Outrage (23 page)

“Got to get going, somebody will have heard the shot,” Harmon called to Shay. He was walking toward them, his gun never leaving a point on Thorne's chest. Thorne turned to Shay, the shock gone now, and snarled, “You better hope you get killed when I come for you.”

“What's that?” Shay said. “You're gonna torture me?”

Her hand was shaking a little, and Thorne sneered at her—
Amateur
—and said, “That'd be the least of it. Ask your brother….”

Harmon was there. He picked up Thorne's gun, put it in his pocket, and said to Shay, “Get the leftover rope out of the trunk. We'll tie his foot to a car. That'll slow him down long enough for us to get out.” To Thorne he said, “Assume the position, asshole. Over here.”

He pointed Thorne to a concrete pillar, and Thorne leaned against it with one hand, his other covering his wounded ear, spreading his legs. “I never thought you'd go this far,” he told Harmon. “We're coming for you.”

“Come ahead.” Shay had gone to the Jeep, snagged the rope from the backseat, and hurried back. Harmon said over his shoulder, “Mr. Thorne does all kinds of karate and Krav Maga and all of that, so keep your gun on him while I do this. I'm going to hook this rope around his ankle.”

Shay blurted, “Thorne? This is the guy who shot West?”

Harmon said, “Easy….”

Shay said, “Forget the rope.” She was standing directly behind Thorne and she kicked him in the crotch. She kicked him like an NFL punter would kick a football, like a German soccer star would shoot on goal. She kicked him so hard that, for a split second, a black patch flashed across her eyes from the impact.

Thorne gagged and went down, and Shay shouted, “Come for me now!” and wound up to kick him in the head, but Harmon hooked an arm around her and dragged her to the Jeep, and a minute later they were rolling. Thorne remained curled on the floor, his mouth open, his head back, one long, long silent scream.

Shay was still breathing hard when they exited the parking structure. Harmon caught two lights in a row, and then blew through a red, and they were gone, lost in traffic.

Harmon slowed and said, “Kinda lost your cool there.”

“It happens,” Shay said.

Harmon grinned. “I've seen guys kicked in the goolies before, but I've never seen anything like that.”

Shay said, “I'll take that as a compliment.” Then: “You think Cade's really loose?”

“Yeah. If he's got the sense to really hide himself.”

“He's been on the street in L.A. He can hide.”

They came to a red light, stopped. Harmon glanced at her, the traffic light picking up the red glint in her hair. “How old are you?”

“Sixteen.”

“Did you mean that shot to frighten Thorne? Or did you mean to shoot him?”

“I meant to shoot him; I figured that'd frighten him good.”

Harmon said, “Jesus. You're a little scary, kid.”

“Can we move faster?” Shay asked. “I want to find out about Cade.”

Cade lay under a tree, behind a wooden-slat fence, and said into the phone, “Nineteenth Avenue crosses some train tracks. Wait there, I'll come to you.”

“Pull the battery on the phone,” Twist said.

Twist found the place and, two interminable minutes later, saw Cade limping toward him, his arms wrapped around his body as though to keep his lungs inside himself, struggling to keep moving. He popped the front door and Cade was in.

Twist accelerated away and asked, without taking his eyes off the narrow road, “You hurt bad?”

“I think they busted some ribs. Hurts to run, hurts to cough. I haven't been laughing a lot, but that'd probably hurt, too. Oh, yeah, they hit me in the eyes a few times, and I can't see too well out of the left one.”

“Gotta get you to a hospital.”

“We gotta get away from here first….Just try…to take it easy….” He gasped for air. “Doesn't hurt so much when you don't hit those potholes.”

“I don't want to insult you…but did they ask about where we're hiding?”

“Yeah. I told them that we move every day, because we're so scared. I think they believed me.”

“You are one tough little street rat,” Twist said. “I think I just shed a tear.”

Cade involuntarily laughed, then gasped, then gasped again when Twist hit another pothole. Twist said, “I'm trying, man.”

“Yeah, don't worry, keep going.” Cade half turned his head to X in the backseat, said, “Hey, dog.”

X gave his swollen eye a lick, and Cade turned back to Twist and said, “I don't know what you did, but it freaked out the guy who gave me the phone.”

“Where's the phone?”

“Left it by the tracks. You gotta get rid of yours, they'll have that number.”

“Right.” Twist took the phone out of his pocket, threw it out the window. A minute later, they took a left onto a wider street and eventually merged onto a freeway. “I think we're good,” Twist said. “Never saw anyone behind us.”

Cade groaned. “Man, that asshole who had me…Thorne…he was the leader of the guys at the hotel….Last night, he said they were gonna kill me. But then they ignored me today.”

They hit a highway seam that Twist hadn't seen coming, and Cade gasped again.

“Sorry, sorry….”

“Keep going…tell me what happened, distract me.”

Twist told him about Harmon and the meeting on the face of the cliff and the plan to grab Cartwell. “The last I heard, he was standing on a toilet bowl with a rope around his neck.”

Cade laughed, then groaned, then said, “Jeez, laughing does hurt. Don't say anything funny.”

“I'm not feeling all that funny,” Twist said. “I haven't heard from them….I should have heard from them.”

“You threw the phone out the window, dummy.”

“Aw, we've got more phones than—”

A phone rang in his pocket and he fished it out and said, “Yo.”

He listened for a second, then said, “I got him. We're clear.” He turned to Cade and said, “They're out.”

Back to the phone: “He's got some broken ribs. I'm going to take him to an emergency room, see what they can tell us. It was the same guy that our new friend told us about.”

He listened again and then said, “I don't want to make our boy laugh, but I'll tell him anyway. We'll see you up there.”

He clicked off, turned to Cade, and said, “Don't laugh.”

“Tell me.”

“They caught Thorne, put him up against a wall, you know, like the cops do when they're searching you. Then Harmon mentioned that he was Thorne, and Shay punted him in the nuts. Harmon says she kicked him so hard his balls are probably in orbit.”

Cade laughed, then groaned, then laughed even harder.

Harmon and Shay ruminated over Singular's possible reaction to the attack on Cartwell, but neither had much idea of what Singular could do that they weren't already doing. “And they have a handicap,” Harmon said. “I'm no longer working for them.”

“How big a handicap is that?” Shay asked.

Harmon smiled. “Well, it's something. My boss—everybody calls him Sync—is former CIA. He's as good as I am, but he's got a lot of other stuff to do. So, they'll have to find somebody to fill my job. That'll take a while.”

“You're sure Sync is
former
CIA? There's no possibility he's still working for the government
and
for Singular?”

The question took Harmon by surprise: he didn't reply for a moment, then said, “I think I would have spotted that he was reporting in two different directions. And when I talked to him last night…No. He's purely Singular's guy now.”

Over the next fifty miles, they talked about climbing: Shay about rain, about snow, about rotten rock, Harmon about dry heat so bad it felt like you were in a toaster, about times when you could burn your fingers hanging on to a ledge, and both of them about the feeling after clearing the last obstacle and looking down at where you'd just come from.

“If we get out of this, I'll take you climbing down in Arizona or New Mexico,” Harmon said. “There's some strange stuff down there. Take you climbing in a slot canyon.”

“I'd do it,” Shay said.

A while later, Shay asked, “Why'd you really ditch Singular? It couldn't all have been West. For one thing, you didn't do it right away.”

Harmon looked at her, then back over the wheel, thinking about how to answer. After a minute, he took a stab at it: “I joined the army when I was just a little older than you are now. I was in Iraq, and then a few other places, and then Iraq again, and Afghanistan. Stayed in, because, you know…I was a”—he waved an arm, as if what he was about to say might seem silly—“a patriot, I guess. I was good at it, but I eventually got tired. I had my twenty years in, and then Sync came and talked to me about being an intel guy for a private business for way more money. I took it. It was mostly just fending off hackers, doing corporate anti-espionage, and a little espionage as well, to tell the truth—keeping up with the competitors.

“They were doing good work with prosthetics. I guess I knew there was more, but I didn't know they were killing people. After you guys hit that lab up in Eugene, everybody started freaking out and I started digging—didn't like what I found. I mean, when I went private, I didn't change what I basically believe. I'm still a”—he waved his arm again—“an American.”

Shay nodded. “I get that.”

They got to Danny's at two o'clock in the morning, Harmon driving, Shay pointing down the various switches along the entry road. Harmon said, “This is what I call a hideout. I couldn't find this place with a satellite.”

Danny came out on the porch, alerted by the driveway chime. Shay got out of the Jeep and shouted, “Shay and a friend.”

Danny waved from under the porch light and went inside. Harmon said, “I don't want to sound the least bit critical, but…was he carrying an M16?”

“I don't know the model, exactly, but he's got quite a few guns,” Shay said. “Danny's what you might call an entrepreneur.”

“Of a particular kind,” Harmon said.

“Exactly,” Shay said. “He gave me my gun…but he really doesn't know much about them. I could use a few more lessons.”

“You guys have more resources than I'd guessed,” Harmon said as they walked through the rock-maze fence.

Odin came out on the deck a few seconds later, with Fenfang a step behind. Shay told Harmon, “You'll want to take a long look at Fenfang without the wig. You'll see what you guys were responsible for.”

Up on the deck, Odin looked at Harmon, then at his sister, and said, “This is a mistake. We don't need him.”

“Without him, Cade might be dead,” Shay snapped. “We're trying to bring Singular down, and I'll take any help I can get.”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Danny said. “Everybody relax.”

Shay went inside, and Harmon nodded at Odin. “Odin. Nice to meet you.” He caught Fenfang's eye and tipped his head at her before following after Shay.

As they walked into the kitchen, Shay muttered, “You have to understand what Odin's been through….”

“Not a problem—I know what Thorne and his people did to him, and I didn't stop them. I didn't like it, and I told Sync that I didn't, but I didn't quit over it.”

Fenfang said to Odin, “Try to be good. People can change.”

“That doesn't make him innocent.”

“I know,” she said, and stroked his hair. She turned and went inside, and Odin and Danny followed her into the kitchen. Shay got two bottles of orange juice out of the refrigerator and handed one to Harmon without asking if he wanted it, then suggested that everyone move into the living room.

As they all settled onto a pair of couches, Shay nudged Odin and said, “Sorry. It's been a long couple days,” then looked at Fenfang and asked, “Would it bother you to take off your wig to show Harmon?”

Fenfang looked across Danny's cracked glass coffee table at Harmon, who was wearing his mirrored aviators and didn't look inclined to take them off. He took a swallow of juice, then set the bottle aside and folded his hands in his lap.

Fenfang said: “I never saw you at the prison.”

Harmon shook his head.

“Did you ever see me?” she asked.

“No. But that's no excuse.”

She nodded and looked him over a while longer. “All right,” she said, like a declaration. “I will show you my head.”

Dropping her chin, Fenfang peeled the wig off from the back to reveal the dozens of tiny gold-colored knobs scattered over her scalp, and the maze of threadlike wires. Harmon stiffened—Shay felt the couch cushion shift—and said, “I have a photo of you, but…it's not the same as seeing for myself what we did.”

“No, it's not,” said Odin.

“We'll show you an X-ray,” Shay said, “but the knobs are actually connections to wires that thread through holes drilled in her skull and go down into her brain. They tried to put Senator Dash in there. They partially succeeded: sometimes the Dash personality will try to take hold, and then Fenfang has a seizure.”

“Hasn't had one for two days now,” Odin said. “The antiseizure drug is working, I think.”

Shay said, “That's great.”

Fenfang spoke directly to Harmon: “Sometimes I can still feel her there. She tries to come out, but she is weaker now.”

The driveway chime sounded. “That'll be Cruz,” Shay said. “He wasn't far behind us.”

She walked away from the group, down the deck stairs, and across the dew-covered lawn to meet him. He got out of the truck and asked, “Is everybody okay?”

“Twist took Cade to an urgent care clinic, and we know they left there, so I think he'll be okay.”

Cruz stepped closer. “I mostly meant you.”

“I know,” Shay said, and stepped right up to him, hooked three fingers over his belt buckle, and kissed him on the mouth. She let it linger for a moment, then stepped back and said, “How you doing?”

Cruz answered her with another kiss.

Twist, Cade, and X arrived at five-thirty, as it was getting light. Shay had gone to bed, but Cruz rapped on her door and said, “They're coming in.”

She got up, pulled on her jeans and a sweatshirt, and hurried out to the deck. X practically leapt into her arms, and she knelt down and hugged him as Twist and Cade made their way up the lawn. Cade was walking stiffly, like the Tin Man in
The Wizard of Oz.

When they started up the steps, Shay stood and called down, “How bad?”

Twist answered for Cade: “He's got cracked ribs on both sides and in back. No blood in his urine, so they probably missed his kidneys.”

Cade said, “Hey, Danny: I could use some medicinal attention.”

“Not a good idea,” Danny said. “They probably got you high on painkillers already.”

“They do. He hardly complained at all on the way up,” Twist said. “Before that, it was all, ‘Don't hit the pothole, don't hit the pothole.' ”

When Cade reached the top of the stairs, Shay looked at his face and said, “Oh, your eye…”

“I'd wink at you, babe, if I could,” Cade said.

Shay: “Can I give you a hug?”

“Maybe next month,” Cade said. His entire face was badly bruised and he had a fat lip. Shay patted him on the butt, and he smiled.

“Didn't lose any teeth,” she said.

Harmon showed up, barefoot, in jeans and a gray army-style T-shirt. He nodded and said, “Twist, Cade: I'm Harmon.”

Cade said, “Thanks, Harmon,” and extended a hand.

They talked for an hour, everybody's version of everything they'd done since the night on the roof across from the Singular building. Cade said that he thought Thorne would have killed him, and would have enjoyed doing it. “He's that kind of guy, I think.” He tapped eyes with Harmon. “How'd that work, between you and Thorne?”

Harmon drew a breath and said: “I was the intel guy—my basic job was trying to keep hackers out of our computer system and checking out people who were perceived as possible threats. I didn't have anything to do with the research or tracking the research, or with direct security. Singular is carefully compartmentalized. You only know what you need to know. I had no idea until after you attacked Eugene that they were using human subjects, that these people had been captured, that they would die. When I started looking for Storm, I listened in on a conversation that I wasn't supposed to hear between Singular's boss and a new client they were recruiting for the immortality program. That's when I began to understand….

“Thorne is not intel. He's in charge of direct security—building guards, physical security procedures, moving the experimental subjects around. When you got through the fence up in Eugene, it was Thorne who took the rap. It was his security that broke down. When we couldn't find you later, I began to get the heat, because that was my side of the job. I have to tell you, I enjoyed it. You guys were interesting opponents. Then, you know…it started to go south.”