Under My Skin (Wildlings) (39 page)

We wait until the local police have the Black Key guards in custody and the rest of the FBI agents have joined us.

"Which way?" Lindel asks me.

I start to lead off, but he puts a hand on my shoulder.

"I doubt there's any danger," he says, "but I'd prefer to have my men take point. You just tell us in what direction we're going."

It's a very different trip back to the labs than it was escaping them with Rico. No one is trying to kill or recapture me this time, but I do worry the whole way down. What if the bodies are gone? What if somebody comes along and shows the FBI the surveillance footage of me changing into a mountain lion and then killing the woman researcher? What if they can tell just by looking at her body that I was the one who killed her?

I know it's ridiculous, but the deeper we go, the more vulnerable I feel. The press of the building seems to weigh down my shoulders. All the horrible memories from this place crowd around in my head like the unwelcome guests that they are.

Waking from the drugs. Rico's missing leg. Snapping the woman's neck. Rico cutting her companion's throat. Jenny's desecrated body. All those cut up kids in the metal drawers ...

I almost hope they're not there, because I don't know that I can bear to see them again.

Two agents lead the way down the stairs with Matteson and Lindel behind them. Solana and I are next, with another four agents bringing up the rear. No one has a weapon drawn.

When a cell phone rings, we all start. The Chief fishes his phone out of his pocket.

"Lindel," he says.

The mountain lion lets me tune in to hear what the caller's saying.

"We found the vehicle, Chief. A 2010 Chevy Suburban. Thing looks like it just came back from the front lines—shot to shit, the windows all gone."

"Where was it?"

"In back of the Target. The weird thing is, the locals already checked this entire complex. I don't how they missed it."

"Any sign of the driver?"

"Nothing."

"How about the owner?"

"Reported it stolen last night around nine-fifteen."

"Okay," Lindel says. "Keep working it."

He stows his phone away just as we're coming down the fifth flight of stairs.

"Through that door," I say.

My nose catches the smells of cleaners and disinfectants as soon as the door opens. Our smell is still there, lying just under it—Rico and me, the dead Wildlings—but it's faint. I breathe a sigh of relief. I won't have to see the bodies again. But the relief is short-lived, replaced by worry. The FBI is not going to be happy with me.

I point to the door at the end of the hall. "That's where I woke up—in the lab behind that door."

"And the bodies of the kids?" Lindel asks.

I hesitate. I'm torn between wanting to tell them that everything's been cleaned up and squeezing out a last few seconds of reprieve before they come down hard on me.

Lindel misinterprets my silence.

"How are you holding up?" he asks, his voice gentle.

I decide to go with at least a portion of the truth.

"I'm okay," I tell him. "It's just harder being here than I thought it would be."

"You don't have to look at them again," he says. "Just tell us where they are."

I point to the morgue's door. "In there."

The two agents on point go in first, followed by Lindel and Solana. The rest of us wait in the hall. I can tell Jenny's body is not there. It's not just the lack of reaction from the agents. With the door open, I would have smelled it.

I realize I'm holding my breath and make myself exhale. I hear the first drawer open on its sliding wheels. No reaction. A second. Then the smell comes rushing out to me and I hear one of the agents gag.

"Jesus Christ!" Lindel says, his voice soft.

More of the drawers are opened and the smell of the dead gets stronger.

I hear one of the agents punch some numbers into his cell, then realize it's Solana when he says, "We need somebody from the coroner's office down here."

"What've you got?" the voice on the other end asks.

"Eight—no, nine bodies," Solana tells him. "It's bad. Most of them are teenagers."

I lean against a wall and slide down until I'm sitting on my haunches.

Matteson had gone to look in the room, but he's back with me now. "You okay, kid?" he asks.

I stare straight ahead and give a slow nod. "But they're not. They didn't get away like I did."

Matteson crouches down so that his head's level with mine.

"Don't let it get to you," he says. "Yeah, you survived and they didn't, but they were already gone before you were even brought here. This had nothing to do with you."

Lindel comes out of the morgue, phone in hand.

"There are cameras mounted everywhere," he says to whoever's on the other end. "I want to see their footage. I want the faces behind what happened to these kids."

"I'm already on it," the agent he's talking to says. "The power failure they had took down their computer system and screwed any chances for us to see last night's recordings, but I've got a tech bringing up the backups so we should be able to access everything else. What dates and times do you want?"

"No idea. Start with newest ones from these fifth floor labs and work back from there."

"Will do."

"You sure they don't have backups from yesterday?"

"Guy says they send those out to an off-site storage facility every morning, but when the computers crashed, they lost anything from after yesterday's backup."

"Well, get what you can," Lindel says.

He notices me on the floor, Matteson crouched in front of me. All I'm trying to do is hide my relief.

"You don't have to stay here much longer, son," Lindel says. "But if you can, I'd just like you to look into this lab that you told me about and verify that that's where they held you."

"Sure, that's not a problem," I say, hoping like hell that there won't be any evidence of what we did in that room.

But it turns out to be all right. Other than the broken, cockeyed plastic cells within the room, there's no trace of violence to humans. Someone even cleaned up where the male researcher bled out.

"Where did they keep you?" Matteson asks.

I point to one of the undamaged cells. "I was in that one for awhile," I lie, "but I was out in the main part of the room with a couple of … doctors … when the alarms went off and everything went haywire. I escaped at the same time as the doctors exited the room, but in all the commotion, they weren't aware of it."

That seems to satisfy both of them. I'm so grateful that they don't seem to think I had anything to do with the damaged cells. Maybe it hasn't occurred to them. Maybe they're just so shocked by what went on in the morgue that my confirmation about this room is just a formality.

"I want you to know that you did good work,"
Lindel says, patting me on the shoulder.

"I'll take him back up," Matteson says.

Lindel nods, then he returns to the morgue.

"You need a hand?" Matteson asks.

I start to shake my head, but his hand is already on my shoulder, steering me toward the exit.

"We'll let your mother take you home," he says. "Everything else can wait for a couple of days. I have the feeling we're going to be really busy here for awhile."

"I'd like that," I say. "Going home, I mean."

"I hear you. At a time like this, I wish I could do the same."

It's so weird, comparing the Matteson here with the one I first met. I have no idea what to make of him anymore. Which is he? Probably both.

"The worst thing about all of this," he says as we start back up the stairs, "is they're probably going to get off."

I give him a shocked look.

"Oh, yeah. ValentiCorp has been on the FBI's radar for years now about several questionable ventures, but all those government contracts get them connections that always stop us dead in our tracks. Until today, it's just been hearsay and suspicions—nothing we could really pin on them."

"But those kids ..."

"Don't get me wrong. Some stiff's going to take the fall for it. But in the long term? It's likely to be business as usual."

"You mean they'll go back to grabbing kids and—experimenting on them?"

He shrugs. "Honestly, I hope to hell not. But I do know that when you get to a certain level on the food chain, you get to live by a different set of rules. Something like what's happened here—with the added stupidity of trying to pin your kidnapping on the FBI—lets us step in. Right now, we have carte blanche to investigate, but you watch. Roadblocks are going to go up and next thing you know, we won't be able to do zip."

"Why are you telling me this?" I ask.

He stops on a landing to look at me.

"The Chief was right," he says. "You did a good thing here. But I don't want you to think it's over and drop your guard. We don't know what they wanted with you—with any of those kids. But sooner or later, they just might come looking for you and your friends again."

"We're not Wildlings."

"Yeah, and I'm not a cop. And I'm not a big fan of you kids running around putting yourselves and the general populace in danger. But I'm even less of a fan of what happened down in that lab. That's just wrong. I wouldn't treat my neighbour's dog that way and I hate that yapping little mutt."

"So can I ask you something?" I say.

"Shoot."

"How is ValentiCorp any different from the FBI pulling kids off the street and doing whatever it is you do with them on the old naval base?"

"How do you know about that?"

"Come on. You've got those PSAs running on all the local stations. I live here. Everybody knows that's where you're taking them."

He gives a slow nod. "Okay, here's the difference, so far as I've been told, and I've no reason to think it's not this way. When a Wildling proves dangerous or if they want some guidance …  Don't look at me like that—we've had a few come to us, like your friend Danny."

"He's not my friend."

"Yeah, well I can't blame you for feeling that. The kid's a jerk. But the point is, all that's happening on the base is they're being kept in a safe environment and learning to control themselves. It's not Guantánamo Bay. It's more like a boarding school."

"If it's so nice, why do people want to escape?"

His gaze narrows, but he doesn't call me on how I know that.

"Like I said," he tells me, "some of these kids are dangerous and they were brought in to stop them from hurting the people around them. Or themselves. We have to keep them away from the general public."

I think of Dillon killing himself because he was so scared of being taken away.

I return his narrow gaze. "So how's that working out for you?" I ask. "Are you saving many from hurting themselves?"

Anger flickers in Matteson's eyes, but he keeps his temper in check.

"I'm not getting into a pissing match with you, kid," he says. "Not today. Not with what we found down there. But the free pass doesn't last forever. Keep your nose clean and you've got nothing to worry about."

"From you."

"From the Bureau. None of this is personal." He starts up the stairs again. "Let's get you back to your mother."

When we get back to the foyer, he stops me again.

"Wait here," he says. "I'm going to go out and give a 'press conference.'" He makes air quotes. "When you see the reporters gathering around me, go collect your mother and get out of here. If you're lucky, it'll give you enough of a breathing space to get home. I'd send an escort with you, but if I do that, I might as well hang a sign around your neck saying 'here I am.'  Are you okay with that?"

"I don't really have much choice, do I?"

He shakes his head. "'Fraid not. Freedom of the frigging press and all."

"Is there any way to stop them from harassing me?"

"You could appeal to their sense of humanity." He gives me a humourless smile. "Just wait it out. In a couple of days, you'll be old news and they'll all be in a frenzy about something else."

That's starting to sound like a tired old refrain.

I wait while he goes outside and moves away from the front of the building to the barricades that the reporters and their cameramen are now pressing against. I suppose once word gets out that the FBI Chief is on a case, it generates all this fresh media attention.

When Matteson approaches them, I slip out, get Mom, and we walk to our car. She keeps her arm around my shoulders as we go. I don't know if it's to make sure I'm really here with her or to keep anybody from trying to take me away. Whichever it is, I find it comforting.

Marina

Chaingang drops me off a couple of blocks from home. Bad enough that I'm arriving the day after having been out all night. I don't want to announce my arrival home via motorcycle to Mamá or the whole neighbourhood, for that matter.

I cover the last two blocks on foot, go around back and slip in by the back door. I tiptoe down the hall toward the kitchen and there's Mamá on her knees on the floor, all of her
santos
statues spread out around her, and every votive candle in the house lit in front of her. My framed high school picture is in the middle of it all. Her head is bowed and her eyes are closed. Her lips move in fervent prayer. She seems oblivious to the fact that it's stifling hot in here because of those candles.

"Mamá, I'm home," I say softly. "I'm okay."

She raises her head and opens her eyes. Her red eyes well up with new tears. It's clear she's been doing a lot of crying. I feel like a piece of crap for making her go through this.

"
Gracias, Dios
," she sobs and reaches for me.

I get down on the floor beside her and hug her for all I'm worth.

"You heard about Josh getting kidnapped from school?" I say into her ear.

I'm looking at all those saints and thinking I'm about to get struck down for telling my mother lies, but I go ahead anyway. It's not as though I can tell her the truth.

Josh

Home feels good, normal. Normal is exactly what I need. Mom has put a macaroni and cheese casserole into the oven and we're both sitting at the kitchen table.