The sight broke Allison’s concentration, and the garage filled with the thud of the Jeep falling back on its tires from a height of about an inch.
I did it. Allison thought.
She felt like she was going to throw up.
She staggered over to Babs, wondering if Mr. Luvov had heard the sound of his Jeep testing its shocks. As she picked up her rabbit, Allison heard a car roll up the driveway. Mom must be home.
“Good enough. I can’t do much more of this.” She grabbed the paper bag with her other hand.
Allison walked to the door of the garage and was about to open it, when she looked out one of the windows.
It was Mom’s Taurus that had pulled up into the driveway.
It wasn’t Mom driving it.
ELEVEN
EUCLID HEIGHTS, OH: Tuesday October 26, 1999
1:03 PM
“Mom?” Allison whispered, feeling a sickness grow in the pit of her stomach. She clutched Babs closer to herself, and nearly dropped the bag of miscellaneous junk she carried.
Through the dirt-smeared window she watched a man she didn’t know get out of Mom’s white Ford Taurus. The man wore an expensive-looking suit, and he had a build like a wrestling coach. He wore a reassuring smile that Allison didn’t like at all. It was a smile that went with the phrase, “this won’t hurt a bit.” Beyond the end of the driveway, out on the street, Allison saw a gray van park in front of her house.
She dumped Babs in her bag, reached down, and locked the door of the garage.
A second man got out of Mom’s Taurus. He wore jeans and a blond ponytail. She didn’t like him at all. He looked everywhere with an expression Allison would make when turning over a slimy rock. It was as if he was hunting for something icky to step on with his snakeskin cowboy boots.
Mr. Luvov had turned off his hose and walked up to the men. Suddenly, Allison was very afraid for her neighbor. She may have managed to disprove the omnipotence of fictional telekinetics, but what about the other assumption all those stories made? The bad men who wanted to use the paranormal for their own purpose? The government in Akira. The corporation in Scanners. The Shop in Firestarter.
Her heart almost stopped when the man with the boots looked right at her. She froze and told herself that the sun was streaming right at the window and all he’d be able to see was a glaring reflection.
Even so, she felt their eyes lock together for a moment.
The man’s head kept moving, and Allison breathed a silent sigh of relief. A sigh that caught in her throat when the man’s denim jacket moved and she saw a gun under his left armpit.
Allison still didn’t know who her father referred to when he’d said “they,” but she felt certain that she was looking at “them” now.
Mr. Luvov talked to the gray-haired man, the one in the suit, the one who seemed to be in charge. Allison strained to hear what they said. Through the garage door it sounded muffled and far away.
“Please, Mr.— Luvov is it?— Mr. Luvov. There’s no need to be upset.”
“You are government agents, you say. Where is your warrant to walk into Mrs. Boyle’s house?”
“We have permission from Carolyn Boyle to be here.”
He’s lying, Allison thought. Mom’d never—
“Where is Mrs. Boyle then? This is her car but you drive it? This is not right.”
Mom, where are you?
They were interrupted by another suited man walking out the back door of Allison’s side of the house. He was dark haired and wore thick glasses. To Allison he looked nervous.
No, don’t hold the door open like that—
Allison’s heart sank when Rhett shot out past the man’s legs. The man was oblivious to Allison’s escaping cat. He shook his head, “no” at the two men flanking her mom’s Taurus.
“I should perhaps call—” Mr. Luvov began.
The other man interrupted. “Carolyn Boyle is making a statement at our office downtown. Here.” He handed Mr. Luvov a card. “This is the number. Call there and everything will be explained.”
“I should talk to Mrs. Boyle.”
“I’m sure they’ll let you. She’d appreciate your concern.”
Mr. Luvov looked up from the card and said, “Agent… Fred Jackson, I do not ever hear of this Agency for Scientific Investigation.”
The leader— Agent Fred Jackson, apparently— fingered his tie clip. “Jurisdiction wise we’re under the auspices of the FDA, though we’re administered out of the Treasury Department like the ATF.”
Mr. Luvov gave a blank look.
“Bureaucracy,” said the man with the ponytail, “go figure.” The man spoke with a southwestern accent, and was facing away from Mr. Luvov and toward Allison. She could see the evil smile the man made, an expression harboring some nasty joke at Mr. Luvov’s expense.
Even as she watched, he walked towards the garage. Allison backed away from the door as the man approached, each click of boots on concrete pushed her a step back and tore the breath from her mouth. She had to stop when she’d backed into the table. Her heart nearly stopped beating when her paper bag rustled.
The man’s face was almost at the window when she heard Mr. Luvov say, “What are you doing here now?”
The man turned away from the garage, and said with a slight western twang, “Wanted to park the car.”
She couldn’t see much out the window from where she was. She couldn’t see Mr. Luvov. She could barely see the top of Agent Jackson’s head.
She heard Mr. Luvov say, “This is also my garage.” Mr. Luvov was trying to protect her, and she was deeply afraid for him. “If you have no papers to enter my garage, you will not. You do not have my permission.”
“Now look you—” began the man at the garage.
He was interrupted by Agent Jackson, “No reason to antagonize Mr. Luvov, Barney. Leave the car in the driveway.” She could barely see the small gesture Agent Jackson made, tilting his head in the direction Allison knew Mr. Luvov was standing. “Why don’t you go make that call, Mr. Luvov? We’ll wait here for you.”
She saw Barney nod at Agent Jackson, and step off in the direction of Allison’s house. Allison walked back up to the little square window. She made it to the window just in time to see Mr. Luvov reach for the handle of the back door to his side of the duplex. As he reached for it, she saw Barney step up behind him and wrap his arm around Mr. Luvov’s neck.
Allison gasped and stumbled back. No! My God, Mr. Luvov!
When she looked out again she couldn’t see Mr. Luvov any more, only three men approaching the garage. My God. My God. My God.
“Miss Boyle,” said Agent Jackson, “Would you please come out of there? Believe me; it’s for your own good…”
Allison scrambled back, falling to the ground. She backed away from the door, clutching her paper bag to her chest as if it could protect her. She backed away until she was wedged under the table at the other end of the garage, and her back was against the wood clapboards forming the rear wall.
“Please, Miss Boyle. We know you’re in there.”
He heard someone try the handle to the garage and curse. “Locked,” Barney said.
“Get the keys off of Luvov,” Agent Jackson said.
I’m trapped. Did they kill Mr. Luvov? What about Mom?
Allison’s thoughts were screaming around in furious circles, all questions without answers. It was a Herculean effort for her to clamp down on the emotion and focus on one thought. Out, I have to get out of the garage. How?
Agent Jackson continued his reassuring, authoritative talk at her through the door. She didn’t listen. She looked wildly around the garage for another way out. There was a window in the wall to her right, but it was blocked by a stack of red bricks.
Someone tried the door again. She pushed herself back against the wall. A nail bit into her lower back, and she turned and looked behind her. All that was between her and freedom was a quarter inch of wood and dry rot.
She pushed agai
nst the clapboard and found that it was a little loose. Then she realized that they would see it from the windows in the door. It might be too dark to see in the garage, but if she opened a hole in the wall in their line of sight—
She scrambled, under the table, to the wall in front of the Jeep Cherokee. Unfortunately, the wall down here was in much better condition. She pushed at the board and it didn’t budge.
She heard a jingle behind her and Agent Jackson said, “We have the keys to the garage, Allison, but we’d much prefer if you opened the door yourself.”
Oh God.
They waited a moment, and Allison peeked around the fender of the Jeep. All three were there, Barney holding up a key ring. After a few seconds of waiting for her, Agent Jackson nodded, and she could hear Barney sliding a key into the lock.
Allison panicked and did the only thing she could think of. When the handle on her side of the garage began turning, she grabbed it with her teek and turned it back. It happened so fast that she barely felt what had happened. A great ker-chunk echoed through the garage. The garage’s handle spun freely for a second, then clattered to the ground.
“Fuck,” Barney said from outside. “The key snapped.”
For a moment Allison’s heart lifted. But then she heard all three men grunt, and the whole door vibrated. She began to hear metal protest, and a thin line of daylight momentarily sprouted at the bottom edge of the door, vanishing as the door fell back.
Another trio of grunts, and this time the light stayed.
Allison ducked back behind the Jeep. She had to break through the wall, somehow. She pushed at it with her feet, but the boards didn’t want to move. Her head throbbed, but the only thing she had left was her teek.
Unlike her instinctive grab at the garage handle, she had to close her eyes and focus herself. The effort caught her head in a vice, and sweat stung her eyes, making her squeeze them even more tightly shut. The sound of the men forcing the garage door faded in her awareness as her world became an odd blending of inner vision and touch. She could sense the structure of the wood, odd and fibrous— like rectilinear cotton candy. Nails felt crystalline and solid, offering much more of a purchase for her sense. She grabbed all the solid nails as she could manage.
Just before she felt the effort might blossom into a crippling migraine, she pushed all the nails away from her. The speed at which they moved broke her contact, and shocked her out of her trance.
Her eyes shot open, even as the bottom three clapboards began to sag to the ground. Behind her she heard the garage door straining, and she only had to see the shadows on the wall in front of her to know that in a second or two the door would be open enough to let them in.
Allison scrambled out of the hole she’d made in the wall, digging through the musty leaves that accumulated behind it. She had to bend the wood to get out. The long boards were only freed along four feet of their length. She concentrated on moving out as fast as possible, which was why she didn’t see the kid until he grabbed at her.
She had just made her way outside, free, when she felt a tug at her jeans. On the ground, behind the garage, a twelve-year-old kid lay in the leaves. One hand was to his thigh, holding a bleeding injury. In fact his right leg was dotted with red holes that almost looked like gunshot wounds. Then Allison saw the pointed end of a rusty nail sticking out of one of the holes, and felt ill.
“They’ll get you.” The kid whispered. She turned to look at his face. When she saw that gaze, she finally recognized him. The same kid who’d been in the gray van— the gray van out front, Allison realized. The same kid she’d seen at Euclid Heights High. The same kid who’d been out on the street this morning. His Walkman headphones lay in the leaves next to him, and his Bugs Bunny T shirt had been torn in his fall. Tears streamed down the kid’s cheeks, but his expression had an alien detachment. “They always get you,” said the kid. The only emotion in the voice was a hint of a sob.
Allison pulled herself away from the kid’s weak grasp, and ran off behind her neighbors’ garages. She was several blocks away before she realized that the running footsteps pursuing her were her own echoes.
2:13 PM
Elroy lay on the couch in the Boyle’s living room, the leg of his jeans was slit up to his hip and Jane was busy taping gauze to one of a half-dozen wounds on his leg. Elroy stared at the ceiling, oblivious to his surroundings.
George, his white hair frizzed out more than usual, paced back and forth in the living room, occasionally cursing under his breath. From upstairs, there came the occasional sound as Fred Jackson searched the premises.
Jane looked up at him and said, “Would you calm down, George? Hysterics won’t help anything.”
“Hysterics?” George asked. The manic lilt to his voice lent a little irony to the word. “What have I got to be hysterical about?”
“Please,” Jane hissed in a near whisper. “Lower your voice.”
“What? It is like Fred doesn’t know how fucked up everything is now?” George threw himself down on an easy chair. “I called him, told him the girl was manifesting something, that Elroy— God I hate these names.”
Jane sighed. “Don’t try and pretend you didn’t know what you were getting into when you joined the team.”
George shook his head. “But killing people?”
Jane mopped Elroy’s brow, “Heartwarming, but hypocritical coming from someone who’s been kidnapping children for most of his professional career.”
“That’s different,” George said limply.
“Ah, the crutch of conditional morality,” Jane said. “Just remember what we’re protecting.”
George sighed. “I just wanted to work with these kids. How’s Elroy doing?”
Jane looked at him, “The leg’s fine. But I’m worried about the way he’s withdrawn— more than usual.” She waved at the coffee table where six bloody nails lay on a paper towel. “None of those penetrated very deeply. I don’t think that’s the problem.”
George leaned over and asked, “How’re you doing kid?”
“There’s something cold,” Elroy said flatly. “It doesn’t like us.”
George looked at Jane, and Jane shrugged. “Don’t push him right now,” she said.
“Damn it, what’d he see?” George shook his head. “This girl could be the most powerful Class I we’ve found since that pyrotic in Michigan. God knows what she’s capable of.”
“Don’t worry about it, at the moment she’s security’s problem.”
“Yeah,” George said, “And if Barney makes the same ‘mistake’ he did with her mother?”
“You think he did that on purpose?”
“The man’s an assassin, Jane. Or haven’t you noticed?”
Just then, Fred Jackson came down from upstairs. In his hands were a ratty-looking red notebook and a photo album. Fred wasn’t quite smiling, but his expression said he was pleased about something, which was unusual considering the circumstances.
“Do any of you recognize this?” Fred asked. He went on without waiting for an answer. “This is the notebook that put Charles Wilson in the hospital.”
Fred tossed it down on the coffee table and flipped it open. “What do you see?”
George leaned over and said, “A play, dialogue, something—”
“Read it,” Fred said.
George did so, his face growing whiter. “Christ, how much do these people know about us?”
“A lot,” Fred said, “Carol Boyle was a PRI employee.”
“If that’s ‘Mom,’” Jane said. “Who’s John?”
George tapped John’s first line on the page, where the erasure of the word “Dad” was just visible. “Allison’s father?” he said.
“Exactly,” Fred Jackson said. “Whose identity was something Mr. Stone was considerably interested in.” Fred slapped the side of the album he still held. “This is confirmation. One bright spot in an otherwise dark picture.”
3:23 PM
Allison stood in front of a pay p
hone across the street from Euclid Heights High. At her feet was the paper bag that had come with her from the garage. It was open and Babs lay on top of the junk inside, staring up at her. She flipped through the phone book, and all she could think of was Rhett. It was bizarre for her mind to fixate on her cat when her mom was missing. But she kept wondering if those men would think to let Rhett back in when he came mewing back to the house.
Will you try to get some priorities straight? Allison thought at herself.
She had already tried to find the Agency of Scientific Investigation in the phone book. There was no such animal listed. She had hesitated calling information, or the ATF, or the police.
What if they were from the government?
What if they traced the call?
Allison told herself that she was at a pay phone, and she’d already hesitated long enough to be surrounded by people streaming out of Euclid Heights High. That, and there was a news van parked across the street. No one would try anything in front of Eyewitness News, right?
Allison couldn’t convince herself she was safe.
But Mom?
She finally found the number for Mom’s office. She pulled out a quarter and called the number. Please, let her be there, or I don’t know what I’ll do.
The phone rang a few times before a female voice answered, “Levy, Mahyer and Boyle Associates. Can I help you?”
Allison sucked in a breath and said, “I’m Allison Boyle, is my mom there?”
“I’ll check.” There was an agonizingly long pause. As she waited, she heard someone call, “Allie!” from down the street.
Allison looked up from the phone to see Macy coming down the street in front of the McDonald’s. She was waving and coming toward her. “Hey girl, how you doing?”
Allison waved her hand nervously at Macy and pointed at the phone. Macy nodded and stood mute, waiting for Allison to hang up. The pause seemed to get longer and longer. It made Allison nervous, even though she knew it was mostly in her head.
Then, eventually, the woman came back and said, “I’m sorry, she hasn’t been in yet today. Can I take a message?”
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