Love Over Matter

by Maggie Bloom

  I’ll be lucky if I can breathe, period. “Um, sure . . .” I say, setting my feet to skedaddle. “See you in a few.”

  chapter 15

  Pick up! Pick up! Pick up! Pick up! I screech in my head, Ian’s phone threatening to click over to voicemail, leaving me stranded with a potentially homicidal maniac.

  “Smith and Wesson. We cock, you hammer,” Ian jokes when he finally answers. Seriously? He’s messing with me now? “Cass?”

  “Quick!” I blurt, my gaze tacked to the kitchen door, through which Aleks might stride at any moment. “Get over here! I need you!”

  A chuckle floats across the airwaves. “Whoa, Nellie. Deep breaths, in and out.”

  I’m in no mood for his patronizing mockery. “Something’s wrong,” I try explaining, “with Aleks. He’s . . . doing things.” Ha! I’ve got his attention now.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I don’t want to be alone with him. Just come over,” I plead. It dawns on me that Ian is at work. “If you can.”

  I practically hear his teeth grinding. “Meet me at the Hit & Run,” he instructs, referring to the convenience store two blocks from my house. “And try not to get followed.”

  I can be sneaky when I want to, and something tells me that, if ever there was a time to flex my covert muscles, this is it. “Will do.”

  * * *

  “Oh my God! Thank you!” I squeal, throwing my arms around Ian’s neck as he hops out of the Love Machine, which he’s shrewdly tucked into a secluded spot behind the Hit & Run. “I’m so glad you’re here.”

  He gingerly pries me away from him. “What’s . . . this?” he asks, gesturing at my disguise.

  I pull off the baseball cap and shades, let my hair down. “I had to improvise. Not bad, huh?”

  My smile jumps to his lips. “So what’s going on?” he says, leading us to a rickety-looking picnic table that is about to collapse under a mountain of cigarette butts and bird droppings.

  I kick a gooey ice cream wrapper out of the way before I sit. “It’s Aleks,” I say. “I think he’s evil.”

  He bursts out laughing. “An evil twin?”

  “Cut it out. I’m not joking.” I make a pouty face, and he rolls his eyes. “He’s at George’s right now, tearing the place apart.”

  “Like how?”

  With a shrug, I say, “Ransacking everything. Stealing stuff.” I frown. “I don’t know. When I caught him, he just told me to leave.” A repulsive thought dawns on me. “He might’ve poisoned Lillian too. I mean, right after he gave her that tea, she got sick. I hope she doesn’t die.”

  “What do you want to do?”

  “Wait for the cops,” I say. And I’m serious. As soon as Mr. Brooks gets a gander at that bedroom (and recovers from the enormous shock), a uniformed officer will be beating a path to my door.

  “Where is he now?” Ian asks.

  “Probably taking a baseball bat to something,” I say, a huff escaping my pursed lips.

  His toes tap against mine under the table. “We should go back.”

  “And do what?”

  “Act normal,” he proposes. “Or confront him.”

  He’s right. It’s weak of us (or, well, me mostly) to run away. I circle the table and give him a friendly peck on the . . . eyebrow? “Meet you there?”

  He agrees with a snappy nod. “Right behind ya.”

  * * *

  Aleks and Rosie are on the porch, nonchalantly shooting the breeze, when the Love Machine rolls into the driveway, pinning the Bunny Mobile in place. I push my sunglasses over the bridge of my nose and straighten my cap, not to mention my vertebrae.

  Ian waltzes into the yard ahead of me. “What’s up?” he’s asking Aleks as I approach.

  I shoot a glance next door, wondering how long it will take the Brookses to discover that their home has been violated.

  Rosie answers instead of Aleks. “Just about to get started,” she says, giving her mop bucket a shivering kick. She jangles a giant key ring in the air and smiles. (With all those keys, she looks like a prison warden, which isn’t such a bad thing at the moment. I mean, if she had the power of the law, she could haul Aleks off to the clink and be done with it.)

  “I’ll give you a hand,” Aleks says, springing to his feet and saving the bucket from Rosie’s wrath.

  I hate DNA. Why does this boy have to be so much like George, down to the way his eyes crinkle at the corners in the sun and his biceps stretch against the soft cotton of his tee? “Ian can get that,” I say, grabbing the other side of the bucket. “Right, Ian?”

  Ian freezes me with a warning glare. I answer with a look that, I hope, says: I know what I’m doing here. Chill. Finally, he relents. “Yeah, sure,” he says, getting his own hold on the bucket. I let go and, pretty quickly, Aleks does too.

  Rosie just shrugs. “Nice seeing you,” she tells Aleks, unlocking the door and starting inside.

  Once Ian is gone, I decide to get risky. “Are you . . . okay?” I ask Aleks.

  He shifts around on his feet. “Wanna go for a ride?”

  “Like, on your motorcycle?” I reply, my numbskull showing.

  Without bothering to answer, he peels off for the garage, where he has an easy time wheeling the bike out, even though Rosie and Ian’s vehicles are clogging the driveway. “I don’t usually carry passengers,” he tells me, sounding a bit reluctant. “’Cause my dad, uh, gets nervous.”

  If he only knew how panicked my father would be if, instead of manning the grill at The Moondancer, he was a fly on the wall—or, well, in the air—of this conversation. “Where are we going?” I ask, my trust in George irrationally trumping my unease about his brother.

  He leans over and cranks up the motorcycle, giving me a start. “You tell me,” he says with a mischievous grin. “I don’t exactly know the lay of the land around here.”

  A little half helmet is secured to the motorcycle’s seat with a bungee net. “Here,” he says, tugging it out and passing it to me.

  He’s chivalrous like George too? No fair. “Um, thanks,” I say with a nervous chuckle. I remove my cap, fumble with the helmet’s strap until I get it undone, then plunk the thing on my head. To my amazement, it fits pretty well.

  And Aleks seems to like it. “Hop on,” he tells me, once he’s swung his leg over the gas tank and planted a foot on one of the rubberized pegs.

  I’ve never ridden on a motorcycle before, and I doubt I should start now, but . . . I shimmy onto the springy passenger cushion, my thighs pressing involuntarily into Aleks’s hips. The bike rumbles beneath us like our own personal earthquake. I strap my arms around his midsection and, over his shoulder, say, “We’re clear for takeoff.”

  He knocks the kickstand back and gets us rolling. It’s hot outside, or as hot as it gets in our part of Vermont—low eighties, stark blue sky, a ball of fire bearing down on us. But as we zoom for the escape hatch of Willow Crest, the breeze we’re creating wicks the dampness from my skin. “Which way?” Aleks shouts, his voice struggling to overcome the roar of the engine.

  At first I don’t think he’s going to stop at the sign, but then he does. “I dunno.” If I send him left, there’s a chance we’ll end up passing Mom or Dad or someone else we shouldn’t on the road. “Right, I guess,” I say, trying to recall what’s on the outskirts of town in the direction we’ll soon be traveling (mostly wilderness, I decide).

  I let a few miles elapse between us and home before suggesting, “There’s a picnic area up ahead.” I know this only from a roadside sign, not from personal experience. “We could pull over.”

  When he nods, I feel his abdominal muscles flex. “Okay,” I think he says, wind rushing in my ears and washing away his words. Moments later, we come to a perfectly executed stop in a dusty parking lot.

  Aleks lets the kickstand down, kills the engine and holds his hand out for the helmet, which I’m already unstrapping. Without looking, I can tell that my hair is roughly in the shape of a startled porcupine. “Geez, it�
��s buggy out here,” I say, swatting a swarm of gnats away from my mouth. I slide off the bike and shuffle over to a rustic log fence, the perfect hangout since the sole picnic table is besieged by a rowdy family of approximately nineteen.

  I straddle the fence and Aleks mimics me, triggering a flash of memory: the waterfall; the downed tree; the raccoon; George and me. Always George and me. “I’m glad you wanted to do this,” Aleks says.

  I’m not quite sure what he means, but I do have questions that need answering. “Yeah, sure.” I suck in a heavy breath. “So what’s going on, Aleks?”

  He doesn’t bother pretending to be confused. “Sorry about that,” he says. “You weren’t supposed to see.”

  “But what were you doing?” Besides the obvious ransacking, I mean.

  “It’s complicated.”

  I can’t help treating him like he’s George. “So?”

  “What do you know about the Brookses?”

  I shrug. “They’re kind of weird, if that’s what you mean.”

  “Not exactly.” He gives a sigh that strikes me as overwhelmingly sad. “Remember that Facebook message you sent me? The one about George and our mother?”

  “Ruth Dawson?”

  He cringes. “Right. You know what happened to her?”

  “She left the country?” I say with a gulp.

  “That’s putting it politely.”

  A crazy notion hits me. “Do you know her?”

  “In a way.”

  Holy crap. A real lead on George’s mysterious past? I twirl my hand through the air, encouraging him to continue. “Okay . . . ?”

  “Listen, this is going to sound crazy,” he warns, “but our mother worked for the government. She was a Russian national. She was here in the United States—at Columbia—on a mission.”

  Mr. Rabinski’s warning comes to mind, giving me a burst of edginess. I scan the trees and the faces of that rambunctious family for potential threats. “I know,” I say.

  “Who told you?”

  “An old neighbor of hers from Queens,” I admit, without naming names.

  “Anyway,” he says, sounding exhausted, “that’s only the beginning. When she, uh, found out about us, she tried to quit.”

  I think he means Ruth Dawson wanted out of the spy game once she became pregnant by Dr. Smullen. “Oh.”

  “The thing is, they wouldn’t let her. So she turned herself in to the CIA.” He sighs. “She thought they would protect her.”

  “How do you know all of this?”

  “That’s not important. What happened, though . . .” he trails off, suddenly emotional. “They handed her back to Moscow to . . . to . . .”

  I whisper, “She was deported for trying to save you guys?”

  With a reluctant nod, he says, “Basically.”

  “But how did George . . . ?”

  “That’s why I’m here. Did my brother ever say anything . . . incriminating about the Brookses?”

  He’s lost me now. “Like what?” I ask, grimacing. The most I can picture George’s parents being guilty of (besides having a matching pair of personality disorders, that is) is fudging a few figures on their taxes. Not exactly hardcore criminality.

  “I don’t know for sure,” he admits. “But there must be evidence. Fake passports? An old medical ID badge with a different name on it? Secret documents from the mission? It wouldn’t take much to get the ball rolling.”

  I want to help him for George’s sake, and because he seems so sincere and not the least bit threatening like before, but . . . “Sorry if I’m being dumb,” I say, “but I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  “The Russian government stole my brother,” he tells me in a low voice. “And then they killed Ruth Dawson.”

  Okay, back up the bus. “You’re kidding.”

  “I wish I were,” he says, shaking his head.

  My brain is working overtime trying to make two plus two equal four. “You think the Brookses were involved?” I conclude warily.

  “More than involved,” he says. “There’s no doubt. I just need proof.”

  “So what happened?” I ask. “George’s parents were—are—spies? They abducted him, so they could . . . so they’d be able to . . . ?” I hit another brick wall of logic.

  For some reason, Aleks is grinning. “They’re sleepers,” he says. “They infiltrate . . . well, just about everything—government, industry, medicine, education—from the inside. But they can only get so far without natural U.S. citizenship. That’s where George came in.”

  He’s pulling my leg, obviously. “George was a secret agent?”

  “No. I don’t think so.” He stares after the picnicking family as they pile into a minivan, reverse and pull away. “They were grooming him. That’s how they do it. He probably didn’t even realize, but eventually they would’ve started making demands. Forcing him.”

  This is all too much for my brain to take. “Your mother’s dead?” I ask, circling back around to the real bombshell.

  “Yes.”

  “And George wasn’t adopted?”

  “Absolutely not.”

  “My next door neighbors are Russian spies?”

  “I know it’s hard to believe, but . . .”

  I lock eyes with him. “And you’re . . . you’re trying to . . . What? Catch them?”

  He gives a shy nod that is all George. “If you’ll help me.”

  I have no other choice. “Just tell me what to do.”

  * * *

  Cockamamie. That’s the best word to describe Aleks’s plan for bringing down the Brookses. Or maybe kooky. I can’t decide which. “Are you sure about this?” I whisper to him across the breakfast table, my mother stuttering around the kitchen like a confused bumblebee.

  He nods with assurance.

  “More eggs?” Mom asks, not bothering to wait for an answer before flopping a fresh pile of the scrambled things onto Aleks’s plate.

  He smiles graciously. “Thank you.”

  I hold my hand up and frown. “No, thanks.”

  “Suit yourself,” Mom says. She buzzes back to the stove, the pan clanging as it slaps down on the burner. “You sleep all right?” she asks over her shoulder.

  I know she means Aleks, but . . . “Awesome. Thanks for asking,” I say.

  She gives an exasperated huff, plants a hand on her hip and struts right up to Aleks’s side. “The pullout wasn’t too uncomfortable, was it?” she asks, referring to an ancient sofa my parents keep in the basement, where Aleks has been banished for sleeping purposes. “I wanted to give you the master bedroom, but Cassie’s dad wouldn’t hear of it. Since my heart attack, he’s gotten a little hypervigilant.”

  “I appreciate your letting me stay here,” Aleks says, dodging the question. He sighs lightly and hefts another forkful of eggs into his mouth.

  Mom pats him on the shoulder. “Any brother of George’s is a son of ours.”

  I hope she means son-in-law. Otherwise, I’m feeling a bit incestuous.

  Behind schedule, Haley wobbles in on us. Her hair looks like the Bride of Frankenstein’s, minus the crazy white streak. “What’s up?” she mutters, with the effort of someone speaking under water.

  I reflexively roll my eyes. “Morning, sunshine.”

  She kicks my shin on her way to the fridge. Instead of retaliating, I focus on Aleks. His wide, disarming eyes. The nick of a cleft in his chin. The sparks of reddish blue dancing through his aura. When Mom ducks around the corner for a fresh dish towel, I say, “If I do this, you’ve gotta promise to do something for me too.”

  Haley is such an eavesdropper. “Like what?” she asks, despite the fact that I’m not talking to her.

  “None of your business,” I say. “It’s not about you.”

  She melts into a chair, keeps at me. “Need any help?”

  Aleks perks up. “Now that you mention it.”

  I shoot him a stifling glare to no effect.

  Haley toys absently with the salt shaker, a
castoff from The Moondancer. “So . . . ?” she says.

  “We’ve got to create a diversion,” Aleks starts explaining, but then Mom slinks back into the kitchen, silencing him. Luckily, she only stays a minute before excusing herself for work (not that she’s actually going anywhere, since today is a work-at-home day). Haley and I, on the other hand, have been granted vacation time until Aleks splits for Queens—or wherever he lives.

  I reach for Haley’s chair and drag it—and her—into whispering range, in case Mom pops up again. “It’s really none of your business,” I repeat, “but we’ve got to get into the Brookses’ house to look for something.”

  “Yeah?” my sister says in a bored voice.

  I check Aleks’s eyes for permission to blab about George’s kidnapping, Ruth Dawson’s murder, and the Brookses’ secret-agent status. “They’ve done something bad,” I settle for saying, “and we’re gonna tell the police. But first we’ve gotta prove it.”

  A panicked thought hits me. I ratchet my head in Aleks’s direction. “You didn’t leave the place like that yesterday, did you?”

  He shakes his head and grins. “I’m not an amateur.”

  He’s not? “Oh. Because they’re very . . . particular. They’d probably notice a carpet fiber out of place.”

  “I have a photographic memory,” he proclaims. “Even the carpet fibers are safe.”

  I catch a dazed, lovesick look on Haley’s face that makes me shudder. If I didn’t know better, I’d swear she was falling for George’s twin. “Anyway,” I continue, “you know how wacko they are about security. We can’t just parade in there and start turning the place upside down.”

  “What about Mrs. Brooks?” Haley asks. “Shouldn’t we check on her because . . . because she was sick?”

  “No one told you that,” I say, wondering how my sister got in the loop yet again. “And since when did we start filling in for Florence Nightingale?”

  “Now seems like a good time to start,” says Aleks, and then we get to work.

  chapter 16