were going. Gypsum wasn’t that large, not even when you included all the farms that circled the edges of town, the fields full of early-season soybeans and alfalfa and corn, the grazing acreage and the rich land along the creek. Growing up here for sixteen years, with no friends and no brothers or sisters, no mother or father to entertain me, I had explored every inch of town on foot and occasionally on a broken-down bike I’d found abandoned at the dump.
All my exploring had been cut short when Chub had arrived. Then I’d begun living for him, and our exploring was limited to the fields and forest around our house, paths and secret hideouts known only to me, places where a little boy could walk and play.
But I still carried the map of Gypsum in my mind, and as the car navigated the gravel drive and then the pavement of the roads, leaving the smoking ruin of the house and Derek’s body for the fire team whose sirens we heard in the background, I knew exactly where we were.
They were smart, our captors-a pair of men so like the ones who’d first come after me and Prairie a few months earlier that it was almost funny. Rent-a-Thug, I thought; but who knew how many more of these guys Prentiss had on standby? If anything, this team was even better trained than the first one; maybe Prentiss had stepped up his demands after the first team was killed in Gram’s home when they tried to kidnap us.
Mustache, as I’d nicknamed the one who’d pressed his boot into my back, was tall and dark-skinned and seemed to be in charge. He gave us short, clipped orders as his partner, who had a shaved head, a freckled red face and a tattoo around his arm, cuffed our hands behind us and forced us into the back of the car.
As we rode, I leaned against Kaz, his chin resting on the top of my head, and traced our path in my mind. They took the first turn on a dirt road that looped around the back of a drainage pond and crossed a brackish swale before heading through a mile or so of new-planted fields and coming out on State Road 9. By then I could hear sirens in the distance; the smoke cloud above the Pollitt land could probably be seen all over Gypsum. Soon neighbors would head over to see what had happened. It was more excitement than Gypsum usually saw in a month, and half the town was likely to show up, along with the entire sheriff’s department and the fire crew from Casey. Meanwhile the sedan turned down hidden drives and doubled back and looped, and only by concentrating hard did I follow its path-even though I’d known from the start that it would eventually make its way to the abandoned business park.
By the time it hit the last stretch, I could no longer hear the sirens. We parked, and when my door was opened, all I heard was the buzzing of a few crickets. We were led up a walk, and I stumbled once or twice, not being able to see the ground in front of me. A whoosh of an electric door opening was followed by a blast of cool air.
We took a walk down a long hallway, and then we were guided through one last door and our hoods were taken off. We were in a conference room, its long narrow table and the dozen chairs around it looking brand-new, the whiteboard pristine, the projection system humming softly above us. At the head of the table was a tall, broad- shouldered man in his sixties. He had a neatly trimmed beard and a buzz cut, and he gave us a tight smile.
“Welcome.” Prentiss-the man whose voice we’d heard on the phone.
“Where’s Chub?” I demanded.
He held up a hand and chuckled. “Slow down, young lady. You’ve barely arrived; why don’t you get comfortable? I’ll have some sodas brought in. Surely you would like to refresh yourselves after your… unfortunate adventure.”
He gestured at my scratched arms and filthy, ruined shirt, at Kaz’s disheveled hair and the faded bruises and cuts that remained after the healing.
“I know exactly where we are, you know,” I said furiously. “You could have had those guys drive me around for hours and I’d still know we were in the business park. I mean, it’s not like there’s anywhere else in town that’s got this kind of money poured into it.”
“Ah, that,” Prentiss said, inclining his head in a parody of an apology. “Procedure, I am afraid. You’ll learn, Hailey and Kaz, my young friends, that discipline is at the heart of every successful venture. Procedure. Chain of command.”
“What branch of the services did you come from?” Kaz demanded. “Was it even ours?”
Prentiss scrutinized Kaz, one eyebrow raised. “You’re questioning my patriotism, young man?” he said softly.
Kaz glared silently, and Prentiss made a show of pretending to remember something, snapping his fingers in the air.
“Oh dear, I forgot-you lost your father in the Gulf War. A brave man, Tanek Sawicki. He was proud of his citizenship, Kaz, was he not? Proud of fighting in the army of his adopted nation?”
Kaz said nothing but I could sense his fury escalating. I reached for his hand and held it tightly until I felt him respond, his grip relaxing slightly. I needed him to be focused, to remember why we were here-not to avenge his father’s death, but to rescue his mother and Chub.
“Only…” A look of fake sorrow passed over Prentiss’s features. “There is more to the story, I am afraid. Details of his last engagement that were classified. Have you wondered what really happened that day, Kaz?”
Kaz did not speak; he just held my hand more tightly.
“As I thought. Kaz… I was, during that chapter of our nation’s history, close to, shall we say, the heart of the intelligence community. I had access to information that was never made public. I could-”
“Tell me, you bastard,” Kaz hissed. “If you know anything about my father, tell me.”
“No,” I whispered. I knew what Prentiss was doing-trying to draw Kaz’s focus away, to break him down, to weaken our bond, to turn him against the government so that he would agree to participate in the research. A Seer like Kaz-he would be of great value to them.
Wait a minute. A Seer like Kaz…
Prentiss had been there, with access to classified information about the troops stationed in Iraq…
“You knew,” I said accusingly. “You knew his father was a Seer.”
“Ah, Hailey, you impress me again,” Prentiss said, clapping his hands in delight. “There was an experimental psychic viewing program that was begun back in 1988, when we first found evidence of psychic prodigies among the new recruits. Kaz, your father was far more gifted than any subject before or since. When word of his abilities reached me, I immediately called for his transfer to a more stable location, where he could enter our program safely. But…” He waved his hands impatiently. “Paperwork. Red tape. Bureaucracy. In the end, I was not able to transfer him soon enough. Not before that terrible day in Al Busayyah. Your father did not have to die there, in the dirt. It was, if you care to know, the last straw in my frustration with working from within. The reason I decided to go… independent, you might say.”
I glanced at Kaz. His features were frozen in hatred. Grief would come later, I suspected, when he was alone.
If Prentiss thought he could sway Kaz with this story, he was mistaken. Prentiss might have tried to save his father, as he claimed, but it was only so Prentiss could use him. And we both knew it.
“Now we have an opportunity to work together, Kaz.” Prentiss pressed on. “You can save the lives of American soldiers like your father. We’ll begin with a few simple tests. Get to know one another, so to speak, before we begin exploring your marvelous gift. And then I’ll share what I know. As two colleagues might. Because that is what I want you to see me as, Kaz. Your colleague, your comrade, with a shared goal. Not to mention the promise of handsome rewards.”
“So now you’re bribing him?” I demanded, enraged. “Are you insane? Why would he ever agree to help you?”
Prentiss frowned at me, eyes narrowed. The good humor disappeared from his expression. “You would do well to remember that we also have Jacob. Oh, excuse me… Chub, as you know him.”
His words chilled me. “What do you mean…”
“Jacob Alan Turlock. Born at home, rushed to Casey General Hospital to deal with complications at birth. Fetal alcohol syndrome and… but you don’t want to hear the whole list now, do you, Hailey?”
They knew everything. They knew where Chub had come from. They knew things about him that I had never known, and I realized that it wasn’t only Kaz who was under their thumb.
Prentiss had me.
“As I thought,” he said softly. He signaled to the men who’d brought us here. “We have so much to talk about. Why don’t you two freshen up, change into clean clothes, have something to eat? And then we will talk again.”
“I have nothing to say to you,” Kaz said. He shook off the guard’s hand as he stood.
