HEAR (14 page)

“Punk?” Erika says, tilting her chin up at him. “ Your bet?”

“Sorry!” He tosses a few chips in the pot.

I've distracted him, and I know this for certain when he loses the hand.

That one was my fault
,
I think at him.
I apologize.

It's okay. It is your money, after all.

Veck gathers his winnings, smirking behind his sunglasses. “Finally!”

A few other people have come upstairs and are now standing around the table, watching the action. Since they all look entirely at ease, I'm guessing they belong here.

“Who wants whiskey?” a guy calls out from behind a small bar near the fireplace.

I almost laugh when I recognize him: it's Flip-Flops, the guy who passed out in front of the library. He's more fresh-faced tonight (maybe because he hasn't started drinking?), and clean-shaven. His eyes meet mine briefly, but he doesn't appear to remember me at all.

Veck spins his forefinger in the air counterclockwise. “Shots all around.”

Flip-Flops nods. He reaches down and places seven shot glasses on the top of the bar, then carefully pours out the brown liquor. He brings the shots over to the table, two by two, and the squish-thwack sound of his footgear seems to echo in my brain, making me feel vaguely ill.

When he sets a shot glass in front of Pankaj, the pain hits.

It's like a corkscrew stabbing through the side of my head. It literally feels as if metal has twisted into my skull. I wince and almost lose my balance. I sense people are starting to watch me, and in a panic I start coughing. Loudly.

“Kass, are you okay?” Alex asks.

I shake my head.

Pankaj stands and hurries over to my side. “Kass?”

As he pats my back, I whisper, “Don't drink it.” I let the cough dissipate.

What's going on?
he asks silently.

We need to get out of here.

“Do you need some water?” Erika asks. She turns to Flip-Flops. “See if we have some water back there.”

“Sure thing.” He jogs back to the little bar and ducks underneath the counter. His head emerges a few moments later. He's holding a cup full of dark-red liquid. “No water, just cranberry juice. Sorry about that. Here ya go.”

Another flash of pain. No way will I drink this.

“I'm so sorry,” I say, smiling weakly and hacking some more. “Allergic to cranberries. I'll just get some water from the bathroom.”

“Take a cup from here, and if you want ice, the kitchen's down the stairs and back to the right,” Erika replies.

“I'm going to sit this round out and go with her,” Pankaj says, nodding a thank you. “Apologies. I'll be right back.” He starts to escort me toward the stairwell.

“Alex,” I choke out. “Come with us?”

Alex doesn't respond. He's concentrating on two men in dark suits sitting on one of the leather couches. I didn't see them before, but it's impossible not to notice them now: they're at least twenty years older than anyone else present. These guys don't look like professors; they're too slick. Alumni? Parents? Or something else?

“Back in a minute,” Pankaj adds, putting his hand on Alex's arm. “Come on.”

“Oh, yeah. Sorry. Sure.” He sounds like we've pulled him from a trance.

The three of us are silent until we're down the stairs and in the empty kitchen. Once I'm convinced we're alone, I turn to them. “Something's not right,” I advise.

“I agree,” Alex replies.

“I think they put something in your drink,” I tell Pankaj.

“Who do you mean? Which
they
?” he asks.

I look at Alex, but he's locked on Pankaj. “Have you felt or noticed anything strange?”

“No, not really. I've been trying to stay focused on the table. Why? What are you thinking, man?”

Alex shakes his head. “The whole night's been weird in my opinion.” He leans against the counter. “Can't tell what yet, but something's off; that's for sure.”

“Kass, you think it was one of the other players who put the thing in my drink?” Pankaj asks me.

“I don't think so.” I try to lower my voice even more. “Who are those two old guys sitting on the couch?”

“That's what I was trying to figure out.” Alex lowers his voice too. “I've seen them on campus before. Listen, I know this will sound paranoid . . . but remember our very first experiment? I mentioned I thought we had a tail. I wasn't kidding. I mean, I know I'm starting to sound like Dan with his conspiracy theories, but—”

“So you're sure it's not just another one of the players trying to take me out, or something?” Pankaj interrupts. “Like, to protect his investment?”

Alex makes a dismissive
pffft
sound. “Are they overprivileged assholes? Probably yes. But I don't think it goes further than that.”

“Maybe the old guys are just the club's private security force,” I suggest. Some of my father's wealthiest associates have private security teams. The best of them just blend into the background. But if you're a middle-aged man in a suit, it's a lot easier to blend into a crowd of middle-aged men in suits than a club full of preppy college kids. “Maybe parents want them around in the aftermath of the shooting?”

Neither Alex nor Pankaj seems impressed with this theory.

“So what's our move?” Pankaj asks.

“I say we get out of here. Just go. It feels too dangerous to stay.”

Alex nods. “ Yeah, you guys should definitely take off.”

“ You're not coming with?” I ask, frowning. “I meant
all
of us.”

“No, I'll stick around . . . try to get a handle on things.” Alex swallows and glances toward the ceiling. “Plus . . . Erika.” His face flushes with an embarrassed-looking smile. “Look, I'm sorry, okay? I
am
a teenage boy. My hormones rule my life. There. I said it.”

“Okay, just promise us you won't drink anything you don't pour yourself,” Pankaj says. He turns back to me. “Come on, Legacy. Let's roll.”

“Wait!” Alex calls after us in a low voice as we head for the door. “What about your winnings? You have a lot of money still on the table.”

Pankaj taps his pocket, which is bulging. Amazing: he somehow managed to swipe his cash before leaving the room. “I told you my mama was a grifter,” he says.

“I thought you said your sister was the grifter,” I whisper.

Pankaj's hand is already on the doorknob. “Her too. Where do you think we learned our tricks?”

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

“It's not a lot,” I tell Uncle Brian as I spread the cash before him on the kitchen table. “But don't worry. It's just the beginning.”

He gives me a quizzical look as I push the money closer to him.

“It's to save the lab,” I add, but his expression remains unchanged. “It's only five thousand dollars, but consider it the first layaway payment.”

The term “layaway” was Pankaj's. So was the idea to turn over what little we'd made tonight in the first place. I admit I didn't even know what the word “layaway” meant until Pankaj explained it to me on the walk home.

“Layaway, my wealthy friend, is also known as payment on an installment plan. You put down a deposit on an item as a pledge that you intend to buy it. But since you don't have all the cash up front, you pay the rest when you get the money together. For its part, the store takes the money and reserves the item for you. It shows good faith and trust on both ends. My mom signs those little IOUs like a movie star giving autographs at a film premiere. Your uncle will get it.”

Now I'm not so sure. Brian not only seems
not
to get it; he seems disappointed and annoyed. I gamely plow forward in the silence nonetheless. “It occurred to me that we have some advantages working in our favor, so we might as well use them, right? Atlantic City isn't all that far from here. I mean, if we spend a few days there, we should be able to win more than enough to make the hundred thousand you need.” My eyebrows rise in excitement as I nod along with my own great idea.

Brian absently rubs his palm into his forehead in circles; it almost looks as if he's extinguishing an invisible cigarette. “Kass, you're suggesting that you and the other HEARs use your abilities to restore funding to my lab through gambling?” His voice is gravelly. He sighs, and his hand drops to his lap. “That is . . . very kind of you.”

I shake my head. “It's no big deal.”

“I know.” He laughs cynically. “But what I don't think you realize is that in order to be presented to the university, the money must come from a respectable source. The provenance of the currency is very important at a place like Henley. If cash were the sole issue, there are easier ways of acquiring it. I could have you pick stocks, for example.”

He says this last part with purpose, and it hits me like a punch to the gut.

Picking stocks is what my dad—my very, very successful dad—does for a living. Not only did he short the market during the financial crisis; he's always one of the top hedge-fund managers on those “highest earning” year-end lists. Everything written about him mentions his “smarts,” his “nose for sniffing out value,” and his “uncanny timing.” He always jokes that these are just sexier ways of saying he works all the time and gets lucky.

I'm suddenly thrown, now quite certain my father has been beating the market not because of his intellect or intensity but because he shares my gift.

Uncle Brian nods at me. “Some families have a genetic predisposition towards obesity; others, athleticism and certain types of cancers. Some family members get it; others do not. But this is our predisposition.”

How did I never know this? Why didn't my father tell me—about him
or
me?

“So obviously
you
have it,” I say accusatorily, wondering what else my dad may be hiding. “Does my mom have it too?”

Uncle Brian shakes his head. “No, your mother doesn't have ESP,” he mutters. “And neither do I.”

“Stop lying!” I yell, sick and tired of being shielded from the truth.

“Kassandra, I am not lying. I do not have extrasensory perception. Not anymore.” He places his hands on the kitchen table and pushes himself up. “Come with me.”

I follow him into the living room. He stops a foot away from the mantel, the altar on which stands the picture of him and Ellen Rios.

“ You lost it because of her?” I ask, baffled.

“I lost it when she was murdered.” He stares at the picture. “I never had the vision that you were born with. My innate ability was much weaker, not much greater than the average person's. The difference was that I was
aware
of it. And unlike most people, I didn't chalk it up to ‘good parking karma' or believe my luck was made by some talisman like a rabbit's foot. But when I was with Ellen, those largely latent talents became activated, practically supercharged. I
did
have a gift like yours. And when Ellen died, that part of me died with her.”

I swallow, half tempted to reach out to him, to hug him. I don't. “ You didn't get any sort of warning about the bomb?” I whisper.

His head droops. “ Yes,” he murmurs. “Though I completely misinterpreted the vision I received and pursued a lead that went nowhere. All the while, the attack was being planned for our home office. These false readings or misinterpretations of visions, these ‘failures of intelligence,' as they're known . . . they happen all the time. But I've never been able to forgive myself for it.”

“And you never had another vision after that?”

“No.”

He takes the framed photo in his hands. I want to ask more questions, but he's already a million miles away. I start twisting my signet ring. I stare down at it as he shambles out of the room and back upstairs, still clutching the photo. The etching on the onyx in the center of the ring is an image of a temple. My dad claimed it was a family heirloom, and I never bothered asking more about it; the family inheritance part didn't really interest me. Now I can't help but wonder if there are more inheritances from my family that I have yet to discover. Or if the temple signifies something . . .

If there's an answer to that question, my gut tells me there are more clues to be found on the third floor.

For an hour and
twenty minutes, I lie in wait on my water bed. If Uncle Brian suspected I was about to undertake an exploratory mission, hopefully the long delay has assuaged his concerns and he's gone to sleep. I slide out of my shoes and stretch and flex my feet, popping the noisy cracks out of my toes. Then I reach into my backpack and feel the Zippo lighter and the mini LED flashlight I keep in the side pocket for emergencies.

When my dad discovered the lighter shortly after I bought it, I told him I needed it for an art project. (“Project Set Off Fire Alarm,” though that detail I kept to myself.) Dad seemed skeptical, but at the time, I assumed he worried I'd become a smoker. The lighter and flashlight have proven invaluable tools on various missions in the past, so I always keep them handy. It's only the flashlight I need tonight.

I inhale and exhale deeply, summoning my inner ninja before sneaking back to the third floor. The door to Uncle Brian's room is closed, and the main light is off. Whether or not he's still awake and reading, I can't tell, but I won't risk going near the end of the hall to find out. Of the other two rooms on the hallway, the door to the right is open. That's where I'll go first—always take the easy way out (or in) if offered.

I creep through the door and shine the flashlight across the walls. The bookshelves are filled with cans of spray starch, extra lightbulbs, a mug full of pens, and a sewing basket. To the left is an ironing board with a stack of handkerchiefs on top awaiting pressing. It's a glorified laundry room. Pretty unglorified, actually—there isn't even a washing machine. Nothing seems out of the ordinary on preliminary inspection; several framed paintings hang on the pale-yellow walls. I run the flashlight over the carpet edges to see if anything looks loose. I even search for hidden panels—he did work for the CIA, after all—but find nothing.

When I swing the flashlight over the bookshelves one last time, I spot a shadow behind one of the cans of starch. The shadow is a container the size of a pill bottle made of opaque black plastic with a grey flip-top lid. I can't imagine what kind of pills would require such secrecy, so I shake the bottle to hear if there are any left. Rather than the rattle of pills, it produces the sound of something solid.

I uncap the container. As the rolled brown strip of plastic slides out, I realize I'm holding a film canister. I uncurl the strip and shine my flashlight at it. The tiny images are color-reversed, making the pictures impossible for me to decipher. In order to see what's here, I need to develop the pictures and literally turn this negative into a positive.

“ You look like ass,”
Pankaj says when I walk into the lab early the next morning and find him sitting there alone.

He's right—I haven't slept—so I don't have an immediate comeback. It doesn't help that
he looks pretty good himself. Maybe even more than pretty good. Whatever.

Since I couldn't sleep, I considered calling my dad at 3
a.m
. to vent. I wanted to tell him the big family secret was out and demand that he tell
me
all he knew about his abilities and mine. But I didn't call. Something stopped me. Part of it was rage—righteous rage, if I'm allowed to call it that. I was afraid of what I would say. I also knew that if I pressed him on why he'd lied to me about this for my whole life, he would find an excuse.
I never lied to you, Kass. I just never mentioned it. There's a difference
, he would say, and then he'd assure me whatever he did or didn't tell me was to protect me and my innocence. All for my benefit.

But this is so much more than just a sin of omission. This is deception about something very personal, something that exists inside of
me
, that is part of
me
. This goes far beyond the lies all parents tell their children: that the tooth fairy exists, that everything will be okay.

Besides, I know there's nothing he can do at this point. If my father was ever able to protect me before, that's no longer the case. There's no way he can save me—or whichever one of the five of us is supposed to die—now.

“Apologies for the comment,” Pankaj says in the silence. “But don't take it the wrong way, Legacy.”

I take a seat at a different workstation and turn to face Pankaj. “How could I possibly take ‘You look like ass' the ‘wrong' way? There's really only one interpretation for a statement like that.”

Pankaj smiles. “That I'm a jerk?”

“I'm beginning to see the downside of this mind-reading business.”

When he laughs, I can't help myself. I start laughing too. And I have to admit, the laughter feels good. Thankfully the others have yet to arrive, so I don't have to be self-conscious about it. How is it that this cocky con artist—this kid who's so dismissive of my background that he still calls me Legacy—can lift my mood in an instant?

“I promise I wasn't trying to be mean,” Pankaj says as he walks over to my workstation, leaning across it. “Seriously, what's going on? How did it go with the money and your uncle last night?”

I shrug, and because we're still alone, I consider telling him what I learned about my dad. But for once, I'm able to stop myself. Before confessing anything to anyone, I need to learn more about his abilities myself. “It's all related to family drama, I guess.”

“Ah, family drama,” he repeats. “I know it well. As I may have mentioned, my family is award-winningly dysfunctional. My sister, Nisha, is perpetually up for ‘worst performance' in social situations. She has a particular skill for making people uncomfortable and scared. I spent my childhood sleeping with one eye open. So, yeah, I get that worrying about family stuff can suck the life force right out of you.” His voice softens. “I'm being serious, Kass. You can talk to me.”

“There is so much about all this that I can't even begin to understand.” I wave my arms around the lab. “I mean, why would you close a lab that's doing research on ESP? If we can find a reliable way to predict events in the future, we can stop things like disease, conflict, and disasters . . . just to name a few.”

Pankaj lets out a whistle. “Wow,” he says.

“Wow?”

“ You don't seem to get how dangerous this is.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Kass, scientific advances almost always come with moral ambiguities.” He pauses but I wait for him to continue. “Okay, ever heard of J. Robert Oppenheimer?”

I knit my eyebrows, not sure where he's going with this. “Father of the atomic bomb. Manhattan Project guy, right?”

“Right, the guy whose creation, the nuclear weapon, killed or injured somewhere around two hundred thousand people in Japan. Oppenheimer said that in the moments following the first successful test of his bomb, he realized the dark consequences of his work: the world would not be the same; his invention could end life on a massive scale. He said he thought of the words from the Hindu scripture, the Bhagavad Gita: ‘
Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds
.'”

“ Yikes. How do you know all this?”

“I'm smarter than I'm given credit for,” Pankaj says. “Maybe I'm
a lot
smarter than I'm given credit for.”

“ You hide it really well.”

He laughs. But as I picture the famous photo of the mushroom cloud over Hiroshima, he looks down and his expression grows serious.

“Look,” he says, “I mention this because advances in science come with all kinds of consequences, good and bad. And your uncle, he's . . . troubling.”

“I'm not following.”

“Kass—”

“He's the J. J. Dyckman Distinguished Professor of Applied Engineering at Henley University,” I interrupt. “He got you out of jail. What's troubling about that?”

Pankaj sighs and brushes his hair away from his eyes. “Nothing about him has been ringing any alarm bells for you?”

I hesitate. Lots about my uncle rings alarm bells. But for some reason I feel defensive; this is my family, after all. “No,” I lie.