Strike (30 page)

“This is your grandfather's nuclear fallout shelter,” he says. “On the other side of this hill is the old Cannon house where me and Ash grew up. Now, watch your language and come on down.”

It's cold underground but not nearly as gross as I was expecting it to be. The fallout shelter is like a long, metal pill, and it has a built-in ventilation system that hums as it churns fresh air through, although it does smell a bit musty. As soon as he's made sure everything is safe and functional, my dad climbs back up to close the cover and lock it. And that's when it begins to feel like we're buried alive.

“Should I ask why you have a fallout shelter?” I say, leaning back on a narrow bed set into the wall. It's as flat and crisp as a hospital cot, and the guns stuffed in my waistband are instantly uncomfortable, so I put them on a little shelf set overhead. Everything in here is white or beige and strictly utilitarian. As soon as I see the brown marks my muddy sneakers are leaving, I shuffle them off guiltily and curl back up.

“My father was a very paranoid, vindictive man. He had this shelter built back in the nineties in case something happened. Y2K, zombies, whatever. He wanted a place to hide. I think it was left over from the fifties. I only know about it because there was a land dispute and I managed to hack into his files.” He brushes off his hands and ducks farther back to open and close doors. I hear a toilet flush, water running. I guess he's making sure everything works. A few moments later, he reappears with a flat package in each hand.

“What are those?” I ask, and he hands me one.

“MREs. Meals ready to eat. They're for troops in combat. Twelve hundred calories to keep you fighting, including dessert. Open it up. You've got to be hungry.”

I flip the package around and dump a pile of dark brown plastic squares on the bed. “What's it made of? Is this even food? Is it safe? Wait. How old is this thing?”

Of all the questions I'm dying to ask him about where the hell he's been, I can seem to focus only on the immediate. Maybe I'm not ready for what he has to say.

My dad's already flopped down on the identical bed across from mine, eating something that smells like tuna out of one of the bags, and I want to gag. He shrugs and gives me a crazy grin. “Oh, it's safe. Would the government do something that was bad for you?”

I poke through the bags. No way I'm touching that chicken à la king. I pull out some crackers and a bag of M&M's that looks
weirdly off. The first piece of candy is yellow, stale and dry, but still chocolate enough to work. I dump them out in my hand and look up at my dad.

“Since when do they make tan M&M's?”

“They stopped before you were born.”

I pour the candy back into the bag, tuck everything back in the package, and decide I can wait for real food. My dad watches me, his eyebrows scrunched down, and abandons his meal to bring me a bottle of water.

“At least stay hydrated.”

I check for weird inscriptions before drinking it.

The shelter is strangely impersonal, quiet and cool. I get the idea that anyone trapped down here for very long would go insane, despite the bookshelf set into the wall and boasting hundreds of slender paperbacks, mostly science fiction and thrillers. I don't really know what to say, don't know where to start, but my natural instinct is to let my dad go first. Let him do the work. After all, he's the one who left.

I expect him to apologize, to tell me how good it is to see me, or to ask what my hobbies are or if my grades are good or what I want to be when I grow up. But I'm dead wrong.

“So why do you have my brother's dog?” he says, eyes locked on mine over his bag of tuna.

I swing my legs over the side of the bed to face him.

“This is how you want to start? You're gone for thirteen years, and you want to know about your brother, who you saw six fucking months ago?”

He puts down the tuna, wipes his mouth on a paper napkin, and turns to face me.

“My brother would die before he let that dog out of his sight.”

“Then I guess you know what happened.”

He pulls off his beanie and runs a hand through wolfish hair gone salt-and-pepper, though still mostly pepper. I can tell he's chewing the inside of his cheek just like I do when I'm pissed and at war between what I want to say and what I should say. This is not how I dreamed our reunion would go, every word fueled with anger, suspicion, and blame.

“How'd he die? He was supposed to stay out of this mess.”

“You want the full story?”

He chuckles like he can't believe we're doing this, kicks off his muddy boots, and lies back on the bed to stare at the ceiling. “Well, we've definitely got the time.”

“Don't you want to know about me? Or tell me where the hell you've been?” I dash the tears away, wishing it weren't so well lit in this goddamn underground courtroom.

“If you killed your uncle, for Valor or otherwise, I need to know why.”

“But I'm the one who's still alive!”

“Honey, this is a war. We are in a war, and people are dying. We both killed people, not even two hours ago. And as much as I'd love to do the hugging-and-laughing thing, I'd rather do everything in my power to keep you alive. And that means I need to know what we're up against. So. Tell me about Ash.”

I take a deep, petulant breath and lean back against the wall so I don't have to look at him. I know he's right, but it still hurts.

“It all started when a Valor guy knocked on the door,” I say.

“I know. But tell me anyway.”

So I tell him the entire story. Mom's cancer, the gun pointed first at her and then tossed in my lap with my knitting. The envelope of cards, the list of ten names, the mail truck waiting outside, freshly painted just for me. When I get to my first kill, to Wyatt's dad, my mom's ex-boss, he sits up and faces me, reaches for my hand. I shake it off. I don't want this to be what connects us.

“What'd you do after you shot him?” he asks.

I swallow hard. “Wyatt came after me, shoved me up against the truck. He didn't know what was going on then—no one did. But I didn't shoot him. I drove away and threw up.”

He looks like he wants to reach for me again, but I've got my arms drawn in tight, my hands clasped. “It took me that way too. The first time,” he says softly. “What happened next?”

I know he wants me to get to his brother, but the words just tumble out. Like a confession. Here, underground, after midnight, I
need someone to know everything, someone who'll have no choice but to love me anyway. I tell him about Eloise Framingham, dying from the same cancer my mom has. About parking the mail truck in an abandoned lot to get some sleep and waking up with Wyatt on top of me, a knife to my throat. It's awkward, recounting how Wyatt and I fought off the suburban thug rapists, leaving two dead. But the worst part is telling him about the third name on my list, the one he thinks he wants to know about.

“I thought it was a girl. Ashley Cannon. I didn't know it was your last name. When I knocked, he cocked his shotgun. Matty was barking, and she actually sounded mean from the other side of a closed door. But he . . . he recognized me. Knew I was Jack's girl.”

“But he wouldn't take the deal?”

I bow over, head in my hands. “He didn't get a chance to. I didn't mean to shoot him. My finger was sweaty on the trigger, and I was holding this stupid basket, and he knew me, and I was scared, and . . . it just happened. And he was gone.”

Silence settles, still as a tomb. My dad sniffles, a manly sniffle, and I keep my eyes trained on the cheap, thin carpet.

“And then what?” he finally says.

“I went inside. For clues. I don't know. I didn't remember having an uncle, and I thought there might be stuff inside that would tell me about where you were. I found a photo of you and Ash and an old guy that's maybe y'all's dad?”

“That was Devil Johnny. My dad. He died two months ago.”

A small part of me snaps, knowing that my family is growing smaller by the day.

“Uncle Ashley—”

“Ash.”

“He had all my school pictures. And he had a lot of bills, owed a lot of money. And I didn't want to leave Matty there, so I took her. She's . . .” The tears fall, hot and heavy. “She felt like all the family I had left. I didn't think I'd ever see you again. I didn't know if Mom would make it. She's a good dog. She ran into a gunfight for me. I just . . . I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. I didn't know.” When he doesn't say anything, doesn't reach out, I add, “They were going to kill Mom. I didn't know.”

He stands slowly, like a much older man, and sits beside me, one arm around my back.

“I don't know much about being your dad, but I know you did what you had to.”

“I had no choice!”

He rubs my arm, puts his cheek against my hair. It's strange at first, but he smells the same as he did when I was a little kid, and I slowly thaw and relax against him.

“I'm sorry.”

“It's not your fault.”

We say these words, again and again, in a circle. Parents to kids, kids to parents. Maybe one day I'll believe it.

I finally stop crying, and my dad gets up to bring me a carefully folded wad of cheap toilet paper. I blow my nose, wipe off my eyes. It's time to ask the question that's been bugging me for days.

“Do you know why Valor would send me to my uncle's house?”

He's wiping his own eyes as he sits back down across from me. “You said you saw bills. He used to work for a bank, but then he quit. We both did. Our dad was a shark of a businessman, and his business got too shady. So maybe Ash got fed up and just quit paying. He didn't get anything from Dad's will except a big-ass television. Almost like it was a joke.”

I give a sad chuckle. “Yeah, I noticed that. It was worth more than pretty much everything else in his house. But here's the thing . . .” I look up, meet his eyes with cold resolve. “I had some kind of connection to everyone on that list.”

“Tell me,” he says.

“Robert Beard was the guy who fired Mom. We were doing pretty well before him.” I can't help shooting him a reproachful glance. Does he know how hard it hit us, his leaving? “Eloise Framingham had the same cancer as mom and was dying. Ashley Cannon was my uncle. Kelsey Mackey looked like me in five years, happy and with everything I ever wanted. They got her for college loans. Ken Belcher—Dr. Ken Belcher—lived in that stupid Château Tuscano, the richest mansion in the city. Sharon Mulvaney was the
mom of this girl I used to be friends with. Tom Morrison was a great single dad to a little girl who looked just like me, and he went into debt trying to give her everything. Alistair Meade was a double agent, working as a Valor suit. A conspiracy theorist, I guess. Amber Lane was my best friend until she dumped me for being too poor. And Maxwell Beard is Wyatt's brother. Wyatt took out a credit card in his name when he was younger, but he's been paying it back, trying to make it right.”

He lies back and looks up at the ceiling. “So why you?”

“Jesus, I wish I knew. The conspiracy guy's trailer had all these lists taken from the results of a career aptitude test we took at school. My name was on there. But my results just said I could be a secretary or a dental hygienist. There was nothing on there about . . . whatever this is. Being an assassin. I'm not important at all.”

My dad chuckles at the ceiling and puts out his elbows. “You're more important than you think.”

I blow a raspberry. “Yeah, you're only saying that because you're my dad.”

“That's part of it. But this thing is bigger than it looks. My father started working for Valor when they were still just a local bank. Ash and I did, too, like I said, for a while. But the dealings got too dirty. Valor got too big, started cannibalizing other banks, other businesses. The presidents of rival banks had a nasty habit of dying under mysterious circumstances. Me and Ash needed some
distance, so we quit. That picture you saw of us hunting—that was our last-ditch effort at reconciling with our dad. He wanted us to work for Valor, wanted to pull us into this takeover. We both turned him down. He cussed us out, cut us out of the will, and died a few months later. He was a hard, evil son of a bitch. Neither of us went to his funeral.”

There's a crumbling feeling inside me, everything suddenly clicking into place with a sick finality.

“So you're saying that maybe they targeted me because I was your daughter? That it was, what? Revenge from beyond the grave?”

“That sounds like something Devil Johnny would do. To us both.”

“Why? Why would my grandfather do that? God, none of this makes sense. Everything is so messed up. My life was good until you left.” I pop to sitting and then stand to pace the shelter. “All of this. It was all your fault. If you'd stuck around, Mom wouldn't have always been behind on bills, working her ass off. I wouldn't have been pulling thirty hours a week and bringing home pizza to feed us when the peanut butter ran out. We wouldn't have been in debt at all.” I face him, hands in fists. “So why did you leave? Why didn't you care?” I want to hit him, to rake my nails across his face, but I can't unclench my fists, and if I do, I'll just collapse into his arms. “Why didn't you love me enough to stay?”