“Was it that platform?” Thatcher asked me.
The short hairs on the back of my neck prickled. “It just dragged up some old shit, but I’m fine now. We need to talk about that.” I pointed at Ethan’s collar.
Thatcher looked at the collar like he hadn’t noticed it before. He touched his own throat, tracing the faint scar from the security collar he’d worn for fifteen years as a resident of Manhattan Island Prison. “Where did that come from?”
“Bethany put it on me,” Ethan replied.
“What? How did she get one?”
“That’s what we’d like to know,” I said. “How did an eighteen-year-old thief get her paws on a piece of technology used by both our federal government and a bunch of whack-job Recombinant clones?”
Thatcher blanched. “Clones?”
Crap, we hadn’t told him about that part of our adventures before and during last month’s earthquake. Only a select few in our entire HQ knew about the twenty-year-old clones of our dead relatives and friends: two mothers, two fathers, and a brother, complete with their original superpowers. The clone of Ethan’s mother was killed during our final encounter with them, and we hadn’t heard a peep from the other clones since.
Their silence made all of us incredibly nervous.
“I’ll tell you about them later,” I said. “The long and short of it is that either the government is funding the Recombinant experiments, or someone is playing for both teams.”
“Playing for both teams?” a familiar female voice asked. “Someone looking for me?”
Bethany Crow waltzed out of the shack, her short, unnaturally red hair spiked up like a porcupine, back in the same ripped jeans and layered tanks as that first night. She gave me a long, appraising look from head to toe and her singsong comment made more sense.
I rolled my eyes. “You’re not my type, sister.”
“Shame.” She winked as she slunk forward, like a cat wanting to rub up against someone’s ankle. “Blue’s my favorite color.”
“Sorry, but I like dick.”
Thatcher made a choking noise. Ethan snickered.
“Me, too, honey,” Bethany said with a saucy come-hither grin I’d perfected back in my Vegas days. “But not all the time. Variety is the spice of life.”
“Too much spice can give you the runs.”
“You don’t know what you’re missing.”
“A bad case of the clap?”
Ethan turned away, his face bright red from trying not to laugh out loud. Thatcher’s eyebrows were arched so high they threatened to jump right off his face. Bethany stared at me for a moment before dissolving into giggles.
Legit giggles, in a pitch so high that my own vocal range was a little jealous. “Oh, my God, I love her.” Bethany looked over her shoulder at the open shack door. “Bro, why didn’t we kidnap her instead? She’s totally cooler than Captain Grumpy-Puss over there.”
“I’d wager Ethan was pretty calm with you, considering that most folks object to being kidnapped,” I retorted. “Or were you expecting him to entertain you?”
“Well, I was hoping we could entertain each other, since we had all night, but he’s taken, or so he insists. Is he really?”
What were we? Teenage girls at a sleepover? “Yep, he is taken. And his boyfriend’s pretty damn cute, too.”
Bethany’s face fell, then immediately brightened up again. She gave Ethan a hopeful smile. “You two ever consider a threesome?”
“Enough!” Thatcher said, with enough force to make all three of us jump. He took a few steps closer to Bethany, dwarfing her slight size with his much taller, bulkier frame. “Where did you get the collar that you put on Ethan?”
She wasn’t the slightest bit cowed. She planted her hands on her hips and craned her neck to stare back up at him. “Why don’t you tell me?”
“From the man you call Uncle, the one who raised you.”
“Give the man a teddy bear.” She clapped her hands in mock applause. “So what?”
“I wore a collar like this for fifteen years. It was almost identical, so I have to wonder where this Uncle of yours acquired technology that’s under a federal patent.”
“How would I know? Landon and I don’t ask questions. Uncle gave us two collars in case we ever needed to restrain other Metas, and let me tell you, they’ve been useful.”
Ethan harrumphed.
“Bethany, are there any other kids like you and Landon?” I asked. “Raised by Uncle?”
She shrugged. “Don’t know, don’t care. Landon and I take care of each other. We don’t need anyone else. And you can save your breath asking, too, because neither one of us would ever sell out Uncle. He saved us.”
“Because your biological mom was an evil, child-murdering monster, right? Like Thatcher over there is an evil, child-murdering monster?”
“Basically.”
“What if you’re wrong?”
“About what?”
“Everything, but we’ll start with your parents. You’ve heard of Specter, right? Psychotic telepath who can take over your body from a distance and kill you with his brain?”
“Of course I’ve heard of him.” Bethany tossed me a look that clearly said I was an idiot. “He led the Banes.”
“Oh, I’m sure he led some of them. The rest he threatened to kill unless they fought on his side.”
“Bullshit.”
Landon appeared in the shack’s doorway. He leaned there, listening, out of Bethany’s line of sight. Likewise, Ethan and Thatcher were somewhere behind me, and I’d bet Ethan’s eyes were bugging out of his head as he listened to me defending the Banes. I half expected to be struck by lightning.
I jacked my thumb over my shoulder. “Thatcher didn’t have a choice about following Specter, but he did have a choice to hide his wife and son so Specter couldn’t hurt them. Your mother probably gave you up for the same reason.”
I was reaching with that last comment, but it was a logical deduction. Alice Stiles could have ended her pregnancy, but she didn’t. She disappeared during the War to give birth, then gave the baby to the biological father. Daddy Dearest may have dumped Bethany in an orphanage, but that was on him.
“You must be really desperate,” Bethany said with a snarl. “You should have chosen better lies.”
“What if they’re not lying?” Landon said.
Bethany spun around, startled. “Don’t tell me you’re buying this. They’re trying to manipulate you.”
“It’s the truth,” Thatcher said. “I swear on your life and mine, Landon, that it’s the truth. Once Specter found us, once he could sense our individual energies, there was no place on the planet we could hide from him for long.” He came forward, stopping next to me. Hurt and regret etched lines on his forehead and deepened the crinkles around his eyes. My hand jerked, as if to reach out and comfort him, and I froze.
Thatcher continued. “I was afraid of Specter, and I was too much of a coward to end my own life. So I went to war and I killed, and eventually I was punished for that. I regret so many things, but I don’t regret that I’m alive, because I got the chance to meet you, to see the man you’ve grown into. If you believe only one thing, please believe that I love you, son. Unconditionally.”
Landon’s face crumpled, then smoothed out as he caught himself. But I’d seen the first chink in his armor, and I bet Thatcher saw it, too. Landon was eighteen, raised to believe his father was some sort of scary monster, only to come face-to-face with a completely different kind of man.
And Landon wasn’t the only one seeing a new side to the Banes today, either, and that scared me. Scared me a lot.
“Dinner’s ready,” Landon said, as if his father had never spoken.
“Dinner?” I parroted.
