“Fine. Misha the Mighty.” The car bounced again and I heard the muffler hit one rock too many and it was gone behind us. “You got it. Now put that mighty brain to use and figure out how Raynor, and whoever the fuck he works for, found us.”
I didn’t have to put my brain to work. I knew. In a flash of inspiration . . . and subconscious brilliant deduction—a given—I knew. “Anatoly and you, Stefan. You both told him where we were.”
Raynor was smart all right. Too smart. And we hadn’t tried to finish him off when we had the chance. It was a thought I wouldn’t have had three years ago—when I hadn’t known what it was to have a real life. I wasn’t ashamed I had the thought now. I’d learned a lot since that time. Life and death . . . It was the cycle of the world. For someone to live, someone had to die—especially if that person was trying to take your life, be it mental or physical.
And me?
I wanted to live.
The hell with the Institute and their lies about what I was and what I could never be.
I wanted to live.
Chapter 4
“We need to take the 84. We’re heading southeast toward the Burns Paiute Indian Reservation,” I told Stefan. I had the route memorized, but I handed him the map from the glove compartment. Stefan didn’t like GPS. He thought all the voices were annoying, and when I programmed in HAL from 2001: A Space Odyssey , he tossed it out the window and drove over it. I’d known Stefan wasn’t technically . . . adept. That was the best and politest way to put it, but I didn’t know he was afraid of killer computers.
I thought they were rather entertaining myself. There was no explaining taste.
He snatched the map. “Burns? Why the hell are we going to . . . wait. What the fuck. How did Anatoly and I give away our location? How the hell did you come up with that?”
Burns was one of my nine—technically, ten—backup plans if Canada didn’t work out, but Stefan didn’t seem in the mood to appreciate that right now, and I couldn’t blame him. “Raynor must’ve found Anatoly,” I said. “And as smart as he appears to be, Anatoly was smart too. It must have taken Raynor about”—I calculated—“up until four weeks ago to find him. Almost three years.”
“But I told you, kiddo, I made sure Anatoly never knew where we were. Never knew where our money was, didn’t know our account numbers in the Caymans. Raynor couldn’t have found us through him.” The car bumped again and I thought I heard something else fall off. I let Stefan’s “kiddo” go. He was running on autopilot, but that would have to change in the future.
“But he did know one thing . . . all the properties he owned and used to hide in. He knew about the beach house where we were shot. Raynor must have gone to every one of them once Anatoly told.” And anyone would tell eventually, no matter how Mafiya tough, when a saw was cutting through their bone. I cleared my throat. “Raynor would’ve gone to every single one and dusted for prints, then entered them in AFIS.” This was a collection of fingerprints from a number of criminals and certain occupational workers.
How he became fixated on Anatoly to begin with was a mystery, unless he hung around Miami at the time of my rescue. While Jericho chased us, he’d investigated how the Institute had been discovered to begin with. With his clearance, he could’ve gone from the police to the FBI to see if anything peculiar had happened at the same time Stefan had taken me. He could’ve heard about a certain mob assassination, a missing mobster named Stefan Korsak. Stefan hadn’t killed his boss, but everyone thought he had. There would be boards covered with pictures, family connections, and maybe the mention and photo of another Korsak brother, long gone—a little boy with bicolored eyes.
Blue and green, like all of Jericho’s children.
If Raynor was as smart as I thought he was, he might have taken a chance on a wild-card hunch like that. “He would’ve kept them classified,” I went on about the fingerprints. “He’s Homeland. He can do that. But he would’ve had them, just waiting for one to pop up.”
“Ah, shit.” Stefan pounded his head once against the steering wheel. “And my stupid ass fucks up trying to blend in and be Harry-the-Handyman, good guy, up for a bar fight, who gets arrested and printed. Two weeks. Two goddamn weeks and he’s probably been here watching us at least half that time. Brought along a buddy, not Homeland, but trained. That shithead was trained to fight and kill. He sends him in to annoy you day after day to see what you’ll do. Make sure he has the right kid.” I had changed a lot in the past three years—I had my contact that changed the color of my one blue eye to match the green. I was taller, my hair darker, enough for there to be some initial doubt, although with my living with Harry/Stefan as my brother, not more than a molecule of it. “He did it to see if he could trigger you.”
“And he did,” I said quietly. “That means I fucked up too and maybe worse than you.”
“I don’t think so”—he gave my shoulder a light push—“but if you want to share, let’s say we both screwed up and you tell me why the hell we’re going to the Burns Indian Reservation. Assuming the car holds together to make it to the interstate. The pipe bombs we will talk about later—I haven’t forgotten. But why the reservation?”
“Oh, the reservation?” Actually, he probably was going to forget about the pipe bombs. “That’s where the plane is. Didn’t I mention that before?”
“Plane? What plane?” he demanded.
“Our plane.”
“Our plane? Since when do we have a plane?” His fingers were slowly beginning to whiten as his grip tightened on the steering wheel.
“Since I bought one,” I replied as if it were the most obvious of answers.
I could see his jaw tightening now as he tried to hold on to his temper. In the beginning, when he’d rescued me, taught me how to live in the real world, taught me . . . hell . . . everything (even cursing), he was nothing but patient. He was the most patient, protective ex-mobster you could find, because he knew how damaged I was, which I think might have been only marginally more damaged than he was from guilt and despair. Not once in almost two years did he ever snap or lose his temper with me, even if I deserved it—especially if I deserved it. But after two years, he went from treating me as a phantom brother who would disappear at any moment and started treating me like a real brother.
It turned out that I liked that. After two years, I wanted to be given a verbal ass kicking when I deserved it, I wanted to pay off the half-blown-up garage with my paycheck from the coffeehouse, despite our having money in offshore accounts, I wanted all of that. Why? Because that meant no matter how annoying I was and how quickly Stefan would make sure I paid the price, he always had my back. He protected me from anyone and anything.
Blood is thicker than delinquent behavior.
And while that wasn’t one hundred percent correct, I took it. Good, bad, and all that came between, Stefan would always be my brother, my family, and that was something. . . . That was really something.
“Since you bought one? Why did you buy a plane? How did you buy a plane? Who’s going to fly the plane if we need a plane?” Stefan demanded. Now I could hear his teeth grinding at the end of the last question. I tried not to smile, but it was entertaining . . . just a little. That didn’t make me a bad person. I simply found amusement where I could. That made me emotionally healthy and I could write a two-hundred-thousand-word paper to prove it.
“I bought one in case some of our other backup plans didn’t work, and Raynor cancels out at least three of them. I bought it with the money from the Caymans. Who does our banking, remember? You’re horrible with numbers. That was why that old lady hit you with her cane when you were in the ten-items-only line with sixteen items.” I crossed my arms and Godzilla came slithering out from under the seat to paw at the glove compartment. He knew where the goodies were. “Besides, it’s only a Cessna.”