The Devil You Know

by Sam Sisavath

  “What’s number one and number two?” a voice asked behind them.

  They all glanced back at Reiko, coming out of one of the bedrooms rubbing at her eyes. She looked disheveled and still half asleep.

  When she saw everyone looking back at her, Reiko stopped. “What?” Then, seeing the empty fast food bags on the tables, “Tell me you guys didn’t eat all the breakfast.”

  “How long have you been doing this?” Zoe asked. “I mean, knowing about the Rhim’s existence?”

  “Less than a month, though it feels more like a decade,” Quinn said.

  “I bet. It hasn’t even been forty-eight hours yet, and I think I just aged ten years. Oh, who am I kidding, it’s more like twenty.” She paused, then, “Does it get any easier?”

  “No.”

  “Not even a little bit?”

  “It gets stranger.”

  “I don’t know how that’s possible. Guys who are supposed to be dead coming back with a different face…” She shook her head. “I don’t know how you can get stranger than that.”

  “It does.”

  “Wow.”

  “Yeah.”

  Zoe let out a short laugh.

  “What?” Quinn said.

  “I was going to say, ‘At least I don’t have the FBI chasing me like you did when you found out about them,’ but then I remembered—the FBI probably have joined the hunt for me after yesterday.”

  “That’s probably a safe bet.”

  “Oh Lord, if my dad could see me now.”

  “Is he still around?”

  “He passed.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Thanks.”

  They sat on the hood of the white sedan, parked next to the RV in the wide-open lot, in silence for the next few minutes, watching as heavy machinery began coming alive around the three mounds on the other side of a very tall fence. The plant was gearing up for the day, and the air around them was already filled with white clouds that forced both Quinn and Zoe to pull their shirts over their mouths to keep from inhaling the specks of crushed concrete in the air.

  Behind them, Rick and Owen busied themselves under the hood of the recreational vehicle while the others were finishing up breakfast inside.

  “Porter, the Rhim, spew,” Zoe finally said, her voice slightly muffled by her shirt’s fabric.

  “And the Old Men,” Quinn said. “Don’t forget about the Old Men.”

  “How could I forget about the Old Men?” Then, with a heavy sigh, “God, what did I get myself into?”

  “It’s a lot to digest in such a short amount of time. I was lucky; I had days to understand it. Even then, it was too much, and I struggled. You’re actually taking it very well, if that helps.”

  “Yeah, well, I guess I’m used to processing a lot of information in a short amount of time.” She looked over at Quinn. “I still don’t know what I’m doing here. Why did you guys help me escape?”

  “Like I said back in the car, Aaron thinks you can help us.”

  “How?”

  “At first it was to use your resources to help us find Porter.”

  “Porter.” The reporter shook her head. “Are you sure that’s him? Because I’ve seen what Porter is supposed to look like…”

  “It’s him.”

  “You’re sure, sure.”

  “I’m sure, sure.”

  “You said it was the eyes?”

  Quinn nodded. “There’s just something about Porter that sticks out. I don’t know why it didn’t for Aaron, but it did for me.”

  “Like when you recognized him in that nightclub.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Crazy.”

  “Which part?”

  “All of it.”

  “It’s going to get crazier.”

  “I want to say you’re being overly dramatic, but after the last two days, I think you might be understating it.”

  The dust around them had lessened enough that Quinn could pull her shirt down. “Are you scared?”

  “I’d be crazy not to be, wouldn’t I?” Zoe pulled down her own shirt and sucked in a deep breath. Then, “What do they want? The Old Men?”

  “I don’t know. That’s why we’re all here.”

  “This Red Sky thing.”

  “Yeah.”

  “It sounds ominous. Real Empire Strikes Back stuff.”

  “Porter came out of hiding to find it. Sarah and her people did the same thing. A lot of people are risking a lot to dig it out.”

  “You and Aaron, too.”

  “Us, too,” Quinn nodded.

  Zoe shot a quick glance over her shoulder, back at the RV. “She doesn’t care about finding Porter. Sarah.”

  “No, she doesn’t.”

  “What does she want?”

  “I don’t know that, either.”

  Zoe gave her a curious look. “You don’t trust her, do you?”

  “What makes you say that?”

  “I can tell. She’s trying to win you over, but you’re not biting.”

  “We’ve only just met a few days ago…”

  “It’s not that. I mean, okay, maybe that’s a part of it, but it’s not the real reason. I’ve only met you yesterday, and I already trust you.” That surprised Quinn, and it must have shown on her face, because Zoe chuckled and said, “You look shocked.”

  “Like you said, we just met yesterday.”

  “Yeah, but I’ve been following your case long before then. I know everything there is to know about you. Or I thought I did, anyway. Learning that you’re something else entirely just puts all the pieces of the puzzle into place.”

  “How so?”

  “I always had questions about what they were saying about you. For instance, why you would murder your FBI mentor. The more I looked into your past and his, the more it didn’t make any sense.”

  “How far did you dig?”

  “Far enough to know he basically raised you after your run-in with him in Los Angeles. You guys never filed any official papers, but you and he basically became father and daughter. That was the biggest sticking point for me. Why would you murder someone who was that important to you? Now it all makes sense. The answer is, you didn’t.”

  Quinn didn’t know why, but knowing that there was someone else out there who knew the truth about what happened made her feel better, even if thinking about Ben just made her question, once again, how much she really knew the man.

  “After this morning’s roundtable discussion, things are becoming a lot clearer,” Zoe was saying. “I don’t know if that’s good or bad, to be honest with you. What’s that saying? Ignorance is bliss? I wish I had some of that bliss right about now.”

  “Says the woman who ran into the middle of a hostage situation.” Quinn smiled.

  Zoe laughed. “It was a good idea at the time.”

  “I bet.”

  “Right now, though, I trust you and Converse.” She sneaked a look back at Owen and Rick, wiping grease and dirt off their hands behind them. “I don’t know about them. And from what I’ve seen, neither do you and Aaron.”

  “I’m glad you feel that way about Aaron and me, but you need to be more careful about who you trust.”

  “Does that include you and Aaron?”

  “That includes everyone.”

  “Gotcha,” Zoe said.

  “Someone talking about me again?” a voice said behind them.

  Quinn glanced over as Aaron came out of the RV. “I was just telling Zoe to be careful about who she trusts. Even the people you think you know the best can surprise you.”

  “That’s definitely a good policy.” The teenager walked over to the car. “Speaking of which, there might be a potential problem.”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Henley.”

  “You mean Jack?” Zoe asked.

  “You say Jack, I say Henley,” Aaron said. Then, more seriously to Quinn, “I tried to get in touch with him this morning through the usual channels, to get an idea of wh
ere the fuzz were in their manhunt for us.”

  “And?”

  “Nothing. He never answered.”

  “Maybe he’s busy.”

  “Maybe. I contacted Harrison after that, but he hadn’t heard from Henley, either. That got Harrison worked up; he’s the one who recruited Henley in the first place.”

  Quinn recalled the two deputies helping them out of the river and remembered thinking to herself just how young they both were. Jack and Kyle, the two other SOPs who had been with Mack at the Wilshire attacks, had been about the same age.

  “What else did Harrison say?” she asked Aaron.

  “He’s going to ask around, see if he can find out what happened to Henley, if anything did,” Aaron said. “He’ll get back to me as soon as he can.”

  “What are the chances that he called in sick?” Zoe asked. “I mean, that happens, right?”

  “Anything’s possible.”

  “But you don’t believe it.”

  Aaron shook his head. “It’s too much of a coincidence. A day after he helps you guys with your Great Escape, and he doesn’t turn up for work?”

  “And your communications with him were secure?” Quinn asked.

  “Of course,” Aaron said, sounding almost offended. “This is me you’re talking to.”

  “Aaron,” Quinn said, “I’m not talking about you. I’m talking about him. Remember what happened with the girl Xiao went to meet? Just because they can’t track you doesn’t mean they can’t figure out Henley.”

  “Shit. I never considered that.”

  Of course you didn’t, Aaron. Because you’re seventeen and you’re smart, and you don’t realize that most people aren’t as smart as you.

  “Does he know where we are right now?” Zoe asked.

  “Of course not. No one knows, except the people here,” Aaron said, before he went very quiet.

  “What is it?” Quinn asked.

  “Henley and Harrison were at the bayou. They know what kind of car you guys left in. Hell, they arranged it for us.”

  “So?” Zoe said. “Can they track us with that information? I mean, there are thousands of cars like this one out there, right?”

  “Knowing what kind of car we used would help them to narrow down the search,” Quinn said. “But maybe we’re overreacting. Maybe Henley really did just come down with something and called in sick. Or maybe he decided this was a good time to use up his vacation days. He could be out of contact for a number of very good reasons.”

  Zoe was looking at her, and Quinn knew the woman didn’t believe her for a second because she didn’t believe it.

  Shit.

  Quinn turned and shouted the short distance over to Owen. “You guys almost done?”

  Owen pulled his head out from under the hood. “What?”

  “The RV. Are you almost done fixing it?”

  “She’s putting up a fight, but she’s okay.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means she’ll go when I step on the gas. As to how far, well…” He shrugged. “I guess we’ll find out. Why?”

  “We have to go. Now.”

  “I’ll go tell Sarah,” Aaron said.

  The teenager turned and headed back to the RV. He was almost at the door and was reaching for the lever when he stopped and looked back—not at them but instead up at the sky.

  Quinn was going to ask what he was looking at and why his face was suddenly very pale, when she caught the shadow gliding over the front hood of the sedan, dropped off the side, and continued along the cracked concrete parking lot until it flitted over Aaron’s head and onto the roof of the RV.

  She blinked against the harsh morning sunlight as they reflected off the extended metal limbs. The small machine was so quiet she hadn’t heard it as it made its approach, then still wasn’t aware of its existence when it hovered above their heads while they were talking.

  “Is that what I think it is?” Zoe whispered next to her.

  “Yeah,” Quinn said.

  It was a drone, and it had seen them.

  Chapter 21

  Xiao

  “What if I want to leave?”

  “Why would you?’

  “But what if I did?”

  “Then you can.”

  “Just like that?”

  “I’m not going to stop you, Xiao. Those gardeners outside aren’t going to stop you even if they wanted to.”

  “So you’re saying they’re really just gardeners?”

  “Xiao, for God’s sake, the guy near the porch is in his sixties. The woman is in her fifties. What could they possibly do to stop you if you walked out of here?”

  “I don’t know, that clipper looks pretty dangerous…”

  “You shouldn’t leave.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I don’t want you to leave.”

  She smiled. “You don’t have to try so hard. My pants are already off.”

  He grinned, looking as happy as she’d ever seen him, and Xiao thought again, Is this real? How could any of this be real? I must still be in the chair. That’s the only explanation.

  Isn’t it?

  They had been in the same position for almost an hour, with Porter’s head resting across her lap. He looked contented, as if this was where he always wanted to be, in bed with her. A part of her liked it (You’ve always secretly wanted this, didn’t you? Didn’t you?), but the other part of her, the one that had been running from the Rhim, kept waiting for reality to barge into the room and prove her doubts true.

  She traced her fingers along the bridge of his nose. The slope was slightly deeper, though not by much. Anyone who hadn’t spent the last few years in close proximity to Porter might not recognize him, but she did. This was him. All she had to do was stare at him in the right angles for a few seconds for confirmation. The question that she couldn’t answer, that remained at the back of her mind, was just how much of him had been changed by the spew.

  “You have questions,” Porter said. “Ask.”

  “What did they do to you?”

  “They helped me see the light.”

  “You said that before. How?”

  “By showing me the truth.”

  “What truth would that be?”

  “The world needs us, Xiao. I didn’t realize how much until they showed me. It’s going in the wrong path, and it’s digging itself deeper into a hole. The Rhim is trying to change that. They’re trying to avert disaster. Everything they’ve done is in service of that goal.”

  “What is Red Sky?”

  He smiled. “I can’t tell you that.”

  “But you know what it is.”

  “Yes. I’ll answer what I can, but that isn’t one of them.”

  “When?”

  “When?” he repeated.

  “When can you tell me?”

  “When you’ve seen the light.”

  “Hard to see the light when you won’t flick on the light switch.”

  “I have to be careful. They’re doing me a big favor by giving me this house, this opportunity with you. I can’t let them down.”

  “You didn’t use to care about hurting their feelings.”

  “I didn’t understand what they were trying to accomplish then. I do now.”

  “Saving the world.”

  “Is that so hard to believe?”

  “Yes. I’ve seen the results of their handiwork. So have you.”

  “I know why you feel that way. Why I did too, before. It’s impossible to understand why they do the things they do without seeing everything in their totality, Xiao.”

  “So convince me.”

  He pulled himself up from her lap and sat cross-legged on the bed in front of her. “Only if you’re willing to be convinced.”

  She nodded. “I am.”

  He gazed at her intensely, as if trying to read the truthfulness of her words on her face. She wondered what he was seeing because even she didn’t know.

  Did she want to be conv
inced? Or was she just fishing for information?

  Finally, he nodded. “I want to show you something first.”

  “I think I’ve already seen everything you have, Porter.”

  He chuckled before climbing off the bed. He picked up his pants and slipped them on, and Xiao didn’t remember ever enjoying watching someone get dressed so much in her life. It helped that she’d always imagined what Porter looked like naked.

  Check that off the bucket list.

  “Come on,” Porter said.

  “Where are we going?”

  “I want to show you the rest of the house. You’ve only seen a small part of it.”

  “Yeah, well, whose fault is that?”

  “Trust me, I’d like nothing better than to stay in bed with you all day, but there’s too much to do.”

  She slid off the bed and, for the second time that morning, searched for her nightgown on the floor.

  “Oh, I forgot,” Porter said. He walked to a pair of doors across the room and swung them open. “I had them stock up with as much variety as possible. Hopefully some of them are in your size.”

  It was a massive walk-in closet with clothes along the sides, and racks of shoes.

  Xiao smiled. “Damn, Porter, I think I love you.”

  Most of the clothes fit, as did the shoes, but she opted for comfort rather than fashion, with an eye toward maneuverability, should the need call for it.

  Just in case…

  Porter led her back down to the first floor, which was still as empty as the last time she had gone through it. He moved like a man who had been here before and knew every step by memory.

  “Where are we, Porter?” she asked on the way down the stairs.

  “I grew up here.”

  “This is your house?”

  “It used to be. My parents sold it when I was fifteen. But it hasn’t really changed very much, except everything that belonged to us, that said we used to live here, is gone. The new owners moved out a few years ago.”

  “Jesus, Porter, I didn’t know you were rich.”

  He smiled. “I wasn’t rich, Xiao. My parents were.”

  “Still, I didn’t know you came from money. You never mentioned it.”

  “You never asked.”

  He had a point. What did she really know about the man, besides the fact they were both running from the same people? For years, that had been enough and she hadn’t needed to know more about him, because what did the past matter when the present was already so murky?