Undetectable (Great Minds Thriller) (30 page)

“See Elias?”

“Kid fought off Feeney. Cracked his own head open to do it. Didn’t take a day off, either. You should see him.”

“Kid is
tough
.”

Elias was aware of none of this. He knew only that Ms. Beck had said he could be part of her study hall session that afternoon, and that 2:30, therefore, could not possibly come quickly enough. After the last bell he got his backpack and went to the library and sat down, and a minute later she arrived and came over to his table, right over to his table and
sat
next to him
, and said “Hello, Elias,” and smiled at him as though he were her friend.

All in all, it was the best first week of school Elias could remember.

Kevin watched Elias for a minute, watched the boy working contentedly at history or math or whatever he was pretending to have difficulty with, and he reminded himself that he was, after all, still a very smelly man.

I can talk to her tomorrow
, he thought.
When I’ve had some rest.

So he backed away from the door, and in another minute he was back on the street. He had at least another forty-five minutes of energy left, but he wasn’t taking any chances.

He headed for home.

Stack Them Up

Andrew was in the vestibule waiting for him. Psychic as always.

“How was your day, Sir?”

“Better,” Kevin said briskly, without breaking stride. He headed for his bedroom, and for the bathroom. “Sorry about the smell,” he added over his shoulder.

Andrew remained diplomatically silent.

Kevin
c
leaned himself as quickly and as thoroughly as he could. Two shampoos, suds everywhere. He washed as if he were preparing for entry into a hot zone, for close-contact work in an infectious disease lab, for open-heart surgery.

Hopefully that’ll last for a few hours,
he thought, stepping out and drying off.

He dressed and went to the living room. And then to the bookcase. He stood before it, considering.

“Okay Andrew,” he called.

His assistant appeared beside him, quick and silent as ever.

“Sir.”

“Here’s what I need. A bunch of non-fiction. Doesn’t matter to me what you pick, just make it a serious pile. Fifteen or twenty at least. And then stack them up over there, at the head of that long couch.”

Andrew nodded and got to work. Kevin did the same. He picked titles at random, pausing only long enough to make sure he was selecting books that seemed thick enough. He didn’t want to run out of material before his rest period was over.

The two of them made a couple of neat piles on the floor, at the long end of the largest couch in the room, and when they were done Kevin assessed the setup.

“This looks good,” he said. Then he gave Andrew his full attention. “We’re going to turn off all the lights except the one right here, and then I’m going to lie down and read.
D
on’t bring me any dinner. In fact, I’d like you to stay out of this room altogether until six tomorrow morning, when you should come in and give me a tap on the shoulder.”

Andrew listened, nodding along slowly. “Shall I turn off the phones?”

“I have a phone? A land-line?”

“Indeed. It hasn’t made a sound since I’ve been here, but you never know.”

“Definitely. Unplug it. Unplug them all. I’ve got a cell anyway, which I’ll turn off as well.”

“Very good.” Andrew glided around to each window pulling the curtains together, and when he was done he took a moment to scan the area in case there might be anything that could disturb the long rest his employer was planning. Finding nothing, he turned and walked quietly out of the room without a second glance.

Kevin nodded with satisfaction.
H
e lowered himself gently onto the couch, taking a minute to enjoy the soft, welcoming feel of the huge cushions. The temperature in the room was just right, and the light was exactly bright enough to read by. He reached over and took the topmost book from the stack Andrew had made, and as he was opening the front cover he could feel the energy from Petak’s drug suddenly begin to drain out of him. It was if someone had flipped a switch. His body sank deeper into the couch, and all at once he was glad he had not dallied any longer back at school.

I wouldn’t be able to get up now even if I wanted to.

He looked at the first page of the book he was holding and prepared to settle in.

A Practical Guide to Handguns and Small Arms
.

He smiled gently. “Just what I’ve always wanted to know about
,
”
he whispered. I
t was no effort at all to let his mind slip into that single-stream, hyper-focused state he had found the day before. It was the same as with the Spanish book, and the physics.

The room went gray around him, and Kevin Brooks began, finally, to rest.

Part 4 – Bulk
Processing

Hung Over

There was a tap on his shoulder a minute later, and Kevin’s first reaction was annoyance. His instructions had been so clear. No interruptions at all until 6 AM. But in the next moment he reminded himself that Andrew was a profoundly considerate man. Not only that, he was a
precise
man. Which meant that there were two possible explanations for the interruption. Either there was something incredibly important that needed Kevin’s attention…

Or Andrew followed my instructions to the letter. And to the minute.

So instead of sighing, instead of turning to glare at Andrew, Kevin took an extra second to check the title of the book he was reading. Just to be sure.

“Electrical Engineering for the Second Year Graduate Student,” he read out loud.

“Yes,” Andrew said quietly, from above him. “Absolutely riveting, no doubt.”

Kevin stared at the book for a minute, feeling somehow tricked. He had no memory of putting the first one down, or of picking this one up. He looked to his right, to the neat stacks of books he and Andrew had created.

The stacks were gone.

In their place was a mess, a riot of books that seemed to have been attacked by a hoard of small, insufficiently-exercised children. Books had been thrown in every direction, lying half-open, face down, on-end, and in one case teetering on the edge of the table at the other side of the room. There was a small, still-neat pile remaining where the original stacks had been, but here there were only five titles left, as opposed to the twenty or thirty that had been here just a minute ago.

Or maybe that was yesterday.

Kevin took a deep breath. Was that really possible? He had come home at a little past three o’clock
,
and i
f it was six in the morning now, then that meant he had been lying here for more than fourteen hours.

Nope. Not possible.

He tried to sit up, and several parts of him – his entire body, really – seemed suddenly to cry out in pain.

“Holy
Lord
,” he said, letting himself relax into the cushions again. He put the engineering book slowly to the side and looked down at himself. He could see no obvious bruises.

So why do I feel as though someone crept in here and drove over me with a tank?

“How are you feeling?” Andrew asked him.

“Horrible.”

“That was a long rest. And a lot of reading, if I may say.” Andrew scanned the living room, noting with dismay the lack of respect his employer seemed to have for textbooks. “You must be hungry,” he added.

“I feel like throwing up. I feel hung over.”

“That would make sense,” Andrew said, his tone flat and disapproving. “You’ve hardly slept in the last three days, and you’ve been exercising far too much.”

Haven’t slept at all
, Kevin wanted to correct him, but kept silent. In any case, the man was right.

“Go clean yourself up,” Andrew commanded, “and I’ll bring in some breakfast.
”

Kevin nodded.
It would be time for
school
soon. Which reminded him –

“Hey.”

Andrew paused on his way to the kitchen. “Sir?”

“Do I still reek?”

Andrew hesitated. An answer of any kind would be to acknowledge, however obliquely, that Kevin had indeed reeked at one time or another. He took a small, cautious sniff of air through his nose, as though testing the room for a deadly gas. “You are passable,” Andrew declared. And then, in a rare moment of frankness, he added, “
Much
better than yesterday.” A quick shake of the head, perhaps out of embarrassment. Or to scold himself for such impropriety. “I would say one last shower is all you need now. You’ll be fine.” He turned away without waiting for Kevin to say anything more, so that he could retreat to the kitchen and his breakfast preparations.

Kevin grinned.

Passable. All right.

Now he was ready to try
getting up
again, but this time he did it much more carefully. First he sat up slowly. Then one leg off the couch, then the other. Kevin groaned, but he was smiling now. These were familiar pains.
Good
pains. This was how you felt when you had gone through a two-hour, pre-season football practice in the high-humidity August heat of a New Hampshire summer. You trudged into the cafeteria afterwards, filled your plate with pasta and burger meat and coleslaw and rolls and anything else you could fit on that little plastic tray, and then you crawled back to your dorm, played an hour of Madden on XBOX because classes hadn’t even started yet, and collapsed into bed. When you woke up the next morning, you felt just like this. Sore as hell, kicked in the butt, and grumpy.

But also strong.

And ready for whatever bone-jarring drills the coach was planning to throw at you that afternoon.

Kevin stood up from the couch, stood and squared his shoulders and listened to the half-dozen popping sounds coming from his knees and hips and neck. “Yeah, yeah,” he said to his body, still smiling. “Stop your grousing.” He walked slowly down the hall to his bedroom, still enjoying the solid feel of his legs under him. He was steady again. Sure on his feet again. Such a wonderful sensation.