Criminal Destiny (15 page)

“Think,” Tori prompts. “Rackoff goes back to the very beginning of Project Osiris. Maybe he knows about it. And even if he doesn't, he still might remember the day someone came and took a piece of him to make Hector.”

She has all our attention now. The trail, which seemed completely cold just a few minutes ago, has several new possibilities. The DNA donors—of course!

Eli's fingers dance over the tablet. “C. J. Rackoff is serving seven consecutive twenty-year sentences at the Kefauver Federal Detention Facility in the Texas panhandle, near a town called Haddonfield.” He opens a map program in a small window. “A little more than three hundred miles from here.”

I may be the reckless one, thanks to Mickey Seven. But for once, I have something cautious to say. “We can't take the pool truck all that way. It must have been reported stolen by now.”

“Don't worry about that,” grins Malik. “I've got it covered.”

By the time we roll out of Happy Valley that night, the blue Splash! truck is white. Cardboard has been taped over the hole in the glass we made breaking in. The
F
in the license plates has been changed to an
E
, and the 6 is now an 8. On the side is the logo of the New Mexico Pinto Bean Consortium, which Frieden found on the internet. Hats off to Torific—she really is great at art. If some nosy cop happens to pull alongside us on the highway, no way he'll be able to tell it's not the real thing. I wonder if Yvonne-Marie Delacroix could do that.

We leave Happy Valley pretty much the way we found it, except we take a load of clothes and some pillows and blankets in case we have to sleep in the truck. One other difference: the Laska house has its windows bashed out,
courtesy of Amber, who likes to make a statement. Mickey Seven would be proud. The pool stuff is crammed into the Pritels' garage, along with a note apologizing for stealing the truck. Frieden has a thing about sorrys. Maybe he's trying to make up for being the clone of you-know-who.

I'm at the wheel, since I have the best chance of passing for old enough to drive. The minute tiny Serenity disappears from my side mirror, I know this is good-bye forever. In the back, I can hear Torific sniffling a little, but not much compared to the water works from the last time. It's not that long since we first broke out of Happy Valley, but we've changed a lot since then. It's not so much that we're tougher, although the outside world isn't as alien to us anymore. We're just not who we used to be, when our families were the most important things in our lives. Eli, Amber, and Tori will figure more in how I turn out than Mom, Dad, or anyone from Serenity ever will. I'm not an adult yet, but the kid part of my life is definitely over. For most people, this probably happens very gradually. We're not most people. In the normal sense, we're barely even people. We blasted out of childhood on a runaway cone truck.

Old County Six is so deserted that it seems like a waste of time that we bothered to paint the truck. Eventually,
though, we get on Route 412 and pass the occasional car. Nobody looks twice at a home paint job on the Pinto Bean Express.

We've brought along a lot of snacks—everything we could scrounge out of four houses, mostly junk food. The idea is the fewer times we have to stop, the less chance someone will notice that we're four kids without a driver—a real licensed one, anyway. The problem is that most of that stuff is so salty that we're dying of thirst before we're even halfway to the Texas border. Then Laska gives us this long lecture about proper hydration that makes us even thirstier. We tough it out.

Although we can go without water, the truck likes a little gas every now and then. As we watch the needle edging toward E, it starts to sink in that we need a pit stop.

We pull into a service station just past a town called Clayton. I make a point of being nowhere near the wheel by the time the attendant saunters over.

He's an older man in greasy coveralls, and he looks me up and down as he pumps the gas. “Where's the driver?”

I motion vaguely toward the bathroom. “How much do we owe you?”

The pump clicks off, and he works the trigger until the readout shows an even eighty-two dollars. I hand over
the cash, wondering if Tamara Dunleavy might have been a little more generous in what her driver stuck into our backpacks. Nobody thought much about the price of gas in Happy Valley, where a half-mile walk got you anywhere you wanted to go and then some.

I pay up and wait for the guy to bug off. In alarm, I realize that he's looking toward the bathroom door, waiting for “our driver” to appear, which clearly isn't going to happen. He'd better not be holding his breath. In the mirror, I catch sight of Eli, flashing me a “what's-the-holdup?” glance.

At that moment, the bathroom door opens and Tori steps out.

The attendant shoots me an arched eyebrow. “That's your driver?”

I'm starting to sweat. “No, of course not.” I raise my voice to Tori. “Where's Dad?” Just to let her know we're in trouble. I hope she gets the message. Yvonne-Marie Delacroix would.

“He's around here somewhere,” Tori replies glibly. “Dad . . . Dad?”

Amber jumps out of the truck and heads for the bathroom.

“How many of you kids are there?” the man demands.

“Four,” I manage. “Our dad's taking us to Oklahoma to visit our grandma.”

“In a pinto bean truck?”

I draw myself up with dignity. “This is the only car we have.” If you don't count the quarter-million-dollar Bentley we ditched in Taos.

Amber enters the bathroom and pulls the door shut. Tori joins Eli back in the truck. A couple of minutes later, Laska returns and climbs aboard, casting the attendant a dazzling smile as she passes us.

The man looks exasperated. “Listen, son, I wasn't born yesterday. If you don't think I've got the brains to recognize a bunch of joyriders—hey!”

All at once, he's sprinting in the direction of the bathroom. Water is pouring out from under the wooden door.

A holler comes from the car. “Oh, here's Dad! Come on, Dad! Let's get going!”

I swear, I'm so confused that I'm actually looking around for “Dad.” Then the driver door is kicked open and Laska's voice hisses, “Get in the car, stupid!”

I jump in and we squeal off down the road.

“What if he calls the police?” Eli asks anxiously.

“He might,” Amber tells him. “When he's done
plunging that toilet, which isn't going to be for a while.”

I picture the miniature Niagara cascading from the bathroom. “What did you flush down there?”

“Paper towels.”

“How many?”

“All of them,” she says with satisfaction. “And by the time he fishes it all out of the pipes we'll be long gone, right?”

I step on the gas a little harder. “I don't think he'll call the cops. We paid for the drinks; we paid for the gas. He can't even say for sure there was no adult with us. He called us joyriders. Not sure what that means, but I kind of like the sound of it.”

We drive in anxious silence for a while, with me checking the mirror a lot. But when we cross into Texas, we breathe a little easier. We're not lawyers, but we have to believe that toilet clogging isn't the kind of offense you send officers into other states for.

We pass a sign saying that Haddonfield is 110 miles away. I feel a new dread beginning to build. C. J. Rackoff—he's sixty-two now, but everything about his picture screams Hector. His features, especially his stick-out ears; the way he holds his head. It's going to be hard to look at him—and not just because he's a big-time crook. If I cry in front of
Laska, I'll never live it down.

Why does it have to be Rackoff? We could just as easily have gone to see my guy. Well, not
just
as easily. According to the internet, Gus Alabaster is in a hospital medical unit in Joliet, Illinois. He has cancer, and his doctors don't think he's got much longer to live. I'd kind of like to meet him. Even though he's a bad guy, he's almost like the closest thing I'll ever have to a biological father. Plus it'd be a sneak preview of what I'm going to look like when I'm old. I wonder if he'd recognize himself at thirteen.

I have to forget it. It's not going to happen. The others voted for Rackoff because he's the closest. Mickey Seven's jail is in Florida, and Yvonne-Marie Delacroix is being held in New Jersey. Bartholomew Glen is the next closest, but he's all the way west, in California. And anyway, wild horses couldn't drag Eli to see him. I have to agree that the Crossword Killer doesn't sound like a very pleasant guy to hang out with.

It's after one a.m. when we reach downtown Haddonfield. We're in and out of it in about three seconds. It's one of those places you could easily miss, especially on a dark night.

We turn around to retrace our steps and end up missing the town
again
, this time going in the other direction.

“There's no way there's a whole prison here,” says Amber firmly.

“There's no way there's a whole dog kennel here,” I add.

“The prison's supposed to be outside of town,” Eli reminds us. “The question is where. We can't just drive around in circles hoping to find a big jail. ‘Outside' could mean forty miles.”

There's only one light on in the entire place—seriously, they'd roll up the sidewalks if they had sidewalks. It's a 7-Eleven, which is good, because we ran out of snacks fifty miles ago. The best thing about being a fugitive is the junk food. Nobody lectures you about nutrition—unless you're unlucky enough to have Laska with you.

We might not have her with us much longer if she doesn't eat something.

“Hotter here,” Tori notes as we head for the entrance. “The air feels heavier.”

I shrug. “Texas.” Different weather. Different scenery. Different states. It's hard to get used to after nearly fourteen years cooped up in the same handful of acres.

I open the door and usher the others inside.

The guy at the counter frowns when he takes in our age. “Isn't it a bit late for you kids to be out on your own?”

We let Tori do the talking. “Oh, we're not alone. Mom's
just too tired to get out of the truck. We've been driving all day.”

He looks at us sympathetically. It's pretty obvious that he's put two and two together and concluded that we must be visiting someone at the prison. And it's probably not the warden. Let's face it, how many other reasons could there be to come to Haddonfield in the middle of the night?

Tori flushes. “We're trying to find the Kefauver prison. Our—uncle—” She's a pretty good actress, showing just the right mixture of sadness and embarrassment.

The man smiles. “You're almost there. It's about eight miles south of town.”

“Is there a sign?” I ask.

“Trust me, you can't miss it, especially in the middle of the night. They keep a lot of lights on.” He adds, “There's a little motel there. Nothing fancy, but it's clean. That's where the visitors usually stay.”

He must feel really sorry for us because he gives us free Cheez Doodles. If he knew who we were cloned from we'd probably get half the store.

Back in the truck, I pull out of the lot and head south. The days of Frieden hogging all the driving are over. I think I've got kind of a knack for it. Maybe Gus Alabaster
was a wheelman before he got too rich and important to drive his own car.

That clerk wasn't kidding about Kefauver being hard to miss. The sky starts glowing a couple of miles away. We crest a rise and there it is—a metropolis of buildings, towers, and walls, lit up like one of those sports stadiums on TV. The only thing in Serenity to compare it to is the Plastics Works, but it's more like twelve of those built together. And fences—inside, outside, all around the perimeter.

It's weird, but I actually feel bad for C. J. Rackoff having to live in such a place. I know he's a criminal, but he's also exactly like Hector, and Hector wouldn't deserve this. I know what you're thinking: something even worse happened to Hector. But still.

“What an awful place,” Tori whispers.

“Take a good look at it,” Amber says stoutly. “This is where our parents are going when we prove what they did. Or somewhere exactly like it.”

“It's not just about revenge, Amber,” Eli observes. “It's about making a life for ourselves.”

“You worry about the life,” Amber shoots back. “I'll handle the revenge.”

“We're all cloned from people who are behind bars in
prisons just like this,” Tori ventures timidly. “Is this how we're going to end up?”

“We were in a jail exactly like this,” I remind them. “We had pools and tree houses and Contentment class, but could we leave?”

Eli points. “Take a left. There's the motel.”

We turn into a parking lot that feels like gravel, but is really busted concrete. By the lights from the prison we can just make out the sign, which is not electrified:
Tumbleweed Inn
.

“No wonder nobody ever comes to visit C. J. Rackoff,” comments Tori.

“As long as they have a shower,” Amber counters.

The Tumbleweed Inn is a single strip of eighteen units, all grubby stucco and peeling paint. There are cars parked in front of units 4 and 7, but the office is dark and closed up tight.

“How are we supposed to get a room now?” I demand, annoyed.

“We can sleep in the truck,” Eli suggests. “We brought pillows and blankets and everything.”

“Not everything,” Amber growls. “Not a shower. Or real beds.”

“Or a bathroom,” I add. “Those free Cheez Doodles aren't agreeing with me.”

Tori makes the decision for us. “We got no rest in Serenity; we were too scared. We haven't had a decent night's sleep in days. We have to get into one of these rooms.”

“You mean break in?” Eli questions.

“Right next door to a jail?” I put in nervously. Gus Alabaster wouldn't think twice about it, but I'm starting to wonder if I'm quite as brave as him.

“We can leave some money for the room after we—uh—check out,” Tori suggests. “Come on, we
need
this.”

“
And
for the damage we have to do to get in,” Eli adds.

Tori shrugs. “Maybe there won't be any.”

I take the truck around the back and park it where it's semihidden in a grove of trees. There are no lights in the rear, but the prison is so bright that we can see enough not to wipe out.

“There was a TV show where somebody got into a hotel just by slipping a card through the door,” Amber ventures.

“We don't need that,” Tori says. “Look.”

We squint into the gloom. Along the row of hotel units is a line of high windows, each one propped open with a short stick.