Power Revealed (The Elementers) (28 page)

Thoughts of Henry occupied Justin’s thoughts as he waited for his teacher to arrive. But an explosion of earth energy and loud booms yanked him out of his reverie. Justin spun and ran back in the direction of Boris, but a crater sat at least ten feet wide and a few feet deep in the place of Boris’ prior spot. Four trees had been uprooted and had fallen to the ground. Justin scanned the grove, but he couldn’t see Boris anywhere in sight. He ran to the far edge of the grove and scoured the view, but his opponent had seemingly vanished. Justin kicked a small boulder the size of a volleyball to let out his frustration. It hurt his foot far more than the rock, but he didn’t care. He needed to catch these guys before they found out that Henry was still alive.

Chapter 38

“Why did you let him get away?” Rex demanded of Justin as the others stood nearby in the cabin while Rex and Justin stood facing off. The fury of the storm outside had picked up and rattled the windows in the old cabin.

Justin balled up his fists. “Why did I let him get away? You guys already let him escape once before. I stopped him by myself and even fully tied him up in branches. By the time I looked for Mr. Hamilton and returned, Boris was gone. I couldn’t carry him out by myself and you’re the one who said I can’t do a Wipe, or even a partial overload.”

Grant leaned forward in his chair. “Rex, it’s done. Let’s figure out what we’re going to do now. At least they were able to capture Diederick. Now there’s only two left: Alexei and Boris.”

Rex finally took his glare off of Justin. “Fine. I recommend we all stay here tonight.”

Justin lifted up his arms in exasperation. “I told you. My parents are not going to let me stay at a friend’s house on a school night. They’re going to be upset as it is that I won’t be returning home until almost ten o’clock on a Thursday night.” That wasn’t Justin’s only concern though. He needed to return home soon so he could call Henry in private. “Besides, my mom knows I haven’t finished my homework yet.”

“Hmm. What a surprise,” Rex said.

“Stop it, you too!” Anya said with more force than matched her body. “Grant and David can take turns watching at Justin’s house. Stay put until it’s time to go to school. At least at school David can watch out for you and Raven. With only two of them left. I don’t think they’ll try attacking again.”

“They did today,” Justin said.

“Only because they thought I’d be injured and alone in the hospital,” Anya said.

“Fine.” Justin sat back on the couch.

“It looks like the earliest the Council will be meeting is tomorrow evening. Now that we’ve also temporarily overloaded Diederick too, they should be able to vote on him also and fly someone out here by Saturday morning. Until then, we try to stay out of trouble,” Rex said looking directly at Justin.

“What?” Justin raised his eyebrows and shoulders.

“Um.” Raven’s voice spoke up quietly but Rex didn’t seem to notice. “But what about the things Alexei said about a big bang?”

“What about it?” Rex said.

“What if he’s planning something soon?” Raven said.

“Our priority is taking care of our prisoners until the Council votes and others arrive. Besides, all we have are a few bits of information. It doesn’t mean anything,” Rex said.

“Well, maybe it does mean something. I needed a distraction while stuck in the hotel room so I began looking again at the photos I took from Alexei’s hotel room. I can’t get his voice out of my head when he spoke about a big bang and how they won’t know what hit them. You didn’t hear his voice. I may not have proof, but I just know he intends to do something horrible. I can feel it. We need to stop him,” Raven said.

“Raven, how can we stop him when we don’t even know what he plans to do?” Mr. Hamilton said.

“That’s why I went through the photos. We need to figure out what he’s up to before it’s too late. Alexei said he was preparing for a ‘big bang’. At first, I thought he meant that figuratively. But what if he was being literal? Lannix is a chemical company. What if he intends to blow up the factory?”

The comment Henry made about researching a chemical company crossed Justin’s mind. “What if Alexei’s sabotaging companies?” Justin said.

“Why would he do that?” Grant asked.

“Raven, once we take care of the others, then we can worry about Alexei. One step at a time. We don’t want anyone else hurt like Anya,” Rex said.

The discussion was over. Grant offered to drive Justin home and take the first shift at his house. Justin walked over and sat on the arm of the couch beside Raven. He wanted to reach out and comfort her, but he knew he couldn’t touch her. “I’ll see you in class tomorrow?” Justin said.

Raven raised her furrowed forehead. “Yeah. Be careful.”

Chapter 39

The next morning, Justin pumped the pedals of his bike as fast as he could up the hill. He only had two class periods to get to the Lighthouse Mission, visit with Henry, and return to school before English class. He didn’t want Mr. Hamilton, Raven, or even Lewis and his other friends to know he had skipped classes. Justin was concerned that Henry’s safety depended upon no one else knowing he was alive.

As he sped down the street, Justin came to a stop in front of a park near the shelter Henry stayed at. An elderly couple sat together on a bench near the entrance to the park. Justin climbed off his bike, locked it to a nearby pole, and walked past a young mother pushing her son in a stroller down the path. Justin tried to shake off his nervousness by rolling his head and shaking his arms. He told himself it was ridiculous to be nervous about meeting his best friend, but after returning home last night and calling Henry, Justin realized that while Henry was still Justin’s best friend, Justin was a stranger to Henry. That left a pain in Justin’s chest, but he hoped they could find a way for Henry to regain his memory.

Henry sat on a bench farther down the path. Butterflies scattered in Justin’s stomach and he took a deep breath to calm himself. “Hi, Henry,” Justin said as he sat down on the bench next to his grandpa.

“If I’m your grandpa, why do you call me by my first name?”

“When I was seven, you told me that best friends call each other by their first names, so I should call you Henry.”

“What kind of teenager is ‘best friends’ with an old man?”

“You’re not old. Okay, well maybe technically you are. But you’re more fun than anyone I know. Even my friends back in Houston thought you were cool. You and I go white water rafting, surfing, rock climbing, and do all sorts of great things together. You never let my blankouts stop us from doing things. You even somehow convinced Mom and Dad last year to let me go with you on your research trip to Africa. That was incredible. We go to sports games. You even took me to a rock concert once. I know you didn’t really like the music, but you came with me and my friends and had fun with us. You always said that age was a state of mind and you were staying twenty-seven.”

“Hmm. Sounds fun.”

“It was. It is. Now that you’re back, we can continue to do so. Well, once we take care of Alexei and his friends.”

“Yes, speaking of that, I brought the camera like you asked.”

Justin reached out and accepted the small, red camera. He hoped that it might hold some clues to help them move forward. Scanning past the photos of their trip to Galveston made Justin look up at Henry and smile. “When we went to the waterslide park in Galveston, you were easily the oldest person riding the slides by at least twenty years. All the other adults were too wimpy to have any fun. That was a great weekend.”

Henry smiled briefly, but then his mouth closed in a tight line and the wrinkles on his forehead magnified. “I don’t remember any of it.”

“That’s okay. We’ll find a way to help you remember.”

“What if we can’t?”

The thought jarred Justin, but he hid his concern. “Then we’ll just have to make new memories for you. But don’t worry about that right now. First, we’ll take care of Alexei and then we’ll get your memory back.”

Time passed too quickly as Justin answered questions about Henry’s life and then they reviewed the images on the camera. Henry told Justin what his research had uncovered about the two companies recorded on the camera. Justin felt bad leaving Henry alone, but he was anxious to talk to Raven about what he learned. Besides, if he wasn’t back to the school before English class, Raven would call the others and they’d start searching for him. A hug felt awkward right now, so Justin simply squeezed Henry’s shoulder, said he’d call tonight, jumped on his bike, and pedaled like mad to try to return to school before his next class.

Chapter 40

Justin could barely wait for English class to end. It seemed ridiculous to be wasting his time sitting in class listening to Ms. Chalmers drone on about Romeo and Juliet. He had way bigger problems than those two ever had and his were real. Thankfully, the bell rang at last. Justin grabbed his backpack and walked up to Raven’s desk. She looked like she hadn’t slept well last night. He wished he had something to ease her worry, but what he had to say would probably only heighten it and after looking at the images on Henry’s camera, he couldn’t wait. “Can we go somewhere and talk? Privately?” She looked up and nodded. Justin told Lewis he’d meet them later at their table in the cafeteria and followed Raven down the hallway and into a deserted classroom.

Raven sat on top of a desk next to Justin waiting for him to speak. Justin took a breath before starting. He hated to not be entirely truthful with Raven, but he didn’t want to tell anyone about Henry yet, not even Raven. He knew she’d never do anything purposely to hurt him or Henry, but what if her knowledge even somehow suggested to someone else that Henry was alive. Justin felt he couldn’t risk that right now. “My grandma just sent me Henry’s old camera and I looked through the photos. Most of them were of Henry and me on the last trip we took together, but the last images were of some documents and news articles. I almost deleted them until I recognized the Lannix logo in one of them.”

“Your grandpa researched the same company that Alexei is investing in?”

“Yeah and the images were taken only three days prior to Henry’s— death.” Justin almost said something else, further proof that he shouldn’t tell anyone yet about Henry. It would be too easy to let the truth slip out.

“What are the pictures of?” Raven asked.

“The first few are about some oil company that suffered a major explosion at one of their refineries due to a natural disaster and how their stock price plummeted. But there are some shots about Lannix. The first image is just a news article about Lannix expanding its operations. The next one is a report about the projected growth of the company stock.”

“Growth?” Raven asked.

“Yeah, why?”

“The documents I photographed showed that Alexei shorted the stock.”

“What? English, please,” Justin said.

“He kind of did the opposite of buying stock shares in the company. But you only buy short if you think the stock price is going to drop. Why would he short a stock if the company is doing well?”