Do-Gooder (16 page)

He blanched. The white shade did nothing to improve his ratlike appearance. “How long—” he began.

Snake Eyes cut him off. “Forget it, Doctor. We don’t have time for this.”

Right. Chuck.

Holy shit! They had my dad on some kind of video conference. Chuck would fix this. He had to.

Of course, at the rate things were progressing, if he didn’t fix it now, I was screwed. Like in a coma, probably dying, screwed. One of these days—maybe even one of these hours—my toxic insides were going to overwhelm my brain, and I would fall asleep and probably not wake up. I was already experiencing the giddiness and flashes of delirium. Too much stress, too much adrenaline was finally kicking my ass.

Shorty reigned behind his bank of computer monitors when I got in. He glared at Snake Eyes. “Finally.” He pointed to the chair I’d sat in when recording the message the other day. Had it only been yesterday?

“Get his wrists.”

Snake Eyes pushed me into the chair. He took a silver roll of duct tape from Shorty and wrapped the heavy-duty tape around my wrists a couple of times.

Good old duct tape. A man’s tool for all occasions. Fix a pipe, make a wallet, tie up a teenager. A real multipurpose tool.

“What are you laughing about?” Shorty glared at me from behind his desk.

Hadn’t known I was laughing. Yep, here comes the delirium.

I shook my head and tried to concentrate. Focus. I needed to focus.

Shorty barked an order at the guards. They all jumped to attention, and their stiff postures and blank faces emphasized their creepy clone-like resemblance. He turned one of the monitors to me, and I saw a familiar video chat screen. Seriously? Mercenaries used Skype? Was their handle Guns4Hire? I pressed my lips together to keep from giggling.

Shorty adjusted the angle of the webcam. When my picture showed in the top corner of the screen, I almost threw up. The Scientist hadn’t been kidding when he said I looked strung out. Oh my God, I was Sméagol. Drawn grayish skin, stringy hair, wide, dark eyes. I was going to crouch, screaming for
my precious
any minute now. Even figuring craptastic webcam imaging, I looked like a freak.

I was so creeped out by the picture of me in the corner that I didn’t notice right away that there was someone else on the screen. A someone who looked more like what I should look like. His skin was tanned from years in the sun, and there were lines around his green eyes, but other than that, we had the same face—the same nose, the same facial structure, the same mouth. His mouth was moving, quite emphatically.

“What?” I leaned closer.

The man—my father, clearly—was saying something. His face, so like mine when I didn’t look like an extra from a fantasy-quest movie set, was stern and, on the surface, emotionless. Behind the emotionless mask, his green eyes were brewing up one hell of a storm. Chuck was pissed. I mean, superpissed. And maybe a little scared?

“Isaiah, are you okay?”

My heart gave an extra thump when I heard his voice for the first time in over a decade. All those years, and it was scratchy and staticky, not at all like I remembered it. A gazillion-dollars’ worth of electronics and the mercenaries had crappy speakers.

Chuck’s eyebrows jerked up in surprise, and Shorty growled. Whoops. I’d said that out loud.

I needed to keep my mind from wandering. Seriously.

“Isaiah? Are you okay?”

I blinked and cleared my throat. “Define okay.” My hands trembled when I brought my bound wrists up to rub at my face. My eyes burned with the need to cry, but, well, no extra moisture in my body made that tough. And a little painful. I scrubbed at my eyes anyway, trying to wipe away the ache.

“Did they hurt you?”

“Why do you care?”

He was still waiting, so I must not have said that out loud. Which was probably good. No need to air the family’s dirty laundry in front of the guys with guns. However, I only had dirty laundry. I tugged at my sweat-soaked, blood- and dirt-smeared shirt.

“Isaiah?”

“Fine.”

He squinted at me.

I didn’t want to tell him, but he needed to know. “DKA.” I knew he’d know the acronym, and I knew it was unlikely the guys with guns would. On the screen, his eyes widened, and he opened his mouth to say something, but I didn’t get to find out what.

“That’s enough,” Shorty growled, stepping in front of me. “You have your proof. Now, where are my canisters?”

“I don’t have your canisters.”

“That is too bad,” Shorty said. He made a small gesture at his side, and one of the guards—Mike, I think—lifted his gun.

“But I can get them!” Was that panic in Dad’s voice?

The gun lowered.

“But I’ll need time.”

I drew my legs up in front of me, looping my bound hands around my knees. I lay my head on the dirty denim of my jeans. “I don’t have time,” I whispered.

I don’t think anyone heard me.

“Twenty-four hours.” Shorty’s tone brooked no arguments.

“I’ll need at least three days.”

I didn’t have three days. I couldn’t pinpoint the exact moment of no return, but three days would be pushing it. I curled up tighter. It had gotten so damn cold in here.

“Thirty-six hours.”

“Forty-eight.”

All these numbers, like a countdown. Ten… nine… eight… then
kablooey
! Sarin gas over the Sahara.

I wanted to go home. Absolutely. But with every concession Dad made, the sooner a weapon of mass destruction—maybe several—would be let loose.

I thought of the kids I’d played with when I’d lived in the Central African Republic.

I thought of the refugees I’d seen last week.

I thought of the amount of time I had left before I hit that point of no return.

I was fucked either way.

“Don’t,” I said. Then louder. “Don’t. Don’t do it, Dad. You can’t let them… they’re trying to make sarin!”

“Shut him up!” Shorty hissed, and Snake Eyes tried to cover my mouth.

I squirmed and kicked. “It’s too late for me!” I shouted, hoping the computer’s mic wasn’t as crappy as the speakers. “But save Hank! Please. You’ve gotta save… him.”

My head spun and all the breath came whooshing out of my body. For the second time that day, I blinked out.

“I can’t
believe we’re going to do this.” My smile is probably big enough to see from the moon. No one could blame me, though. Henry looks ah-may-zing in the black tux. And tonight, he’s all mine. Well, mine and 250 other students attending my high school’s prom.

It might be a little risky taking a boy to prom, but it isn’t against any of the rules. I’d checked.

Any risk is worth it. I have the smartest, sweetest, hottest boyfriend ever, and tonight everyone is going to know it.

“It’s all good,” Henry says, straightening the bow tie of my own black tux. His hands are cool and his voice is… cold.

His face is a perfect mask. Beautiful but empty.

No. That’s not right. Henry is warm. Caring.

“What’s wrong, Hank? Why are you acting this way?”

“What way?” His voice is deep, sexy. Emotionless.

“This way.” I wave my hand up and down, indicating the whole of him and his actions. “Don’t you want to go? I wouldn’t force you to do something you don’t want to do.”

He smirks. “Look. It’s a simple transaction. You get what you want. I get what I want.”

“…A SIMPLE
transaction. You get what you want. I get what I want.” Henry’s voice, sharp and cold as broken glass, broke through my sleeping brain.

I didn’t know what was going on. I didn’t remember what happened after the video chat with Chuck. My stomach cramped, drawing a groan from me. I curled up tighter, my arms wrapped protectively around my stomach.

The conversation in the hut—who was Henry talking with?—halted.

Drowsiness swept over me again. Whatever was going on didn’t involve me.

“I don’t
think I would have done it, you know.” Wendy sits Indian-style on the grass, plucking the tiny petals off a dandelion one at a time. She looks happier than I’ve ever seen her. She wears jeans and a yellow-and-pink T-shirt, and her blonde hair is long again, the way it was before she hacked it all off. Her face is free of makeup, and I’ve never seen her look better. In the streaming sunlight, she looks positively angelic.

I rest on my back, my head on her folded legs. “I’m glad.”

“Question.” It’s Wendy’s voice, but that’s not her thing. That’s something Henry and I do together. The question-answer thing.

I play along anyway. “Shoot.”

“Why didn’t you tell anyone the gun was mine?”

“Because I didn’t want you to get into trouble.”

“But you got into trouble.”

I shrug. Dissecting it now won’t change anything. I did what I did and paid the consequences. And now I’m back and enjoying a sunny summer day with a friend.

“My dad knew it was me.”

Wendy’s whispered confession makes me sit up. Too quickly. My head spins and I have to wait a minute before I can look at her. “What?”

“It was his gun. When they confiscated it from you, he recognized it.”

“It wasn’t registered to him.” If it had been, the police would have found out before they dropped the charges.

“No. He’s got a big gun collection and not all of it’s registered.” She presses a finger to her lips. “Shh, don’t tell.”

A cloud passes over the sun and instead of sunlight and grass, I smell dank and rot. She pops the empty dandelion head into the air. It flies forward and lands at the foot of a gravestone. Wendy Miriam Sorenson.

“What happened?” I grip her shoulders. My hands hold too tight, but I can’t lessen their force. “Jesus, Wendy. What did he do?”

“He knew.” She whispers again. “And I couldn’t… I couldn’t…. So I did it.” She shakes her head, a tear tracking down one smooth cheek. “I’m sorry your sacrifice was for nothing.”

She presses two fingers to my cheek until I turn my head. Next to her gravestone was another. Isaiah Charles Martin.

“Fuck.”

“TOO LATE.
I was too late.” I couldn’t get that image of the twin headstones out of my mind. I couldn’t get the image of Wendy out of my mind. What if something happened to her while I was here? There was no one there to protect her from her stone-faced father.

I didn’t fall asleep again right away. Lethargy weighed me down and made it nearly impossible to move. Something told me I
had
to stay awake.

Henry. That was it. Henry had been hurt.

Mrs. Okono betrayed him—us—and then he’d been knocked out.

How long ago had that happened?

There was something else.

Oh, yeah. Chuck. He had forty-eight hours to return the canisters. But how long had I been out? Had it been two days?

“Henry?” My voice cracked and croaked. I tried again. “Henry?”

Nothing.

It took a minute, but I was finally able to roll over enough to see the entire room.

Henry wasn’t there.

My heart beat in a queasy
thump
-
thump
-
thump
that echoed in my head and in the empty room.

Where was he?

Would Shorty have hurt him to get back at me? At my dad?

He couldn’t be dead.

My head swam as I battled against hyperventilating. Passing out again wouldn’t help anyone.

Light filled the room, and I shut my eyes against the glow.

Something dropped into one corner and something larger—God, let it be Henry—slid against the wall and onto the ground.

I pried my eyes open, but I couldn’t make them focus. I caught a flash of red and a blurred form that must have been Henry. He knelt on the ground, using one arm pressed against the wall to hold him up. His hand slid and he slumped forward until he was on all fours, his body heaving.

Gagging, choking dry heaves. The kind that made it feel like your body tried to expel your intestines out your mouth. I could sympathize.

What was wrong?

“Hank?” My voice was wheezy, barely audible, but Henry heard. He whipped his head up. I still couldn’t focus—I think the jelly helmet covered my eyes again. One moment he hunched on the floor, the next he sat next to me, something red in his arms.

My backpack.

“What did you do?”

I was glad I couldn’t see better. The red blob that was my backpack was bad enough, but if I’d had to see the bag in detail, I’d have thrown up. Empty stomach or no.

I reached over and grabbed his hand. “Damn it, Hank.
What did you do
?”

He shrugged off my weak grip. “I did what I had to do.”

Ice water churned in my guts.

I closed my eyes and cried. Tears may not have poured from my eyes, but my soul registered the loss.

The stupid, self-sacrificing son of a bitch.

The cold
from the dark and foggy Washington, DC, streets seeps into my bones. I know I’m in DC because I can see the Washington Monument in the distance. I’m definitely not on the tourist path. I’m pretty sure this is the part of the country’s capital outsiders don’t know exists. The stench of rotting garbage, urine, and burning metal assaults my nose, and I tuck my face into my hoodie. It’s cold. The kind of damp cold that makes joints ache and breaths puff out in a white mist.

A group of kids—ages anywhere from fourteen to eighteen—sit under a building’s overhang. They don’t talk. Not a word. They shift and pull sweatshirts closer around bony shoulders to ward off the chill.

A car creeps down the street and comes to a stop in front of the kids.

They talk, though I can’t hear the words. Some kind of agreement is made, and one of them stands up and passes his sweatshirt to one of the others. He’s tall, thin, and his long brown hair hangs to his shoulder blades.