Viral Nation (19 page)

“I need you to come with me, Bridget,” West said. “It’s important.”

The plan was simple enough. Convince Bridget that, for her own safety, she had to come with him. They’d think of step two later.

“Come with you where?”

Good question.
“I’m not sure yet. Somewhere.”

“We can go to the stables.”

This was going to be so hard. How could he persuade her to go away with him? He wouldn’t do it, if he were her. “We have to get away from here.”

“Why?”

“I wouldn’t ask if this wasn’t important. Life-or-death important.”

“What are you talking about?”

Bridget looked concerned, but more about his acting like a jerk on her doorstep than by what he was telling her. How could he blame her? He didn’t even know what the real threat was. This was taking too long.

She was five foot seven or eight and had the solid build of a girl who always had enough to eat. West could carry her off if she fought him, but he was less convinced that no one would notice.

She had to come on her own. The words just slipped out. “Someone is going to kill you.”

Bridget took a step back into her house. Wrong direction. When he started to follow her, she put a hand out to stop him. “You’re freaking me out.”

“I know. I know, but I need you to trust me.” She tried to close the door, but West was faster. He slipped in, pushing her ahead of him, and closed the door.

“My dad will be home soon.”

That was a lie, but West didn’t blame her for it. She was terrified. He saw it in her blue eyes, the pupils dilated wide open, and heard it in her quick, short breaths. She pressed her back to the stair rail. “I’m not going to hurt you. I promise.”

“What do you want?”

“I want to save you from whoever is going to kill you a week from Tuesday.”

Bridget sidled farther from him. “Oh, God. You’re crazy, aren’t you? My dad said so, when you came here looking for your sister. I didn’t believe him, but it’s true.”

“I’m not crazy.” She fought away from him, and he grabbed her by the arms. “Look at me, Bridget! You know me. You know I’m not crazy.”

For a second, he thought he’d gotten through to her. She tilted her head and took one deep breath as she looked up at him. But just when he let his guard down, she twisted to get away from him and moved toward the open hallway that led to the kitchen.

He caught her arm again and hated when he felt her stiffen under his palm. “Can’t you see I’m trying to help—”

The front door opened behind him and West dropped Bridget’s arm. His first worry was for himself, because he expected to see that she had been telling the truth and her father was home. Bridget tried to get around him, probably expecting her father as well. He grabbed her again and held her tightly in place behind him.

“Let me go!”

“It’s not your father.”

She wrenched away from him and looked around his shoulder.

“Let the girl pass, son,” the man said.

West nearly complied. It was a good bet the man was someone who had more right to be here than he did. But Bridget didn’t try to get away from him now. She shrank back, suddenly hiding behind him instead of being kept there against her will, so he stayed put.

The man came all the way into the house, carefully closing the door behind him, then clicking the deadbolt into place. “Who’s your friend, Bridget?”

“My father is still at work,” she said from behind West. Her voice, usually sweet and slightly high-pitched, sounded raw with fear.

“I know where your father is.” The man came closer. He didn’t have any kind of visible weapon, and there wasn’t any threat in his voice. If he was here to do either of them any real harm, he wouldn’t be here at all. He would have already been arrested. Still, the hairs on West’s arms stood on end and when he looked back at Bridget, her face had lost its color.

“I asked you a question, Bridget,” the man said. “Who is your friend?”

Bridget shook against West’s back. She was really scared. West didn’t think he could have been any more on edge than he was when he knocked on her door a few minutes ago, but he was wrong. He straightened to his full height and tried to keep his voice steady. “We’ll be sure to tell Mr. Kingston that you stopped by, Mr.…”

The man didn’t fill in his name. And he didn’t take his eyes off Bridget over West’s shoulder. “Whoever your friend is, I’m afraid I’ll have to ask him to leave. Your father wouldn’t like me leaving you alone with a dirt slinger.”

He knows who I am.
West had that thought just as Bridget’s breath caught and she grabbed a handful of his T-shirt. Something was wrong. He didn’t know what, but he went with his instincts and pulled her with him, up the hall. She jerked forward, landed against his back, and then took the stairs with him.

“Where?” he asked Bridget. The man followed, but slowly. As if there were no question that they might get away. “Where!”

She tugged on his hand and took him through a doorway into what must have been her father’s bedroom. West closed the door, hit the thumb lock, and then shouldered a tall pine dresser in front
of it with Bridget’s help. The room was gigantic, with an enormous four-poster bed and a fireplace. On the mantel, West saw a marble clock. “We have to get out of here.”

“What’s happening?” she kept asking. “What’s happening?”

“Who is that man?”

“Why is this happening?”

West had no idea. They could sort that out later. “Bridget, I need you to focus. Do you understand me? We have to get out of the house.”

If they could get out onto the street, they could disappear. At least long enough to get away. Whoever that man was, West was fairly certain he wouldn’t kill them or try to grab Bridget in the open. If that was his plan, then this wouldn’t be happening at all. West held on tight to that, even though a stubborn insistence that the system worked didn’t make much sense for him right now.

West went to a floor-to-ceiling sliding glass door that opened onto a small porch. When he opened it, he saw a wooden table and chair, painted white, where Mr. Kingston likely took his coffee in the morning in the shade of a big old oak tree. The branches hung over, thick and sturdy.

“Have you gone out this way before?” West asked.

The door rattled. “I just want to speak to you, Bridget,” the man said.

“What’s happening?” she asked West again.

“Bridget!” The dresser rocked, then settled back on its feet.

She crowded onto the patio with him, and he yanked the curtain closed and then the door, hopeful the man would check the bathroom first and give them time to get down the tree.

Bridget went ahead of him, shimmying out onto the nearest branch. As soon as she put her weight on the next limb, West followed. Somehow they managed to scramble down the tree without more than skinned palms.

West took Bridget’s hand and they ran, without waiting to see if the man looked down over the railing.

“What the hell just happened?” Bridget asked when they finally slowed. She walked close enough to him that he felt her shaking with exertion or fear.

If he knew, he would tell her. He would tell her what he did know, in a minute, but right now he needed her to answer a question. “Who was that man?”

She hiccuped and didn’t answer at first. When he waited her out, she finally said, “Langston Bennett.”

James hated what it said about him that he wished,
hard, he’d never run his son’s name through the Company database. He should have just done his job that morning. Just his job, nothing more.

The guilt that had permanent residence in his gut pissed him off. He was in the protection business. He might not spend as much time as he’d like with Clover and West, but he kept the city safe for his kids. James sat on the edge of his barracks bed and held his head in his hands, wishing he could reach in and tear out the part of his brain that made things so hard.

He’d gone into the office that morning, as he had dozens of times, expecting an administrator to hand him the stack of folders with his crew’s jobs for their monthly on-week. Instead, he found the room empty. The folders were on the edge of the desk, topped by a note with his name on it.

He should have taken them and gone. Would have, too, except that his crew mate Coal’s brother-in-law worked in the training office. He’d heard that West had an interview scheduled and passed the information along. Lots of congratulations from the whole crew.

James was maybe a little hurt that West hadn’t told him about his interview himself, but he understood. He might be able to kid himself into believing that he’d had no choice but to accept a promotion that required him to live in the barracks with his crew, but his boy was smarter than that.

Understanding why his son hadn’t shared his news didn’t make it feel any better.

James told himself he stayed away because it upset his kids to see him. Especially West, who had a pit of anger always brewing under the surface. A more selfish reality was that it upset James to be in the house he’d shared with Jane. The house where she died. Where he’d killed her.

He never stopped hurting, not even after more than sixteen years. And he never stopped remembering what he’d done.

His kids didn’t know. No one did. The truth, that he had murdered his wife, lived inside him. It ate away at his ability to function like a normal, rational person. Eventually, it stole his ability to live with his children.

He knew that Clover thought he’d left because she looked so much like her mother. And that West believed his scars reminded James of Jane, too. The truth was worse, and so much more self-serving. The pair of them reminded him of his failure as a husband and a father. Losing Jane had left him raw, and being near Clover and West was like pouring acid into his wounds.

He was a coward. If he’d been brave enough to withstand Jane’s pain, she’d be alive. If he’d been brave enough to be the father Clover and West deserved, instead of hiding in his work, he’d still have a family. Instead, he lived alone and told himself that keeping the city safe for his children was more important than being present in their lives.

And then he found himself alone with a computer that connected to the Company database. He wanted to see for himself that
he’d managed to raise his son to be a
good
man, even though he knew in his heart that everything good about West was despite James, not because of him.

It wasn’t until he was faced with the proof of his son’s violent crime that he realized what he’d been afraid of all along. That he would find a warning that his son’s anger—an anger he helped create—would finally boil over.

Screw Coal for putting the idea in his head. Screw Jane for getting sick and making him kill her—oh, God, he hated himself for even having that thought. And, most of all, screw himself for not just letting the system do what it was designed to do.

Now, because he was vain enough to think that he could predict what he would find, he knew something he wished he could scrub away. And he’d told West, which was just as bad in the eyes of the law as the murder his son would commit if he wasn’t stopped.

The system wasn’t broken. No. James had lifted his rifle, pointed it through the gun hole in the execution room, and fired it at a human being with a red X over his heart once or twice a month for three years. The system could not be broken.

Which meant the database couldn’t lie. James had to believe that West would kill the Kingston girl if he wasn’t stopped. He’d given him forewarning, anyway.

James lay back, fully clothed, on his hard mattress and stared at the ceiling. Every protective layer he’d wrapped so carefully around himself was unraveling, thread by thread.

Clover sat on the library steps, watching for West.
At this point, she didn’t even care if he had Bridget with him. She was pretty pissed off at the headmaster’s daughter for getting her future self killed and putting West in this position.

“Please, please, please,” she whispered, holding on as tight as she could to her knees, forcing herself not to rock or do anything that would draw attention.
Please
let West come walking down the street.

Clover didn’t know exactly who she was praying to, but she prayed hard.

It must have worked, because he was there. And not bleeding or even running. He had Bridget by the hand and they moved at a good clip, but not like they were being chased.

“Let’s go,” he said as he passed. He slowed long enough to slip Clover’s overstuffed pack onto his own shoulders.

“What happened?”

West stopped and turned to look at her. “It was Langston Bennett, wasn’t it? The man Bridget’s father sent you to?”

Clover hesitated, her heart beating in her throat. “Yes. Why?”