by Leigh Tudor
He finally made his way to Ally with only having one beer spilled down his back, and a cigarette flicked in his path. “Hey, Ally, seen Cara?”
“Oh, hey, Nate,” she said, “I didn’t know you came to these parties.”
“I don’t, but I needed to get an important message to Cara about her sister and was hoping she was here.”
Ally instantly went into concerned BFF mode and pulled away from Manny. “Is it Loren? Is she okay? I know she wasn’t able to pick her up from school today.”
“Nothing big, but rather personal. Know where she’s at?”
“Yeah, you just missed her and Landon. They were walking toward the road. She said Landon was taking her home. If you hurry, you might catch her.”
“Gotcha, thanks,” he said before tearing his way through the crowd of kids drinking alcohol and indulging in who knew what substances that would compromise their frontal cortexes.
He made his way through the field and to Mercy’s car, then jumped in and faced her, breathless. “Drive out to the road and help me find Landon’s car. A friend is with him, and I want to make sure he gets her home safe.”
“Landon Standish?” Mercy asked, turning on her engine. “Isn’t he like, the nicest guy in school?”
“He is. I just want to make sure they both make it there okay.” Who knew if he had been drinking? Nate would hope the guy wouldn’t drink and drive, but he wasn’t willing to make the assumption, considering Landon had just been surrounded by dozens of kids making monumental mistakes that could affect them cognitively.
Mercy pulled onto the road, and Nate caught Landon opening the door to his Ford F-150 for Cara.”
“Was that Cara?” Mercy asked, leaning forward and squinting her eyes.
They were too far away. And getting their attention before they left wasn’t a possibility.
“Follow them,” Nate responded.
“Are you telling me the friend you were looking out for was Cara?”
“I’m not saying anything. Just follow the truck.” So he could go to bed knowing she had made it home safe and sound. He couldn’t wait until he had his driver’s license and he could patrol Cara’s comings and goings without a nosy babysitter.
But something was wrong.
Instead of driving toward the house, Landon had taken the opposite way that led out of town.
“Why are they going this way? Oh my God, is that little piece of feces taking Cara to a motel? I swear to God I will staple his testicles to his jockstrap if he takes her to a motel!” Mercy screeched.
Nate pulled his phone out of his pants pocket and tried calling her again.
No answer.
He then tried calling Landon.
Again, no answer.
“Should we tell them we’re following them?” Nate asked, unsure how to proceed.
“No, let’s see where he takes her. And then when I interrogate the little schemer, i.e. Cara, I’ll catch her in her lies.”
“That seems a bit unethical.”
“What do you think Little Miss Perfect is doing? Ethically attending a party she doesn’t have permission to go to and then morally hightailing it out of town with a boy two years her senior?”
“I know Cara,” Nate said with resounding faith. “Something’s going on, and I think you’re right. We need to follow them and find out what it is.”
There were few times in Mercy’s life when she had to be the one to trail another vehicle. It was usually Loren behind the wheel, while Mercy helped navigate.
Loren had always said that if you can see the car you’re tailing, they can see you. Big sister’s answer to that was to outfit Mercy with a long-range video camera with a zoom lens. This allowed Loren to drive farther behind the targeted vehicle, with Mercy giving her turn-by-turn directions well in advance.
But Landon, being a high school student as opposed to a criminal of ill-repute, made it all the easier, requiring far less stealth. The fact he was distracted by his passenger was more than likely a contributing factor.
“Okay, Nate, time to cough up some intel. How did you know Cara would be at the party and why did you feel it necessary to check on her?”
He held on to the dashboard as she took a turn at a fast clip to keep a large truck from getting in front of them and hampering their view.
He sighed. “I overheard a conversation that conflicted with what you told me about Cara spending the night with Ally,” he said, not offering any additional information, his eyes glued on the truck ahead of them.
“Yeah, but why check on her?”
“I have found that lies lead to more lies that lead to poor decisions that lead to life-altering circumstances. She’s important to me, and my frontal cortex is more fully developed than most teenagers’. It’s my public duty to help those who aren’t fully capable of making such good choices.”
This kid was so full of himself.
Mercy still didn’t get it.
With the exception of her little sister’s road trip to Dallas to watch a cover band with Ally so many months ago, Cara was beyond reproach and usually the one keeping her and Loren on the straight and narrow. Mercy chalked it up to Cara having a comparably normal upbringing. Certainly not normal compared to the students at Wilder High, but vastly normal compared to her older sisters. She hadn’t had to lie, rob, steal, fight, coerce, interrogate, hack, or threaten people on the reg. And although a celebrity, she met your average everyday people, learned how to navigate society, and dressed appropriately to suit the event.
She also had Madame Garmond, who kept a close eye on her and did her best to give her a normal childhood under abnormal circumstances.
“Are you saying you were afraid Cara would make poor decisions and do something really bad?”
“No, I was afraid other people would make poor decisions, and she would become inadvertently involved.” He frowned and shook his head. “Don’t get me wrong. Cara is a strong-minded woman and more than capable of taking care of herself. It’s the other morons around her who I don’t trust.”
Nate’s focus returned to the truck ahead of them.
“I do have a question, though,” he added. “About her past.”
Mercy didn’t like the sound of that. Sharing details of their past brought on conflicting emotions. Some stories weren’t hers to tell. And most of them she wasn’t permitted to tell. But was that still the case? And wouldn’t it all become public knowledge once Amado’s trial began?
“You can ask me questions, but I can’t promise to answer them,” she said with what she thought was a diplomatic response.
“Fair enough. Why did Halstead adopt you, Loren, and Cara?”
Oh wow, that was a spring-loaded question.
She stopped a couple of cars back at a red stoplight.
Where to begin? And should she?
She thought about what Trevor had said regarding how she was always doing the detract and distract thing. Always avoiding the truth and hiding things. Maybe it was time to be more honest with the people in her life? Didn’t Trevor say it took commitment and communication to develop and nurture relationships? Maybe this was one of those moments when sharing was a good thing?
Maybe she could use Nate as target practice for her new and improved version of herself. Kind of like a Mercy 2.0 who’s more honest and forthright and a little less gun shy when it comes to her past.
Besides, this was Nate. He’d lived at the Center as well, likely in line to join their special little club and live a life of crime.
“He wanted to replicate Loren’s genius with Cara and me and make money doing it.” She almost released a huge pent-up sigh. Hearing the words coming out of her mouth made her feel like she’d just released a huge burden tinged with a foreboding sensation, as if a specter were going to appear before her car at any moment, pointing an accusatory finger at her.
That looked like Loren.
“Was Loren born smart, or after having an accident, like me?”
“A
ccident,” she answered.
“How did Halstead plan to replicate something like that?”
She hesitated, but figured she had gone this far. “Brain surgery.”
“He… he operated on your brain?”
“Both Cara’s and mine. As a result, Cara became a musical genius, and I became a not-so-shabby artist. But he didn’t operate on us; his in-house brain surgeon did the honors. Dr. Vielle, aka Dr. Vile, a perfectly revolting human being of the first order.”
“So Halstead sold your art?”
“Not quite.” This was where things got sticky. “I painted replicas of valuable works of art and then Loren would arrange for the swap.”
“Swap? You stole paintings?”
“We did.”
“For money?”
“No, we stole paintings to protect Cara, and then Halstead took the money.”
He turned his head toward the side window, working through the additional information. Then whipped it back toward Mercy. “Did Cara play the piano for money?”
“Oh, yes. And she was good.”
“As in, she made him tons of money playing the piano?”
Mercy glanced at him and saw nothing but good intentions and innocent curiosity about a girl he was infatuated with. “She was—is—amazing. Cara sold out concerts all over the world. She was what you might call a really big deal.”
He sniffed. “Please, I would never use such a sophomoric term. So, how much are we talking?”
The kid was all about the money. Maybe this wasn’t a good idea.
As if he picked up on her thoughts, he added, “I would never equate Cara’s value to the amount of money she earned playing piano concerts. You have to understand that her worth to me transcends something as plebeian as money.”
“Are you telling me you don’t love making money?” she asked with a raised eyebrow.
“I love ensuring my sisters have the means to make decisions based on their passions and desires as opposed to stark survival.”
That was interesting. What would Nate know about living in survival mode? “Did your parents struggle financially?”
Nate became quiet, and Mercy realized she’d turned the tables on him, asking questions he was reticent to answer.
“Yes,” he said, rubbing his hands up and down his legs. “We were extremely poor. Like dirt poor. My dad was a drunk, and my mom… a prostitute. When I got hit in the head by the baseball and woke up… like this,” he said, pointing to his head, “I became their golden ticket.”
“And?” Mercy asked, half afraid to pose the question.
“And after I made the local papers and Halstead got wind of my acquired savant status, they sold me to him.”
Chapter Twelve
“Let me be clear about this: I don’t have a drug problem, I have a police problem.” — Keith Richards
Mercy barely made the green light as she pumped on the brakes at that unexpected bit of information.
“They sold you?”
“Yep, they weren’t what you would call principled.”
“I thought your parents were dead?”
“Oh, they died. Halstead staged a convenient accident for them so they were no longer a complication, and he didn’t have to follow through on the payout. So much for that golden ticket, right? And because of their untimely death, when Halstead offered to adopt both Marleigh and me, how could the courts refuse, with two fewer orphans to worry about?”
“How do you know this?”
Nate turned toward her with a smirk. “Please, if the information’s digitized, I can hack into it.” He hesitated for a moment. “Although I wasn’t nearly as good at it as Loren. Some referred to her as a master cracker.”
“Cracker? Seriously?”
“That’s lingo in the hacking community for someone who hacks for personal gain or nefarious reasons.”
“And you had heard of her?”
“Sure did. Within the dark web, she was nothing short of legendary. I wasn’t sure she wasn’t urban legend. Her services were pretty expensive. There was only a small percentage of criminals who could afford her, or even knew how to get in contact with her. What I didn’t realize at the time was that she worked out of the Center.”
“Just a few yards from where you slept,” she said. “So how did you figure out this master cracker was Loren?”
“Her alias was HALFPINT.”
Mercy rolled her eyes.
“Once I heard Jimbo call her that, I started to put it together, but wasn’t one hundred percent sure,” he commented. “However, I am starting to see a number of commonalities between me, Marleigh, Haley, and you and your sisters.”
Mercy nodded. “Yep.”
“They were planning to operate on Marleigh’s brain, weren’t they?”
“I’m pretty sure that was the plan. But fortunately for Marleigh, Jasper’s gray matter is about the same size as a single cell amoeba and he jacked it all up by getting himself in the crosshairs of a drug cartel boss.”
She didn’t mention Jasper’s offer to Amado to exchange Nate and the girls for his freedom. She thought the kid had heard enough about him and his sister being bartered for or sold to the highest bidders.
“So, Loren planned out the swaps. What else did she do that he could exploit?”
In for a penny in for a pound. Might as well come clean. The kid certainly deserved to know.
“In a nutshell, Loren and I were contracted out to plan and execute other… criminal activities.”
“More than just hacking jobs and swapping out original pieces of art for dupes?”
“Oh, yes.”
Nate sat back in his seat, keeping his eyes straight ahead. “So, basically, you were, like, hardened criminals.”
“Not by choice,” she said, exiting off the highway. “We were instructed to either carry out the contracts negotiated by Halstead with some of the world’s biggest lowlifes, or they’d threaten to keep us from ever seeing Cara again. Or, they’d hit us with their all-time favorite threat, which was to perform more experimental surgeries on her.”
She made another left, and the houses became progressively neglected and unkept, with windows busted and covered with sheets of cardboard or plywood. The residents appeared soulless, sitting on their front stoops or on chairs that looked like they’d once resided inside but were now relegated to the front porch.
Even though a number of the lamps in the streetlights were suspiciously broken and casting a shadow over sections of the sidewalks, enough were illuminated, which forced her to keep farther away from the truck, making it all the more difficult to keep track of Landon.
“From a quantitative perspective, how bad are we talking here?” Nate asked, always using numbers to add clarity to his world. “Like, on a sliding scale, one being petty theft stuff and ten being crimes of international proportions.”
“You’re a smart kid and already know the answer to this, but for the sake of clarity, ten.”
“Okaaay,” he said, taking it all in.
“I know it sounds bad, but we were coerced and exploited from a very young age. So much so that the FBI had been keeping an eye on Halstead and trying to gather enough information to finally bring him down.”
Nate turned instantly skeptical.
“That should have been child’s play. There had to be tons of incriminating evidence inside the Center.”
“Did you find any of this incriminating evidence while at the Center?”
He narrowed his eyes. “No.”
“Want to know why?”
“Of course I do.”
“Because Loren was the one who masterminded the cyber security software and physical infrastructure to protect it. What she didn’t know was that there were people outside the Center, who, if they had access to that information, could have helped all of us get out from under Halstead’s thumb. But she thought she was protecting us by building all that Fort Knox-level security.”
“Did you or Loren … kill an
ybody?”
Mercy hesitated. But who was she kidding? He was a genius and would be able to hunt down the information with the multitude of crumbs she had already provided. And it was all going to come out during the trial anyway. “Only when there was no other choice,” she confessed. “Although, I can count on one hand the times when Loren went all-out-vigilante on a few really despicable human beings. I’m talking the absolute dregs of society.”
“Halstead?” The word on the street was that he died of natural causes. But something didn’t sit right with telling him that it was Loren and a vial of poison that had done him in.
“No comment,” she said, having a better understanding of why Loren had kept the same tidbit of information from her at the time.
“This has all been quite enlightening,” he said as if in a trance.
Second-guessing the level of detail she had just coughed up to a mere twelve-year-old, she added, “I wanted to be honest with you, Nate. Largely because what happened to us was planned for you, Marleigh, and Haley and for that reason alone, you deserved to know. But I don’t apologize for anything we’ve done in the past. Do I wish it never happened? Of course. But we did the very best we could with the information we had, the circumstances thrust upon us, and the few options we were afforded, every moment of every day.”
Mercy pressed on the brakes as Landon suddenly pulled to the side of the street and turned off his headlights.
She was able to park behind a Ford Escort that looked to be about twenty years old with bullet holes peppered on the backside. Mercy turned off the headlights and silently waited for something to happen.
“Why would Landon drive Cara to such a suspect area miles from Wilder?” Nate asked, shaking his head.
“Because he’s a sexual predator?” Mercy growled, leaning toward him to open the glove compartment and pull out her trusty Glock.
Nate grabbed her by the wrist. “No, he’s not. I’m telling you; Landon Standish is one of the good guys.”
Mercy felt real pain in her chest at seeing Nate, a genius who was still just a kid, discover that people who he thought were good could be very, very bad.