The Trial (The Tree House) (8 page)

My brother just sat there, his face as white as his hair, his mouth open like his lungs had closed up and he was trying to force air back into his tightening throat.

“Ben?”

“All of them,” he whispered at last, his words barely a breath.

We all sat in silence for a while after that. I picked up my burger and brought it to my mouth but when I went to try and bite into it, it grew heavy in my hands and my stomach twisted painfully. My brother didn't move for a while. He just sat there with his mouth set in a solemn straight line, his eyes down and shoulders sagging like they were weighed down with guilt. To think he'd killed a hundred people just like us. Confused, scared, innocent people.

David had his head in his hands, surely thinking about Aly and what could have happened to her. She had mentioned the night before that getting caught doing whatever she was doing could get her killed. Maybe that's what happened. I looked up at Sy and David. Maybe these two knew.

“So,” I started, causing everyone to jump a bit. “Did Aly do what she needed to do? Are Ben and I safe now?”

The two of them shared a look. “For now,” Sy said clasping his hands together. “Aly sent us a list of all the patients, though the two of you and twenty three others were no longer on it.”

“So her plan was successful,” I said. It was finally over. “We're safe then,” I turned to Ben. “We can go home.” He didn't seem to hear me, or if he did he was still too wrapped up in his own mind to react.

“Not quite, Jack,” Sy said causing me to look at him again.

I stared for a second. “Why not?”

“We need your help.”

I felt my shoulders sag. So this wasn't over then. “Well, what can the two of us do?”

A couple entered the room and took a seat at a booth across the room. Sy leaned in and so did I. “We still need to find the other ninety eight patients.”

“Seventy five,” Ben said from beside me. The three of us looked at him, waiting for him to explain.  “If twenty five of us are off the list, there’s no reason to waste our time finding the other twenty three. They’re safe for now.”

I turned back to Sy. “So, you want us to find them?” I asked him.

“The two of us can’t be running around searching for these kids,” he explained. “They’re still looking for us. No one will be after you though, especially with your information wiped out of the system.”

“But Ben was a hit man in London,” I said catching my brother tense up from the reminder, out of the corner of my eye.

Sy shook his head. “Aly wiped out every trace of you two. For all they know, you guys are dead.”

I looked at my brother. He held his head in his hands and his wide eyes were still glued to the table. “I don’t know,” I finally said quietly. “This is all too much –”

“We’ll do it.”

David, Sy and I looked at my brother again. This time he looked up to meet each of our eyes. “We’ll do it?” I asked feeling my stomach twist painfully again.

“Yeah, we’ll do it.”

A look of relief passed over Sy’s face as he picked something up off the seat next to him. “I was hoping you’d say that,” he said and tossed a manila folder onto the table.

Ben picked it up and opened it. “Who’s this?”

Over his shoulder I glimpsed a photo of a shrimpy looking guy with curly hair and glasses. “He’s the first person you need to find.”

“Thomas Root,” I read aloud. “Why him?”

David stood up and Sy slid over following suit. I guess it was time to go. “It took Aly long enough just to find information on this one patient.”

Ben and I slid out of our bench seat. “And?” he said.

“It seems Thomas is a very intelligent kid,” Sy explained as we followed him back toward the front of the diner. “If we can get to him before the suits do, it’ll be a lot easier to find the other patients.”

The four of us made our way out of the diner and down the sidewalk. Sy and David turned into a parking garage and we followed them in silence until we reached a big brown minivan.

“What are we supposed to do when we find him?” Ben asked folding the folder in half and sticking it in his back pocket.

Sy took a pen out of his coat and grabbed my wrist. The two of us watched perplexed as he yanked my sleeve up and started drawing a sloppy map on my forearm. Once I was able to pull my arm away, I looked closely at the sketch. I didn’t recognize any of the street names he had jotted down.

“I have no idea where this is,” I said shrugging
sympathetically.

Sy attempted to explain what part of town we’d need to get to but David interrupted him. “Maybe it would be better if I went with them.”

Sy pursed his lips and shook his head. “I need someone to help me back at the Tree House.”

Had he just said tree house?
“The what?”

“I’ll go with you and David can go with Jack,” Ben said disregarding my question. Before any of us could dispute, he pulled the folder back out of his pocket and slapped it into my hand.

Sy and David shared a look then Sy nodded. “Alright, that’ll work.”

As I watched my brother get into the van with this man we’d known for less than an hour, something churned in my stomach. I didn’t like any of this. I wanted to go back to Aly’s place and find out what
really happened at the end of that Hemingway novel about the man and fish. Did he catch the fish? Did he get his happy ending? Was I going to get mine? After everything that had gone down in London, was Ben going to get his?

I hadn’t really noticed I was walking until David and I were back outside the parking garage on the sidewalk. He pulled out a black flip phone and held it out to me. “Take this in case we get separated.” I took it and stuffed it into my pocket.

“Do we need a car?” I finally asked feeling the gun handle in my palm.

“That would make things easier, I guess,” he replied with a solemn shrug. Of course he was upset. His girlfriend could be dead. “Do you have one?”

The box of keys hidden in my dad’s office at the lot came to mind. “I have several,” I said feeling my mouth twitch into a smile.

* * *

Twenty minutes later, we were parked outside North Seattle Community College in a silver Toyota Corolla. I sat in the passenger seat watching people make their way across the campus. Rain was still coming down though no longer so hard. Only the windshield wipers broke the silence every few seconds. “So, are we waiting for anything in particular to happen?” I asked David as I flicked the little air freshener tree hanging from the rear view mirror.

“Just give me a minute, kid,” he replied and I finally looked over at him. He was staring at his white knuckles as his hands clutched the steering wheel tightly. From my angle, I couldn’t see his eyes very well but he was
furrowing his brow and his skin was pale. Was he still thinking about Aly? I didn’t want to be rude or anything but if it was important that we find this Thomas Root guy, shouldn’t we have been saving the grieving for later? Weren’t we on some kind of time restraint?

A black car pulled up to the curb a block down. When I glanced at David, he was still looking down at his hands. He didn’t even see as two men in suits got out of the black car and started for the entrance nearest to them. I watched as they passed groups of students, ignoring the gawks and stares and curious whispers.

“David,” I muttered, my eyes following them into the building.

Finally
, he tore his own eyes away from the steering wheel and looked up. He cursed under his breath as the two suits disappeared into the building. “Alright, we need to get in there,” he said before opening his door and getting out. I followed after him and the two of us hurried into the building on our own side of the college.

We walked into a hallway that stretched out to the right. Students milled around, talking loudly about end of the summer plans and what they were doing for the next break. I saw all these people but none of them were wearing black suits. So
, those two guys had to be somewhere else in the building. Where was this Thomas Root kid and who was going to get to him first?

“How do we find him?” I asked leaning into David so he could hear me above the noise.

He shook his head, his mouth hanging open a bit, his eyes darting from left to right as he thought. “I have no idea,” he finally said under his breath.

I clenched my jaw to keep from cursing out loud then crossed my arms. The folder in my back pocket crinkled as the material from my sweatshirt tightened over it. Maybe it said something in the file. I pulled it out and began shuffling through the pages. Maybe there was some sort of schedule or something. My eyes scanned the papers quickly until they settled on one with times and days of the
week. I let out a triumphant “yessss,” and David looked down over my shoulder. “He’s in the technology building.”

David glanced at a map of the campus on the wall and
stabbed his finger at one of the buildings. “That’s a bit far,” he said frustrated.

I bit the inside of my cheek. “What do we do?” I asked. “The suits could already be on their way.” I could feel my shoulders sagging. David pushed past me.

“Then we better get going,” he said and started down the hall. I hurried after him, putting the papers back in the folder and sticking the folder into my pocket under my sweatshirt as I half jogged down the hall.

The building we were in was pretty packed and I felt a bit bad for pushing people out of the way. There was no time to be polite though. We needed to get to Thomas Root before the suits did. David burst through the doors and the icy wind hit me in the face. It had been so warm in the building with all the bodies I had almost forgotten how frigid it was outside. The gun in my pocket clunked against my stomach and I was sure someone could see the outline through the material. Self-consciously
, I shoved my hands into my pocket and wrapped my fingers protectively around it. Why was I even still carrying the thing? David had a gun. I sure didn’t need one. I should have just left it in the car.

“Hurry up, Jack,” David called from the doorway ahead of me. I picked up the pace and the two of us entered the building letting the heavy door fall shut behind
us.

We were in another hallway, though this one was much emptier than the other. A few students ambled around but for the most part we were alone. “Alright,” David huffed, his wet hair plastered to his forehead. “What room was he in?”

I recalled a room number from the schedule and rattled it off to him. Then we frantically started down the hall, our heads turning left and then right as we checked each number on the doors to the different classrooms. We were pretty far down the hall when the doors opened behind us. The two of us kept moving but I glanced back to see the two suited men starting down the hall, checking the classrooms after us. I cursed under my breath and pulled David into an alcove with a soda machine. He looked confused at first until he peeked around the corner and let out an irritated grunt. “Now what?” I whispered clutching the gun in my pocket even tighter.

David pointed with his thumb over his shoulder at the door across from us. “That’s the one we want, right there,” he said. “But if we move now, the suits are going to see us
and we and Thomas are done for.”

I bit my lip, my eyes shifting from the door to the classroom
, to the empty spot in front of us where the suits would appear at any moment. We needed to get to Thomas. Then my eyes settled on a red box on the wall next to me and I felt my face pull up into a smile. Maybe Thomas just needed to get to us. Without another second to spare, I reached over and pulled the little lever sticking out. It clicked and then the hall was filled with a shrill ringing. David’s eyes met mine and a smile appeared on his own face as he nodded in approval. His mouth formed the word “nice” and then the doors to every classroom opened and students started filing out into the hall. They all were headed in the direction we had come from and when we stepped out of our hiding spot, the suits were trying to fight their way through the current and failing miserably. As people passed by, knocking into me as they made their way down the hall, a curly head caught my eye. At first I wasn’t sure this was the person we were looking for. He looked like a middle-schooler mixed in with all these college students but then he turned his head, locking eyes with me for just a second and pushed his glasses up his nose before turning to start down the hall with everyone else. I nudged David hard and the two of us fell in line behind him. The suits weren’t too far away and I put my hood up and got right next to the curly haired kid to shield him from them.

“Hey,” I jabbed him with my elbow. The kid glanced over at me and pushed his glasses up again. “Hey, are you Thomas Root?” I asked keeping my eyes on the suits as they went past us. Their eyes scanned the crowd completely missing him.

This time he turned his whole head and stared. “Maybe,” he replied in a rough voice that sounded older than he looked. “Why do you want to know?”

I didn’t respond, just kept my head down until we were close to the door. I could see David tensing up on the other side of me. Surely he was trying to come up with a plan for when we were out the doors. “We need you to come with us,” I finally muttered to him as the cold air touched my face. We were almost outside.