Wendy’s, but this one did. Sliding my gaze back to Raynor, I smiled myself. What it looked like, I had no idea. It wasn’t one I’d practiced. It was genuine and sprang from a place of surgical blades and ice-cold metal and human flesh floating in jars. “Asshole,” I said, “did you think we didn’t know that?” Raynor’s own smile faded into a split second of confusion. A split second was all he had time for.
The driver’s window to the truck parked next to us slid down. Raynor turned swiftly at the soft sound and right into the short metal baton Saul slammed across his throat. Mr. Homeland Security fell to the asphalt instantly. He’d dropped his gun to grab at his throat with both hands. From the strangled sounds and the rapid color change from red to blue, his trachea had been shattered by Saul’s blow. He was about five minutes away from death by asphyxiation.
I wasn’t sympathetic. While I wouldn’t kill, I did recognize that in the world we lived in there were people who deserved the ultimate punishment. Anyone involved in the Institute deserved it. Anyone who sent a sandwich- eating idiot to shoot my brother deserved it. Anyone who wanted to
Saul grinned, his white-streaked ginger beard a strange frame to such a homicidally happy flash of teeth. “Okay, I’d rather really be at Caesar’s instead of faking it over the phone, but wetwork costs you double. That makes my bank account get a boner like there’s no tomorrow.” He started to open the door. “I’d better finish the job before he attracts attention, kicking and gasping like a headless chicken. Nice suit, though. I wonder where he bought it.”
Before he could, there was a shout. “Hey, what’s going on? What are you doing to that guy? What the fuck? Someone call the police!”
Good Samaritans more often for those on the run were Inconvenient Samaritans. “Shit. Civilians. I hate civilians.” Saul swore, slammed his door shut, started the truck, and drove off, the vehicle’s tires squealing. Stefan was right behind him. We’d been parked too close, as planned for the ambush of Raynor, for either car to swerve enough to put an end to the government agent without colliding with each other. He would have to take the full five minutes to die as no ambulance would get there in time. It wasn’t as if things were ending differently for him, I told myself. If the rebellion at the Institute hadn’t happened and Raynor had managed to get Wendy out to chase after me—free in the world as she was now, it would’ve been the same. Chases could be long and boring. Wendy didn’t like boring. Eventually she would’ve had to find some way to entertain herself. Wendy would’ve eaten him for lunch.
We just saved her the time.
Chapter 6
We hadn’t had to wait long at all for Raynor to show up in that parking lot. What we’d found at the Institute hadn’t made us forget about him. He wasn’t thirteen chimeras loose in the world, but he was smart and dangerous. He’d found Anatoly. He’d found us. He’d remained very much a threat, if the lesser one. We had enough on our plate to keep looking over our shoulders for him. It was another lesson that Institute and
I’d have to ask him later, when he wasn’t expecting it, to see how fiercely his brain would cramp. Brothers did that—joked around with each other. The three primary sources of information in my life now had taught me that: Stefan, movies, and the Internet. I’d gotten good at it in the past few years—so good that sometimes when I opened my mouth, Stefan’s eye would twitch before I said a single word.
Now with Raynor done and gone, we headed east, driving five hours, twenty-two minutes, and thirty-five seconds, before stopping at one a.m. at a motel in St. George, Utah. The Institute GPS tracker had indicated Peter and the rest had stopped too. They had been in the same position since I’d entered their codes into the tracker from the data I’d taken off the Institute computers. I’d studied the tape, every face. I’d known them all either my whole life or their whole lives . . . starting at the age of three. If you were three, you were old enough to sit quietly at a desk and learn, said the Institute. You were also old enough to fathom the consequences if you didn’t. That was something the Institute didn’t say—it proved.
And where were the ones younger than that? I tried hard not to think about it. Raised by foster-type families, Stefan had guessed. Or by their own family if they were like me and harvested instead of grown in a surrogate. That was his second guess. I didn’t guess at all. I would search the Institute’s computer files to see if I could find mention of a place, an assassin’s day care. I’d look for facts, not guesses. But I’d do that later. Better to take on one impossible crusade at a time.
Peter and the others were in Laramie, Wyoming, at the moment, which was curious. They could’ve gotten much farther in two weeks. Then again, where were they going? Were they going anywhere in particular at all? Or were they making the entire country their new Basement, their Playground? If the only thing that satisfied you was spreading death, you could do that anywhere. Location, location, location—that meant nothing to a chimera. Anyplace that hosted a single living thing was your Playground.
At the motel, I began to pull my bags from the backseat of the Ford Mustang we’d stolen off a random exit. The SUV and its GPS we’d driven off the interstate and torched before continuing on. Simple arson wasn’t challenging. I hadn’t participated. Saul had seemed to enjoy it, however; the same Saul whose hand slapped me on the back as I wrestled the bags out. “How’s it going, Mikey? Long time no see . . . in person anyway. E-mails lack that personal touch. By the way, how’d that plane work out for you?”
Saul was Stefan’s friend, although they’d both deny it and swear to their graves it was a business relationship only. Saul was also something of an acquired taste, like Brussels sprouts. Our landlady brought us dinner once a week without fail and it always included Brussels sprouts. It was like Lolcats—if people bothered with that tasteless shit or, conversely, with an incredibly bad-tasting vegetable, then there must be a reason. If people ate those disgusting things, there had to be an explanation. I hadn’t figured out what it was yet, not after a year of grimly forking down their repulsiveness on a weekly basis, but I’d been determined. There was an answer and I’d find it. The fact that everyone else figured it out when they were eight instead of nineteen didn’t deter me one bit. They might get AP credit in Brussels sprouts, but I’d catch up. Geniuses always did.
I didn’t have to be a genius to know that Saul was a Brussels sprout. I didn’t get what Stefan saw in him. It might take a few more years, but, as with the vegetable, eventually I would. “The plane worked adequately.” I heard Stefan snort and ignored him. “It’s not Mikey. It’s never been Mikey. It’s not Michael either. It’s Misha now.” I hefted one bag and tossed the other over my shoulder. “I’m also two and a half years older, have several degrees, blend in”—although my drug dealer persona needed work—“learned to fly”—more or less—“and I’ve picked up considerably on my cursing. I think I’ve been fairly productive.”
“Cursing?” I turned with the bags and Godzilla looped around my neck to see Saul’s hand immediately cover his mouth, muffling the rest of his words. “Good for you. Next to screwing, cursing is one of life’s greatest pleasures.”
He was mocking me. He knew what I could do, what I was. Stefan and I had debated long and hard about telling him, but when it came down to his being willing to hire the mercenaries and help us take the Institute back, he did deserve to know what he’d be facing in them. And in me. Yet here he was, laughing silently. I narrowed my eyes. “You aren’t afraid of me, are you?”
He dropped his hand. “Sorry, Mikey, but nope. I’ve seen killers. Hell, I am one myself. I can tell when someone doesn’t have it in them—not that there’s anything wrong with that.”
“There is everything right with that, in fact,” Stefan interjected firmly as he passed us on the way to one of the rooms we’d rented.
“So, sorry, bucko. Not afraid of you.” The same hand swatted my shoulder in apology.
Not afraid of me. That was . . . irritating.
It shouldn’t have been. In Cascade Falls, no one was afraid of me—of my persona, Parker. Saul should’ve boosted my belief in myself and my conscience. I didn’t want to hurt people, right? I wouldn’t kill people, ever.
But I could.
