The Doubt Factory

  “I told you, it wasn’t like that!”

  “If a stranger knew my name and grabbed me, I’d have crippled him. Why haven’t you called the cops?”

  “He said it was for me.”

  “What?”

  “The thing with the paint and rats and everything… he said it was for me. Right before it happened.”

  “For you, how? Like a big snuggly stalker present?”

  “I don’t know. I asked him what he meant, and he told me to ask my dad.”

  “Your dad? Ew. Now your guy sounds incest-y, too. Seriously, girl. Call the cops. They don’t have any leads on this guy. You could probably help.”

  “Yeah. I know. I should.” Alix swirled the ice in her drink, avoiding looking over at Cynthia.

  Cynthia sighed. “But you’re not going to, are you?”

  5

  ALIX DIDN’T WANT TO ADMIT it in front of Cynthia, but the more she thought about it, the more she realized she was considering not telling anyone at all.

  Cynthia seemed to be reading her mind. “He assaulted Mr. Mulroy,” Cynthia reminded her. “You do remember that, don’t you?”

  “So? What am I supposed to say?” Alix playacted the way it would go if she went public. “Um, like, so, there’s this guy? And, like, I think he’s stalking me?” Alix made a face of annoyance. “It’ll look like I’m trying to get attention. People will make something out of it. I don’t need that. Next thing you know, I’ll be a joke on TV.”

  “You’re making excuses.”

  “I am not!”

  “Are you hot for him?” Cynthia accused suddenly.

  “What? Ew!” Alix socked Cynthia’s arm. “No!”

  “So why aren’t you at least telling your dad?”

  “I don’t know.… I guess I don’t want to make a big thing out of this. Maybe if he’d put my name up there instead of that stupid 2.0 stuff, then maybe I’d say something. Seriously, I don’t need the hassle.”

  “So what’s he want with your dad? He said something about your dad, right?”

  “How should I know?”

  Cynthia let out an exasperated breath. “What’d the stalker say?”

  “I don’t remember too much,” Alix lied. “It was all happening so fast.” Cynthia kept glaring at her. Alix relented. “Okay, okay. I think I asked him what all this prank stuff meant—you know, why he was doing this stuff, and he said, ‘Ask your father.’ That was it, I swear. I think he was making some kind of joke.”

  “Like a ‘your mother’ thing?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe. Something like that.”

  “You think maybe he was serious?” Cynthia prodded.

  “How would I know?”

  “You could… you know…” Cynthia jerked her head toward the window where Dad was still having his loud conversation. “Ask your dad if he knows anything that would clear it up.…”

  “He’s busy,” Alix said.

  Cynthia rolled her eyes. “Oh, yeah. Totally busy. He wouldn’t have any time to talk to his teenage daughter about some creep who’s stalking her.”

  “He wasn’t stalking.”

  Cynthia gave her another hard look.

  “Okay, okay. Lay off, Tiger Mom.” Alix made a face. “I’ll do it.” She started to get up, then sat back down again. “Tonight.”

  “Gah!” Cynthia threw up her hands. “I can’t stand the suspense. Promise to tell me what he says, at least.”

  “I promise.”

  “I’m serious, Alix. Don’t do some kind of bad-boy romance thing on me, girl. Stalker crushes are so last year.”

  It was like Cynthia had climbed inside her head and was reading every single guilty thought almost before Alix thought it. “The guy’s a total stranger,” Alix said. “I’m not hot for him.”

  “No? The big, strong, black stranger? Sooo hot.” Cynthia pretended to fan herself and fluttered her eyelashes. “Sooooooo hot.”

  “It’s not like that!” Under Cynthia’s judging gaze, Alix finally conceded. “Okay, okay. I’ll talk to my dad. Tonight. I promise.”

  “Fine. Good.” Cynthia’s phone beeped with a text message. She checked it and frowned. “I’ve got to get home. My mom’s freaking.”

  She dialed and pressed the phone to her ear. “Ma? Meiyou. Everything’s fine. Shi. Shi. Shi. Wo zai Alix jia. Buzhidao. Some kind of weird prank. Wo zenme zhidao?”

  She rolled her eyes at Alix and made a circling motion with her finger beside her ear. Crazy mom. “Haole. I’m coming home now.”

  She climbed out of the lounge chair and started pulling on her socks and shoes. “Sorry. She’s totally flipping.”

  Alix was secretly relieved to have Cynthia getting off her back, but as Alix let her out the door, Cynthia stopped and turned to Alix again. “You’ll ask your dad, right?”

  Alix tried to look obedient. “Yes, I will.”

  “Seriously, Alix. This isn’t like you. This is the kind of thing Denise or Sophie would do. At least talk to your dad about this. Don’t turn into some kind of weird thrill seeker on me. I don’t do the whole good-girl-turns-rebel cliché.”

  Alix saluted. “Okay, Tiger Mom. Will do.”

  Cynthia laughed and made her hands into claws as Alix pushed her outside. “Rawr!” she said. Alix closed the door on her. The door clicked.

  Alix leaned against it and sighed with relief.

  It was great that she and Cynthia listened to the same music and liked to rave and that Cynthia was always free to go out for coffee or talk about Jane Austen. But sometimes she could be freakishly overbearing, as if she was trying to prove that she could be more adult—

  “Talk to your dad about the stalker!” Cynthia’s voice filtered through the door.

  Alix winced. “I heard you already!”

  Even though she’d shut Cynthia outside, the girl’s admonishments refused to go away. Tiger Mom had done her job, apparently, and managed to get Alix’s conscience involved.

  With a sigh of frustration, Alix went to her father’s office door and knocked. Inside, the talking stopped.

  “Come in!”

  Hesitantly, she pushed the door open. “Dad?”

  Dad looked a little annoyed to be interrupted, but he at least made the effort to smile. “What is it, Alix?”

  “Can I talk to you?”

  He glanced over at George. “We’re sort of in the middle of something. Is it important?”

  “Yeah.” She hesitated, trying to decide how much she really wanted to push. “I mean, well, I don’t know.”

  Smooth, Alix. Real smooth.

  Dad smiled at George. “Could you give us a second?”

  “Sure.” George got up. “Take all the time you need. I was feeling parched anyway.” He squeezed past, patting her on the shoulder as he left. “Good to see you, Alix.”

  “Yeah. You too.”

  “Well?” Dad asked.

  Alix settled gingerly into George’s still-warm chair. The office was large; it had been expanded when Dad did the renovation so that he could work one day a week at home.

  “What’s going on?” Dad asked. “Why aren’t you at school? Are you okay?”

  “Yeah. I’m fine.” She paused. “I don’t know. Something weird happened at school today, and… I wanted to talk about it.”

  “Something bad?”

  “No. Yes.” She shrugged. “I don’t know. There was a prank at school. I left a voice mail.”

  Dad frowned. “I’ve been on calls all day. Something happened?”

  As Alix outlined the events, Dad’s face turned more and more serious. She found herself avoiding the real reason for going into his office, but, finally, she couldn’t talk around it anymore. “So…” She hesitated and then blurted out, “The guy who did it talked to me.”

  It took a second to register, but when it did, Dad’s response was just as bad as she’d expected it to be.

  “What?” He looked shocked. “What do you mean, he talked to you? How did he talk to you? When?” br />
  Alix found herself rushing to explain. “He snuck up on me. He sort of whispered in my ear—”

  “He touched you?”

  “No! It wasn’t like that! Why does everyone think that’s what happened? He didn’t do anything like that. He just said I should watch the prank. And…” There was no way to minimize it, and Alix knew it would sound terrible as soon as she said it.

  “He knew my name.”

  Dad’s expression went from surprise and concern to the intense look that she saw only when he was solving a serious work problem. She’d seen it when he talked about having to fire someone or when a client was being difficult or when there was a PR crisis. He was suddenly totally focused on Alix, and his voice was dead serious.

  “Tell me everything, Alix. Everything you can remember.”

  And she did. She told him about the prank and how the stranger had looked totally different from the day before. She told him how the guy, whom she was starting more and more to think of as 2.0, had whispered in her ear and how he’d told her to ask her dad what was going on.

  “He wanted you to talk to me?” Dad looked puzzled.

  “That’s what he said.”

  “But he went after you.”

  Alix could see anger rising on her father’s face. She rushed to explain. “He didn’t do anything to me, though.”

  “He did, actually.” Dad’s voice was rising. “He targeted you. Some lunatic activist is targeting my daughter.”

  “He didn’t look like an activist.”

  “Not every activist douses himself with patchouli and dreads his hair, Alix. Let me lay this out for you. This is serious. He knows your name. He knows where you go to school. He probably knows where you live. He just told you he’s after me, but what he didn’t say is that he probably knows Jonah and your mother and all your friends.”

  “He said I should ask you what all this was about. Why did he say that?”

  “There are a million possibilities.” Dad’s brow furrowed as he considered. “With the rats, it could be some animal rights activist who doesn’t like the lab-testing one of my clients does. It might be some religious fanatic who doesn’t like stem cell research. I do government work. It could be antinuclear.…” He stood up and went to the door. “George! I want a security detail here at the house, ASAP. Alix and Jonah will need someone to take them to and from school.”

  George didn’t even blink at the weird request.

  “Williams and Crowe?”

  “Yes. Definitely. Get them. I don’t want to have to waste time bringing people up to speed.”

  George pulled out his cell and started dialing. His Santa Claus features no longer appeared calm or jolly. He looked as dead serious as her father.

  “Who’s he calling?” Alix asked, feeling unmoored as the two men went to work on the problem.

  “A security firm I’ve worked with in the past,” Dad said. “They’re the best.”

  “Dad!” Alix said. “I don’t need security. Nobody’s trying to hurt me.”

  “You don’t know that.” Dad started ticking off points on his fingers. “This is someone who has already assaulted the headmaster. Someone who has managed to bypass all the security at your school. Someone who has the technical skill and willingness to use explosives. Someone who is obviously methodical, and who is clearly targeting us. Just because you don’t feel like you’re at risk doesn’t mean you’re safe. I don’t want to give him an opportunity to take you.”

  “You think I’m going to be kidnapped?”

  “If I knew, Alix, I wouldn’t be worried. But that’s the point, isn’t it? If someone takes you, what can I do? The world isn’t a safe place. Everyone’s a crazy, these days. Radicals come in a dozen different stripes, and they all think the ends justify the means. Maybe I can get you back, maybe I can pay enough to make someone set you free, maybe I can beg for them to let you go alive, but if someone takes you, it will mean that that’s all I’m doing: begging. I won’t let you get hurt—” He stopped short. “Where’s Jonah?”

  “I—” Alix’s heart gave a flip of worry as she realized that she didn’t know. “He ditched me at school,” she said. “I was trying to keep track of him, but you know how he is.…” She stopped talking. Dad was staring at her. Alix felt suddenly, coldly, afraid.

  “Did he leave on his own?” Dad asked. “Or did someone take him?”

  “I don’t know—”

  “You were distracted,” Dad accused.

  The stranger leaning close, his hands gripping my shoulders, whispering in my ear to watch the prank. To see what happened next. The rats coming out, pouring down the stairs, all of them spreading out over the lawns like a fluffy carpet…

  Oh God. What have I done?

  “When the guy talked to me,” Alix admitted miserably, “I lost Jonah right after.”

  “Dammit!” Dad exploded. “George! I want Crowe’s people here, now! They’ve got Jonah! And call Romero at the FBI. Tell him that it’s not just pranks now.”

  Now?

  “You know who these people are?” Alix asked, but Dad ignored her.

  “You shouldn’t leave the house,” George was saying.

  “If they wanted me, they would have already come after me.” Dad was pacing back and forth. “Goddammit! Why didn’t I see this? Why didn’t you see this?”

  “Nobody—”

  “Never mind. Get me Romero. They’ve gone over the line. I want the security here, now! Find my son.”

  George was dialing furiously on his mobile even as he was nodding. Dad was picking up his own phone, pushing the button that would give him an encrypted line out. He’d had the line installed when he started doing work for the Department of Energy, and Alix had always thought it was sort of overly dramatic that PR would need that much secrecy, but now…

  “Dad, I—” She stopped short as her father looked up from the phone at her. He looked so sad and angry and frightened that she couldn’t get any words out. She’d never seen him like this. He’d always seemed so together. Mom sometimes lost it about things, but Dad never lost it.

  “I’m sorry,” she whispered, but he wasn’t paying attention to her anymore. He was talking into the phone.

  “Priority code. Alpha. Alpha. Five. Nine. Zero. Tango. Zulu. Eight. Victor. Nine. Two. Alpha.” Pause. “Affirm.” Another pause, then:

  “This is Simon Banks. My son has been kidnapped.”

  6

  THE HOUSE WAS FULL OF people. There were guys from the FBI, plus some other agency that Alix was starting to suspect was Secret Service, plus the private security people from Williams & Crowe. Two clean-cut guys were going through the whole house and the grounds outside, scouting for whatever it was that security people scouted for after it was too late to do anything, and more people were on their cells, talking to different law enforcement agencies, and coming in and out of the house on mysterious errands.

  Alix sat alone and miserable, watching her world fall apart.

  A slim woman in a black pantsuit came over and introduced herself. “Hi, Alix, I’m Lisa Price. I’ve been assigned to you.”

  “Are you my bodyguard?” Alix asked, feeling dull and lost in the mess and horror of it all.

  Lisa smiled gently. “Something like that. We’re all here to protect you. I understand you have a description of the man who took your brother?”

  “I already told, like, fifty people.”

  “Why don’t you go over it again with me.”

  So Alix did. Lisa kept asking her more questions: Who was standing next to Jonah? And who had been standing with her? And then what happened?

  Going over it again was like ripping open a wound. Everything she told Lisa just reminded her that she’d lost track of Jonah, and it had happened because she’d been obsessed with chasing after her stalker.

  This was her fault. She’d let her own brother get kidnapped. Alix wanted to vomit.

  “Do you remember anything else?”

  Alix shook he
r head. “I don’t know. I can’t… I can’t tell anymore.”

  She’d been asked so many times that the events in her head were starting to seem fixed and unchanging. She wasn’t sure if any of the details were real memories or if her brain was just making things up now because she wanted so badly to fill in the blanks for the investigators.

  Lisa must have seen something in Alix’s face, because the woman reached over to touch her hand.

  “Hey, Alix. Don’t worry. I’m just trying to understand who I need to be looking out for. Do you have photos of your friends, too? I need to know about you. If I’m going to be protecting you, I need to know who to consider a threat and who to pay more attention to.”

  “You mean you can beat up my enemies?” Alix almost managed to smile.

  Lisa smiled kindly. “Only if they try to beat you up first.”

  The door burst open.

  “Mr. Banks!” a huge guy in a suit called out. “Mr. Banks!” His voice was followed by a higher, familiar voice that made Alix’s heart pound with relief.

  “Let me go!”

  Jonah was being dragged in by the security guys.

  “Leggo of me, you goons!”

  Dad ran over and the guys let Jonah go. Dad scooped him up. “Oh my God. Oh my God.”

  Alix didn’t even realize that she’d run over, too, leaping to Jonah so fast she hadn’t felt herself doing it. She grabbed him and hugged him.

  “Let go of me!” Jonah kept saying. “What’s going on? What’s with the goons? Of course I’m okay! I’m fine! Let go, will you?”

  Finally, they let him wriggle free.

  “You ran away!” Alix accused him. “You just took off! Do you know how worried I was? Do you know—”

  She broke off, because all of a sudden she was crying, all the fear and relief and anger pouring out of her. “You ran away!”

  Jonah was looking at her like she was crazy. “But that’s what I do.”

  They both looked at each other, and then Alix started to laugh and cry at the same time. She grabbed him and pulled him close, hugging him and wishing that she could hug him harder still. “Yeah. Sure, bro. That’s what you do. We should’ve known.”