Payback (2 page)

She gave a little growl of frustration, and the blobby backed away. Then the light turned green.

Green, go. Like the door. In the room. Red, red, red, red. Watching, watching. Red, red, red. Then green. Green for go. Like now. Green light. Yana bolted across the street, leaving the blobby behind her. Go, go, go. Something red. Over there. She hesi tated, peering at it. No. Not a light. Don’t stop. Go, go, go. Run, run, run.

Red. Red light. Means stop. Means door locked. Can’t get out. Red light. Yana stopped next to the yel ow-and-blue blobby. Not as blobby as the other one. More… hard? Solid. More solid. Yana rubbed her eyes. More, more solid. A person. A… um…

what? A… a man person. Yel ow shirt. Blue jeans.

“Are you okay?” the man asked.

Yana’s forehead crinkled as she tried to find the word in her sticky head. She got it, then pushed it out of her mouth. “Yes,” she answered.

“You sure?” the man asked.

“Yes.” The word came out more easily. Then suddenly there were words everywhere, bouncing around in her head, unstuck.

They came spil ing out of her mouth. “My mother. My mother. She’s dead. Murdered. Someone’s got to pay.”

Anthony took a slug of his massive coffee. He’d gotten the guy at the 7-Eleven to fil up a Big Gulp cup because he’d known he was in for a long night and he wanted to be wide awake for every second of it.

Is Rae awake, too?
he wondered, staring through his recently Windexed windshield at her bedroom window.
Is she lying there
terrified that any second Yana’s going to show?
He wished he could tel her he was out here, watching. But if he did, she’d pro bably insist he go home. And that wasn’t going to happen.

“Come on, Yana, where are you?” Anthony muttered. He had to see her before she saw him-or his hands could be the ones that ended up kil ing Rae. That night in the cabin, when Yana had taken control of his mind and started to make him feed Rae rat po ison, that had been the worst night of his life. For three nights afterward he’d had a dream where Aiden hadn’t brought Yana down with the tranquil-izer gun, where Anthony had kept Rae’s mouth pried open and shoveled the poison down her throat until she foamed out of the mouth and convulsed over and over. Then Anthony’d woken up screaming. And yeah, with snot and fre akin’ tears on his pil ow.

Just thinking about the dream had him pumping sweat.
All you have to do is make sure that you see her first,
he told himself again.
You gotta take her down before she has a chance to claw her way into your head.

Anthony took another gulp of the coffee. His eyes were burning, but he forced himself to scan Rae’s front yard, then check up and down the street. Nothing. So far. He rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands, then returned his attention to Rae’s yard.

Crap, he’d rubbed too hard. There were al these little squiggles of red running across his vision. He blinked rapidly, then pe ered out at the yard again.

His heart kicked into his ribs. Someone was out there. A girl. Moving toward Rae’s window. Yana. Had to be.

Anthony eased open the car door and slowly climbed out of the Hyundai. Had she heard him?
If she had, she’d already have
taken you over,
Anthony told himself. He pul ed out the stun gun he’d bought off one of the guys who hung around the 7-Eleven parking lot, then crouched down, locked his gaze on Yana, and hurled himself across the street and over the grass.

He got Yana just behind the knees. She went down hard. But the stun gun flew out of Anthony’s hand, landing halfway across the lawn. She had him. She total y had him now. She’d be in his head before he twitched a finger.

Rae’s eyelids snapped open. There was someone outside her window.
It’s probably just that calico cat,
she told herself as she slipped out of bed.
Or Yana,
she couldn’t stop herself from adding.

Cat. Yana. Cat. Yana.
The words thudded through her head as she crept up to the window. She pul ed the curtain aside an inch and peeked outside.

Mandy Reese smiled at her and gave an apologetic wave. Rae’s heart rate returned to normal, and she began to slide the win dow up, then caught a flash of motion in the darkness. Before she could move, before she could shout a warning, Mandy was thrown to the ground.

By Anthony. ’Cause that’s who had come racing across her front lawn. Anthony. He had his knee on Mandy’s back, and he was straining to reach… a stun gun!

Rae jerked the window al the way up. “Anthony, no!” she cried. “It’s Mandy. It’s
Mandy.
”

Instantly Anthony jerked his knee off Mandy’s back. He stood up and gently helped her to her feet. “Are you okay?” he asked. “I thought you were Yana.”

“Yana?” Mandy exclaimed, fear giving her voice a jagged edge. “Why would Yana-”

“You guys have to be quiet. We don’t want to wake up my dad,” Rae cautioned them. “Go to the front door. I’l let you in.” Without waiting for an answer, Rae quickly threw on the jeans and shirt she’d been wearing earlier, then hurried out of her bedroom and down the stairs. She turned the lock on the front door slowly, but it stil made a click that sounded as loud as a gunshot to Rae’s ears. She hesitated a moment, listening. But she didn’t hear any movement from her dad’s room, so she swung open the door, gestured Anthony and Mandy inside, and led them back into her room.

“Are you okay?” she asked Mandy as soon as she’d shut the door behind them.

“Yeah. I’m fine,” she said, speaking half to Rae and half to Anthony. “But what’s the deal with Yana? I thought Aiden had her loc ked away, loaded with drugs.”

“She escaped,” Anthony answered.

“God. Oh God.” Mandy sat down on the edge of Rae’s bed.

“You’re safe,” Anthony told her. “Yana’s got no reason to be coming after you. She probably didn’t even see you that night in the cabin, and there’s no way she knows that you used your power to help track her down.”

“I’m not worried about that,” Mandy said. She turned to Rae. “But I should be asking if you’re okay, not the other way around.

What she tried to do to you at the cabin-” Mandy shook her head as if she couldn’t stand to even think about it.

“I’m okay, real y,” Rae told her. It was a lie, but she wanted to keep Mandy out of this. Mandy’d done enough for Rae already.

Her mother had been in the same group that Rae’s mother and Yana’s mother had been in. And Mandy’s genes had been scre wed up by the experiments that had been done on her mom, just the way Rae’s and Yana’s had been screwed up.

But Mandy hadn’t known that until Yana had taken Rae hostage. Then Aiden and Anthony had told Mandy the truth about herself.

They’d told Mandy that she had some kind of psychic ability that would start showing itself when she was at the height of puberty.

They said that they thought her power-whatever it was-might help them save Rae. So Mandy, even though she barely knew Rae, had agreed to let Aiden give her an injection of hormones to bring out her power right away. And it was some power, too-it turned out that Mandy could touch an item of clothing belonging to someone and “see” that person. Actual y, more like
be
the person for a few minutes. She’d used Rae’s sweater to figure out where Yana’d taken Rae.

“Why don’t I believe you?” Mandy asked Rae.

“Because you’re a smart girl,” Anthony muttered.

“Why were you even over here tonight?” Rae asked, not wanting to drag Mandy deeper into Rae’s personal nightmare. The girl was only fourteen. She should be out doing… fun stuff. Normal stuff.

Mandy started making a little braid in her long, light brown hair. “It’s stupid. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have come running over here so late.”

“Bathroom,” Anthony mouthed at Rae, then quietly left her and Mandy alone.

“It’s not stupid,” Rae said as she sat down next to Mandy. “When I found out I could get thoughts from fingerprints, I completely freaked. Are you freaking about your powers?”

“Yeah,” Mandy admitted. “Plus that hormone shot did something to my breasts. I wanted them to be bigger, but they’ve been gro wing so fast, they ache.”

Rae winced. “Ouch. Mandy, you know how sorry-”

“Oh, shut up,” Mandy interrupted. “I told you I don’t want you to apologize. Anyway, that’s not why I came over.”

Rae picked up one of the dark green pil ows off the head of her bed and cradled it to her chest. “So what is going on?”

Anthony came back in and hesitated. He raised an eyebrow at Rae. “Is it okay if Anthony’s here?” she asked Mandy.

“Sure. But like I said, it’s nothing that I needed to talk to you about in the middle of the night. Not with the Yana thing happening,”

Mandy said.

“We both owe you,” Anthony told her as he sat down in Rae’s black leather desk chair. “If you have a problem, we want to help.”

Do I have a great guy or what?
Rae thought before she turned her ful attention back to Mandy.

“My sister, Emma? She’s always been sickeningly good. She always does her homework right away. She tutors these kids at the elementary school. God, she irons her jeans,” Mandy said. “At least that’s how she used to be. But since my mom died…

was murdered…” Mandy corrected herself. She paused, her eyes glazing over. “I can stil hardly believe that crazy scientist guy kil ed her,” she murmured.

Rae knew exactly how Mandy felt. Steve Mercer, the man who’d shocked and drugged and radiated her mother-and Yana’s

and Mandy’s-had murdered Rae’s mother, too. He’d gone crazy and kil ed the members of the group he thought were dangero us to society. He would have kil ed Rae if the agency that funded the experiments-the agency where Aiden used to work-hadn’t kil ed him first. It was so eerie knowing that somebody had actual y gone after her mother like that, and she could only imagine how much scarier it would be for Mandy, since she’d already been a teenager when it happened. Rae had only been a baby when her mother died.

“So, your sister,” Anthony prodded gently.

Mandy gave her head a little shake. “Right,” she said. “I touched this shirt of hers, and I
was
her, you know?” Rae and Anthony nodded. “And I… she was making out with this gross guy, Zeke. She never would have even spoken to scum like him when Mom was alive. And I could tel … I could
feel
how into him she is. He’s going to hurt her. I know it. But there’s no way she’s going to lis ten to her stupid baby sister about something like that.”

“Maybe he’s not as bad as he seems,” Anthony said, using his feet to turn the chair back and forth and back and forth. “What makes you think he’s scum?” He gave an extra-hard shove with his feet and spun the chair completely around.

“How about the fact that he’s stoned pretty much every second of the day?” Mandy answered. “I think he might even be dealing a little. What if Emma starts doing that crap, too? She practical y has this scholarship to UCLA in the bag, but she’s going to to tal y screw it up if she keeps hanging with Zeke.”

Mandy started wrapping her little braid around her finger. Rae’d seen her do that before when she was stressed. God, she prac tical y pul ed the hair out of her head.

“Look, tomorrow’s Saturday. How about if I help you check out this Zeke guy?” Rae said. She gently pul ed the little braid out of Mandy’s fingers.

“Don’t you think we should be-” Anthony began.

Rae shook her head. “I think we should just do what we’d usual y do, ’cause what other choice do we have?” She smiled at Mandy. “And what I’d usual y be doing is trying to get a scum-reading on your sister’s guy.”

“Thanks,” Mandy said. “I… just thanks.” She turned back to Anthony. “But you were going to say something about looking for Ya na, right?”

Anthony glanced at Rae, then slowly nodded.

“You’re right,” Mandy told him. “We have to help my sister, but we have to find Yana first. So what do we do?”

Rae tilted her head to the side. Mandy sounded so much like Rae and Anthony’s friend Jesse. Eager to help, ready to throw her self into something extremely dangerous for Rae’s sake. In the middle of al the horrible stuff that had happened to Rae recently, she’d made some pretty amazing friends.

Anthony coughed. “That’s basical y the problem,” he said. “We don’t know what to do. We have no idea where Yana could be right now.” He shrugged. “So we just have to wait,” he said, his voice tightening on the last word.

Mandy narrowed her eyes in concentration. “Maybe not,” she said. “Maybe there
is
something we can do. Wel , something
I
can do.”

Rae frowned. “Mandy, I don’t want you-”

“No, she’s right,” Anthony said, his eyes taking on an excited gleam. “And don’t worry, Rae, she won’t be in any danger.”

What was Rae missing here? She stared at both of them, then final y got it.

“Your power,” she blurted.

“Yes,” Mandy said. “Anthony, can you get me something of Yana’s? Something she’s worn?”

“Definitely,” Anthony answered. “I’l bring it to you tomorrow. And once we know where Yana is, we go after her.”

God,
Rae thought, shivering.
Am I going to end up bringing them both into something none of us will survive?