HEAR (21 page)

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

After the experiment, Uncle Brian asks me to join him for lunch. His tone makes it clear that it's more an order than an invitation. I know he's worried that I was the only one who said I came up blank after hearing the prompts. Maybe he thinks that I was holding back. He doesn't know that I have reason to be worried myself: three had information to give him; one did not . . . and I
genuinely
didn't see anything. Maybe this is the moment when that partial vision I shared with Pankaj finally comes true. I'm the odd one out, and the other three are closing the circle without me.

Brian is pensive as we sit in a booth at the local pizza joint, our slices untouched. I know he's wondering if what the others gave will be enough to satisfy Figg. It seems hard to imagine how any of it could be considered useful. But since Uncle Brian has yet to ask me about the experiment, I decide to begin with my own question.

“Why do you trust him?”

Brian glances around the restaurant before answering. He leans in. “What do you mean precisely?”

I look around before replying too, but since I don't know what I'm looking for, I just start talking. “ You know who I mean. I know you need money for the lab at this point, but you told me you left the CIA all those years ago because you stopped believing in the mission. Because you didn't like what they were doing. What makes you think ‘the mission' or Chris Figg's motives are any different now?”

“People change, Kass.”

“Do you mean him or you?”

He takes a bite to buy himself some time, then puts down his slice and wipes his mouth with his napkin. “Both, I suppose,” he says after a while. “It's important to remember that the only thing that stays constant is our own evolution. We all change mentally and physically. Our wants change; our needs change.”

I push my pizza away, feeling vaguely ill. What is it that he needs? Is it the glory? Is he putting us all at risk just because he wants his ESP back? Is there yet another reason still unknown to me? I stare at my uncle, but I can't read his thoughts. They are locked behind those world-weary eyes staring back at me.

When we return to
the lab, the other three are already seated at their workstations. I want—I
need
—to check in with Pankaj, but he stares out the window and doesn't acknowledge me. When he finally turns, I smile at him. He immediately looks away, shifting his attention to the ground. I continue staring at him, but he won't glance back in my direction.

Something's off. I feel it the way you know something's wrong when a text goes unanswered for too long, or your calls keep going to voice mail.

Hey, are you okay?

Pankaj doesn't respond. I stare more intently, willing him to look at me, to explain what's wrong. He keeps his head down; it's answer enough. He's not okay. Does the fact that the others had visions and I didn't mean they shared something that I
couldn't
? Has this altered what he thinks of me?

“We'll just have to wait and see,” Brian says.

My head snaps in his direction, and I'm about to tell him to butt out when I realize he's not speaking to me. He's simply responding to a question Alex asked that I hadn't even heard. But seeing the expression on my face, he says, “ Yes, Kass?”

“No, I . . . Sorry, never mind.”

Brian opens his mouth, but right then his cell phone rings on his desk. “I have to take this,” he says with a glance at the caller ID. “We'll reconvene later this afternoon. See you back here at four o'clock.”

Pankaj is first to leave the lab. He practically sprints out, making it clear he doesn't want company, so I hang back and wait for Uncle Brian to finish his call. But when he sees me lurking by the door alone, he motions that I too should leave.

Close the door behind you
, he mouths.

Mara and Alex have disappeared too by this point, and by the time I get outside, I feel more depressed and alone than when I first arrived on campus. I start walking, not knowing where to go or what to do. Eventually I realize I'm heading in the direction of the boathouse where Pankaj and I shared our first vision.

That's where I find him.

He's sitting by himself on the dock, staring out over the lake. He doesn't turn as I approach, but he knows it's me. “I was wondering when you'd get here,” he murmurs. Finally he turns and brushes that long black hair away from his amber eyes.

“Where are Mara and Alex?”

“Don't know and don't care,” he replies.

Right.
I sit down beside him on the uneven wooden planks. “Can you at least tell me if this is about that experiment? Is it because you saw something and I didn't? Because giving me the cold shoulder for that after everything else we've been through—”

“Kass, this isn't about you,” he interrupts. “It's something else, I swear . . . I spoke to my mom.”

“ Your mom?” I repeat. Is this some kind of dodge? My mind races to put things together, but I can't make anything connect. “What does she have to do with any of this?”

“Mara kept mentioning my mother when she read my cards. She made it seem like my mom had some kind of knowledge, and that I
needed
to talk to her. Of course I didn't buy it at first—my mom and I don't have a good relationship—so I kept ignoring the advice to talk to her. But after I saw those pictures and you said Nisha
and I
had both been here before, I had to find out more. So before our testing session this morning, I called her.”

“Okay . . . and?”

“The very first thing my mom says to me is, ‘Have you seen Nisha?'” He gives a WTF shrug. “
Have I seen Nisha?
I'm like, Mom, I'm at Henley. She goes, ‘Yeah, I know.'”

I shake my head, feeling like I've missed a step. “I don't understand.”

“I didn't either,” he replies. “I figured my sister just pulled another one of her disappearing routines—she does that, just leaves home with no warning, no note. But she always comes back eventually, so we've gotten used to it. That's why I couldn't understand why my mom would ask if Nisha was here,
at Henley
of all places.” His eyes widen as he seems to be reliving the conversation. “She says, ‘Because of the man who called for her. You know, the one with the ponytail who took you to Henley when you were kids—
Figgy
-something.'”

“But what does Figg want with your sister
now
?”

“Mom didn't know. And now my mind is racing; I start thinking about the camp again, and I asked her how we got picked for it as kids. She goes, ‘Pankaj, they never picked
you
. Nisha was the one they wanted. But I told them you were a package deal: you can't have my daughter unless you take my son.'” He turns from me and stares out over the lake.

I know what Pankaj is thinking: He doesn't belong. He never did. “But you have ESP,” I whisper. “Of course you're supposed to be here with us.”

He turns back to me. “Think about it, Kass. Think about our vision. I'm obviously not part of the group that matters. I never have been. I'm not one of the chosen three.”

I see the pain on his face, and I want to tell him the “union of three” thing doesn't matter. But I'm not sure I believe that. “Of course you are. Think about
us
, about you and me.” I take his hand.

He shakes his head; it's not enough for him.

“Then what about the experiment today? You were the one who rattled off all those numbers. Alex, Mara—they both saw something. I was the one who had nothing.”

He pulls his hand from mine and looks me in the eyes. “I made it up.”

“What?”

His lips turn upward in a sad smile. “I was so out of my head and screwed up after talking to my mom, I couldn't see
anything
. So I just started rattling off a bunch of numbers. Nisha's birthday, her cell phone number, her zip code. Totally meaningless stuff.”

I don't know how to respond, but I do know there's only one person who can explain it to us. “When we get back to the lab,” I say, “we tell my uncle nothing else happens until we speak to Figg. Nothing else happens until we get answers.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

It's three when Pankaj and I get back to the lab, and we find Brian sitting at his desk, writing notes on a legal pad.

“Uncle Brian?”

Startled, he jumps at the sound of my voice, then checks his watch. “What are you two doing back here so soon?”

“We need to speak to Figg,” I say. “Do you know where we can find him?”

“No.” He shakes his head. “But I believe he has some business to take care of just now. So why don't you come back at four?” He stands and walks over to us, making a “shoo!” gesture with his hand. “Four, like I said earlier.” There's a look of concern on his face as he tries to move us to the door. “Go outside and enjoy the nice day!” He flashes an unconvincing smile.

Gee, I can't tell if he wants us to leave
,
I silently say to Pankaj.

He's being so subtle about it
. . .
Let's push him a little, see what we learn.
Pankaj turns to Brian. “I think we should just wait here,” he says out loud. “It's really important that we speak to Mr. Figg.”

Brian shakes his head. “No, no, no. You'll see him later. Go on, get out of here, you kids,” he replies, desperately trying to sound jokey. The tone doesn't work on us or on Alex, who overhears this as he strolls into the lab.

“Wow,” Alex chuckles as he repositions the large gym bag he's carrying on his shoulder. “ You don't have to be a psychic to see
someone
doesn't want you to stay here, huh?” Unlike Brian, Alex appears
genuinely
upbeat, as if he's somehow shaken off the sorrow consuming the rest of us. Whatever workout he's just done seems to have worked wonders on his mood. He takes a seat at one of the lab tables and drops the gym bag at his feet.

I watch my great-uncle, now literally wringing his hands. Though I don't know what's up, my goal is not to antagonize him. “Okay, guys, let's vamoose,” I say, acquiescing to his wishes.

Pankaj shrugs, then nods.

“ You two go on ahead,” Alex says. He spins on his stool. “I'm actually wanted here.” He looks at Brian with expectant eyes. “Right, Professor?”

Brian glances at his watch again. “I, uh.” He gives a hesitant shrug. “That's very possible.”

That's very possible?
That's
very
weird. I wonder if this has to do with the vision Alex had in the experiment earlier today. Maybe Pankaj and I are being excluded from . . .
whatever this is
because neither one of us saw anything.

“Where's Mara?” I ask. I look at Uncle Brian first. He shrugs, so my eyes go back to Alex.

“I don't think she got a written invitation like I did.” He holds up his phone. From a distance, I can see texts have gone back and forth. “But it wasn't Professor Black who told me to come back here now. It was his old pal Chris Figg.”

As if on cue, Figg walks into the lab.

Alex gives a jovial laugh. “Well, speak of the devil!”

Figg glances around the room. He turns when he hears footsteps behind him. It's Mara. “ You're all here.” But he seems not only surprised to see us; he seems angry.

Brian's head shakes as if he's hoping to deflect the anger. “Chris,” he says, “I promise you I told them to come back at four.”

“He did,” I confirm with a nod. “But now that we're all here, maybe you can answer some of our questions, Mr. Figg.”

“Not now, Kassandra.” Figg's eyes stay in motion, sharklike, as they survey the room. “In fact, I suggest you take your little friends out of here for a while.”

“That's okay,” I reply. “We'll wait.”

“Point, Kass!” Alex laughs, clearly enjoying this. “ Your move, Figg.”

“Alex, why don't you just come with me?” Figg says. “We'll leave, so the rest of them can stay. Save us all a lot of trouble.”

“That's okay,” Alex says, his voice teasing. “I'm good here too.”

“It's not a suggestion, son.”

Alex shakes his head as he moves his bag from the floor to the table. “I'm not your son. And even if I were, I'd still disobey you. 'Cause that's the kind of son I am.” An eerily familiar grin crosses his face. In that moment, as I witness that grin—somehow boyish and somehow menacing—an intense feeling of déjà vu crashes over me. But it's not because of any ESP.

Faking a sneeze, I turn away, rattling the CVS bag looped around my wrist. Instead of rummaging for tissues, I rifle through the stack of recently developed photos. Mara catches the commotion, and in the charged stillness of the room, she strides toward me.

“I still have your tissues from earlier, Kass,” she says. “Sorry about that. Here you go.” She holds the package out to me as I come to the picture of the blue-lipped dead girl. Our hands collide just as Mara sees the picture.

She makes a barely audible gasp.

That's the little girl I saw screaming during the experiment
, Mara says silently, her voice coming through clearly in my head.
She's the girl whose skull got smashed.

I flip to the next picture, a close-up of the grinning little boy.

And he's the one who killed her.

Even though she's speaking soundlessly, I hear her distress. I turn back to Alex. There's no doubt; I recognize that same grinning boy, even though he's a decade older. One section of this puzzle has come together, at least. Now I understand Brian's urgency in getting rid of us. Figg's “business” is to take Alex away. And our presence throws a wrench in the plan.

“ You don't want to do anything you'll regret, Alex,” Figg says.

“I'm not so worried about that, Mr. Figg. Regret's not one of my go-to emotions. Anger, yes.” He stands and starts pacing. “Jealousy, of course. If I ‘regret' anything, it's probably that I care too much, but it's not like I have any psychological or emotional hang-ups about it.”

Pankaj laughs, not yet seeing what I do, not sensing the danger. “Dude,” he muses, “the lady doth protest too much, methinks!”

“ You're right, Desai.” Alex nods with appreciation. “I don't know why I'm even bothering to justify myself to this clown. Especially when I know he would have done the same thing had he been so wronged.”

Pankaj's smile drops. “Uh, what?”

“How were you wronged, Alex?” I ask. I wonder what a little girl could have done that would have upset him so much.

“She broke up with me.” He looks baffled that I hadn't already assumed this was what he meant. “I told you Erika broke up with me. And we were in love.” He shakes his head as if still struggling to believe the rejection is real.

My mind is reeling; I can't figure out how Erika relates to the girl he killed. And forget the fact that Erika's now dead too—that she dumped him seems to be what Alex is fixating on.
That's
what seems to be upsetting him most.

“I mean, it was love at first sight,” he continues, “incredibly deep and intense, and it just grabbed both of us by the throat.”

I recall that last conversation with Erika at the library. She also used the word “intense,” but she used it to describe Alex's behavior . . . and his intensity was one of the reasons she broke up with him.

Alex approaches Brian, his palm out. “ You know what that's like, don't you, Professor?”

Brian's mouth drops open, but he hesitates before answering.

“Of
course
you do,” Alex replies for him. “That's how you got on this whole kick of yours to begin with. You're also trying to regain lost love.”

Brian shakes his head. “No, Alex, that's not why I—”

“Don't be coy. Maybe you're not trying to get your girlfriend back specifically, since she's been gone for so long.” He rolls his eyes as if
that
would be crazy. “But you're trying to get the feeling back—and what
the feeling of being in love
does
to you. You know, what it
gives
you.” Alex smiles as Brian takes a step back. “ You see? We're not so different after all.”

“That's not true,” Brian manages. But I can see that he's been affected by Alex's words.

“Okay, Alex, you've made your point,” Figg says. “It's time for us to go.”

“No, I don't see that happening. Remember, I'm really smart, Mr. Figg, and I don't want to be the puppet of an idiot puppeteer anymore.” Alex moves his arms like a marionette then grabs his gym bag. “So I'm cutting my ties with you, and I'm leaving here. By myself. And you and I are going to say goodbye forever.”

“Bravo!” Figg says loudly.
“Bra-vo!”
he repeats, even louder the second time.

Bravo?

It's only as two men in dark suits storm into the lab that it becomes clear “bravo” isn't a compliment. It's a code word. Now flanked by two fierce-looking men whose jackets bulge with what no doubt are concealed weapons, Figg faces Alex. “Drop the bag, Alex. It's over.”

“ You don't get to end this,” Alex replies.

In a flash, Alex pulls a large knife from the bag's front pocket, and in a few quick steps, he's seized my great-uncle in a chokehold. I am momentarily paralyzed, as if not truly present, as if watching in a vision, while Alex's knife waves perilously close to Uncle Brian's carotid artery. But this is no vision. This is happening, here and now.

Brian gasps for breath. His eyes are wide behind his glasses. His limp arms dangle in front of him.

Without thinking twice, I run at them, but just as instinctively, one of the CIA suits runs at
me
, tripping me. I land on my palms with a smack. All at once, there's a very painful bone digging into the small of my back. It's his knee, pinning me to the floor.

“Get off!” I rasp.

“Alex,” Figg whispers, trying to sound composed, “now let's not do anything rash. You know you don't want to hurt Professor Black.”

“Do I?” he asks. “Do I know that? Because I thought the fact that I hurt people was one of the things you liked best about me. In fact, should we tell them who suggested I get that merit badge in knife skills? Wink, wink.”

Figg's expression is blank, a perfect poker face. From my very uncomfortable position at shoe level, I can see that Pankaj and Mara are frozen in fear as they stare at Brian, who's turning red in Alex's hold.

“Listen to me, Alex,” Figg says evenly. “ You've always been an incredibly talented young man, and your abilities can still be of great use to the country.”

Alex snorts. “Figg, I know how you work. You'll burn me just like you burned the good professor. You should thank me! I'm just doing the work that you'd eventually do yourself anyway.”

My eyes move to Figg. The old CIA deputy director takes a step back, blinking. Whether or not Alex's accusation is true, no one in this room doubts it could be, not even the man whose knee is currently bruising my kidneys. I flash back to what Uncle Brian said about rattlesnakes, seeing both Alex and Figg for what they truly are for the first time. Still, in this moment it's impossible to determine which of the two is the more poisonous.

“Alex,” Mara says, “Kass and I know you killed that little girl. But Mr. Figg and the professor knew it too. They've known about it for a long time. So think about it,” she pleads. “It must not have bothered them. Obviously they must not have cared, so . . . don't do this. There's no need to do this.”

“Mara,” Alex says, mimicking her tone, “ You
obviously
don't know
everything
.”

The only thing that's clear to me now is that Alex will kill my great-uncle.

Out of the corner of my eye, I see Pankaj edging toward them.

“Come on, man,” Pankaj says. “Let the professor go. He's old and he never meant you any harm. If you need a hostage, take me instead of him.”

Alex laughs. “Uh, no offense, Pankaj, but he's the one of value here. He's the one with the ESP booster. You're just a delinquent.”

Pankaj shakes his head, looks somehow disappointed. “Alex, the booster's not ready yet. He'd be using it on himself if it were. You're smart. You
have to
know that
.
So the professor can't help you now,
and he doesn't have ESP. But
I
do. And if you and I team up, what could stop us?”

I feel a twinge of unease as I watch Pankaj getting closer to Alex. I know he must be doing this to help out my uncle, but there's something dangerously convincing in his performance . . .

Alex pauses for a moment, loosening his grip on Brian's neck. “ You are reasonably intelligent yourself, Pankaj,” he says. “And I have been impressed by the way you've conned Kass this summer.”

Conned?

“She hated you at the beginning. Now you have her wrapped around your finger.”

“I only wanted to prove to myself that I could make her fall for me,” Pankaj says. “But like you said, it was just a good con.” He gives a dismissive laugh.

The words hit me like a kick to the gut; the laugh feels like a grenade.

“Anyway, it's not like her family would ever let the two of us be together.” Pankaj shakes his head. “They'd destroy me before letting me be with their daughter.”

“That's actually true,” Mara quickly adds. “The cards have always said that. That's why I told you to stay away from him, Kass.”

This is one comment too many. I struggle to break free and get up, but it's hopeless. I'm trapped, forced to endure this torture.

Pankaj doesn't look at me as he walks past, moving closer to Alex. “Come on, man. Let's do this. Let's go.”

“I have always liked you, Desai, and it would be nice to have a partner in crime.” Alex smiles sadly at the room. “So here's how this is going to work: Desai, you approach the door. Get down on your belly when you reach it.”