“What’s up?” Tim asked.
“Do you play chess?”
“I know the game, but I was never very good at it.”
“I am,” Luke said. He was speaking low. “And now I’m playing with him. Stackhouse. Do you get that?”
“I think I do.”
“Trying to think three moves ahead, plus counters to his future moves.”
Tim nodded.
“In chess, time isn’t a factor unless you’re playing speed-chess, and this game is. We have to get from here to the airfield where the plane is waiting. Then to someplace near Presque Isle, where the plane is based. From there to the Institute. I can’t see us making it until at least two tomorrow morning. Does that sound right to you?”
Tim ran it in his mind, and nodded. “Might be a little later, but say two.”
“That gives my friends five hours to do something on their own behalf, but it also gives Stackhouse five hours to re-think his position and change his mind. To gas those kids and just take off running. I told him his picture would be in every airport, and he’ll buy that, I think, because there must be pictures of him somewhere online. A lot of the Institute people are ex-military. Probably he is, too.”
“There might even be a photo of him on the queen bitch’s phone,” Tim said.
Luke nodded, although he doubted if Mrs. Sigsby had been the type to take snapshots. “But he might decide to slip across the Canadian border on foot. I’m sure he has at least one alternate escape route all picked out—an abandoned woods road or a creek. That’s one of those possible future moves I have to keep in mind. Only…”
“Only what?”
Luke rubbed the heel of his hand up one cheek, a strangely adult gesture of weariness and indecision. “I need your input. What I’m thinking makes sense to me, but I’m still only a kid. I can’t be sure. You’re a grownup, and you’re one of the good guys.”
Tim was touched by that. He glanced toward the front of the building, but there was no sign of Wendy yet. “Tell me what you’re thinking.”
“That I fucked him up. Fucked up his whole world. I think he might stay just to kill me. Using my friends as bait to make sure I’ll come. Does that make sense to you? Tell me the truth.”
“It does,” Tim said. “No way to be sure, but revenge is a powerful motivator, and this Stackhouse wouldn’t be the first to ignore his own best interests in an effort to get it. And I can think of another reason he might decide to wait in place.”
“What?” Luke was studying him anxiously. From around the building, Wendy Gullickson came with a key card in one hand.
Tim tipped his head toward the van’s open passenger door, then brought his head close to Luke’s. “Sigsby’s the boss lady, right? Stackhouse is just her ramrod?”
“Yes.”
“Well,” Tim said, smiling a little, “who’s her boss? Have you thought of that?”
Luke’s eyes widened and his mouth dropped open a little. He got it. And smiled.
3
Nine-fifteen.
The Institute was quiet. The kids currently in Front Half were asleep, aided by sedatives Joe and Hadad had handed out. In the access tunnel, the five who had started the mutiny were also sleeping, but probably not deeply; Stackhouse hoped their headaches would be fucking them up most awesomely. The only kids still awake were the gorks, rambling around almost as if they had somewhere to go. Sometimes they made circles, like they were playing ring around the rosie.
Stackhouse had returned to Mrs. Sigsby’s office and opened the locked bottom drawer of her desk with the duplicate key she had given him. Now he held the special box phone in his hand, the one they called the Green Phone, or sometimes the Zero Phone. He was thinking of something Julia had once said concerning that phone with its three buttons. This had been in the village one day last year, back when Heckle and Jeckle still had most of their brain cells working. The Back Half kids had just offed a Saudi bagman who was funneling money to terrorist cells in Europe, and it had totally looked like an accident. Life was good. Julia invited him to dinner to celebrate. They had split a bottle of wine before, and a second bottle during and after. It had loosened her tongue.
“I hate making update calls on the Zero Phone. That man with the lisping voice. I always imagine him as an albino. I don’t know why. Maybe something I saw in a comic book when I was a girl. An albino villain with X-ray eyes.”
Stackhouse had nodded his understanding. “Where is he? Who is he?”
“Don’t know and don’t want to know. I make the call, I give my report, then I take a shower. There would only be one thing worse than calling on the Zero Phone. That would be getting a call.”
Stackhouse looked at the Zero Phone now with something like superstitious dread, as if just thinking of that conversation would make it ring in his—
“No,” he said. To the empty room. To the silent phone. Silent for now, at least. “Nothing superstitious about it. You will ring. Simple logic.”
Sure. Because the people on the other end of the Zero Phone—the lisping man and the greater organization of which he was a part—would find out about the spectacular balls-up in that little South Carolina town. Of course they would. It was going to be front-page news across the country and maybe the whole world. They might know already. If they knew about Hollister, the stringer who actually lived in DuPray, they might have been in touch with him for all the gory details.
Yet the Zero Phone hadn’t rung. Did that mean they didn’t know, or did it mean they were giving him time to put things right?
Stackhouse had told the man named Tim that any deal they made would depend on whether or not the Institute could be kept a secret. Stackhouse wasn’t fool enough to believe its work could continue, at least not here in the Maine woods, but if he could somehow manage the situation without worldwide headlines about psychic children who had been abused and murdered… or why those things had taken place… that would be something. He might even be rewarded if he could manage a cover-up that was watertight, although just keeping his life would be reward enough.
Only three people knew, according to this Tim. The others who had seen what was on the flash drive were dead. Some of the ill-starred Gold team might be alive, but they hadn’t seen it, and they would maintain silence about everything else.
Get Luke Ellis and his collaborators here, he thought. That’s step one. They might arrive as soon as 2 AM. Even one-thirty would give me enough time to plan an ambush. All I’ve got on hand are techs and widebodies, but some of them—Zeke the Greek, to name just one—are hard guys. Get the flash drive and get them. Then, when the man with the lisp calls—and he will—to ask if I am handling the situation, I can say…
“I can say it’s already handled,” Stackhouse said.
He put the Zero Phone on Mrs. Sigsby’s desk and sent it a mental message: Don’t ring. Don’t you dare ring until three o’clock tomorrow morning. Four or five would be even better.
“Give me enough ti—”
The phone rang, and Stackhouse gave a startled yell. Then he laughed, although his heart was still beating way too fast. Not the Zero Phone but his own box phone. Which meant the call was coming from South Carolina.
“Hello? Is it Tim or Luke?”
“It’s Luke. Listen to me, and I’ll tell you how this is going to work.”
4