UnBound (26 page)

Hayden smiles. “Yes, but with a rare kind of passion.”

“I do it because I like to, not because I'm any good. You want good art, go back in the house. The walls are full of it.”

“Yes, I noticed,” Hayden says. “I suspect it's not your style.”

Grace shrugs. “I got some artsy-fartsy woman with high heels and some kind of accent to decorate the whole place, on account of I woulda filled it with sad clowns and stuff on velvet. Not the kind of ‘aht' rich people are supposed to like.”

“But it's your house—you should fill it with the things you like.”

Grace waves the thought away. “I might own it, but it's not where I live.” She points to the guest house. “This is where I live. The big house is too cold and scary-lonely at night. I got it because I could. And because it's supposed to be an investment.”

She tells him all about how her deal with Rifkin Medical Instruments for Sonia's organ printer made her a king's ransom, and how some highly strategic investments of her own parlayed it into a true embarrassment of riches. “I got these financial advisors who tell me don't do this and don't do that—but my investment strategies always pay off and make them look like morons—which is why I keep them. I like makin' people who think they know everything look like morons. So anyways, now I got more money than God, as they say. Well, maybe not God, but his cousin at least. If he had one. Does he? Well, if he did.”

Hayden laughs out loud, and Grace looks a bit embarrassed—which was not his intent. He just finds her attitude so refreshing. “So what are you going to do with all of it?” Hayden asks.

Grace shrugs. “Play,” she tells him. “Maybe buy an amusement park or something. And give a bunch away to folks who deserve it.” She looks to the mansion. “I've been throwing parties for poor people in the house, to keep the place from being so empty all the time—and everyone deserves a fancy night out in a place you gotta be invited to—especially poor folks who never get invited nowhere by anyone who isn't family. I buy 'em gowns and tuxedos that they get to take with them when they go, and I feed 'em the kind of meat you don't gotta put ketchup on. I make 'em
my
family, on accounta my real one didn't work out so well.”

She looks away then, probably thinking about her brother. Hayden never met Argent, but he knows he played a crucial role in saving Connor from a ruthless black marketeer.

“So I imagine you invited me here because you want me to interview you on my radio show,” Hayden says.

“I don't wanna talk about that yet,” she says. The butler arrives with lemonade and chocolate chip cookies. “Eat, drink, and be merry,” she says. “Isn't that how it goes?”

“There's a second part to that expression,” Hayden points out. “But it's not nearly as much fun.”

“So you were with Connor and Risa down in Sonia's basement the first time they were there, huh?” she asks with her mouth full of cookie.

“Once upon a time.”

“Wasn't no fairy tale, I'm sure.”

“A different kind of ‘grim.' ”

“And then you was with them in the airplane graveyard. That's where you started the Radio Free Hayden thing, right?”

“You know a lot about me.”

Grace shakes her head. “Just the stuff Connor told me. And the stuff you say on your show. You know, you talk about yourself an awful lot.”

“I know; it's a bad habit.”

“So where are they?” Grace asks, and says no more as she waits for his answer. When he isn't forthcoming, she adds, “I mean, you were closer with them than just about anybody, so you gotta know where they are now, right?”

Hayden sighs. “Not exactly.”

The fact is, ever since that infamous TV interview that Connor and Risa did more than six months ago, he hasn't heard from them. No one has. He could hardly blame them. Hayden wasn't there—he just heard about it like everyone else. It was a big deal. An interview on a national prime-time talk show. How the guy got a gun into the studio audience is still a mystery—there were metal detectors and security up the wazoo, and then some. It was, after all, their first public interview after their testimony before Congress—the testimony that shamed lawmakers into making the moratorium on unwinding permanent. But there are still plenty of people who support unwinding, and they're not going to let that dark era of history go without a fight.

Connor or Risa or both of them would be dead now, had it not been for the actions of some anonymous woman in the studio audience who saw the shooter rise and pushed his arm as he fired.

There, before the world, on live TV, the beloved host of a beloved talk show was shot through the chest by the stray bullet and killed. He never had a chance. Risa and Connor were spirited off the stage by security and neither has been seen since.

“C'mon,” Grace cajoles. “You know where they are—you hafta know!”

“If they want to say hidden, why would they tell a blabbermouth with a nationally syndicated radio show?”

Grace considers that. “Good point. Damn.”

There are a few theories out there, of course, as to where Risa and Connor are. Some people think they've joined Lev on the Arápache Reservation and are enjoying peaceful sanctuary there. Others say that Connor, Risa, and Connor's family entered the witness protection program, and all have brand-new identities. With faces that recognizable, Hayden can't imagine how they'd remain anonymous for very long. Conspiracy kooks think they're in a high-security prison or dead. Religious kooks think they've been raptured. Every tabloid claims unconfirmed sightings, and the
WHERE'S CONNOR?
and
WHERE'S RISA?
T-shirts that were so popular before they resurfaced at the Washington rally are back in vogue. Too bad for them. The more they try to hide from their legend, the more it asserts itself.

Hayden, on the other hand, has no problems with fame or infamy. He loves the vitriolic haters as much as he loves the fans who adore him. To be the cause of such passion tickles him to no end. And of course there's the free stuff.

“I got a theory,” Grace says. “And I'm very good with theories. Theories and games and strategies. So tell me what you think.”

“I'm listening.”

“Connor needed something from his parents before he could forgive them for reals. He needed a sacrifice. So after that awful interview thing, he gave them a choice. Either leave their lives behind and disappear with him and Risa, or say good-bye to him forever. They would live out their lives without him, knowing that he never forgave them for signing his unwind order.”

“So in your scenario, what did they do?”

“I can't be certain, but I
do
know that they sold their house. I heard that the guy who bought it is gonna turn it onto some kind of public attraction, you know, like Graceland, although I can't see it—I mean it's just a house. But then, Graceland is also just a house—I been there and I wasn't all that impressed—so I guess it's possible. Anyway, I think they accepted Connor's challenge. They took off and they're all together.”

“Where?”

“Somewhere mobile,” Grace says. “My first thought was the opposite, of course. That they hunkered down in Alaska or some other place where they'd stay put and have no outside contact. Nobody sees them, and they don't gotta see no one else, living off the land. But you know Connor—that's not him. His life's all about motion. He's like that shark he's got on his grafted arm—he's gotta keep moving or die. So I think they got themselves some sorta sailboat or catamaran. Nothing fancy. I mean, his family wasn't rich. Just a simple kind of boat, and maybe they're tooling around the Mediterranean, minding their own business, hanging out in smaller, less-traveled ports. Or maybe they're using their boat to save AWOLs in places where there's still unwinding. That'd be Risa's idea, and although Connor'd say he doesn't want to do that anymore, he's just saying it so that Risa can convince him. And his parents get behind it, because again, it's part of the deal: Love me; love my choices. And maybe they'll come back someday and maybe they won't. But I think they're happy. Not happily-ever-after kind of happy, because no one gets that. I mean we all get sick, and get hit by trucks, and fall out of love, and stuff—but I swear I can see Connor and Risa dangling their feet off that catamaran, saying,
Sure as hell beats Sonia's basement
.”

Hayden has to laugh again, because the way she paints it, he can see it too.

“The proof, though,” Grace says, “will be the brother. Luke, or Lucas, or whatever his name is.”

“What about him?”

“They'd want him to finish school. They won't leave him behind, though, so five'll get you ten that he's enrolled in some boarding school that's not too far from the Mediterranean Sea. Maybe Barcelona or Athens, or Ephesus, or Nice. Find a Luke, or a Lucas, who just started a few months ago at some boarding school out that way, where they teach in English, and you'll know I got it right.”

Grace smiles, proud of herself, treating the whole thing like it was a fait accompli. Like a mathematical proof beyond reproach. Then her smile fades. She pours herself some lemonade and pours more for Hayden, even though he tells her he doesn't want any more.

Then she says, “I didn't ask you here to talk about Risa and Connor. Well, I guess maybe I did, but that's not the main reason.”

“Right,” says Hayden. “Your interview. How Grace Skinner became the name behind organ printing. How she became worth half a billion dollars in less than a year. A true American fairy tale.”

Grace slams down her glass hard enough to make half the lemonade shoot out. “First of all, I'm only half of the name behind the printer. It's the Rifkin-Skinner Biobuilder. Rifkin made it—I just handed him Sonia's broken prototype, and he got it to work, and I still feel pretty damn guilty I didn't insist they call it the Rifkin-Rheinschild Biobuilder
,
after Sonia and her husband, but I figured it was too hard to spell, and after all I'd been through I wanted some credit. Second of all—like I said—there are no fairy tales, American or otherwise. And third, I don't do interviews, because they make me sound stupid, and I'm tired of sounding stupid, because it makes me
feel
stupid, and I never want to feel stupid again. I got enough money so that no one calls me stupid to my face, but I don't want them saying it behind my back neither.”

“I don't think you're stupid, Grace,” Hayden says very honestly. “Yes, there are some things you lack that other people have—but you compensate. There are things you can do that put everyone else to shame. I don't think you're low-cortical. I think you're deep-cortical.”

“If I do an interview with you, others won't see it that way.”

“So if I'm not here to set up an interview, why am I here?”

“I want you to find my brother.”

Hayden takes a deep breath.

“I want you to put out a plea to your listeners. You got a lot of them—they'll listen to you.”

“Grace—Divan Umarov's plane hit a mountain. The debris field stretched for miles—there were no survivors. . . .”

“I know—but I got a feeling. . . .”

“A theory?”

“No!” she says, frustrated. “I ain't got enough to have a theory. All I got is a feeling and I can't let it go. They didn't find any part of him. And if there's no proof he's dead . . .”

“Grace, there are lots of people who are dead with no proof.”

“I know that! And I know I can't let it go. You got listeners. I'll put pictures of him up online. You just gotta get your listeners to look.”

“From what Connor said, half his face was gone, and the black market guy promised him a new one. Even if he survived the crash, and is alive, what good will a picture do? He won't look the same.”

“Why can't you do it? Connor would want you to do it, wouldn't he? He would want it!”

“He would tell you exactly what I'm telling you now.”

Grace's face gets red like a child about to throw a tantrum. “Get out of here. I don't want to talk to you no more. You're just like everyone else, sayin' Argie's dead, when I know in my heart that he's not. He's not!”

Hayden stands up. “Grace, I'm sorry.”

“Just go. Take some cookies with you, or else I'll eat them and I already ate too many.”

And although it goes against all his instincts, Hayden says, “Okay, I'll do it. I'll put an all-points bulletin out on Argent—but on one condition.”

“What.”

He's about to ask for an interview. It's what he wants. His listeners will love it. But he's not going to blackmail her. It's not his style. Besides, he can do a whole show about her without even having to have her there. And he does love to hear himself talk. So, instead of asking for an interview, he says, “On the one condition . . . that you invite me to your next party. I'll even bring my own tuxedo.”

Grace smiles. “And bring a date,” she says. “A girl or a boy, I don't care.”

Hayden chuckles. “Maybe both,” he says. “One on each arm. They can go dance while I schmooze.”

•  •  •

He does the public plea just as he promised. Argent Skinner—oddball unexpected hero who helped save the Akron AWOL from being sold for parts on the black market. Has anyone seen him? His sister has pictures up on her website. He looked like this. Might not look like that anymore. Might look only half like this. Then Hayden opens up his show to callers. His producer always hurls him the most bizarro ones. Good for ratings. One guy talks about the black market and says he knows a guy who knows a guy who knows a girl who escaped from the Burmese Dah Zey. And that she has four arms. Go figure. Another caller says that Argent Skinner is really just an anagram of the Stark Green Inn in Stark, New Hampshire, so that must be where he's hiding. When faced with the fact that the Stark Green Inn was in existence long before Argent Skinner was born, the caller suggests some form of time travel. It's all very amusing and entertaining, but, as Hayden suspected, this train leads to various suburbs of nowhere.