The first thing that hit her was the scent of fresh coffee. It was like a shot of energy straight to the brain. The insulated mug it came in wasn’t drawn from her private pattern catalog, and the brew, she suspected, wasn’t her favorite, but that was okay. It was still caffeine—and if someone was looking for her, the less evidence she left of her presence, the better.
Next to the mug was a bundle of fresh clothes and a pair of sneakers. Again, not her favorites—lightweight travel gear in grays and blacks, anonymous and easy to layer—but at least they looked to be her size. The new clothes went with her new identity or mask or whatever it was, she assumed. There was a new backpack, too, the same nondescript color scheme as the clothes.
Inside the backpack was an automatic pistol.
She touched the cold metal with the tip of one finger.
No, she told herself, this is crazy.
Or was it?
In all her life, she’d never fired a gun. Her parents had never owned one. But when people started pointing them at her, didn’t it make a kind of sense to point one back? It wasn’t as if she had to actually fire it or anything.
Clair shoved the pistol under the clothes, well out of sight, and stuffed it all into the pack.
She wanted nothing more than to shower and drink her coffee in peace. A headache was throbbing behind her right eye.
Reprisals, she thought, remembering something Gemma had said in the safe house. The man WHOLE is trying to kill . . . That was what “q” had called the person holding her parents hostage. That person had turned out to be Dylan Linwood.
Distant pieces of the puzzle were slowly starting to come together, but what good did that do her? She couldn’t call Libby. She couldn’t call her parents. She couldn’t call her friends. She couldn’t call the peacekeepers without giving her location away. Clair had escaped from one cage only to find herself caught securely in another.
“One piece at a time,” she reminded herself. If she could get Zep out of the safe house, that would be a start. At least she wouldn’t be alone in the cage then.
“Can I call up a map?” she asked “q.”
“Yes, Clair. I will advise you if you are about to do anything dangerous.”
There was a public bathroom one block to the north, worth going out of her way for. She didn’t want to arrive anywhere looking like a refugee.
She slung the pack over her shoulder, threw the empty mug and box into a bin, took one last look around her to make sure Dylan Linwood really wasn’t still following her, and set off.
27
ONE HOUR LATER, after a lonely walk under stars as crisp and cool as a cosmic chandelier, Clair strode up to the safe house door and waited. She didn’t need to knock. She knew Ray or someone else would be watching.
The door opened after thirty seconds. Gemma stepped out. The door closed behind her and clicked shut.
“We didn’t expect to see you again,” Gemma said. Her face was unreadable in the darkness. There was no porch light.
“I didn’t expect to see you, either.” Clair held the pistol at her side, not hidden but not aimed at anyone either. A bluff like Gemma’s had been. This time, Gemma appeared to be unarmed.
“You should have told me,” Clair said.
“About what?”
“About Dylan Linwood.”
Gemma looked surprised but unrepentant. “You’ve seen him, then?”
“He tried to kill me.”
Gemma nodded and said, “We couldn’t tell you about that. You wouldn’t have believed us.”
“How long have you known he was a traitor? And how on earth did he survive that explosion?”
That earned her a long, measuring stare.
“You’d better come inside. Your boyfriend is making my life a living hell.”
“He’s not my boyfriend,” she said again.
Gemma knocked on the door, a quick rat-a-tat, and it opened. Clair’s eyes had adjusted to the darkness. Ray looked pissed off. Clair didn’t care.
“I’ll be out of touch for a bit,” Clair told “q.” She squeezed the pistol grip tightly, feeling as though she were leaping off a high dive. Gemma followed her into the house, too close for comfort, but no one tried to search or disarm her. No one said anything. All the menus in her night-darkened lenses were dead.
She found Zep in the living room, sitting on the couch, with wrists and ankles secured by plastic ties. Jesse sat next to him, not tied but not exactly one with his captors, either. Big-Ears stood over them both with his arms folded. Arabelle, in her wheelchair, blocked the door to the back of the house, long-fingered hands resting loosely in her lap.
“Clair!” Zep tried to get up, but his bindings prevented him. Seeping blood had stained the bandage around his thigh bright red. “What are you doing here? You shouldn’t have come back.”
“I didn’t have to,” she said. “I’m here of my own free will, and I’m not making any demands, either. That counts for something, doesn’t it?” She said that to the woman in the wheelchair.
“Perhaps it does,” said Arabelle.
“Why are you here?” asked Jesse, looking up at her with eyes wide through his thick hair.
“I haven’t worked everything out, but I know one thing,” she said, figuring there was nothing to be gained by prevaricating. “Neither VIA nor the peacekeepers blew up your house. It was these guys. That’s why Gemma appeared so soon after the explosion. That’s why she was surprised to see you. Your father was the target, and we were almost collateral damage.”
Jesse looked at Gemma and Arabelle in turn, then back at Clair. His expression was furious.
“It’s not true,” he said to her. “Why are you lying to me? Haven’t you done enough damage?”
“What Clair says is true, Jesse,” Arabelle said. “I’m sorry.”
“When your father didn’t call in on schedule,” Gemma said, “we knew he’d been compromised, and we acted immediately to neutralize the threat.”
“Compromised?” Jesse’s head swung back and forth. Clair wanted to grab him and make him be still. “You blew up our house!”
“The charges were laid years ago,” said Ray. “I helped Dylan put them in place myself, but we never thought we’d need them.”
“He would never have done anything to hurt you,” said Jesse, face turning pink. “You murdered him.”
“If we were murderers,” said Arabelle, “you would already be dead.”
Zep was nodding grimly. “Yeah, right. We’re witnesses. So why are you sitting around talking to us?”
“They don’t know what to do with us,” said Clair.
“That’s true,” said Arabelle. “We can’t let you go without exposing you to grave danger.”
“She’s already run into him,” Gemma said.
The members of WHOLE shifted uneasily.
“Run into who?” asked Jesse.
“Let’s talk about that later,” said Arabelle firmly. She was probably thinking the same thing as Clair. Was it better for Jesse to know that his father wasn’t the man he believed in or to remember a lie?
“For now, why don’t you tell us what you want, Clair?” Arabelle said.
This was it. Everything she had pondered in the long walk to the safe house came down to this moment. They were seven people lumped together in a way none of them would have chosen. But that was the way it was, and she had to work with it.
“We need to leave,” Clair told them. “It’s not safe here.”