Apart from that brief call, Trey trudged along in silence with his head bowed and his hands deep into his pockets. I left him to ferment his thoughts for half a block or so before I butted in.
“Why didn’t you tell me about the program?” I said quietly. “Why all that bullshit about your dad working for the government, hmm?”
He didn’t answer right away. In fact, he took so long I nearly repeated the question. Finally, he looked over and regarded me gravely.
“I guess I was scared to, like, tell you the truth,” he said at last and his voice sounded raw, teetering on the edge of tears.
“Scared?” I echoed, nonplussed. “Scared I’d do what?”
He hunched his shoulders. “Want it for yourself, I guess,” he said.
I thought of Henry’s greedy face and nodded slowly. It was a reasonable fear, I supposed.
“Trey,” I said. “My first duty is to protect you. Everything else comes after that.”
“Yeah,” he muttered. “Whatever.”
Stung, I grabbed his arm and yanked him to face me. “No, I’m serious,” I snapped, “Don’t just dismiss me like that. This is what I do. It’s what I am.”
Trey met my eyes for a moment, his face stubborn with his disbelief. “Yeah,” he said. “Just like Ms Raybourn and Mr Whitmarsh and Chris, huh?”
For a moment I didn’t reply. What could I say to him?
He pulled out of my grasp and spun away so I wouldn’t see him crying. I let him weep. I suppose, in the circumstances, I would have felt pretty gutted, too.
***
Scott picked us up two blocks away from Henry’s place. His shiny Dodge looked too cool and too new in the shabby neighbourhood where all the cars had a two-tone thing going between the paint and the rust.
Scott clearly wasn’t prepared to wait until we got back to the house before hearing all about the meet. He jumped straight in with a hundred questions. Aimee and Xander had shifted to the back to let Trey and me have the seats in the cab, but it didn’t stop them chiming in through the small sliding window behind us. They were too full of themselves to notice that Trey wasn’t contributing much to the general conversation.
I took my lead from the boy, giving brief answers that were as vague and noncommittal as I could get away with.
Eventually, Scott shook his head in exasperation.
“I swear to God, man, that Henry must be some piece of work,” he said, and I could still hear the excitement running through his voice, just under the surface. “One meeting and you’re even giving us the whole Big Secret thing, huh?”
“There’s nothing to tell,” I said. “He promised to help.” But I was watching Trey as I said it and I couldn’t help wondering – if Henry was the answer to all our prayers – why the kid suddenly looked set to cut his own throat.
***
It was late by the time we got back to Scott’s place. The opportunity to sleep somewhere clean and comfortable, and relatively safe, was too tempting to pass up on. I left the kids sprawled in front of the TV and turned in.
I wasn’t sure if I was supposed to unravel the beaded bits in my ridiculous pink hair, but felt stupid asking so I left them as they were but I dropped the necklace Aimee had provided in a heap on the bedside table. I took the SIG out of the little backpack and shoved it under the pillow, just in case.
I undressed slowly, weary beyond words. The guest room had mirrors on the wall behind the double bed headboard. The sight of my strange reflection kept catching me out, like someone else was in the room with me.
I climbed into bed and was just reaching for the light switch when there was a hurried tap on the door. Before I could speak it opened and Aimee stuck her head round.
“Oh hi,” she said. “I was kinda hoping I’d catch you. Can we talk?”
I sat up, trying not to hug the bedclothes around me too prudishly.
“Help yourself,” I said, waving a hand towards the end of the bed.
She came in, closing the door behind her. Instead of sitting down she came and stood by the bed with her hands in her back pockets. It made her shoulders hunch forwards awkwardly. Her eyes kept dropping down past my chin, then popping back up again, nervous.
I sighed. “What’s on your mind, Aimee?”
“I was just wondering what—” she broke off, thought some and tried again. “How did you get that scar?”
I was silent for a moment, mentally arguing over whether to tell her the truth, a convenient lie, or simply to tell her to mind her own bloody business.
“Someone jumped me,” I said at last, watching her face. “They tried to cut my throat.”
She nodded without showing surprise. There was little more than curiosity in her voice as she asked, “What happened to them?”
Now that question I wasn’t sure I was prepared to answer. “Why?” I hedged.
“Well, aren’t you scared that one day they’ll, like, come back?”
Now there was one thing I could be sure of . . .
“No,” I said.
“Oh.” She eyed me for a few moments, then nodded and started to turn away.
“Why the quiz?” I asked as she reached the door.
She shrugged. “I just wanted to know that Trey’s gonna be OK. I’ve known him since we were six – like, forever,” she added. “His birthday and mine are a week apart so when he lived up here we used to have, like, joint parties and stuff. He’s the brother I never had.”
The mention of birthdays sparked a memory. “So you were around when his mother disappeared?” I asked. She nodded. “You remember anything about it?”
Another shrug. “Not really,” she said. “I know what Trey thinks might’ve happened, but I heard my mom and dad talking about it, a while after. They said she was always gonna go sometime – Trey’s mom, I mean. She just never liked giving up her job to bring up a kid. I think she resented him, or something. He just can’t see it, that’s all.”
“Yeah well, parents can give you the impression they think you’re a waste of space sometimes,” I said tiredly, thinking of the ups and downs I’d been through with my own. “I think it’s part of their job description.”
She smiled, with that slightly worried look behind her eyes, like she didn’t really get the joke.
“So, you feel any more reassured?” I asked.
She frowned for a moment, hesitating.
“Aimee,” I said, straight and steady. “I won’t let anything happen to him – or any of the rest of you, for that matter. Not if I can help it.”
She carried on frowning for a moment, her eyes flicking over my face. “Yeah,” she said then, slowly, “I guess you won’t.”
I watched the door close behind her and debated in passing on turning the key but quickly dismissed the idea. If anything happened in the night, I didn’t want to have to waste time fumbling with the lock.
I reached up and killed the light but sleep eluded me. I lay awake in the gloom, my eyes just about able to make out the twirl of the ceiling fan above me, and let my restless mind roam. A good many questions had been answered tonight, but at the same time just as many new queries had been thrown up.
I struggled to stop my mind turning things over, so that when I eventually drifted into sleep, it was edgy, fitful and disturbed by savage dreams. I woke distressed, reaching for Sean, only to find the bed beside me cold and empty.
***
Saturday morning dawned with that hazy brightness of English midsummer, which seemed to indicate it was going to grow up into another hot and sunny day. Did it ever do anything else round here?
I was up and showered and dressed by seven, so I sat out on the small screened rear deck, drinking coffee and watching the nimble little geckoes flit across the concrete path just beyond the mesh.