“Thank you for taking all that stuff,” she said with a sigh. “I hope it makes things better.”
“It seems to be what we do with stuff that makes things better. Or worse,” I added.
She nodded. “There you go again. Thinking.”
“It is a hazard of being me.”
“Well, don’t let it mess up the good things in your life—sometimes overthinking ruins things. And remember what I said: If it’ll make you feel better, you can pay me back. But you don’t have to.”
“Nyet,” I said, my voice falling into a whisper. “I will most certainly pay you back,” I promised. “For everything.”
She smiled and said good night and good-bye and I stood there a heartbeat after the door was shut and the lock slid into place before going back down the steps.
Paying her back would be the least I could do. But I doubted it would be the sort of payback she expected now that I knew the truth.
Marlaena
The car pulled around to the door of the abandoned little farmhouse. No need to park in the driveway like a proper family, so we rolled over a few bushes and got as close as we could to our ramshackle sanctuary.
More important than maintaining a lawn was maintaining our lives.
They rushed out to greet us, all grins and laughter—expecting success—until they saw the grim truth tumble from the backseat. Help rushed forward to cradle their friends—their family with a capital F—and help to bring them into the house.
Gabriel was flopped onto the nearest couch, and Kyanne fell into a heap of fabric and springs that once—probably years ago—had been a fashionable chair.
I watched a moment, making sure everyone was settled before I left the room and returned to the car to retrieve the zipper bag.
I sat down in the passenger’s seat again, setting the bag on my lap.
I tugged on the zipper, feeling it catch on a dollar bill. Or maybe a check. I quietly hoped it was the former. Checks, I couldn’t do anything worthwhile with and the only contacts I had who could turn a check into cash were miles and miles away. “Cash,” I whispered. “Have lots and lots of cash. Small bills,” I added, reworking the zipper so that it finally ran loose.
I pulled it back and opened the bulging bag wide to examine the tops of the bills. I fingered through the stack, ruffling the edges. Not a bad take. Junction might be just one more economically depressed bit of small-town America, but at least this store had a decent day.
Except for the death of its owner …
I swallowed.
That was an unexpected consequence of feeding my family.…
Killing was new. But if we went with the Russian, it might be necessary. Several times. Killing might become the norm.
Weren’t our lives “kill or be killed”?
I tugged the stack of bills free and ordered them neatly so all the presidents’ heads were right side up. Then I arranged the bills by denomination, unwilling to count any of it until it all had some semblance of order.
“Was it worth it?”
I jumped at the sound of his voice, nearly dropping the money loose in my lap.
“Jesus, Gareth.”
He eased himself into the seat beside me and put out his hand.
I looked from it to the money and back.
“I’ll count it tonight,” he whispered solemnly. “I want to know what it all comes down to. What’s the cost of one man’s life?”
I threw it all at him, the money, the bag with some coins in its bottom, and the last bits of attitude I had. But I felt no satisfaction as the bills floated down around his head and landed on the dashboard and in his lap. Even the thwap and clink of the bag and its coins hitting him square in the chest did nothing to alleviate my loathing.
My loathing of him, my loathing of my lifestyle and, most of all, my loathing of myself for not being able to find some other way for all of us.
Survival shouldn’t have to be so hard.
“Find out then—tell me what a man’s life is worth,” I demanded. “Because I know what the survival of all those lives in there is worth to me, and it always comes out on top regardless of what anyone else thinks or feels. Always!” I slammed the door and stormed away.
Alexi
“I am sorry, Pietr. But you must try harder. Surely there is some work you can find. You are very clever,” I added. The fact that the brightest among us was struggling to find a minimum-wage job was frustrating beyond words.
Pietr cracked his knuckles. “I’ll ask Wanda and see if there are any openings at the library.”
Jessie and I both began speaking at the same time. “She’s—”
“Not to be trusted,” I blurted out, and everyone’s head snapped up, all eyes sharp and at attention.
“Damn,” Jessie said, her voice little more than a whisper. “I was just going to say she’s out of town for a few weeks.”
“Alexi,” Pietr said, taking Jessie’s hand, “what are you talking about?”
We were all keenly aware of Jessie’s father’s intentions toward Wanda. They had fallen into a romantic relationship—initially a bit one-sided—as Wanda needed a way to stay close to the students of Junction and being around Jessie and her smart-mouthed little sister provided decent intel considering how girls talked. But Wanda seemed to have truly fallen for Jessie’s dad. And Jessie was just beginning to accept the idea.
I should have kept my mouth shut. “It was nothing,” I said, seeing the darkness grow in Jessie’s brown eyes.
“No,” she said, her eyes fixed on me, her gaze full of daggers and, worse yet, the fear that I was right. “Tell me—tell us—what you meant. Why now can’t Wanda be trusted?”
I sat heavily. “I have learned a few more things about her past.”
“Oh.” Jessie heaved out a sigh. “Her past?”
“Da.”
“So this isn’t about something she’s doing right now.”
“Yes and no,” I said, struggling to clarify. “It is about her past, but she has yet to come clean about it now.…”
“Sometimes there are things in a person’s past that no longer matter in the present,” Jessie said. “People change and grow. People make mistakes but they can get past them.”
Amy watched her, hope in her eyes.
I hated to be another one who dashed her hopes, so I chose my words carefully. “People can change—I believe that. But what she did should have been explained. Although I doubt there is any explanation that could suffice.…” I ran a hand through my hair and tried to focus. “She has not told us all about a very important part of her past. A part that ties in directly to our family’s past.”
“Quit beating around the bush,” Jessie urged me. “What did she do in the past that caused you to not trust her now, after all we’ve been through—the way she fought beside us against the company. What could it possibly be that she did that was so wrong you can’t trust her even now?”
I looked at her levelly and licked my lips before saying the words that already lodged in my throat. “She murdered our father.”
CHAPTER TWENTY
Alexi
Jessie seemed to stop breathing. She blinked once, a slow move that made it possible to believe I was actually watching the wheels in her brain struggle for traction. “Wanda murdered your father?” she asked.
I knew it was unbelievable. I could not even grasp the depth or gravity of what I had so recently discovered—and what I had finally said aloud. “Da.”
“Proof, Sasha,” Jessie begged.
Had she ever called me that before—ever called me Sasha?
“I need proof.”
But I knew what she really meant was: Please let his proof be something I can blow a hole through—please let him be wrong. Oddly, I felt guilty knowing I was not wrong.
Wanda had saved Jessie’s life—had probably saved most of us at least once—which made it even harder to fathom the level of her betrayal.
How much worse to know all the good
she had done recently and still know it could not stack up against her cruelest work—taking away our father’s life and imprisoning our mother?
“There was a woman that my mother spoke of briefly while we lived in Farthington—a friendly woman with a small, yippy dog. Mother met her when she was out for a jog one day and they began meeting every morning. They were not close friends, but they talked.”
Cat leaned forward, resting her elbows on the table. “That was the little dog Mother joked about eating, da? ‘Just a hairy morsel,’ she laughed one day, ‘barely any meat—just fur and bones.’”
“Da,” I agreed. “That was Wanda’s dog. The woman? That was Wanda.”
“I never met the woman,” Cat said, confused. Pietr and Max nodded in agreement. “Did you meet her?”
“Nyet. But she would have been there that night.”
No one asked what night I meant because everyone knew. It was the only night that still haunted all of us—the night our parents disappeared from Farthington.
“This could all be coincidence,” Jessie spoke up.
“I am sorry, Jessie. Nyet. This is not coincidence.” I went to the china cabinet, opened a door on its bottom, and pulled out the photo.
We all saw it.
Cat cursed, and Jessie knew by that I was right.
“It’s a good thing she’s not anywhere nearby right now,” Max snarled.
I nodded. “Pravda, brother. Very true.”
It was one of the few times recently he did not recoil at my use of the familial term for him. In this—in anger—we were again united. Kin.
But until Wanda returned to Junction, there was little we could do to mete out justice.
Marlaena
I stalked into the house an hour later, the cold finally edging its way past the protection afforded by my body’s extra heat. I paused in the kitchen, watching the candlelight dance eerily along the dusty old curtains. I pulled open the refrigerator out of habit long ago made useless—how many abandoned homes still maintained electricity, or a working fridge?
Dark and empty. As expected. Noise came from the little living room, and I slunk toward it to lean on the door’s warped frame.
There he was, Gareth, licking their wounds, so to speak. Soothing and gentle and—utterly Christlike.… I wanted to scream. Or crucify him.
How could he be so sharp with me and so loving to them? And so consistently?
Kyanne was gloating at the extra attention he paid her and it didn’t hurt the growth of her tender ego that Noah and Darby were seated at her feet, telling jokes until she laughed and scolded them for making her hurt.
My stomach ached to see them like that. So close, and me not a necessary part of any of it. This was my pack. My family.
“They heal, you know,” I snapped at him, striding forward and slapping his hand away from the wound on Kyanne’s arm as he was being his tender best with her. It disgusted me how gentle he could be with absolutely anyone.
“Everyone heals faster with a touch of compassion,” he replied levelly.
“Why must you be so soft with everyone?” I snarled, stepping away from the group of them. I could hear him behind me—feel the heat of him by my back—and it made my stomach do strange things, made my mind slow. I spun to face him.
“Why must you be so hard?”
“Damn it, Gareth,” I whispered, backing into a wall. “Survival. That’s why I do everything. That’s how I make all my choices. It’s survival. Needs and some wants. For them, for you, for me.…”
“We need to start looking further ahead,” he said. “This simple survival is coming closer and closer to killing us.” He took a step toward me, coming so near I could smell the sweet scent of his breath.
My head swam and my spine and knees went loose seeing him so close, so touchable, so soft and kind.… “What are you suggesting?” I whispered, knowing in my head the words were laced with a request for far more than he was willing to give. I blinked and, remembering myself, my place, his place, I straightened and cleared my throat. “Do you have a plan? Some brilliant idea that could make all our lives perfect?”
“Not perfect. But perhaps stable. Maybe better.”
“Stable. How very middle-class American and human”—I let the word twist out of my mouth like I’d said something foul—“of you.” I crossed my arms before me, effectively building a wall between us.
I’d return to the Russian. If my plan regarding the Russian-Americans didn’t work out first.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Jessie
Having talked to Harnek and spent a little more time with Sophie’s wards, I’d come to a conclusion. “It’s simple, really,” I said. “We just need someone on the inside to warn us if things go bad. Or if there’s info we need to know.”
“Yeah,” Amy gave a snort. “That’s simple. How do you get someone on the inside of a group like this?”
“I agree with Amy. We have a strong suspicion of who the local leader is here, but getting access to his files or overhearing any of his calls … it’s risky, Jessie. He almost never leaves the offices—”
“Unless there’s a food fight—”
Amy grinned. “Yeah, some sort of civil disobedience the teachers can’t handle.”
“And I’m already walking on dangerous ground with”—Sophie cleared her throat—“my other project.”
I nodded. “I agree, Sophie. I can’t have you involved.”
Cat blinked at me.
“You’re not in the running, either, Cat. You attract way too much attention still being new—”
“And foreign—”
“And gorgeous,” Amy concluded, sticking her tongue out.
Cat’s smile spread nearly from ear to ear. “You are all so much trouble, but I must keep you all as a result of that.”
“Does this mean we’re suddenly kept women?”
Cat snorted. “Have you seen how little the Super Shoe Shop pays me? I could not afford to keep a mouse!”
“And yet I see some strappy new high-heel boots,” I remarked, looking at her feet pointedly.
“Ah! They were discounted,” she said, stroking her fingers along the straps and their shiny platinum buckles. “Besides,” she said with a smile, “making an occasional purchase helps keep my spirits up.”
“Then your spirits must have been sky-high after you brought that tiny leather jacket home…,” Amy muttered, looking up and away in mock innocence.
“Oh! You are so not being kept!” Cat scolded her.
“Okay, okay,” I said, waving my hands for their attention. “Look. I have a plan—”
Pietr’s tray clinked down beside mine. “Excellent. I would love to hear this plan of yours.”
I barely kept from groaning. Without skipping a beat, I announced, “The plan is: We all meet up after school and hit the mall to do some window shopping!”
On cue, all the girls smiled and nodded or clapped agreement. “It’s settled then.” I winked at them and finished my lunch.
* * *
Because my friends were smart and girls are naturally quite savvy, we met up right after lunch in the girls’ bathroom—the only thing close to a fortress of solitude at the high school. The only place Pietr wouldn’t barge in and give his two cents on my plans. Not that he barged in anywhere anymore really.…
“Okay, some office staff’s been let go due to the new budget cuts instituted by the superintendent,” I announced.
“Heard he’s a drunk,” Amy muttered in disgust, looking down at her shoes.
Aghast that she’d be so cold about someone suffering from alcoholism considering her dad’s own fragile state, I stared at her for a long minute.
“He’s not in rehab,” she explained suddenly, realizing I was staring. “It’s different because of that.”
I chewed on the inside of my cheeks and wondered when a good time would be to point out that as great as it was she thought things could be made better by getting help, she herself still was
n’t talking to anyone or seeing a professional about what had happened to her. Not now, the voice in my head said.
“So, because of these staff cuts, the office is looking for a couple volunteers to help the ladies out during study halls and lunch breaks and before and after school. It’s as close as any of us can legally get to what Perlson’s doing. And it may be close enough to find out what’s up.”
Nods.
“Cat’s out. Sophie’s out, and I’m out—I have a bit of a reputation with sticking my nose places it doesn’t belong and—”
“Breaking the noses of others?” Amy quipped, recalling the fight in the locker room.
“Yeah, that, too. I no longer have angel status.” I shrugged. “Amy?”
“I never had angel status and I doubt any of the office cares to help me earn my wings,” she muttered. “I’d stick out like a sore thumb.”
I had to agree. “So…”
They shrugged.
“We need someone in the office—someone working the inside track.” I fell silent, hearing the door open and close.
Sarah stepped around in front of me. “I’ll do it,” she said.
* * *
“Nooo.” Amy’s was the first protest, but certainly not the only one. “She can’t be trusted. She’s always the first to flip-flop, and there are things she doesn’t know—things that she shouldn’t.”
Cat nodded. Emphatically.
“Buuut,” I said, looking Sarah flat in the face, “she doesn’t have to know everything as long as she knows she needs to report everything she sees and hears. No matter what.”
“Not a problem,” she said firmly. “Besides, the office ladies love me.”
“Is that love, or is it a deeply seated fear they have of you?” Amy asked.
“At the moment I don’t care. Jessie needs help, and none of you can do it. But I can. I have the social graces and ability to maneuver in different social circles—a gift some of you don’t,” she said, looking straight at Amy. “I have a high-end phone that can snap awesome photos of documents, record at a remarkable distance, and has no problems sending everything it gathers to somebody’s e-mail. It’s the perfect tool for spying.”
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