Hunter (9780698158504)

by Carroll, Michael

  “Oh no,” she said. “I’m so sorry!”

  “It wasn’t your fault,” Lance said. “Mom told me to be careful and I should have listened!” He looked again at the pieces, hoping he could force a tear or two. “She found this in an antique store and I’m supposed to get it engraved for Grandpa’s birthday. He’ll be seventy.” Putting an extra tremble in his lip, he looked up at the woman. “What am I going to do? The watch cost a hundred dollars and I only have twenty!”

  She stepped closer. “Perhaps it can be fixed. . . .”

  Lance held up one of the gears. In truth, the watch had never been anything but a shell containing a mismatched collection of components he’d prized out of two cheap watches he’d found in a thrift store. “Maybe. But I’m supposed to get him a cake too. Twenty dollars isn’t enough for that and to get the watch repaired!”

  “You poor boy!” The woman opened her purse. “Here. . . . Would fifty help?”

  Lance stepped back, shaking his head. “No, I couldn’t. It was my own fault and I should have to pay for it. It’ll be OK. I’ll sell my bike.”

  She offered him a fifty-dollar bill. “No, you take this, young man. I insist!”

  Trying to look as though he was reluctant, but grateful, Lance reached out to take the money, and at that moment a shadow fell over him.

  Lance looked up to see a tall, middle-aged man eyeing him with considerable suspicion. “Is everything all right, Mrs. Bluett?”

  “Oh, Mr. Blakely. I bumped into this boy and he dropped his pocket watch and it broke.” She smiled at Lance and said, “Mr. Blakely is my neighbor—he’s very good at fixing things.”

  Lance felt the skin on the back of his neck begin to tighten. Oh no.

  The man peered closely at the watch and its parts in Lance’s hand. “Those components don’t look like they belong to that watch. Look, that one’s almost too big to fit into the case. I reckon it’s a scam, Mrs. Bluett. He probably—”

  That was the last Lance heard; he was already racing down the street.

  He’d had no further luck raising money in Omaha. He hadn’t even been able to hitch a lift—no one was stopping.

  The last of his money went to a sandwich and the thirty-five-dollar fare on the run-down bus.

  Now his butt was starting to go numb from constantly sitting on cold floors. He got to his feet and stretched. Mid-yawn, he became aware that someone was watching him.

  The burly young man was dressed in an open leather jacket and faded black jeans. He nodded at Lance as he approached him. “You look kinda lost, dude.”

  “Nah, just waiting for the rain to stop,” Lance said.

  “Steve doesn’t know you, does he? You new in town?”

  “I’ve been here before. Been a while though.” What’s this guy want? Lance wondered. “Who’s Steve?”

  “Me. I’m Steve.” He spread his arms in a gesture designed to take in the whole station. “And this is Steve’s place. Steve’s in charge.”

  And clearly Steve’s amp doesn’t go all the way up to eleven, Lance thought. Talking about yourself in the third person isn’t a sign of strong mental health.

  Steve stepped closer, and spoke softly so that no one around could hear. “You got any money, hand it over to Steve right now and save yourself a lotta trouble.”

  “Seriously? You’re robbing me here, in front of all these people? Get lost.”

  The young man stepped closer again, so close that Lance could smell onions on his breath. He was a good four inches taller than Lance and looked to be considerably stronger. “No one’s gonna help you. Give Steve everything you got.”

  Lance peered past the would-be mugger’s shoulder and nodded toward an imaginary person. “That guy might help me.”

  When Steve glanced around to check, Lance quickly darted his hand into Steve’s leather jacket’s inside pocket, and lifted his wallet.

  None the wiser, Steve turned back. “What you talkin’ about? Just give Steve your money.”

  Lance opened the wallet and took out two of its three twenty-dollar bills. “Take it, then. You gotta leave me with something.”

  A snort. “What, you think Steve’s runnin’ a charity? Gimme that!” He snatched the wallet out of Lance’s hand and took a quick glance at it before he started to put it away. Then he stopped, and looked at it again. “This is Steve’s wallet!”

  Lance put on his best innocent expression. “Sorry?”

  “You sneaky little punk! You tried to rob Steve’s wallet!” He stuffed it back into his jacket’s inside pocket, then grabbed Lance by the collar and pulled him closer. “You got three seconds to hand over your money or Steve’s gonna tear your head clean off your shoulders an’ use your neck-hole for a barf bag!”

  “All right, all right!” Lance lifted the man’s wallet again, and dropped it on the floor. “There—take it!”

  Steve pushed Lance aside and bent down to snatch up the wallet. “Wise move, kid, ’cos if you hadn’t . . . This is Steve’s again! And now the money’s gone!”

  Lance was already heading toward the station’s doors, where eight or nine people were leaving. He was sure that Steve wouldn’t tackle him in front of so many. As he walked, he stuffed the sixty dollars into his jeans pocket and then examined Steve’s watch. He was disappointed to see that it wasn’t worth selling. Outside, he dropped it into a trash can, along with Steve’s house keys. The final item he’d taken from Steve’s pockets was an asthma inhaler, and he hesitated for a second, wondering whether it would be cruel to throw that away too.

  Then he looked back inside and saw Steve striding toward him. He held up the inhaler to make sure the man could see it, then tossed it into the trash and took off at a run.

  He was thirty yards down the street before he heard Steve screaming, “Steve’s gonna make you pay for that!”

  Yeah, yeah, sure he is, Lance thought as he ran. Steve’s as dumb as a bucket of damp gravel and is probably going to have an asthma attack long before he catches me.

  Three minutes later, Lance was regretting his actions. The mugger had proved to be much faster on his feet than he’d looked, and barely seemed out of breath as he cornered Lance in an abandoned lot.

  “You are gonna regret the day you decided to mess with Steve!” the young man roared. “You don’t come to Steve’s town and try to rip him off!”

  Lance shouted back, “Well, Steve doesn’t like it when someone tries to mug him!”

  Steve slowed. “What?”

  Lance quickly looked around. The lot had high walls on three sides—there was no easy way out. “Steve’s beginning to wish he’d never come to this town!”

  “Wait, what, your name is Steve too?”

  “Steve’s gonna kick Steve in the nuts so hard that Steve’s gonna end up with two more Adam’s apples, if Steve doesn’t back off and leave Steve alone!”

  Steve stopped, and chewed for a moment on his lower lip. “Wait . . .”

  Lance said, “If Steve leaves Steve alone, then Steve won’t have to worry about Steve hurting Steve. Steve would hate for that to happen to Steve, right?”

  “No, which Steve is the one who . . .” The mugger briskly shook his head. “Shut up!”

  Lance sighed. “Look, maybe we’d better start over.” He stepped closer to the mugger. “You’re Steve, I’m Steve. That’s too confusing. You got a quarter? We’ll flip for it.”

  The young man nodded, and pulled a quarter out of his pocket.

  “Call it in the air,” Lance said. “All right?”

  “Yeah . . .” Steve flipped the coin into the air, and Lance took off again, darting around Steve and out of the lot. He headed back toward the station, and the man came barreling after him, more furious than ever.

  Lance was out of breath by the time he reached the station, and knew he’d have to put an end to this one way or th
e other.

  Back inside the terminal, he saw that another bus had arrived. A large group of tourists—none of them properly dressed for the weather—were heading into the coffee shop. Lance mingled among the shivering throng.

  A few moments later, he saw Steve racing around the corner. The mugger skidded to a stop when he saw the crowd, and Lance had to fight the urge to return his glare with a cheesy grin and a double thumbs-up as he followed the tourists back into the station.

  Twenty minutes later, while the drenched and grumbling tourists were sipping their too-hot coffee as they argued over whose idea it had been to come here in the first place, Lance quickly checked outside. There was no sign of Steve.

  He darted along the street, around a corner into a quiet side road, then slowed to a stop.

  A voice beside him said, “In trouble again?”

  Lance smiled. “You are? Me too.”

  “I meant you, dummy.”

  “Well, duh. Where are you?”

  The voice said, “Keep going in that direction. Take a left at the junction, then the second right, then keep going for about three hundred yards, then stop.”

  With the frayed collar of his jacket pulled up against the driving rain, Lance trudged through the almost deserted streets. On the last street, after what he guessed to be about three hundred yards, he stopped outside a small, boarded-up movie theater.

  “Go around the back,” the voice said. “There’s an alleyway on your right. Wait a sec . . . OK, no one’s near. Now.”

  Lance darted into the narrow alley, where he had to clamber over piles of split garbage bags and broken-up shipping pallets to reach a padlocked gate at the rear of the movie theater.

  “Over the gate,” the voice said.

  Lance looked up. The top of the gate and the wall next to it were heavily strung with thick coils of barbed wire. “No way—that’d be like trying to climb through a cheese grater!”

  “The wire is fake. Check if you don’t believe me.”

  Tentatively, Lance reached up and poked at the nearest strand of wire. It looked like steel, but gave easily under his touch. “It’s just ordinary plastic-coated copper wire,” the voice said. “The kind you use to connect speakers to a stereo. We spray-painted it to look like steel. The barbs are just little knots of wire and string. So climb.”

  Lance grabbed the top of the wall and, using the gate’s heavy padlock as a foothold, hauled himself up onto the rain-slicked wall, easily shimmying under the coils of wire. On the other side the drop was broken by an upright oil drum. Lance lowered himself onto it, then jumped to the ground.

  A door opened in the back of the movie theater, and a girl’s voice said, “Come in.”

  Lance stepped inside, and a light flickered on.

  Abigail de Luyando and James Klaus were standing side by side in the middle of an almost empty room, staring at him. Neither of them looked happy.

  “What, no hugs?” Lance asked.

  James said, “Everyone’s sound signature is unique. I recognized yours.”

  “I figured it was something like that,” Lance said. “Thanks.” He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “So . . . How’ve you guys been?”

  Abby glared at him. “Lance. You . . . you idiot! No one knew what had happened to you! You just disappeared—Max was going crazy trying to find you! We all thought you’d been murdered or something! And you have to get in touch with Sol—he’s been searching for you.”

  “Please tell me you didn’t let Max know I’m here.”

  “Not yet,” James said. “So what happened?”

  Lance slipped his backpack off his shoulder and opened it. As he rummaged through its contents—his spare T-shirt, the second half of a paperback spy novel he’d found next to a garbage bin, old candy bar wrappers—he asked, “What did Roz tell you about the day I left?”

  Abby said, “Nothing. Just that you went out for lunch and never came back.”

  “She didn’t mention anything about a package that arrived for us in the mail?”

  “No.”

  “Knew it,” Lance muttered. Then his fingers found what he was looking for. “Aha—got it.” He pulled the small cassette tape out of his pack. “We’re going to need something that can play this.”

  IN THE PROJECTION ROOM of the old movie theater, Lance was standing directly over a small convector heater, smiling happily as the warm air wafted up. He turned toward Abby. “A few more hours of this and I’ll be dry again. Is there hot water in this place? A shower, maybe?”

  “Oh, sure,” Abby said. “Cinemas are famous for their shower facilities.”

  “Then is there any chance I can—”

  “No.”

  “You don’t even know what I was going to ask!”

  “You were going to ask me if you could get a shower at my place. Well, you can’t. My mom is there, and so are the boys. She’s already suspicious enough without me bringing home strangers.”

  “Tell her you know me from school.”

  “Right. ‘Mom, this is a friend from school that I’ve never even mentioned before. Can he use our shower?’ Yeah, that’ll work.” Abby was sitting on a wooden stool, with her back to the projection window. “How did you survive, Lance?”

  He shrugged. “You know me.”

  “You scammed your way halfway across the country.”

  “Pretty much. So, what’ve you guys been up to? Any exciting missions?” Before she could answer, Lance asked, “Hey, did you find Brawn yet?”

  “Not yet.” Abby paused. “You know, next time we meet Max he’s going to read our minds and he’ll find out we met you.”

  “I know that.” Lance peeled off his damp jacket and hung it on the back of an old chair. His T-shirt—once white, now gray and stained—was sticking to his chest. “Well, once we’re done here, I’ll be moving on.”

  “Where to?”

  “I have . . . plans.”

  “Of course you do. But you’re not going to tell us, are you?”

  “No. Max would pick it out of your brains and come looking for me. I never want to see that guy again.”

  The door to the projection room opened, and James entered carrying two full, clean backpacks, one of which he dropped in the middle of the floor. “Clean clothes. Probably a bit too big for you. There’s food and money too. Two hundred dollars, that’s all I have.”

  He removed a large bath towel from the other backpack and tossed it to Lance, who caught it and started drying his hair. “Thanks, man. I owe you.”

  “I know.” James reached into the second backpack again and removed its only other item, a small tape recorder. “Let’s hear that tape.”

  • • •

  Later, James, Abby, and Lance sat in the corner booth of a café. Lance was alternating between bites of his burger and handfuls of fries, and trying to talk at the same time. “What do we do?” he asked, accidentally spraying James with food. “Sorry.”

  “We?” James said, flicking the tiny particles of soggy french fry off the sleeve of his jacket. “Nothing.”

  Abby said, “Look, I remember Casey Duval breaking back into the base so that he could use the computers. And I remember you guys and Roz being there too. I even remember us all talking about it afterward! It did not happen like it does on the tape!” As she spoke, Abby was absently toying with a metal fork, twirling it around her finger.

  “I know,” Lance said, around another mouthful of fries. He swallowed and added, “That’s what I remember. But the first time me and Roz played the tape, I got this sort of feeling . . . You know when you’re watching a mystery movie and near the end just before the big twist happens, you get that feeling that things aren’t quite what you thought they were? That’s the feeling I got. We know that Max can control people’s minds. We’re all agreed on that, right? Well, think about it. H
ow dumb would we have to be to believe that he’s never done it to us? And I think—this is only a hunch—that it doesn’t work on Brawn. Don’t ask me why I think that, but if it’s true, it explains why Brawn did what he did. He knows that Casey isn’t the bad guy. Max is. Or they both are.”

  Abby shook her head. “No way. The tape is a fake, and you’re just paranoid.”

  Lance looked at James. “Well?”

  “Well what?”

  Lance sighed. “Dude, I just spent months trekking across this country specifically to play that tape to you.”

  “What? Why me?”

  “Because you’re an expert in sound manipulation. If there’s anyone on the planet capable of detecting whether that recording is real or a fake, it’s you. Are those our voices, yes or no?”

  James looked down at his orange soda and nodded. “Yes, they are. The human voice is extremely complex, and our hearing is way more sophisticated than most people realize. Even the best impressionists can’t actually duplicate someone else’s voice—they copy the pauses and inflections and pitch and use recognizable phrases to remind you of the person they’re trying to mimic, but compare the sound waves and you’ll see they don’t really get anywhere close to it.”

  “And that’s really Casey’s voice too? The background sounds are real?”

  “The average person can hear someone cough on the other side of a crowded room and still recognize their voice, right? Well, I can recognize someone’s heartbeat in the same way. And I can hear it on the far side of a city, not just across a room. If I concentrate, I can hear your muscles stretching, blood moving through your veins and arteries, the sound of your eyelids sliding over your eyeballs as you blink. If Duval had been recording our conversations for weeks and made the tape by stitching together hundreds of words we used, it would never sound right because the pacing would be off, and he’d never be able to get the background sounds to match. So, yes. It’s all real. I just don’t know how he did it.”