The Mysterious Stranger (The Confidence Game Book 3)

by Ainslie Paton

  Right now, that meant she stood quietly, revulsion simmering, hand in hand with him while Spencer announced their intention to bond and they signed a special page in the Origin book. Best she could make out from Spencer’s rambling explanation, an intention to bond was meant to be viewed as an engagement and was only used for special circumstances. She got the feeling she was the special circumstance. An intention was designed to last for a month and would be followed by a bond. There was no unless either party asks for a do-over that you might expect if this wasn’t a game of life played to Orrin’s rules.

  Orrin gave her the tangled earphones. Strangest engagement present ever.

  “You know iPods need to be charged,” she said. You know I’m going to make you pay for all of this.

  “Then I know what to give you on the night we bond.”

  She laughed. Orrin preened. “You’re so romantic.” He was a true artist of manipulation. The crime was how he turned that skill on others for his own benefit.

  “For you, Rosie, I will try my best to be everything you need.”

  “Can you stop me worrying? I don’t understand what austerity measures are and what it means that we’re locking down?”

  “It means cutting off our remaining contact with the outside world. We won’t be bringing in any more supplies and we won’t be taking in any more free settlers. If you have letters to write to people you think should be saved, let me know and I will look at their applications personally. There is no time to waste.”

  She put her teeth to the end of her tongue to stop from asking what the application price for such a one-of-a-kind bargain was. This had to be a fundraising drive, but for what purpose?

  He kissed her forehead and she disguised her wince as best she could. “Go, Rosie. You have a new cabinmate to meet and time to ready your heart for the future.”

  No second invitation needed.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  They’d been at the work site for three weeks without a break when Zeke woke in the thick of night with a hand over his mouth and a knee in his gut. His first instinct was to roll, get free of his sleeping bag and ready to defend himself. His second was to learn to sleep without the goddamn bag restricting his movement.

  Bonding with Cadence instead of Susan had earned him a shunning on top of his virtual exile. None of the crew had spoken a word to him that wasn’t essential the whole time they’d been on-site and now someone wanted to rough him up again.

  “It’s me. Mike. I’m going to take my hand away, but you need to be quiet.”

  No, fuck no. He needed a proper wash, clean clothes, all of his fingernails, sugar, so much sugar, and his goddamn Grand Master. Also a phone would be good. And the primary thing he needed was to know Rory was okay. He’d needed emotional distance from her but three weeks out of contact was professionally a problem and personally eating his stomach lining. All that considered, being quiet wasn’t his preferred option.

  “Please, Zack.”

  It was Mike’s hissed plea and the fact he’d come without backup that made Zeke take a breath before he made a noise when the crew boss took his hand away.

  “Shhh. I’m not going to hurt you. I want to explain, and I don’t want to wake anyone.”

  “And I’m going to trust you not to kick in my ribs because?” he said. The benefit of the doubt better not have him coughing up blood.

  Mike stood and backed off but there was a long pause before he said anything, during which Zeke got free of the sleeping bag and reached for a shirt. He’d been sleeping on his own on the floor in one of the half-completed cabins. It wasn’t much different from the two nights he’d spent sleeping on the floor of the cabin he shared with Cadence.

  “Because I’m dying,” Mike said finally.

  Zeke put his shirt on and added boots to the sweats he’d been sleeping in and followed Mike outside. They walked a good ten minutes away from the others with the moon as their light before Mike spoke again.

  “I had cancer. My colon. Ten years ago. Thought they got it all and I was clear for life, but I’ve got all the symptoms back.”

  “Sorry to hear that.” Sorry he believed it. Mike had blamed bad water for a stomach upset and he’d noticed the crew boss wasn’t eating and his pants were loose, extra holes drilled in his belt. He was also first to leave the campfire and last to arrive on-site in the morning, a change in his behavior.

  “I’ve been a Continuer since the beginning. You just arrived. Is it as bad as what Orrin and Spencer say out there?”

  Ah shit. This could be some kind of test. The excuse everyone was looking for to make life harder for him. “I can’t help you, Mike.”

  “I thought you might say that. We beat that into you. Made you worry for Rosie’s safety. I’m sorry for that. And then you went and did the wrong thing by Susan, so we’ve put you in the doghouse again.”

  “All of that is to help me fit in, right? To teach me the Continuer ways. You were only trying to make it easier for me.” What a good little recruit he was.

  Mike took his battered Cattleman off and scratched his head. “I used to think that’s why we treated newcomers so mean. That it was for their own good. I’m looking death in the face and I’m wondering why we’re so scared of anyone who thinks differently. Why we try to make sure they keep those different thoughts to their damn selves. Can’t fault you for not wanting to talk straight with me.” He put his hat back on and tipped the brim. “Sorry I disturbed your sleep. I’d be grateful if you kept this little chat to yourself.”

  As Mike turned to leave, Zeke blew out a stream of air. He didn’t like to think himself a sucker, but this assignment was testing that self-image something bad. “What do you really want to know?”

  Mike stopped and about-faced. “We can’t treat serious illnesses. We can’t treat much of anything. I’m trying to work out if I should accept my fate or take a risk on the outside.”

  Mike was maybe early fifties, a hell of a lot of living left to do. This could still be a trap. “I can help you, but I need something in return.”

  “I can have you assigned to a different crew. You won’t have to work so hard.”

  Tempting, especially a trade that meant he was closer to Rory, but not good enough. He needed something he could use to shut the place down. Mike was a member of Orrin’s inner circle. Zeke just had to play this right to get him to talk. “I don’t mind the work.”

  “I can get you certain freedoms.”

  He stayed silent, let Mike fill in the knowledge gap. “You could have a laptop with books on it, or one of those tablet things with games on them.”

  Aha, so there was an illicit trade in devices. That was why Rory hadn’t been able to find a treasure chest of them. “I need answers more than I want to play games. For one, how well armed is this place?”

  “You and that question. Dog with a bone.” Mike put a hand to his gut. “If I answer your dang questions I won’t need to worry about dying of cancer. You think this place doesn’t have its secrets? You think Orrin treats anyone who talks out of turn, steps out of line, kindly?”

  He’d made Mike angry. He could use that. Show me where the bodies are buried, and this will all be over. “Why do you keep Orrin’s secrets?”

  “Because it would be chaos. Same as the outside.”

  “Except it’s not like they’re telling you out there.”

  Mike looked away. Zeke let him weigh the consequences of trading information for a chance at life.

  “We have enough weapons to defend ourselves when it comes to it. You don’t need to be worried about Rosie’s safety.”

  He shook his head. Not enough give in that answer. C’mon, Mike, cough up something I can use, make me feel like less of a sucker when I tell you everything is A-OK in the big bad decay.

  “We have the right gear to equip an army,” Mike said.

  “If I wanted to shoot down an aircraft?”

  “Now that would depend on how steady your aim is, but we could kit yo
u out.”

  That wasn’t quite hold my bazooka. But he could work with it. “Hawaii is still afloat. New Orleans too. Bird flu isn’t rampant, neither is Ebola, or leprosy. There are no food riots, and no one is cooking cats to survive. There’s no martial law. Measles might be on the rise, but it’s not an epidemic. Oh, sure there’s crippling racism and unemployment and disadvantage, crooked politicians, and the weather is fighting back, but it’s not so different out there from what you’d remember.”

  “That can’t be.” Mike rubbed his face. “Things were deteriorating rapidly.”

  “Life is complicated. Shit happens. And depending on the color of your skin and where you live, it can be a horror show. But it’s not all bad and it’s not like they’re telling us.” He added, “Not yet,” because Mike looked dazed and he didn’t want this to turn into a conversation about why he was here if he wasn’t a believer.

  “You think I could walk into a hospital and get some treatment? Maybe beat this thing again?”

  Mike’s biggest problem would be finding a way to pay for medical care. But Tres would sort that out. “I know you could.”

  “Aw, hell. A desperate man’ll believe anything. I was desperate to start a new life in here, had the money to invest and I was convinced it was the only way to survive. I’m desperate again, because I’m scared of dying. I don’t even know what I’m saying. People don’t leave Abundance. You sign on for life. There is no coming and going anytime you please like it’s one of them Costcos. They still have them?”

  “They’re still out there. Selling everything you can imagine.”

  “No one has ever left here.”

  “Why is that?”

  “Why would you?”

  Zeke pushed his hair out of his eyes. Blind belief was a difficult thing to combat and no amount of logic was useful. “I can think of a hundred reasons.”

  “No one out there cares about me. That’s the same for lots of us. This place suits us.”

  “Even if it’s a lie?”

  Mike gave him a sideways glance. What Zeke had said had to be close to treasonous. “I don’t want to think about that now. Scratch the surface of most of us you get doubt but we all came because we were filled with fear and doubt. If that makes us overlook some shady practices from time to time, well, it still looks like a fair deal to me.”

  But not if you were dying in here and you could get treatment out there. “You could make a run for it.”

  Mike grunted. “I’ve got maybe thirty years on you and I can’t eat or sleep. I bleed when I shit. I’m not running anywhere so who am I kidding? Time to take my licks. Planned on dying here anyway, just not so soon.”

  “What if I could help you with more than a headline update?” He could get Mike out, have someone meet him outside the fence, take care of him in exchange for something concrete he could use.

  “You already did, son. Cured my madness.”

  “The way I see it, you just drive out those gates.”

  “With what? Even if I could steal the key to a truck and took it for a joyride, I don’t have a bean to my name to feed myself out there. No one here does.”

  “It’s possible if there’s someone on the other side to take care of you.”

  “What are you saying, son?”

  They talked long into the night. Mike gave up the fact the weapons were stored in the mountains and the settlement was broke.

  “Expanded too fast. Too many dang babies born. Folks got nothing to do at night but get naked and monkey around. Some of us tried to tell Orrin all that free love, grow your own population business was going to be a problem. He stopped listening to anyone else a long time ago and Spencer hasn’t been able to recruit new money fast enough to cover what we need to bring in from outside to survive. We were supposed to be self-sufficient by now but that’s not how it’s turned out. Orrin says we need austerity measures and this recruitment drive is an adjustment period before we’re forced to lockdown for good.”

  The longer they talked, the more despondent Mike was, the more information he gave up, but it might simply be his desperation talking. Until Zeke could verify some of the details, it wasn’t enough to shut the place down permanently.

  The stars were starting to wink out when Mike said, “You can’t talk about any of this. Orrin has plans for you and you already crossed him over Susan. You have a whole pile of black marks against you. You can’t be caught repeating any of this or helping me out.”

  In response, he told Mike he’d get the key to a truck big enough to plow through the gate into his hands and that he’d have a friend meet him on the other side and take care of him.

  Mike had a lot of questions, but he cut himself off from asking them. A desperate man will believe anything that might save his life.

  Zeke hoped it wasn’t too risky to save Mike’s.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  When Rory first moved in with Shavonne, her new cabinmate was pissed off. She’d been told she’d have a single and as a mom with a newborn, she was not in the mood for being messed with.

  “I’m not supposed to talk to you. I’m just going to pretend you’re not here,” she’d said.

  In practice, Shavonne was the one not there. She spent nearly all her time at the nursery or sleeping.

  That was three weeks ago. Before Rory got blisters on her hands from shoveling hay. Three weeks during which she was still invisible, Zeke and no one from his crew came home, she ran out of iPod battery, and she found enough automatic weapons to kit out an army—on paper at least.

  Her nightly break-ins at HQ had turned up torn fragments of what looked like a weapons inventory. It was the millionth occasion she’d patted her body down looking for her phone to call Zeke. It might be enough to get this place raided, though not enough to crack what was going on here underneath the furious letter writing, recruiting and building taking place.

  But in the week leading up to her intention deadline, all that changed. Shavonne, it turned out, was quite the raconteur. Rory got booted from her kitchen corner to a new job as a farmhand helping to take care of a herd of goats, and everywhere she went, people called her name, launched into conversation and congratulated her on the coming bond with Orrin.

  She went from being the local pariah to most popular girl in town. It was exhausting being so social. All the talking gave her a sore throat. It was odd being the center of attention and having so many new friends who seemed genuinely apologetic for her freeze-out and concerned about how she was fitting in. She went from eating all her meals alone to people vying to sit next to her in the dining hall to ask about her day. It was cramping her style.

  It did make breaking into Orrin’s apartment in the late afternoon when she knew he wasn’t there easier. No one thought it was odd that she was sneaking her intended a basket of baked goods. They’d have thought it certifiable if they’d known she broke in to steal the antenna from the signal jammer so it would forever blink green but never successfully block a transmission again.

  The only peace she got was when she was laying fresh straw for the goats.

  “It’s a head spin,” she told Petunia, scratching the black goat behind her ear.

  “Baa,” Gertrude agreed, butting Rory’s thigh, impatient for her turn at a head scratch.

  “Wait till they learn I’m pregnant,” she said.

  The new piece of information didn’t rock the goats, but it was designed to make Orrin pause. With the inventory in her hands she didn’t need to risk getting any closer to him. She’d figured a pregnancy would snooker him. She’d be a beloved and revered expectant woman, readying to birth a highly valuable new citizen for Abundance and she’d be legitimately entitled to put off her bond with Orrin until after a bouncing baby arrived.

  She hoped.

  Hope never figured into her regular work life as a con. It was agitating having to rely on it now. She had another freaking breakout because of it. She was wearing her stress all over her chin.

  “Th
is would be a better plan if I’d been able to discuss it with my partner in crime,” she told Violet, nudging aside the goat who tried to eat the edge of her sweatshirt.

  Zeke had been out of contact too long in the scheme of things and she missed him terribly, but they’d needed to cool off, so the separation had come at a good time, and now she had too many people to talk to so really it was fine that he wasn’t here. Cadence certainly thought so.

  “Aaag,” said Petunia.

  “That is potentially a problem,” she said. “Pregnant women have sex but I think it will make Orrin furious that he didn’t get to impregnate me first and turn him off.”

  Orrin looked at her as if she were virgin territory he could stick a flag in and call his own, but if it was abundantly clear some other man had already done that, he might turn his attention elsewhere. That was what she was banking on, reducing her value to him and having his ego step in to break his intention as punishment.

  “Not that you care, Bernadette.” She pushed the largest of the goats aside to fill their trough with fresh water. She was almost sure it was floppy-eared Bernadette who’d been screaming at her and Zeke when they’d argued in the field. She made sure to smile a lot around Bernadette in case Zeke was right about goats being attracted to happy faces. No one needed a goat enemy.

  “The other problem is that this plan puts a timeline on things. I can fake a lot but not being six months pregnant. We need hard evidence of those weapons pronto.”

  “Baaaah,” said Petunia.

  “Yes, all right. I hear you. I don’t know if Orrin will buy me being pregnant. The good thing is they don’t do tests here. I don’t know where the weapons on that inventory are, or what this recruiting drive is about, and if I tell him I’m pregnant, I have less time to find out. Also, the only time I’m alone now is when I’m with you guys because frankly you’re all very bossy and you smell funny and no one else wants to hang out with you.”