The Seven Sequels bundle

by Orca Various

  “My dad shipped out,” I tell him. Then, before he can ask, I add, “He’s with the military. He has an assignment overseas. Afghanistan.”

  “And you?”

  “Me?”

  “You haven’t explained what you’re doing in Detroit. It says here you’re a Canadian citizen, residing in Canada. You have friends here?”

  “No, sir.”

  He looks at the file folder again. “You told the officers on the scene that you had dinner with friends and that you were in the alley where the shooting occurred because you were doing a favor for one of those friends.”

  I feel my leg jump. I wish it wouldn’t, but I can’t stop it. I realize it looks like he’s caught me in a lie. But it’s not a lie. The fact is, I can barely remember what I told the two uniforms who questioned me at the scene. Mostly I was thinking how close I’d just come to being a corpse like Duane. If those cops were to walk into the room right now, I doubt I’d recognize them. There are only two faces burned into my brain, and believe me, I wish they weren’t. They’re Duane after he stopped breathing and the guy with the massive spider tattoo.

  “They aren’t really friends,” I tell Carver. “I mean, I didn’t know any of them until the day before yesterday. They’re more like acquaintances.”

  Carver shakes his head. He’s disappointed. “It’s late, Rennie, and it’s been a long day. Let’s not play word games, okay?”

  SHANE PEACOCK

  DOUBLE

  YOU

  O R C A B O O K P U B L I S H E R S

  To Watson Peacock, a blunt instrument,

  but loyal and true. R.I.P.

  There’s two sides to everyone.

  —JOHN LE CARRÉ, TINKER TAILOR SOLDIER SPY

  I never seen nobody but lied, one time or another.

  —MARK TWAIN, ADVENTURES OF HUCKLEBERRY FINN

  ONE

  GUN

  James Bond’s weapon of choice is a Walther PPK pistol. You see it in his movies—a cold, hard piece of steel held in the grip of the most daring secret agent of all time. Sometimes it looks deceptively small, like an extension of his hand, while other times it’s long and deadly, with a silencer attached to muffle the sound as another villain eats lead.

  But now I was seeing it somewhere else, somewhere it didn’t belong. It lay on a table in front of me at our family’s cottage in northern Ontario, looking as innocent as a gun could—a gun used by a man with a license to kill. That man, of course, was 007, not my grandfather, David McLean, though within days I would begin to wonder if that description fit him too.

  The gun mesmerized me. And when the others weren’t looking, I took it. I even convinced myself that I hadn’t really taken the gun from anyone, and certainly not to be used as a weapon. I reasoned, so far as I reasoned at all, that it didn’t belong to anyone anymore and that I had no intention of using it (which is why it shocked me so much when I later employed it with such precision). I also told myself that I had every intention of giving it back (which I did) and that none of my cousins seemed to want it anyway.

  Something consumed me when I saw it, something bad.

  Bad Adam. I used to be him. He isn’t dead or anything—I haven’t completely killed him off. Now he lives inside me. He talks to me every now and then. He asks me to do things I know I shouldn’t. Bad Adam is the guy who used to be insecure, who used to be mean to his amazing girlfriend, Shirley, who used to pine for a shallow but really attractive girl named Vanessa, who he liked just because of the way she looked. Bad Adam is also the guy who went on a trip to France last summer and acted like your typical “ugly American” almost from the minute he touched down. And, much to my shame, Bad Adam was also the one who hadn’t really liked Grandpa very much for a long time. But that isn’t me anymore.

  On the day I first saw the Walther PPK, though, I was having a pretty hard time liking my grandfather. And I think most of my cousins felt the same way. I was trying, but the evidence against him was stacking up mighty fast.

  We had all agreed to meet at the cottage that December day. Well, all of us except Rennie, who was in Uruguay, of all places, and Steve, who was in search of a little romance in Spain. So, five of the seven McLean grandsons were ready to spend a week or so together to finish off the holidays. In the old days, I would have despised that, but I was looking forward to reconnecting with the guys, seeing what it would be like to not be a jerk around them for once. It was the 26th, Boxing Day, and typically cold, typically Canadian. Actually, that isn’t fair, because Buffalo, New York, where I live, is just as cold as northern Ontario, maybe colder.

  I had driven up with Webb. I think there were things going on in his family that he wasn’t talking about. His stepfather had seemed like a bit of a bad dude, even worse than Bad Adam. I hadn’t ever thought about Webb’s problems before. But from the minute I really tried to connect with him, I could tell that he’d been through some tough times. You could see it in his eyes. I’d been texting him (in fact, I’d been texting and emailing all my cousins a lot since I’d come back from France), and he hadn’t responded too often. And when the call came through from DJ about getting together—DJ, who is so full of himself and the supposed leader of our…wait, that’s Bad Adam again. DJ is a good guy, actually. He looks out for the rest of us all he can.

  Anyway, when he called to suggest we all get together at the cottage right after Christmas, I thought I’d reach out to Webb. I’m seventeen now, fully licensed (to drive, not to kill, though Mom might say that’s one and the same thing with me), so I asked Webb if he’d like me to pick him up in Toronto. It took half a day for him to respond. And all he texted then was OK. I thought I’d wine and dine him a little to loosen him up, so I decided to take him to an IMAX film on the way up—pay the whole freight, the popcorn and everything. I was hoping we could see a real guys’ flick, something with people just beating the crap out of each other. I figured we’d have a great time. Maybe Webb would even smile once. And it turned out that we were in luck. Skyfall, the latest James Bond movie, just happened to be on, fifty feet tall in IMAX! Man, I’d seen it at regular size a couple of times, and it had just blown me away, so I could hardly imagine what this would be like. Daniel Craig is sick, especially when he takes people out. Best Bond ever, and I know something about Bond. What guy (or girl—Craig walks around with his shirt off all the time) doesn’t? But partway through the show, my reaction kind of worried me. I was pretty hyped up as I watched, especially during the scenes at the end where 007 wipes out Javier Bardem and every last one of his evil army of thugs in ammunition-packed action, and when Craig gets alone with the absolutely smokin’ Bond Girl…and I started wondering if that was Bad Adam responding. Was I acting like what many people believe is typically American, getting off on gunplay and money and cars and perfect bodies and stuff? Vanessa would be into that kind of thing. (My girlfriend, Shirley, wouldn’t.) For some reason, I started thinking about that shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, where that guy went into that school with an assault rifle and shot all those little kids. In seconds I was feeling really bad about enjoying the violence playing out on the screen. So I tried to cool it. But it was hard to do. It was James Bond, after all, the best Bond ever.

  I don’t remember much about driving up north. Webb didn’t say a lot, even though I tried to get a conversation going. So it was mostly a blur. By the time we got to the cottage, DJ, Spencer and Bunny were gathered around a hole in the wall by the fireplace, their eyes nearly popping out of their heads. There was usually a lot of chopped wood piled up there, but since Grandpa’s death it had dwindled. Spencer had pulled at the last log, really yanking and tearing at it, and it turned out to be nailed to a panel. When the panel came loose, things got really weird. Behind it was a sort of secret chamber! A bunch of stuff fell out: a leather bag, a sack of golf balls with strange letters on them, and all kinds of cash, in different denominations from all over the world. And the Walther PPK, of course, which I couldn’t stop staring at, though I think I
hid my interest pretty well. Then DJ found some passports sewn into the lining of the bag. They came from different countries and had Grandpa’s picture on every one, but none of the names was David McLean! We were all speechless. It was pretty freaky—scary and exciting and upsetting at the same time.

  I felt like I was having an out-of-body experience. I could hear the guys talking almost as if they were in the distance. Suddenly, I was worried that I knew exactly what my grandfather was, and he wasn’t anything like any of us had ever imagined. Fake passports, all those foreign bills, that particular gun.

  “It’s pretty,” said Bunny about the cash. “It looks like Monopoly money.”

  Bunny has some learning problems, and I used to think he was a family embarrassment. But he’s actually pretty cool, a great guy with an interesting rather than weak mind. If you really listen to him, he always tells the truth—about everything. We studied a Shakespeare play in school called King Lear and there was a character in it called the Fool. He was the smartest guy in the story, but you had to really pay attention to know that. In real life—in my life—that’s our Bunny.

  “This stuff is for real,” muttered Webb. The things we were looking at were so mind-blowing that even he was coming to life.

  They started counting the money and speculating about what it all meant. I was trying to look calm and normal. I said something about Grandpa maybe just liking to keep some cash on hand. But this was piles and piles of cash, not a few extra bucks, so it was a pretty lame thing to say. I was desperate to find reasons for Grandpa hiding this stash. The things he had asked me to do in France this past summer had turned around my life. He had made me look into myself and see what was important: the good in me, the good we all have inside us. He had made me into a better person—into Good Adam. He couldn’t be a bad guy. He couldn’t! It felt like my life depended on it.

  The guys turned to the gun. And Spencer took the words right out of my mind.

  “It’s not just a gun,” he said. “This is a Walther PPK.”

  For some reason, I pretended I didn’t already know that. Spencer, who is a pretty bright guy in a kind of eccentric way—funny and witty—really knows his movies. He wants to direct them—he already does, in fact—so he knew exactly what that gun was and exactly who had used it on the screen.

  Spencer worried me because I had the feeling he was going to jump on the same idea that was percolating in my mind—these hidden materials were the tools of a spy. I knew Spence could make a pretty good case for it. I just hoped he would be conjuring a David McLean who was like James Bond, a good guy always doing what was right. But I knew better than to think that way.

  Since I’d come back from France, I’d been reforming myself in more ways than one. I was trying to treat others better, especially Shirley, and I was rebuilding myself too, both body and soul. I worked out all the time and had begun studying a martial art that I’d read Robert Downey Jr. did, a rather vicious but effective form of self-defense called Wing Chun. I worked hard at it and was getting pretty good. It actually taught you how to relax and expand your mind too, even while you were in combat. But I was also trying much harder at school and doing a lot of reading, which I hadn’t been so big on before. I’d stopped playing so many video games and stopped reading trashy books. Some of the better novels I’d read were about espionage, and a couple were by this guy named John Le Carré. One was called The Spy Who Came in from the Cold and the other was called Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. They were hard going, with kind of boring, intricate prose and complicated, sometimes hard-to-follow ideas, but I stuck with them. Le Carré wrote about what spies were really like. And they weren’t like James Bond. They were ordinary people with suspicious minds and dirty tactics. Their whole world was dirty. And lots of them, lots of them, were traitors and double agents.

  Go, Spencer, I thought. Convince us that David McLean was a hero like James Bond. Bad Adam, of course, was telling me that Grandpa wasn’t a hero, that chances were, he was awfully sketchy, like most spies. And in minutes, Bad Adam’s argument was backed up by some awfully strong evidence.

  “If I had to hazard a guess,” said Spencer, “I’d say Grandpa was a—”

  “He wasn’t a spy,” snapped DJ.

  You tell him, my serious, decent, big cousin, I thought.

  But then DJ ruined his own argument. I had been poking around more in the chamber in the wall, hoping the other guys wouldn’t notice, and I found a black notebook way at the back. I was worried about what was in it and wanted to keep a grip on it. But DJ asked for it as soon as he saw it, and when DJ asks for something, you give it to him. He opened the notebook and started reading aloud. “I hoped I’d never have to use this book,” he began, “but I needed to keep my own record, my own account, in case things ever came tumbling down around me.” That sounded awfully defensive, as if Grandpa was making excuses for something bad he’d done in the past. “I just know that I always did what needed to be done. Nothing more and nothing less.”

  I looked down at the Walther PPK, and my spirits kept sinking.

  DJ started flipping through the pages. I was right next to him and could see what was on them. There were all sorts of drawings and numbers and strange, incomplete sentences that didn’t make any sense, all in Grandpa’s handwriting.

  Then it got even worse.

  As DJ leafed through the pages, an envelope fell out. I picked it up quickly and considered hiding it. But the other guys had already seen it. I held it out for them to look at it. Everyone moved in closer. It was just an old envelope; the letter inside was gone. Addressed to my grandfather, it had a return address in Bermuda on it, and you could see a few words embedded into the surface of the envelope, as if the writer was so angry when he wrote the letter that he had pressed down on his pen really hard, engraving the words into the envelope beneath the paper. I held it up to the light and, stupidly, because I was so anxious to see what it said, read out loud, “You are a traitor. You deserve to die.” The second the words were out of my mouth, I clammed up. I felt like a traitor myself. I shoved the envelope into my pocket.

  “Still think he wasn’t a spy?” asked Spencer, smiling at DJ. Spence almost seemed to be enjoying this. He was way too into the movies.

  “Maybe he was, but he wasn’t a traitor!” shouted my usually calm big cousin. It was an interesting choice of words, given what we had all just read. His reaction reminded me of a line from Hamlet, something about The lady doth protest too much.

  DJ was no lady. He was a big, strapping athlete who could run over you like a train on the football field, but he was definitely protesting too much. Our teacher had explained what that line meant: sometimes people say things and actually mean the opposite. Even DJ was seriously worried about our hero now.

  And then Bunny fired the gun. And I made my move.

  The sound was like a cannon exploding right next to us. It was awesome. (At least, that was what Bad Adam thought.) As soon as we picked ourselves up off the floor, Spencer (who is great at looking out for his brother) asked for big, bad Bunny’s weapon. The Bun-Man, of course, pointed it straight at him as he offered it. Spencer ducked…and I reached out and took the gun. It was almost sleight of hand: I passed it behind my back and slipped it into my pocket, and no one noticed. They were arguing, loudly, not looking at me. I didn’t say a word. I stood there with my heart pounding. One thought was coursing through my brain: Grandpa kept a loaded gun at the cottage!

  “Could everybody just be quiet?” yelled DJ.

  He started taking control, like he usually does. He had figured out that there were twelve passports and twelve sections in the notebook, each with a crudely drawn flag that seemed to associate it with a particular country: England, Spain, Russia, Argentina, etc. He reasoned that with my dad working, Spence and Bunny’s dad out of town and our moms on a Caribbean cruise together, we could actually take the cash and the passports and the evidence in the notebooks and find out what Grandpa was up to. All we had to do was be ba
ck home by New Year’s Eve. It would be amazing!

  At first it seemed kind of crazy to me, but I’d been on my own in France earlier that year, and I’d flown alone to California and back to visit a cousin on Dad’s side a month ago. All I needed was a day or two to check out the address on the envelope. A couple quick flights and home. And we couldn’t keep the money anyway. We’d have to explain it, and that might incriminate my grandfather. We almost had to spend it. I had to know about Grandpa too. I had to.

  Everyone chose a country. I was assigned the job of passing the Argentine stuff on to Rennie in South America. DJ made it sound as if we were about to find out all the brave and marvelous things good old Grandpa had done, as if it were a James Bond movie.

  One part of me hoped he was right. But the other part feared the worst.

  And so that was how I found myself flying into the beautiful island of Bermuda the very next day, a John Le Carré novel in hand, fear in my belly and a Walther PPK pistol in my luggage. Bad Adam was thrilled.

  TWO

  FANTASY ISLAND

  We’d all made a beeline out of northern Ontario the minute we decided we were going to investigate this big question mark in Grandpa’s past. I think I moved the fastest. We had six days, including Boxing Day. So really, we only had five. That was it. In five days, I had to find the truth about David McLean. If that truth was horrible, which I suspected it was, I didn’t know what I was going to do. It could very well ruin many lives, especially mine.