Strike (35 page)

“How are you feeling?” I ask.

She turns partially in the seat, and she doesn't look good, but her smile is real. “I've been better, but I've been a lot worse. At least I haven't started the chemo. Yet.”

I lean forward, hug her around the seat, and put my cheek against her shoulder, and she pats me. I didn't realize how tense I was in the car with my dad, but this . . . I know how to do this. I know who I am when I'm with my mom, taking care of her. I tell myself she doesn't know what I've been through in the last week, everything that I've done. Even if she tried to guess, even if Wyatt's already told her some of it, there's no way she would get it right. To her I'm just Patsy. And there's a comfort in that. The look in her eyes is still one of love.

For now.

“What about you, honey? How are you? Did you do . . . ?”

There's no good way to phrase it, is there?

Did you go kill your ten people like the bank told you to?

Yes, Mom. I sure did.

“I took care of it,” I say.

“Have you been back to the house?”

I look away. Right, as it happens, at Wyatt. At the tendons in his neck, standing out, and the curls of his blond hair over his ears. He's looking straight forward, hands clenched on the wheel of the idling car. Like he's trying to pretend this isn't happening. I know that look well.

“Yeah. I'm really sorry, but . . . they blew it up.”

Her head turns to me slowly. “Who did what now?”

I rub my eyes. How much does she need to know? And why does it matter? She owed more on it than it was worth anyway.

“Our house blew up. They had Mrs. Hester waiting to kill whoever showed up first. She tried to shoot me. And they told her to go in the house if she saw me, and when she did . . .”

“None of this makes sense,” my mom says, sounding less like she's in her forties and more like an old, tired, confused woman. “Why would you blow up a perfectly good house?”

“Nothing Valor does makes sense,” Wyatt says.

“My dad said it did,” Heather says. “It's all based on deadweight and how far in the hole you are. It actually costs them less to blow up your house and collect on the insurance than to keep trying to get you to pay it. I'm betting that all the houses that exploded will actually be categorized as acts of God. They'll have the insurance adjustors in their pocket. And it frees up resources.”

“Um, what?” I say.

“My dad was a statistician. Probably why Valor targeted him. He'd done some CPA work for one of the smaller banks that Valor subsumed—and for the Cranes, of course. That's why I went to Crane Hollow after. He was writing a study of the subprime mortgage collapse and had sold a book on the politics of debt.”

“Did he have debt himself?” I ask.

She shrugs. “Nothing unusual. A thirty-year mortgage. Valor just wanted him quiet. Permanently.” She looks out the window and wipes away tears. It's getting pretty hard to hate her.

“So, Mom. I have a question for you. Did you ever work for Valor? Or do any business with them?”

She sighs and taps her lip. “Hmm. I never worked for them. I filled out an application once, but they never called back.” She pulls her purse into her lap and digs through it, releasing the scent of her perfume into the air. “I guess this is all I have,” she says finally, handing me a credit card. It's bluish green and has Valor's logo on it. “It had such a low interest rate that I thought it could help.”

I turn the card over in my hands, and even though I've held guns and bombs this week, the unremarkable piece of plastic feels like the most dangerous thing I've ever touched. On the front it says in red
DIAMOND ELITE
, with my mom's name beneath that. I flip it over and find her signature in the signature strip and all the usual things I guess you'd expect in a credit card. It doesn't say, “Owner can be murdered at any time,” anywhere on it. The closest thing I can find is the phrase “By activating this card, user agrees to the complete terms of service outlined in the credit card application.”

That line leaves a lot to the imagination these days.

“Wait. Heather. Is this trackable?”

She looks up, eyes red. “What, the credit card?”

“Leon mentioned getting rid of cards at the meeting. Can Valor use it to find us?”

I put the card in her waiting hand, and she looks it over. “Only if you use it. Leon might've lied a bit to keep people in line.” She hands it back.

“How high was the balance on this card?” I ask.

My mom looks away, her cheeks red. “I don't remember.”

“It doesn't matter,” Wyatt says. “It's over.”

“But I'm trying to figure out why they picked me. Why I knew everyone on my list.”

“You knew everyone on your list?” Heather asks, suddenly interested.

I lean back and pull my gun out of my waistband so I can slump. The gold letters are starting to rub off a little. “I mean, I didn't know them personally. But they were all connected to me or Valor somehow.”

“I don't think I've ever heard of that before,” she says, looking troubled.

“So what does it mean?” my mom asks.

My dad appears at the top of the grand staircase and motions us inside.

“It means that I'm special,” I say. “And not because of my test scores. Let's go.”

I get out of the car, grab my backpack, and head for the open door.

The house smells like incense and BO, which is not good, but at least it doesn't smell like blood and bleach. It's kind of amazing how low my standards have fallen in just a week. There's no electricity, but there's a battery-operated camping lantern in each room and jugs of dirty-looking water sitting beside the toilets.

“Cisterns out back to flush the toilets without city water. It's kind of genius,” Rex says.

My dad's already found a worn piece of paper hidden in one of the huge, fancy kitchen cabinets that explains how to tap into a neighbor's Wi-Fi. He's on the floor of one empty bedroom, legs out in front of him, typing away. I've had a dad for twelve hours, and I already know what it's like to be neglected for work.

Our shoes make strange echoes in a house that's big enough for twelve people but was probably just haunted by two people who constantly planned new renovations. The walls are all high and white, the floors wood and stone. It is not a soft place. Even though it's still morning, I feel like I'm supposed to claim a bedroom and go to sleep, because what else is there to do in an empty house? Without a mission or a list or any way to access media, sleep seems like the most interesting option anyway.

I feel like a little ghost, going from room to room, looking for something that isn't there. In the basement, there are rows of chairs facing an empty wall, bolted down like a movie theater. There's also a bar and an entire apartment that's bigger than my old house. Most importantly and strangely, though, is the pool table. I guess it must've been too big and heavy to move, or maybe the house was just built around it, because it's massive. And even in the post-Valor world, even though the people who lived here must've fled months ago, every cue and ball is still here, along with the rack and a row of blue chalk.

“Want to play?”

I spin around, mouth open. Wyatt snuck up on me, which makes no sense until I see that he's in his socks. That's the kind of guy he is—he would take off his shoes in an empty, foreclosed house so that he wouldn't mess up the floors.

“You don't want to play me at pool,” I say, a beat too late for it to sound relaxed.

A ghost of his old smile. “Except maybe I do.”

I stare at him, and I want nothing more than to run into his arms, except that it won't be the same if Matty's not slobbering all over us. My anger has cooled, but I'm not ready for hugs yet. I guess we can play pool. It's better than talking, at any rate.

“I'll rack.”

He tips his head to me as I gather up the balls and put them in order, rolling the rack and snapping them into place before backing away. He's already got his cue and is chalking it up and rolling the cue ball under his hand in exactly the place I like to break from. Just when I think he's still rich-boy, honor-society Wyatt, he does something to remind me that he's also smashed-a-window-with-my-bass-and-watched-my-friend-OD Wyatt. His break is flawless and sharp, and the balls rocket around the felt. He pockets a stripe and a solid.

“Stripes,” he calls, and suddenly he's all business as he moves around the table.

“Did I hear pool?” Chance calls, barreling down the stairs.

Wyatt turns to face him. He always seems a foot taller and wider when he stands like that, and whatever Chance sees on his face sends him right back upstairs, shouting, “Never mind, bro.”

Wyatt misses his next shot and steps back with a small bow to me. I take an easy shot and pocket the two.

“So,” he says.

“So,” I say. I miss my next shot and step back.

“So I'm going to assume that things are going to be weird until we get Matty back.”

A small smile tugs at my lips at the word “until.” “You learn quick.”

“When I pay attention, yeah. But I know I won't feel okay until we have her back, either. So how are we going to do it?” He misses his next shot, too, and it was an easy one.

I miss my shot and scuff the felt. “I just can't believe you let her go. She's the closest thing I have to—”

“That doesn't work anymore, Patsy. Your mom and dad are in this house. Like, right upstairs.” He points at the ceiling, angry. “I get that Matty's important. She's important to me too. But how would you be treating me if your mom had died in the explosion but I'd brought our dog? You're not being fair here.”

Panic clutches my chest, and I double over with my hands on the pool table. It feels like there's a sucking hole in my gut, as if all the horrible feelings I've been repressing are rising up like an overflowing toilet and choking me. I just want to hug my dog. Matty can make this better. But what if they kill Matty? Leon would do it. I know this instinctually: Leon would kill her for nothing. I can't even imagine where I'd be if my mom had died in the explosion. Either of the explosions, Klein house or Crane house. But that doesn't make it any easier to tamp down the panic.

My heart is hot and hammering, my stomach a cold rock, and
the world goes fuzzy and starts spinning. I think I might be as angry at myself as I am at Wyatt. If I'd just told him to grab Matty and run, or if I'd never planted those stupid nut cans, maybe we'd all be together. But now Leon is furious, and it's all my fault. And he knows it.

“I think I'm having a heart attack,” I whisper, and Wyatt wraps his arms around me, his chest against my back and his cheek against my hair like he's a second skin, like he's armor.

“You're not having a heart attack. You're having a panic attack. It's the same thing that happens at night. You just have to breathe deep, in through the nose and hold it and out through your mouth. You can do this.”

“Panic attack?” I squeak. I can barely draw in any air at all.

He lifts me like a baby, one arm under my knees and the other around my shoulders, and sits down on the ground with his back against the carved wood of the pool table. I manage to swallow down a breath, but my heart is still beating in my ears, my eyes darting madly, my thoughts showing me all the horrible things I've done. All the horrible things I've seen, all the things that might have happened if I'd pulled the trigger a second later or aimed a little worse. All the horrible things Leon could be doing to Matty right now, her tongue flopping bloody on the ground like he promised.

“This is a panic attack, Patsy. Once you understand that, it loses its power. It's just your body sending the wrong signals. Nothing is
wrong. You're safe. Breathe with me. In-two-three, hold-two-three, out-two-three-four. Good. Now let's keep doing that. Just think about breathing, okay? Think about your lungs expanding like balloons.”

It's stupid. Breathing is one of those things you should just do automatically, and thinking this much about it feels like a complete waste. It's hard to inhale in that long and hold it and then exhale so long. But he's right. After a few minutes, I feel calm and relieved, and my heart stops beating in my ears.

“You good now?” he asks. He's been rubbing my back all this time.

I pull away a little. “Yeah. Thanks. How'd you know what to do?”

“Uh.” He looks away, blushing. “Pot makes me paranoid. Some strain Mikey found made me have panic attacks. I thought I was having a heart attack, but I couldn't go to the hospital, so I looked it up online. Turns out it's just easier to quit smoking up than it is to feel like helicopters are going to bust into your garage at any moment, you know?”

I can't help thinking back to Alistair's trailer in the old orchard and the sound of helicopters rushing to where we were. “I wish I could quit this feeling that easily.”

“Soon,” he says. “Soon. We just need to get Matty and hit the road, and we'll be cool.”

“You make it sound so easy.”

“Oh, yeah. Well, I'm a liar.”

That gets my first laugh, even if it's a sad, weak one.

“But to go back to your original question, I think we all know who's the brains of this operation, Patsy. You've been calling the shots, and you're really good at it. So I figure you'll find the best way to get our dog back, and then I'll do whatever you ask.” He rubs my back, and I grin into his neck.

To think—me! I'm the brains. I've never been the brains before.

But he's kind of right. After everything I've been through in the past week, I should've died twenty times. Valor tried like hell to kill me, and then the CFF sent me into all sorts of impossible situations with Leon's passive-aggressive attempts to screw me over. And I paid them back by blowing up their house.