He was aware of Adam and Tank listening from the doorway. Everyone was so fragile. So damn fragile.
“Yeah, you do know me,” Moses said. “You do.”
“No. You’re changing. Half the time I think you believe your own bullshit.”
“I’ll never change on you. Trust that. I will never let you down. That’s how people out there do,” Moses said, willing her to believe. “That’s not us. We’re solid. We’re granite.”
“You say. And then you go and sneak out and look in the target’s window.”
“Okay. My bad. It won’t happen again.”
“You promise?”
“Promise.” He went over to her, bent lower, so he was looking into her wild, bloodshot, dilated eyes. “This is me, Kook. It’s still me. Same as I always was. I’m a chameleon out there, but that’s not who I am, here. Not with us. We’re family, right?”
“Sure we are.”
“I’m serious. I won’t risk us. Not ever. Not for a second.”
Kook looked up at him. In her eyes, he could see the wounds she hid from the outside world. They were family all right. He had scars. She had scars. The two boys listening at the door had scars. He pulled Kook close, into a hug.
“We’re family,” he said.
Kook went rigid for a second and then hugged him back. “My big black brother.”
“You know it.” He laughed. “Get in here, you guys.”
“Is it safe?” Adam called.
“Yeah,” Moses said. “Get in here. You might as well listen where you can actually hear.”
They both slunk into the kitchen. A rat ran across the floor, startled by their movement. Tank jumped and said, “Would you put that thing back in its cage?”
“I—” Adam checked his jacket. “It’s not mine. I still got my little guy. You must have let that one out when we moved all the cages.”
“No way. Don’t blame that shit on me,” Tank said. “If there’s rats still around, it’s because you kept letting them loose when you fed them.”
“Let it go,” Moses said. “Come here, you guys. Gather ’round. Kook’s right. This is serious. No mistakes from here on out. We’ve got no room for mistakes.”
He looked around at his crew. A ragtag bunch of kids as haunted as he was. Not a single one of them the same, and yet every one of them related, bound together by hurt and horror.
“We can still back out,” he said. “We can pull back right now. Walk away. This is our last chance, though. Once we start the next stage, we’re going to be up to our necks.”
“Once you’re halfway across the channel, you might as well keep swimming,” Adam said.
“I don’t even know what that means,” Moses said.
“The English Channel…” Adam shook his head. “Never mind. You’d have to be a swimmer.”
Tank snickered. “A prep school swimmer. We should have sent you into Seitz. Target would have loved you.”
Adam wrinkled his nose with disgust. “I can’t think of anything worse.”
“Knock it off,” Moses said. “Seriously. After we make the next play, we’re committed, forever. Right now, we can still walk away, live good lives. Forget any of this even happened. But after this? We’re in too deep. There’s no backing out.”
He looked at each of them. “I’m not much for democracy, but this one time, we need to vote. I need to hear that you’re all in. I already got one vote, but I need to hear it from you three. I’m ready to go on. But if you don’t want to carry this weight, I get it. You can back out now, and I’d understand. So… are you in?”
Moses found himself holding his breath, wondering if he was making a mistake of leadership to do this. He knew he could talk them into it. He could poke and prod and cajole. He was good at that. He could con a body just as well as Simon Banks. He knew which words would manipulate for which results, and it was tempting to do it. He shook off the urge.
There’s no other way. There’s no way to do this. And then, on the heels of that thought, came another. It’s too much. This is too much to ask of anyone. I shouldn’t be pulling them into this at all.
Kook blew out her breath. “Yeah. I’m in. I was in before. I’m in now. All the way down the rabbit hole, if that’s what it takes.”
Adam gave Moses a lazy mock-salute. “You don’t have to ask me. The ride’s been good so far. I’m definitely around for the finale.”
Tank nodded, his welding helmet wiggling. “In. Most definitely in.”
Moses looked around at the group of them, and for a moment he couldn’t speak.
“Like you say,” Tank said. “We’re family. Nothing’s going to change that.”
Moses blinked and looked away, afraid they’d see tears in his eyes.
Sometimes he felt so alone that it felt like his body was being ripped apart by the loneliness, and then, at times like this, he felt so complete that he wondered how he’d even been able to walk down the street without them, let alone breathe.
He pulled them close. “That’s it then,” he said. “We’re going for it.”
12
LIFE SETTLED INTO A ROUTINE. Alix and Cynthia defaulted to going home every day and hanging out in her room or playing Xbox with Jonah in a weirdly domestic habit that got Death Barbie off their backs.
Alix got the feeling that Cynthia was taking pity on her and wanted to be elsewhere, but, still, she loyally went home with her even though it would have been more fun to spend time driving out to the ocean, or going shopping with Sophie, or teasing Derek—or doing almost anything other than staying at Alix’s house.
“You think you’re ever going to get your life back?” Cynthia asked as she fiddled with the Xbox and swapped out Jonah’s SwordSlayer IX game.
“Ask 2.0,” Alix said. “Why?”
Cynthia looked uncomfortable. “There’s that rave…”
Alix got it immediately. “And nobody’s going to be excited to see my security detail show up.”
“It’s not me,” Cynthia said. “But everyone else is sure that Death Barbie is going to rat them out to their parents. Either that or call the cops.”
“Thanks for the trust.”
“I’m just saying.”
Alix felt the gulf between her and Cynthia widening. “I get it if you want to go without me.”
“You idiot,” Cynthia said as she booted up Left 4 Dead. “I’m not trying to ditch you. I’m trying to figure out a way to bust you out.”
Alix laughed. “My dad would kill me.”
“Better to beg for forgiveness than ask for permission,” Cynthia quoted.
“Is that one of those sayings from your father?”
“I think it was some admiral.”
Alix sat with the idea. Her parents would lose their shit if she actually did this, but she’d been cooped up for the last week with Lisa. Even if she had started feeling bad about calling the woman Death Barbie, she was dying for some time alone.
“What am I supposed to do about 2.0? He’s out there somewhere.”
“Have you seen anything from him?” Cynthia asked. “Has he done anything else? Has he even showed his face since the school thing?”
“You mean other than when he was stalking and staring into my kitchen?”
Cynthia snickered. “Yeah. Other than that.”
“When did you get so blasé about all this?” Alix asked. “2.0 basically said he was coming after my family.”
Cynthia shot her a serious look. “Yeah. I’ve been reading about that.”
“About what?”
“Assassinations.”
“What?????”
“No! Sorry!” Cynthia waved her hands frantically. “Not like that! Not like someone going to snipe you. Just about people who get targeted. What I read is that the most dangerous thing a target can do is have a routine. The routine is what makes it easy for the bad guys to get at you. If you don’t have a routine, then they don’t have a chance to set up on you.” She glanced around the house. “It could be that the most dangerous thing you’re doing is coming home every day and playing Xbox.”