I pull my gun and open Heather’s door. She looks grim, like she was expecting this to happen.
“Do you have a phone?” I ask.
Wyatt holds out a burner phone, black and identical to all the others. “Already took it off her.”
“Do you have any other Crane tech?”
She shakes her head. “You think they allowed me to keep anything?”
“You were there that first night. You were smiling.”
She holds up her hands and rolls her eyes, looking much closer to twenty than she did in the Crane house. “Yeah, that’s kind of the point. Leon needed a nice little blond girl to make people feel at home. I mean, would you have joined up if it was nothing but big dudes with Uzis?”
“So why’d you stay? Why were you mean to us?”
She gestures to the cooler at her feet. “I told you—I’m the nurse. Your mom, Kevin, anybody who got hurt. I was in nursing school, so I was the only person who could help. There are more than a hundred people currently on Crane land. It’s hard to walk away from people who need you.” Her smile seems genuine, apologetic. “I was mean because if you didn’t do what Leon told you to do, you’d get shot. It seemed better to pretend to be a bitch than have to patch you up later when you were full of bullet holes.”
“Why should I believe you?”
She throws her hands up. “Do you want to search me? I ran out of that trailer carrying your mom’s meds, so it’s not like I had time to grab all my stuff.”
I nod. She huffs and gets out of the car. I give Wyatt my gun and step close, running my hands down Heather’s arms, over her ribs, around her waist, down her hips and legs and up her inseams. I’ve never searched anyone before, and I’m very aware of how awkward and intrusive it is and how uncomfortable it’s making both of us.
“I’m telling you—I’m on your side,” Heather says. “Ask Kevin.”
I look to him, and he’s already nodding. “Mr. Crane was really mean to her. He made her cry. She’s pretty okay. Except for the broccoli.”
Heather laughs. “Yeah, I make him eat his vegetables. You can’t heal if you eat nothing but Pop-Tarts.”
When I searched her, I found nothing. If she’s hiding something, even a Post-it note, she’s hiding it well. She sure as hell doesn’t have a gun or a knife . . . and then I think of something.
“Wait.”
I drop to a knee and run hands inside her beat-up cowboy boots. Sure enough, I find a knife in a clip-on sheath.
“Were you going to tell us about that?”
She looks at me dead-on. “If you were suddenly taken hostage by a bunch of teen assassins with guns, in the world we live in now, would you offer up that you had a knife?”
I fold the knife up and put it in my back pocket.
“I don’t know if I can trust you, but I know that we need you. So just remember that if you make one false move, if we catch you with a phone or trying to contact the Cranes, I will shoot you. And not in the leg.” I look pointedly at Kevin. “I shot him for the wrong reason. It’s a lot worse when I do it for the right reason.”
She sighs. “Look, I’m just here to help people who are hurting. So just know that I never took the Hippocratic oath, and don’t piss me off.”
I hold out my hand, and she looks at it a moment before shaking it.
The morning’s quiet is shattered by the sound of a slap. I look to my parents, and instead of the tearful reunion I’d kind of hoped to see, she’s crying, and he has a red print on his cheek.
“You bastard,” my mom says, her normally frail voice loud and angry. “You could’ve stopped this. It’s all your fault.”
“Karen,” my dad says, pleading.
“Go to hell, Jack.”
She walks to the car, gets in the front seat, and slams the door. Everyone is staring at my dad.
“Everything okay?” Wyatt asks. He steps behind me, a hand on my shoulder, and I want to melt into him, into the relief of a solid body behind me, someone I can trust completely.
My dad just shakes his head, so I answer.
“I guess when you walk out on your girlfriend and daughter and then show up thirteen years later working for the enemy, things aren’t easy.”
“You can say that again,” my dad says, his eyes pinned to where my mom sits in the front of the burgundy sedan, carefully staring straight ahead. I realize that it’s the same car Wyatt brought back from his Wiper assignment. I didn’t even think about that part of the plan—that if they managed to get everyone out, there was no way we would all fit in Wyatt’s old Lexus.
“Dad, do the Cranes track their cars?”
He snaps out of his freak-out and looks at me in confusion. “Just the regular cars? No. Anything we can track, Valor can track too. They even switch around the license plates so that they’re harder to find. Plus . . . well, you blew up all of their laptops.”
“I totally did.” I grin, remembering how good it felt to spray-paint the wall. “Did you bring my backpack?” I ask Wyatt. He nods. “And food for Matty?”
His face falls, and he shakes his head and swallows hard. “Yeah, but . . .”
“But what?”
He turns to look back at the cars, or maybe he just turns away from my stare. “We lost Matty.”
20.
I go cold all the way down to my toes. How did I not notice it before? I guess I was so busy being totally overjoyed that my mom was alive and my dad was here that I didn’t notice my dog was gone.
“What the hell happened?” I want to shove him, hard. But I’m not that far gone yet. “How the hell do you lose a dog? Is she dead? Oh my God.”
He turns back, hands on his head. “No. I don’t think so. You don’t understand. You weren’t there. I had to get all our stuff, get rid of the last bomb, get Gabriela and Chance and the other kids, get in position so I could see everyone running out of the woods once the shit hit the fan. I had to look for your mom, just wandering around the woods in the dark. I couldn’t find her. And I was holding Matty’s leash, and then the bombs went off, and she bolted.”
I take a deep breath through my nose. “She bolted. That’s it?”
“You don’t know how big the explosion was. I mean, they must’ve been hiding C-4 in one of those rooms, because it wasn’t just, like, BOOM. It was this huge chain of explosions, windows blasting out and nails and wood and fire everywhere. People were hurt, kids were screaming, the old ladies in the kitchen were dragging themselves out the door with their bones sticking out. It was a nightmare. So I watched the crowd and found your mom, and we ran for the car. I had to hit the guy guarding the road on the way out. Like, I hit a guy with the car. There’s a dent in the hood.” He walks over to the car, runs a hand over it.
I’m crying again. I used to fight tears, control them, tamp them back down. But now they just flow whenever they want to, hot rivulets down my cheeks. I wake up like this every night, crying before I even know where I am, but this is worse, because I can’t count on Wyatt to stop it. I don’t want him to touch me now.
“So what you’re telling me,” I say slowly, “is that Leon Crane has my dog?”
He nods. “Maybe. I don’t know. I’m so sorry, Patsy. I just—”
“You’re driving the red car?”
“Yeah. Why?”
I walk to his gold Lexus, open the back door, sit next to Rex, and shut the door.
It’s a tight fit, crammed in with Rex and Bea, and I put my arm along the window and my head on my arm. My dad and Wyatt are arguing outside, but I don’t want to hear it.
“May I?” I ask, pointing to Rex’s ever-present earbuds.
He shrugs, pulls one out, and hands it to me. I shove it in my ear and feel a wave of vertigo as pounding, thumping beats travel down my ear hairs. Normally, I would yank out the earbuds and enjoy silence instead, but I’ll take techno, or whatever it is, if it means I don’t have to hear Wyatt’s voice right now. For good measure, I stick my finger in my other ear and give myself up to Re
x’s music.
The other car has my mom in the passenger seat, Heather and Kevin in the backseat, and Wyatt in the driver’s seat. I’m too furious with him to even stare in that direction. I want so much to be with my mom, to hug her and never let her go, but at the same time, something holds me back. Does she know everything I’ve done? What will she think about the gun that’s left a permanent indentation against my spine, the one I used to shoot Kevin? Does she even know that was me, or does she just assume he was the victim of another faceless monster?
What happens when she realizes that I’m the faceless monster, and that it was done out of love for her?
That’s what keeps me in this car. The other one is too heavy with rage and love.
Chance is at the wheel, and he keeps giving me an apologetic smile that just reads fake on his smug face. Gabriela’s frown is real, though it could also be that she hates being the one holding Monty’s aquarium. So he brought his snake but let Matty go? And he didn’t find my mom before the bombs went off. Jesus. He messed up big-time. We almost lost them both.
I guess my dad would rather hold a snake than ride in the car with my boyfriend and my mom, as he switches places with Gabriela, sends her to the other car, and settles in with the snake box in his lap.
“Where to?” Chance asks, not even bothering with introductions.
“Start driving, and I’ll tell you,” my dad says gruffly. “Take a right out of here.”
“You’re a cheerful bunch,” Chance says as he turns the car around and leads the way. “Like, you survived a hostile takeover of the entire country and then you survived a crazy backwoods dictator, and then you instigated a bombing as cover for a rescue, and now you’re all boo-hoo, woe is me. I’m a little puss.”
“Leon has my dog, you ass,” I mumble into my arm, “and, by the way, this is my dad, who abandoned me when I was four. It’s complicated.”
He whistles. “Yeah, okay. I deem that a just cause for whining. Why’s Wyatt so pissed?”
“Because he’s an idiot who lost my dog.”
He starts to chuckle and clears his throat. “But he did save your mom, so . . .”
“Barely. So he gets to live, but he’s not going to enjoy it for a while.”
I stick my finger back in my ear and watch the trees flash by. My dad gives terse directions to Chance, and even though I thought I knew everything about this area, the same ten square miles where I grew up, we take unfamiliar streets, back roads that keep us off the main highways. We hit a busier road, and I finally see what I’ve been hoping to find: evidence of anarchy. The windows of a Second Union are broken and covered in plywood. A check cashing store belches smoke through a door torn off its hinges. A church billboard reads MONEY IS THE ROOT OF ALL EVIL. PRAY FOR REDEMPTION.
We have to slow down through one section, thanks to a protest bleeding into the street, the crowd wearing ski masks and holding handmade signs that say FUCK YOUR VALOR and MY SON DIED FOR YOUR DEBT and THE WAR IS HERE and THE END IS NIGH. When a police siren screams behind us, my dad shouts for Chance to turn off at the next intersection. Two shiny black SUVs follow the cruiser, and I don’t want to see what happens to the protesters. They still think they’re safe probably. That the Constitution and courts still count. That free speech is free.
They think they only have to worry about what happens at their front doors.
Fools.
The back roads take forever, but I’m glad we’re away from the chaos of the city. I don’t trust groups anymore. I’m pretty surprised, actually, when we wind up at a big box store, one of the ones that’s open twenty-four hours for people who just really need to spend money they don’t have at midnight.
“Shopping?” I ask.
My dad adjusts his pull-down mirror to stare at me, eyes strained but somehow twinkling. “I always wondered what it would be like to have a sarcastic, eye-rolling teenage daughter who questioned my every decision,” he says. “And, yes, shopping. Everything I do requires a computer and Wi-Fi. We’ve got nowhere to go, and that means I have to find us a place.” He points to a spot far away from the store and says, “Park here and wait. Be ready to run.”
“Anticipating trouble?” Chance asks, gamely pulling through the space and into the next one so he can take off quickly if necessary.
My dad snorts and pulls down his beanie. “In Valor’s world, a smart man always anticipates trouble.”
“Or smart woman,” Bea chimes in, her voice, as always, sounding dead.
My dad looks at her like he’s only just noticed her. “That, too. I’ll be back.”
As he stalks toward the building, he pulls a packet out of his jeans pocket and starts sorting through cards held together with a rubber band. I can’t see what they are, but I’m willing to bet they’re more of the CFF’s fun-time gift cards, stocked with all sorts of cash that draws from Valor’s vaults. Wyatt parks two spaces over in the red car and glances at me, eyes full of worry and guilt and hope. He looks like a dog who pissed on the couch and is ready to be let back inside. Then his jaw tightens, and he gets out of his car and leans against the trunk.
“You gonna go talk to him?” Chance asks.
I stare at Wyatt, and he looks like a stranger now. My dad’s in the store, and everyone in the other car is looking somewhere else, pretending that we’re not all completely messed up. I’m amazed that even after a week of Valor anarchy and state-sanctioned murder, there are dozens of cars in this parking lot, just tons of people out spending money at seven in the morning. Like they think that hitting the store before normal business hours is safe. Like they haven’t connected the random killings and unrest to the bank stamped on their checks. Like the workers still value minimum wage over staying alive. Not everyone is cut out for the truth, for living on the run. Maybe they think playing along is the best way to pretend it isn’t happening.
It pisses me off, actually. Everything that’s happened to me? Is basically their fault.
And that gives me an idea, one way to help the rage bleed out.
“Where’s my backpack?” I ask Wyatt as I get out and lean against my door.
Without a word, he pops the trunk of the burgundy car and hands it to me. When I unzip it, I see that he packed everything of mine that could fit, from my toiletries to most of my clothes and a couple of Pop-Tart pouches. My heart melts, just a little, as I paw everything aside and pull the two cans of spray paint from the bottom. One red, one green, right where I left them. Just like my fingernails were painted the day I stepped into my Valor uniform and tucked a Valor gun into my waistband.
“Tell me if anyone’s driving by or whatever,” I say, not meeting his eyes.
“Okay.”
I kneel in the empty space between the cars on the cold asphalt, pop off the top of the red can, and shake it while I think of the best thing to write. At this point, am I more furious with Valor or the Citizens for Freedom? More important, which one should the innocent people fear more? The CFF, at least in our area, should be mostly crippled now, so I opt for the original enemy.
Carefully, in block letters, I write VALOR $UCKS. For good measure, I make the A into an anarchy symbol and go over the $ with green paint. Not bad for a rallying cry.
“Nice,” Wyatt says, but I’m not doing it to impress him.
It does make me feel better, though. I’m going to leave this everywhere I go from here on out. Yarn bombing took time, patience. But this artistic rebellion takes just sixty seconds and someone to stand guard.
“Your dad’s coming back in a hurry.”
I pop the tops back on the cans, shove them in my bag, and stand. A flush of guilt flashes over me, but then I realize: I don’t care if my dad approves. I nod at Wyatt and get back in my car.
“Trouble in paradise?” Chance says with a fake-ass sigh, and I punch his shoulder.
My dad gets in the car with a bag in his arms and says, “Take a right onto the highway and head for the doughnut shop about a mile from here. Park close to the do
or.”
“Aye aye, Captain.” Chance drives away, and my dad starts pulling boxes out of the bag and unwrapping a laptop and a bunch of accessories. I don’t know a ton about computers, but it’s the pricey kind, and he probably just dropped a few thousand dollars on all this junk.
“More Valor cards?” I ask.
He gives me a quick grin. “Who do you think hacked that little trick in the first place?”
He pops the laptop open, and it turns on without being plugged in. The damn thing is sleek and silver, the sort of indulgence my mom and I could never afford. My old laptop was big and clunky, bought refurbished, and it held a charge for only, like, three hours. It’s weird how I spent my whole life wanting to meet my dad, but now everything he does, from smiling to buying a stupid computer, makes me resent him.
Chance pulls into the doughnut shop as requested, and my dad’s fingers fly over the keyboard. I watch over his shoulder as he taps into the free Wi-Fi, and he’s definitely not going to the normal sites that the rest of us use.
“What is that?” I ask.
“The darknet,” he says, still typing. “Shadow Internet. Not regulated.”
“What are you doing?”
“Finding a safe house.”
He hops from forum to forum, and finally a list of addresses pops up. Some have big Xs on them, and most have several weird codes under them that make no sense to me. He scrolls down, muttering to himself about Valor and goons and squads.
“Can Leon and the CFF do this too?”
He shakes his head. “Not after my daughter blew up their war room and shot their top three tech guys, no.”
“I thought you were their top tech guy.”
He turns, meets my eyes. “I was never really theirs.”
After some more scrolling, he points to an entry. “Let’s try this one.” He gives Chance directions and settles down for more typing.
“So these are, what?” Rex asks, leaning forward. “Anti-Valor safe houses? But how do you know they’re actually safe?”
My dad looks back at him as if seeing him for the first time. “Whenever someone uses one or drives by one they’re familiar with, they leave notes. Like the old hobo codes. A toilet works if you bring water, or you can steal Wi-Fi from a neighbor, or they left some food there in a cache. I’ve stayed in a few before, and some are definitely better than others. But this one is decently stocked and has plenty of room.”
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