swallowed his laughter in to the most unconvincing cough I’d ever heard.
“I did not.” Okay, yes, I did call him a shit, but not a demon. “I said he screamed
“You faced down the Russian mob and the Institute and you can’t handle a toddler?” Stefan grinned. “How much pity do you think you deserve?”
Finishing the fries and with the tacos long gone, I decided now was a good time to talk to someone less judgmental, in addition to one with no knowledge of the attack of the evil taco thief. What was I anyway? Meals on Wheels? His mother had money and taco-buying ability. Obviously she had no foresight or spirit of preparation in the face of the purely sinister demands of her own child, but it wasn’t as if anyone could hold me accountable for that.
If Ariel wasn’t online, I’d see if there was any suspicious rash of deaths in Laramie, other than the ones I’d already found dated last week. There hadn’t been any more yet, but with Peter and the others there, and according to the Institute’s GPS tracker they were, it was only a matter of time. I grabbed my laptop and opened it as I tipped back the cup for the last swallow of Mountain Dew. I loved caffeine almost as much as grease and sugar. Stefan took in the sight and drawled, “Greek Gods live on Mount Olympus. Geek Gods live on Mountain Dew.”
“Drug dealer, pilot, ex-assassin-in-training, genius, geek, and
“That is damn talented,” Saul said from behind. “Maybe I should think of hiring you as a subcontractor. God knows I make no moral judgments. I make money. That’s it. Things are much simpler that way.”
“Simple in the way you assisted Stefan in liberating me from a heavily guarded, virtual fort at the risk of your blindingly horrific neon shirt?” I asked as I zipped through a firewall, typing on. God knew I couldn’t forget that shirt.
“It was a lot of mon—You liked that shirt?” I turned my head to see him give a pleased grin and then change it into a scowl as he finished his excuse. “It was a lot of money. It had nothing to do with saving your polysyllabic ass. It was only about the money. It’s never about anything but the money, you brat.”
I dismissed him, saying, “You’re lying. Your voice is half a pitch higher, pupils slightly dilated, you touched your collar twice, and you said never—never means at least once if not always. I could go on. Would you like me to?” Saul had a soft spot to have done what he did, one beyond his friendship with Stefan. I wondered what it was. I didn’t ask, but I wondered.
I also didn’t give him a chance to reply. Instilling fear in your subject at first opportunity ensures better behavior faster. In this case, better behavior would be Saul no longer annoying me. “Besides your refusal to admit morality, we could talk about your extreme womanizing. Overcompensation and denial so blatant it should require little comment, except to you perhaps.” I studied him intensely. “Psychology is a hobby of mine. I could produce some notes for you to study. They might assist in your personal development. Except for your love of spandex. I can’t comment on that. It’s too horrifying.”
“He’s shitting me, right?” Saul directed the question to Stefan with more than a little desperation.
“Oh, I very well could and you would never know it,” I answered placidly, before Stefan had a chance, and returned to my computer. “I could give you an Oedipal complex in less than three minutes if you want to put it to the test. In six minutes I could turn you into an agoraphobic germophobe with profound hoarding proclivities. Those last two aren’t easily combined, but I have faith I could pull it off. It’s up to you.”
“Yeah, thanks, but I’ll pass,” Saul muttered; then, more softly, in hopes I couldn’t hear, he added, “Brat.”
“Grown men can’t be brats.” I sent Ariel an IM. “We can be bastards, though. Do you like your hair, Saul? And your ability to semi-please women with your equally semi-erections? Do you want to keep those?”
Ahhh, and there it was.
Silence.
The next hour remained blessedly quiet. Ariel wasn’t around and Laramie hadn’t suffered any clusters of peculiar if natural-appearing deaths for eight days, the same as when I’d looked into it yesterday. Five heart attacks, six aneurysms, and four people who abruptly fell over dead with no cause determined. It had all happened last Wednesday and it reeked of Institute tactics. Leave no sign behind . . . unless your owner wanted to send a message. Peter and the others were following training, but they’d stop soon. Where was the satisfaction in having all that power if you couldn’t get the recognition—the
Fly away, bird. Fly away no more.
Chapter 8
The tracker led us to a house just beyond the outskirts of Laramie. It was the only one at the end of a long gravel road. Its isolation made me think of our house in Cascade Falls—or what had been our house before it had burned. The isolation was the only thing that reminded me. This house needed painting, but it had no Stefan to paint it. Its wooden shutters were split and on the verge of falling off most of the windows. The weeds that made up the yard were taller than my knees. It was all gray. The unpainted concrete porch, the bare, rotting wood, the grime-covered windows—they were the colors of no color at all.
Except. . . .
There were balloons—red, yellow, blue, green, purple; the helium had them bouncing in the breeze. They were tied to the mailbox at the road as people did for birthday parties. When I’d first seen that, fresh out of the Institute, I’d asked Stefan if clowns lived there. What did I know about celebrations and parties? Peter knew, though. Two weeks on the outside and he knew what it had taken me months or longer to learn. How had I missed seeing that in him? Genius beyond customary chimera genius—he was extrapolating information and customs I’d had to learn and he was doing it with what little data the Institute had given us. He was the chimera Einstein, and that not only made him as dangerous as Wendy, but maybe more so with his maturity level and cunning. I was in over my head. We all were, but there was nothing to be done about it. I wanted my brother to stay safe; I wanted Saul . . . well, out of hearing range, but that didn’t matter. We couldn’t let death roam in a pack across the country. If we did, I couldn’t say how long the country would be left.
We were the only option; I was the only cure.
“I don’t think they’re in there. Not anymore.” Stefan had traded his Steyr for one of the tranquilizer guns. “I believe they outfoxed the tracker, Misha.”
I didn’t have a lot of doubt about that either. The homemade banner across the front door that read TOO SLOW, MICHAEL. BYE-BYE and the fact that their GPS signatures hadn’t moved in more than twenty-four hours were sure signs that too slow was me indeed.
Peter had thought of something else that I hadn’t during my escape. Stefan and Saul, not I, had figured out I’d been implanted with a GPS tracking chip. It hadn’t crossed my mind then, but it had crossed Peter’s. I tightened my lips and headed down the grass-spotted driveway toward the house. I managed two steps before Stefan moved in front of me—no surprise there. “When do I lead the way?”
“When you’re sixty, not nineteen, and I’m in the nursing home. And I’m hoping before then we can stop worrying about who goes where first.” Stefan had switched the tranq gun to his left hand and now carried his 9mm in his right.
Behind me, Saul said, “You can both go first. No skin off my nose.”
“You’re bringing up the rear, guarding my flank, aren’t you?” I demanded, for Stefan if not for me. It was hard to gain acceptance as being as efficiently dangerous as an ex-soldier, such as Saul, and an ex-soldier of a different sort, such as Stefan, without their seeing me in action. And while I did want their respect, hurting people to get it . . . That situation hadn’t come yet. I should hope it wouldn’t. Being a man and leaving childhood behind were damn challenging and equally damn confusing.
