Unleashed (10 page)

“I’m not here for gossip anyway,” Jo said. “Straight up? We’re here because Internet rumors have started about a team that is
living in the shadows, dispensing their own kind of justice
.”

Raven said, “That would be us. Someone sent out a message on a forum. A kid who needs help against authorities when other authorities won’t help.”

I said, “I think both of you need to look up the definition of
team
. Unless you mean just the two of you. If so, good luck and goodbye.”

“For this kid to have any chance of retribution,” Jo said, “we need you and your brother.”

“We have our own troubles,” I said.

“One computer hack from him, one social-situation scam from you. That’s all we’re asking. Then we’ll leave you alone.”

“What’s in it for you two?” I asked. “Why take chances for someone else? Thought you liked being invisible.”

Raven was serious and quiet as she spoke. “Hey, we all like to pretend we’re cynical. But Jo and I realized that if you can make something better, you need to try. Injustice sucks.”

“Feels good to fight it,” Jo added. “I mean, some people recycle cans and bottles to feel good about themselves. What we’re doing is just on a bigger scale.
As long as we stay invisible, we can take down people like your father.” She pulled out her cell and showed me a text. “Bentley’s in. Are you?”

Of course Bentley was in. He actually liked them.

What Jo didn’t know was that Winchester Wyatt wasn’t my father.

I hadn’t been able to shake what Winchester had said when he thought he could get away with killing my mother and me, when he didn’t know I had asked Bentley to hide in the drapes as backup.

After that, each night when I closed my eyes I heard Winchester’s words again.
If I hadn’t been caught, you would have never known. Just like the first time
.

The thing is, there was a 25 percent chance that the first baby born to Margaret Croft and Winchester Wyatt had also been born with the obvious features of a Laron-syndrome baby.

For years, I’d thought Winchester had not discovered that he and Margaret both
carried the gene until Bentley was born. I was wrong.

I’d done my own blood test two days ago. Winchester wasn’t my father. Margaret wasn’t my mother.

You would have never known. Just like the first time
.

Dr. Evans hadn’t been blackmailing Winchester Wyatt for the failed switch of Bentley at birth. No. Dr. Evans had blackmailed Winchester about the
first
switch. Of me and the baby actually born into the Croft fortune, on the same day in the same hospital. I’d been born to a different mother.

Yes. The awful truth was that the first time, Winchester had succeeded in switching babies.

Someone out there was raising Bentley’s real brother while I’d been given a silver spoon that I hated. Somewhere out there were my real father and mother.

I was messed up, knowing this. Maybe it wouldn’t be a bad idea to stop feeling
sorry for myself and help another kid get out of a situation that looked hopeless.

“I’m in,” I told Raven and Jo. It flashed through my mind, the image of Bentley’s tattoo on his right wrist and of mine on my right shoulder blade. Of us finding a way to give infinite possibilities to those who needed it most, and taking satisfaction from delivering knockout blows against corrupt authorities who were trying to take those possibilities away from them. “What do we do next?”

Yeah, I thought. I’m in. I stopped thinking about my sorrows and focused on something else. Infinite possibilities.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Thanks to Andrew and everyone at Orca for their faith in this project.

With close to three million books in print, S
I
G
M
U
N
D
B
R
O
U
W
E
R writes for both children and adults but is happiest when he is bucking authority. In the last ten years, he has given writing workshops to students in schools from the Arctic Circle to inner-city Los Angeles. One of his latest novels,
The Last Disciple
, earned Sigmund an appearance on
ABC
Television’s
Good Morning America
. Sigmund and his family live half of the year in Nashville, Tennessee, and the other half in Red Deer, Alberta. For more information, visit
www.sigmundbrouwer.com
.