A Million Shadows

by Janci Patterson

  “Okay,” I said. “This is where we part ways.”

  Aida shook her head. “I can help you.”

  “You can help us as we work against your parents,” I said. “Who you’ve never in your life managed to do more than hide from. You’re going to help us with that.”

  Aida flinched at my sarcasm, but I couldn’t help it.

  “You can help me,” I said. “By staying the hell out of my way.”

  “She did save us,” Kalif said.

  I nodded. He was right. But that didn’t mean that I could bring her with me and trust that she would always do the right thing. “Maybe someday we can work together again. But trust has to be won back over time, and right now, I have other things I need to do first.”

  Mom leaned against a post at the edge of the building, looking like she’d lost everything.

  And, I supposed, she probably had.

  But she was still breathing. That was something. I hoped she’d keep doing that, but if I’d learned one thing today, it was this: I couldn’t protect her. Not from the Carmines; not from herself. I’d thought for a while I could.

  But she had to choose for herself what she was going to do next. And she couldn’t follow where I was going. She’d only be a danger to me and to herself.

  “You can’t do this,” Mom said. “They’ll kill you.”

  “We can’t keep running,” I said. “We’ll kill each other before they can even get to us.”

  Mom shook her head at me, but the fight seemed to have gone out of her, like she’d used up her last bit of willpower coming after Aida.

  “You can’t do this alone,” she said.

  “You’re right,” I said. “But I’m not alone. I have a team.” I swallowed. Even knowing I was doing the right thing, the words were still hard to say. “And you’re not on it. Not right now. Not until you get your life back together.”

  Aida looked at Kalif, like she was expecting him to argue with me. “I’ll send you an email,” he said. “When we’re done. Until then, she’s right. You should stay out of our way.” He walked around to the passenger door and climbed into the van.

  Aida’s hands flopped helplessly at her side.

  “You can try to stop us,” I said. “But you’ll only get us killed. If you really want to help, he’s right. You should leave us alone, and let us work without worrying that the two of you are skulking around, screwing everything up.”

  I expected my mother to snap at me, to tell me that I shouldn’t talk to her that way. But instead she just spoke in a small voice. “And will I ever see you again?”

  I sighed. I had to believe in a better future for her, even if it was as hard to imagine for her as it was for myself. “Well,” I said. “If you stay in touch with Aida, then when we’re done and we email her, you’ll be able to find us.” I paused. “And I hope in the meantime, you both get some help.”

  Mom and Aida looked at each other. I held my breath.

  “Okay,” Mom said. Aida nodded. And though earlier today my mother had only wanted to kill her, I saw defeat in both their eyes.

  And I hoped maybe here, at the end of everything, they’d finally be able to set the past aside, and learn how to work together again. I couldn’t do it for them. All I could do was wish them the best.

  I reached for the door to the van. They might come after us, but I was pretty sure that after everything we’d been through, they didn’t want their own children dead.

  “I love you,” I said to Mom.

  And then I closed the door, and drove to the hospital nearest Aida’s apartment to find Damon. All the way there, I hoped and prayed he was okay.

  And if he could still trust me after what I’d dragged him into, I was going to ask for his help.

  One more time.

  Thirty-three

  As Kalif and I pulled up to the Systems Development building in our rented black kidnapper van, we held hands between the bucket seats. Behind us, dead center along the floor of the van, lay Mel’s faceless body.

  “You don’t have to do this if you don’t want to,” Kalif said. He stole a glance at me, his free hand holding the steering wheel loosely, as if he were at ease.

  I didn’t need his tight grip on my hand to know that he wasn’t. I felt naked in my home face. All I wanted to do was cover myself and hide.

  But not today. Today, we walked in the open.

  “Same to you,” I said.

  Kalif shook his head. “Where you go, I go.” And he added, almost as a breath, "even if we go to our graves.”

  As we passed under the shadow of the parking garage, it felt like that was exactly what we were doing. The last time we went into this building, we came out alive, but my father didn’t.

  This time was different, though. Last time we went in to steal from them.

  This time, we were going to join them.

  I’d expected Damon to be more shocked when I’d told him the plan at the hospital, Kalif standing beside me next to his bed in the trauma wing. “Sweetheart,” Damon had said, "from you, nothing surprises me. I’m in.”

  He was expecting a release sometime tomorrow, and it might be a few days after that before I could get away safely. But we’d arranged a meeting spot. I’d be seeing him soon.

  And as we drove through their parking garage, I told myself again, for the thousandth time.

  This was what the Carmines wanted.

  As long as they believed we were there to be trained by them, to serve them, to join their clearly superior forces, then we’d have an asset we couldn’t get any other way.

  The opportunity to work together to bring them down from within.

  It was my idea, but we were both banking our lives on it, trusting this one fact, this one glimmer: Kalif and I were far more valuable to them alive than dead.

  Kalif pulled to a spot across from the elevator, and turned off the van. I forced my eyes forward, refusing to let them dart around as I categorized the exits, measured the distances, weighed my odds if I ran this way, or that way.

  If this went wrong, Kalif and I weren’t getting out alive.

  He took a deep breath. “Ready?” he asked.

  I shook my head. “There is no ready for this.” Kalif smiled, and traced the invisible ring around my finger. I gave his hand one last squeeze before I let go, climbed out of the car, and walked toward the stairs up to the lobby.

  No matter what I was here for, I wasn’t climbing into the Carmine’s elevator. I might be coming to join them, but I wasn’t going to gift wrap myself.

  As I entered the stairway, I stole a last look back at Kalif, still waiting in the van, watching me. He gave me a reassuring nod.

  But it was obvious neither of us was feeling it.

  Onward, I thought. And I climbed the stairs two at a time, and entered the sparsely decorated lobby with the huge, tinted glass windows.

  I steeled myself as I walked toward the desk. One benefit of coming this way was that I didn’t have to walk past the place where my father died, in the doorway to this very building. But I could feel his blood beneath my feet even so.

  I hoped he understood, even if my mother still didn’t.

  As I approached, the receptionist pulled her reading glasses off her face, letting them dangle on a silver chain. “How may I help you?” she asked.

  I straightened my back and held up my head. “I’m here to speak with Wendy and Oliver.”

  Her eyes widened, probably in surprise that I’d used their first names. Her hand hovered over her computer mouse. “Do you have an appointment?”

  I shook my head. “No. But they’ll be expecting me.”

  The receptionist shook her head. “If you don’t have an appointment—"

  I reached toward her and tapped my fingers on the top of the desk. “Tell them Jory and Kalif are waiting for them in the parking garage. They’ll come.”

  And then I turned and walked out of the lobby and back to the van, without turning to look behind me at her shock.<
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  I found Kalif sitting on the bumper of the van, waiting. So I joined him and took his hand again.

  “It’s done,” I said.

  He shook his head. “No. It’s just beginning.”

  I tried not to visibly shiver, though I could feel them watching us through the security cameras. There were at least three pointed at us—one watching the driving lane, one focused on the row of spots, and another taking in a panorama of the whole floor from the far side.

  I wanted to crawl under the van, or leap over one of the concrete barriers and run and run and run until I got away.

  But instead we sat on the bumper, holding hands, waiting.

  When Oliver Carmine stepped out of the elevator flanked by two security officers in black, my flight instincts raged, pushing against my muscles, begging me to go.

  But I turned toward him, stood, and smiled.

  “We brought you something,” I said, reaching for the latch on the van door.

  Oliver stopped in his tracks and held up his hands. “Stop,” he said. “Don’t move.”

  I stood straight, and took one step away from the van. “Fine,” I said. “It’s your gift. You open it.”

  He took a step forward, and his security officers dropped behind him, each producing a small sidearm.

  My instincts kicked into overdrive. The impulse to shrink small was overpowering, but I forced my muscles to stay relaxed.

  Oliver walked until he was right next to me. He narrowed his eyes slightly at the van.

  I smiled, softening my eyes, trying to look like a proud puppy who had fetched his master a ball. I kept my voice low. “We brought what you asked for,” I said. “If your security people aren’t in the know, you might not want to let them see. We tried to bring him in alive, but things got . . . complicated.”

  Oliver gave me the smallest of smiles. And then he waved over his shoulder toward the two men, and motioned them forward. He backed away from the van, motioning for us to come with him. One of the security guards kept his gun at the ready, while the other opened a bag filled with technical equipment and proceeded to swab down the handles and locks with white cotton—like a TSA officer checking for bombs.

  He ran the swabs through the equipment in the bag.

  “You don’t think we’d come in here with explosives,” Kalif said to Oliver.

  Oliver shrugged. “And yet people have tried it.”

  The security guard at the van looked at the readings on his equipment, and then, apparently satisfied, opened the door to the van and did the same to the body.

  Oliver stood at attention, a few feet from Kalif and I. Waiting.

  I studied his face. It wasn’t real, of course—I’d seen his home face in the pictures Damon took, and in reality he looked a lot like Aida, and therefore like Kalif. This face was a construct—an image he’d built for the sole purpose of running his hardware company, of building an airtight front from which to run his real operations. I’d seen him in pictures. I’d seen him in tense situations; I’d seen him at a distance. But I’d never had a chance to pause and study his long-term persona up close.

  He was handsome. His strong jaw and high forehead were built to project an air of competence and honesty. They were meant to put clients at ease, while simultaneously making them feel like this was a serious man, a man who could be trusted with their secrets and assets.

  I’d give him his competence. But the rest was a lie, plain and simple. A lie he could put on and wear whenever it was convenient for him. Wendy had a mask just like it—though I knew from pictures that her face was shrewder, more focused.

  I guessed from their chosen images that she was bad cop. That’s why Oliver was the one who had come out to meet us.

  But likely as not, this was actually Aida’s mother standing before me. That was the benefit of being a shifter team. They could swap their masks around whenever they chose.

  The security guard grunted at the readings on his equipment, then reached for Mel’s body. He didn’t unwrap him much. Just enough to check the face. Then he turned back around to Oliver, and nodded.

  Oliver reached out and put a heavy hand on my shoulder, stretching the other toward Kalif. Kalif looked at me, and I could see a hint of panic in his eyes.

  Though my muscles all screamed to fight or run, I shifted my shoulders to relax, projecting an air of pride, and calm.

  And for Kalif, I offered a smile.

  He gave a small sigh, and returned it.

  However this turned out, we were in it together.

  Oliver pulled us both close to him, as if to hug us, but stopped with each of us mere inches from him. A slight smile graced his lips, and then he said the last words I’d ever wanted to hear from Oliver Carmine, kidnapper of my parents, killer of my father.

  He bowed his head between ours, and in a kind, gentle voice, he said,

  “Welcome home.”

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  Acknowledgments

  Thank you to my writing group, The Seizure Ninjas, for their excellent feedback on this book, and to my beta readers, especially Kathy Cowley, whose structural advice was especially helpful. Special thanks to James Goldberg, who is always good for telling me how I meant to end my book. You are all, collectively, the best.

  Thanks to my editor Kristina Kugler—who weathered the long revision process on this, my first sequel, while both of us went through setbacks and life upheaval. As always, I love you fifty million billion.

  Thanks to my cover designer, Melody Fender, who tirelessly generates options until my sensibilities are satisfied, and never complains about it. Thanks again for your truly beautiful work on this book. Love you.

  Thanks to Megan Grey, for listening to my endless whining. Without our Starbucks sessions, this book might never have gotten revised. You really are the best friend a girl could ask for. Love you to pieces. (Thanks also to Starbucks of Springville, Culvers of Springville, and The Chocolate of Orem, for the delicious snacks and the table space, all of which were absolutely critical to the finishing of this book.)

  And thanks last (but not least) to my family—my two adorable children and my ever-patient husband. You make my life awesome, and I love you all.

  Janci Patterson is the author of contemporary and science fiction young adult novels. Visit her online at www.jancipatterson.com.

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