“But what if they are tracking us?”
“But Carlyle said—”
“Don’t be so gullible.”
“We have no choice, Alina. What do you want me to do?”
“The whole plan could be exposed by morning,” she said fretfully.
“Do you have an alternative?”
“I’ll go,” Natalia announced, standing.
Her parents turned their heads suddenly.
“Out of the question,” Leonard said.
“Dad, it makes sense.”
“You don’t even know where he lives.” He turned to Alina. “Does she?”
“I had my picture taken there six months ago.”
“You took her to Max’s? She knew about this plan?”
“Mom didn’t really explain it to me. They told me it was for safety purposes. To have my picture on file.” She touched her mother on the shoulder. “But I thought it was more than that. You and Max acted strangely.”
Leonard sneered. “Did they? I would assume that, by now, Max is a fairly convincing liar.”
Alina glared.
“In his line of business, I mean.”
“Knock it off guys. Just let me go. Max knows me. It’ll be easy.”
He glanced at the clock. “It’s nearly ten. It’s dark—”
“It’s the solution, Leonard,” Alina said softly with a hint of reluctance.
“You can’t be serious.”
“Even if Carlyle lied and the trackers are hyper focused on the two of us—”
“They probably wouldn’t be tracking Natalia,” he said solemnly.
“Who needs to track the comings and goings of a teenager?”
Leonard frowned. “It wouldn’t even occur to the WLN that her parents would put her in a dangerous position.”
“I’ll be fine, Dad.”
Leonard did not acknowledge her.
The young lady put her hands on her hips defiantly. “You think I won’t be in danger when we try to cross the border?”
He closed his eyes and remained silent.
Alina hugged her daughter. “You’ll do great. I have every confidence in you.”
Leonard moaned, realizing that he was on the losing side of the battle. He fumbled with an object still lodged in his sock, the thumb drive containing Max’s WLN record. Handing it to Natalia, he said, “Give this to Max. I promised him.”
Natalia touched her father gently on the shoulder and kissed his head. He grabbed her hand and pulled it toward his chest, clutching it as if he did not ever wish to let go.
“I love you,” he whispered.
“I know, Dad. I know.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
Two hours later, Leonard paced the room anxiously. Natalia had not yet returned.
“I told you this was an abhorrent idea,” he said. “Why, oh why, oh why am I so stupid?” He put his head in both hands.
“It’s only been—”
The front door opened suddenly. Alina and Leonard rushed to the hallway. Natalia closed the door and strode inside.
“Well?” Alina asked.
Natalia grinned. She held up an ID badge. Leonard snatched it from her hands.
Robert H. Cook, MD.
He turned the ID over and examined it from all angles. Fumbling with his wallet, he retrieved his DID pass. The IDs were identical except for the seal. Robert Cook’s pass shimmered in red and gold, the DOH logo beaming proudly across the surface. The symbol, a snake wound around a staff with a dozen radical lines branching out in all directions, appeared on both sides of the ID. As Leonard tipped the card, a hologram echo of his face twinkled in one corner.
“Is this good?” Leonard asked Alina, assuming that her DOH ID was a better indicator of a convincing reproduction.
She looked it over carefully. “It’s perfect.”
“I’m supposed to warn you,” Natalia said.
“Yes?”
“Max was kind of pissed. He said that his computer guy hasn’t finished fleshing out Dr. Cook’s identity on all of the department computers—”
“What does that mean?” Leonard asked.
Alina said, “I think it means that Dr. Cook might show up in one database, like the DOH, but you’ll be completely absent in another, hopefully something irrelevant like the Department of Housing and Relocation.”
Natalia touched her father’s arm. “They were also holding off redirecting the retina scan and fingerprints in the national identification database until Wednesday evening.”
“Why?”
“He assumed you were going to work tomorrow. Leonard Tramer still needed to get through the security maze at the DID.”
“Right.”
“He hopes his computer guy will be able to reroute everything first thing in the morning. We should be okay by the time we cross the border.”
“Hope. Should.” Leonard sighed. “I guess that’s the best we can do.”
“Be grateful, Leonard,” Alina said in a scolding tone. “You’ve got an ID.”
He glowered.
“Oh.” Natalia laughed, seemingly unaware of her father’s aggravation. “You’ll love this.”
“What?” Alina said.
“Just before I left, Max said to me…”
“Yes?”
“‘Get an MRI.’”
“You’re kidding me,” Alina shouted. Hastily, she covered her mouth. “He knows.”
“And he planned to slip that bit of information to us as we were stepping over the border?” Leonard spat in exasperation.
Alina frowned. “You’re right. That is disconcerting…Did you ask Max why he didn’t tell me?”
“He said he intended to line up an insider MRI tech for us—”
“But why didn’t he let me know sooner? It doesn’t make sense.”
Leonard offered a speculation. “He keeps as much information to himself as possible. That way if you are an informant, all they’d have is a fake ID.”
“Makes sense, I suppose. But, still, he knew we were going to leave on Thursday.”
Natalia winced. “He told me he had second thoughts after you brought Dad on board.”
“What a surprise,” Leonard said.
“He didn’t want to risk the identity of one of his DOH insiders.”
Alina appeared despondent.
Hastily, Natalia continued, “He apologized. Said he wouldn’t have let you cross the border until he knew you were safe.”
“That’s comforting,” Leonard mumbled. “But he considered letting me cross, didn’t he?”
Natalia opened her mouth but hesitated. “I told him Mom had access to an MRI machine and that we already knew.”
Alina smiled. “I’ll bet that impressed him.”
Leonard rolled his eyes. An awkward silence followed.
“So,” Natalia said clumsily, attempting to drive the conversation in a productive direction. “You’ll pick me up at noon, Dad, right?”
“You need to print me a map.”
“It’s Ridgecrest.”
“I don’t recognize where I am anymore.”
Alina put one hand on his shoulder. “We’ll have to show you on a paper map, Leonard. I’ll draw it out as well.”
“Right. No Internet. No printer.” He sighed. “Where do you want to meet, Natalia?”
“Just inside the entrance there’s an office. I’ll stand to the left. It’s busy at lunch, but there won’t be a horde of people hanging by the front office.”
“Let’s try to slip out. The less attention we draw to ourselves the better. But if they give us trouble, I’ll flash my DID pass.”
Alina chimed in. “And I’m on the third floor of the west building.”
“I’ve been there, Mom.”
“Right.”
Another awkward silence.
“Up Next: Eric Stehlen: The Right Man For the Job.”
“Let’s stock the car,” Leonard said, glaring at the television.
“I’m on it,” Ali
na replied.
Chapter Twenty-Three
At a few minutes before noon, Leonard wandered up the stairs of Natalia’s middle school. Above the doors the school’s designation, Department of Education Public School 007934, stood out in large, black letters and numerals. Other than the uninspiring name, Leonard knew the building well.
As he wrenched open the door, the lunch bell sounded, reverberating throughout the building. Within seconds eager voices and the sound of hundreds of galumphing feet filled the hallway. A few wandered in Leonard’s direction to access lockers near the front office, but as Natalia had promised, most of the students wandered away, presumably toward the cafeteria.
Leonard surveyed the crowd expectantly, waiting for his daughter to emerge. It was difficult to distinguish one student from another since they all wore the same navy blue uniforms. He glanced at his watch several times. By 12:05 only a few pupils remained in the hallway. A gaggle of pretty girls, two of them visibly pregnant, loitered near a locker about twenty feet away. But no Natalia. Leonard craned his neck trying to make out a familiar shape in the trickle of kids disappearing at the far end of the hallway. He peered at his watch again, growing impatient. At 12:10 a foreboding feeling crept from his stomach up into his throat.
Something happened.
“Mr. Tramer?”
A voice startled him, shaking him from his grim speculations. One of the pretty girls approached him cautiously, her three friends following reluctantly. The girl in the lead had auburn hair and deep brown eyes. She was not one of the students who appeared pregnant from a distance. Nevertheless, a slight bulge in her abdomen indicated that she might also be carrying a child.
“Mr. Tramer. Are you all right?”
She knows me?
“Come on, Linda,” a copper-skinned, very pregnant student said, addressing the auburn-haired girl.
Their dark-skinned companion sighed. “Leave her alone. She’s talking to someone.”
“She’s talking to an adult,” the first girl grumbled through her teeth. “And he’s not a teacher.”
A fourth student, another swollen-bellied girl, remained quiet. She examined her hands anxiously and hung back several paces.
“It’s okay, Sunni,” Linda said. “This is Natalia’s dad.”
Sunni scoffed, regarding Leonard with disdain. “Whatever.” She pivoted on her heels and took command of the other two. “We’ll meet you in the lunchroom when you’re done with that guy.”
The sassy teenager’s blatant disrespect unnerved Leonard. He stared after the trio as they marched down the hallway.
“Mr. Tramer,” Linda whispered urgently. “What are you doing here?”
“I…uh…” Leonard knitted his eyebrows and stared into the eyes of the girl before him. Clearly, she knew him from somewhere. She must be a friend of Natalia’s.
“Linda.” Leonard remembered his daughter’s confession the first time he met her. Some girl named Linda was pregnant and ignoring Natalia. He tipped his head to one side. “Are you still Natalia’s friend?”
Linda pulled her head back in surprise and became defensive. “You barged into our school to ask me if I’m still Natalia’s friend?”
“No, no, no. I came here to pick up Natalia. It’s just that she said—” Leonard refrained. His mission didn’t include scolding this girl.
Linda pursed her lips. “She said what? I mean…” Her words trailed away and her tone implied that she knew very well what he was talking about, but she was not going to go there. Not with him. Not at that moment.
“Anyway, no matter,” Leonard said, dismissing the issue. “Natalia was supposed to meet me by the front door during her lunch period. I’m sure she said right here by the office.”
“You missed her.”
Leonard’s heart beat faster. “What do you mean, I missed her?”
“She left. Twenty, maybe thirty minutes ago.”
Leonard stammered. “How…how can that be? She told me students were not allowed to leave campus.”
Linda laughed derisively. “Yeah, well the Youth Brigade gets special privileges.”
Leonard’s stomach turned over, and he became so dizzy, he nearly fell to his knees. Youth Brigade? Everything they told Natalia in the past twenty-four hours: the tracking implants, the counterfeit IDs, the smuggling compartments in the car. All the details of their escape plan, not to mention almost everything they knew about the government and the CARS scam. Natalia knew. Natalia had bluffed her way into their sphere of trust and extracted enough incriminating evidence to sentence her parents for life. What was it Alina’s friend, Brenda, told her? Trust no one. Especially not your children.
“Oh my God,” Leonard moaned, no longer feeling the need to be vigilant. Without warning, the odor of sweat and old mops overpowered Leonard. He staggered, putting his head in one hand. “Natalia never told me she was in the Youth Brigade.”
Linda let out a yelp of amusement. “Natalia? Natalia’s not in the Youth Brigade.”
“But you said—”
“I was talking about Garrett.”
“Garrett?”
“Garrett came and pulled Natalia out of math class.”
“You were there?”
Linda sighed in teenage annoyance. “Yes, I was there. That’s how come I know.”
“Why would he pull her—?” Leonard began, but the answer to his question emerged swiftly from within. He’s not waiting until Friday.
Leonard gazed at Linda keenly, but the girl refused to meet his eyes. Instead, she examined her fingernails attentively, her face flushed, growing redder with each second.
“You know where he took her, don’t you, Linda?”
The girl shook her head several times fast, but she bit her lip nervously.
Leonard touched her shoulder and tilted his entire body to one side, trying to catch her eyes — this young lady, pressured into sex before she was ready, corralled into The New Direction’s breeding program.
Violated by my own son, Leonard concluded in horror, remembering the conversation he heard in the backyard Monday night. I already nailed your friend. Was that why Linda avoided Natalia?
“You know because you’ve been there…with Garrett.”
Linda curled her lips inside until the skin around them blanched. She blinked back tears. All of a sudden she shook Leonard’s hand away violently and scowled at him in disgust. “You want your turn now, I suppose?”
“No, Linda, I wouldn’t…I’m so sorry my son did this to you.”
Her voice trembled. “He is not a nice boy, you know. Of all the boys to…” Linda closed her eyes, as if refusing to open them might make the whole sordid business go away. The pained expression on the girl’s face prompted Leonard to remember the urgency of the present.
“Where did Garrett take Natalia? Someone’s house?”
Linda looked away.
“She’s paired with an Asian boy, correct?”
Linda’s eyes flew open. “Yeah. Dishi. How did you know?”
“Did Dishi leave with Garrett, too?”
“I don’t know. He’s not in our math class.”
Leonard took a deep breath, trying to remain calm. “Listen, Linda, do you know where they would go?”
She glared at him in disbelief. “Do you realize what they’ll do to me if I tell?”
Leonard grabbed her by both arms and she grimaced in fear. Her discomfort did not move him. He shook her slightly. “Where did he take her?” he demanded.
“The Camry Motel. Room 101 or 103.” She wrenched herself from his grasp, turned, and ran down the hall in tears.
The Camry Motel.
Leonard pulled Alina’s hand-drawn map out of his pocket. The Camry Motel was one of the landmarks she’d included to help Leonard find his way. It was only three blocks from the school and Leonard had parked halfway between the motel and DEPS 007934. He turned abruptly and made his way toward the front door.
“May I help you?” a stern woman’s voice h
ollered before Leonard reached the exit. Something about her tone reminded Leonard of the break enforcer at the DID. He gritted his teeth and turned slowly.
Play it cool. “I’m sorry,” he said, feigning a smile. “I was looking for my daughter.”
The woman glowered. Gesturing at Linda who had just disappeared around the corner, the school official said, “I see you found her.”
Why not? It’s a good cover, Leonard thought. “Yeah. I’ll be getting out of your hair now.” The urge to bolt and run to the Camry Motel nearly crippled his wavering self-control.
The woman strode briskly toward Leonard with a haughty, authoritative gait. “This is why we don’t allow parents to visit during school hours, Mr. uh…”
He did not know Linda’s last name. Furthermore, he realized he might have to use his ID. Hoping that the woman had not gotten a good look at Linda or that she really didn’t know the students by sight, he answered truthfully. “Tramer.”
“Mr. Tramer.” She folded her arms. “Kindly do not visit in the future. You may pick up your daughter at the curb.” Her saccharine smile sickened Leonard.
“Absolutely, ma’am,” he said, matching her fake smile with a beauty of his own. “Do you have something to hide?” It slipped out of his mouth before he could contain it. Like sterilants in the water and segregated education?
The woman narrowed her eyes to half-moon slits. She regarded Leonard with contempt. “Leave. Now. Mr. Tramer,” she spat. “Before I have to call the authorities.”
Dying to flash his badge at that moment, he paused, but only for a second. Natalia was at the Camry Motel. It might already be too late.
“My pleasure,” he said, and he walked quickly to the exit. As he ran down the steps, the bell rang, signaling the end of the lunch period. Leonard doubled his speed and raced toward the Camry Motel.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Old and in desperate need of paint, the two-story motel consisted of three buildings forming a u-shape. A Department of Housing and Relocation banner plastered on a billboard near the sidewalk announced that rooms were assigned to persons in transit from one housing development to another. Leonard stepped onto the property and looked around. The office was at the end of building three, kitty-corner from rooms 101 and 103.
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