Rivals and Retribution (24 page)

“We will need to leave now.”

“Excellent.” She swung her legs over the bed, and putting the cards down, reached for her cane. She clutched it, straightening once it was in her grasp.

She took an unsteady step forward. Then another. I just watched, my arms crossed, while she made her plodding progress forward.

What good was she going to be in a crisis situation? I sighed. Was bringing Hazel Feldman into this an even bigger mistake than blindly proceeding without her help?

“Do you need…”

“What?” She peered at me like a hawk spying its next meal far below. She chuckled. “You were going to ask if I needed any medications, weren’t you?” The chuckle grew into a belly laugh.

I shrugged. “You live
here
.”

“You do understand that making an assumption makes an ass out of you—”

“And me,” I completed.

She snorted. “No. Just you. I do not live here because I require ongoing care, but because when you reach my age—which is not so very great in the overall scheme of life—you are faced with certain choices. You can work as a greeter at Walmart if you’re short on funds; travel the world if you’re far from being short on funds; if you have a good number of active friends you might wander the local mall and gather for lunch in assorted fast-food restaurants (which will surely shorten your life span), or you can come to a place like this a bit prematurely in hopes of meeting new friends, hearing about their travels, and never needing to be a greeter at a super-center.”

I nodded but withheld the grin pushing at my lips. “So?”

“No medications unless you think you will continue to be a pain in the ass, in which case, aspirin, please.”

I snorted. “Are you ready then?”

“One moment.” She drew a card from her deck. “Oh. That is disappointing and exciting all at once. Grab my purse, will you? I need to make sure I have my medical insurance card.”

I blinked at her.

“And, in my bathroom, grab a gauze pad and some Band-Aids. Stop looking so worried. We’re on a schedule, are we not?”

I nodded and did as she instructed.

She shoved everything unceremoniously into her purse. “There’s a good boy,” she said. “Off we go.”

She shooed me out of her room and back to the nurses’ station.

I cleared my throat to get the nurse’s attention. “Signing Ms. Feldman out,” I explained.

Feldman snorted. “Sign yourself out. I am quite capable of taking responsibility for my own actions. Now at least,” she added, eyeing me. She snatched the folder and filled in the required spaces, under “Reason for Travel,” scrawling, “Because I’m not dead yet.”

“My son is taking me into the city to spend the day,” she announced proudly, her head high.

“Your son?” the nurse replied with a startled blink, looking me over. “Why, I had no idea.…” She jotted something down on her clipboard.

“Yes, yes, it’s quite the tale,” Feldman intimated.

“It is too bad she does not have the time to hear it,” I said, removing Feldman’s hand from my shoulder and placing it on the counter.

I was not impressed by her willingness to act proud. Or tender. The woman had lied for decades. Perhaps she thought nothing of lying even more now—to me even as we were in such close contact.

“I apologize—just a bit more paperwork to fill out before you go anywhere.…”

“It is no problem,” I assured her.

“After decades apart we have been reunited.” She leaned forward on the counter to give the girl more information.

I barely kept from glaring at the way she romanticized our reunion. As if we hadn’t been within two hours’ flight of each other for years—though the direction of the flight shifted frequently while I was growing up and moving around. Moving around? More aptly on the run.

“Well, I think it’s wonderful that you two found each other after all these years,” the nurse said, her smile so wide it verged on looking pained.

“
Da,
” I agreed. “After all these
years
.”

Feldman’s knobby fingers reclaimed my arm, nails biting into it like a predator’s claws, and my mouth clamped shut.

“Last one,” the nurse said, retrieving the papers. “You two have fun.”

“
Da,
” I replied. “I am certain it will at least be memorable.”

The nurse just smiled.

In the car, Feldman immediately went to adjust the radio station and I stopped her. “
Nyet
. This is my car—”

“And what a beaut it is—” she said, admiring the interior.

I ignored her and turned out of the parking lot.

“Have some respect. Do not adjust the radio station.”

She shrugged. “Shall we discuss our plans, or make it up as we go along?”

“We can discuss them now,” I agreed. “The train might be crowded.”

“And you worry someone might overhear? Do you trust no one?”

“I trust few enough. I have learned to not trust too freely.”

“I am sorry about that,” she said, turning to look out the window.

I winced. “You have the right to take credit for
that
as much as you have the right to take credit for anything else in my life—not at all.”

She sighed and folded her cane, resting it in her lap. “Fine.”

I asked the question that had been gnawing at me since the moment I had realized we were now fighting an imprint. “How much time do we have?”

“Until?”

“Until Pietr dies?”

“He will continue to deny the imprint?”

“
Da,
” I said, certain of nothing more than I was certain of my youngest brother’s stubbornness.

“A month or perhaps a little more. But you must make him eat.” She tilted her head, observing me keenly. “But that is not the question you should be asking,” she warned.

“What should I ask?”

“You should ask when he will finally lose his mind. Because it will happen if he denies the imprint. And then death will seem a mercy.”

I swallowed hard. “Insanity?”

“Yes. Three weeks from the onset of the imprint. Do you know exactly when…?”

“
Da,
” I confirmed. “He wanted to die that day.”

“Before this is done, I suspect he’ll feel that way again,” she said softly. “You must act quickly, Alexi.”

“Tell me what to do. I will do anything to save Pietr. He is my brother in all but blood.”

Feldman nodded. “First then, I believe we must make a plan.”

Jessie

My cell phone buzzed in my jeans pocket and I carefully slid it out. Sarah’s eager smile showed on the screen, and I pulled up her text message.

Something big’s happening. Perlson’s on the move.

On the move? Where to?

Not sure. Had some phone calls today. Called someone “boss.”

Great.

Sarcastic great or great great?

Both. Thanks.

He’s leaving office now. Headed toward science wing.

Going there now …

Good luck.

Thanks.

I stood up and headed for the hall pass, scrawling
bathroom
into the notebook. I would head toward a bathroom, just not the nearest one. I needed to check out the one in the science wing.

Pietr glanced up at me, quirking an eyebrow in question. I just shrugged and dodged out the door.

I made good progress with nearly no one in the hallways until I spotted Perlson up ahead. I heard someone else approaching.

Someone in heels.

Ms. Harnek saw me the moment I saw her and luckily she was levelheaded enough to blink and tilt her head in just the perfect way that signaled me to go into hiding while still displaying her standard terse expression to Perlson as he walked toward her in the hallway.

I slid into the alcove surrounding one of Junction’s less-than-perfect water fountains and tried to hear whatever they were saying over the cycling of the water in the fountain’s rumbling tank.

“And to what do I owe the pleasure of this meeting?” Harnek asked.

“I wanted to pass along some information that should cheer you up tremendously.”

“Go,” Harnek challenged.

“Precisely.”

“What?”

“I will be going soon. Leaving Junction behind for greater educational opportunities and a sunnier climate.”

“And again I say: What?”

“I put in for a transfer.”

“In the district.”

“In a way. The company has some worthwhile connections in the educational industry.”

“Is that all this is, really? An industry? Like a factory pumping out docile and decently educated citizens?”

“There is no better type of industry to be involved in if the product is a more properly educated American,” Perlson declared.

“So where will your transfer take you?”

“I am being promoted.”

“That seems to happen with the incompetents,” I thought I heard Harnek mutter, but the water fountain started to rattle its way through part of its standard cycle. I leaned against the wall and pressed my knee and shin into the fountain’s side, shifting its tone slightly.

“What have you been promoted to?” Harnek asked finally.

“Principal of a lovely middle school.”

There was a lengthy silence. At least it felt lengthy considering the strange position I’d gotten myself into.

A boy walked down the hall, on a direct course for the water fountain. I barely stopped from groaning in recognition. He paused briefly when he saw me and cocked his head. He was the same kid who had needed to use the bathroom where Max and Pietr were sequestered while having their recent talk. While I stood guard outside like a total dork. What timing this kid had. I pushed my lips together and jerked my head at him in what I hoped was a distinct
come over here
gesture. I pressed a finger to my lips for good measure.

He ambled over, staring at me the whole time he took the longest water-fountain drink imaginable. I waved a hand at him to finally shoo him away, and he staggered back in surprise and then flipped me off before jogging away.

If I was the strangest thing he’d seen in Junction, he should count himself lucky.

I adjusted my position and refocused on the conversation.

“You’ll just take this madness there,” Harnek was saying, her tone clearly disapproving.

“It’s
already
there—and things are progressing at an amazing rate.”

“An alarming rate is probably what everyone else thinks.”

“You would not feel that way if we had seen the same level of success with our students here as they are witnessing in California. I hypothesize it’s because the food is being inserted into their diets at such an important stage of their adolescent development.”

“So you’ll go there, take the reins, and do what?”

“Whatever the company asks me to do.”

This was
so
going into my supposedly fictitious novel.…

“And what happens here? Who is transferring in?”

“I have no idea. No one wants a school like Junction with so many headaches and such a history of violence.”

“Well. I don’t quite know what to say.
Good luck
because it seems like my good luck finally kicked in by seeing you gone, or
break a leg
because you’re putting on quite an act and I really hope you break a leg?”

“Always a pleasure, Ms. Harnek.”

“Bite me.”

Alexi

I returned to Wondermann’s headquarters with the cover story of concluding the cleaning of my lab. I was paralyzed by frustration at my lack of boxes and the complete accumulation of stuff when I noticed Feldman getting underfoot. “Stop,” I insisted, waving her away from a box she had begun to empty. “I am packing that.”

“Not as efficiently as you could,” she said, carefully reconfiguring the items and puzzling them back together so that the box held nearly twice its previous contents.

Marveling, I admitted I would not have thought of that arrangement and let her do the same with the next box. And the next. As one person I was quite capable, but with another person of differing skills and experiences perhaps … “Do you suppose…” But my train of thought was interrupted when a guard entered the lab.

Not a guard from the lobby and not Terra’s guard. A guard clearly from Mr. Wondermann’s office, complete with black suit and tie, earpiece, holster, and a look that made vultures appear cuddly.

“Mr. Wondermann requests your presence in the penthouse.”

“I am quite busy,” I said, not giving him a second look as I returned to my collection of boxes.

“Mr. Wondermann is requesting…”

“And my son said no,” Hazel snapped.

“Your son?” He turned away, pressing his earpiece and muttering.

Not good. Not good at all.

“When I said
requesting,
I meant: You will come with me now or we will have an altercation.” He patted the bulge at his side, smiling.

I looked at Feldman and shrugged.

“I’ve never seen a penthouse. I’ll check it off my bucket list.”

I nodded, sidling up to her as we followed the guard to the elevator. “It may be the last thing you check off your bucket list,” I whispered.

“Oh. I need my purse,” she said, turning around.

But the guard stuck out a hand and stopped her. “This will be quick, I promise.”

“Fine,” she said with a glare.

We rode the elegant elevator in silence and obediently followed the guard’s directions out of it and into the jungle-inspired splendor of Wondermann’s penthouse. Feldman kept quiet, but I could tell by how rapt her attention was that she found the surroundings to be exquisite. The guard stepped away from us, motioning us to wait there.