by J. Kenner
Lane shook her head. “He’ll find something the others won’t. And even if he doesn’t, I understand what he’s going through. He needs to do something—anything.” She shrugged. “I’m going stir crazy myself. I’m absolutely useless . . . no help at all to my son.”
Zoe’s heart twisted, and she gave her stomach a protective pat before walking to Lane and putting her arms around her. “We’ll find him,” she said.
And she meant it. Her hormones be damned, they were going to find Davy and save him.
From the small window over the sink, Lane watched as the sun slid closer to the horizon: a symphony of colors reflected on the calm ocean, deceptively beautiful. Night was falling, and still they hadn’t found any leads. There were monsters in the dark, and her son was with one of them.
Deena walked into the room and Lane tried to conjure a smile for her.
“I just came in to tell you that I called Hoop. I thought it might be helpful if he were here.”
Lane smiled a silent thank-you. She wished Taylor were around, but her foster brother was still at his convention in Switzerland. Zoe had called him, of course, but he wasn’t going to be able to get back until morning. Hoop was Taylor’s best friend, and a private eye as well. She was glad he was on his way over.
Of course, she wasn’t sure how much help Deena’s fiance would be. She’d take whatever warm bodies she could get helping in the search, though, and maybe Hoop would think of something the dozens of Protectors already looking for Davy had missed. At the very least, he’d give her a hug. At the moment she could really use one of Hoop’s clumsy but sincere hugs.
She paused. In truth, it wasn’t Hoop’s hug she wanted but Jason’s. Earlier, at Sea World, he’d held her tight in the circle of his arms. She’d felt safe. Secure. His embrace had provided a barrier between her and horrible reality, and she’d succumbed to the pleasure, drinking in the optimism engendered by his caress.
Now, the memory of his touch teased her. How her body had heated when she’d seen him. And how right they’d felt together so many years ago—even if his departure had proved they weren’t right at all.
Then again, if what Jason said was true, he would have returned if he could have. Which meant . . . what? There was still something there? After all this time?
She frowned. No. No way. Not after what he’d done.
The day she’d found out she was pregnant with Davy had been the most emotional of her life. Wonderful, but terrifying. She’d needed him there, wanted him holding her hand and sharing her joy and her fears.
But he’d walked away. Maybe he’d meant to return, and maybe he hadn’t. The bottom line was that he’d put himself before her and her child, and she couldn’t trust that he wouldn’t do the same thing all over again. That was even more true now that she knew he was a Protector. She would never come first. Even—especially—if he was the good guy he claimed; saving the world would always rank just a little bit higher than being with her. Than being with his son.
Honestly, she couldn’t bear that. She’d spent her childhood being shuffled from home to home, never truly being important to anyone. She didn’t want that for Davy. Her son was her priority, and he needed to be the same to whatever man she ended up with.
From what she knew of Jason, he wasn’t that man.
She sighed. She’d work with him to find Davy, but that was all. Once she had her son back, she’d get on with her life.
She stifled a shiver, the truth crashing in on her once again as it had all afternoon: Her son was missing. For brief moments she could remove herself from that reality, could think objectively and know that everything was being done to bring him back. But then she’d return to her own skin, and the horror of it would surround her.
Her skin was clammy and her head throbbed. Her chest ached, and her eyes burned from tears both released and forced back. She was living her worst nightmare, worse than any situation she’d expected or worked so hard to prevent. So much for all her efforts at safety. None of her planning or worrying had protected her boy, and now she had to rely on the help of the one man she’d never expected to see again.
As if reading her thoughts, Deena and Zoe reached out for her, each squeezing a hand. She smiled, wishing she had more to cling to than just their friendship.
But she did have more. She had Jason’s promise. And even if she didn’t entirely trust him, she did trust that.
She turned to Deena, squinting. “Zoe thinks I’m nuts for trusting him. What do you think?”
Color rushed to Deena’s cheeks, and Lane almost laughed out loud. Deena was so not the blushing type, and to see her now looking decidedly uncomfortable was funny. Of course, considering her own state of near hysterics, she’d probably laugh at Davy’s favorite Protector joke: How many superheroes does it take to screw in a lightbulb? None. They just find Electroman and ask him to light up.
She clenched her fists and fought a burst of giggles. Yup. She was definitely hysterical.
After a couple of deep breaths, she felt reasonably in control and repeated her question about Jason. Deena licked her lips, but this time the woman didn’t budge. She didn’t look at Zoe, either.
“I don’t know what to think. Jason said the kidnapper was a shapeshifter.” She turned to Zoe. “Since I’m not entirely sure what you saw . . .” She trailed off, her words laced with some import Lane didn’t understand.
Zoe did, though. She sucked in a sharp breath, then closed her eyes. “Fire,” she whispered. “That’s what’s been bugging me. He used fire.”
When Lane’s sister-in-law opened her eyes again, she looked straight at Lane and uttered a name. It wasn’t as bad as Hieronymous, but it was still enough to turn Lane’s blood cold:
“Mordichai.”
Davy shoved his glasses into the front pocket of his T-shirt. When his pretend daddy had kidnapped him, those glasses had been in his jeans. Now the arm had broken off, and his mom was going to be really mad. He’d only had the glasses for a month, and she’d made him promise to always wear them and not put them in his pocket, because they cost a whole bunch and she didn’t have the money to replace them every time he sat on them.
This probably meant no Pokemon for at least a week.
The thought of his Game Boy sitting on his desk at home made him start sniffling again. He did so loudly, then ran the back of his hand under his nose and wiped it on his shorts, determined not to be a crybaby. His mom and Aunt Zoe would come soon. Elmer would tell them where to find him, and then he wouldn’t be stuck in this big white room all alone.
When the big Outcast named Clyde had taken him and gotten on that elevator, he’d been really scared—even after Clyde claimed they were just going to a secret hideout. Davy had been so scared, in fact, he’d been happy to be left all alone in this locked room.
He’d scoped it out really good, testing every single part of the walls just like he was playing Super Mario Brothers. But no secret passages opened, which meant that the room made a lousy secret hideout. Of course, by then he knew it wasn’t really a secret hideout. Even though the walls weren’t stone and the floor was carpeted, it was still a dungeon and he was a prisoner, and unless he figured a way out, he was stuck.
Now his tummy was rumbling and he’d looked at every single inch of the room. A twin bed was in the middle, and the walls were all white, with posters of Teletubbies—like he was a baby or something. There was a mirror hanging over the sink, and Davy felt certain there was a camera behind it. The toilet was right next to the bed in the middle of the room, which was kinda gross, so Davy was gonna hold it for as long as he could.
The door locked from the outside, and he couldn’t find a latch. The one window above the bed had bars behind its sheer blue curtains. Davy looked around for a light or a switch but didn’t find one. He also didn’t find any way out—and since he didn’t have any of his tools, he couldn’t make anything to cut away the bars. All he had were his clothes and his Walkman, and that wasn’t much to work wi
th.
It was starting to get late, and it was definitely past his bedtime. The sun had fallen below his window, and the room had already gotten darker. As the sun continued to sink, it would just get worse. And even though he knew there weren’t really any worse things in the dark than there were in the light, he still didn’t want to be all alone in the blackness.
The floor was cold, but the bed squeaked and smelled funny, so Davy plunked down on the floor and took off his sneakers. With his left shoe, his belt buckle, the broken arm of his glasses, and his Walkman, he could probably make some sort of light fixture out of the toilet. It wouldn’t be as cool as his SpongeBob lamp back home, but it would keep him out of the dark. He went to work, happy to have something to do other than sit on the floor watching the shadows move on the wall and wondering if his mom would show up before morning.
A little while later, when the sunlight disappeared completely, it didn’t matter. He’d used the wire from the broken glasses and the metal from his belt buckle and connected them to the back of his red light-up tennis shoe. He’d used the batteries from his Walkman as a power source, along with the water in the toilet bowl, since water was a conductor. He thought it was cool that the toilet now glowed red.
However, he only had one shoe left. He could’ve used both and made the toilet even brighter, but the right shoe had the tracking device he’d invented, and he was pretty sure Elmer would see where he was on the Lite-Brite map and tell someone. He didn’t want to give that up.
His tummy growled some more, and he wondered if anybody was going to come to bring him food—or if there was even anybody around. Curious, he pulled what remained of his glasses from his pocket and balanced them on his nose. With only one arm they tilted sideways, and he had to cock his head so they didn’t fall off.
As soon as he looked through the lenses, the walls started to go all fuzzy, and soon they disappeared altogether. The lenses were the ones his mom had bought, except Davy had added an X-ray coating. He hadn’t told his mom, because he didn’t figure she’d want him to be messing with them—especially since she’d had to use “plastic” to pay for them, and that always made her grumpy. But Davy had wanted to be like his Aunt Zoe. And since he couldn’t see through walls on his own, he’d used the chemistry set at his best friend Eric’s house.
The set belonged to Eric’s brother, but according to Eric’s mother, “Ricky was flunking out of tenth grade because he couldn’t stop listening to that darned, infernal music.” So Davy had figured Ricky wouldn’t care too much if he used his chemistry set.
Now Davy was even more glad that he had. Without these glasses, he wouldn’t be able to see outside this room. Not that there was much to see. Just more rooms like his, but with no one in them. And a long, empty hall with no one in it.
He squinted, turning his head even more sideways to try to get a better view down the hall. A shadow. And it was moving.
Holding his breath, he backed up, half hoping it would go away and half hoping the shadow belonged to someone who was bringing him dinner.
Still . . . what if the shadow belonged to a monster? Unlike his friends at school, Davy knew that there were real monsters, and they had to live somewhere. He was pretty sure that a dark, scary island dungeon would be the perfect place.
The shadow kept coming, looming bigger and bigger. An orange light flickered on the polished walls, both it and the shadow getting nearer. And then a man appeared, a black cape swirling around him. His face was made of orange fire and dark shadows.
Davy couldn’t help it. He screamed.
“Hopping Hera,” Mordi hissed, aiming the flashlight at the magnetic keypad on Davy’s cell. “You’d think you’d seen a ghost.”
He shifted back to Jason’s form and opened the door. Lane’s kid was huddled in the corner, half a pair of glasses hanging off his face and his eyes wide behind their lenses.
Damn. The kid was really scared.
Well, considering the circumstances, Mordi couldn’t blame him. In fact, he felt a little guilty, adding to what had to already be the worst day in the kid’s short life. “It’s just me, okay? I didn’t mean to scare you.”
“I’m not scared of you,” Davy said. He crawled out of the corner and tucked his broken glasses carefully into a pocket. “But I thought you were a monster.”
“And you are scared of monsters?”
Davy nodded. “Aren’t you?”
Mordi frowned, sure there was some pop-psychology way to answer that question, but nothing brilliant came to him.
“Yeah, kid,” he finally said, figuring he might as well go with the truth. “As a matter of fact, I am.”
He’d be especially scared if he was stuck like this kid, in a dark room with—
He broke off the thought with a frown, then glanced down at his flashlight. Sure enough, he’d turned it off, just like he’d thought. So where was that odd red glow coming from?
Squinting into the cell, he noticed an otherworldly looking toilet. “Davy, did you . . . ?”
The boy nodded. “I don’t like the dark,” he said simply.
“You did that?”
Another nod.
Chalk one up for the kid. Hieronymous had said the boy was a genius. Maybe it was true.
“If it’s dark, my mom and Aunt Zoe won’t be able to find me,” Davy added.
Mordi thought of Jason Murphy, out there somewhere and surely pissed. Especially if word had gotten to him about how Mordi was impersonating him. “What about your real dad?”
Davy shrugged, looking a little sad. “I told you, he’s an astronaut. He’d come if he could, but he’s stuck in space.” Not a bad rationalization for parental failure, Mordi thought. Too bad it wasn’t true of his own father. Hieronymous had been right there during Mordi’s formative years. But despite his physical presence, his father had been absent. The situation had sucked then, and it sucked now. Mordi couldn’t help but hope Jason really did manage to find and rescue his kid. And then stayed with him.
The odds, though, weren’t in his favor.
For one thing, this island was hidden by a cloaking device, making it invisible to both mortal and Protector eyes. For another, Hieronymous had rigged it with all sorts of traps designed to make sure no Protector could get through.
Yes, the island was quite Council-proof. Which was a pity, because Mordi really didn’t want Hieronymous to steal Davy’s brainpower. And at the same time, he wasn’t at all sure that he was up for the job of preventing it. Foiling his father in secret was one thing. It would be quite another to openly oppose him, to see that usual faint glimmer of disappointment change to outright hatred.
All he’d ever wanted was approval from his dad. And if he did anything to help save Davy, he could pretty much toss that possibility right out the window.
He cocked his head, his eyes going back to the jerry-rigged toilet. “So, you’re a smart kid, huh?”
Davy shrugged. “I guess so. My mom’s making me go to private school next year. If she can figure out how to pay for it.”
“Don’t you want to go to private school? I bet you’d get even smarter.”
“Yeah, but Eric goes to my old school.”
“I see. Is that your friend?” Mordi tapped a finger against his chin, thinking. “So maybe you’d rather not be quite so smart.”
“I dunno,” Davy said. “Maybe.”
“Makes perfect sense to me.” Mordi stepped farther into the room. “Be normal, hang out with your friends.” He nodded, more to convince himself than Davy. “Yes, maybe that wouldn’t be so bad after all.”
“Mister?”
Mordi jerked his head up, realizing he’d lost himself in his thoughts. “No matter,” he said, striding to the child. He carried a bag of food for the kid, and now he plunked it down on the little table, next to the remains of what had once been a Sony Walkman.
“I hope you like peanut butter and jelly,” he said, pulling a sandwich out of the bag.
Davy nodded, then
hobbled over, his right foot bare.
Mordi rolled his eyes. “What’s with the shoes?”
“The other one’s in the toilet,” Davy said, as if that made perfect sense.
“And you’re walking around wearing only one because . . . ?”
“ ’Cause Elmer needs it to find me.”
“O-kay,” Mordi agreed. Whatever fantasy made the kid happy. He pointed at the sandwich. “Dig in.”
Davy did, and Mordi leaned against the wall, watching the kid scarf down the boring little meal. He half-snorted, the possibility of rescue by tennis shoe amusing him.
The glow of the toilet caught his attention, and he frowned. Then again . . . If the kid could turn a toilet bowl into some sort of art-deco light fixture, then Hera only knew what he could do with a tennis shoe. He was a genius, right?
A small smile played across Mordi’s face, and he hoped the kid was as smart as Hieronymous thought. Maybe Jason or Zoe would find him after all. “Stay on your toes, Davy,” he whispered. “Maybe your daddy will come through for you.”
“Mordichai,” Zoe repeated. Was she right? Was her cousin really the culprit? That seemed to be the only reasonable explanation, what with the fire the kidnapper had used. That was one of Mordi’s skills.
But Mordi? She didn’t want to believe it was true. Despite everything, Zoe had a soft spot for her cousin. And after Mordi’s most recent adventure with Hale and Tracy, Zoe had hoped to Hera he’d turned over a new leaf. If this new hunch was right, though, Mordi had yet to extricate himself from his father’s shadow.
Lane shook her head, a jumble of emotions playing across her face. “What fire? And what does Mordi have to do with this? If he has Davy . . .” She trailed off with a shiver.
Zoe couldn’t blame her. Lane’s past encounters with Mordi hadn’t exactly been warm and fuzzy. For that matter, Mordi had put Davy in danger before.