The Fallout

I was back under his control.

  And Eddy seemed completely enamored with him, hanging on every word. Stopping my father would be next to impossible on my own. I only hoped I could convince Eddy that our father was not to be trusted.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  I opened my eyes.

  Two walls of the room were floor-to-ceiling windows, looking out onto the ocean. Surprised to see the open water after all the jungle, I leaned out the open window. Amid the tops of the trees to the side, three roofs were visible. I stayed there a moment, feeling the breeze and hearing bird sounds.

  Rolled up at the top of each window were large white shades, and I reached up to unroll them. I couldn’t see any cords, but there was a switch on the wall. I pushed it.

  Immediately, the shades began unrolling, slowly covering the windows from the top to the bottom, until the room lay in near darkness.

  I went back to the door and flipped the light switch, brightening the room. A king-size canopy bed of bamboo sat along one interior wall, with white matelassé bedding, accented with bright orange and red floral rectangular pillows.

  A desk with a large computer sat along the other interior wall, as well as two wooden doors. I opened the first, and a light automatically came on, revealing a huge walk-in closet, full of clothes. I stepped inside and knelt down. Flip-flops, sneakers, even a pair of dress shoes. Shirts hung in a row along one side, while jeans and trousers filled the other. I had no doubt that everything in there would turn out to fit me perfectly.

  Just like my old closet in the Compound.

  A dresser was near the back, and I opened the drawers.

  Shorts, T-shirts, swim trunks, underwear.

  I pulled out a T-shirt and a pair of shorts, grabbed a pair of black flip-flops, and stepped back into the bedroom. I opened the other door and again, a light popped on.

  A bathroom. Nearly the size of the bedroom itself. Double sinks sat under a long mirror. The toilet was off to the side in an alcove, and at the far end of the room was a monstrous open shower made of black lava rock, like the living-room fireplace. The linen closet held large, white, cushy towels, and I hung two of them, along with the clothes from the closet, on hooks next to the shower.

  I undressed, left my clothes in a pile on the floor, and turned on the water.

  The spray came from all directions: the ceiling, the sides, and when I stepped inside, the soothing jets felt better than any shower I’d ever taken. Clear square containers held thick, pale-colored liquids. I pushed one of the buttons and the contents oozed out into my palm. I held it to my nose. Coconut-scented shampoo.

  I stayed in there until the water turned lukewarm.

  When I came out, the mirrors were all steamy. I dried off, and in the drawers of the vanity, I found deodorant and toothpaste and floss and everything else I needed.

  I felt better, much better. Ready to handle whatever other truths were waiting for me. So I got dressed and went to join my brother and sister for dinner. I hoped it would be the last time we ever had to eat a meal with our father, because I planned on getting us out of there as soon as possible.

  Down in the main room, the table was set, but no one was there. I heard water running, and figured maybe the others were showering, too. I wanted to get out to the beach, so I headed back down the hallway and past the staircase, figuring there had to be a door that opened toward the beach.

  I reached the end of the hallway and entered a small foyer that set off a large wooden door. I turned the handle and stepped out onto a sidewalk where a breeze hit me. Spread in front of me was the most beautiful white sand beach I’d ever seen. I headed straight for the sparkling, turquoise water.

  The sand was like powder under my feet, and not hot at all. I stepped into the water, and it was barely warm. I walked in up to my shins and stood there, letting the waves move between and around my legs. Ahead of me I saw nothing but water, the surface reflecting the sun so brightly that I had to put up a hand to shade my eyes.

  Up the beach to my right, I saw several dwellings: the roofs I’d seen from my window earlier. A sidewalk led along the beach. Reluctantly, I left the water and went to see what I could find.

  The first house was much like Dad’s, only smaller. There was no one in sight. Same with the second. But at the third, the back of someone’s head was visible on the small deck in front. As I got closer, I wondered if I should turn around without saying anything. But if my intention was to find out as much as I could …

  “Hey there!” I called out.

  The person stood up. As he turned around, I started to wave. But my hand froze in midair when I saw who it was.

  Tony. Phil.

  And he did not look happy to see me.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  I lowered my arm and turned to walk back, my steps fast and light on the sand.

  “Wait!” he yelled. “Kid! Hold on! Wait a sec.” He jogged onto the beach toward me.

  Wondering how good an idea it was, I slowed, then turned around and took a strong stance, ready to fight him off.

  He stopped in front of me and held his hands out toward me. “No worries. I won’t try to retaliate.” He gestured toward the white bandage on his nose. His eyes were both bruised, and would probably get worse before they got better.

  “I’m not sorry,” I said. “You deserved it.”

  He shrugged. “Probably. Depends on whose side you’re on.”

  I frowned. “You’re admitting there are sides?”

  “Aren’t there?” He tilted his head slightly.

  I nodded. “I think so.” I held up a hand. “This place…” I wasn’t sure what I wanted to say. I knew I couldn’t trust him. But if he’d had anything to do with the island, which I strongly suspected he had, he would probably drip his own praises from his mouth without much coaxing. “It’s beautiful,” I finished.

  “Yes, it is.” He straightened up a bit. “Took me awhile to get it ready. But Rex was pleased when he arrived. Definitely pleased. We’d been up and running for about a year when you all finally got out.” He noticed me watching him. “You know I disagreed with that.”

  “What?” I asked.

  He looked out to sea, shading his eyes with a hand. “The whole underground thing. While it was being built, I thought it was brilliant. Think about it.” He turned to look at me. “When the world descends into chaos, your family is set to ride it out.” He put a hand to the side of his mouth, and lowered his voice. “Honestly, I rather hoped I’d get an invite if there really was an apocalypse.” He breathed deep and it came out loud, almost like a sigh. “But when he told me what he meant to do, that you were all going under, with no plans to come out, well…” He shook his head. “I’ll admit that I’ll do just about anything for money, but there’s not enough in the world for me to go in there, and live in that situation.”

  “Smart,” I said.

  He turned his back to the sun and faced me. “I did try to change his mind, you know.”

  What? My heart began to pound. “About taking us into the Compound?”

  “No.” He shook his head. “It was once you were in. Those first couple of days after your brother was left on the outside. I told Rex how devastated that kid was. There was still time, before the world found out. I was the one with the lies to spin into a truth the world would believe. I told Rex that he could fix it, let you all out, tell you all that it was some kind of drill. A test to see how the Compound worked. Everything could go back to how it was.”

  “He didn’t listen,” I stated.

  “No, he sure didn’t.” Tony held his arms out to the side. “Instead, it was on to the next thing. Build him this place. That’s probably why I felt I should take care of Eddy all those years. Since I’d failed at getting you guys back for him.” He dropped his arms. “You know it really threw Rex when you figured it all out.”

  “How to open the door?”

  He nodded. “I never heard him as frantic as he was that night.”

  I
thought of the phone that had sat on Dad’s desk in the Compound. “So he did call you from there.”

  Tony looked almost guilty as he nodded. “Every day. No different from when he called me from his office at YK.” He started drawing in the sand with a toe. “I hoped we could go back to that. Once you all were out. I wanted to go back to just being his right-hand man at YK. Meetings. Business trips.” He stared out at the sea. “You might not believe it, but kidnapping kids and trapping people underground are not what I signed up for.”

  “You had no problem with the age reversal.”

  He whipped his face around toward mine. “You think I wanted to be a guinea pig? I had no choice in that! Rex owns me. Everything, every single dirty thing I’ve done for him, is documented.” His shoulders slumped. “I knew it from the start. I knew what I was getting into.” He put his hands on his face. “I never expected to be an experiment, though.”

  He didn’t say anything else, and the breeze and waves were the only sound.

  I shrugged. “You make a pretty good teenager. You fooled me. Fooled Eddy and Lexie.”

  He smirked. “It has been kinda fun. Being a kid, yet being able to afford all the toys.”

  I rolled my eyes. “That Camaro was totally yours, wasn’t it?”

  He laughed. “Well, it belonged to Philip A. Whitaker. Tony the teenager would have had a hard time explaining that.”

  I smiled. “I gotta say, it’s much harder to hate you as Tony. Phil was such a prick.”

  Tony laughed. “I deserve that. I mean Phil deserves that.”

  I pointed at the house. “It’s yours?”

  “Of course.” He smiled. “There are perks to being a henchman. Mine include room and board with oceanfront property.”

  “What’s next?” I asked.

  Tony quickly turned and looked out at the water again. He shrugged but didn’t say anything.

  I needed to know, and I felt like he was going to open up to me. So I kept at him. “Tony?” I couldn’t get myself to call him Phil, even though I knew that’s who he really was. “What’s next? What’s the plan?”

  Finally he turned back around and met my eyes. “Eli, you know what’s next. You know what has to happen.”

  “I don’t,” I said.

  He let out a breath. “Think about it. Think about what Rex wants.” He held up his hands, palms up. “What would make this paradise complete for him?”

  I started to say something, then I stopped. I knew my dad, how he thought. There was only one thing that would make the island complete.

  “My family,” I said.

  Tony nodded. “They’re next.”

  My father wanted us all on the island. To keep. To control. Just like he told me when we were still in the Compound. Only once we were back in Seattle, I had thought we were safe.

  I was so wrong.

  “But Dad said we were all flying home tomorrow.”

  Tony frowned. “He did? In those words?”

  “Yeah, he…” I trailed off and looked down at the sand as I tried to remember. What had he said? “I told him I wanted to go home and he said that wouldn’t happen before tomorrow.” My heart sunk as I realized it meant nothing of the sort. “He’s not letting us go.”

  Tony shook his head slightly. “He has no intention of letting you go now that you’re here. At least, not all of you.”

  I blurted out, “But my mom will never come here. She’ll never let him bring the others here. She won’t let him.”

  Tony said, “Really? There’s nothing on earth that would get her to change her mind?”

  “No, she—” I stopped. Dad would use us. Me, Eddy, Lexie. “He’ll use us. He’ll use us to get her here.”

  Tony nodded. “He’s going to send you. Alone. I’ll be flying you out tomorrow. And he knows if you ever want to see Eddy and Lexie again, you’ll bring the rest of your family back.”

  I studied his face. There wasn’t a trace of smugness in his face or the tone of his voice. So what was left? Could it be remorse? Guilt?

  I said, “I can’t let him do this to us again. Make us prisoners in his private world.”

  And then I did something I never thought possible. I dropped to my knees in front of Philip A. Whitaker and begged, “Please help me stop him before it’s too late.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  “Oh, God, kid, don’t do this.” Tony reached out and grabbed my elbow, pulling me back up to my feet. “Get up. You know I can’t help.”

  “Why not?” I grabbed him by the arms so I was right in his face.

  “You know why not.” He tried to push me away, not unkindly. “You know my loyalty lies with him.”

  I dropped my arms and stepped back. My hands turned to fists at my side. “Why?” I asked. “Why do you have to be loyal to him? The rest of the world thinks my father is dead. Eddy and I are set to inherit everything.” As much as it disgusted me to say it, I did. “We could give you a permanent place at YK, just like you wanted. You could have your job like it was. I would see to it.”

  Tony stepped back, shaking his head. “That’s not what you want and you know it.”

  I clasped my hands at the back of my head and looked up at the sky. “What I want is to be back in Seattle with my family. My whole family.”

  “And Rex? You want your dad, too?” he asked.

  That was the worst part. I wanted what any son wanted: a father to be there for me, pick me up after my failures, feel pride at my successes.

  I dropped my arms and faced him again. “That man … is not my father. Not the father I knew. That man … that man … is a monster.”

  And in that moment, I knew how Lexie felt, knowing the truth about her birth mother and the atrocities she’d committed. Powerless. I knew my dad’s genes were coursing through my own body, my own brain, and I could do nothing about it. Rex Yanakakis, and everything he was, was what I came from.

  The difference was that Lexie had the comfort of knowing she had not been raised by her biological monster, that our mother had been nothing like that.

  But everything I was—everything I knew—had been affected, cultivated, bred by my monster. Nature and nurture. There was no escaping that fact. Which meant the only chance for me was to escape him.

  I asked, “What time do we leave tomorrow?”

  “Long flight. Would rather get an early start.” Tony glanced at his watch. “About eight?” His eyes were wary. “Listen, whatever you’re planning, I can’t help you—”

  “I know.”

  He watched me for a moment. “So you’ll be ready to leave at eight?”

  “Yes.” And then I added, “You’d better have the jet ready to go.”

  So I would be flying out the next day. Without Lexie and Eddy. I would be the one sent to bring back the whole family. But I would never do it. I would never allow Mom and the others to get on a plane and come and be prisoners again. But the only way to prevent that would be to get Eddy and Lexie on the plane with me.

  Back at the house, Eddy, Lexie, and our father were seated at the table. They had all showered and changed as well. Eddy wore board shorts and a T-shirt, while Lexie wore a flowered dress.

  “Sorry,” I said. “I wanted a walk on the beach before dinner.”

  Dad smiled. “It’s lovely, isn’t it?”

  I answered honestly. “Most beautiful beach I’ve ever seen in my life.” I slid into a chair next to Eddy and he handed me a plate with rib eye steaks on it. I stabbed one with my fork and set it on my plate, then passed them on to my father.

  He took one and set the plate down. “I thought we could all walk the beach after dinner.”

  I dished up some salad and asparagus, then started eating. I was starving and had eaten half my plate before I set my fork down. “So are we leaving tomorrow?”

  Dad paused, his fork in midair. “I’ll make sure the jet is ready.”

  Eddy said, “But we just got here.”

  “Yeah,” added Lexie. “I wanted some
time on the beach.”

  Dad smiled. “You two are staying. Eli will go back and get the rest of the family.”

  Eddy sat up. “They’re all coming?”

  “Everyone will be together?” Lexie asked. She glanced at me. “Mom is on board for a vacation?”

  “It’s not a vacation.” I turned to my father. “Isn’t that right, Dad?”

  He looked slightly uncomfortable before catching himself and putting a smile on his face. “We all belong together, and this is the most beautiful place I could find.”

  How was I going to convince Eddy that he and Lexie needed to be on the plane with me? He was so happy; he’d just gotten his father back, and the island was paradise.

  The rest of dinner was small talk, and then Dad stood up. “Should we take that walk now?”

  We all went out on the beach, Lexie in front, then me, then Eddy and Dad, all of us walking on the wet, hard-packed sand, leaving footprints that washed away as soon as each wave came in. Behind me, Eddy told Dad, with a slight wobble in his voice, “It is so wonderful to be back with you.”

  Dad put his arm around Eddy’s shoulder. “I missed you, son. Leaving you out of the Compound was the hardest part of the whole thing.”

  Did he say leaving him out? I forced myself to keep walking, pretend I wasn’t listening.

  Dad continued, “But one of us had to stay in the real world, keep the name going. Otherwise YK might have been broken up, gone downhill.”

  I whipped around, standing in their path and forcing them to stop. “You’re a liar.”

  Dad’s lips trembled for a moment before he forced them into a smile. “It’s been a long time, Eli. It’s probably hard for you to remember.”

  I shook my head. “No, I remember it like it was yesterday. And it was not part of your plan to leave him out!”

  Eddy said, “Dude, just chill. You were a little kid and—”

  “No!” I shouted. “I remember it like it was yesterday because I thought about it every frickin’ day for six years! Dad didn’t plan it! He was shocked when he closed the door and you weren’t there. I remember!”

  Dad said, “Son, you may not have known it at the time, but leaving Eddy out was definitely prearranged.”