Payback Page 5

  I floor it and we roar off down the road.

  Tori looks worried. “Do you think they got our license plate number?”

  I shake my head. “It all happened pretty fast. And anyway, it wasn’t the Purples or anything like that. It was just a real estate guy with a client.”

  She sighs. “Who would have thought they’d find a new renter so soon? Whoever decorated that place must be color-blind. Everything is beige.”

  “The cookies probably don’t notice.” I laugh, which is amazing, since nothing has been funny for a long time. “I’m going to miss the couches, though—a real night’s sleep.”

  “Me too,” she agrees. “But the real question is, where do we go from here? All we’re doing is running away. We have to make a life for ourselves.”

  I merge onto a busier road, and slow to the speed of traffic. I’m not such a beginning driver anymore. I’m getting comfortable behind the wheel.

  It makes me sad. I’ve got a perfectly good car, if you discount a few dings on the bumpers and a pretty serious scrape on top of the roof. But I’ve got no place to go.

  Then it dawns on me: yes, I do. I’ve known it since the minute I first saw him on TV.

  “We’re going to California—to Atomic Studios.” I tell her about Blake Upton, who looks enough like me to be me.

  “Do you think he knows anything about Project Osiris?” Tori wonders.

  “I doubt it,” I admit. “But maybe he can lead us to someone who does.”

  “I always wanted to go to California,” she comments. “They’ve got some great art museums out there.”

  “It’s a thousand miles away,” I put in with a nervous glance at the fuel gauge. “I hope we’ve got enough gas money.”

  “No problem.” She reaches into her pocket, pulls out a thick wad of cash, and stuffs it into the cup holder between us.

  I’m so amazed that I nearly steer off the road into a telephone pole. “Where’d all that money come from?”

  She shrugs. “People can’t get enough of those Thin Mints.”

  6

  MALIK BRUDER

  It’s too bad Gus Alabaster is dying, because he’s got a really great thing going on. Seriously, when they came up with the expression “living like a boss,” I think Gus is the boss they were talking about.

  You caught that, right? He said I should call him Gus because it’s kind of too late to be calling him Dad. The point is I’m on a first-name basis with the most successful gangster in American history—except that he calls me Bryan. Which is a first name; it’s just not mine. I’m kind of stuck with that.

  The house is awesome. Big deal, there’s a lot of fancy gold all over the place. What’s wrong with gold? Believe me, when you’ve got an indoor pool, eighty-inch flat screens in every room, Jacuzzis in the bathrooms, and a full-time chef who cooks whatever you want, whenever you want it, you can put up with a little too much shiny stuff.

  The chef part is even better than it sounds, because Gus is too sick to eat anything but soup and Jell-O and oatmeal and things like that. So he told the chef to make whatever I want, me being his “son” and all. Do you know there’s such a thing as Tater Tots? Back in Happy Valley, they told us we always had the very best, but we didn’t have Tater Tots. Another Osiris lie.

  Life would be perfect here except for one giant drawback—Laska. What a crab. There’s no pleasing that girl. Gus and his people are really nice to us. I mean, we’ve got our own rooms. We’ve got new clothes, because Lenny arranged for this swanky store to come over and bring everything in our size, so we could pick what we wanted. Who could find anything wrong with that?

  That’s easy—Laska.

  First she says she doesn’t like anything. Then she looks at all the price tags and picks out the cheapest jeans and T-shirts in the pile.

  “Come on,” I urge. “Why can’t you pick out something nice?”

  “I don’t want anything from these people,” she says through clenched teeth. “It’s being paid for with dirty money.”

  “Shhh!” I hiss, inclining my head to indicate Lenny, who’s on the other side of the room, talking with the store guy. “You want to get us thrown out of here?”

  “We’re living off the proceeds of crime,” she whispers righteously.

  “For thirteen years, we lived off Project Osiris,” I point out. “What crime could be worse than that?”

  “We thought we were living off our families, because they lied to us. In this case, you’re the one doing the lying. You’re letting that awful man go on thinking you’re his son. When are you going to tell him the truth? We’re never going to find out if he knows anything about Project Osiris until you come clean.”

  “Shhhhhhhh!!”

  “That’s the whole reason we’re here, isn’t it?” she persists. “Not to swim in their pool, and sleep in their beds, and eat their Tater Tots. Who invented those things, anyway? Pure starch and oil!”

  “Hey,” I shoot back, “you can talk trash about me, but lay off my Tater Tots!”

  The reason I’m so mad at her is because she’s right. Not about the Tater Tots, about Gus. I know I have to tell him that I’m not his kid; I’m his clone. But he seems so happy to believe he has a son. The guy’s achieved everything imaginable in his career—okay, so his chosen field is crime, but at least he’s good at it. He’s famous. He’s rich. He used to hang out with celebrities. The one thing he never got to be was a dad. Until now. And I don’t want to spoil it for him.

  Sure, some of my reasons are selfish. He’s a scary guy, and according to the news articles I’ve read, he doesn’t take kindly to bad news. Also, I’d be admitting that I’m a clone. That could be a pretty big shock to him, especially if he doesn’t know much about Project Osiris. Then there’s the simple fact that we’ve got a pretty sweet setup here, so I’d hate to tick him off and get kicked out.

  Of course, if he’s really ticked off, we could get more than just kicked out.

  But there’s something else too. Gus Alabaster is me, or I’m him, or whatever. Yeah, I get it that we’re not the same person. But genetically, we are. In a way, he’s more than my father. He’s my father, mother, and every aunt, uncle, and cousin all rolled into one. If you think about it, no regular person is as closely related to anybody as I am to this dying gangster.

  I feel like I have to get to know him if I’m ever going to know myself.

  So it’s now or never.

  “Your girlfriend,” Gus says to me. “Not too friendly, is she?”

  I stop scratching the soft fur of Counselor’s neck. “She’s just really shy,” I venture with a gulp.

  “Bryan—I’m sick; I’m not blind. The girl looks at me like the judge at my sentencing. If she had her way, I’d be back behind bars, dying or not.”

  I feel a stab of uneasiness. Laska may be a pain in my butt. But with Eli and Tori out of the picture, she’s all I’ve got left. I remember her jumping off that raft to save me from drowning. I’ve got to stick up for her here.

  “She stayed with me all the way from New Mexico, Gus,” I remind him.

  He nods approvingly. “So she’s loyal. That’s a plus. Never underestimate that quality. Lot of guys who work for me, they’re always smiling—‘Hi, Boss. What can I get for you, Boss? You’re the man, Boss.’ First chance they get, they turn around and stab you in the back. But someone like Lenny—miserable sourpuss, never a smile for anybody, to look at him is to want to punch his lights out—”

  “You know I can hear you, right?” comes Lenny’s voice from across the room.

  Counselor sends a disapproving growl in his direction.

  “Smart guy,” Gus mutters, grinning. “So there I am, years in the can, no reason to think I’ll ever get out. And this mug is running my business, filing appeals, bribing guards to make my life more comfortable. Loyalty.”

  Lenny saunters over. “I think you should get some rest, Boss. Maybe a little nap.”

  Gus glares up at him. “Where I’m go
ing, it’ll be all nap, all the time. I’m talking to my kid here.”

  All the other hired guys seem to be really intimidated by Gus. But not Lenny. He’s isn’t afraid to get into a stare-down with the notorious kingpin. “Dr. Schulman said you should take it easy. And he told me to make sure you really do.”

  “Dr. Schulman is a quack, and he’s going to have a hard time digesting that stethoscope when I shove it down his throat.”

  Lenny casts me a beseeching look, and I stand up. “It’s okay, Gus. I’ll come back later.”

  I check on Laska, but when I poke my head inside her room, nobody’s there. I’m a little concerned, since she’s not exactly popular around here, for obvious reasons. I’ve got a pet name for the expression on her face basically all the time: the three D’s—disapproval, disgust, distrust. The fact that she’s not happy here—and doesn’t think I should be either—is pretty plain.

  Two of the regular guys—Danny and Torque—are in the living room.

  “Have you guys seen Amber?”

  No response. They’re watching a European soccer match on TV and screaming their lungs out over every move, which tells me they’ve bet a lot of money on this game. That’s one thing I’ve learned about the Alabaster crew—they’ll bet on two raindrops running down a windowpane. Even Gus himself, as sick as he is, likes to get in on the action. Although no one wants to bet against Gus, because you have to let him win. No wonder he got so rich.

  “Do you know where Amber went?” I repeat, louder this time. “Amber? My—girlfriend?” It isn’t getting any easier to call her that.

  “Oh, yeah—Amber.” Finally, Danny tears his eyes from the screen. “She went out for a run.”

  It figures. Even when we were hiding at a boarding school in Colorado, psycho Laska had to have her workout. She’s too moral to accept all the nice clothes Gus is willing to buy her, but his dirty money is okay to pay for shorts and tank tops so she can keep up her maniac workout routine.

  “You know,” Torque puts in thoughtfully, “too much exercise is no good for a person. All that perspiration backs up inside your heart. Maybe that’s why she’s so crabby all the time.”

  Luckily, I don’t have to come up with an answer to this, because Lenny breezes through and reminds the guys to pick up a load of dry cleaning. This sets off a huge argument between Danny and Torque over which one of them has to go. Considering how heated it gets, I can only imagine the kind of money they’ve got riding on the soccer.

  “I’ll go,” I volunteer.

  “Yeah, right,” Danny snorts. “It’s not around the corner, Bryan. You drive?”

  “I drive.”

  They look dubious, but the idea of staying in front of the game tempts them.

  “No fooling?” Torque asks.

  “No fooling.”

  Danny takes out a set of car keys and tosses them to me. “It’s the red Benz. Don’t screw it up.”

  When I ask about money or claim checks, Danny shrugs. “Just tell them Lenny sent you. That’s all you need.” He gives me directions, and they’re back in the game like they’ve forgotten I’m even alive.

  Believe it or not, it isn’t the nicest car I’ve ever driven. The one we stole from Tamara Dunleavy was a Bentley, but that’s another story.

  I find a spot across from the dry cleaner’s and enter the store.

  The man behind the counter barely looks up from his newspaper. “What can I do for you, kid?”

  I follow Danny’s instructions, which have brought me this far. “Lenny sent me.”

  If I told him the building was on fire, I couldn’t get a bigger reaction. He leaps up, stands ramrod straight. “Yes, sir! Everything’s ready, sir! I’ll have it brought out right away!” He races into the back.

  Within seconds, a battalion of employees marches up to the front, carrying plastic-wrapped suits and dress shirts. It all looks fine to me, but the guy insists on opening everything up, showing me how “this lapel is pressed exactly according to instructions,” and “the crease in these pants was given extra attention.”

  “I didn’t bring any money,” I tell him.

  “Oh, that’s perfectly fine, sir. We’ll put it all on Mr. Lenny’s tab—with the usual discount, of course.” He hesitates. “There was—one slight problem. The tuxedo shirt—there was a stain. We tried our best, and it’s mostly gone. See?”

  He shows me a snowy sleeve, immaculately starched. There on the cuff is a very faint discoloration. It has a brownish tint now, but I have a feeling it was blood red when it started out—as in real blood.

  It’s no big deal. If he hadn’t told me it was there, I wouldn’t have noticed it. But for some reason, I give the guy a hard time. “I don’t know if that’s going to be okay,” I comment.

  “Very understandable!” he bleats. “Of course, there will be no charge for that one.”

  I remain unconvinced. “You know, Lenny can be pretty picky about stuff like this.”

  He’s sweating now. “And naturally, sir, we’ll replace the shirt!”

  I clam up for a few more seconds just to watch him squirm. I’m not exactly sure why I’m getting such a kick out of this. Maybe I like being called sir. Or it could be the fact that I have all the power, and he has none. I haven’t had a racket like this going since Happy Valley, when Hector would do anything for the privilege of being my best friend.

  My brow clouds. Hector, who sold us out to Project Osiris, and got Tori and Eli recaptured. Or worse.

  “Okay,” I tell the guy, who looks like he’s almost ready to faint. “Don’t worry about it.”

  They insist on bringing the stuff out to the car for me and load it in like it’s delicate crystal instead of a bunch of clothes. Then every single employee apologizes for the stain and thanks me for being so understanding. As I drive away from there, it’s like I’m ten feet tall. I can’t help thinking: Gus must feel this way every minute of his life. What could be better than having people falling over themselves to please you? I’ll bet even in prison, he had the best of everything. How awesome is that?

  By the time I get back to the house, the soccer game is over. Danny is sprawled out on the couch with a wet towel covering his face. Torque, on the other hand, wears a cake-eating grin, as he counts out a wad of bills that would choke a hippo.

  I drape the dry cleaning over a loveseat.

  “Thanks, kid.” He peels a crisp hundred off the roll and slaps it into my hand.

  I could get used to this.

  7

  ELI FRIEDEN

  Twenty-three hours feels like a lifetime when you’re scared out of your mind.

  That’s how long it takes us to drive from Amarillo to Burbank, California, where Blake Upton’s TV show, Jupiter High, is in production.

  There are so many things that can go wrong. What if our car has been reported stolen? What if somebody notices that I look too young to drive? Every time we pass a police cruiser, we both hold our breath and try to act casual. Twenty miles in, my shoulders ache from trying to sit taller behind the wheel.

  We make it out of Amarillo okay, but then we cross into New Mexico, which brings up all kinds of weird memories. We’re well south of Serenity—which we know is empty anyway. But I can tell that Tori is thinking about her parents. I’m thinking about my father too, even though Felix Frieden—Felix Hammerstrom—is the mad scientist behind Project Osiris. If the whole experiment is sick, then he’s the head sicko. And even so, I miss him. I suppose what I really miss is having a family, a home, a place I belong.

  We stop on the outskirts of Albuquerque and grab dinner at a crowded Taco Bell. I wanted to stop somewhere more out of the way, but Tori insists that we’re better off where there are a lot of people around.

  “A couple of kids are going to stand out if they’re the only customers at some roadside diner in a town where everybody knows everybody else,” she explains. “Here, we can blend in.”

  Tori’s pretty smart when it comes to things like this. Either that, o
r it’s Yvonne-Marie Delacroix and her instincts for living on the lam.

  We gas up and get back in the car, determined to push straight through to California. It’s rough. We’re driving on the same interstate through total darkness all night. We polish off the rest of New Mexico, cross the entire state of Arizona, and enter California surrounded by mind-numbing black. By three in the morning, I’m slapping myself in the face just to keep from dropping off. Tori pledges to keep me awake and alert with conversation, and promptly falls asleep. She even has the nerve to snore. I’ve never been so jealous of anyone in my life.

  I have no idea how I make it. It’s almost like my head isn’t attached to my body anymore and is floating a few feet above me like a helium balloon.

  The gas holds out until Needles, California, in the middle of the Mojave Desert. It’s dawn, and I’m surrounded by tumbleweeds, cactus, and scrub. I expect a bit of a chill in the air, like Serenity in the early morning. But it’s already baking hot. The mere act of filling the car leaves me bathed in sweat.

  Tori wakes up and buys every caffeinated drink at the mini-mart. But when we get back to the air-conditioning of the car, all we want is the big jug of water.

  We reach Los Angeles a little before noon, and stop at a gas station to buy a city map. If we hadn’t wrecked the car’s GPS, finding Atomic Studios would be easy. But it’s too late to undo that now. Worse, LA isn’t the same as other cities. It goes on forever in all directions, and most of it is crammed with traffic. It still takes hours to inch along the jammed highways to Burbank.

  To our surprise, Atomic Studios isn’t just a building. It’s more like an entire town, surrounded by high walls and a security gate. On the sprawling campus, we can see several huge warehouse-like structures and entire neighborhoods of small bungalows. Cars and golf carts zip around a complex system of roadways.

  “It’s bigger than Serenity!” I exclaim from my vantage point atop a boulder, peering over the boundary wall.

  Tori joins me on the rock. “And it’s so tastefully landscaped. I love the color contrast they’ve created using lush green tropical plants against the desert browns and beiges of the native landscape.”