52 - Lev
Lev is woken by a burst of ice water in his face. At first he thinks he’s out in the storm again. A tornado was coming—did he get hit by a tree? He has to get up. Must keep running. Running.
But he’s not in the storm. He’s not outside. His focus is blurry, but he can see enough to know he’s in some sort of room, looking at a dirty wall. No, not a wall, a ceiling. A water-stained ceiling. And he’s lying on a bed. And his hands are tied above his head. Tied to the bed frame. His mouth tastes like battery acid, the air smells like mildew, and his head pounds, pounds, pounds. Now he remembers! He was in a van with Miracolina. Hail was pummeling the van. Then they were tranq’d by—
“Awake?” Nelson says. Lev remembers his name now. Nelson. Officer Nelson. Lev had never seen the man’s face, but his name was in the news almost as much as Lev’s. He doesn’t look much like a Juvey-cop now.
“Sorry for the water alarm. I’d have given you a wake-up call, but there’s no phone service here.”
On a bed next to Lev is Miracolina, still unconscious. Like him, her hands are tied to her bed frame with plastic cable ties.
Lev coughs up some water. Nelson sits a few feet away, his legs crossed, holding his tranq gun.
“You know, I’ve been staking out the Cavenaugh mansion for days. Just had a hunch. See, everything pointed to a major safe house in the area, but no one could nail down the location. But the Cavenaugh estate—there’s that guard gate made to look abandoned that’s not abandoned at all. And all those state-of-the art surveillance cameras in the trees that border the property. I didn’t know the resistance had that kind of money!”
Lev says nothing, but Nelson doesn’t seem to care. Apparently he’s just happy to have a captive audience.
“So, imagine my surprise when I find you and your friend practically gift-wrapped by the side of the road!” Nelson pops the clip from his tranq gun, slides out the dart bullets one by one, then reloads it, snapping the clip back in. On the other bed, Miracolina groans, finally beginning to stir out of her deep sleep.
“Here’s what I think.” Nelson leans closer to Lev. “You were escorting this poor little AWOL girl to the Cavenaugh mansion and into the arms of your scofflaw friends, but on the way you got caught in the storm. Am I right?”
“Not even close,” Lev croaks.
“Ah well, the particulars don’t really matter. The point is, you’re here.”
“And where is here?”
“Like I said,” says Nelson, waving the gun, “the particulars don’t matter.”
Lev looks over toward Miracolina again. Her eyes are half-open, but she’s still not entirely conscious. “Let her go,” he says. “She’s got nothing to do with this.”
Nelson smiles. “How noble of you—thinking of the girl before yourself. Who says chivalry is dead?”
“What do you want?” Lev asks, his head aching too much to dance around the point. “I can’t get you your job back, and it’s not my fault Connor tranqed you, so what do you want from me?”
“Actually,” says Nelson, “it is your fault. If you weren’t being used as a human shield, none of us would be here today.”
Lev realizes how true that is. Had he not inadvertently taken Nelson’s bullet meant for Connor, then both of them would have been unwound on schedule.
“So, shall we play?” Nelson asks.
Lev swallows, and his throat feels like it’s coated with wood shavings. “What’s the game?”
“Russian roulette! My clip is loaded with five tranq bullets and one nickel-plated lead shell with an explosive tip. I can’t recall in what position I put Mr. Bad Bullet—I was too busy talking to you to notice. I will ask you questions, and if I don’t like an answer, I shoot.”
“This game could last for days if I keep going unconscious.”
“Or it could be over very quickly.”
Lev takes a deep breath and tries not to show any more fear than he has to. “Sounds exciting. I’m in.”
“Well, it’s not quite the thrill of clapping, but I’ll try to keep you from getting bored.” He takes the safety off the weapon. “Question one. Is your friend Connor still alive?”
Lev suspected he might ask this, so he does his best to lie as honestly as he can. “I’ve heard the rumors too,” he says, “but I’m out of that loop. He was taken away, bloody and unconscious, from Happy Jack, and I was arrested. Beyond that, I have no idea.”
Nelson smiles at him, then says, “Wrong answer,” and swings the gun toward Miracolina.
“No!”
Nelson fires without hesitation. Miracolina arches her back as she’s hit, releasing a semiconscious gasp, then falls silent. Lev’s heart feels like it’s about to explode, until he sees the tiny telltale tranq flag sticking out of her shirt.
Nelson stands and shakes his head at Lev. “I’d better like your next answer.” Then he leaves, closing the door.
53 - Nelson
Nelson decides to give Lev plenty of time to think about it. In the meantime, he sits in an adjoining room of the cottage, researching the leads he already has. Not that many. He has tagged nearly a dozen AWOLs, letting them think they’ve escaped from him. Some are still on the streets not far from where he originally captured them. Others are at harvest camps, having been caught by the Juvies. One appears to be in Argentina, although he suspects the kid was caught by another parts pirate and unwound on the black market, which means only his tagged part went to South America. There are two signals pinging from Arizona at the site of an old defunct air force base. This he finds the most curious. He heard talk of some sort of AWOL sanctuary in the Southwest when he was still with the Juvies, but details were sketchy, and he hadn’t had high enough security clearance to learn any more about it, or interest at the time to care. In any case, Arizona is too far away for him to jump to any conclusions. Unless, of course, his little clapper boy places Connor there.
The tranq bullets Nelson loaded in his pistol are the mildest kind, with the shortest half-life. When he returns about two hours later, he lingers outside the door, listening. The girl is awake but groggy, and Lev is all about apologizing for getting her involved in this. No talk of Connor or any potential AWOL hideouts.
Nelson kicks open the door for effect, then sits calmly in the chair between them, brandishing his pistol, just in case there’s any question about his intentions.
“Are we ready?” Nelson says. “Five bullets left. A twenty percent chance that the next one is lethal.”
Lev avoids eye contact with him, struggling to keep his breathing under control. As he already knows the surprise ending of the game, Nelson aims the gun at the girl even before asking the question.
“You think I’m afraid to die, but I’m not,” the girl says. However, the warble in her voice says otherwise.
“Please,” Lev begs. “You don’t have to do this.”
“I believe I do,” Nelson cheerfully tells him. He clears his throat. “Round two. The question is . . . Where is the Akron AWOL hiding? You have three seconds before the buzzer.”
“Please don’t,” Lev pleads again.
“One!”
“Turn it on me! She has nothing to do with this!”
“Two!”
“I’m the one with the wrong answers! Not her!”
“Three!”
“No! Wait! I’ll tell you! I’ll tell you!”
He cocks the trigger. “Better make it quick.”
Lev takes a deep, shuddering breath. “Indian Echo Caverns. In Pennsylvania. It’s where the AWOLs from the East Coast are hidden. They take them deep in the caverns and keep them there until they turn seventeen. Connor’s helping them run it.”
“Hmm,” says Nelson, considering it. “It’s on an Indian rez. I’ll bet stinking Slotmongers are always giving sanctuary to AWOLs.”
He puts the gun across his lap and leans back in his chair. “Now I have a dilemma. Of all the AWOLs I’ve tagged, none of them have gone in that direction. So who should I believe? You or my data?”
“Where were you tagging them?” Lev asks quickly. “If they’re west of Pittsburgh, they probably go someplace else if the resistance picks them up—and don’t ask me where, because I don’t know!”
Nelson smiles. “You know, I’m so glad you didn’t blow yourself to smithereens last year, young man. Because you’ve just saved this girl’s life. Assuming, of course, that you’re telling the truth.”
“If I’m lying,” says Lev, “you can come back and kill us both.”
That makes Nelson laugh. “If it turns out you’re lying, I would have done that anyway, but thank you for giving me permission.”
Then he leaves, making no attempt to free them from their bonds.
54 - Lev
“Were you telling the truth?” Miracolina asks,
“Of course I was,” Lev says, just in case Nelson is still listening. A few moments later he hears Nelson’s van start and drive off. The fact is, it hadn’t mattered what Lev told him—what mattered was Nelson believing it. Lev pulled the location out of his memory—he had been to Indian Echo Caverns with his family many years before. He remembered the guide saying that it used to be a hideout for outlaws. Lev stayed close to his mother, fearing that those outlaws might still be lurking in shadowy crevices. Lev has no idea if AWOLs really are hiding there. He hopes not, now that he’s unleashed Nelson on the place.
“So what do we do?” Miracolina asks. “If he catches your friend, he won’t be back, and we’ll starve to death, and if your friend’s not there, he’ll come back and kill us.”
“I thought you weren’t afraid of dying.”
“I’m not. I just don’t want to die a senseless death.”
“We won’t. Not if I can help it.” Then he begins to roll back and forth on his bed. His hands are secured tightly to two of the metal bedposts with the cable ties, but his feet are able to build a kind of rocking momentum. He throws his weight left, then right, over and over again, and the bed begins to scrape on the ground beneath him as he does. He tries to flip the bed but can’t build the momentum, and eventually he has to rest.
“It’s not working,” Miracolina says, stating what’s more than obvious.
“Then maybe you should start praying. I sure am.”
After a few minutes’ rest, he tries it again. This time he’s able to slide the bed over a little bit more with his rocking, until one of the legs catches on an uneven floorboard. Now when he rocks the bed, the legs on the other side rise slightly off the ground. He loses his strength, and the pain of the plastic ties digging into his wrists gets to him. He has to stop, but after a few minutes of recovery he tries again, and again, each time getting closer to the exact force, and the exact torque it will take. Then finally, releasing a clenched-jawed groan, he hurls all his weight toward the far wall, practically wrenching his arms out of their sockets—and the bed rises, its future dangling like a coin between heads and tails—and then it flips upside down. The metal frame and the mattress land on top of him. Lev’s elbows smash painfully on the rotting wooden floor, splinters digging in. With the bed lying on top of him, he has a momentary flashback to the explosion in the town house and being pinned beneath the sofa. His brother’s face, and Pastor Dan’s. He tries to draw strength from the moment, rather than let himself be overwhelmed by grief.