Puma

by Jorrie Spencer

  “Hey.” There was question in her eyes and perhaps doubt. She was sensitive to his moods.

  He tried to smile, but he wasn’t sure how genuine it looked. He’d have liked to kiss her deeply, but settled for pushing hair off her brow and brushing his lips across her forehead. Then he turned away and quickly pulled on his clothes.

  “What’s the rush?” she asked.

  “I thought you said Trey was arriving today?” he said somewhat stiffly.

  She appeared puzzled and a little hurt that he was acting so distant after last night. Christ, he hated this. Then again, he’d hated the entire past year, so what was new?

  “You don’t approve of Trey?” So she thought this was the key to understanding Dev’s demeanor this morning.

  “No, that’s not it. I just want to be prepared.” They’d talked so much last night that Dev supposed his muted disapproval of Trey had been evident.

  “Trey is a good guy. Really.”

  “I’m glad.” At his quiet voice, she frowned, then got up and listened.

  “I don’t hear Scott. I think he went outside.”

  Dev walked over to the window that looked out onto the front yard. “He’s packing the car.” He left a deliberate pause. “As if he’s leaving.”

  “Really?” She obviously hadn’t expected that. “I’m surprised, given yesterday.”

  Dev shrugged without looking at her.

  “He seems so dependant on you. Where would he go?”

  Dev shook his head to indicate he didn’t know. He didn’t want to lie if he could help it.

  “Perhaps we should talk to him.” She cast Dev a look of concern. Yep. She might not like what Scott’s powers had done to Dev’s mind, but she was also worried about Scott’s welfare.

  “Perhaps,” Dev allowed.

  “I can’t imagine him going anywhere without you. He doesn’t seem to know how to function without you.”

  “Well, he’s had a time of it.”

  “I know it, or I wouldn’t have allowed him to come here with us in the first place.”

  Again, Dev shrugged and Callie gave him a once-over. He supposed his nerves were showing.

  “You okay?”

  “Sure.” He paused, saw she was waiting for more. “It’s just a lot going on, Callie. Sometimes my brain feels ready to explode. Even when Scott isn’t actively pushing me.”

  She nodded. “Okay, I’ll just duck into the bathroom and we’ll go see what Scott’s up to.” She gave him a warning look. “Wait for me though. Don’t go to him alone.”

  “’Kay.” Dev held her gaze for a moment, and satisfied with his word, she strode down the hall and into the washroom. “I’m going to make coffee,” he called as she shut the door.

  He made himself walk, not run, down the stairs. As silently and quickly as possible, he opened the door to outside and loped to the car. At Dev’s gesture, Scott ducked into the driver’s seat.

  Dev jumped in the passenger side and gave a terse, “Go.”

  Scott gunned it, he sure wasn’t quiet, backing out the short drive, shifting gears and squealing down the road.

  “Don’t look back, Dev,” Scott suggested, but Dev, who dreaded to turn around, did just that…

  …to see Callie pelting out of the house and sprinting down the street just as Scott, ignoring the stop sign, rounded the corner. She was alarmingly fast and Dev felt sick at her effort.

  She was trying to rescue him from Scott’s clutches.

  “Faster,” Dev gritted out, keeping his gaze trained on the back window. He felt he owed Callie that respect, to watch her try to reach him. If he wasn’t careful, he’d tear up and he despised his own tears. Especially in these circumstances, when he was abandoning her under the guise of being pushed and taken by Scott.

  By the time they made their second right-hand turn, Callie was no longer in sight. She was fast, but not that fast. Dev continued to face backwards, waiting to see if she would emerge on the main street before they hit the highway. But he didn’t see her again. They reached the on-ramp and sped up.

  He had betrayed her. Loved her too, yet it was the betrayal she would ultimately remember.

  When he finally turned around to face forward, Scott glanced over at him. “Sorry, Dev.”

  “Not as sorry as I am.”

  Bent over, hands on knees, Callie heaved breaths near the highway. She’d never run this hard as human and she felt like throwing up. Or maybe that was because Dev was with Scott again, and she had no way in hell to find them. Her despair threatened to rise up and strangle her.

  The only thing that kept her from giving up was Trey’s imminent arrival. Trey was a problem solver, and he’d been very interested in, even knowledgeable about, this whole Minder business. He also had access to unusual information. He had to help her find Dev.

  When she got her wind back, she straightened up and slowly made the long walk back to the “safe” house that no longer felt safe. She was shocked and confused, found it difficult to think straight. It reminded her of when she took a blow to the head and she’d felt stunned for a good day. But she didn’t have time for that. She needed to figure out a way to track Dev. Puma sympathized. In fact, her cat sympathized so much that Puma wanted Callie to shift.

  It was tempting, because when Callie was alone, she felt weak. She just wanted to retreat into Puma, who loved being solo, and forget everything.

  Dev had left her. She’d known that he would leave her at some point in the future when the gap between cat and normal became too great. But his departure felt brutal after last night, when he’d been so tender, when she’d told him things she’d never told anyone else. When she’d thought they were in this together.

  He hadn’t even said goodbye. He’d just gone to make coffee…

  She gave her head a sharp shake. Yes, she felt abandoned—what was new? Her life had been a series of people leaving her, starting with her mother, ending with Dev. However, she had to look at the facts in this case. Dev had not departed on his own, but with Scott. Scott, who was still in Dev’s brain telling him what to do, and Callie was frightened for Dev’s state of mind. She feared Scott was going to inadvertently kill him, because the boy didn’t seem to understand just how powerful he was, didn’t seem to recognize that Dev might have a breaking point.

  This was another thing Trey understood—the power of the Minders. Callie had been able to recognize that over the phone. Trey’s intense interest had not come from nothing.

  Though she was perhaps grasping at straws, she chose to believe Trey could help Dev.

  For a half an hour, Dev sat rigid with fury. Beside him a silent, almost cringing Scott drove. The boy had screwed with Dev’s mind, yes, but others had screwed with Scott, had pretty much programmed him to mess with others and, more to the point at the moment, to always return to the pod. So Scott was driving “home” and scared shitless about it.

  All in all, Dev wasn’t sure where to direct his rage. At himself, yes, for being sucked into this mess, but there were others he could certainly blame.

  Not Scott, though. Dev would like to kill Eleanor who had ruined Scott. Minders weren’t innately evil. Dev was convinced of it, could remember a timid, tenderhearted boy who had craved some adult attention.

  “What do we do now?” the boy asked, darting a zillionth glance Dev’s way. Scott was nervous, constantly flexing his hands on the driver’s wheel.

  Dev rubbed his forehead, wishing that he could reclaim his ability to think, to be clever, smart. He used to be, before he’d been recruited by the agency to help them flush out Minders.

  Christ, focus, Dev, don’t dwell on past history. “Remind me again. What was the original plan?”

  Scott let out a watery sigh. “We were supposed to rescue people from the pod. I’d take Eleanor and Max’s cast-offs and you’d rehabilitate them.”

  Right, though that was after Dev lost contact with the agency. What had been the plan beforehand? He tried to go back in time, though using Scott
as a source of facts was problematic, for so many reasons. “When’d I start losing it?”

  “Around Christmastime, things got worse.” Scott’s grip on the wheel turned his knuckles white. “Max came to visit then and I really had to work on you, to make you a convincing zombie, or he would’ve found out about us. Would have realized you were more friend than anything. But after I convinced Max, well, you never trusted me again.” Scott cast Dev his mournful, resentful gaze.

  Dev blew out a harsh breath. It was all too fucking convoluted and he was worried they weren’t going to find their way out of this mess. Especially with Scott’s compulsion to return to the pod. Dev had to delay that homecoming, and prepare.

  “My memory is crap, Scott. I’ve got to put the pieces together before we do anything.”

  “Sorry.” It wasn’t clear what Scott was sorry for specifically so Dev just took it as a general sentiment.

  “Well, I’m sorry too.” Dev scrubbed his face. “Help me figure it out, okay? Maybe there’s a plan we can come up with.”

  “Like last time?” Scott said acidly. “The plan that made you hate me?”

  “I don’t hate you, Scott, but if you think anyone wants to be anyone’s zombie, you should know better.”

  “We agreed!”

  “Absolutely, we agreed.” Dev did remember that now. Thank God his memory was getting jogged free. Weird how much Callie had helped with that… Resolutely, Dev placed thoughts of Callie aside. “That agreement is over. No more pushing or I think my brain will fall out. Sometimes it feels like it’s made of Styrofoam. Nothing there but white gunk that fills my skull. Nothing useful.” Except maybe rage. He could feel the red haze washing through him. That he’d been reduced to this, this thing that did as others bid…

  “It saved your life, Dev.” Scott’s voice was low, intense, defensive. Some fear too, because anger frightened Scott, even if that anger belonged to his zombie, Dev.

  Dev swallowed and tried to pull himself together. Impotent fury would accomplish nothing. “I realize that. But it’s over. No more pushing. No more zombie Dev, okay?”

  Scott scowled, presumably at his own memories. “I didn’t like pushing you because you fought too hard, and I told you not to fight. I told you—”

  Dev cut him off. “How long were we supposed to do this? Rescue people, that is.”

  “Just until the agency raided the pod’s house. You said it would be three months max. But they never came.”

  Fucking agency. They’d recruited him and left him high and dry. Dev needed details, which were alarmingly fuzzy. “‘The agency’? Who the fuck are they?”

  Scott gave him a look of alarm. “You used to work for them, Dev.”

  “I know that. I can’t remember fuck-all about them.”

  “Horton was your contact.”

  Dev rolled his hand in a go-on gesture.

  “You didn’t like them much. Even at the beginning when you hoped they’d do something to help me.”

  “So what the hell was I doing with them?”

  “They found you because you used to be my Big Brother, and they convinced you I was in trouble and that they wanted to help me.”

  “I was an idiot.”

  Scott stared ahead, gripping the wheel hard. “No. It wasn’t hard for them to convince you I was in trouble. Because I was.”

  Dev remembered that, the sick feeling of a year ago when he’d discovered that Scott was being abused, Scott who he’d promised he would always help. But, “Hey, you phoned me, remember?”

  “After you wrote, Dev.”

  “Oh.” Made sense, he guessed. The agency had put him in contact with Scott.

  “Anyway, unfortunately the agency was kind of incompetent. Because Eleanor pegged them right away as agents, then got access to them and forced the other agents to decide the pod was made up of just normal people. They left the pod completely alone, but you got stuck inside. With me. You still thought the agency would find you, but they didn’t. End of story.”

  “Why didn’t Eleanor peg me?” asked Dev.

  “She believed your Big Brother story. Because it was true, and because you actually cared about what happened to me. She found it ironic that I then turned the tables on you and controlled you. She approved.” Bitter words.

  The old memories surged forward. It was terrifying what he’d forgotten, and if Dev had had time, he would have been flattened by them steamrolling over him. But events were barreling down on him and he had to act, not react. “So I really was your Big Brother?”

  “You were. That’s how the agency could search you out and hire you on, remember? You had a natural in.”

  “Christ.” Then Dev recalled something else. “You helped me forget that.”

  Scott blinked over at him, looking defensive. “You told me to. You said you had to be truly zombie-like or our plan wouldn’t work. Max and Eleanor wouldn’t believe in you and they’d kill us both, me for being ‘weak’ and protecting a zombie, and you for knowing about us. So you couldn’t know about us.”

  Dev grunted.

  “Instead,” continued Scott with brittle false cheer, “they’re going to kill us now.”

  If only Dev could think more clearly. He gathered what he could of his thoughts and gave Scott another warning. “I don’t want Eleanor to know about Callie.”

  “If they make us talk—”

  “We’ll have to be careful.”

  “I don’t want to die, Dev.”

  God, Scott sounded young then, and Dev remembered the child, scarcely a teen, so frightened, so alone.

  Dev gave his head a sharp shake. Too many memories were crowding in, overwhelming him. He’d spent months with a brain too empty, trying to find his thoughts, and now they were all slamming down on him. What had previously been fogged and something to shy away from were now coming through in crashing Technicolor. His head pounded, blood throbbed at his temples.

  “I don’t want you to die either, Scott. Let me think on this. If I can.”

  “I’m driving towards the pod.” Scott’s tone was troubled. Dev knew that it was Eleanor who would have programmed Scott to always go home. Max was dead, but Eleanor was alive and powerful. Get rid of Eleanor and Scott might be freed. Which meant Madison and Ruth and Callie would be safe. Scott couldn’t know Dev planned to kill Eleanor, because Scott would feel compelled to stop Dev.

  Another killing. Dev wasn’t used to it, but he could do it. He could murder this woman. What had Callie said last night? That they had murder in common, the killing of killers. It wasn’t exactly the way he’d wanted to bond with her. Still, here he was.

  “I know where you’re headed, Scott. But we’ll need to stop at a hotel for the night, because I’ve got a migraine that is going to kill me if I don’t get out of this sunlight.”

  Scott shot him a troubled glance. “I can drop you and go on ahead.”

  Dev shook his head.

  “I want to, Dev. Let me go back alone. I’ll say Max killed you.”

  “You’ll tell Eleanor the truth, Scott, because you’ll have to. Then they’ll come hunting me, Callie, Ruth and Madison, not necessarily in that order. I have to stay with you. Fewer questions will be asked. Just, in the meantime, I need a fucking plan. So we’re going to stop at a hotel.” Dev looked across at Scott, wondering just how strong the compulsion to return was. Surely a one-night stay at a hotel wasn’t impossible. After all, Scott had spent yesterday with him and Callie, driving away from the pod, not hightailing it back to Eleanor.

  Scott let out a shuddering breath. “Yes, we can stay one night. I can handle that.”

  “Good.”

  “Nothing is good.”

  “True, but it will have to do,” Dev said dryly. “Listen, I’m going to shut my eyes and I need silence for a while, okay?”

  “Yeah, okay.” Scott’s voice suggested nothing was okay. But Dev did close his eyes while he tried to put together a plan of escape, for him, for Scott, and for Ruth and Madison.

>   Chapter Seventeen

  When Callie phoned Trey, she got switched to voice mail. He was probably on a plane now. That or he’d turned off his phone for other reasons.

  So she waited, and waiting that afternoon out was one of the hardest things she’d ever done. Oh, she did stuff too. Showered. Paced the house. Ate as much as she could without making herself sick. Because she wanted to have energy stores in case she and Trey had to shapeshift more than once. Their bodies burned through calories at an amazing rate during those shifts.

  It was late afternoon before a car pulled into the driveway and Callie flung herself out the door to see the man whose help she needed.

  “Trey.” His name came out almost as a hiss of relief.

  He emerged from the car, briefcase in hand, then popped the trunk and grabbed a duffel bag. With long strides, he approached the front steps, acknowledging her with a brief nod. His face was grim, drawn, and he looked weary. She wondered where he’d flown from but knew better than to ask. Trey never appreciated questions.

  “Let’s go inside,” he said.

  She backed up and he passed by her, dumped the bag, but not the briefcase, and aimed straight for the kitchen. She followed.

  He placed the briefcase on the kitchen table, grabbed a glass of water from the sink, and turned to her. “You’re alone.” It wasn’t a question but an observation. Trey’s sense of smell and hearing told him Callie was the only one here.

  “Scott and Dev left this morning.”

  “Why?”

  To her horror, she teared up.

  He didn’t become annoyed by her show of emotion, he simply pulled out a chair for her, patted the cushion and got down to business. “Sit. Tell me what’s going on. I was expecting three of you. This changes things.”

  “I don’t know what happened,” she said, bringing herself under control. “I mean I do, just not how. Somehow Scott forced Dev to leave with him even though I kept them apart, and I thought Scott agreed to not push Dev, and Dev agreed to not visit Scott, but…” She lifted her face to meet his gaze and admitted, “They fooled me.”

  He gave a short shake of the head. “Don’t beat yourself up. This situation is very new to you. You tried to keep a Minder and his zombie apart. These guys program their people. Dev would feel compelled to go to Scott, even if he didn’t or couldn’t admit it to you. Minders like control, demand it of the people who surround them.”