We took a walk down a long hallway, and then we were guided through one last door and our hoods were taken off. We were in a conference room, its long narrow table and the dozen chairs around it looking brand-new, the whiteboard pristine, the projection system humming softly above us. At the head of the table was a tall, broad-shouldered man in his sixties. He had a neatly trimmed beard and a buzz cut, and he gave us a tight smile.
“Welcome.” Prentiss-the man whose voice we’d heard on the phone.
“Where’s Chub?” I demanded.
He held up a hand and chuckled. “Slow down, young lady. You’ve barely arrived; why don’t you get comfortable? I’ll have some sodas brought in. Surely you would like to refresh yourselves after your… unfortunate adventure.”
He gestured at my scratched arms and filthy, ruined shirt, at Kaz’s disheveled hair and the faded bruises and cuts that remained after the healing.
“I know exactly where we are, you know,” I said furiously. “You could have had those guys drive me around for hours and I’d still know we were in the business park. I mean, it’s not like there’s anywhere else in town that’s got this kind of money poured into it.”
“Ah, that,” Prentiss said, inclining his head in a parody of an apology. “Procedure, I am afraid. You’ll learn, Hailey and Kaz, my young friends, that discipline is at the heart of every successful venture. Procedure. Chain of command.”
“What branch of the services did you come from?” Kaz demanded. “Was it even ours?”
Prentiss scrutinized Kaz, one eyebrow raised. “You’re questioning my patriotism, young man?” he said softly.
Kaz glared silently, and Prentiss made a show of pretending to remember something, snapping his fingers in the air.
“Oh dear, I forgot-you lost your father in the Gulf War. A brave man, Tanek Sawicki. He was proud of his citizenship, Kaz, was he not? Proud of fighting in the army of his adopted nation?”
Kaz said nothing but I could sense his fury escalating. I reached for his hand and held it tightly until I felt him respond, his grip relaxing slightly. I needed him to be focused, to remember why we were here-not to avenge his father’s death, but to rescue his mother and Chub.
“Only…” A look of fake sorrow passed over Prentiss’s features. “There is more to the story, I am afraid. Details of his last engagement that were classified. Have you wondered what really happened that day, Kaz?”
Kaz did not speak; he just held my hand more tightly.
“As I thought. Kaz… I was, during that chapter of our nation’s history, close to, shall we say, the heart of the intelligence community. I had access to information that was never made public. I could-”
“Tell me, you bastard,” Kaz hissed. “If you know anything about my father, tell me.”
“No,” I whispered. I knew what Prentiss was doing-trying to draw Kaz’s focus away, to break him down, to weaken our bond, to turn him against the government so that he would agree to participate in the research. A Seer like Kaz-he would be of great value to them.
Wait a minute. A Seer like Kaz…
Prentiss had been there, with access to classified information about the troops stationed in Iraq…
“You knew,” I said accusingly. “You knew his father was a Seer.”
“Ah, Hailey, you impress me again,” Prentiss said, clapping his hands in delight. “There was an experimental psychic viewing program that was begun back in 1988, when we first found evidence of psychic prodigies among the new recruits. Kaz, your father was far more gifted than any subject before or since. When word of his abilities reached me, I immediately called for his transfer to a more stable location, where he could enter our program safely. But…” He waved his hands impatiently. “Paperwork. Red tape. Bureaucracy. In the end, I was not able to transfer him soon enough. Not before that terrible day in Al Busayyah. Your father did not have to die there, in the dirt. It was, if you care to know, the last straw in my frustration with working from within. The reason I decided to go… independent, you might say.”
I glanced at Kaz. His features were frozen in hatred. Grief would come later, I suspected, when he was alone.
If Prentiss thought he could sway Kaz with this story, he was mistaken. Prentiss might have tried to save his father, as he claimed, but it was only so Prentiss could use him. And we both knew it.
“Now we have an opportunity to work together, Kaz.” Prentiss pressed on. “You can save the lives of American soldiers like your father. We’ll begin with a few simple tests. Get to know one another, so to speak, before we begin exploring your marvelous gift. And then I’ll share what I know. As two colleagues might. Because that is what I want you to see me as, Kaz. Your colleague, your comrade, with a shared goal. Not to mention the promise of handsome rewards.”
“So now you’re bribing him?” I demanded, enraged. “Are you insane? Why would he ever agree to help you?”
Prentiss frowned at me, eyes narrowed. The good humor disappeared from his expression. “You would do well to remember that we also have Jacob. Oh, excuse me… Chub, as you know him.”
His words chilled me. “What do you mean…”
“Jacob Alan Turlock. Born at home, rushed to Casey General Hospital to deal with complications at birth. Fetal alcohol syndrome and… but you don’t want to hear the whole list now, do you, Hailey?”
They knew everything. They knew where Chub had come from. They knew things about him that I had never known, and I realized that it wasn’t only Kaz who was under their thumb.
Prentiss had me.
“As I thought,” he said softly. He signaled to the men who’d brought us here. “We have so much to talk about. Why don’t you two freshen up, change into clean clothes, have something to eat? And then we will talk again.”
“I have nothing to say to you,” Kaz said. He shook off the guard’s hand as he stood.
“Oh, I very much doubt that,” Prentiss said mildly. “I foresee many interesting conversations ahead for the three of us.”
“I have nothing to say to you either,” I said.
“Is that so?” Prentiss gave me his full attention, drilling me with his cold stare. His eyes were slightly bulging and watery. “There are carrots and sticks, my young friends. I am a civilized man, a peaceful man, at heart. A merchant. I would far prefer to employ carrots. Rewards. We can do smart business together and you will be handsomely compensated. You can have a rich and rewarding future with us. Or… you can fight me. But then I will use a stick. And trust me on this: those who have felt the force of my stick wish they had never challenged me.”
24
PRENTISS WAS PREPARED to be more than generous with the carrots, if the accommodations he provided for me were any indication. The room I was led to had a broad window overlooking the fields rolling away to the east. Far in the distance I could see a stand of black willows lining the bend in Sugar Creek. A mile or so after that, the creek took a turn to the south and joined up with Beaver Creek and eventually flowed into the Lake of the Ozarks.
I had never been to the Lake of the Ozarks. Kids at school were always talking about family trips to the campsites and motels that lined the hundreds of miles of shoreline. They talked about days spent lying on the beaches, with their trucked-in sand and weedy bottoms, paddling canoes and going to waterslides and eating barbecue. There were waterskiing and wakeboarding, sunburns and mosquitoes and car stereos playing loud.
And I had never experienced any of it.
I took a hot shower and dried off with a fluffy towel, then dressed in the clothes that had been left for me. They were plain-black pants and a black silky T-shirt-but the quality was very fine, and the fit was almost perfect. I dried my hair and treated my cuts with antibiotic ointment I found in the medicine cabinet. I looked through the cosmetics that stocked the shelves, wondering who had chosen them-probably some junior member of Prentiss’s staff, a woman selected because she was young herself or because she had a daughter my age. For a moment I felt myself softening and then I realized I had to steel myself against everyone here. I couldn’t afford to forget for a minute that they had kidnapped Prairie and Chub, that they meant to put us to work making zombies.