The Masked Truth (12 page)

Max ignores the voice and continues forward, slipping up behind Cantina, trying not to think the words: choke hold.

Choke hold, choke hold, choke hold.

Doesn’t work, does it, Max? Because as soon as you tell yourself not to think a thing, it’s all you do. That’s part of it. Part of the madness. Part of the crazy
.

Don’t use that word.

Focus on his task. On “taking out” Cantina.

Can you do it? Can you carry through? You know what that could mean. Look around you if you need a reminder. Two bodies on the floor. If the choke hold doesn’t work, he’s not going to slap your bottom and call you a naughty boy. Life or death, Max. Life or death
.

Can you do it?

Can you carry through?

His breath comes harder, sweat trickling into his eye, and he blinks as the salt stings. Could he kill someone? If it was a matter of life or death? Kill or be killed? If the only life at stake was his own? No.

And why’s that, Max? Tell us, why’s that?

But it isn’t just his own life at stake, is it? There’s Riley, always Riley, and if he fails, Cantina will go after her. Gray and Predator will hear and come running. Bing-boom-bam. That will be the end of Riley, and that matters, Max, doesn’t it? That is what matters even if the rest … not so much.

But the problem, yes,
the problem
, is the shadow he glimpsed out of the corner of his eye. The person who is not a person.

Unless it was really only a shadow. A movement. It’s a common optical phenomenon. Entoptic phenomenon, to be exact. From the Greek for “within” and “visual.” The act of seeing a shape that exists within the eye itself.

Ah, you’re a smart one, aren’t you, Max? So smart. Didn’t save you at all, did it? Your brain mutinies—all hands on deck, we’re not taking this shit anymore—and it doesn’t matter how smart you are, all the king’s horses and all the king’s men can’t put your poor mind together again
.

But the shadow … What if it was a sign?

Sign, sign, everywhere a sign, something, something, breaking my mind
.

See, the thing is, it could be a sign. Meds not working. Red alert, red alert. And if that’s true, yes, if that’s true, then he cannot be trusted. Absolutely cannot be trusted, because for all he knows, this man at the table isn’t Cantina at all, but Gideon, struggling to stay alive, perched up here in his bloodied shirt.

Really? You really believe that?

No, but he believed his best friend had been possessed
by demons. The twelve Malebranche, to be precise, from Dante’s
Inferno
, because Maximus Cross must be precise. No vague, nameless demons for him. That would not do.

Justin had been in trouble, and Max would save him. Because that’s what friends did. So he …

Max stops mid-step. He sees Justin in that chair. Justin at his desk, with his back to Max. Max with his hands outstretched, his brain on fire, only he doesn’t realize it’s on fire, doesn’t feel the flames, doesn’t smell the smoke. Later, straitjacketed—

Did you know they still use straitjackets? You wouldn’t think so, would you? How terribly archaic. Right up there with visits to Bedlam, which is short for the Hospital of St. Mary of Bethlehem, if you didn’t know. Bedlam, Victorian London’s finest insane asylum, where you could pay your shillings to see the madmen, frothing and ranting, chained to walls, covered in their own shit and piss. Most were probably schizophrenic. That’s what the tour guide said, when Max visited once on a class trip.

Most were probably schizophrenic
.

He remembers not only the words but the way she said them as if it were simply a statement of fact. Why, of course they were schizophrenic. What else would one expect?

The point …

Ah, yes, you have a point, Max, buried deep in there somewhere
.

The point is that when one is mad, one is incapable of smelling the smoke, of seeing the flames, of feeling the heat. Afterward, the memory of that brain fever is clear, and the shame …

Shall we talk about the shame? No, let’s not today. Perhaps tomorrow, over tea and crumpets
.

The point is that a madman doesn’t know he’s mad at the time of madness. Which is, let’s be quite blunt, the time
when one really ought to know. When one needs to know, lest one attempt to expel demons without proper training. Or attempt to “take down” a supposed kidnapper who might really be—

Cantina’s head jerks up. Max freezes. He’s made a noise, he must have—breathing too hard or socks swishing against the floor. Cantina turns his way, twisting in his chair, and then—

And then he stops short, because his gaze falls on Riley, in the doorway, about to launch her distraction.

“You little …” Cantina begins. Then he shouts, “Hey, guys! She’s—” and that’s all he says before Max is on him, grabbing his hair and slamming his face into the desk before he can get another word out. No forethought. No time for indecision. No time for timidity. Only time to react. Which he does admirably, if he might say so himself.

It’s a perfect strike, hard enough to break Cantina’s nose and daze him, and then to enrage him, rearing up, like a bull spotting red—which is a myth, actually, Max notes, because he has to note it, the thought pinging through his head, but if there is an advantage to those endlessly whizzing thoughts, it is speed. The trivia zooms through his mind and does nothing to impede the signals that shoot from his brain to his fists as Cantina lumbers to his feet. Which is, if Max may humbly note, a mistake, given the fact that the man has been shot in the chest.

Max barely needs to put any power behind his swing. Cantina lunges, his brain on fire—a different sort of fire, though no less detrimental in the short run—and the man’s mind might be willing, but his body says, “Bloody hell, no.” Cantina doesn’t even manage to lift his fist before he starts to topple, and at that point one might say Max’s powerhouse uppercut is a wee mite of overkill, but he doesn’t regret it.

Cantina flies off his feet in a way Max had always presumed was simply cinematic magic. Apparently not. He thuds down flat on his back, and that’s when Max notices Riley running toward them. Running to his rescue. She stops mid-step, sliding in her socks, then she stares at Cantina, and Max braces for the look of horror, of “what have you done?”

Remember that look, Max? On Ilsa Morton’s face as she came around the corner and saw you trying to cast the demons from Justin?

Only it’s not the same look. Not at all. Riley stares in surprise, and when she looks up at him she’s grinning like he is indeed in a film, the screw-up kid who knocked the bully flying. That grin is like a straight hit of oxygen, and it blasts straight to his head.

Tell me how you don’t want to save her, Max. Don’t want to be her white knight
.

He did. Yes, he did. He’d made a mess of things, not helping Brienne and Aaron get Riley out when she had the chance, when the other girl—what was her name?—was released instead. He’d ballsed it up, and now he needs to make amends. To do one thing right before …

Before what, Max?

Cantina starts to rise, dazed and that snaps Max out of it. With Riley at his side, he races to subdue him.

Max knocks Cantina flying. Literally knocks him flying, and I can say it was just a lucky blow, but it’s obvious he’s had some training. Given the way he flinched when we discussed taking down Cantina, I figure it was theoretical training, his father telling him how to defend himself, Max never putting that into practice because of an inner taboo against hitting another person.

Right now, the important thing is that he can fight. Which is a relief. I’d be able to defend myself better with a saber in hand, but even without that, I think I have enough basic training to manage. I just couldn’t do it for both of us.

When Cantina starts to rise, we’re both on him so fast that I have to laugh a little, as we practically knock heads. Max holds him still. I pull off the guy’s sock and stuff it in his mouth. Then I use Max’s belt to secure his hands. Cantina’s own belt works for his feet.

We search him. There’s nothing to find. Brienne or Aaron has his gun, and his partners have taken anything else—radio, cell phone, wallet. We leave him on the floor and start hunting for the counselors’ phones and the meds.

The room is big—at least twenty by thirty—but most is open space. There are a dozen chairs on one side, where we’d
sat in our therapy semicircle. A dozen more are stacked in a corner. The only place to stash stuff is in the two desks. Max stands guard while I hunt. There’s not much to pick through. Half the drawers are empty and the other half contain random assortments of office supplies. Paper, envelopes, tape …

The meds should be right on top. When they aren’t, I shuffle through the supplies as quietly as I can, and when I still don’t find anything, I take everything out and stack it on the desk. Max keeps looking over, his frown growing, eyes darkening with worry. I empty every drawer and find nothing.

I ask Max to double-check. I know he won’t find anything, but I can’t take the chance that in my growing anxiety I missed a bag of meds or a cell phone stuffed at the back of a drawer.

When he comes back, his mouth is a tight line, and when I say, “Are you all right?” I don’t get the standard “Right as rain” and jaunty grin. He nods, but it’s curt, and his gaze is distant.

“You really need those meds, don’t you?” I whisper.

“We need a mobile more,” he says.

Which is true—if we had a cell phone, he could get his heart medication as soon as we escaped. But he’s worried about those meds too, meaning the situation is more dire than he’s letting on.

“You’re worried you’ll need them,” I say.

“I always need them,” he says, and there’s a sharp note of frustration there, deep frustration and bitterness and even something like shame, his gaze downcast. I understand that—no eighteen-year-old guy wants to admit to a physical weakness, especially one usually associated with senior citizens.

“Should you rest?” I whisper. “I can find you a room to wait in while I hunt for the back door.”

“No,” he says, adamant, that shoulder-straightening again, as if he’s gearing up for battle. “I’ll be fine. It wouldn’t help anyway. It’s more a matter of timing. The faster we get out of here, the better. We’ll get out faster if we stick together.”

“Are there signs? Anything I can do or not do or watch out for?”

He hesitates, and his shoulders slump, as if it’s a struggle to keep that battle-ready face on.

“I’m not prying,” I say. “If there’s nothing I can do, okay, but if there’s a sign, maybe one that you won’t notice, and it means you need to rest …? My grandfather has heart problems, and I know there are signs for him.”

“It’s … different for me. But … yes, there are signs. If I start acting … odd, tell me.”

I’m about to say, “Odder than usual?” Tease him, lighten his mood, but discomfort jumps from him like electrical sparks, so I keep it serious and say, “Okay. Anything more specific?”

He shakes his head. “Just odd. If I say or do something that doesn’t seem right. I get lightheaded and it affects my brain.” He hurries on, “Nothing to worry about, but just … be aware and don’t be afraid to say,
Hey, you’re acting a bit mad
.”

I smile at that, and he tries to return it, but there’s a weight there, so heavy I feel it. He shakes it off and looks over at the desk. “Before we go, we should see if there’s anything we can take.”

“Weapons or door knockers. Right. Maria had a letter opener …”

We’re armed now. If you can call a letter opener and a pair of scissors “weapons.” The scissors are safety ones. Max
took them, but they’re in his pocket, acknowledgment that they’re more a tool than a weapon.

I have the opener in my hand as I walk, held like a saber, which gives me some comfort, though I keep looking for something bigger, maybe a piece of wood I could wield. I don’t waste time searching for one, though. I know a piece of wood—or even an actual sword—won’t help against men with guns.

I think back to when I started fencing. I was seven, and my dad came home one day and declared that Sloane and I were going to the Y on Saturday to check out martial arts classes. I thought little of it at the time, though I realize in retrospect that it must have been prompted by a case, something he’d seen that made him decide his daughters needed to take self-defense lessons, starting immediately.

Sloane settled on karate. She was already taking dance and this felt the most familiar to her, with its graceful moves. I tried karate and judo and kickboxing, and hated them all. They felt weird and unnatural. Then, after a session, we cut through the main gym to see a fencing class in progress, and I stopped, enthralled, and said, “I want to learn that.”

Dad signed me up, intending for it to complement my martial arts, but after a couple of months I begged to quit karate. I’d already progressed to the next level in fencing and I absolutely loved it.

“She’s a natural,” Dad said to Mom one night, when he thought I was asleep. “I absolutely want her to continue. But I don’t want her giving up karate. What’s she going to do if some boy grabs her behind the school? Hope there’s a stick nearby to whack him with?”

“Neither a stick nor a throw-down is going to save them from a real threat, Jim,” Mom said. “You aren’t teaching them how to protect themselves as much as you’re giving them the confidence to do it. Fencing gives Riley that. Just
look at her. She’s already standing up to her sister. Not whacking her with a stick, but standing firm and saying no. She’s also learning how to handle herself against a threat. How to stay calm and focused and plan—whether it’s fighting back or knowing she can’t and that she needs to get out of that situation as fast as possible, and keep her head on straight while she does.”

Dad had agreed Mom was right and let me drop the karate, and he became my biggest cheerleader, rising at any hour to take me to private lessons or driving for half a day to get me to a tournament.