He gave a disbelieving snort, pulled the blanket back over his shoulder, and rolled over to present his back to me, physically. It was too late to accomplish the same emotionally. I rearranged the blankets over his shoulder and received a brisk smack of my hand for my troubles. Sighing, I sat back and took my own jacket and shoes off. As I worked, I said firmly, “I moved Heaven and Earth to find you, Misha, and I’m not giving you up. If I have to live forever to prove that to you, so be it. If Dick Clark can do it, so can I.”
Under the quilt his shoulders relaxed. It was probably from an approaching sleep that couldn’t be denied, but I took it as a positive sign nonetheless. I stood and looked down at him. “A couple of years and you’ll be sick of the sight of me. You’ll change the locks while I’m at the store. I’ll be homeless.”
He didn’t hear me. Breaths deep and even ruffled the threads of the fraying patchwork cloth by his mouth. With the lightest of touches I brushed his hair aside. The wound was half healed. By morning the skin of his forehead would be smooth and untouched. It made me wonder. I’d made the sincere if unrealistic promise to stick around until the end of time, but how long would he live? Would he age at the same rate as your average human or would the ravages of time be wiped away by Jericho’s genetic tampering? For that matter, if he had children, would he pass on to them his heritage? Would they be like Michael?
Questions for another time, I thought, as the yellow cat appeared to wind around my ankles. This time was spent on more important things . . . such as watching over my brother as he slept.
And sneezing.
Chapter 27
St. Louis was gray and miserable with an icy rain that wouldn’t relent. It didn’t bother me; it was better than the snow of Boston. I didn’t even mind the monotonous swish of the windshield wipers, although the nauseating country music station Michael had become so fascinated with was beginning to wear on my nerves. As I had predicted, he’d recuperated from the accident completely by that next morning and was just as anxious as I was to hit the road. To that end, we’d taken the car sheltered in the attached garage. It was an older sedan, but with not too many miles on it—an only-to-church-on-Sunday car.
The car ran and that’s all I cared about. I left eight hundred dollars for it on the kitchen table under a cow-shaped creamer. Head down, the porcelain bovine grazed placidly on the field of greenbacks. I’d given a self-conscious shrug at Michael’s curious look and said nothing. He’d seen me steal a few cars now, but this one belonged to an old lady who wasn’t exactly living in the lap of luxury. She needed transportation for herself and the dander-ridden fur balls.
Unfortunately, Michael found his own fur ball before we left. There we were . . . one big happy family again—Stinky, Sneezy, and Country Joe. I looked over as Michael gazed dreamily out of the window, his lips shaping the words of a song we’d already heard three times in the last two hours. “Why country, kid?” I asked with a nearly physical pain. “Seriously, why?”
“You mean you don’t like it?” He unwrapped a candy bar and inhaled the scent of chocolate as if it were a fine wine. “It’s great. Every song is a story and in every story the singer has worse luck than we do. How can you not appreciate that?”
There was something to be said for that, but I’d suffered enough twanging in the past few hours to last me for the rest of my life. “I don’t know. Maybe my bleeding ears are the problem.” I switched the station and then sneezed. “Goddamnit.” We’d left the cats behind, but they hadn’t left us. The upholstery was covered liberally in a layer of white, gray, and yellow hair, and I hadn’t stopped sneezing since Boston.
A froth of tissue was automatically passed my way. “We should’ve bought another box.” Michael returned to his candy bar. “Or five, although I’m not sure it would help. The mucous river cannot be dammed. See the villagers flee in fear.”
I kept one steady hand on the wheel and blew my nose. “Smart-ass.”
“Smart as they come,” he confirmed with haughty cheer around a mouthful of nougat and chocolate.
My comeback was buried in my next sneeze and Michael used the opportunity to ask a question. “Do you think this man will know anything about Jericho? Anything that can help us?”
It had been his idea to begin with, but we all needed some reassurance once in a while. “I don’t know. I’m hoping. From what you said, this Bellucci has a real hard-on for sticking it to Jericho and his theories.” At his mystified expression, I clarified. “He hates him.” I wadded up the tissue and dropped it in the cup holder. “The funny thing is that friends may come and go, but people tend to keep track of their enemies. It’s screwed up, but there it is.”
The rain continued to beat in a lulling rhythm on the roof of the car as Michael contemplated my rough and ready wisdom. Apparently it called for the fortification of another candy bar. I let him get halfway through it before saying, “I have a question of my own.”
Michael shrugged lightly in permission, but there was a hint of uneasiness in the gesture. He knew I was bound to continue in the same vein and Jericho was far and away not his favorite topic. I couldn’t blame him. The thought of being strapped to the table in that bastardized excuse for a medical room was horrifying enough. But picturing Jericho bending over me with gleaming teeth rivaled by the glitter of the metal instruments in his hand stitched my bowels with a needle and thread of ice. Worse than that, though, would be not knowing when or where your moments in the basement would come.
Michael had said it hadn’t hurt that much, that he’d been sedated for the majority of it. Did that matter? Hell, no. It might be that loss of control made the experience more unbearable. You couldn’t prepare and you couldn’t resist. It would be like falling, falling, and never having a chance to grab on to anything. Michael had forgotten a lot of things in his life. It didn’t surprise me he’d as soon forget this as well. I only wished our situation could have allowed him that luxury.
“You said Jericho was grooming you and the other kids to be assassins,” I started. “That he was going to sell you.”
His nod was hesitant and wary, a far cry from the indifferent reaction he’d shown the last time this topic had come up. Trust; it was all about trust. Unconsciously or not, he was now letting me see flashes of what churned inside him.
“How’d that happen? How did they go about it?” There had to be some way to obtain more obvious evidence that the government was turning a blind eye to Jericho’s setup. Saul had thought it obvious, but I still wanted to be sure. “Did people come in and”—Jesus Christ. I gritted my teeth to finish the disturbing question—“pick you out?” Like a stray dog at the shelter or a ripe melon at the grocery.
They did.
But from what Michael said, the children never saw the “shoppers.” The ones near graduation were shepherded into a room with mirrored walls to be looked over by invisible eyes and then sent back to class. The next day one of the students would be gone. It wouldn’t be based all on appearances, I was sure. Blending in to a certain population might be necessary, but obedience and temperament would be considered as well. And that last one would be the reason Michael had only heard about the inside of those rooms, not seen them. Michael may have been obedient on the surface, but his temperament wasn’t that of a killer. As he’d said before, it was a toss-up as to whether he would’ve seen graduation.
The only thing I was accomplishing was to stir up bad memories for Michael, and I gave up on the subject for the moment. Proof might not exist in either direction. If it didn’t, we would probably spend the rest of our lives on the run. Jericho we could evade, with luck, but the government was a different matter. Then again, Elvis had been doing it for more than thirty years.