HEAR
Page 22
“How were you wronged, Alex?” I ask. I wonder what a little girl could have done that would have upset him so much.
“She broke up with me.” He looks baffled that I hadn’t already assumed this was what he meant. “I told you Erika broke up with me. And we were in love.” He shakes his head as if still struggling to believe the rejection is real.
My mind is reeling; I can’t figure out how Erika relates to the girl he killed. And forget the fact that Erika’s now dead too—that she dumped him seems to be what Alex is fixating on. That’s what seems to be upsetting him most.
“I mean, it was love at first sight,” he continues, “incredibly deep and intense, and it just grabbed both of us by the throat.”
I recall that last conversation with Erika at the library. She also used the word “intense,” but she used it to describe Alex’s behavior . . . and his intensity was one of the reasons she broke up with him.
Alex approaches Brian, his palm out. “ You know what that’s like, don’t you, Professor?”
Brian’s mouth drops open, but he hesitates before answering.
“Of course you do,” Alex replies for him. “That’s how you got on this whole kick of yours to begin with. You’re also trying to regain lost love.”
Brian shakes his head. “No, Alex, that’s not why I—”
“Don’t be coy. Maybe you’re not trying to get your girlfriend back specifically, since she’s been gone for so long.” He rolls his eyes as if that would be crazy. “But you’re trying to get the feeling back—and what the feeling of being in love does to you. You know, what it gives you.” Alex smiles as Brian takes a step back. “ You see? We’re not so different after all.”
“That’s not true,” Brian manages. But I can see that he’s been affected by Alex’s words.
“Okay, Alex, you’ve made your point,” Figg says. “It’s time for us to go.”
“No, I don’t see that happening. Remember, I’m really smart, Mr. Figg, and I don’t want to be the puppet of an idiot puppeteer anymore.” Alex moves his arms like a marionette then grabs his gym bag. “So I’m cutting my ties with you, and I’m leaving here. By myself. And you and I are going to say goodbye forever.”
“Bravo!” Figg says loudly. “Bra-vo!” he repeats, even louder the second time.
Bravo?
It’s only as two men in dark suits storm into the lab that it becomes clear “bravo” isn’t a compliment. It’s a code word. Now flanked by two fierce-looking men whose jackets bulge with what no doubt are concealed weapons, Figg faces Alex. “Drop the bag, Alex. It’s over.”
“ You don’t get to end this,” Alex replies.
In a flash, Alex pulls a large knife from the bag’s front pocket, and in a few quick steps, he’s seized my great-uncle in a chokehold. I am momentarily paralyzed, as if not truly present, as if watching in a vision, while Alex’s knife waves perilously close to Uncle Brian’s carotid artery. But this is no vision. This is happening, here and now.
Brian gasps for breath. His eyes are wide behind his glasses. His limp arms dangle in front of him.
Without thinking twice, I run at them, but just as instinctively, one of the CIA suits runs at me, tripping me. I land on my palms with a smack. All at once, there’s a very painful bone digging into the small of my back. It’s his knee, pinning me to the floor.
“Get off!” I rasp.
“Alex,” Figg whispers, trying to sound composed, “now let’s not do anything rash. You know you don’t want to hurt Professor Black.”
“Do I?” he asks. “Do I know that? Because I thought the fact that I hurt people was one of the things you liked best about me. In fact, should we tell them who suggested I get that merit badge in knife skills? Wink, wink.”
Figg’s expression is blank, a perfect poker face. From my very uncomfortable position at shoe level, I can see that Pankaj and Mara are frozen in fear as they stare at Brian, who’s turning red in Alex’s hold.
“Listen to me, Alex,” Figg says evenly. “ You’ve always been an incredibly talented young man, and your abilities can still be of great use to the country.”
Alex snorts. “Figg, I know how you work. You’ll burn me just like you burned the good professor. You should thank me! I’m just doing the work that you’d eventually do yourself anyway.”
My eyes move to Figg. The old CIA deputy director takes a step back, blinking. Whether or not Alex’s accusation is true, no one in this room doubts it could be, not even the man whose knee is currently bruising my kidneys. I flash back to what Uncle Brian said about rattlesnakes, seeing both Alex and Figg for what they truly are for the first time. Still, in this moment it’s impossible to determine which of the two is the more poisonous.
“Alex,” Mara says, “Kass and I know you killed that little girl. But Mr. Figg and the professor knew it too. They’ve known about it for a long time. So think about it,” she pleads. “It must not have bothered them. Obviously they must not have cared, so . . . don’t do this. There’s no need to do this.”
“Mara,” Alex says, mimicking her tone, “ You obviously don’t know everything.”
The only thing that’s clear to me now is that Alex will kill my great-uncle.
Out of the corner of my eye, I see Pankaj edging toward them.
“Come on, man,” Pankaj says. “Let the professor go. He’s old and he never meant you any harm. If you need a hostage, take me instead of him.”
Alex laughs. “Uh, no offense, Pankaj, but he’s the one of value here. He’s the one with the ESP booster. You’re just a delinquent.”
Pankaj shakes his head, looks somehow disappointed. “Alex, the booster’s not ready yet. He’d be using it on himself if it were. You’re smart. You have to know that. So the professor can’t help you now, and he doesn’t have ESP. But I do. And if you and I team up, what could stop us?”
I feel a twinge of unease as I watch Pankaj getting closer to Alex. I know he must be doing this to help out my uncle, but there’s something dangerously convincing in his performance . . .
Alex pauses for a moment, loosening his grip on Brian’s neck. “ You are reasonably intelligent yourself, Pankaj,” he says. “And I have been impressed by the way you’ve conned Kass this summer.”
Conned?
“She hated you at the beginning. Now you have her wrapped around your finger.”
“I only wanted to prove to myself that I could make her fall for me,” Pankaj says. “But like you said, it was just a good con.” He gives a dismissive laugh.
The words hit me like a kick to the gut; the laugh feels like a grenade.
“Anyway, it’s not like her family would ever let the two of us be together.” Pankaj shakes his head. “They’d destroy me before letting me be with their daughter.”
“That’s actually true,” Mara quickly adds. “The cards have always said that. That’s why I told you to stay away from him, Kass.”
This is one comment too many. I struggle to break free and get up, but it’s hopeless. I’m trapped, forced to endure this torture.
Pankaj doesn’t look at me as he walks past, moving closer to Alex. “Come on, man. Let’s do this. Let’s go.”
“I have always liked you, Desai, and it would be nice to have a partner in crime.” Alex smiles sadly at the room. “So here’s how this is going to work: Desai, you approach the door. Get down on your belly when you reach it.”
Pankaj follows his orders, sliding his legs into the hallway and keeping the top half of his body in the lab.
“Good,” Alex says. “Now braid your hands together behind your back.”
Once Pankaj’s hands are behind him, Alex picks up his bag and starts walking Brian out, using him as a human shield. When he gets to the doorjamb, Alex slowly bends down. In one fluid motion, he violently releases Brian and grabs hold of Pankaj’s clasped hands.
I watch Pankaj struggle to stand, his hand holding his bleeding midsection where the wound from the bombing has reopened. Still on the ground myself, I can’t see the face of the person now holding Alex. But as I look across the floor, I recognize him from his shoes: Flip-Flops. From his waistband, the man-boy I’d assumed to be no more than a drunken college student pulls out an industrial-size garbage-bag tie. He wraps it around Alex’s wrists and yanks it closed.
Pankaj helps Brian to his feet. “Professor, are you okay?”
Brian closes his eyes. “I will be.”
Nobody bothers to ask this question of me. But that’s okay. I doubt I would have given the same answer.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Mara sits between Pankaj and me at one of the picnic tables in the lobby of the Merion Building. Uncle Brian and Chris Figg are on the other side. It feels like we’re in some sort of bubble within a bubble. The people who casually walk by have no idea what we’ve just been through. They couldn’t begin to understand. How could we possibly explain it?
After Alex was hauled off, Uncle Brian, still shaken and rubbing his bruised neck, suggested we too leave the lab. “We could all probably use a cold drink and some refreshments,” he said as he shepherded us out. “We’ll make Mr. Figg pay for it,” he added with a meaningful glance in Figg’s direction.
But I don’t want a drink. What I really want is time alone to process what just happened . . . and what was said. Still, what I most want is for Figg to pay, so I went with them.
Here, at this ridiculous indoor picnic table, as I sit next to my “allies,” I can feel the distrust and disgust boiling on our side of the table. We all still want and need answers, but none of us seem ready yet to speak to Figg, or to one another. I look at Mara and Pankaj and shake my head. With allies like these . . .
Fine, I’ll start.
Both of their heads turn in my direction. Message (obviously) received.
“So while you were running Camp Dodona, you were also training an army of violent children. You needed them to do your dirty work; is that right, Mr. Figg?”
He takes a sip of his drink and sets the can down before answering. “We want to be careful not to stigmatize by calling those children violent, per se, Kass. We use the acronym CU, for callous-unemotional.”
Even after all that happened this afternoon, the old spook’s still trying to spin the story.
What a dick, Mara says silently.
“ You’re a dick, Figg,” Pankaj says out loud. “We’re all thinking it.”
I nod. “And I’m curious, Uncle Brian: Did any of those CU s have ESP?”
“No,” Brian replies. “The CU children did not possess any extrasensory perception as far as I’m aware. But, truth be told, there’s a very fine line between psychopath and telepath neurologically speaking.”
Glancing at Mara and Pankaj, I realize that was information I could probably have done without.
“And for your information, callous-unemotional people excel at certain tasks that those with a conscience frequently find difficult to accomplish,” Figg says. “They require very little convincing to become snipers, for example. And though you may consider this dirty work, it’s work that’s necessary to the security of our country.” The man is unbowed; he’s argued this point of view many times before.
I can’t even look at Figg. I’m so angry I might spit on him. So I refocus on my uncle and try to make sense of this. “Didn’t you personally invite Alex to be part of the group here this summer? Or did Figg force you?”
Brian’s nod of admission is more like a pathetic shake of the head. “I invited him myself, under no orders from Chris. I was under the misimpression that he had talent for some reason.”
I recall the research I did on my fellow HEARs. The pages of Google results attesting to Alex’s abilities scroll through my mind . . .
They were all lies.
“ Your friend created a false history for him,” I say. “He planted stories for you to find so you’d invite him into the program.”
When Figg rolls his eyes, suggesting he can’t believe it took me this long to figure this out, Mara takes my hand and squeezes it hard. Cool it, she tells me, sensing I might jump across the table to throttle him. You want some ginger?
No. But thank you.
Pankaj sits up, wincing in pain and clasping his open wound. “So if you had Alex so well trained, what happened?”
As Figg looks at us, he knows he must concede at least this one point. “That’s the problem with psychopaths: they’re unpredictable. That can cause issues from time to time.”
“But you’d been watching him the whole summer, hadn’t you?” Mara asks, hugging her knees to her chest.
“Of course,” he replies. “ You don’t take your eye off someone like Alex, even when you’re using him as an asset. Especially when you’re using him as an asset.”
“So he wasn’t just being paranoid when he said someone was following him.”
“No, he was not.” Figg shakes his head. “And still he did what he did.”
My head tilts in confusion. Did what he did? I’m fairly certain he’s not referring to our recent hostage-taking situation. “What do you mean?”
“Pinberg,” Pankaj mutters.
This is the first thing Pankaj has said to me directly since . . . the lab.
“ You’re wrong,” I reply curtly, holding myself back from telling him all that he’s wrong about. “Alex didn’t kill Pinberg. He couldn’t have. He didn’t have the time to get to that mall.”
“Alex was not responsible for Graham’s death, no,” Figg says. “But he did plant the bomb in the library that killed his ex-girlfriend and your friend Dan.”
That’s what Alex was rambling about in the lab. He bombed that library because Erika broke his heart. I react to these words like a windshield struck by a baseball bat; I absorb the blow and shatter. Tears blur my vision, and I feel Mara grab my arm. When she takes Pankaj’s on the other side, everything whites out.
That’s when the three of us have a simultaneous vision of the past. We watch as Alex calmly walks into the library to plant the bomb. He sees Erika working behind the desk in the Special Collections Room, and he stares at her for a while as he keeps himself hidden from view. When she turns her back to look through a filing drawer, he darts toward the information desk and leaves a book bag full of explosives in front of it, less than ten feet from where she stands.
The Peabody Library bombing had nothing to do with the US Army Research Institute archive or Uncle Brian. Alex perpetrated the crime because he was angry at Erika for dumping him and he wanted revenge. Dan was simply collateral damage. Dan ran to the library either to stop Alex or to warn us, or both, and he paid for his empathy with his life.
“Brian will be the first to tell you,” Figg says, “love can make you reckless, make you do crazy things.”
Despite myself, I steal a glance at Pankaj.
I couldn’t risk Alex hurting you, he tells me. That’s why I said those things in the lab.
But I am so broken and exhausted I don’t know what to think or how I feel about anything anymore. I don’t respond.
You have to believe that that’s not how I really feel. I am in love with you, Kass.
When our eyes connect, I feel the truth. I take a deep breath, and I’m finally able to breathe again.
“The good news,” Figg continues, “is that we can all keep an eye on one another as we continue to work together.”
The three of us let out a shocked roar of laughter.
“I’m quite serious,�
�� Figg says. “I’ve made arrangements so that you will all be able to attend Henley tuition-free next year.”
“Not a chance in hell,” I reply. “Why on earth would we stay here?”
“Because you have nowhere else to go, Kass,” he says matter-of-factly. “None of you do.”
Mara shakes her head. “I’ll go anywhere else. Anywhere is better than here. We’re not safe here.”
“ You’re not safe anywhere, my dear.” Figg utters this as a promise. Then he extends his arms as if he’s the ringleader of an exotic circus. “So what do you say?”
What do we say? Pankaj asks us silently.
I can tell he doesn’t yet know the answer himself.
What can we say? We’re trapped, Mara reasons.
But we’re not powerless, I reply. We have one another. We determine the future from here on out.
EPILOGUE
When I jolt awake, my heart feels like it’s trying to beat its way out of my chest. My eyes scan the room searching for what’s on fire.
This has been happening a lot lately.
But the feeling I have this morning seems like more than just the PTSD I’ve been experiencing since the library bombing. The panic attacks escalated when I went home to pack my belongings for the new school year, and they’ve been even worse since I returned to Henley earlier this week. Though fall term doesn’t start for a few more days, I was hoping if I came back to campus early, I could ease my way in. But this morning, the alarm is more acute than ever; it feels like something truly terrible hangs in the air.
When my phone vibrates moments later, I fumble to grab it, and when I hit the touchscreen, a male silhouette avatar with the word “Dad” beneath it lights up.
“Hi, Dad,” I croak.
“Oh, Kass, I’m sorry. Did I wake you?”
“No. I was . . . Don’t worry about it.” I look at the alarm clock. It’s 7:30 a.m. On a Saturday. If he’s trying to get back into my good graces, this is not the best tack. “What’s wrong?”