The Flight of the Silvers

by Daniel Price

  THIRTY

  The old man wasn’t happy to have guests. The moment the minivan rolled into his garage, he threw an antsy scan around the neighborhood, then closed the power gate. Zack had barely stepped out of the driver’s door when a gnarled and stubby finger poked his chest.

  “You the leader?”

  The cartoonist stammered. He’d never considered the title before and he didn’t enjoy wearing it now. “I’m Zack.”

  “I don’t want to know your name. I just want to know if you’re the man to talk to.”

  In his recent portal delivery, among all the notes and handcuffs, Peter included directions to a house in Quinwood, West Virginia, seventeen miles east of the highway ambush site.

  His name’s Xander. He’ll be expecting you. He won’t be pleasant but he’ll hide you. He has no love for Deps.

  He stood just a thumb taller than Mia, with a scrubbed pink face and the flawless gray bouffant of a news anchor. Despite the early hour, he wore a sharp blue blazer ensemble with a red silk ascot and matching pocket square. Zack figured the man stood out like neon in this rustic little town, a Truman Capote in a sea of John Waynes. Not that the Silvers were any less conspicuous. Four of them were dressed like burglars while two sported the blue prisoner jumpsuits of DP-9.

  Xander covered his mouth at the sight of David’s gory hand, which had already bled through its dressing and now dripped a crimson puddle.

  “Oh, Lord no. He didn’t tell me you’d have injured people bleeding all over my rugs.”

  Amanda narrowed her eyes at him. “Peter didn’t know. If you have towels—”

  “Take what you want,” he said, his palms raised in high dither. “I was never here. You’re merely robbers who broke in while I was visiting my sister.”

  The hair-dryer whirr of an aerocar motor turned all heads to the door. Theo peered through the glass.

  “Get away from the window!” Xander yelled.

  “A taxi just pulled into your driveway.”

  “It’s mine. I was hoping to be gone before you showed up.”

  He thrust a set of keys in Zack’s hand, then gestured at his small red sedan.

  “You have three days before I report it missing. If you’re still driving it by then, it’s your problem.”

  “I understand. Look, we have money. We’ll pay for whatever we—”

  Xander cut him off with a scoffing hiss. “You people never change. You think you can buy your way out of any fix.”

  Zack blinked at him in dark wonder. He thinks we’re Gothams.

  “Listen, if you talk to Peter—”

  “I won’t,” Xander insisted.

  “—tell him the Deps are watching him.”

  He snorted a chuckle. “The Deps are all fools to a man. If they’re watching Peter, it’s only because he’s letting them.”

  The cab honked. Xander lugged his suitcase to the door, then turned around one last time.

  “Don’t bleed on my rugs. Don’t abuse my cat. Don’t be here when I get back. And when you talk to Peter, you tell him, ‘No more favors.’ My debt’s officially paid.”

  He sneered at Amanda’s thick metal collar, a remote-triggered gas dispenser that the Deps typically used on lunatics twice her size.

  “They finally admit you exist now. At long last, the Bureau believes.”

  He left them in the garage, all grim and exhausted in the wake of their messy battle. Mia didn’t care that she was standing around in her flimsy undershirt, or that she still tasted the blood of the Dep she bit. All her dark thoughts revolved around David. The poor boy had screamed all throughout the van ride as Amanda disinfected his wounds. Now he’d become dark-eyed and listless, a living corpse.

  It killed Hannah to see him like this. David had been their strongest wall, their toughest spine. Now the universe had broken him as thoroughly as Hannah broke the back of that federal agent.

  She wrapped her arms around Theo, burying her face in his chest. He rubbed her shoulder and looked to the minivan.

  “Zack, if that thing has an antitheft tracker—”

  “It does. I’ll rust it.” He scanned the group, his nervous eyes lingering on David. “You guys should get some rest.”

  Mia held Amanda’s arm. “You want me to find a towel?”

  Through the garage-door glass, Amanda watched Xander depart. The Deps may have been fools to a man, but she knew they had one smart woman. A second encounter with Melissa seemed all but inevitable. Next time she wouldn’t bother with sleeping gas.

  Amanda rubbed her brow with a bloody hand, too tired to even cry.

  “No. Screw the rugs.”

  —

  The house was as posh and immaculate as its owner. The living room teemed with modernist sculptures, abstract paintings, and bizarrely shaped furniture that seemed more ornamental than functional.

  Mia reclined in a lounger, stroking the neck of a fat black cat while she replayed the events of the morning. She could only imagine how her dad and brothers would have reacted to seeing their sweet little treasure on the highway, growling threats at federal agents as she cuffed their wrists. She might have seized the mantle of Meanest Farisi if she hadn’t screwed up so badly.

  She chewed her pen in somber thought, then scribbled into her journal.

  The time may come when you need to put handcuffs on people. When you do, make them tight. I didn’t, and David got shot because of it.

  Now that she was freed from the fear of paradox, she could send any messages she wanted through her past portals. It brought her a modicum of comfort to think she could create a branching timeline where that agent never broke free and seized Rebel’s gun. The note would make all the difference in the world to a parallel David. She only hoped this one could forgive her.

  He slouched at the kitchen table, processing his wound with bleary misery. The bullet had reduced his ring and middle fingers to stubs, turning his right hand into a crude, misshapen trident. The sight of his infirmity, his obscenity, forced his rage into a single vengeful beam. It didn’t point at Mia.

  “I warned you,” he told Amanda, through a hoarse and jagged rasp. “I warned you what would happen if you took Theo to that health fair. Do you believe me now?”

  The widow sat at his side, bandaging his hand in grim intensity. “I’m sorry.”

  “You’re sorry. Just like you were sorry when you ignored Mia’s warning and confronted those policemen. Just like you were sorry when you nearly killed Hannah and Zack with your tempis.”

  Amanda hid her torment behind a face of stone. She knew from experience that not all patients were brave in the face of their pain. Some were downright cruel.

  “If you would just take an epallay—”

  He slapped the patch from her hand. “I do not want that chemical filth in my body. I’d sooner wear leeches.”

  Mia shut her eyes in a tortured wince. She could hear David’s every word from the living room and anxiously waited for her due share of the rancor.

  “You’re a stupid woman, Amanda. As stupid as you are sanctimonious. The fact that you even lecture other—”

  The violent slam of a car hood cut him off. Zack treaded in from the garage and threw David a baleful glare on the way to the sink. The boy’s deep blue eyes narrowed to slits.

  “You have something to say to me?”

  The cartoonist scrubbed his greasy hands under the faucet. “He was bald and black.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “The agent who shot you. He was a bald, black man. I’m only telling you this because you seem to have him confused with Amanda.”

  She raised a palm at Zack. “It’s all right.”

  “No, it’s not all right. I know he’s hurt right now—”

  “Hurt right now?” David stood up and brandished his hand. “Do you think this is a temporar
y condition, Zack? Do you expect to heal me like you so brilliantly healed that animal? At least Amanda’s fearsome in her incompetence. You were just a joke out there. The way you took Melissa’s side against me—”

  “You were acting like a psychopath!”

  “I did what had to be done!”

  “All you did was prove their worst fears about us! Even I was scared of you!”

  “Even you,” David mocked. “You’re scared of everything. You’re the most cowardly man I’ve ever known.”

  Amanda shot to her feet. “Okay, stop it! Stop. This isn’t the time for this.” She looked to David. “Please sit down and let me finish.”

  “No! I’ve had it with both of you!”

  “David . . .”

  “You don’t ever listen to me! None of you listen! I’m fighting to keep you all alive but you just . . . you . . .”

  David sucked a sharp breath as hot knives of fire shot up his arm. All his life, he’d been a stranger to pain. He’d never broken a bone, never pulled a muscle, never suffered a burn or laceration . . . at least not that he could remember. And now here he was, suffering an agony that was medieval in its cruelty. It was powerful enough to shatter every mask and pretense, every chiseled image of the person he fought to be.

  As David fell to his knees and cried, Zack winced in self-reproach. He blew a heavy breath. “Listen—”

  “No,” David sniffed. “I’m done listening to you. I’m done protecting you. You can both go die for all I care.”

  Mia’s heart skipped a beat as David hurried through the living room. He was halfway up the stairs when he heard her high voice, barely a whisper.

  “I’m sorry.”

  He stopped mid-flight to look at her. From the new lines of grief on his beautiful face, Mia guessed he was done being vicious. She expected her rebuke now to be one of gloomy disappointment. I gave you one task, Mia. One. You couldn’t even do that.

  Instead, he continued upstairs without a word.

  Mia vented a heavy breath and continued to pet the purring feline in her lap. Her grandmother always told her that black cats were good luck for good people. Mia didn’t even think she needed it. While her friends all suffered fractures and gunshots, concussions and amputations, she had yet to get a single scratch. The one bullet that was fired at her had missed her head by millimeters.

  She peered down at the cat, her tortured mind bargaining with the forces of fate. Give me the next one, she implored them. Whatever bad thing happens, you leave them alone. You give it to me.

  —

  Hannah spooned Theo on the futon, listening to his gentle snores while she stared at the wall in restless discomfort. The musty little office reeked of old age and iodine, and her wrists still throbbed from shoving that agent. Every time she closed her eyes, she could see his body skid across the highway in slow motion, scraping bloody patches with each impact.

  She gave up on sleep and sauntered out to the hallway. Through the crack of a bedroom door, she saw Mia snoozing away on Xander’s queen-size bed. The fat black cat sat dejectedly at her side, mewling for his new best friend to give him more love.

  The sound of whistling laughter drew Hannah to the stairwell. She crouched down and peered into the living room, where Amanda and Zack stretched side by side on a wide chaise longue. They looked like a cozy married couple in their long T-shirts and underwear. Morning light cracked through the wood blinds, striping their bare legs.

  Amanda rolled onto her side and fought an indignant grin as Zack giggled deliriously.

  “You just find that hilarious, don’t you?”

  She’d just finished explaining how she subdued Owen Nettles in the back of the truck. While the peculiar little agent paced and mumbled, Amanda summoned a burst of tempis from her toes. Owen turned around just in time to see the man-size foot coming at him. Before the whiteness could even touch him, his eyes rolled back and he fainted to the floor.

  Amanda had been too stressed at the time to find it funny. Even now her humor was tempered by the fact that she owned only one shoe.

  Zack wiped his eyes and moaned. “You should’ve seen us outside the truck. We were so scared of what that guy might do. Melissa made him sound like Joe Kickass.”

  “He was not Joe Kickass,” Amanda said. “I’m just glad I didn’t hurt him.”

  Disenchanted with Mia, the cat sauntered down the hall and rubbed against Hannah. She caressed his back, praying she wasn’t her sister’s next topic of discussion.

  Amanda pursed her lips in a droll pout. “I’m so glad David called me stupid. That’s just what my self-esteem needed today.”

  “At least he didn’t call you a coward.”

  “Right. I lack a brain. You lack courage. All we need now is a tin man.”

  Zack plunged into another fit of punch-drunk giggles, until his humor gradually melted away. He smeared his bleary eyes.

  “I shouldn’t have gotten on his case like that. He was probably just blustering out there. It’s not like he hurt any of them.”

  No, Hannah thought. I’m the one who left a victim.

  “He’s just in pain,” Amanda told him. “He has a long recovery ahead of him. The best thing we can do is be there for him, without judgment. He needs siblings now, not parents.”

  Hannah suppressed a jaded laugh. It took an extraordinary lack of self-awareness for Amanda to equate siblings with nonjudgment.

  Zack closed his eyes and cracked a boyish grin. Amanda eyed him flippantly. “Still tickled about the tempis?”

  “No.”

  “Then what, pray tell, are you smiling about, Zachary?”

  He folded his hands over his chest, his expression serene and contented. “Just nice to have you back.”

  Hannah scowled cynically in the tender silence that followed. Shit. Here we go.

  Amanda nestled up against him, resting her hand on his. As their fingers laced together, she suffered an unwelcome flashback to her alley encounter with Esis, the madwoman’s stern and cryptic warning. Do not entwine with the [something something]. Amanda couldn’t salvage the rest from her trauma-scarred memories. She had larger concerns now anyway.

  She heaved a jaded sigh across Zack’s chest. “You’re a schmuck.”

  He chuckled at her shiksa Yiddish. “Why am I a schmuck?”

  “Because you’re being all sweet and I know it won’t last. You always run hot and cold with me.”

  “Says the woman who sat on my lap, then threw me off a balcony.”

  “You still blame me for that.”

  “No. I always blamed Evan.”

  “Then why did you get so distant after that?”

  Zack considered pinning that on Evan too, but then he’d have to explain the teasing hint about Amanda and Peter, a romantic prophecy that still bothered him to no end.

  “I’m too tired to open that box,” he replied. “Let’s just agree I’m a schmuck and move on.”

  Hannah watched the cat roll around on the carpet, purring in mindless bliss. For a moment, she thought Amanda and Zack would do the same. Now she wasn’t sure if they’d kiss, fight, or fall asleep on each other. In any case, it was time to leave them alone.

  Just as she rose to her feet, Amanda took Zack’s advice and changed the subject.

  “I’m worried about Hannah.”

  A sharp new panic gripped the actress, freezing her in place. Her inner self waved her on with flapping arms. Go! Leave! You don’t want to hear this!

  “She’ll be all right,” Zack assured Amanda.

  “You’ve only known her ten weeks. I’ve known her her whole life. I know what trauma does to her.”

  “You’re looking down from the big sister perch.”

  “I’m not looking down, just back. She has a history, Zack. It’s right there on her wrists.”

  A storm of
screams brewed in Hannah’s throat. She clenched her fists and vanished into the bathroom. The startled cat bolted down the stairs, past the chaise longue.

  Amanda raised her head at the scurrying footsteps. “What was that?”

  “Bad luck,” said Zack.

  “Great. Like we need more.”

  Amanda fixed a tense gaze at the sleeping-gas collar on the coffee table, a grim souvenir of her incarceration. Forty minutes ago, she asked Zack to reverse the lock, a task he’d initially refused out of fear of rifting her. She had to remind him that he was a man of minor miracles, able to rot a swinging banana from twenty feet away, grow keys out of keyholes, and turn old mice into young ones. He’d led an actress and two teenagers into battle with armed federal agents, and won.

  Ultimately he’d indulged her, concentrating on her collar with the sweaty apprehension of a bomb defuser. The moment he popped the lock on her very last shackle, Amanda’s regard turned a hot new color and she fought the urge to kiss him. Now as she pressed against him, his heartbeat thumping against her breast, she wished she had her sister’s skill with men. She wished she could find just the right words to express her feelings, her qualms.

  Then she considered that Zack was an artist. Maybe he didn’t need words.

  Thin white strands of tempis slowly sprouted from her forearm, twisting around their locked hands like ivy. Zack leered with grinning marvel as small white leaves sprouted from the vines.

  “Wow. Amanda, that’s beautiful. You ever do that before?”

  “No.”

  Her ropes wrapped tighter around them, driving the point home. The cartoonist aired a loud, somber breath.

  “Guess we have a bit of a problem.”

  “Guess we do,” she said.

  “I don’t know what to do about it,” said Zack. “I spent four years in a bad entanglement.”

  Amanda fixed a heavy stare at her naked ring finger. “Five and a half.”

  “With everything going on, I’m not sure I can handle another one. I’m not saying it’s inevitable. Just possible. And after all the drama with Theo and Hannah . . .”