The Doubt Factory

  Adam glanced at Moses. “Seriously?”

  “Doing some kind of Peeping Tom routine,” Kook said. “He talked to her.”

  “I wanted to see what they were up to,” Moses protested.

  “That’s what you’ve got us for! We’re the anonymous ones!” Kook said. “You’ve got an identity. They’ve already got you on camera.”

  “All they’ve got is versions of me.”

  “You know what I mean.” She scowled at him. “We shouldn’t be doing this. You’re in too close.”

  “I’m not too close.”

  “I’ll bet you know what color bra she wore today.”

  Moses glared at her. “I know you’re wearing a black one—so?”

  Adam watched the two of them arguing. “Nobody ever asks me what color bra I wear.”

  Kook shot him a dirty look. Adam raised his hands defensively. “My bad.” He went back to the fridge and started pulling out two-liters of Coke. He peered between the bottles and then pulled out a quarter round of the most expensive-looking cheese that Moses had ever seen.

  “What’s that?”

  Adam at least had the grace to look guilty. Moses couldn’t believe it. “Is that for the rats?” he asked.

  “Just one of them.” Adam opened his jacket, revealing a white rat tucked into his inner breast pocket. “He’s cute, right?”

  Moses stared at the ceiling. “I live in an asylum.”

  “This from the stalker?” Kook said.

  “I am not a stalker,” Moses shot back.

  Tank came in carrying a load of pizza boxes and stopped abruptly. He still had on his welder’s helmet, and judging from the look in his eyes, he wanted to slam the welding shield down and hide.

  Adam took the pizza boxes from Tank and put them on the huge trestle table that they’d set up in the kitchen. “Come on,” he said, draping his arm over Tank’s shoulders. “Mom and Dad are fighting.”

  “Fuck you, Adam,” Kook called after him.

  “Not really interested, but thanks.” He ushered Tank out of the room, leaving Moses and Kook to face off.

  Moses said, “You want to seriously mess with Tank’s mind any more than it’s already been messed with?”

  “Don’t pull that con-man shit on me. We’re only fighting because you’re an idiot. The kid’ll be fine as long as you don’t fuck up his entire life because you’re addicted to some chick.”

  Moses paused, trying to feel out the edges of Kook’s rage. “What’s getting you? Seriously. So I went and peeked in their windows. You know how good I am. You know Williams and Crowe are nothing for me.”

  “Sure sure sure. You come and go like the wind. You’re a real genius at that shit.”

  “That’s right. I’m a ghost. They never even know I’m there.”

  “Except when you screw up and punch some headmaster.”

  “That was one time.”

  “What would your uncle say if you gave him that line?”

  Moses grimaced. “Well, I didn’t screw up this time.”

  “So what about the next—” She held up a hand before Moses had a chance to respond. “No. Don’t answer me. This is getting serious now. That’s what I want to say,” Kook said. “This is getting serious, and we can’t afford a screwup.”

  “We knew it was going to get serious,” Moses said.

  “Banks pushed the panic button way sooner than we expected.”

  “Just because the brother pulled a disappearing act on them. It wasn’t even us. They just overreacted.”

  “It doesn’t matter why, does it? What matters is that now they’re crawling with big guns. Williams and Crowe has it out for us. After the rat raid, they’re off the leash.”

  “Those rats.” Moses shook his head. “They’re turning out to be a serious pain in the ass.”

  “Don’t change the subject.” Kook glared at him. “I’m telling you, don’t get wrapped up in the target. We’ve been planning this too long for you to screw this up.”

  “I won’t.”

  “You better not. I swear to God I’ll pull the plug on this whole thing and let you burn if I think you’re going to screw it up.”

  Moses looked at her. “Come on, Kook. I’m not going to screw it up. You know me.”

  “No, I don’t. I used to think I did. But now?” Kook shook her head. “I have no idea who you are.”

  Moses could see how worked up Kook was. She looked positively strung out. She was pretty deep into her high, riding the weird, ragged edge of pot and caffeine that she claimed kept her inspired and that also kept her sleepless for days at a time. The high that Adam kept telling her wasn’t healthy, but she didn’t care. She’s exhausted. Moses could see it in her bloodshot eyes and the dark circles under them. Even her Goth makeup couldn’t hide it.

  He was aware of Adam and Tank listening from the doorway. Everyone was so fragile. So damn fragile.

  “Yeah, you do know me,” Moses said. “You do.”

  “No. You’re changing. Half the time I think you believe your own bullshit.”

  “I’ll never change on you. Trust that. I will never let you down. That’s what people out there do,” Moses said, willing her to believe. “That’s not us. We’re solid. We’re granite.”

  “You say. And then you go and sneak out and look in the target’s window.”

  “Okay. My bad. It won’t happen again.”

  “You promise?”

  “Promise.” He went over to her, bent lower, so he was looking into her wild, dilated eyes. “This is me, Kook. It’s still me. Same as I always was. I’m a chameleon out there, but that’s not who I am here. Not with us. We’re family, right?”

  “Sure we are.”

  “I’m serious. I won’t risk us. Not ever. Not for a second.”

  Kook looked up at him. In her eyes, he could see the wounds she hid from the outside world. They were family all right. He had scars. She had scars. The two boys listening at the door had scars. He pulled Kook close, into a hug.

  “We’re family,” he said.

  Kook went rigid for a second and then hugged him back. “My big black brother.”

  “You know it.” He laughed. “Get in here, you guys.”

  “Is it safe?” Adam called.

  “Yeah,” Moses said. “Get in here. You might as well listen where you can actually hear.”

  They both slunk into the kitchen. A rat ran across the floor, startled by their movement. Tank jumped and said, “Would you put that thing back in its cage?”

  “I—” Adam checked his jacket. “It’s not mine. I still got my little guy. You must have let that one out when we moved all the cages.”

  “No way. Don’t blame that shit on me,” Tank said. “If there’s rats still around, it’s because you kept letting them loose when you fed them.”

  “Let it go,” Moses said. “Come here, you guys. Gather round. Kook’s right. This is serious. No mistakes from here on out. We’ve got no room for mistakes.”

  He looked around at his crew. A ragtag bunch of kids as haunted as he was. Not a single one of them the same, and yet every one of them related, bound together by hurt and horror.

  “We can still back out,” he said. “We can pull back right now. Walk away. This is our last chance, though. Once we start the next stage, we’re going to be up to our necks.”

  “Once you’re halfway across the channel, you might as well keep swimming,” Adam said.

  “I don’t even know what that means,” Moses said.

  “The English Channel…” Adam shook his head. “Never mind. You’d have to be a swimmer.”

  Tank snickered. “A prep school swimmer. We should have sent you into Seitz. Target would have loved you.”

  Adam wrinkled his nose with disgust. “I can’t think of anything worse.”

  “Knock it off,” Moses said. “Seriously. After we make the next play, we’re committed, forever. Right now, we can still walk away, live good lives. Forget any of this even happened. But
after this? We’re in too deep. There’s no backing out.”

  He looked at each of them. “I’m not much for democracy, but this one time, we need to vote. I need to hear that you’re all in. I already got one vote, but I need to hear it from you three. I’m ready to go on. But if you don’t want to carry this weight, I get it. You can back out now, and I’d understand. So… are you in?”

  Moses found himself holding his breath, wondering if he was making a mistake of leadership doing this. He knew he could talk them into it. He could poke and prod and cajole. He was good at that. He could con a body just as well as Simon Banks. He knew which words would produce which results, and it was tempting to use them. He shook off the urge.

  There’s no other way. There’s no way to do this. And then, on the heels of that thought, came another. It’s too much. This is too much to ask of anyone. I shouldn’t be pulling them into this at all.

  Kook blew out her breath. “Yeah. I’m in. I was in before. I’m in now. All the way down the rabbit hole, if that’s what it takes.”

  Adam gave Moses a lazy mock-salute. “You don’t have to ask me. The ride’s been good so far. I’m definitely around for the finale.”

  Tank nodded, his welding helmet wiggling. “In. Most definitely in.”

  Moses looked around at the group, and for a moment he couldn’t speak.

  “Like you say,” Tank said. “We’re family. Nothing’s going to change that.”

  Moses blinked and looked away, afraid they’d see tears in his eyes.

  Sometimes he felt so alone that it felt like his body was being ripped apart by the loneliness, and then, at times like this, he felt so complete that he wondered how he’d even been able to walk down the street without them, let alone breathe.

  He pulled them close. “That’s it, then,” he said. “We’re going for it.”

  12

  LIFE SETTLED INTO A ROUTINE. Alix and Cynthia defaulted to going home every day and hanging out in her room or playing Xbox with Jonah in a weirdly domestic habit that got Death Barbie off their backs.

  Alix got the feeling that Cynthia was taking pity on her and wanted to be elsewhere, but, still, she loyally went home with her even though it would have been more fun to spend time driving out to the ocean, or going shopping with Sophie, or teasing Derek—or doing almost anything other than staying at Alix’s house.

  “You think you’re ever going to get your life back?” Cynthia asked as she fiddled with the Xbox and swapped out Jonah’s SwordSlayer IX game.

  “Ask 2.0,” Alix said. “Why?”

  Cynthia looked uncomfortable. “There’s that rave.…”

  Alix got it immediately. “And nobody’s going to be excited to see my security detail show up.”

  “It’s not me,” Cynthia said. “But everyone else is sure that Death Barbie is going to rat them out to their parents. Either that or call the cops.”

  “Thanks for the trust.”

  “I’m just saying.”

  Alix felt the gulf between her and Cynthia widening. “I get it if you want to go without me.”

  “You idiot,” Cynthia said as she booted up Left 4 Dead. “I’m not trying to ditch you. I’m trying to figure out a way to bust you out.”

  Alix laughed. “My dad would kill me.”

  “Better to beg for forgiveness than ask for permission,” Cynthia quoted.

  “Is that one of those sayings from your father?”

  “I think it was some admiral.”

  Alix sat with the idea. Her parents would lose their shit if she actually did this, but she’d been cooped up for the last week with Lisa. Even if she had started feeling bad about calling the woman Death Barbie, she was dying for some time alone.

  “What am I supposed to do about 2.0? He’s out there somewhere.”

  “Have you seen anything from him?” Cynthia asked. “Has he done anything else? Has he even shown his face since the school thing?”

  “You mean other than when he was stalking and staring into my kitchen?”

  Cynthia snickered. “Yeah. Other than that.”

  “When did you get so blasé about all this?” Alix asked. “2.0 basically said he was coming after my family.”

  Cynthia shot her a serious look. “Yeah. I’ve been reading about that.”

  “About what?”

  “Assassinations.”

  “What?????”

  “No! Sorry!” Cynthia waved her hands frantically. “Not like that! Not like someone’s going to snipe you. Just about people who get targeted. What I read is that the most dangerous thing a target can do is have a routine. The routine is what makes it easy for the bad guys to get at you. If you don’t have a routine, then they don’t have a chance to set up on you.” She glanced around the house. “It could be that the most dangerous thing you’re doing is coming home every day and playing Xbox.”

  “I don’t know.”

  Cynthia looked bummed. She pulled out the flyer. “Check it out.”

  “Where is this?”

  “Some warehouse in Hartford.”

  “Long drive.”

  “It’s an out-of-the-way, out-of-the-pattern long drive. It’s as safe as houses.”

  “I thought you said my house wasn’t safe,” Alix cracked.

  “You know you want to go.”

  Alix considered the unpalatable idea of another weekend alone in the house with bodyguards watching her swim in the pool.

  “Yes,” she said decisively.

  Cynthia perked up, looking more like a happy puppy than a girl. “Yes?”

  “Yeah.” She laughed. “I definitely need it.”

  “Hell, girl. You deserve it!”

  Alix felt a frisson of excitement. Hell yes. I deserve it.

  And what were the risks, really? Cynthia’s theory of safety pretty much matched what Lisa had been telling Alix about how Williams & Crowe thought about security. A target needed to have a pattern in order to be vulnerable. It was why Death Barbie and Hulk took a different route to school every day. They changed up their travel a lot, to make it harder for Alix to be picked out.

  So it made sense that if someone was looking to mess with her, the one thing they definitely wouldn’t be prepared for was the same thing that Lisa and the rest of the Williams & Crowe people wouldn’t be prepared for—Alix’s ditching them all unexpectedly.

  “I can’t make my parents worry, though.”

  “We’ll leave a note.” Cynthia’s eyes glinted with mischief. “And we’ll have you back before dawn. Well,” she amended, “at least by late morning.”

  Alix laughed. “So how are we going to do this?”

  “Are you kidding, girl? I’ve been thinking about this for days.” Cynthia tapped her head. “Been using my big brain to work it all out.”

  “So Derek’s right. You never do study.”

  “I never study boring things, that’s all. Ditching Death Barbie is actually kind of awesome.”

  Alix’s heart was pounding as they went into the mall. Cynthia had chosen it because of the layout of the back doors. The trick was all about pulling a switch. Denise and Sophie were happy to help.

  “We just need a little misdirection,” Cynthia had explained. “Lisa’s job is to keep an eye on you, but she isn’t actually watching you. She’s watching to make sure nobody grabs you. So we’re going to take advantage of that.…”

  Denise and Sophie would be the decoys. It would take a quick switch of people in the changing rooms at Aritzia. Denise would go in earlier and wait for Alix to go in. Lisa would want to watch the dressing room door where Alix went in, but she wouldn’t know that Denise was already in there.

  Everything was going as planned as she shopped around, and Alix made her way to the dressing rooms. She slipped into the stall and met Denise. Silently, they swapped outfits. After a minute, Alix leaned out of her changing stall. “Lisa?”

  Lisa glanced back at her. “Yes?”

  “Can you get me this in a four?” She held out a camis
ole.

  Lisa glanced around the place. There was no one in the store. Alix watched, with her heart racing.

  When Lisa went away, she switched to the stall across from her and waited as Denise accepted the new camisole from Lisa over the top of the stall. “Thanks,” Alix heard her sort of grunt. Alix put on a blond wig that she’d brought in her purse to further confuse and distract Lisa.

  Alix waited until she heard Sophie arrive on the scene and start to chitchat with Lisa, pretending to be surprised to see her friend’s bodyguard there.

  Sophie’s arrival was the cue. It was going to happen soon.

  Alix heard the door across from her open. Denise would be wearing the wig she’d styled in an approximation of Alix’s brown hair. As Sophie was chatting up Lisa, Denise would be walking away from Death Barbie, toward the racks on the opposite side. Sophie followed, calling out, “Hey, Alix, how’s it going?” and walked over to her.

  Three, two, one… Alix peered out of her own dressing room door now. Lisa was trailing after them, her back to Alix. Now or never.

  She slipped out of the dressing room and walked away as quickly as she could. Walking, trying not to run… trying not to panic as her heart pounded.

  Behind her she heard an exclamation—Death Barbie discovering the switch too soon. Dammit! Alix bolted. She hit the service entrance, labeled EMPLOYEES ONLY, and then was off and running down the back corridors of the mall.

  “Alix! Stop!”

  Alix spared a glance back. Oh shit. Lisa was scary fast. The woman was charging down the corridor like some kind of insane Olympic sprinter.

  Okay, fine. Let’s run, then! Alix put her head down and ran, putting everything into it, just like at track and field.… She blasted past a FedEx guy with a bunch of packages on a cart and hit the loading-entrance doors. Slammed out into bright sunshine.

  Cynthia was waiting right where she said she’d be, in her Miata with the motor running.

  Behind her, Lisa shouted again, “Alix!”

  Cynthia leaned over and shoved open the passenger door as the mall doors slammed open, Death Barbie coming through them like a freight train.

  “Come on!” Cynthia shouted.

  Alix dove in.

  Cynthia peeled out, driving so fast Alix almost fell back out the open door. “What are you doing?” she shouted as she grabbed for the dash and the seat, trying to stay inside the careering car.