Edge of Midnight (McClouds & Friends #4)(125)

“And if he’s not?” Sean said. “We put a body in the ground on August twentieth. If this guy saw Kev on the twenty-third, then…”

“Who’s lying up there on the hill?” Connor finished.

There was a stony silence in the car while they pondered this.

“Didn’t you…aren’t there…dental records?” Miles faltered.

Con shook his head. “None of us ever went to a dentist until we were adults. Dad was dead sure they’d implant transmitters in our teeth.”

“Oh. Uh, never mind,” Miles mumbled. “Maybe DNA?”

“Forget it,” Davy said harshly. “It doesn’t matter. Kev is dead, Sean. There’s no other reason he would not have contacted us. They got him. Face it, deal with it. We can’t spend our whole lives like this.”

Sean shook his head.

“Fuck,” Davy’s voice was bleak. “This means another freak-out?”

Sean met his brother’s furious eyes in the mirror, and stared into them calmly. He said nothing. Nothing needed to be said.

Con looked miserable and worried. He massaged his bum leg.

“Great,” Davy muttered. “So now what?”

Sean shrugged. “That’s obvious,” he said. “We go to the library.”



“First, we run you through a series of tests to identify your learning style. Dr. O personalizes each subject’s program,” Jared explained, as he merged onto the interstate. “The tests are the hard part, but it’s just the first couple of days. Then the fun begins.”

Cindy stared out the windshield, bug-eyed. Tests? Her goose was cooked. To a crunchy crisp. “Wow.” Her voice strangled. “Super cool.”

Jared waited for some enthusiastic, intelligent, intellectual comments from her, but anything she said would betray her for the bubbleheaded idiot that she was. In over her head. And going down.

“Uh, OK,” Jared tried again, gamely. “So. I liked that abstract you wrote about predictions of formant-frequency discrimination in noise based on model auditory nerve responses. I even showed it to Dr. O. I was thinking, maybe we could try combining temporal and rate information for a smaller population of model fibers, and tune them—”

“Um, could we talk about non-technical stuff?” Cindy rubbed her damp palms over her jeans. “I really prefer to get to know people talking about, like, you know. Normal stuff.”

“OK.” Jared looked baffled. “What’s normal?”

“You know. Everyday life. Movies. Current events. Fashion. I believe in being well-rounded. You can’t sit around obsessing on plane wave solutions all day, you know? You gotta make space for red cowboy boots, and espresso brownies, and the Howling Furballs.”

Jared frowned. “Who the hell are the Howling Furballs?”

“They’re an acid punk band that’s doing some cool multimedia stuff,” Cindy explained. “They’ve got a totally wild sound, and the engineer uses the signals the musicians generate in real time to create a freaky interactive light show. I’ll show you their website, if you want.”

“OK. Great. Sounds interesting.” He sounded bemused. There was an uncomfortable silence that Cindy wanted desperately to fill, but she didn’t dare push her luck. Then Jared spoke again.

“I get the impression that you’re not happy to be here,” he said.

Duh. “Look at it from my point of view,” she said. “I’m a girl all alone with a guy I just met, going to a place I’ve only heard of on the Net. Anybody would tell me I’m brain dead.” Yeah, like her entire family.

“You’re not,” Jared said. “I know you’ve had bad experiences.”

She had? Shit! She hadn’t read the transcripts of Mina and Jared’s chats, so she didn’t even know her own back story. Yikes!

But Jared was talking earnestly on. She tried to concentrate.

“…wanted to tell you that I understand where you’re coming from,” he said. “I’m an orphan, too. In foster care since I was seven.”

“Really?” She looked at him, wide-eyed. “Get out.”

“I did high school at Deer Creek.”

She blinked. “You mean the reformatory?”

“Drugs,” he confessed. “I set up a meth lab in my foster father’s barn, all by myself, when I was in the ninth grade. Dr. O heard about it. He came to meet me. He thought any kid who could get into that much trouble at age thirteen had to have potential.”

“Wow. That’s totally wild,” Cindy said weakly.

“When I got out, he invited me to the Haven.” He paused for a moment, and added “It’s the only real home I’ve ever had.”

“Wow,” she said again, feeling totally inane.

“Maybe it could be, you know. A home for you, too.”

She tried to smile. He seemed like a genuinely sweet guy. But the corners of her mouth felt like they had weights attached to them.

“So where is the Haven, anyhow?” she asked.

Jared chuckled. “I could tell you, but then I’d have to kill you.”

He must have heard the thud as her stomach froze into a solid chunk and hit bottom. His gaze darted to her face. “That was a joke,” he said. “You know, jokes? Hah, hah? Very funny? Irony, and all that?”