by Tarah Benner
“He’s intelligent, charismatic, single-minded, and has problems with authority,” said Cole. “I honestly have no idea how he slipped through the San Judas vetting process. He’s a born leader with a white-knight complex. It’s a recipe for disaster.”
“White-knight complex?”
“He thinks he can save everybody,” Cole explained. “People like that who end up in prison nearly always get time tacked onto their sentence. They’re in and out of the hole, and lots of them end up killing themselves. Their entire self-worth is based on their role as the protector.”
Lark didn’t know what to say to that, but she was beginning to feel as though she didn’t know Soren at all. How had she not picked up on that? His obsession with finding Micah, getting her out of prison . . . It all made sense. Was he drawn to her because he liked her or because he thought that she needed saving?
“You don’t know us,” Lark mumbled, feeling as though she needed to stand up for her friends. “You just know how we performed on some bullshit personality test.”
“The test doesn’t lie,” said Cole. “It was developed by the Department of Defense to weed out terrorists. As it turns out, terrorists are too unpredictable, but we use it to assess gang members who could become potential informants, soldiers who might go undercover to infiltrate a terrorist cell . . . stuff like that.”
“It’s just a personality test,” Lark muttered.
“Relax,” he said. “It’s normal to be angry once you see people for who they really are.”
Cole turned away, and Lark got the feeling that he was stifling a grin.
“What are you, then?” Lark asked, suddenly annoyed.
Cole didn’t answer. He just stopped, and Lark wondered if he was about to drop another truth bomb on her. But then he pulled out his key card, and she realized that they had reached their destination.
The door swung open, and Lark found herself standing in a room that resembled a lab. The walls were lined with stainless-steel counters and gray laminate cabinets. There was a long table in the center of the room that was bare except for a sturdy plastic case — the sort of box that might contain a power drill.
“Reuben made me your handler for this,” said Cole.
Lark raised an eyebrow. “I have a handler?”
Cole cracked a grin. “You’re gonna like what I have to show you. Trust me. As far as GreenSeed knows, the DOJ will be doing the handoff with San Judas tomorrow morning. The U.S. Marshals Service is taking credit for the collar, but we’ll be the ones to hand you over.”
“Why the U.S. Marshals Service?”
“GreenSeed knows the Department of Homeland Security has been trying to get to them for a while. We don’t want to make them suspicious.”
“Right.”
“The story is that you were pursued by the U.S. Marshals and that Soren, Axel, and Simjay were killed in the shootout. They opened fire first. The plan was to meet up with Bernadette Mitchell, but you were unable to make contact.”
“That doesn’t make sense,” said Lark. “Bernie was supposed to escape with us.”
“You heard she escaped over a police radio, and you were going to look for her at her Aunt Stacey’s house. Stacey is her closest living relative.”
The name rang a bell for Lark. She vaguely recalled Bernie complaining about her Fundamentalist Christian aunt and her four bratty kids, but she was impressed and a little creeped out that Homeland Security knew about Aunt Stacey.
“Now, listen,” said Cole. “They won’t reintegrate you into gen pop. They don’t want you revealing what you know about the outside. If you play your cards right, you’ll be housed in isolation on the administrative campus.”
“What do you mean ‘if I play my cards right’?” Lark asked. She couldn’t imagine serving the rest of her sentence in isolation. She’d go crazy.
“I mean it’s important that you sell the story,” said Cole. “If something smells off to them, they’ll do whatever’s necessary to make you talk. You need to convince them that Hensley lost it and that the four of you were holed up in some filthy trailer in New Mexico. When we showed up, they panicked and got themselves killed trying to escape.”
“How am I supposed to get out of there once they put me in?” asked Lark.
Cole nodded and pulled the black case across the table toward him. He flipped it open, and Lark’s feeling that she’d just been dropped inside a James Bond movie intensified.
The interior of the case was padded with bumpy grayish foam, and inside lay a device about the size of a triple-A battery. It was encased in blue plastic and had a tiny glass tip.
“Is that what I think it is?” asked Lark.
“I told you you’d like this part,” said Cole, unable to suppress the hint of boyish excitement in his voice. “This is a high-powered handheld laser. It can cut through any metal in just a few minutes.”
He reached into a cabinet behind him and produced a well-worn pair of boots that were identical to the pair they’d confiscated. “Look familiar?”
Lark nodded. Cole set the left boot down on the table and flipped the right one over in his hand.
“They’ll give you a new uniform just like the one you had, but work boots are expensive. They should return this pair to you once you go through processing.”
He cupped the boot in his hand, slid off the rubber heel, and showed it to her. Someone had carved out a small cylindrical compartment that was the exact shape and size of the laser.
“The heel of the other boot contains a small homing beacon,” he explained. “Once you have what you need, activate that, and someone will be there to extract you within twenty-four hours.”
Agent Cole fitted Lark’s scary new laser into the hole, reattached the heel, and turned the inside of the boot to face her.
“The new lining is removable. Inside you’ll find two dozen waterproof pouches. That’s how you’ll smuggle out the seeds.”
Lark stared at the boot in disbelief. They really had thought of everything.
“There’s a minuscule amount of metal in the laser and the beacon, but it’s unlikely that their metal detector will be sensitive enough to pick it up. Otherwise it would go off for the eyelets on your boots. Same goes for this.” He set the boot down and took something else out of the case.
Lark stared. She hadn’t noticed it before, but Cole was holding a semitransparent piece of plastic smaller than a postage stamp. It was the exact size and shape of the nail on her big toe.
“What the hell is that?” asked Lark.
“This is just a microchip,” said Cole. “It’ll fit any computer manufactured after 2035. This is how you’re going to get us the files.”
“And where exactly does that go?” asked Lark.
Cole smirked. “Where do you think it goes?”
At that moment, there was a soft beep, and the door to the lab slid open. A man stepped inside dressed in gray slacks and a long white lab coat. He looked to be in his late fifties with light-gray hair and a neat little mustache.
“Lark, this is Carl Rosenberg. He’s going to fit you with the device.”
Lark’s stomach did an uncomfortable flop, and she felt the color drain from her face. “Fit me with the —”
“Why don’t you take a seat?” said Rosenberg. He pushed a button on the wall, and the floor seemed to open in the very center of the room. An uncomfortable-looking dentist’s chair rose up out of the floor, and Lark’s anxiety ratcheted up a notch.
“Please remove your right shoe,” said the man.
Reluctantly, Lark slipped off the flimsy canvas shoe they’d given her and ripped off her sock. Then she hopped over to the chair and eased herself into it.
Rosenberg wasted no time. He pulled a little metal cart and stool over to Lark’s chair and situated himself beside her right foot. Lark really didn’t like people touching her feet, but she was too focused on what was about to happen to put up a fight.
Rosenberg groped around on the metal cart
for a thin sheet of plastic. He covered four of her toes with the hanky-sized shield and produced a blue aerosol can. He shook the can vigorously and then sprayed a layer of cool foam over Lark’s big toe.
Instantly, the skin around Lark’s nail began to tingle. Her toe throbbed painfully as a sort of chemical frostbite worked its way down through her nail to the flesh beneath it. But just as her toe seemed to freeze, the cold numbing sensation was replaced by a pleasant heat.
Cole and Rosenberg were watching her toe intently. If every nerve in her body hadn’t been hot with anticipation, Lark might have found it funny. Never in a million years would she have thought that she would be sitting in a secret government lab with a mad doctor and her spy handler staring at her foot.
“Hmm,” said Rosenberg, pursing his lip so that his mustache twitched. “Too bad.”
“What’s too bad?” asked Lark, breathless with panic.
“Lots of times, that solution is enough to make the nail fall off completely. Yours needs some help.”
“What?”
“This’ll only take a second,” said Rosenberg, grabbing a pair of pliers off the cart with the grim resolve of a dentist about to yank out a bad tooth.
Every muscle in Lark’s body clenched. She gripped the arms of the chair so hard that her knuckles turned white, and she held her breath as Rosenberg bent over her foot.
She felt the cool metal graze her skin before clamping down on her toenail.
“One . . . Two . . . Three.”
nine
Bernie
Bernie sat in silence for the rest of the drive. She only spoke after hour ten when Simjay announced that he was falling asleep at the wheel. It was around two in the morning, and he had been driving since Sweetwater, Texas.
Bernie took over, feeling grateful for the distraction. Portia was snoring loudly in the back seat, and Denali was perched beside her with his front legs resting on the center console. He seemed to sense that Bernie was not all right, and she was strangely grateful for the extra support.
She couldn’t stop thinking about the man in the trailer who’d almost raped her and cooked them up for dinner. She could scarcely believe that people in some parts of the country were resorting to cannibalism. It was like being trapped inside a nightmare.
She knew the man’s rough hands and bulging blue eyes would be giving her nightmares for months, but worse than the images seared into her mind was the smell she couldn’t seem to shake.
When they stopped in Lakewood, Colorado, to siphon some gas, Bernie broke into an apartment across the street and raided the former occupant’s closet for a new set of clothes. She found a pair of jeans and a soft cotton sweatshirt that smelled like dryer sheets, but she could still taste the acrid stench of ammonia and lighter fluid on the tip of her tongue.
Maybe the smell had soaked into her skin. She desperately wanted to shower. Her cheeks were crusty where the tears had turned to salt, and she could still feel the man crawling all over her. But they were in a hurry, so she just grabbed some extra clothes for Portia and met them back at the car.
Simjay didn’t say anything about her new outfit. Portia was still fast asleep, so Bernie tossed the clothes in the trunk and climbed into the driver’s seat. They were only about an hour and a half from Vail, and Bernie was starting to feel anxious.
What if Vail was overrun? What if they couldn’t find Conrad’s house? What if he wasn’t even there?
They had no backup plan — no plan B — and Bernie had no idea what they would do next. She didn’t think she’d felt this helpless since she’d watched her mother die.
Her wrists were still sticky where the duct tape had adhered to her skin, and her gaze kept drifting to Simjay’s battered hand resting on his knee. His knuckles were bruised and split, dried blood still flaking off the scabs. His left eye was swollen and puffy, but he didn’t complain as they sped down the deserted highway toward the mountains.
He was leaning his head against the dark window, but Bernie could tell that he was awake from the reflection of the dashboard lights in his eyes. Was he still picturing that enormous pile of bones, or was he thinking about the man in the trailer and what might have happened if he hadn’t been there?
“Thank you,” she said finally.
Simjay turned to face her, his eyes half-concealed in shadow. For a moment, Bernie wasn’t sure if he’d heard her, but then he shook his head.
“Don’t thank me for that,” he said roughly.
Bernie swallowed and stared straight ahead. Her heart seemed to be working hard to maintain a normal rhythm, and her chest felt very tight.
Don’t cry, don’t cry, don’t cry, she scolded herself.
“I want to,” she said, fighting to keep her voice steady. “You saved me. If you hadn’t —” She broke off, struggling against the unmanageable tide of emotion that was threatening to spill out of her.
“I don’t want to think about what would have happened,” said Simjay. His voice was so dark and hollow that Bernie turned to look at him. In the soft bluish glow of the dashboard icons, Simjay’s face looked as though it were carved from stone.
“I saw what he was going to do, and I couldn’t —” He broke off, and Bernie heard his knuckles crack as he clenched his injured fists. “It makes me sick.”
There was a long pause, and Bernie used the opportunity to draw in a long ragged breath.
“Men like that shouldn’t exist,” said Simjay finally. His tone was laced with so much hatred that it scared Bernie a little. “I mean, I’ve done some shitty things — some really shitty things — but I could never hurt someone like that.”
“I know,” said Bernie, a little surprised that he felt he had to say it.
He shook his head. “When I think about guys like that who are walking free . . .” He shuddered. “It makes me want to nuke the whole fucking planet.”
Bernie stared. She hadn’t imagined such a strong reaction from happy-go-lucky Simjay, but clearly he’d had experience with men like that before.
“When I saw the way that guy looked at you . . .” He shook his head. “God.” He broke off, but Bernie had the feeling that he wasn’t finished.
“When I left school, one of the first places I went was India,” he said. “I was renting this little shithole apartment in New Delhi for, like, six thousand rupees. I was there for two or three months. On the floor below me was this girl about my age who still lived with her parents, and there was a middle-aged guy who lived across the hall. I always got the creeps from him, but I never knew why.”
Bernie waited, sure this had to be related somehow.
“I liked the girl. She was the only one in the building who spoke English, and she was really nice to me.” He swallowed, and Bernie could tell that the story was about to take a nasty turn. “One night I came home, and she was lying in the stairwell. She was crying. I could tell that she was hurt, so I went over to see what was wrong.” His face grew dark. “I knew what had happened right away, but she said her parents would never believe her.”
“It was the guy across the hall.”
Simjay let out a breath that was almost a growl. “Yeah. I went straight to his unit and beat the shit out of him. It scared me a little.” He clenched his jaw. “By the time I was through with him, he couldn’t even move. He was just lying there moaning. But he deserved every bit of it and then some.”
Bernie just stared at him in shock.
“The next day, the girl’s father came to my door. He said to leave his daughter alone and that the man across the hall had contacted the authorities.”
“Seriously?”
Simjay nodded slowly. “That’s why I had to leave. My visa was expired. I couldn’t get arrested.” He shuddered. “The thing is . . . I knew that guy was bad news. I could feel it in my bones. I should have done something, but instead I just let it happen.”
“It wasn’t your fault,” said Bernie. “You didn’t know what he was going to do.”
Simjay
shrugged, but Bernie could tell he was still haunted by thoughts of what he might have done to prevent the man’s heinous crime.
“And the girl?” Bernie asked.
Simjay shook his head. “I never found out what happened to her.”
Bernie turned back to the road, utterly floored by Simjay’s story.
When he’d told them he’d traveled the world, she’d always imagined him partying in Ibiza, getting stoned in Amsterdam, and taking funny photos with the Queen’s Guard in London. She’d never pictured him renting a room in the slums of New Delhi. What had made him decide to go there? Where else had he visited?
Suddenly Bernie was dying to know more about him. It was a strange feeling, caring about Simjay, but she couldn’t help but feel that she’d grossly misjudged him. He’d risked his life to save her from that man, and she was beginning to wonder if all the jokes and carefree attitude were just a front.
As the road wound through Georgetown and Silverthorne, Bernie began to see signs for other ski resorts she knew. Within half an hour, signs for Vail started popping up along the side of the road, and Bernie’s heart beat a little faster.
It was the middle of the night. She couldn’t see the mountains, but she felt their strong, immovable presence around her like a tribe of sleeping giants.
But just as they were about to enter the resort, they found their path blocked by a tall chain-link fence. Bernie slammed on the brakes to avoid banging into the gate, and suddenly the inside of the car was flooded with light.
She heard a sound like a siren reverberating through the street, and panic rushed through her system. Someone was guarding the resort, and they had just let everyone know they were there.
“What the fuck?” Simjay murmured, leaning forward and squinting through the brightness.
Portia jolted awake in the back seat, and Denali growled at the window.
Bernie didn’t know what to do. Her mind was in a frenzy, but she had the common sense to throw the car into reverse and hit the gas. They sped backward, sirens still shrieking, and Bernie saw shadowy figures moving above them — at least ten or twelve feet off the ground.