Release Me (Stark Trilogy, #1)(68)
Claire asks what if PacifiCorp detects a power drain, what if they get caught?
“That won’t happen,” he says. “Because we work for PacifiCorp. Just as we work for UPS and the Port Authority and Nosler and Union Pacific and American Airlines.” He lists off names and holds out a finger for each one until he runs out of fingers. He smiles when he says, “We’re everywhere.”
They move through the roots, brushing them aside, some of them as thickly clustered as hair. They approach a brightly lit chamber. Voices mutter from it, voices that go silent when they enter, ducking their heads through the low entryway. The room, twenty yards in circumference, is shaped like a dome. The floor is a mess of black and white cords that vine from tables crowded with desktop and laptop computers, printers, a scanner, a blinking green modem and wireless transmitter. A map of the country hangs on the wall right next to a map of Oregon, with different colored pins quilling them both. White Christmas lights are strung overhead in an impression of a starlit sky.
Ten men, seated at computer terminals or standing around a table littered with paper, are staring at them. At Claire. Some of them are as pale and swollen as grubs, and some of them are leathery and appear clownish in their mismatched clothing, a too-large Gap shirt and pants sewn out of doeskin and stitched with sinew.
“The latest?” Jeremy says.
One of the pale men, dressed in a Darth Vader sweatshirt and blue jeans, says, “Problem solved.” His eyes flicker to her and back to Jeremy. “Freight from Canada is delayed but on its way. We’ve got a truck on standby at the intermodal rail yard. He’ll meet us at the farm in Sandy. We won’t have long to get ready.”
“Then we better get moving.”
She filters out the rest of the conversation—because nearby, peeking from beneath a pile of paper, she has spotted a pair of scissors. She tries to be casual when she rests her flattened hand on the table. She thinks about lurching forward, grabbing the scissors, swinging them into Jeremy’s temple. Then she spots a web hanging between two computers, a spider balanced in the center of it like the pupil of an eye watching her. So she swings the scissors, and then what? And then what would she do? They would have her on the floor within seconds. She creeps her hand around the blade and secrets it up her sleeve. She can be patient.
Another minute and Jeremy leads Claire from the room—down a corridor lined with yellowed newspaper clippings that flap and whisper with their passing. She glances at the headlines. “Terror in the Air,” they read. “Hundreds Dead.” “Nation of Fear.” “Lycan Uprising.” She slows when she spots the front page of USA Today. “Miracle Boy” is the headline, and below it she spots a familiar face. The boy, Patrick.
She nearly cries out to him, like a friend spotted in an unfamiliar city. He is surrounded by police who usher him toward an ambulance. He is staring directly at the camera, staring directly at her. A spot of mold darkens one of his eyes.
“What are you planning?” Claire says.
Jeremy keeps walking, not looking back at her when he says, “You’ll know soon enough. Along with everyone else.”
*
“Is something wrong?” Patrick says. He doesn’t know what else to say. He has to say something—has to break the long silence that hangs between them, Max on one side of the coulee, him on the other.
No response outside of an unblinking stare. Maybe his words were lost, carried away by the rushing water, the wind whining through the trees. Maybe he is jumping to conclusions. Maybe Max doesn’t know what Malerie said he knows.
“Is something wrong?” Max finally says. “Is lying wrong? Is betrayal wrong? Is f*cking somebody else’s girlfriend wrong?”
Patrick has never heard him swear before, so the word seems as sharp as a sword. “We never did that.”
“You did enough!” Max screams this, his voice filling up the forest, drawing from it other figures, the Americans. They step from behind trees, their eyes hooded, their boots dragging through the pine needles. “Half-breed.”
“I’m not a lycan.” He realizes this will make no difference to them, realizes they have already made up their minds to hate him, but he can’t stop himself, as if to affirm his identity. “She was bitten after I was born.”
“That still makes you a son of a bitch.” Max points his rifle at him.
He raises his own in defense. They have brought him here to hurt him. Deep in the woods. A place where no one will hear him scream. A place where he will never be found. He isn’t sure what they are capable of—but he is about to learn.
Max keeps his eyes on Patrick but speaks to the others. “He hasn’t reloaded. Get to him before he does.”
They leap off the ledge and kick their way down the hill and splash through the stream and scramble up the other side, moving steadily toward him, and all the while Patrick stands there, as frozen as the deer in the river, too tired to run, too tired to do anything but ratchet the breech and eject the cylinder, not bothering to reload. “I’m sorry about Malerie,” he says.
“Too late for sorry.”
The boys close the distance quickly, clambering over the lip of the coulee, racing in his direction with their arms out. He can’t fight them—there are too many and their punishment will be that much more severe if he puts up a struggle—so he tosses the rifle aside and crouches down in a ball and they are on top of him. He is ready for the pain. Their fists and their boots thudding against his spine and ribs, his ass, the back of his head. First the impact, then the bruised heat that follows, until his entire body feels inflamed, every throb like an ember glowing orange beneath his skin.