Basilisk (The Korsak Brothers #2)(25)

“Since you bought one? Why did you buy a plane? How did you buy a plane? Who’s going to fly the plane if we need a plane?” Stefan demanded. Now I could hear his teeth grinding at the end of the last question. I tried not to smile, but it was entertaining . . . just a little. That didn’t make me a bad person. I simply found amusement where I could. That made me emotionally healthy and I could write a two-hundred-thousand-word paper to prove it.

“I bought one in case some of our other backup plans didn’t work, and Raynor cancels out at least three of them. I bought it with the money from the Caymans. Who does our banking, remember? You’re horrible with numbers. That was why that old lady hit you with her cane when you were in the ten-items-only line with sixteen items.” I crossed my arms and Godzilla came slithering out from under the seat to paw at the glove compartment. He knew where the goodies were. “Besides, it’s only a Cessna.”

“Only a Cessna? Damn it, Michael, Misha, whatever. The government tracks that sort of thing, especially since 9/11.”

“No problem. It was a totally illegal and untraceable purchase. I have quite a few friends of that sort on the Internet, but that time I went to your friend Saul. I told him not to tell you, that it was a surprise. He thought that was pretty hilarious.” “Goddamn f*cking hilarious” was what he’d actually said. “Then I found one of my friends from the Net who said there were a few people with flexible morals at the Burns Indian Reservation who would hide it for us in case we needed it.” Like now. With Raynor, we definitely needed a plane, because he was going to the same place we were: the Institute. Not that he’d think we’d go there. I imagined he thought that was the very last place we’d go. A man like him wouldn’t understand trying to save what you could own instead. No, he knew it was the best place to get his own fresh-fromthe-oven baked assassin, a special one, because he’d seen what I could do when merely annoyed by a fake tourist. He wanted to be prepared. He didn’t know I wouldn’t use what I had in me to kill . . . that I wasn’t like him or Jericho.

I hoped.

“What? They’re hiding a plane? Jesus, they’ll think we’re terrorists, and hauling around pipe bombs isn’t going to help with that impression.” His knuckles were bone white now, and he was going to get hoarse soon if his voice became any louder.

“No, don’t be ridiculous. I thought about that, so I told them we’re drug dealers,” I said with the complacent certainty I had in any of the plans I’d thought up. The Institute had taken my life, but they had taught me to plan like a son of a bitch. More cursing. It seemed I only needed adrenaline to bring it out in me. I probably shouldn’t have been pleased by that accomplishment, but I was.

“Drug dealers? And they believed you?” Now he was looking at me, not at the road, which wasn’t the best way to drive, and that amber I’d never seen directed at me was beginning to glint in his eyes.

“Why wouldn’t they?” I reassured him. He no doubt thought I’d made a mistake. Big brothers were like that . . . always questioning the younger ones and never letting them grow up. “I pay them to grow marijuana. It took them a while to get . . . the hang of it? Right, the hang of it, but last month they finally said they’d figured out the correct temperature, hydration, where to get better grow lights, and they said they have a great crop now.”

He blinked, his darker skin turning nearly as red as a sunburn. Pulling the car over into the emergency lane, he turned back and rested his forehead on the steering wheel and said nothing. I waited about five minutes. It was just a plane and some barely illegal drugs, which I thought should be legal. It was no worse than beer. Of course, I wasn’t allowed to drink beer yet as I wasn’t twenty-one and Stefan was as strict as a TV grandmother with things like that. Plane, drugs, only just illegal . . . and if I could’ve gotten a doctor involved, maybe not illegal at all—surely five minutes was enough to recover from my “surprise.”

I slapped him on the back and went on to be, admittedly, an utter ass. “Are you okay? Was the healthy breakfast too healthy? Did it upset your normal intestinal workings? Do you want a Three Musketeers to counteract the health?”

“Tui nemnogaya dermo,” he said without lifting his head.

I frowned. “You little shit? You called me a little shit. I am as tall as you now. I am not little.”

“But you are a shit. What happened to that agreeable kid who used to be afraid of grocery stores? Who only scared me when he wanted the sex talk? Where did the pipe bomb–building drug lord come from?” He leaned his head back against the headrest and covered his eyes. “Where did I go wrong?”

I wasn’t offended. In fact, if I’d known it would be this entertaining, I’d have told Stefan about all my plans—although some of the others might give him a heart attack—at least a year ago. I grinned, though he couldn’t see it, and punched him hard on the shoulder. “I grew up. I’m a genius, I was raised to be an assassin, and I’m trying to figure out a way to bring down an entire Institute of assassin-makers while curing the assassins they made. What did you think I did in my spare time? At least I didn’t build a nuclear bomb in the garage, which, by the way, is so beyond easy you wouldn’t believe it. . . .”

Stefan sat up and clapped his hand over my mouth. “Michael . . . Misha, you’re my brother and I love the hell out of you, but I think right now it would be a good thing if you didn’t talk. For a while. A couple of hours at least.”