The Truth of the Matter (2 page)

I felt a jolt and suddenly Beth was gone. The river was gone and so were the birch trees. Suddenly I was moving quickly and another guy’s face was moving quickly in front of me. Mike—Sensei Mike—my karate teacher. He was throwing blows at me, quick chops and punches, too fast to block. They hit me in the chest and the shoulder, jolting me again and again. Mike’s face was as it always was, long and lean with chiseled features under that neatly combed black hair he was so proud of and the big black mustache. But then he opened his mouth to speak—and the voice that came out wasn’t his. It was deep and rumbling with a British accent. Somehow I knew it was Winston Churchill’s voice, the voice of the man who was British prime minister during World War II. He spoke the words that Mike had taught me, the philosophy he’d taught me: “Never give in; never give in—never, never, never, never, in nothing great or small, large or petty, never give in except to convictions of honor and good sense. Never yield to force: never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy.”

I didn’t want to give in, but they were after me. I was in the woods. It was dark. It was pitch-black night. All around me, dogs were howling, sirens were sounding, footsteps were drawing near. It was the Homelanders. The Homelanders were coming for me. The Homelanders was a group run by Islamo-fascist terrorists from the Middle East. They hated . . . Well, they hated a lot of things. They hated our country. They hated the idea that people should be free to choose how they live, to choose what they believe. There were Americans among them too, homegrown traitors they’d recruited because it was easier for them to move around the country, to get at their targets. The Homelanders thought I was one of them, one of their American traitors. Only they thought I had betrayed
them
as well. So they were chasing me, closing in on me, and then . . .

Then suddenly, bright lights blinded me. The night whirled red and blue. I wasn’t in the woods anymore. I was on a city street. The police were coming for me. Their cars were racing at me from every street, from every side. They thought I’d killed my best friend, Alex Hauser. I’d been put on trial for it, convicted of it. I’d been put in prison. I’d escaped.

But I couldn’t remember any of that. It was like falling in love with Beth. Like falling into league with the Homelanders. It was all part of that missing year, that chunk of memory that had somehow disappeared.

I felt another jolt—and now suddenly they had me. The police. I was captured. Under arrest. In handcuffs. Detective Rose—the man who’d arrested me for Alex’s murder, the man who was relentlessly hunting me still— was leading me to a patrol car that would take me back to prison. I was surrounded by state troopers. They were crowded around me, pressing in on every side. The open door of the patrol car was getting closer and closer. They were going to put me in the car and take me back to prison. But now a voice was whispering in my ear:

You’re a better man than you know. Find Waterman
.

Find Waterman . . .

Suddenly, with another jolt, my eyes came open. I was awake. My heart was pounding—and it pounded faster as I realized I was still in utter blackness.

Am I dead?

That was the first thought that went through my mind. But then there was another jolt. I bounced heavily and felt a throbbing ache in my head. Oh man, it hurt—it hurt like crazy. Well, at least I wasn’t dead anyway. Not with a headache like that!

But then, where was I?

I reached out and felt the space around me. Metal. Plastic. Some kind of padding material. Some kind of heavy insulated wires.

I listened. An engine. Rushing wind. Highway noises . . .

With a spurt of claustrophobic panic, it came to me: I was locked in the trunk of a moving car.

My first instinct was to start pounding on the trunk lid, to start shouting, “Help! Let me out! Let me out!” Which would’ve been pretty dumb, I know. I mean, whoever put me in the trunk of a car probably hadn’t done it by accident. They probably weren’t walking around, thinking,
Hey, what happened to Charlie? Gee, I hope we
didn’t leave him in the trunk of the car!
Obviously, they’d dumped me in here on purpose, and so if I started shouting, “Help! Help! Let me out!” they probably wouldn’t say,
Oh, okay, sorry, we thought you liked it in there
. All it would do was alert them that I was awake. So, like I say, screaming for help: dumb idea. And I
knew
it was a dumb idea. But still, let me tell you, in my fear and claustrophobia, the urge to start screaming anyway was almost overwhelming. I had to work hard to fight it down. I had to force myself to breathe slowly, deeply. I had to force myself to think. I thought:
Okay, what’s my
situation? How did I get here? What happened to me?

Then I remembered: Waterman.

I felt another jolt as the car went over a bump. I flinched as the pain lanced through my head like a jagged bolt of lightning. I winced. I thought:
Ow!
Then I thought:
Waterman
. Right. Waterman in the alley. And the man in the Dodgers cap. And the gun . . .

The gun. The man in the Dodgers cap had shot me. Quickly, my hand went to my chest. I felt the bruise, the stinging pain under my fleece where the gunshot had hit me.

But that’s all I felt. No dampness. No blood. Plus I was alive. Which meant I hadn’t been shot with a bullet. A bullet to that spot would’ve almost surely hit my heart, almost surely killed me, with plenty of blood to go around. Flinching at the pain in my head again, I realized: it wasn’t a bullet. It was a dart, a drug of some kind. The man in the Dodgers cap had fired a tranquilizer weapon at me. I’d been knocked out, but I was unhurt. I was alive.

Okay. So that was my situation. On the plus side, I was alive. That definitely had to be counted as a positive. In terms of negatives: well, the whole locked-in-the-trunk-of-the-car thing. It was hard to find anything good to say about that.

In fact, as I thought about it, I felt the panic and claustrophobia start to rise up in me again.

Again, I forced myself to breathe deeply.
Never give
in
, I told myself.
Never, never, never, never
.

Feeling stiff and uncomfortable, I shifted in the small space. I discovered I had a little room to move. My eyes were adjusting to the darkness now too. I could see that I was facing the rear of the car. I struggled to turn around, to face the front, to see what else I could see. Moving like that redoubled my sense of claustrophobia. Made me feel like I was in a coffin, buried underground, left for dead. Not a pleasant feeling.

All the same, I did manage to make the turn onto my back then onto my other side. When I finished, I could see the barrier between the trunk and the backseat. That gave me an idea. I struggled to get closer to the barrier. I managed to press my ear against it. I listened.

Sure enough, I could hear what was going on inside the car. I could hear voices in there. At first, it was hard to make out the words through the barrier. The rumble of the car’s motion kept drowning them out too. But if I lay very still and kept my breathing shallow, I could hear some of what was being said.

“We don’t have much choice. One way or another, we’ve got to act.”

That last part came to me clearly. I was pretty sure it was Waterman speaking. I recognized the distinctive southern twang I’d heard in the alley.

Somebody answered him, but the voice was muffled.

Then Waterman said, “No. And it isn’t going to be pretty finding out. But I don’t see what other options we have. They’re close. Very close. We can’t just wait and hope for the best.”

This time, the answering voice was clearer: “He may still be worth something to us as he is.” I guessed it was the guy in the Dodgers cap speaking.

“It’s gone too far for that, Jim,” said Waterman. “As he is, he can only be a liability.”

Again, there was an answer I couldn’t hear.

I licked my dry lips, staring into the darkness of the car’s trunk. Were they talking about me? Were they deciding what to do with me? I thought they probably were.

Then I heard Waterman say flatly, “Well, then we’ve got to get rid of him.”

There was another jolt, another flash of pain through my skull.

We’ve got to get rid of him
.

That didn’t sound good at all.

Now I could feel the car changing direction, slowing. We were getting off the highway. I figured we must be approaching our destination. Was this the place where they were going to get rid of me?

“I don’t know,” the second speaker—Jim—began. “Either way, I think we have some kind of responsibility—”

“No,” said Waterman, cutting him off. “This was part of the deal. We knew it would be like this from the beginning.”

After that, the voices stopped for a while. I shifted in the car again. I felt around me, trying to find some way to get the trunk open or maybe some weapon I might be able to use: a tire iron maybe. But there was nothing. The trunk’s latch was hidden inside the body of the car. And the only objects around me were those insulated wires, which I now realized were a pair of jumper cables. Not much help.

I’d have to wait and take my chances. They might just open up the trunk and shoot me, but they might take me out first, take me somewhere secluded. Sensei Mike had trained me well in karate. I was a good fighter, a black belt. There might be a chance, a small chance, I could break away from these guys and run for it.

So I said a prayer for calm and for courage and I waited and, while I waited, I tried to think.

Who were they? Who was Waterman? Was he one of the Homelanders? I had no way of knowing. That time I’d been arrested, someone had whispered in my ear that I should “find Waterman,” but I didn’t know who the whisperer was—a friend or an enemy? If all Waterman wanted was to “get rid” of me, why hadn’t he just done it in the alley? Why hadn’t he just shot me for real and left me there?

Maybe they need something
, I thought.
Maybe they
think I have some important piece of information
.

It isn’t going to be pretty finding out
.

That didn’t sound so good either. Were they going to torture me? Did my life depend on the answers I gave them? Didn’t they understand? I didn’t know what had happened. I didn’t remember.

The car went on and on. I felt another turn. The road grew bumpier. I was jostled back and forth roughly in the trunk. It felt like we were on a dirt road. We were heading away from traffic, away from people.

Now I heard the voices in the car start up again. They were easier to hear than before because the car had slowed down to deal with the rough road.

“Where do you want to do this?” said the voice I now knew as Jim.

“Might as well use the Panic Room. That way, we can be sure no one hears the screaming.”

Great. Screaming. Screaming was never a positive. And Waterman’s tone when he talked about it was chillingly cool and casual. As if torturing me and getting rid of me was just another piece of business that had to be taken care of.

There was a brief silence, then the guy called Jim said, “Poor kid.”

“Like I said,” Waterman drawled, “this was the deal from the beginning.”

“Yeah. Still. Poor kid.”

My stomach turned. I was scared, I don’t mind saying. I’d escaped from the Homelanders. I’d escaped from the police. But something about these guys was different. They sounded so relaxed, so professional. Their tone sapped my confidence, made me feel there was no chance I could fight my way out of this.

The car slowed. I felt a slight bump as if the car were lifting over a threshold. The car stopped. The engine died.

I heard the doors opening. I held my breath. I heard footsteps.

Then suddenly, Waterman’s voice sounded right nearby, right outside the trunk.

“Let’s get this over with,” he said.

The trunk came open.

CHAPTER THREE
Milton Two

After such a long time in the darkness, I had to blink and squint in the pale light of evening before I could see anything. Then I saw Waterman, silhouetted by the light, standing above me holding the lid of the car trunk. Jim— the man in the Dodgers cap—was standing just behind him, his hands shoved into his overcoat pockets.

“Come on, Charlie,” Waterman said grimly. “Let’s go.”

He stepped back. I climbed slowly out of the trunk, my limbs stiff and aching after the long confinement.

“Where are we?” I said. “Where are you taking me?”

“Sorry,” said Waterman. “You don’t get any questions. We ask; you answer. That’s how it’s going to work.”

I stood up, rubbing my legs to bring them back to life. I looked around, blinking, dazed.

We were in an old barn of dried-out brown wood. The fading daylight poured through the open bay doors. Strips of light came in between the cracks in the ancient wallboards. Farm tools hung on nails in the boards: a pitchfork, a shovel, a pair of gardening shears. My eyes went over them as I tried to think of some way to get my hands on something I could use as a weapon.

Waterman seemed to read my mind. “Don’t even think about it, son. I know you’re a tough guy. But you’re not tough enough. This is already going to be unpleasant. Don’t make it any harder on yourself than it has to be.”

I eyed my two captors. Waterman looked like he was fifty or so. Dodger Jim looked somewhat younger, not much. But both of them looked like they were hard characters, very confident and experienced. It was a pretty good bet that Dodger Jim was holding a gun in his overcoat pocket too, and it might not be a tranquilizer gun this time. If I was going to try to escape, this wasn’t the time. I was going to have to take them when they were off guard in order to have even half a chance.

Waterman glanced over his shoulder, as if he was afraid someone might be watching us. Outside the barn door I couldn’t see anything but forest.

“All right,” he said. He slammed the trunk. “We can’t just stand around here. Let’s get moving.”

Dodger Jim stepped aside and gave an ironic wave of his hand toward the barn door: right this way, sir. I stepped out into a deep forest that was fading into shadow with the coming of night. It was cold here, colder than in the city, colder with every moment the light grew dimmer. My breath frosted in front of me, and I could feel the chill eating at my skin through my fleece.