“We’re betting a lot on this girl,” Kook pressed.
“You’re telling me.”
“If this goes sidewise, we’re all screwed,” Kook said. “High stakes now.”
“It was always high stakes. We’re just finally seeing it.”
“I’m just saying.”
“She’s the one,” Moses said finally. “The plan’s good. And she’s the right one.”
Tank came up behind them, rolling fast across the smooth concrete. He came to a halt, popped his skateboard. “She’s the only one,” he said.
“Well, then it’s pretty much the same thing, isn’t it?” Moses said.
Kook gave a snort of disgust. “You better be sure you know what you’re doing.”
Am I?
How could he be sure? It suddenly felt as if his careful puzzle had become jigsaw pieces flung into the air, with him counting on them all falling into place perfectly.
It was a gamble. No way around it. But he couldn’t admit that to Kook. He couldn’t admit that to anyone. He had to be strong. There was no way they’d follow if he showed how weak he was. He’d dragged them into this. It had been his plan.
You got them this far.
Against all the odds, he’d gotten them this far.
So now he was just going to have to get them out at the other end. He was going to step up, just the way his uncle had stepped up when the Nevada state investigators came down and wanted him to testify. Uncle Ty had made sure his gang was safe, even if the cops were going to throw the book at him, and Moses was going to do the same. I’m going to get them through.
“Just got to have faith,” Moses murmured.
Kook snorted. “That sounds a lot like ‘belief’ to me.”
Moses didn’t answer the barb. It sounded a lot like belief to him, too. And it scared the hell out of him.
Can I trust you, Alix Banks?
He wanted to.
Don’t trust. Test.
And yet, despite himself, he desperately wanted to trust her. He wanted to believe in her, and it scared him more than all his enemies combined.
23
ALIX’S HOUSE WAS MOBBED WITH people. Haverport PD cars clogged the drive, along with a half dozen of the low-slung armored SUVs that Williams & Crowe favored. An entire ants’ nest of activity, all frantically trying to find her.
As Alix walked up the steps, she felt more and more like she wanted to turn in the other direction and flee. Cynthia and Adam had dropped her off a few blocks away, but as she made her way home, her pace slowed. Each step became more hesitant as she anticipated the storm she was about to face.
She braced herself, took a breath, and opened the door.
The startled shouts began before she was even halfway inside. People were looking up, surprised. Mom and Jonah and Dad, all looking shocked.
“Alix!” Dad’s face broke wide with relief. He lunged for her with a glad cry and sob, and bundled her into his arms. Alix let herself sag against him and found herself crying as well, relieved that he didn’t hate her for running off. Desperately grateful that she was home, and then Mom and Jonah were there, too, babbling and crying and hugging, and they were all together again. All of them together, and all of them safe. Alix wished she could stay inside their embrace forever.
Of course, Jonah broke the mood. He smacked her upside the head and said, “I’m the one who’s supposed to do the running away!”
Alix would have smacked him back if he hadn’t been crying as he said it.
Once everything had calmed down, people started asking her questions. Dad assured the police that they didn’t need to file any other missing person’s report, but Williams & Crowe stayed, and from their looks, she suspected they wouldn’t be going away.
The interrogation started in earnest, beginning with Mom’s haranguing her about ditching Lisa.
“You can’t just run off and do things like this!”
Dad laid a quelling hand on Mom’s arm. “It’s all right. I think we can save the lecture for another time.”
“What were you thinking?” Mom pressed. “You can’t just run off with your friends to party! What are you wearing?”
“Leigh,” Dad said. “It’s all right.” His eyes were serious. “I think Alix already knows the lesson.”
Alix smiled gratefully at him.
“Why don’t you tell us what happened,” he said.
“I was—”
Alix started to say, I was kidnapped. Cynthia was a plant. There are a bunch of kids who want to destroy you.
She stopped short. It sounded insane. The second she tried to say the words, it made her feel like she was some kind of hysterical conspiracy theorist.
Alix felt in her pocket. The USB stick they’d given her was still there.
It was real. It was all real.
“I was—”
Kidnapped by a Stepford Student?
She remembered Cynthia. The girl who had pretended to be her friend but who had also stood up for her against all the rest of them when she’d been trapped in Moses’s cage. She thought of the stories they’d told her. Their crazy, lunatic theories. Their ridiculous claims.
The man in front of her was supposed to be evil. Every day, Dad helped companies kill people, if 2.0 was to be believed.
It didn’t make any sense. Even saying any of it made her feel like she was crazy. The USB key burned in her hand.
She found she couldn’t say anything at all. She couldn’t tell them about the kidnapping. She couldn’t… “Dad?”
He saw her distress. “Is there something you need to talk about? Did something happen?”
“Can we talk in private?”
“In private?” Jonah complained. “But I want to see her get busted!”
“No one’s getting busted,” Dad said.
“She isn’t?” Mom asked, surprised.
They exchanged one of their parental talk-about-it-later-not-in-front-of-the-kids looks, and Mom subsided. Alix wondered who would win out in the end and how bad her grounding would be.
“Please, Dad. I just want to talk in private.”
He smiled gently. “Let’s go into my office.”
As they entered, Alix caught a glimpse of his laptop, sitting open on his desk. She felt guilty just seeing it. All it would take was a little misdirection. She could plug in the little USB stick and walk away, and forget about it. Moses and his crew could do whatever they did.
Dad was looking at her, puzzled. “Are you all right?”
Alix felt ill again. All the things Moses and Cynthia and everyone had been saying came rushing back. All the accusations. All the companies.
He’s your dad.
Alix pulled the USB stick out of her pocket and offered it to him. She couldn’t meet his eyes.
“What’s this?”
“It’s a USB.…” She trailed off.
Never mind. It’s nothing. Just a funny thing I got at a rave. Kind of embarrassing, actually. Can I have it back?
“I think it’s a virus.”
It felt as if a dam were breaking. Suddenly she could breathe. “I think it’s a virus. I didn’t run away. I was kidnapped. It was 2.0. You’re right. They were trying to come after me. They were coming after us. And they said horrible things about you, and I didn’t want to believe them, but they sounded so real.…”
The words kept pouring out of her. More and more, a river of all the fears and worries she had been keeping back while she’d been trapped. She could feel tears welling up. And before she knew it, she was crying again as she told him everything, purging all her guilt for doubting him, all her horror and fear, all her powerlessness.
Dad pulled her close as she kept talking, and for the first time since the kidnapping, she felt safe.
A little while later, he called Lisa into the room, and she had Alix go over everything again, slower, with details that she took down in a notebook. She questioned Alix seriously and without comment.
When Alix apologized
for being an idiot, Lisa just shook her head and said that she knew what it was like to be seventeen, and Alix had felt a gush of relief at the forgiveness.
“You mean these are all kids?” Lisa asked finally. She looked shocked.
“Yeah. I mean, they’re my age. High school, you know? Except for the little one, Tank. He’s younger. He’s like twelve or thirteen, I think.”
“Kids,” Dad said, shaking his head.
Lisa was scribbling in her notebook. “Were there any adults involved?”
“You mean, like, over-eighteen adults?” Alix shook her head. “I don’t think so. They were all young.”
“A bunch of kids,” Dad muttered again. “Just a bunch of crazy kids.”
Lisa was waving in another Williams & Crowe agent to review the details again with Alix. Lisa dug into Alix’s story with an intensity of focus that made it feel more like an interrogation, but Alix didn’t complain. After all the trouble she’d created for everyone, and Lisa in particular, she had the feeling she owed Death Barbie some meek obedience.
She showed Lisa the USB drive. The woman took it with two fingers, regarding it with a revulsion that Alix would normally have reserved for a cockroach found deep-fried in a plate of french fries. “We’ll have it analyzed,” she said.
“Did they hurt you?” Dad asked.
“Not really. Just when I yanked Moses against the cage. But I hurt him a lot more than he hurt me. I think I chipped his tooth.” As she said it, she realized that it might sound like she was bragging, but Lisa and Dad and the other agent were all smiling. Alix smiled, too. Screw him. He deserved it.
“And they kept you in a cage for how long?” Lisa asked, still writing furiously.
“I don’t know. I slept.” Alix realized she didn’t even know what day it was.
“A cage,” Dad fumed. He was looking angrier and angrier. Alix didn’t think she’d ever seen him so mad.
“What are you going to do?” she asked.
Her father exchanged a look with Lisa. “You say it was in a warehouse?” he said.
“Yeah. On the south side of Hartford. Where all the warehouses and the trains run.”
“Do you think you can lead us back there?” Lisa asked.
Alix nodded. “Yeah. I remember from when Cynthia drove me. It was getting dark, but I know exactly where it is. They didn’t let me see it when we were coming back. But I remember the exits. I’m pretty sure I can find it.”
Lisa’s smile was almost sharklike. Alix hesitated, suddenly uncertain. “What will happen to them?”
Lisa looked impatient. “Well, they’ve been breaking a lot of laws, Alix. There’s conspiracy. There’s fraud. There’s kidnapping. Probably other things, depending on how aggressively the DA goes after them.”
“Aggressively,” Dad declared. “She’ll go after them aggressively.”
Lisa nodded. “There you go. They’ll be brought up on charges. The ones who are minors will probably be treated differently, but it sounds like the ringleaders may be over eighteen. We’ll press to try them all as adults, though. This is serious. It’s not a game. And the things they’re doing have escalated way beyond pranks.”
Alix swallowed. “We can’t just, I don’t know… give them… some kind of warning… I mean…” She trailed off. “I mean, I think they’re just really confused. They’re just kids,” she said again.
“Harris and Klebold were just kids,” Lisa said. “Give a kid a TEC-9, and you’ve got a killer. Today, they’re trying their hand at kidnapping; tomorrow, who knows how many bodies we’re sorting.”
Still Alix hesitated.
Lisa knelt down in front of her. “Time’s passing, Alix. If they suspect their plan isn’t working, they’ll pack up and run. They’ve been doing this for a little while already. And every time they do something, they escalate. They’re learning, Alix. Every time they succeed, they learn. You’re the only person who can stop them before someone gets hurt.”
Alix swallowed, wishing there was some clear answer. She thought of Cynthia, playing as her friend. Moses, so hot and cold. Kook and Adam and Tank.
“They’re orphans,” she said. “I mean, they’re alone. Maybe they’re just hurt and confused.”
Lisa looked at her kindly. “They’re escalating, Alix. It started with tagging. But now it’s gone beyond that. They raided a lab and stole a semitruck full of rats. Then they assaulted your school’s headmaster. Then they drugged you, and put you in a cage. They’re out of control. We can’t guess what they’ll do next. And when they find out this little virus trick has failed, they’ll escalate again.”
What was right, and what was wrong? It was so impossible to tell. “Okay,” Alix said finally. “I’ll show you. But only if you let me go with you all the way. I want to see them.”
“Alix…”
“I have to see them. I have to go back.”
Lisa made Alix wear a bulletproof vest.
“They don’t even have guns,” Alix protested.
“Do you remember the last time we had a conversation about safety?” Lisa asked. “I think that time, you ended up spending a night in a cage in a factory while we all tore our hair out looking for you.”
Alix subsided into abashed submission, and Lisa fitted her with the vest.
Now Alix sat in the SUV, watching with interest as Lisa pulled on her own body armor, along with the rest of the Williams & Crowe team. Dad sat beside her, his expression hard. He’d tried several times to persuade her to wait at home, to just show them on Google Maps where they needed to go, but she had remained adamant. In the end, he’d come along, too, as if he were going to be more protection than the professionals from Williams & Crowe. She was glad to have a familiar and comforting presence there, though, as they got closer and closer to the factory.
Alix had expected the police or FBI to be with them, but it was only five SUVs full of Williams & Crowe people who navigated slowly between the warehouses, letting Alix zero in on the one where she’d been kept.
“You’re sure they don’t have weapons?” Lisa asked as she loaded rounds into her tear gas gun. It had a drum for the tear gas canisters and a short, fat muzzle so wide that Alix thought she could almost slide her hand inside.
“I don’t think so,” Alix said.
“You don’t think so? Or you know?”
“I didn’t see anyone with guns.”
“We need to be sure,” Lisa said. “Did you see any evidence that they had any weapons?”
“Well, the one kid talked about making things explode. The little one, Tank, said that. But he just said something like that once. He was like some kind of tinkerer or something.”
“A bomb?” Lisa prompted. “Was he making a bomb?”
“I don’t know. He didn’t say that, exactly.”
Alix had the uncomfortable feeling that her words meant different things to her than they did to Lisa, because her bodyguard was already nodding significantly to her compatriots and radioing to the other vehicles. “We’re going in hot. Possible explosive ordnance.”
“What’s ‘going in hot’ mean?” Alix asked.
Lisa glanced back. “It means we aren’t going to give them a chance to blow us up.”
“I didn’t say they had a bomb rigged,” Alix protested.
“Better safe than sorry,” Lisa said. She slammed a bulletproof helmet over her head. Beefy guys were climbing out of the other vehicles. They, too, had blunt guns with tear gas rounds, but they also had what looked like assault rifles slung on their shoulders.
Alix reached over the backseat and grabbed Lisa before she could exit. “The one kid, Tank. He has asthma. Will the tear gas hurt him?”
“If it does, we’ll revive him after.”
“You’ll what?”
But Alix didn’t have a chance to say anything else because Lisa’s radio squawked to say the rest of her people were in place. “Stay here,” she ordered. “If things go sidewise, we can’t have you in the cross fire.”
She pushed the door of the SUV closed and stole toward the warehouse. More black armored forms were scampering for the building. Alix saw them holding automatic rifles at the ready. More and more Williams & Crowe people in SWAT-type gear preparing to go in.
“They’re just kids,” she whispered, suddenly horrified at all the firepower that was being brought to bear. “Dad, they’re just kids.”
“It’s not the time, Alix,” her father said.
“But they weren’t like—”
She didn’t get a chance to finish. Events were unfolding already. One thing cascading into the next, into the next.
Alix watched with her heart in her throat.
A couple of guys with a heavy iron battering ram dashed to the warehouse and pinned themselves at either side of the entrance doors. They waved hand signals to the rest of their team. There were soldiers at every door now, locking down the entrances.
At a signal from Lisa, the tear gas gunners stood back and aimed their weapons at the upper clerestory windows.
Oh, God, what have I done?
But it was too late to stop what was already in motion.
Tear gas and pepper canisters boomed from the guns. They arced toward the factory’s windows, trailing yellow smoke.
Shshshshshshshshshs…
They hit.
24
SSSSHSHSHSHSHSS…
Tank’s longboard shot across the ancient concrete of the factory floor, weaving easily past cracks where subsidence and age had broken the smooth, open space. The kid was fluid, Moses thought. Whenever that boy was on a skateboard, he looked perfectly self-possessed. Without doubt or fear. Just a perfectly tuned object, speeding toward his goal.
Even if he sometimes crashed.
Moses briefly envied Tank’s silent self-possession. The kid was like a hermetically sealed person. Whatever went on inside his head almost never came out as words. There was Tank, rolling around on his board. There was Tank, building his latest Rube Goldberg contraption, and that was all there was. The rest of him was silent depths so deep they might as well have been the Mariana Trench.
The Doubt Factory Page 19