Chimera (The Korsak Brothers #1)(43)
Twenty minutes later my ponytail was gone. With the length gone, the short black hair had much more of a wave to it. With the curl and olive skin I looked more Greek or Italian than of Russian descent. I tried the scar cover-up. It would do. Unless someone was within six feet of me, I’d pass as smooth faced. Hell, girls would be mistaking me for a male model. I flashed my teeth at myself in the mirror. Yeah, they’d be falling all over themselves. The smile melting into a self-deprecating grimace, I decided there was little I could do about changing forbidding pale eyes. Vasily might have had puppy dog brown, but I had wolf amber; predatory through and through. Sunglasses would have to do the trick there.
In the room I discovered several discarded clear plastic wrappers and no sandwiches. Cocking an eyebrow at Michael, I said wryly, “Thanks for saving me one.” I patted what I liked to think was a lean stomach. “You trying to tell me something?”
Still speeding through the television channels with the remote, he looked up. “Oh. That was rude, wasn’t it?” He appeared disturbed, probably more from a failure in training than from the actual rudeness itself. Michael might not have excelled in his acting class, but I was confident he was an A student in all the rest. I had my doubts that Jericho and his school had much sympathy for poor performers. It made me cold, the thought, and it made me realize I still didn’t know the purpose of the Institute. If Michael didn’t learn to trust me soon, I was going to have to start pushing . . . a lot harder than I wanted to. But for now . . .
“I’ll survive.” Gathering up the refuse, I dumped it in the garbage can beside the bed. “But tomorrow you owe me one big order of cheese fries. Which reminds me.” I searched until I found the vitamins I’d purchased at the drugstore. Tossing him the sealed bottle, I ordered, “One a day. Hopefully that’ll keep alive the cells that don’t run purely on sugar.”
After the painkiller incident I thought he’d appreciate a tamperproof bottle. “What are these?” He didn’t wait for an answer, instead reading the label, then the ingredients. I was waiting for another Freud-channeled crack. I could all but see it hovering on his lips, but he resisted the urge. Maybe he thought of it as atonement for eating my dinner. Peeling open the plastic seal, he pulled out the cotton and chased down a pill with a swallow of soft drink. “You did a good job on your hair. You look completely different.”
“Yeah?” I ran a hand over the shortness of it, the feeling still peculiar. “Since I’m looking for a career change, I figure I’m pretty enough to be an actor now. Maybe a male model. What do you think?”
“I think . . .” He looked me up and down, then tossed me the vitamin bottle. “I think vitamin B is supposed to be excellent for the brain. It improves your thought processes. Helps you make clear decisions.”
“Biology, huh? Or the psychology of breaking it to me gently?” I caught the vitamins. “You combined two classes in one there. I couldn’t be more proud.” Reaching for the remote, I took it from his hand and switched off the TV. “Time to turn in. We’re up early.” He gave in with only a mildly petulant expression, a bare shadow of the one I would’ve flashed at his age. Nearly a half hour later I was on the edge of sliding into sleep when a quiet question ripped me back into stark awareness.
“Did you ever kill anyone?”
It wasn’t a question you expected to hear in the dark while cocooned in a nest of blankets with a soft pillow under your head. That was a question for the unblinking and unforgiving harsh light of day—or never. Never would be good too. Rolling over onto my back, I studied the pattern of moonlight on the ceiling. “No,” I replied simply.
I hoped it was true, but technically I couldn’t be sure. I may have killed someone at the compound during Michael’s rescue. I hadn’t exactly been stopping to check any pulses. Nor had I particularly cared whether they’d had one . . . not for my sake. None of those bastards deserved to live in my book. But for Michael’s sake, I hoped I hadn’t been the one to kick them over the river Styx. It was bad enough to have an ex-mobster for an older brother. I didn’t want to add the label of killer to that. I heard the rustle of sheets in the next bed as Michael processed my answer and then gave the response I wouldn’t have had a hope of anticipating.
“I have,” he said calmly.
Chapter 15
It rained during the night. A sheet of water had turned half of the parking lot into a rippling reservoir. A trick of the morning light made the depth of scant inches seem bottomless. When you’re a kid, something like that is so . . . shit, “miraculous” is the only word. Just a little thing, but through a child’s eyes it would be a lake so crystal clear that you could sail across glass to the distant shore. There would be trees that blazed autumn colors year-round, animals with the silver eyes of a benevolent moon, and amber gold grass would sing with every whisper of the wind.
It would also be a shore where children had never learned to kill. I stepped into the massive puddle and broke the illusion. Water soaked through my sneakers as I popped the trunk to the car. My eyes burned from lack of sleep and even the rays of a cloud-shrouded sun felt like needles. Michael had slept a few hours, from what I could tell, but I hadn’t. I don’t think I’d once closed my eyes the entire night. Michael had finally come through with some hard information, as I’d wanted. Ask and you shall receive, right? Unfortunately, what he had told me was right on the edge of being more than I could handle. I’d once thought my brother had been taken by a sexual predator, a twisted perverse monster. I was wrong and I was right. There had been a predator. There had been a monster. But sexual abuse had nothing to do with the nightmare Michael had lived through.