Chimera (14 page)

He wasn’t used to being teased, that was easy to see. Hopefully, that would change, along with so many other things he’d been denied. “Yeah, I do.” Pouring him a glass of the breakfast elixir of the gods. “But drink your juice first. I don’t want a swat with the Delgado dish towel.”

Lifting the glass, he gave the contents a doubtful sniff before taking an experimental swallow. “It’s good.” He sounded surprised, no doubt thrown off by the lack of chocolate syrup.

“
Si
,
perrito
, and it’s good for you.” Bustling up to the table, she slid two heavy white plates overloaded with food in front of us. Scrambled eggs mixed with peppers, mushrooms, and tomatoes, fried potatoes coated with cheese and onions, thick slices of ham and even thicker toast slathered with butter and jam. I felt my heart stagger in midbeat just at the sight. Serve it to a man over fifty and Mrs. Delgado would be considered an accomplice to murder. Pulling a bottle of ketchup and a jar of salsa out of her apron, she placed them on the table, smoothed a stray hair on the crown of Michael’s head, and rushed back off. The woman was a whirlwind in a muumuu, a whirlwind with a black belt in cholesterol.

Michael looked down at his plate, then back up at me with round eyes. “Holy shit.”

“Hey, watch it,” I laughed. “Where’d you pick up language like that?”

“Movies.” He picked up his fork and started on the eggs. “And you.”

He had me there. I’d tried to keep it clean once we made it out of the compound, but how foolish was that? Michael had faced much worse in his life than a few dirty words. Besides, when I was seventeen I was playing football, smoking behind the gym, and my mouth had been anything but pristine. And I’d been a fairly good kid. Given that I had a father like mine, the little rebellions of a normal teenager had seemed innocently naïve . . . even to me. How could you be tempted to worse things when your father ordered men killed between dinner courses? Cheating, graffiti, vandalism—what the hell would be the point to those?

They were old thoughts and I shrugged them off to dig into my own breakfast. I ran out of steam about halfway through, my stomach uncomfortably full. Michael kept going to finish every bite on his plate and then eyed mine. The kid could eat and that was no lie. I thought about giving him my leftovers, but the image of his spewing eggs and ham in a manner not even Dr. Seuss would approve of stopped me.

“About Jericho,” I prodded as I leaned back in my chair, hoping against hope for a quick digestion.

“Oh.” He stalled by helping himself to another glass of juice. That the subject of Jericho was harder to face than the Institute didn’t give me a warm, fuzzy feeling. “Jericho.” He took a swallow, his throat convulsing as if the juice were much thicker than it looked. “Jericho . . . He oversees the Institute. The students, the classes, everything.”

“Even that room in the basement?” That ghastly room. “Does he oversee that too?”

Hand clenched tightly around the glass, he lowered his gaze into the icy red liquid. “Jericho has been at the Institute as long as I can remember. He’s a scientist. All of the instructors called him Doctor.” The curl of his lips was brutally bitter. “Or stuttered and wet their pants.”

The memory of the shadowy figure from the back of the van was all too clear. The man had no fear or a surreal belief in his own immortality. Either one made him a dangerous man, not to mention a demented lunatic. But . . . he hadn’t looked like a loony. He’d looked cold, hard, and completely in control.

“A scientist, huh?” I commented with the image of that rotating DNA helix I’d seen on the compound computers flashing through my mind. I had no difficulty picturing this Jericho involved in medical experiments on children. Of all the violent shit I’d seen in my life, nothing had turned my stomach as that thought did. “And what kind of science did the son of a bitch practice? What’d he do?” Something with a genetic flavor to it, I was presuming, but the two biology classes I’d taken in college hadn’t exactly prepared me for any educated guesses.

He pushed the glass back and forth. The squeak of that and the sloshing juice were the only immediate sounds. There was the murmur of the other diners and Testimony Delgado’s humming “Amazing Grace” in the background, but at our table there was silence. “Misha,” I started, trying my best not to pressure him. “I’m trying to help. . . .”

The slamming of the glass on the surface of the table shut me up as it was intended to do. “Trying to help me. Trying to save me. I know.” His voice was raw. “You keep saying so.” From his tone it wasn’t easy to tell whether he possessed any confidence in my ability to pull it off. “But you don’t know. You can’t know.”

“Then tell me.” I eased the glass from his grip and set it aside. “Explain it to me.”

His shoulders slumped and he gave in. “He made us special. Jericho made us special.”

That was the last I was able to get from him. Mrs. Delgado interrupted to drop the check on the table, but I had my doubts that he would’ve said anything more even if she’d kept her distance for a while longer. For the moment he’d reached the end of his rope; the strain was evident. He needed time to recuperate and regain a little distance.

The fact that I had questions boiling, hot and unsettled, would have to be put on the back burner for the time being. Special . . . made them special, what the hell could that mean? Misha was special to me; he was my brother. What could Jericho do to him that would make him special in a way that had Michael’s voice breaking on the very word? Distracted, I dropped a few bills and a generous tip on the table. I might have been caught in my own thoughts, but I still appreciated what Mrs. Delgado had done for Michael. It had to be the only mothering he could remember receiving in his short life. There were a thousand things I wished he could recall, but our mom was at the top of the list. Chances were he wouldn’t have remembered much about her anyway; he was five when she died. There would have been only scraps that remained, bits of warmth and emotion, but I would’ve given anything for him to have those scraps back.

In the car I tried to focus. We needed a new car. We needed a new look. We needed a destination other than just “north,” and we definitely had to find out how Jericho had picked up our trail so quickly. It was a list all right, and I knew how to accomplish only two of them.

For those two we’d need a town.

I nudged him as he stalled by the doors to stare at a woman pushing a stroller loaded with squalling twins. Accustomed to the sound, she absently reached down to smooth two nearly bald heads and kept moving. “Weird,” Michael murmured, more to himself than me. “Seeing where they come from.”

They, not we. Moving us both into an aisle, I lightly bumped his shoulder with mine. “I have pictures, tons of them. I’ll show you where you came from. It’s pretty much the same.”

With a defensive folding of his arms, he studied the shelves with a scrutiny more suited to emotionally moving art or really good porn than the feminine-hygiene products that were actually there. “What are we looking for anyway?” he asked with the avoidance of a pro.

We walked on, leaving the aisle of no-man’s-land until we reached hair care products. “Anything your tree-hating little heart desires.” I picked up two boxes at random and shook them in his direction. “And dye. Red or blond?”

He caught the implication instantly. “You must be joking.”

“Blond it is.” I put the red back with the rueful realization of why I’d picked the other color. It was more familiar to me than the brown Michael had now. Swiftly checking one way, then the other, I stuffed the small box into the wad of jacket I’d carried in over my arm for just that purpose. Belatedly, I glanced at the smaller figure beside me. “By the way, stealing is bad, okay? Don’t steal.” Considering, I added, “Or smoke. And don’t drink and drive.” Wait, he was seventeen. “Scratch that last one. Don’t drink at all.” It wasn’t the entire summary of knowledge required for teens, but it was the best I could do at the moment.

“You’re . . .” He shook his head. Apparently there were no words for what I was, and he let it go to pursue another subject. “Why are you stealing it? You have money.”

“If anyone trails us here, I don’t want them to know we’ve changed our looks.” How I was going to change my appearance was more problematic. I had thought of cutting my hair, but that would only make my scar more noticeable. In the cosmetic department I found the answer: makeup specially constructed to cover scars. That, combined with a haircut, should change me enough to escape anything but a good, hard stare.

“Snack cake aisle is just down there, Misha.” I pointed with one hand while tucking away the glass jar with the other. “That we’ll pay for. Short of pretending one of us is pregnant, there’s no way we can smuggle what you can eat out of here.”

He gave me a look, one far too haughty for a seventeen-year-old, but he went. He always had been smart as hell, far too much so to bite off his nose to spite his face. I watched as he loaded up with box after box of empty calories. “I’ve created a monster,” I groaned under my breath, deciding to pick up some vitamins before we hit the cash register. Kids took vitamins, didn’t they? I remembered our housekeeper’s buying them for Lukas and me after our mom died. I hadn’t taken them, but I vaguely remembered a bottle of colorful characters on the bathroom counter.

We waited in line for nearly ten minutes. Sandwiched between a harassed lady with three sociopathic children and a teenage couple working desperately on making one of their own, I noticed Michael moving his weight from foot to foot. It was a minute motion, barely detectable, but it allowed me to pick up his discomfort. In the past two days with me he’d been exposed to more of the outside world than in two years at the Institute. He and the other kids may have studied it until their eyes watered; it wasn’t the same. This was direct, unrelenting contact with a basically alien existence. It was enough to shake up even the coolest customer.

I dumped the items that I actually intended to pay for onto the counter. “Hang in there,
perrito
.” As I’d hoped, it distracted him and he instantly turned a pale pink. “Maybe someday we can grab breakfast there again,” I offered lightly. “The food was good and the company not so bad either.”

The pink deepened. “Maybe,” he replied, noncommittally.

I grinned at him, then transferred the flash of teeth at the cashier in the hopes of hurrying her along. She stopped tapping keys long enough to give me a smile back. It’d been a long time since I’d flirted, even superficially, with a woman. Long dark brown hair as straight as a fall of water, bittersweet chocolate eyes, and a tiny diamond piercing her nose, she was a good place to start, but she had to be eighteen at the most. She was too young, and this wasn’t exactly the best time. I slapped down hormones that had been in hibernation for what seemed like years and passed over the cash.

I’d always known that saving Lukas would be saving myself, but to feel the internal thaw . . . to feel ice cracking over black water to let in the first ray of light in ten years . . . It was unexpected in its ferocity. I hadn’t imagined it would be like this. I couldn’t have imagined.

In college my scar and questionable family background hadn’t held me back on the dating scene. At that time I’d used the occasional relationship and anything-but-occasional sex to forget my guilt over my brother’s disappearance. After college I had only one relationship, Natalie. And after she left, I gave up on relationships altogether. I wasn’t especially good at them, so who needed them? And sex was easy enough to find at Koschecka if I was in the mood.

I rarely was. When you’re filled with guilt and rage it doesn’t leave much room for the more healthy emotions . . . ones that were beginning to swell in me again. I gave the girl another smile, wistful and wicked, as she gave me my change and receipt, then prodded Michael into motion. “Let’s go, kiddo. We have more shopping to do.”

The shopping I had in mind took place in the parking lot. As with most places, the employees had a spot at the far end designated for their cars so the customers wouldn’t be crowded out. Chances were a car stolen here would go the longest before being missed. I’d already gathered everything out of our old car and given it a quick wipe down. Now I stood casually on the back curb of the lot and made my choice—an old gray Toyota; it didn’t get more nondescript than that, or easier to steal. I’d pulled a jimmy, a thin piece of flexible metal—an old tool for an old ride—out of my duffel bag as I automatically tested the door handle. It was unlocked, unbelievable as that was in this cynical day and age. Motioning Michael around to the passenger side, I started, “Remember what I said. Stealing—”

“Is wrong. Yes, I know.” He put the drugstore bag in the back and then climbed in. His language was always so precise. I didn’t expect it would last. He had picked up swearing from me; sloppy speech couldn’t be far behind.

Within seconds we were on the road with no sign anyone had noticed anything out of the ordinary. The hours passed and I filled them telling stories of our younger days. Mostly Michael ignored them, staring out the window or leaning his head back and pretending to nap. But there were a few times I caught the gleam of interest sparking from the corner of his eye. He didn’t want to believe because he was afraid to believe. I understood that implicitly. I’d become afraid to believe too in the past years. I refused to give up. Hell, I was incapable of giving up. Doing that would mean I’d as good as killed Lukas when I’d led him to the beach. I couldn’t give up, no, but neither had I believed . . . not really. Not with any true faith.

Yet, here he was.

I looked over at him to see pale brown lashes resting on his cheeks, but there was an alert air to him that indicated he was still awake. I felt a rush of warmth that damn near embarrassed me. Excepting Natalie and maybe Saul, I couldn’t remember the last time I gave a damn about anyone—and to this extent, never. This was my brother. This was family, true family; it wasn’t that crap people like Konstantin tried to pass off. As for Anatoly . . .

“You talk about your mother all the time.” With unfortunate timing considering my thoughts, his voice broke in quietly to be barely heard over the radio. “What about your father?”

Once again with the training . . . I could all but feel the seat beneath me turn into a psychiatrist’s couch as the kid spoke. I tried to ignore his still saying “my mother” as opposed to “our.” Small steps; it was all about small steps. Instead I concentrated on another discomfort. Good old Dad. What in God’s name could I say about him? I’d always known that the old Lukas, softhearted and innocent, would have been devastated when he eventually found out the truth. This Lukas wouldn’t be. This Lukas very probably wouldn’t give a shit. And he was far from innocent. None of that changed my reluctance to tell him the truth.

Finally, I settled on something that, while true, had nothing to do with Anatoly’s career of choice. “He loved you. Called you his little Cossack. If he had a favorite, it was you.” That had been the case with nearly everyone. Lukas had a quality then that I couldn’t explain. It was like an inner light, the kind you see in people who devote their lives to something beyond them, those who have a calling. He would’ve been someone amazing, my brother, if he hadn’t been stolen away. Now? Fuck amazing. That he was alive was more than good enough for me.

“He loved your brother more than you?” I don’t think he could help the barb he inserted in the question. He was indoctrinated to home in on weakness and vulnerabilities. “That doesn’t seem fair.”

“I didn’t say that, Freud,” I said patiently. “You were special to him, but that doesn’t mean he loved me any less.” The fact that I had the love of a man who ordered men killed without a glimmer of remorse was something I’d never truly gotten a handle on. How do you feel about something like that? “You’ll see that yourself when you meet him.” And how exactly that would go I couldn’t begin to guess. As certain as Anatoly was that Lukas was dead, he was bound to demand proof, DNA most likely.

“He’s still alive?”

I wasn’t surprised Michael had gotten the impression that he wasn’t. The stories I told were about him and me, about our mom and grandmother. Our father hadn’t entered into too many of them. That was for two reasons. First, he hadn’t entered our lives any more than he had the stories. He was a busy businessman; he simply wasn’t around often. Second, I wasn’t ready to spill the whole ugly bag of secrets just yet.

“Yeah, he’s alive; just a busy man, that’s all,” I answered evasively. “Hard to reach.”

“Is that who you were talking to last night?” The homey rustle of a Twinkie wrapper didn’t take the bite out of the question.

“You heard?” I made a conscious effort to lighten my suddenly adrenaline-heavy foot on the gas pedal. “I thought you were asleep.”

“I’ve gotten rather good at faking that over the years.” Impassively, he took a bite.

“No, that wasn’t Anatoly on the phone. I haven’t been able to track him down yet.” I tried to mentally reconstruct my half of the conversation with Dmitri last night and came up with some disturbing recollections. I’d mentioned loyalty, I’d mentioned Anatoly, and I’d said the word “dead.” Talk about your triple threats. If Michael had caught any of that, overcoming his suspicion had just become a helluva lot more difficult. Unless . . . unless I came clean. Talk about the devil and the deep blue sea. Which was worse? A deceitful stranger or an honest criminal? I was a bodyguard, not a leg-breaker, but that still didn’t make me as pure as the driven snow. There was no doubt about that, not in my mind.

And Michael wasn’t going to make the decision any easier for me. He didn’t ask any further questions to push me one way or the other. Finishing up his snack, he shifted his attention to the radio and surfed the stations without another word. Hours later, long and silent ones, I chose another hotel. We needed a bathroom, not only for Michael’s peace of mind but for our transformations. And it was mid-transformation when I told my brother the truth.

“Like a movie star,” I commented with a grin, cradling the empty dye box in my hand.

Sitting on the edge of the bathtub, Michael scowled from beneath tufted hair covered in yellow goo. “I think I hate you.”

“Only think?” I snorted. “Hey, I can live with that.” I checked my watch. Per the directions on the box we had ten more minutes. It was enough. “Misha, I have some things to tell you.” Resting the box on the sink, I added dryly, “And as luck would have it, you seem to have some time on your hands.” What type of luck was something that only time would tell.

He caught a dribble of creeping yellow foam making its way down his forehead. “And I have you to thank.” Meticulously, he wiped his hand on some tissue before continuing in the same charm school elocution. “Asshole.” Catching my reaction before I could smother it, he sighed and reached for another tissue. “I’m not very good at that, am I? Cursing.”

I could’ve said practice makes perfect, but I wasn’t sure Michael would ever be able to pull it off. He wasn’t a normal teenager and despite the Institute’s effort to give him the façade of one, I wasn’t sure he ever would appear to be one. “I’m sure you’re loaded with other talents, kiddo,” I came back consolingly.

Something about that hit an obviously sensitive area and his eyes darkened. “You were going to tell me something?”

“Yeah, I was.” I boosted myself to a seat on the sink, scooting the dye box to one side. Taking a breath that somehow evaporated before it reached my lungs, I struggled for the right way to begin. “I told you how I’ve been looking for you all this time. How I hired people who’d made a career of searching for the missing . . . kids, things, info. Whatever. I guess what I didn’t mention is how I paid for it.” Leaning back, I rested my head against the cold glass of the bathroom mirror. I wanted to close my eyes, but that would’ve been the coward’s way out. “I’m in . . . I
was
in the mob. Anatoly, our father, was in the
Mafiya
back in Russia before he emigrated. He kept up the family business here.”