The Inner Circle (42 page)

“So what did those guys want?” the Kid asked.
 

“To talk to their guy in charge. He’s kind of like the Korean Carver.”
 

The Kid raised an eyebrow at this.
 

“They’re going to be there tonight, too. They’re aiming to kill Caesar. They understand our main objective is to get Carver first, so he said they’ll try to hold off as long as possible.”
 

“Why don’t they just team up with us?”
 

“I’m not sure. I think they, just like us, have trust issues.”
 

Ronny cleared his throat. “Ben has something he wants to say to everyone.”
 

I shot Ronny a glare but he wasn’t having any of it. He just stood there, his arms crossed, waiting.
 

“Ben?” Beverly said. “What is it?”
 

I looked at her and started to speak ... but then my gaze shifted and my eyes met Maya’s.
 

“Ben?” Beverly said again.
 

Staring at Maya, I whispered, “My family.”
 

“What about your family?”
 

I blinked, looked around the room, took a deep breath. “My family ... they’re dead. Jen and Casey—they’re dead.”
 

Beverly shook her head sadly. “But you don’t know that for certain. They may still be alive.”
 

“They’re not,” I said, my voice all at once going cold. “I saw them die. After my game, when I wrote my story and the Kid posted it online, they ... they sent out a video. It was encrypted, so only someone like the Kid could find it. Maya wasn’t with us then, and of course neither was Mason, but some of the rest of you might remember Carver taking me away for a day. We met the Kid in Denver, and the Kid ... he showed me the video. It was less than two minutes long. It showed Jen and Casey, both of them tied to separate chairs. And then this person walked into frame—I never saw his face, he always kept his back to the camera—and he said that if I wanted to fuck with them, they were going to fuck with me, and he ... he killed them. Slowly. With a knife.”
 

The room had gone silent. Outside, the city continued to breathe with frantic life, but here right now all was quiet and still.
 

Beverly, her hand to her mouth, whispered, “Oh, Ben, why ... why didn’t you tell us?”
 

“Carver wanted me to. So did the Kid. But it was my decision, and I told them we would keep it a secret. That ... that the only thing that keeps us going is the hope that our families are still alive. And after what they did to Jen and Casey, it was obvious they had done the same to all of our families. That”—I swallowed—“that we really had nothing to live for anymore. Nothing except making these motherfuckers pay for what they did to us.”
 

The silence grew. Nobody spoke. Nobody moved.
 

Then Beverly, her voice soft, said, “Ben?”
 

“Yes, Beverly.”
 

“I think I speak for everyone when I say we understand your reason for keeping this from us. But even without knowing exactly what has happened to each of our families, I’m sure we all know that they’re dead. And I can’t speak for anyone else here, but I have had hope this entire time. Not exactly to see my family again—because, again, I have always believed them dead—but that we will eventually reach the people responsible for what happened to them. And tonight it seems that will happen. So yes,” she said, and produced a devilish little grin, “let’s make these motherfuckers pay.”

59

“I don’t think I can do this.”
 

“Try it again.”
 

“It’s not going to work.”
 

“Try it again,” Maya repeated, her voice all at once hard.
 

We stood in an empty room in front of a makeshift desk, a small mirror before us, a contact lens on my finger. For ten minutes now I’d been trying to put in one lens, and no matter how hard I tried, the sucker wouldn’t stick properly to my eye.
 

“I’ll be okay with just my glasses.”
 

“Try it again.”
 

“Maya.”
 

“Ben, don’t make me tell you one more time.”
 

Normally, I might have smiled at her tone, but her eyes told me she was deeply serious—more serious now than ever before.
 

I turned back to the mirror and used my thumb and index finger to widen my left eyelid. Then I slowly moved my finger with the contact lens to my eye, trying to keep it open despite its initial reaction to automatically shut.
 

Next thing I knew, I blinked and the contact ended up on my cheek.
 

“You’re pathetic,” Maya said.
 

“Thanks for the pep talk.”
 

Over a year ago Carver had me get a prescription for contact lenses. He said it would be best when trailing players to have contacts instead of glasses. After all, without my glasses I was half-blind, so if they broke or were lost, I would be pretty much useless in the field. And so I had gotten contact lenses and spent an hour trying to put them in, and hated the feeling so much that I never wore them again. But I still had the prescription, and according to Stark (who had heard it from Congresswoman Houser earlier this week), everyone in the Inner Circle tonight would be hiding their identities, which meant they would be wearing masks. And with a mask, my glasses were not going to work.
 

“Try it again,” Maya said.
 

I turned back to the mirror, then turned back to Maya and said, “Are you seriously mad at me?”
 

“You could have told me the truth.”
 

“And what good would that have done?”
 

“I don’t know. But you could have told me.”
 

“There was nothing to tell. They were dead. Telling you or telling anybody wouldn’t have changed that simple fact.”
 

“I thought you trusted me.”
 

“I do.”
 

“But you don’t. Otherwise you would have told me.”
 

“I was going to tell you.”
 

“When?”
 

“Last week at the farmhouse. While everyone else was inside singing and we were outside on the porch.”
 

“So over a year later.”

“Are we really having this discussion right now?”
 

“Do you love me?”
 

“You know I do.”
 

“But are you in love with me?”
 

“Maya,” I began, and I meant to say more—what, I wasn’t exactly sure—when there was a knock at the door.
 

The Kid poked his head in. “Am I interrupting anything?”
 

“Just trying to put in these contacts,” I said. “What’s up?”
 

He stepped into the room and held up a pair of black leather dress shoes. “These are ready to go.”
 

“Great. You can set them down wherever.”
 

He placed them on the floor, leaned back, and just stood there.
 

“Yes?” I said.
 

“Got a minute?”
 

“Sure.”
 

He took a step forward, paused, said to Maya, “Actually, I’d like to talk to Ben alone if that’s okay.”
 

She gave no verbal response, just turned and left the room.
 

The Kid said, “Trouble in paradise?”
 

“Are you here for a reason?”
 

“Having trouble with the contacts?”
 

“As a matter of fact, I am. Any suggestions?”
 

“Dude, I got twenty-twenty vision. Don’t know what to tell you.”
 

“As always, you’ve been extremely helpful.”
 

The Kid walked deeper into the room, his hands in the pockets of his jeans, looking everywhere but at me.
 

“So what’s up?” I asked.
 

“I just wanted to go over everything one last time.”
 

“You’re more than welcome, but I’m good.”
 

“Are you sure?”
 

“Yes.”
 

“You don’t want to go over the Fillmore’s building plans again?”
 

“Kid.”
 

“Mason said he’s seen activity over there all morning. Utility van after utility van entering the garage and then coming out.”
 

“Kid.”
 

“What?”
 

“What’s wrong?”
 

“I’m worried about tonight.”
 

“We all are.”
 

“I have that feeling I sometimes get, that something really bad is going to happen.”
 

“We all know the risks. Why—you’re not backing out, are you?”
 

“No, I’m not bailing. You know I would never do that. But I just ... I wanted to tell you something.”
 

“Shoot.”
 

The Kid opened his mouth ... but then closed it.
 

“Are you going to make me guess?”
 

He was standing only a few feet away now, and still he hadn’t looked me in the eye.
 

“Kid, what’s wrong?”
 

“I ...”
 

“Yeah?”
 

“I’m gay.”
 

I was quiet for a beat, then said, “Kid, I’m flattered, but—”
 

“Don’t be an asshole.”
 

“I rarely know what else to be anymore.”
 

“I’ve never told anyone. Not even Carver. But Carver’s smart, so maybe he always suspected it, I don’t know.”
 

“Why are you telling me now?”
 

“Because I feel I have to tell somebody.”
 

“But why now?”
 

“I told you. I have that feeling something bad is going to happen tonight. And if something happens to me, or to you, or to Carver, or to any one of us, I just ... I don’t want to be that person who never comes out of the closet. I don’t want to be that stereotype. I’ve known what I am for a long time, but in my line of work, I don’t get out much. I don’t have any friends outside you and Carver and the rest of you guys, and I never ... I never once kissed anyone.”
 

I let another beat of silence pass before I said, “Again, Kid, I’m flattered ...”
 

He smiled. “Again, Ben, don’t be an asshole.”
 

“So what do you want me to say? That I accept you how you are? You know I do.”
 

“I know. But Ronny and Beverly, they’re just so religious, I feel like I can’t tell them.”
 

“You should. They’re not going to think any less of you.”
 

“How do you know?”
 

The truth was, I didn’t. Though I thought I knew Ronny and Beverly pretty well, none of us truly ever really know ourselves, let alone the people closest to us.
 

I asked, “What about your mom?”
 

“What about her?”
 

“Don’t you want to tell her?”
 

“Give me a break. You saw how she is. It would be like talking to a wall.”
 

“Still.”
 

He was quiet for a moment, staring down at the floor. “Do you still have that nightmare about Michelle Delaney?”
 

I said nothing. Not at first. I thought about how my nightmare had changed. No longer was I standing outside watching Michelle Delany being beaten by her boyfriend, but instead I was standing in room 7 of the Paradise Motel, while my wife and daughter were trapped in those wooden caskets. Caesar had been in that nightmare, telling me to choose—to pick one to live, to pick one to die—and tonight I might very well come face to face with the son of a bitch. The irony was not lost on me. But still, as hard as it had been to first tell someone about that initial nightmare, it had become impossible for me to tell anyone about this most recent one. Not even Maya, who I had wanted to tell countless times.
 

“Ben?”
 

“Sometimes,” I said softly. I cleared my throat. “Why?”
 

“Because I have a nightmare of my own. It’s about when my brother died. I watch him fall, I run back to the house, tell my dad and all that stuff, but this time when I come back inside I tell my mom, I just confess to her, and you know what she says to me? She says it should have been me. That I should have fallen and broken my neck. That I’m a waste and will never do anything with my life. That I’m nothing.”
 

Silence then, except for the faint traffic noises beyond the warehouse walls.
 

“You know that’s not true,” I said.
 

“Isn’t it? What have I really ever done with my life? I mostly hide behind a computer screen. I’ve never touched a gun before. Even if I did, I don’t know if I would be able to bring myself to fire it. If and when the shit hits the fan tonight, I don’t ... I don’t think I’ll be any help.”
 

“You will be.”
 

“How do you know?”
 

“I just do.”
 

The Kid nodded, chewing his lip. “Speaking of which, I should let you get back to it. I need to recheck my equipment anyhow.”
 

We stood there then for a long moment, neither one of us saying anything.
 

I asked, “Is this the part where we hug?”
 

He smiled again. “Fuck you, Ben.”
 

He turned and left through the door.