was unnerving. What kid when faced with a gun-waving man dressed all in black wouldn’t scream her lungs out?
Stripping off my glove, I tried again. Palm up, I let it lie unthreateningly between us with an inner patience I was far from feeling. “It’s all right, sweetheart,” I assured her softly. “Come with me. I’ll take you home.” She didn’t blink at the words or move, but continued to study me with an assessment that was anything but childlike. It almost seemed to hold the cunning of an adult or . . . a wary animal. My hand began to grow cool, then cold, far colder than the temperature warranted. Confused, I pulled it back and turned it over. My nails were dark blue, the skin of my fingers blanched an unnatural white. What the fuck? When I looked back up, the door was shut once again. The girl was gone. Not much to my credit, I wasn’t completely sorry.
Shaking my hand hard, I put the glove back on and gritted my teeth as the blood began to tingle fiercely back into my fingers. I had no idea what had happened and less time to think about it. Resolutely, I moved on to the next door.
I don’t remember opening it.
I don’t remember walking into the room. I only remember facing the boy sitting on the edge of his bed. Boy, young man, whatever you wanted to call him, he sat there wearing the same style unisex white pajamas and a face that bore only the faintest traces of curiosity. Without instruction from my conscious brain, my hand switched on a tiny penlight to see him more clearly. I stood, paralyzed, and looked—just looked. The line of the jaw and the slope of the nose were blurred by time. Ten years would change the map of anyone’s face. But the eyes—they were the same. The colors, yes, but more than that; it was what lay behind the blue and green. It was Lukas, completely and utterly; the amazing directness, the clarity of spirit, the look of which I’d never forgotten.
They were my brother’s eyes.
He had brown hair, I noticed dazedly. I hadn’t expected that. I thought it would stay blond like our mother’s. Medium length, it was a light chestnut with the occasional pale streak. He looked a little younger than the seventeen Saul had described and with a face as pale and tranquil as a snow-covered pond. He looked—my God—he looked like salvation.
“Lukas?” Raw and shaking, his name came out more a fractured sound than an actual word. It was less recognizable as letters strung together and more like a visceral grunt of pain. I tried again. “Lukas?”
His head tilted slightly and he corrected politely, “Michael.” He didn’t raise his hand to shield against my light but instead stared into it without hesitation as he repeated, “My name is Michael.” Like the little girl, he didn’t show any sign that he found any of this out of the ordinary. There was a man dressed all in black, armed and masked, and no one found that worth comment.
His voice was as his face, changed. The light tenor of childhood was gone, replaced by an adult’s deeper tone. “Is this a test?”
I was still struggling to process the different name. It made comprehending his question difficult, perhaps impossible. I didn’t even try. “Test? Lukas, it’s me, Stefan. Your brother.” It had been ten years, more than half of his life. In the back of my mind the realization that he might not know me had been present, but present and acceptable were two entirely different beasts. Emotional trauma or the physical trauma of his head injury when he had been kidnapped, the reasons for his memory loss were something I didn’t have the time for now. “I’m your brother,” I repeated.
I saw his confusion. It was suppressed and muted, but it was there. He opened his mouth, then closed it again without speaking. I used the opportunity to push on and say to crushingly familiar eyes, “I’m here to take you home.”
As I talked, I shook like Vasily had when he had begged for his life. It was appropriate, because now I was begging for mine. It was easy to forgive myself the adrenaline and long-buried emotions wreaking havoc within, and when the moment of truth came, the shaking stopped. That moment happened when the alarm went off.
“Shit.”
It was a silent alarm, at least in this section of the building. The only evidence that our break-in had been noticed was the sudden blinking of the security lights. It was enough to chill my blood; I didn’t need a wailing siren or rotating red beacon. The simple strobing of the strips of fluorescence near the floor brought the catastrophe home clearly enough. Swearing again, I lunged over to the bed and circled my fingers around Lukas’s wrist.
“Lukas, we have to go.” I yanked at his arm, pulling him to his feet.
“Go?” he echoed with eerie calm. “Go where?”
“Right now out of here is good enough for me.” Towing him along unresisting behind me, I ran into the hall and scanned it hurriedly for Saul. Even in the midst of it, the running and the alarms, I marveled at the solid feel of his flesh within my grip. For so long he had been a ghost that I could barely believe he was real and true to the touch.
“Smirnoff, haul ass!”
I whipped my head around to see Saul waving frantically by the same door through which we’d made our entrance, not using my real name, which I appreciated. Seeing that I’d spotted him, he wasted no time in beginning his escape. Obviously devil take the hindmost wasn’t a phrase he took lightly. Following his lead, I ran toward the door. Lukas had been keeping up without difficulty until he saw our destination. He didn’t stop or try to pull away, but he definitely slowed. Considering what lay below, I didn’t blame him. “It’s all right,” I reassured him quickly as I fumbled at my belt. “We’re just passing through that medical torture chamber downstairs. We’re not sticking around.”
It was hard to tell with only the fast glance I could allow him and his strangely unemotional façade, but I thought he seemed relieved. My attention was jerked away as I saw two men, the ever-present khaki brigade, enter the other end of the hall. Shoving Lukas before me when we reached the door to the basement, I whirled and tossed the grenade I’d taken from my belt. It was a standard smoke one. I had tear gas as well, but I was hesitant to use it so close to the other kids. As heavy white smoke billowed and blocked the men from view, there was the sharp bark of guns being fired. I didn’t wait to see how good their aim was in whiteout conditions. Diving through the door after Lukas, I slammed it behind me and rushed headlong down the stairs. I caught up with him halfway down and took a handful of his pajama top to hurry him along.
He didn’t complain or protest. He barely reacted at all, as obedient as a programmed robot. I didn’t like it. It was unnatural, wrong, but as with other things, I didn’t have the luxury of thinking about it right then. Staying alive and getting my brother out of this place made up my entire to-do list at the moment. Hitting the bottom, I saw Saul facing us several feet away. He had double handfuls of the more serious firepower: tear gas and stun grenades. “Move your shit,” he snapped.
My shit and I complied with alacrity and took Lukas past the medical equipment and computers and out into the night air. The sound of hissing gas and ear-ringing explosions followed us as Saul heaved his grenades up the stairwell. I knew he would be pushing us out of the way from behind like a fullback if we didn’t get going, and I charged up the concrete stairs with Lukas like a runaway train. I didn’t even break stride with the first man I shot. The second one, unfortunately, didn’t go down quite as easily.
Halfway across the pseudo-hospital room I’d once again drawn my gun. I’d known from the beginning that I would do what was necessary to free Lukas, no matter the cost. But I had thought I might hesitate when it came to pulling the trigger, if only for a second. I had thought I would pause before sending a bullet into a warm, living son of Man.
I didn’t.
The first one went down with lead in the stomach. That’s the way you were taught to shoot a person. Aim for the biggest target; aim for the torso. The police learned that, as did the rest of us who had less-admirable excuses for our violence. Whatever my justifications, I was already firing again as the first man hit the ground and his gun went flying. His partner, beefy and broad shouldered, was quicker on his feet. He twisted and dodged for cover toward the corner of the building. I was lucky to get one in his thigh and luckier that the bullet he squeezed off in our direction was only an evil buzz past my ear.
Giving Lukas a hard shove, I commanded, “Run!” As before, he did as he was told, without question. From behind us came another detonation, a much larger one than before. Saul had brought the genuine explosives into play. No one would be coming after us through the basement, because by now it was nothing more than a smoking ruin.
I kept just behind my brother as we ran. Saul, who passed us within seconds, kept ahead by a few feet. The son of a bitch could run like the wind, whatever his crappy taste in shirts. As for taste, no one could fault him his
