Authors: Michelle Gagnon
“It was just a taste,” Turk said sullenly.
“What now?” Zeke asked, directing the question to Noa.
She regarded the body on the floor, brow furrowed. “We find a place to dump him on the way.”
“All right. I’ll get everyone up.” Zeke stifled a yawn with his hand. “We should get on the road soon.”
“What about me?” Turk interjected.
Zeke raised an eyebrow at Noa. She regarded Turk coolly. “You’re not coming.”
“What?” he protested. “But—”
“I said, you’re done. Get out.”
Turk turned a pleading face toward Zeke, but he just shrugged. “You heard her.”
“This is some freakin’ bullshit!” Turk spat. He stalked out of the room; a second later, the front door slammed.
They all stood in silence for a minute.
“He might call the cops on us, if he’s pissed enough,” Zeke noted. Teo couldn’t believe how calm they both were. He, on the other hand, felt like puking, passing out, or both. He tried to avoid looking at the body on the floor—
the body
—but no matter where he focused, he couldn’t stop seeing it.
“He won’t.” Noa squared her shoulders. “Turk’ll score again, then sleep it off.”
“Still, we should get out of here.”
“Yeah.” As if noticing him for the first time, Noa turned to Teo. “You all right?”
“I, um . . .” Teo swallowed hard, feeling like he had no saliva in his mouth. His mind was reeling, trying to process everything that had happened in the past five minutes.
“Teo.” Noa stepped forward and laid a hand on his arm. “This never should have happened. But it’ll be okay. I promise.”
“All right,” he said, fighting the urge to tug his arm free. “I’m good.”
“You sure?”
“Yeah, I’m sure. I just gotta . . . I’ll be right back.”
Spinning on his heel, Teo raced to the bathroom, making it inside just in time. He heaved for a few minutes until there was nothing left, then sat back. He’d seen some crazy stuff the past few years, but a dead guy in the living room . . .
Teo ran his hands through his hair, fighting down panic. After everything he’d heard about Persefone’s Army, he’d assumed it would be awesome, they’d be heroes. But armies killed people, he realized. And the way they’d been so cool about it, like this sort of thing happened all the time . . . he didn’t have what it took to do that.
They’d been discussing Arizona last night. He’d never been, but it should be warm there. Probably a good place to sleep outside. Once they got there, he’d just tell Noa that he’d been wrong, he wasn’t cut out for this. He didn’t want to see anyone else die.
“Almost done,” Mrs. Latimar said with a sigh. “Would you mind finishing up the last of them?”
“Sure,” Amanda said. She was feeling better. After class that morning she’d taken a long nap, and woke up feeling refreshed. She’d glanced back at the string of babble on her computer screen, deleted it with a sigh, and rattled off a copy of the paper she’d meant to write. Tomorrow she’d hand it in to her women’s studies professor. It was no big deal, really; her own fault for pushing too hard, staying up late to finish the paper when she was clearly exhausted.
But now she felt fine. It was nearly the end of her volunteer shift at the Runaway Coalition, a small nonprofit that offered outreach services to teens who were living on the streets.
It was an organization that Amanda felt passionately about, since her brother, Marcus, had run away when he was fifteen years old. He was found dead on an icy park bench less than a year later. She couldn’t help but think that if he’d been helped by the Coalition, he might still be alive today. . . .
She brushed away the memory and tried to focus on the stack of folders in front of her. The waiting room was empty, so she was helping Mrs. Latimar sort through the files of all the kids who had visited today. In a small way, she was helping these kids—just like Noa. Amanda wondered if that’s how Peter saw it.
Probably not
, she thought darkly. As far as he was concerned, Noa was practically a superhero.
“I’m going to make some tea,” Mrs. Latimar announced, pushing back from her desk and standing. Absentmindedly, she tugged at her long gray ponytail. “Would you like some, dear?”
“No thanks,” Amanda said.
She kept her eyes down as Mrs. Latimar eased her considerable bulk out the narrow doorway and headed toward the break room in the back. Amanda mentally counted to ten, listening as the footsteps receded down the hall, then dug a small key out of her pocket and opened the locked file drawer in the bottom cabinet. Hurriedly, she shuffled through the files, checking to see if any new ones had been added.
This had become her pet project, her secret. Right around the time she’d been kidnapped, Mason, the man Peter claimed was spearheading illegal experiments on runaways, had appeared at the Coalition during one of her shifts. And Mrs. Latimar had handed over some of their files, information that was supposed to be private.
Amanda hadn’t made the connection right away. She’d never seen Mason again, and Mrs. Latimar had never mentioned it. But she’d started noticing that after certain kids came in to see the doctor for a free physical, Mrs. Latimar set their files aside. They were never in the stack she was assigned to file. And there was that locked drawer, the one Amanda had always assumed held the Coalition’s financial records. . . .
On a hunch, Amanda had lifted the key from Mrs. Latimar’s desk one day when she was out for lunch. She’d copied it and replaced the original before her boss noticed it was gone. Then, late one night when she’d been manning the phone lines, she’d looked inside the drawer and found the missing files: ten of them. All of the kids were between the ages of fourteen and sixteen, and they were relatively healthy for street kids. Amanda had to repress a twinge of guilt as she scanned their records: The doctor who did pro bono work for them kept meticulous notes, and alongside stats like their blood pressure and general health were all sorts of other information. Terrible stories about abuse and incest; the worst pain adults could inflict on children. Amanda was forced to blink back tears as she read them. Afterward, she’d carefully set the files back and relocked the drawer.
When she checked a week later, the files were gone. And those particular kids never returned to the Coalition. Which made Amanda wonder.
She started asking around, trying to be casual about it so she wouldn’t raise suspicions. Most of the kids brushed her off, but one girl had listened. She went by the street name Mouse, probably because she was a tiny, sharp-featured girl with drab brown hair. Amanda had seen her before—Mouse came in once a month or so, always looking for a missing friend named Tony. Amanda took her out for coffee. In between devouring all the food Amanda bought her, Mouse had complained about other kids disappearing. Whispering urgently across the cracked laminate tabletop, she’d shared rumors about well-trained men who snatched them off the streets.
Which jibed with everything Peter had told her. Suddenly, it clicked into place. This was the same Mason, the same rogue group abducting kids.
And Mrs. Latimar, the woman who up until that moment had been her personal hero, was
helping
them.
At first she’d wanted to confront Mrs. Latimar, then call the cops and the media and anyone who would listen. But Peter had argued that the group they were up against was too powerful; they couldn’t be beaten that way. So Amanda did the next best thing, by keeping an eye on that locked drawer. She copied names off the files, then ferreted them to Mouse, who warned the targeted kids to watch their backs.
So far, it seemed to be working. According to Mouse, no kids had gone missing in Boston for the past two months. And Mrs. Latimar had no idea that her dirty secret had been discovered.
It was hard for Amanda to be in the same room with her now, never mind trying to act normal. It took all her self-discipline to follow Peter’s advice, but she kept her mouth shut, figuring this at least gave her the chance to do
something.
There were three new folders in the cabinet today. Amanda skimmed them quickly, keeping her ears pricked for Mrs. Latimar. She was supposed to meet Mouse later, on her way back to campus. She always took the girl to the same diner, mainly to make sure she ate at least one decent meal a week. Mouse was skinnier every time they met, and the past few times the girl had had a worrisome deep, throaty cough.
Amanda suddenly heard Mrs. Latimar’s heavy tread coming back down the hall. Hurriedly, she slid the file door shut and locked it with shaking hands, then tucked the list of names in her skirt pocket.
“Everything okay?”
Amanda turned to find Mrs. Latimar standing in the doorway, looking down at her with concern.
“Fine,” Amanda said, forcing a weak smile. “I’m just tired. I pulled an all-nighter last night.”
“I thought you seemed a little off today.” Mrs. Latimar bustled over to her desk, set down a steaming mug of tea, and settled heavily in the chair. “Why don’t you leave early, Amanda? I can manage the rest of the filing.”
I’ll bet you can
, Amanda thought sourly. Reluctantly, she handed over the remaining files. “That would be great. Thanks.”
“Thank
you
. I honestly don’t know what I’d do without you, dear.” Mrs. Latimar smiled warmly at her. “You’re the best help I’ve ever had.”
“I’ll see you on Thursday, then?” Amanda said weakly.
“Yes, of course. See you then.” Mrs. Latimar was already turning back to her work. She flipped through the files; her eyes seemed to devour them hungrily.
The sight made Amanda’s stomach turn. She threw on her jacket, wrapped her scarf around her throat, and pushed through the double doors.
Noa splashed some water on her face. Her skin felt unnaturally hot, and her breath was coming in short gasps. Remembering the dead guy in the living room, a wave of nausea washed over her again and she gripped the sides of the sink with both hands.
She’d managed to hold it together in front of Teo, Turk, and Zeke, but now that she was alone, tears fought their way past her eyelids. She could hear a low murmur outside the door as the others packed up their stuff, getting ready to head out. Ten minutes earlier she’d gathered everyone in the kitchen and explained what had happened. There had been a lot of shuffling feet and sidelong glances, but no one had really said anything. Which in a way made things even worse. She knew that these kids had seen some terrible things in their short lives—hell, she had, too. But murder . . .
She could still picture the cold, dead look in Turk’s eyes. She’d had a bad feeling about him from the beginning, but he’d already been part of the group Zeke was working with. Turk was one of the first kids rescued from a facility, and one of the few who hadn’t been exposed to PEMA. The Project Persephone doctors hadn’t operated on him, either, just dosed him with an experimental medication that apparently either hadn’t worked or had no ill effects.
Unless they had. Maybe it wasn’t the street drugs that had made Turk kill the guy. Maybe those earlier medications had made him psycho or something.
It doesn’t really matter
, Noa reminded herself. Turk was gone, and they had to get out of here. And somehow, they had to deal with a dead body.
When Noa told the group what happened, she could feel them scrutinizing her for signs of weakness, but no one had said a word. Part of her had almost wanted someone to speak up. To yell at Zeke for leaving Turk alone with the guy, or at her for insisting they take him in the first place.
Not that he’d been a good person. He’d called them trash, sneered at what they were trying to do. She could still hear his voice in her head. She tried to silence it, but everything he’d said played in her mind on an endless reel, including his last words:
That’s right, little birdie. Fly away.
Noa closed her eyes and fought her breathing back to normal by sheer force of will. She had to keep it together. Now more than ever, they were looking to her for leadership. She wished for the thousandth time that Peter was there. He’d crack a dumb joke, then come up with a decent plan.
But he was three thousand miles away, and she was here. And the rest of her “army” was waiting. Noa examined herself in the mirror, brushing her hair out of her eyes. She was pale as ever. To her surprise, at least on the face of it she appeared calm.
You can do this
, she whispered to her reflection.
They need you.
Drawing up to her full height, she walked out of the bathroom.
P
eter stared at the entrance, willing someone to show up. He’d bailed on class right after lunch, figuring he could afford to skip history without eliciting the wrath of his parents. Now it was a little after one p.m., and he was standing a few doors down from Mason’s building with his school backpack slung across his shoulders. The door locked automatically, and there was a security camera at the entrance that ID’d anyone who rang a tenant’s buzzer. No guard in the lobby, though. And as far as he could tell, the camera wasn’t recording; it only displayed the faces of visitors for tenants to identify before buzzing them up.
So to get inside, all he needed was for a tenant to show up; then he’d stroll in behind them. It was a large building with thirty-two apartments. Which made it unlikely that the people who lived here knew all their neighbors.
At least, that’s what he was counting on.
A young Asian woman approached the door pushing a stroller. She struggled with a set of keys, rooting through her pocketbook with both hands while she leaned the stroller against her legs. It was cold outside, a few degrees above freezing, and she didn’t appear to be enjoying the weather any more than he was.
Peter hurried up behind her. She glanced up as he approached, and he threw her what he hoped was a reassuring smile.
She frowned. Peter rushed through the story he’d spent the past hour concocting. “Hey, I forgot my keys. So glad you showed, I can’t get my folks on the phone. . . .”
The woman’s frown deepened as the baby started wailing. She bent over, retrieved a toy, and shook it furiously in the child’s face, which only served to make it scream harder.
“Want a hand?” Peter offered.
The woman grunted and produced a key ring, then handed it to Peter. There were at least ten keys on it. He sifted through them, trying to keep his hands from shaking.
“Gold one,” she directed.
“Right. Mine looks just like it,” he said with relief, finding a gold key on the ring. He inserted it into the lock, then held the door as she shoved the stroller through. The woman stopped inside the doorway and turned to stare at him.
“Yes?” he asked, terrified that she’d guessed something was off.
“Keys?” she said pointedly.
“Oh, yeah.” He handed them over. She dumped them unceremoniously back in her purse and marched to the elevator, jabbing the up button. As the doors slid open, he bent to tie his shoe. “Don’t hold it,” he called out. “I’ll just catch the next one.”
The doors slid shut. Peter quickly got to his feet. He’d scanned the directory closely, and was pretty sure Mason lived in the top floor unit, which was listed under the initials “M.C.” That had to be Maurer Consulting. He waited until the elevator light stopped at the fifth floor. After counting to ten in his head, he hit the recall button. As the elevator descended, he fidgeted. What he was about to do was highly illegal, and really, really dangerous. What if Mason didn’t live alone? Or if he had some sort of super high-tech security system installed?
He’d just have to risk it. Getting inside that apartment was his only shot at finding out more about Mason and his goons. He pictured Amanda circling him in the parking lot, which hardened his resolve.
Peter got on the elevator and pushed the button for the top floor. It seemed to take forever for the car to ascend, ticking past each floor so slowly that by the time the doors finally slid open, Peter was shaky from adrenaline.
He stepped off the elevator into a fancy hallway, like something in a hotel. There was a door at either end. In between them sat an elaborate marble table with an enormous orchid perched on top. Peter cracked his knuckles nervously as he checked the corners: no cameras in sight. Score one for him.
He made his way to the door on the right, where a brass
32
hung. His pulse quickened as he bent to examine the lock. A basic dead bolt, just what he’d been hoping to find. Peter dumped his backpack on the floor and dug a tool out of the outer pocket.
Boston’s finest spy store was only a few blocks away from Mason’s apartment. Peter had been there before to check out all the cool gadgets. Today marked the first time he’d bought anything, though. He’d pretty much emptied his bank account purchasing a variety of different items. Including a master key that promised to open “any and all dead bolts, regardless of brand.”
He hadn’t wanted to use it on the building’s front door, though; if it hadn’t worked, it could’ve attracted unwanted attention. So this was the moment of truth.
Saying a small prayer, Peter inserted the key into the lock and turned it.
A
click
as the bolt gave.
Peter exhaled, and paused. This was it. Now he was officially crossing the line into breaking and entering.
Feeling like he was stepping off a cliff into a void, Peter opened the door and entered the apartment . . .
. . . and blinked in surprise. He was standing on the edge of a large living space. Light streamed through the floor-to-ceiling windows at the far end of the room; they showcased an incredible view of downtown. All that, he’d pretty much expected.
What took him by surprise was how plush everything was. Rather than a sterile environment heavy on chrome and steel, the floor was covered by thick Oriental rugs. Furniture his mom would kill for, lots of Louis XVI chairs and velvet divans. Brocade curtains draped in heavy folds along the windows.
It looked like something out of a museum; not at all the decor he’d envisioned for Mason. Which made it seem much more likely that he lived with someone.
Peter strained his ears as he stepped into the room. He counted out a full minute, then took another step. And another, until he was next to the large couch in the center of the room, facing the window. From this vantage point he could see a kitchen, separated from the living room by a raised island lined with wooden barstools. To his right, a door led into a dining room. Through it he saw an enormous mahogany table that appeared to be cowering beneath a massive chandelier.
“Damn,” he whispered. The rooms could have been lifted directly from the lifeless pages of an interior design magazine. There were no framed photos around, not even the random stacks of papers found in meticulously upkept houses.
He went quickly into the dining room. In addition to the massive table, there was a matching sideboard and glass cabinet packed with silver serving dishes and china. Peter shook his head, trying to imagine Mason at the head of the table carving a roast. He just couldn’t get a handle on this guy.
The door at the far end of the dining room opened into a foyer. Three doors led off it. Opening the first, Peter discovered a master suite with an enormous bed that Napoleon would have felt right at home in. He repressed a snort and checked the next room:
bingo
. A library, not unlike his father’s; lots of leather-bound volumes lined the shelves. Peter scanned the titles: Dickens, Chaucer, Shakespeare. All the classics, along with histories of wars he’d never heard of.
A laptop sat on the desk at the far end of the room. Peter hustled over to it and cracked the case: a password box illuminated as the screen flared to life.
Which shouldn’t matter, unless Mason had taken more care with his computer than he had with his apartment.
Peter rummaged through his pack again and drew out a flash drive, then inserted it into a USB port. The computer hummed as the program loaded. It was a deceptively basic spyware program; with it, Peter would be able to open a mirror image of Mason’s computer on his own, shadowing all his activity. Peter had fine-tuned it to make sure that unless Mason spent a few days digging through code, he would never know it was there.
A
ping
signaled that the program had finished loading. Peter tucked the drive back into his bag and checked the time. He’d been inside for five minutes; staying much longer would be pushing it. He’d have to come back another time to install the other toys in his arsenal. Although if he was lucky, the spyware program would provide enough information that he’d never have to risk this again.
A minute later, Peter was charging down the stairs. He was about to tear into the lobby when some instinct caused him to pause. He opened the door a slit and peeked through.
His heart nearly stopped. Mason was standing five feet away. Thankfully he was looking up, focused on the elevator display. At the sight of his familiar profile, the sharp nose and prominent chin, Peter felt himself quail.
As quietly as possible, he eased the door shut and stepped to the side of it, closing his eyes. The elevator chimed, followed by the sound of doors sliding open. Footsteps, then they closed again. He waited another full minute before checking again.
The lobby was empty.
Saying a silent prayer of gratitude under his breath, Peter trotted through the door and back onto the sidewalk.
He was so relieved at having gone undiscovered, he didn’t notice the black SUV idling at the curb behind him.
Noa sat in the passenger seat of the van. The clock on the dashboard read seven p.m.; they’d left the Oakland house during rush hour, and spent forty-five minutes in stop-and-go traffic.
The silence inside was oppressive; no one had said a word yet, which was strange. There was usually a lot of banter and story swapping.
Unable to help herself, Noa glanced again at the mound of garbage bags lining the back of the van. The kids were all hunched well away from it, even though that forced them to squeeze together uncomfortably. But clearly no one wanted to come in contact with the dead guy.
“Nearly there,” Zeke said in a low voice.
“Good.” Noa sat back in the seat and closed her eyes. They’d decided to leave the body in Modesto. Crystal was originally from there, and she knew about a deserted farm outside town with its own access road. She claimed that no one ever went there, so the body probably wouldn’t be found for a while. And by then, there would be nothing to tie them to it.
We’re dumping him out like garbage
, Noa thought to herself. Exactly what he’d called them, trash. It wasn’t comforting. The whole thing felt dirty and wrong. When she’d joined Zeke a few months ago, and they’d expanded his operation into Persefone’s Army, she’d felt like she was starting something positive, helping kids like her who’d been horribly mistreated.
Now she worried that they were becoming just as bad as the people they were fighting. Her mind flashed back to the crab pots at the Rhode Island lab, one of P&D’s more gruesome methods for disposing of their victims. Bile rose up in her throat; Noa swallowed hard to choke it back.
“You all right?” Zeke glanced at her with concern
“No. Not really.”
“Yeah, me either.” He kept his voice low as he said, “I still can’t believe Turk did this.”
“I can,” Noa said darkly.
“You know,” he continued, “they messed him up badly when they had him.”
“They did bad stuff to all of us,” she retorted.
Zeke shook his head. “Not like that. He was part of the project early on, when they were just mucking around, seeing what they could do.”
“They didn’t infect him, though.”
“No. They infected his twin sister instead.”
“What?”
Zeke kept his eyes on the road as he continued, “The two of them got snatched off the street at the same time. I guess the Project hadn’t managed to get many kids who were related, never mind twins, so they took their time with Turk and his sister. They wanted to see how the treatments would affect kids who were genetically similar. So they tested her and used him as a control.”
“A control?”
“They did everything they could think of to her, but he was more or less left alone. If we hadn’t gotten him out, they probably would have started in on him next.”
“What happened to her?”
“She was too sick to save.” Zeke’s fingers had gone white against the steering wheel. “Turk didn’t want to leave without her, but we made him. I don’t think he’s ever gotten over that.”
“She had PEMA?” Noa asked.
“Yeah. And they tried a bunch of stuff with her, drugs, surgery . . . she was a wreck.” Zeke frowned as he continued softly, “It was one of the worst things I’ve ever seen.”
Noa had read Project Persephone’s files, and knew all about the terrible experiments they’d been conducting. She couldn’t even begin to imagine how Turk must’ve felt, leaving his sister in the hands of those monsters, knowing that in the end they’d kill her. “Still,” she said in a low voice. “I can’t stop thinking that this makes us as bad as them.”
“No,” Zeke said firmly. “Not even close. For one thing, this wasn’t you or me.”
“Yeah, but we’re still responsible.” Noa stared out the window. They were passing through farm country, but at this time of year the fields were barren, the grass brown and dead. “I never should have suggested capturing one of them.”
“Look, we knew going into this that it wasn’t going to be easy,” Zeke said. “And that we were probably going to make mistakes.”
“I didn’t know that,” Noa mumbled.
Zeke laughed. “Hell, I can’t believe it’s been going as well as it has. We’ve saved how many kids so far?”
Noa shrugged. “I don’t know.”
“Forty-two, and that’s not counting how many know to be careful because you put the word out on the web. That’s not nothing, Noa.”
Noa wanted to tell him that it wasn’t enough, and didn’t even begin to make up for things like Turk’s sister. Instead, she said, “Thanks. That helps.”
“Yeah? Good.” He grinned, then added ruefully, “I’m glad it’s not just Peter who can make you feel better.”
Noa fidgeted, wondering if he’d guessed that she’d just been thinking about Peter. “What do you mean?”
“I don’t know. It just seems like you’re pretty hung up on him.” Zeke looked uncomfortable.
“We’re just friends,” Noa protested.
“You always say that.” He glanced at her, then back at the road as he asked lightly, “So nothing ever happened?”
Noa flashed back to lying on a futon bed in Cody’s cold apartment. Peter on the floor beside her, his voice low and sleepy as they talked. A lock of hair kept falling in his eyes, and she had to resist the urge to brush it back for him. The next morning, he’d made her laugh over burnt toast and eggs. . . . “No. Nothing.”