Strike (34 page)

We have to slow down through one section, thanks to a protest bleeding into the street, the crowd wearing ski masks and holding handmade signs that say
FUCK YOUR VALOR
and
MY SON DIED FOR YOUR DEBT
and
THE WAR IS HERE
and
THE END IS NIGH
. When a police siren screams behind us, my dad shouts for Chance to turn off at the next intersection. Two shiny black SUVs follow the cruiser, and I don't want to see what happens to the protesters. They still think they're safe probably. That the Constitution and courts still count. That free speech is free.

They think they only have to worry about what happens at their front doors.

Fools.

The back roads take forever, but I'm glad we're away from the chaos of the city. I don't trust groups anymore. I'm pretty surprised, actually, when we wind up at a big box store, one of the ones that's open twenty-four hours for people who just really need to spend money they don't have at midnight.

“Shopping?” I ask.

My dad adjusts his pull-down mirror to stare at me, eyes strained but somehow twinkling. “I always wondered what it would be like to have a sarcastic, eye-rolling teenage daughter who questioned my every decision,” he says. “And, yes, shopping. Everything I do requires a computer and Wi-Fi. We've got nowhere to go, and that means I have to find us a place.” He points to a spot far away from the store and says, “Park here and wait. Be ready to run.”

“Anticipating trouble?” Chance asks, gamely pulling through the space and into the next one so he can take off quickly if necessary.

My dad snorts and pulls down his beanie. “In Valor's world, a smart man always anticipates trouble.”

“Or smart woman,” Bea chimes in, her voice, as always, sounding dead.

My dad looks at her like he's only just noticed her. “That, too. I'll be back.”

As he stalks toward the building, he pulls a packet out of his jeans pocket and starts sorting through cards held together with a rubber
band. I can't see what they are, but I'm willing to bet they're more of the CFF's fun-time gift cards, stocked with all sorts of cash that draws from Valor's vaults. Wyatt parks two spaces over in the red car and glances at me, eyes full of worry and guilt and hope. He looks like a dog who pissed on the couch and is ready to be let back inside. Then his jaw tightens, and he gets out of his car and leans against the trunk.

“You gonna go talk to him?” Chance asks.

I stare at Wyatt, and he looks like a stranger now. My dad's in the store, and everyone in the other car is looking somewhere else, pretending that we're not all completely messed up. I'm amazed that even after a week of Valor anarchy and state-sanctioned murder, there are dozens of cars in this parking lot, just tons of people out spending money at seven in the morning. Like they think that hitting the store before normal business hours is safe. Like they haven't connected the random killings and unrest to the bank stamped on their checks. Like the workers still value minimum wage over staying alive. Not everyone is cut out for the truth, for living on the run. Maybe they think playing along is the best way to pretend it isn't happening.

It pisses me off, actually. Everything that's happened to me? Is basically their fault.

And that gives me an idea, one way to help the rage bleed out.

“Where's my backpack?” I ask Wyatt as I get out and lean against my door.

Without a word, he pops the trunk of the burgundy car and
hands it to me. When I unzip it, I see that he packed everything of mine that could fit, from my toiletries to most of my clothes and a couple of Pop-Tart pouches. My heart melts, just a little, as I paw everything aside and pull the two cans of spray paint from the bottom. One red, one green, right where I left them. Just like my fingernails were painted the day I stepped into my Valor uniform and tucked a Valor gun into my waistband.

“Tell me if anyone's driving by or whatever,” I say, not meeting his eyes.

“Okay.”

I kneel in the empty space between the cars on the cold asphalt, pop off the top of the red can, and shake it while I think of the best thing to write. At this point, am I more furious with Valor or the Citizens for Freedom? More important, which one should the innocent people fear more? The CFF, at least in our area, should be mostly crippled now, so I opt for the original enemy.

Carefully, in block letters, I write
VALOR $UCKS
. For good measure, I make the
A
into an anarchy symbol and go over the
$
with green paint. Not bad for a rallying cry.

“Nice,” Wyatt says, but I'm not doing it to impress him.

It does make me feel better, though. I'm going to leave this everywhere I go from here on out. Yarn bombing took time, patience. But this artistic rebellion takes just sixty seconds and someone to stand guard.

“Your dad's coming back in a hurry.”

I pop the tops back on the cans, shove them in my bag, and stand. A flush of guilt flashes over me, but then I realize: I don't care if my dad approves. I nod at Wyatt and get back in my car.

“Trouble in paradise?” Chance says with a fake-ass sigh, and I punch his shoulder.

My dad gets in the car with a bag in his arms and says, “Take a right onto the highway and head for the doughnut shop about a mile from here. Park close to the door.”

“Aye aye, Captain.” Chance drives away, and my dad starts pulling boxes out of the bag and unwrapping a laptop and a bunch of accessories. I don't know a ton about computers, but it's the pricey kind, and he probably just dropped a few thousand dollars on all this junk.

“More Valor cards?” I ask.

He gives me a quick grin. “Who do you think hacked that little trick in the first place?”

He pops the laptop open, and it turns on without being plugged in. The damn thing is sleek and silver, the sort of indulgence my mom and I could never afford. My old laptop was big and clunky, bought refurbished, and it held a charge for only, like, three hours. It's weird how I spent my whole life wanting to meet my dad, but now everything he does, from smiling to buying a stupid computer, makes me resent him.

Chance pulls into the doughnut shop as requested, and my dad's fingers fly over the keyboard. I watch over his shoulder as he taps into the free Wi-Fi, and he's definitely not going to the normal sites that the rest of us use.

“What is that?” I ask.

“The darknet,” he says, still typing. “Shadow Internet. Not regulated.”

“What are you doing?”

“Finding a safe house.”

He hops from forum to forum, and finally a list of addresses pops up. Some have big
X
s on them, and most have several weird codes under them that make no sense to me. He scrolls down, muttering to himself about Valor and goons and squads.

“Can Leon and the CFF do this too?”

He shakes his head. “Not after my daughter blew up their war room and shot their top three tech guys, no.”

“I thought you were their top tech guy.”

He turns, meets my eyes. “I was never really theirs.”

After some more scrolling, he points to an entry. “Let's try this one.” He gives Chance directions and settles down for more typing.

“So these are, what?” Rex asks, leaning forward. “Anti-Valor safe houses? But how do you know they're actually safe?”

My dad looks back at him as if seeing him for the first time. “Whenever someone uses one or drives by one they're familiar with,
they leave notes. Like the old hobo codes. A toilet works if you bring water, or you can steal Wi-Fi from a neighbor, or they left some food there in a cache. I've stayed in a few before, and some are definitely better than others. But this one is decently stocked and has plenty of room.”

It's a longer drive than I was expecting, but no one seems to want to talk, especially not me. My dad acts like he wants to say something a couple of times, but he takes a deep breath and then remains silent and goes back to typing. Finally, he exhales with purpose.

“So I've been thinking about what you told me, Pats, about how you had some connection to everyone on your list. Do you know any other kids who had a hit list?”

“I did,” Chance pipes up.

Rex just nods, and Bea manages to look vaguely interested.

“Good,” my dad says, looking at each of them in turn. “Did all of you get through your lists? All ten names?”

They all nod.

“And did any of you know anyone on your list or have any connection with them whatsoever, that you know of?”

“Nope,” Chance says. And he's trying to sound like it doesn't mean anything, but his hands are tight and white on the wheel. It's funny—we've been together almost a week, and none of us have ever talked about how we lived through it.

“Me neither,” Rex says.

Bea shakes her head.

My dad continues, looking grim. “So what that tells us is that Patsy is different. Now we just have to figure out why. One or two connections would be understandable, considering that everyone's list is confined to their immediate area. But nine out of ten is . . .”

“A sick joke,” I say.

“Do you know anyone at Valor, pip-squeak? Did you have an account there? Did your mom work at any banks?” He stares pointedly at the paint on my hands. “Were you doing graffiti before the takeover?”

I shake my head. “My checking account is at the credit union. I've never set foot in Valor. Mom didn't even bank with them. She worked for some businesses downtown, but I don't think any of them were banks. And, no, I didn't do graffiti until I had a reason to.”

“There has to be some connection.”

I glare. “Um, like the fact that my grandfather and father both worked for Valor?”

“Burn,” Chance mutters.

My dad sighs. “I quit a long time ago, and your grandfather is dead.”

“Still. Doesn't seem like a coincidence to me. Did you piss off someone there? Someone who knew about me?”

“The only person who knew about you,” he says carefully, “was my brother, Ash.”

My eyes go hot. When I blink, I see Ash's dead eyes, my eyes, my dad's eyes, Cannon eyes, staring back at me.

Repress, repress, repress.

“I think you actually mean ‘suppress,' ” Bea says, her voice cold and distant. “ ‘Repress' means you do it automatically, but ‘suppress' suggests you're trying really hard. It's not working, is it?”

I didn't even realize I'd said it out loud.

I ignore that and attend to my dad's last statement. “My picture was on Ash's mantel. Maybe someone else saw it? My name was on the back.”

He shoots back with, “Unless it included your last name and the words ‘my beloved niece,' I still don't see the connection. You saw Ash's house. It's not like visiting Valor dignitaries were stopping in for tea.”

“But you told me your real name. Maybe someone who knew . . .”

He holds up a hand. “Yeah, I told
you
. Because I knew who you were. No one else knows my real name or that I have a daughter.” When I roll my eyes at him, he adds, “Yeah, okay, so the entire Crane family knows my name. But for all that they're assholes, they're against Valor. They weren't involved in the process of selecting assassins and sending them out after debtors. That was all Valor. Most of what the Cranes know about Valor is from intel I brought them. I've got a list of aliases a mile long, and most of my business is done on the darknet, anonymous and hidden by layers of misdirection.”

My head drops, and I look at my cheap, stained shoes. I've had enough of this. I am so sick of pretending that everything is fine. “Look, the connection is either you or me. And as I was just a normal, poor, fatherless bastard living in a crappy house, going to a crappy school, and working a crappy job, and you're the heir to the Valor throne and an Internet hacker or whatever, I'm kind of guessing it's more about you than me. So maybe stop being a defensive dick and, I don't know, ask your hacker friends about it? Because I'm too busy trying to figure out how to get my dog back to figure out if maybe I shortchanged a customer at the pizza restaurant and it began this nightmare.”

My dad, this strange man, looks down and flexes his fingers over the keyboard in his lap. His mouth opens and snaps closed before he shakes his head and says, “Okay, honey. Okay.”

Soon Chance is pulling into another unfinished neighborhood, all lovely streets and empty foundations and streetlights that were fancy until someone busted out their glass. It reminds me of the one where Wyatt tracked me down to kill me and then ended up saving my life, back when I still thought I could just curl up and go to sleep alone in an empty lot without any consequences. My dad points down a houseless street, just an asphalt edge fading to gravel and dirt, and Chance slows and carefully bumps down the long, winding drive to a house hidden in the woods, big enough to rival Château Tuscano. We're all quiet, and I imagine everyone is hunting
for signs that it's already occupied. But when we get to the circular drive, there are no other cars and no lights, not even the bounce of flashlights or the flicker of a fire in the fireplace.

“Is it safe?” Rex asks.

My dad closes his laptop, hands it to me, hands the snake terrarium to Rex, and pulls out his Glock. “Keep the car running, pointed out, and I'll go make sure.”

“Do you want backup?” Chance asks.

My dad pauses in his open door. “From here on out, let's just assume that if someone's going to do something stupid and get shot, it's me. Agreed?”

“It's your funeral,” Chance says, all flippant, but when he sees my face, he mutters, “Sorry.”

Wyatt tries to get out of the burgundy sedan behind us, and my dad stops him with a hand on the door, motioning for him to stay inside. They get into a whispered argument, and I'm guessing my mom's calm hand on Wyatt's shoulder is what keeps him in the driver's seat. Before I realize what I'm doing, I unbuckle and bolt for the other car. When I open the back door on Gabriela's side, she gives me a weird look, then nods and gets out, heading to the other car. I slide in to take her place, careful not to bump Kevin's leg, and put a hand on my mom's shoulder, which she covers with her own. I couldn't stay away from her a moment longer.