Transparent (21 page)

She sighs. “But what about your friends? I know seeing Graham has been rough on you, but other than that you’ve seemed so happy here.”

She’s right … at least she was until yesterday. “I’m not.”

“Can you explain?”

“Ugh.” I lay back in my pillows. She was supposed to say yes and skip off to her room to pack. I search for a subject change, something to make her angry so she’ll leave me alone. “Miles told me you chose to be with Dad—that you loved him.”

She doesn’t answer for a minute, just stares at the floor. That expression washes over her, the desperate one that makes her look pathetic. “I do love him. I hate that I love him.” She glances at me, her eyes wet. “Sometimes you love things that are bad for you.”

I hate that I get what she means about Dad.

“They say love can heal anything, and for a long time I believed that. Your dad … he’s not as tough as he looks. You should have seen how hurt he was the first time I told him I wouldn’t date him. That’s when I realized, with a power like his, he probably had no understanding of what real love was. Even his own mother was taken in by his ability. He could get anything he wanted without trying.”

She lies on the bed, almost touching me. “That was my biggest mistake. I pitied him. I wanted to show him that love could be real, even with an ability like his. I thought he would love me back if I could prove it.

“Sometimes love isn’t enough, Fi. It took me a long time to figure that out, but I finally get it. If your father wanted, I think he could have changed. He could have loved me the right way. He could have grown into a good man.”

“But he doesn’t want to,” I say.

She nods. “Love can only heal someone who
wants
to be healed. And that’s why I won’t go back, sweetie. I finally know that deep in my soul, and I can’t give any more of myself to your dad.”

“You’re really serious.” How did I miss the fact that Mom was changing right along with me this whole time? It makes sense now. We’ve both been away from Dad long enough that his drug is out of our systems; we can think for ourselves again.

She sits up. “I am serious. The other times we ran, you’re right: I ran for your sake, because I love you despite all the hell I’ve put you through. I’m sorry for bringing you into that horrible world; you never had a chance for better. I’ve always wanted to give you as normal a life as I could, but by then I couldn’t get over his hold.

“This time … this time I left for myself, too.” She smiles a little. “I think that’s why it worked, why I can actually sit here and say I like living in Madison. And I hope you can say that as well.”

I fold my arms, glaring at her. It’s easy for her to say because she hasn’t found
new
problems here. But she is right about one thing: Love is hard. “Well, I can’t say that. I’ll leave without you if I have to.”

She sighs. “I really don’t think that’s a good idea. It seems like something happened, and you can’t run away from your problems forever.”

“Why not? We ran from Dad.”

“That’s different.” She pinches the bridge of her nose. “Look, I know you probably think I’m not qualified to give you any advice, but do me one favor?”

“What?”

“Really,
really
think about it. I don’t think it’s a good idea, because if you run, you might never have this chance for a normal life again. You might never be this safe. That’s a big decision, and it shouldn’t be a rash one.”

I stare at her, trying to believe that the person in front of me is my mother. She’s so calm. So reasonable. It’s annoying. “That’s it?”

“Yeah. I trust you, Fiona. You know what’s best for you. I just want you to be happy.” She heads for the door. “Do you want dinner? Spaghetti?”

“Um, sure.”

“Okay. I’ll call you down.” She shuts my door as she leaves.

I hate admitting her little speech got to me. Am I overreacting? Could I forgive Seth for going about things in every possible wrong way? I don’t even know if it’d work between us. We’d probably fight all the time. So what if there’s chemistry? I shouldn’t let that cloud my judgment. I need to be practical.

It would never work.

I pause, clutching my blankets. Even after all the ugly moments, he said he cares about me. He said I was fixing him. Mom said love only works when someone wants to be healed, and Seth’s spent his whole life looking for answers. For healing.

So maybe it would work. Plus, he can see me. What are the chances of finding someone else who can do that?

I shake my head. “No. Stop it.”

Mom’s spaghetti isn’t half-bad. I can’t remember her ever making it before—ever making anything but coffee, really.

“I’m going to visit Miles,” I tell her, just to get it over with. “Maybe it’ll help clear my head.”

Mom sucks in a breath and nods. “Is that a nice way to say you’re leaving?”

“No. I’m still thinking.” Every other minute I change my mind, but Miles will help me figure it out.

“He’ll take care of you.”

“Yeah. Can I use your phone to call him?”

“Sure.” She grabs her phone from her purse and slides it to me. “He’s number three.”

I hold down the number and listen to it ring until it goes to voicemail. I call again, and still Miles doesn’t answer. After waiting ten minutes with no reply, I try again, and this time it doesn’t even go to his cheesy message.

His phone is disconnected.

By the next morning, Mom and I have called Miles forty-seven times, hoping his voice will magically answer. She hands me a slip of paper. “This is the bowling alley’s number. Call if you hear from him, okay?”

“Of course.” I call again right then, but by now it’s clear there’s something terribly wrong. He said he was going to “pull out the big guns,” and I worry they blew up in his face. I try to pass the time watching TV, but it doesn’t help. Every time a commercial comes on, I’m calling him and hoping for an answer besides, “We’re sorry, the number you dialed is no longer in service.”

At about six, there’s a knock on our door. I look through the peephole, afraid I’ll see Graham or Dad, but it’s Miles, his curly hair bursting out of a baseball cap. I open the door, planning to cuss him out for letting his phone get cut off without warning, but then he pulls the cap off, revealing the blackest eye I’ve ever seen. “Hey, sis. You guys have ice, right?”

I pull him closer to get a better look at his eye. He shouldn’t have driven here—it’s almost completely swollen shut, and what I can see past the fattened, black lid is bloodshot. “What happened? I thought you were dead!”

He shrugs, like it’s no big deal, as he limps to the kitchen. “I got hold of Spud to see if she could hack Graham.”

I still can’t believe he knows how to contact Spud. She is an enigma in the crime rings—probably within the government, too. All anyone really knows about her is that she’s a girl, she can hack just about anything, and she’ll make you pay for it.

“How did you come up with the money?”

“It was more of an exchange.” He shovels ice into a bag and puts it on his eye. “Ahh, that’s better.”

“So, what? Her thugs beat you in exchange?”

He smiles slyly as he limps to a chair. “Nah, she owed me.”

My jaw drops. Spud … owed him? Spud doesn’t owe anyone. Maybe I don’t know Miles as well as I thought. “Owed you for what?”

He shakes his head, laughing. “That one’s going with me to the grave, Fi. Sorry.”

There is only one reason I can think of for Spud giving away a hack. Miles has to know who she really is. “So who did the beating?”

“Dad’s people jumped me after work. Let’s just say Spud found what I was looking for—but Dad’s men found out I was looking. Or suspected me, at least. It wasn’t really clear. You know how it is: They beat anyone suspicious
before
asking questions.”

I sigh. “What did you find?”

He glances at the garage door. “Mom here?”

“No, but she should be home soon. She told me to call if I heard from you.”

“Don’t.” He stands. “Let’s go to your room and turn up some music, just in case.”

As I help him up the stairs, my mind races through the possibilities. It has to be huge if the beat squad was dispatched. Beatings are warnings—back off or expect to find yourself at the bottom of a desert pit without water. They love slow deaths like that.

He turns on some loud punk music and crashes on my bed, looking exhausted. “So I found out you’re safest here. Trust me. I discovered Dad basically wants to kill you and Mom.”

I freeze. “What?”

Miles rolls his eye. “You heard me. That’s why Graham’s been helping you guys out—he knew what Dad was planning, and as bad as he is he couldn’t let his mom and sister die.”

I shake my head. It doesn’t make sense. “Why would Dad want to kill us? What would he gain by doing that?”

He sighs. “Well, not intentionally kill you, but there’s a rumor going around that some syndicate lord in China has figured out how to manufacture Radiasure again. Not that cheap imitation stuff, but the real thing. There’s this rare, secret element that has supposedly been left out of the existing formulas. It was top secret stuff. Dad wants that formula, and he planned on sending you and Mom all the way to China to kill the man who has it, and steal it.”

Could that be true? America may be Shitsville these days, but it’s paradise in comparison to organized crime in China. Even the “good guys” there want Radiasure to boost their powers. Mom and I would have made a great team for a job like that, but it still would have been suicide. Getting in would have been practically impossible. If we got the formula, maybe we could have managed to send it via the web. But getting out? We’d have to kill a lot of people to even stand a chance.

Would Dad really have sacrificed us like that? He’s cruel and greedy and all-round horrible, but surely he’d see it wasn’t worth the risk. His last command comes flooding back—kill Juan’s daughters. Maybe he was prepping me for the plans to come. Maybe it really was a test. He wanted to see if I would kill for him. He needed to see how loyal I was.

I can’t swallow. Why just have an invisible thief? Why not an invisible assassin?

Of course that’s what he wants. The stealing and spying were only the first steps in my training, not my ultimate end. Once I could break into anything and steal anything, I could kill anyone easily. I just had to be dead enough inside to do it, completely under his control.

Miles sits up. “Graham’s using a decoy here to explain all his trips. There used to be another town close by named Radison—and its sole purpose was to manufacture Radiasure. They evacuated it and blew up the factory once the drug riots started. Madison grew up out of the ashes, so to speak. Anyway, Graham claims there’s still a Radiasure storage at the old factory, and the reason he’s here all the time is to find it. But really he’s been smuggling some of Dad’s own supply there. He’s supposed to “retrieve” it this week, and then Madison will be totally off the map.”

It sounds good. I’ve seen the factory with my own eyes, and it’s a logical cover. The place looks just as Miles described, and the battered buildings now make perfect sense.

But something tugs at me. “How do you know this is real?”

He tilts his head. “What?”

“Maybe what you found was fake. Maybe Graham and Dad knew we’d go looking, and they’re trying to put us at ease. I don’t see why Graham would have any more motivation to save us than Dad, and I don’t see Dad throwing away two of his most valuable people, for that matter. He may not love us, but he’s not that stupid.”

My brother’s jaw drops. “Are you saying you don’t believe me? You don’t think Spud would break through stuff like that? This is the most solid info we could hope to get!”

I shrug. “I’m just saying it could be a lie. There’s no guarantee that I’ll be safe if I stay here.”

Miles doesn’t move, but I swear I can feel him thinking, fuming. “What happened to you?”

“Huh?”

“You’re being completely irrational!”

“I am not!”

Miles shoots to his feet. “This place is good for you, Fiona. Can’t you see that? And this information shows that you’re safer here than anywhere else.”

“I don’t want to be here anymore.” I shrink back, because even if Graham does have one last shred of decency in him, that doesn’t remove Seth from the picture.

Miles puts his hands on my shoulders, startling me. But it’s not forceful or angry. His fear seeps into me. “Fiona, did someone … do something to you? Did Brady … ?”

“No!” I pull away. “Don’t be ridiculous! Brady would never,
ever
. Ugh.”

He’s getting closer to the truth, zoning in like a sniper. I head for the door, but he blocks it. “Something happened, though. Something that has you running, right?”

I keep my mouth shut. If I open it, I’ll burst into tears.

I can’t stop thinking about how much Seth smiled that day in Saguro. The way he’d glance over at me during the movie when I laughed at his jokes. The feel of his arm against mine, steady and warm. How close he walked next to me down the street. He … enjoyed being with me. He wasn’t there to fix me or manipulate me. Not that day. He was there because he wanted to be.

But he’s so obnoxious, and he thinks he’s better than everyone… .

Except that’s not true. He doesn’t work so hard because he wants to be better than other people, but so he doesn’t let people down.

No. Stop going in circles. No more thinking about him.

“Fiona,” Miles whispers. “You’re scaring me. Please tell me before I start picturing Carlos going too far or something.”

“Nothing happened,” I manage to say, though I squeak.

“You’re lying. You tell me everything—why not this?”

I shouldn’t tell him. I don’t have Seth’s permission, and it’s obvious he’s kept this a secret from practically everyone. I’m not even sure Bea or her brothers know. Brady does, though. He almost slipped that Sunday, when he said they both had abilities criminals would want. I knew there was something fishy about that.

But I can’t hold this in any longer. I can’t do this by myself. As I look into Miles’s working eye, I know he has my back no matter what. He’ll fight for me even if he shouldn’t. And there’s only one reason why: My brother cares about me.