoning knock.

Walking down the corridor of brush, she willed herself under control.

The Teacher's cottage drew into view. Across the clearing, the usual smoke twisted up from the stovepipe of the shed. Through the open door, she saw the soles of Skate's feet, bare and stained, pointing up from the cot. The dogs arose with ferocious snarling, startling Skate back to life. Leah froze, but Randall's hand grasped the back of her neck, squeezing gently as he steered her forward. Wearing a stretched pair of underwear, Skate hunched over the dogs in the shed, ordering them into submission. They yelped and snatched at each other.

Randall delivered her to the front room of the cottage and left her with trembling legs. She heard TD's raised voice above the deafening blast of the four-nozzle shower, dictating orders to Stanley John. Lorraine was probably in there with them, either extracting hair from the soap between latherings or on her knees beneath the spray, prepping him for Leah.

In its place beside the door sat the white plastic bucket,U.S. POSTAL SERVICE emblazoned on it sides. She raised the top envelope from the stack, reading the return address: Office of the U.S. Marshal. 312 N. Spring St., G-23. The envelope was a Day-Glo, yellow -- hard to miss.

She ran to the door and called for Skate across the clearing, not too loudly. Putting the dogs on a sit-stay, he came grudgingly, buttoning a pair of tattered jeans on his way. The Dobermans snarled at her, rising on their haunches. Skate paused before the porch, his face blank.

"The mail's here." She held out the tub, praying the next step would be self-evident.

Skate tugged his underwear out of his ass. "I know. I just brought it."

Whatever response she'd been expecting, it wasn't that. "Uh, TD just told me to tell you."

"He done sorting it?"

Behind her she heard the shower go off, and her stomach turned to ice. "Yes."

With a grunt he lifted the crate from her hands and headed back across the clearing.

Her heart racing, she watched to see where he was going. She recalled that the mod had a paper shredder.

A hand closed on her shoulder, and she yelped. Dripping and naked, TD smiled down at her, his erect penis brushing her stomach. "I missed you."

TD had only to raise his eyes and he'd see Skate with the postal bucket.

By the bathroom door, Stanley John scribbled down a few more notes and Lorraine wiped her mouth and glared at her, TD's towel folded over an arm.

The sight of TD up close unsettled Leah further.

She forced herself to look into the hypnotic eyes. Across the clearing she heard a door close, but she couldn't tell if it was the shed's or the mod's. She moved away from the door, smiling mechanically. "I missed you, too, TD."

Lorraine presented Leah with the towel. Her stomach roiling, she dried TD off as he stretched and yawned, seemingly impervious to the icy breeze seeping through the screen door.

He strode to the bedroom, Leah still toweling his legs as he moved, sorting through the jumble of her thoughts. He closed the door behind them. Leah continued to dry his back, hoping to buy a few more minutes, but TD pulled the towel away from her and dropped it on the floor. He placed his hands gently on her shoulders and walked her back until the bed pressed against her legs, until she fell on the mattress. He ran a hand up the inseam of her jeans, splaying his fingers near her crotch to part her legs.

"You never yielded to me," he said. "Sexually. Don't you think it's time?"

"No."

His eyebrows twitched upward, the slightest show of surprise. "What did you say?"

"I don't feel ready."

"You don't want to say that to me." He made a tsking noise with his tongue, his muscular hands gripping her forearms, steadily moving them down to either side of her. "Don't you want to give up your need to stand out? Don't you want to fit in and be part of a family for once in your life?"

He crouched over her, his smooth-skinned face looking impossibly youthful, the unlined visage of a Renaissance angel.

She felt revulsion pressing at the back of her throat like vomit. "No."

"Yes." A smile lit his face, showing off the perfect line of his teeth. "Yes, yes, yes."

She resisted, but he was sufficiently overpowering to make clear she had no options. He manipulated her body with a calm forcefulness, guiding her through the motions of undressing, navigating her arms from the shirt as if changing a doll with stiff limbs. Then he pushed down on her knees, forcing one leg straight, then the other, and pulled off her jeans.