Devil's Advocate (The X-Files: Origins #2)(21)

“Can we puke on our lab partners?” asked one of the boys from the football team. He was an offensive fullback, and his partner was a wide receiver.

“Only if you want to clean it up,” said Newton. “But in my experience, if you throw up on someone, they will invariably reciprocate with enthusiasm.”

Everyone got a chuckle out of that, and the football players high-fived. Ethan leaned close to Dana and murmured, “Maybe I’m being harsh, but I don’t see a Nobel Prize for science in their futures.”

Dana turned away to hide a snort of laughter.

“Okay, my little Frankensteins and Frankensteinettes,” said Newton, “you may commence with the mad science. Please take your time, though. Science requires patience and attention to detail, not haste.”

Ethan and Dana set to work with equal amounts of care, interest, and diligence. That impressed Dana, because a lot of the guys in class were either trying to act macho, as if none of this bothered them, or hamming up how much they were going to vomit. Not Ethan. He had a quiet energy and a serious face. He wore steel-rimmed glasses, dress shirts, and Keds sneakers, and he pursed his lips while he worked, but there was no trace of unease or reluctance as he pinned the frog down and used a felt-tip pen to draw the pattern to guide their cuts.

He smiled at her. It was a nice smile, and he had very good teeth, except for a small chip on his left front tooth. He slid the scalpel over to her.

“Ladies first,” he said.

“You sure?”

“Why not? If you’re up to it.”

“Why wouldn’t I be? ’Cause I’m a girl?”

He looked genuinely surprised. “Um … no, because you missed Two-Suit explaining how it’s done.”

“It’s on the board,” she pointed out.

“Right. Sorry.”

Dana picked up the scalpel, glanced again at the notes and diagrams on the board, then placed the blade against the slack pale skin and made her cut. Ethan watched her make two lateral incisions at the throat and groin and then connect them with a long vertical cut. She set the scalpel down and peeled back the flaps to expose the internal organs.

“Wow. Nice job,” he said. “You ever do this before?”

“No.”

“You didn’t even nick anything inside.”

Dana glanced up at him, expecting there to be some kind of humor or condescension there, but Ethan simply looked impressed. “Thanks,” she said diffidently.

“No, I mean it,” said Ethan. “You missed the little film Two-Suit showed us, but you did it exactly right. You’re a natural.”

She noticed again that Ethan had a very nice smile.

Dana wanted to crawl under the table, because she was sure her cheeks were bright as red stoplights.

“Want me to take out the heart?” he asked, and in the weirdest way possible, on a day that was already beyond strange, that seemed like the nicest thing a boy had ever said to her.

I am totally out of my mind, she thought. But she was smiling as she handed over the scalpel.





CHAPTER 21

Craiger, Maryland

9:46 A.M.

“Did you hear a single word I said?” demanded the driver.

The man seated beside him had his seat tilted back and lay with his hat over his face. They had the engine off, which meant no air-conditioning, and even this early in the spring, the sun was hot. The windows were open and the passenger had clearly been dozing.

“Hey, Gerlach,” growled the driver. “I’m talking to you. Are you even listening?”

“No,” said the passenger.

“I said, there she is.”

The passenger, Malcolm Gerlach, did not remove the hat, did not sit up, did not bother to look.

“No,” he said.

“What do you mean, ‘no’? I can see her with my own eyes. She’s on the far side of the school quad, right near the—”

“It’s not her,” said Gerlach.

“Sure it is. Red hair, blue blouse.”

Gerlach removed the hat and looked up. He was thin, with an ascetic face, pale blue eyes, and dark red hair. He did not look through the window but instead fixed his gaze on the driver. “You’re new, kid, so I’m going to cut you a little bit of slack, capisce?”

“Kid? You’re, like, five years older than me. Who you calling—?”

“Shhh. Just listen,” said Gerlach, his voice mild. “The girl you’re looking at is the sister, Melissa. Older, two inches taller, and with curly red hair. She’s seventeen. She doesn’t look like her sister at all. Not if you bothered to study the surveillance photos. There’s a reason we take them from different angles and distances, you know. It’s so you cats can spot a target from any distance, day or night, rain or shine. And here you are, misidentifying a mark and disturbing my beauty sleep. You are dangerously close to making me cranky. Remember that TV show with the guy who turned green and smashed things? Remember the line about how you wouldn’t like him when he’s angry? Yeah, it’s like that with me, too. And what makes me angry? Jocks with more biceps than brains and who don’t know how to do their job, even when the job is to sit in a car and look for a girl you have thirty photos of.”

The driver ground his teeth for a moment. This was his first shift, having taken over from the regular wheelman. The regular guy had eaten some bad shrimp rolls and couldn’t get five steps away from a bathroom. The driver, whose name was Matt, had been warned about this passenger—been told that he was eccentric and that he was a jerk. He was warned that the man was dangerous, too, though no one said exactly how. Matt was six-two and had a second-degree black belt in tae kwon do. He was used to being the one who people walked softly around. The guy riding shotgun was a stick figure who didn’t look like he could punch his way out of a damp paper bag. And here he was, giving him lip.