The Adjusters (19 page)

“You should,” Henry said as she closed the lid on her first-aid box and returned it to the kitchen. “I like it.”

“What happened on Saturday night, Ward?” she asked. “I was worried about you… Both of you. Christian was supposed to give me a call after the operation but I
didn’t hear anything. I’ve been trying to text that reporter, but he’s not answering either.”

Henry took a deep breath and walked over to the front window. The street outside was as quiet as ever.

He said, “We got inside, but the guards caught up with us.”

“What did you find in the centre?” Fox asked, unable to keep the excitement from her voice.

He related the story of how he’d been chased from the centre and then taken back by Mallory and his mom. He told her about the kid who’d apparently been in a motorcycle crash. How
despite his promise to keep things quiet, Mallory had turned the high school against him. He even told her about the “sea cucumbers”.

“Sea cucumber research!” Fox said. “How dumb do they think we are?”

Henry shook his head. “Mallory had me convinced I was imagining things. I guess I wanted to believe him – to believe that everything is okay. Now I don’t really know what to
believe...”

“What about Gab—”

Henry held up a hand to stop her. “Mallory took me to see her.”

Fox’s mouth fell open. “You saw Gabrielle?”

“She’s in the medical centre, apparently recovering from her latest ‘drug binge’.”

“Gabrielle does not take drugs!” Fox said, anger rising in her voice.

Henry sighed. “
I
believe you, but
she
doesn’t. If you ask her, she’ll tell you all about how Trooper Dan and everyone at Malcorp stopped her from running off the
rails.”

“Then they’ve done something to her…”

“She seemed completely happy – in fact she asked me to come visit her again this afternoon. No evidence of scars on her head, nothing. I just don’t get it.”

Fox stood up and began to pace, agitated. “They’re controlling her somehow. They’ve got her locked up in there and she’s afraid. I knew I shouldn’t have trusted you
and Christian to get the job done.”

“Hey, Christian got smacked in the face pretty bad,” Henry protested, remembering the blood on the operating theatre window. “For all I know he was seriously hurt. Back at the
school Blake let something slip… I think they’re holding him somewhere – maybe in the medical centre. He said they’d
fixed
him and I was next.”

Fox shook her head. “I should have gone myself.”

“Well, you seemed pretty happy for us to walk into danger while you stood around painting pictures…”

“Watch it!” Fox interrupted. “Or you’re gonna get hit in the mouth for the second time in one day!”

Henry threw up his hands. “I don’t need this,” he said. “Christian’s in trouble and I’m going to find out where he is. If you’re just going to give me a
hard time, I’ll go by myself.” He walked out of the door and down the stairs.

A second later, Fox ran after him. “Ward, wait!”

He stopped at the bottom of the stairs and looked round. Fox almost tripped into him.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “That was out of line.”

“Yeah, it was.”

“So what are you going to do?” she asked. “Run over to the medical centre and demand to see Christian? Is that the plan?”

Henry shrugged. He didn’t know what his plan was, but he felt responsible for his friend. While he’d spent the last two days feeling sorry for himself, god knows what they’d
been doing to Christian.
Fixing him.

“Well, what do you suggest?” he asked finally.

Before Fox could respond, a hammering on the front door of the cafe made them both look round. Henry looked past the door at the bottom of the stairs, half expecting to see his mom standing
outside, demanding to know why he wasn’t in class.

But it wasn’t his mom.

It was Trooper Dan.

“I’m afraid we’re closed, officer,” Fox said as she opened the coffee shop door a crack.

Trooper Dan pushed his way through and stepped into the cafe, looking around the darkened interior without bothering to remove his shades. “I’m not here to drink coffee.”

“Okay,” Fox replied, closing the door after him. She cast a glance towards the counter and the half-open door to the stairs, where Henry was standing out of sight, peering through
the gap between the door and frame.

“Something wrong?”

She looked round at the cop, who was studying her closely. “Why would there be something wrong?”

“You seem kinda tense,” he said, hooking his thumbs into his belt. “There was an incident at the Malcorp complex Saturday night. You wouldn’t know anything about that,
would you?”

Fox gave him a hard look. “Why would I?”

The cop opted not to answer that question, walking across the cafe as if he owned the place. Henry moved a little further into the shadows behind the door, convinced for a second that the man
was staring right at him. But then Trooper Dan’s gaze moved on as he stopped at the counter. He dragged a gloved finger along the top of the coffee machine, picking up dust that he wiped away
with disgust. “Business a bit slow, huh?”

“Is this some kind of inspection?” Fox asked coldly. “Because I think you’re outside your jurisdiction.”

The cop looked round at her and his lips curled into a mocking smile. “
Jurisdiction?
My, what a big word for a little girl.” He moved along the counter, past a tray of stacked
coffee cups, and stared at one of the photographs. “Shouldn’t you be in school today?”

“I dropped out.”

“Well, that figures. Must be difficult managing this place. What with your momma being a cripple and all.”

Through the gap in the door frame, Henry saw Fox’s rage.
Just keep it together,
he prayed. He could see the cop was trying to wind her up. Get a reaction.

“My mother is
not
a cripple,” Fox said, her voice low and controlled.

The trooper gave a snorting laugh. He leaned back against the counter and nudged the edge of the tray that rested on the top, sending the pile of stacked cups crashing to the floor on the other
side.

“Hey!” Fox exclaimed, moving towards the counter. As she passed, Trooper Dan caught her arm and pulled her back. Fox gave a cry of surprise and tried to struggle free, but the cop
held her firm.

“I know you were involved with the break-in Saturday night.”

“Prove it!”

“I don’t have to. The whole town knows you’re a troublemaker. It’s about time you and your white-trash mother accepted Mr. Mallory’s offer and sold up.”

Fox stuck her chin out at him defiantly. “Or what? You’ll come and break some plates as well?”

Trooper Dan grinned at her. “Oh, I’ll do more than break plates.”

She let out a cry of pain as he tightened his grip on her arm.

“What’s going on?” Henry said, pushing open the door and stepping out behind the counter.

The cop released Fox’s arm and she ran round the counter beside him. Henry stepped forward so he was between her and the cop.

“Well, I might’ve known you wouldn’t be far away,” Trooper Dan said.

Trying to disguise the fact his heart was beating as fast as a racing car, Henry said, “You were harassing her. I saw it.”

“Then perhaps she’d like to file a complaint,” the cop answered, his voice deadpan. He looked at Fox. “Do you want to make a complaint, miss?”

Henry looked at Fox, who shook her head imperceptibly. “No. I don’t want to make a complaint.”

Trooper Dan gave Henry an arctic smile and walked back across the cafe. “I’ll be keeping an eye on you both, you can be sure of it.”

With that he turned and walked out of the door, slamming it so hard it seemed the glass in the window would shatter.

Alone in the cafe, Henry and Fox breathed sighs of relief.

“You shouldn’t have come out like that,” Fox said. “Now he knows we’re together in all this.”

Henry gave her an exasperated look. “He was twisting your arm half off!”

“I’m used to Mallory’s men coming round and breaking the crockery every month. It’s their way of letting us know we’re not welcome in Newton.”

“If you made a complaint…”

“Complain to who? Mallory? The town councillors? They’re all in Malcorp’s pocket.” She paused, biting her lip. “It is interesting though.”

“What is?”

“Well, if there’s nothing funny going on at the medical centre,” she said, “why do you suppose Trooper Dan showed up here to hassle me about the break-in?”

Henry leaned back against the door frame, rubbed his forehead with his hand and groaned.

“What’s the matter?” Fox asked with concern.

“
You’re
the matter,” he said and then waved his hand around the shop. “This whole place…Newton and Malcorp is the matter… I really wanted to believe
that nothing was going on here. So my mom could have a good job and be happy here. I wanted to believe that Gabrielle Henson was fine and that Trooper Dan was just a normal small-town cop. And that
the kids in my school were just…really, really clever… And that Mallory wasn’t…” His voice trailed away.

“Say it,” Fox pressed.

“Experimenting on the brains of local kids,” he said. Out loud it sounded insane. But despite his efforts over the weekend to believe otherwise, everything he’d seen –
the kid with his head cut open, the weird behaviour, the lies, the threats – pointed to one conclusion. He’d read a Sherlock Holmes book once where the detective had said that when you
eliminate all the rational explanations, whatever’s left is the truth, no matter how crazy it sounds. Which was just a fancy way of expressing what Coach Tyler had been saying about listening
to his gut.

“So,” Fox said, all businesslike, “the break-in didn’t help us. Christian has disappeared and they’ve still got Gabrielle. We need a new plan. More
evidence.”

Henry nodded. “My mom’s going to be watching me like a hawk and so is everyone else in the Malcorp complex. Sneaking around isn’t going to be easy.”

Fox thought for a moment before saying, “You keep your meeting with Gabrielle. See if you can find out where they’re holding Christian while you’re in the medical centre. And
maybe you can get Gabrielle to tell you what happened to her.”

“I already tried – she doesn’t remember.”

Fox reached into her pocket and withdrew the photograph of Gabrielle and Blake she’d shown him the other day. She handed it to him.

“Give her that. Perhaps it will jog her memory.”

“What about you?”

Before Fox could answer, her cell phone vibrated and she pulled it from her pocket. She looked at Henry and grinned as she read a text message.

“It’s my missing reporter. He wants to meet me outside town.”

Henry frowned. “Why?”

“Sounds like he had a run-in with Trooper Dan. Says he wants to meet this afternoon. Somewhere discreet.”

“I should come with you.”

Fox shook her head. “No. Go and talk to Gabrielle. Find out where Christian is. I’ll deal with the reporter – see if I can get him to hang around long enough for us to get some
real evidence.”

Parked in the shadows of an alleyway across the street, Trooper Dan watched as Henry Ward emerged from the coffee shop, took a look around to make sure he wasn’t being
followed and headed off up the street. He fought the urge to follow the kid. He would be dealt with later. His orders were for the girl.

Through the glass-fronted door he saw her shoot the bolts, as if she believed that a few locks would stop him if he really wanted to get in. Then she disappeared inside, no doubt to get ready
for her meeting with the reporter. He smiled to himself and sat back to wait.

Soon his prey would come to him.

“So, you’re playing hooky?” Gabrielle said.

Henry smiled at her turn of phrase, which seemed strangely old-fashioned. It reminded him of the way Blake spoke. He laid a card down on the sheet and took another from the deck, slotting it
into his hand. They were sitting on the bed in Gabrielle’s hospital room, playing a game called rummy that she’d been trying to teach him for the best part of thirty minutes. His trip
back to the medical centre had been uneventful – barely a nod from Hank on the main gate. Upon entering the centre, snooping around the corridors for any evidence of Christian’s
presence was curtailed by a nurse who insisted on escorting him to Gabrielle’s room. And she was now waiting outside to make sure he didn’t take any unscheduled trips around the
facility on his way out. So much for that plan.