The Invisible (18 page)

“Do you think Jasper Cawl will die?” I breathe.

He doesn’t answer. Serge’s silence is worse than any false hope he might be able to give me. Again, I feel the bile in my throat rise up. He leans forward and reaches under the car seat, then hands me something inside a zippered velvet pouch.

I unzip it, knowing it’s a weapon. What I find is matte black, small, and light. With a box of bullets. I look at Serge in the rearview and nod, unable to speak. I don’t want this. I don’t want to use it. Just like he doesn’t want to have to give it to me. But the fact that I might need it is something we both understand.

“Thanks.” We’re getting close to home. My heart revs with urgency. I need to do something. Now. “Would you be able to drive me somewhere later?”

Serge is quiet in the front seat. “A study session, perhaps,” he says quietly. “Yes. Of course.”

I’m already composing a white lie for my parents. An emergency study session. Certainly plausible. It’s midterm time in my classes. Before I exit the car, I make contact with Serge in the mirror. “Study session is at Hades. I think I know someone there who might be able to help.”

My mother waves me toward her in the sitting room and flashes me a sloppy grin. Her neck, below the line of her makeup, is flushed from wine. Asher and Melinda Turk sit beside her on the L-shaped white couch, flanked on the other side by my father. The four of them are huddled together, all of them staring at my father’s wide-screen laptop.

“Five hundred thousand dollars per family, bare minimum. Much more if possible. That’s what we should suggest,” Melinda says, her deep olive skin and coppery hair burnished and shiny in the evening light even though her eyes are tired.

“Hi, darling.” My mother motions me over. “How are you holding up?”

“Fine.” I peer at the laptop. There’s a spreadsheet on it. “What’s going on?”

“We’re just putting together a donation protocols sheet,” Asher says. “Nobody wants that child to . . .” He trails off, his dark eyes moving to the corner of the room, unfocused. And the silence in the room buzzes with his unfinished sentence: Nobody wants that child to die.

“Have you all already donated?” I hope they aren’t waiting until the last minute.

They nod. “To the Children’s Hospital. We each gave substantially,” Melinda says. “If only it were enough.”

“You know, we always give a lot of money to charity, Anthem,” my father says, appraising me as if I’ve said something out of line. “Whether or not an extortionist is forcing us to. It’s not something we talk much about or do publicly, normally.”

“Of course. I know that.” I move from one foot to the other and try not to think about the weight of the gun in my Seven Swans bag. I don’t dare set it down here, in front of them.

“We’re also working out secondary funds for a private investigation firm, since it appears the police are useless,” my father continues.

I nod, curious what they think of the other part of the video. The part where they request a meeting with me. “And this girl they’re looking for, do you think anyone’s looking for her?”

“Heavens no,” Melinda says. “We’re all very supportive of that girl. She’s done something nobody else can.”

“A helluva lot more than the police have,” grumbles my father. “How they can walk the streets and hold their heads up high, I can’t imagine. This is a travesty, what’s happened to those children on their watch. And the mayor is just out to lunch, for obvious reasons—”

“Harris, we know,” my mother says plaintively. “We’ve gone over this. It doesn’t help getting all worked up about it again.”

“How are you holding up, Anthem?” Asher smiles. He’s known me since I was five, and usually likes to keep things light. “You’d never let yourself within five feet of these people, wouldya? I know Zahra wouldn’t. I’ve been telling her where to kick a man who gets close to her . . .”

“Yes, dear. We all know where to kick a man when he gets too close.” Melinda smirks.

I can’t manage much more than a half-smile.

“Do you think they’ll . . . do you think people will donate enough?” I feel the blood rush to my face when I say it, my words trembling in the air.

“It’s a long shot. Some people are refusing. But it’s very possible that this is a classic bluff,” Asher says. “Give me this, I give you this, and then at the last second . . . nothing. Who’s to say he’ll release the kids and make a fair trade? All we can do is try to convince people, and hope it works.”

“People are giving,” my mother says, falling back against the pillows of the couch. “I just hope it’s enough.”

I feel a surge of tenderness toward both my parents. For all their faults, for all my mother’s drinking and pills and being checked out over the years, for all my father’s obsession with work and buildings and his babying my mother in her endless grief—they’re what I have.

Two genetically blessed (and slightly injected) middle-aged people who look much younger than they are. Two people who have lost a daughter. And somehow have gone on, together, to have one more and to raise her.

I only wish I could live up to their expectations. Again, the kidnapped kids flash in my mind. Especially Will.

“How are the Hansens?” I ask.

“Will’s father is pulling every string he has. He’s talking about bringing in the military, about finding the girl, using her as a lure . . . he’s just very upset about poor Will,” Asher Turk says. I’m conscious of both my parents looking at me then, to watch my reaction. After all, Will and I have a lot of history. Some of which they know about, a lot of which they don’t.

The blackmail, for example. The secret taping of me in my room. The extortion, the stalking.

“It’s so awful.” I shake my head, saying what they expect to hear. But the truth is, I
do
feel bad for Will. I think of the footage, the way he was sitting against the wall, just staring into space, his eyes empty and his mouth slack. He may have put me through hell, but I don’t want him to end up dead. “Poor Will.”

I try to imagine what’s going through his head in captivity. What will happen if people don’t donate enough money before the deadline and Invisible follows through on his threats? How long until the Invisible focus on killing Will?

But then a trickle of ice makes its way down my spine. Will has something Invisible wants—information about the New Hope.

If I don’t find them, how long until they find me?

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

..................................................................

Serge parks in the former mall’s vast lot, and we head across the dark parking lot and go inside through one of the side doors. We walk through a dark, liquor-scented hallway until we reach the mall’s atrium, lit up brightly with Klieg lights running on generators. The bottom floor is as loud as ever, with barkers selling car parts, weapons, food, drugs. In all, there are about a hundred makeshift booths set up, several aisles crisscrossing through them.

I look up and notice that a line of six huge men pumped up on pharms and wearing Uzis stands on the second floor, glowering, observing the lower level. Nerves twist inside me and I look away, focusing on finding the pack of children I know lives here. I motion to Serge to move faster, toward the back wall where the children of Hades tend to congregate.

When we reach the back wall behind the black market, a group of kids between seven and thirteen years old are playing marbles. I scan their skinny faces until my eyes land on a frizzy head of caramel curls. His hearing aids looped over each ear, glowing blue.

“Hey, Rufus.” I crouch down beside him. He’s got three wrinkled dollar bills riding on this marbles game; they sit in front of him on the ground. “Remember me?”

He scoops up his three dollars, tucks them away like a skilled gambler, then turns to see me. His big eyes light up with recognition. “You’re alive.” He grins. “Why’d you take so long to come back?”

I shrug. “Got busy, I guess. But I’m here now. And actually, I need a favor.”

He stands up, nods. “I’ll be back,” he says to the marbles players. “Got a client,” he adds, jabbing his thumb in my direction. Then I follow him down the hall in the direction of the Chop Shop. The smell of formaldehyde is noticeable way before we get there. But then Rufus ducks into a storefront with the windows blown out and a pink door falling off its frame. It clearly was once an ice cream parlor, but all that remains of that is a pink counter and a few pink plastic tables and chairs. The ice cream cones that were once painted onto the wall are now mostly graffitied over. The three of us—me, Rufus, and Serge—all sit down at a table.

“Who’s the big guy?” Rufus asks me.

“A friend. Trustworthy,” I assure him.

Rufus nods. “So what can I do for you?” He wiggles his small eyebrows winningly, and I wish again that I could make sure he never came back here, that he wasn’t growing up in this place.

“Well, I’m sure you’ve heard about Invisible,” I say quietly, my eyes darting toward the doorway. Nobody’s here but the occasional field mouse darting across the floor.

“Yup. Guys here say they’re all from the loony bin,” Rufus says, obviously parroting something he overheard from someone older.

“Interesting,” I say. “We had the same suspicions, and we think they’re using a new drug. Something different than the usual Droops and Giggles. Have you heard anything about that?”

Rufus shakes his head. “But I have a friend who might. I can get her. Wait here.”

In a few minutes, Rufus is back with a girl of around twelve with four blue braids running down her back and suspicious gray eyes that never seem to blink. There’s a scar running from her hand to her elbow that looks like it hurt a lot. “I’m not saying anything without getting paid.” She pouts.

Serge calmly takes out his wallet. Lays out a twenty.

“That’s a lot of money,” Rufus remarks.

Serge lays out a second twenty in front of Rufus. “For your help with the referral.”

Rufus beams, then squirrels it away in his pocket.

The girl looks from me to Serge, grabbing her braids and twisting them nervously around her wrist. “Rufus says you’re okay. I’m not telling you my name. You didn’t hear this from me, okay?”

“Right,” I nod. “Of course.”

“They were making this weird purple stuff here for a while, on the third floor. But then they needed to expand. So they moved the lab. It’s way out in Exurbia now, past Weepee Hills.”

That doesn’t tell us enough to find it. Serge raises an eyebrow at me. “Can you be more specific?”

The girl sighs. “Why should I help you?’

“Have you seen what Invisible is threatening to do?” I ask. “How they’re holding those kids ransom? Jasper Cawl is younger than you. He’s only ten. We don’t think those kids deserve to die. Do you?”

The silence in the ice cream parlor is thick and expectant. I watch her absorb this, think it over. “No,” she says at last. “It’s wrong, what they’re doing.”

I nod, waiting. Hoping she knows more. Serge folds his huge hands on the table. He is good at being patient.

“Okay,” she sighs. “I know this lady named Jessa who goes back and forth from here to the factory. She’s really tall. Sometimes I help her out with deliveries. She’s a runner for the lab. She makes deliveries here twice a day, once around lunchtime and once at night. I can show you where to wait for her.”

“Jessa Scorpio?” I ask. Jessa was one of the people involved in Gavin’s faked kidnapping. She matches the profile. But I thought she was still in jail.

The girl nods. “But if you ever tell her you heard about this from me, I’ll—”

“We won’t. Not ever,” I promise her. “Jessa owes me a favor.”
Or she will, anyway.
I think back to my last encounter with her, when I wrapped a metal pole around her and called the police. I guess she copped a plea and ratted someone out so that she didn’t have to go to jail. “Can you show us where to wait?”

We watch a side door of the mall through Serge’s car’s windshield, hoping to spot Jessa.

And soon, we’re rewarded. A lanky woman with long tangled hair pulls up on a motorcycle and slips inside, a leather satchel slung over one shoulder, heavy and packed with product. Serge moves to the car door, to follow her inside.

“No,” I say. “Better to wait. We don’t need a shootout in Hades. She’ll be heading straight back there, I’ll bet.”

Serge nods. I shoot a glance his way, studying his face. It’s funny that I’m the one in control here, not him. After so many years of watching out for me, now I’m in a position to watch out for him.

An hour later, we’re trailing Jessa’s bike down the highways of Bedlam and into Exurbia. As the houses and stores grow fewer and the fields and trees start to proliferate, I have a good feeling that she isn’t going home, that we’re going to find the place where Invisible manufactures its preferred drug. Jessa seems oblivious to our car trailing her, even though soon we’re the only two vehicles on the road. Every ten minutes, another car passes going in the other direction, toward the city. Soon we’re so far out that it’s dark enough to see actual stars in the sky. “Ever want to move out here?” I ask Serge. “It seems nice.”

He nods. “It does. But it’s dangerous here. So much poverty that everyone steals from each other. I wish it wasn’t that way.”

When Jessa turns onto a dirt road that looks like a steep driveway, Serge pulls the car over, and I leap out and sprint to overtake the bike as she chugs up a steep dirt path. At the top of it, visible through a bunch of scrub and trees, is a squat house. The windows are covered with what looks like cardboard but light shines around the edges of it. I spot steam pluming out from a vent to the side of the house. Someone’s inside.

I speed up, overtaking Jessa’s bike on the driveway before she reaches the house. I stand in the driveway and wave my arms, frowning like I’m part of the drug operation.

Her bike slows when she sees me. It’s not until she stops, and I move close enough to put my hand on the bike, that it clicks for her who I am.

“You!” she gasps. Her beetle-shell helmet is askew on her head. She moves to start the bike again, her hand twisting the handlebar, revving the engine, but I’m faster and stronger than her, and she knows it. My hands are on the handlebars too, on top of hers, squeezing. “Turn the bike off if you want to live, Jessa.” I say it crisply in her ear. “Remember, I’m stronger than you.”