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  “Headache’s better,” Katie announced.

  Yes, Kalisha thought, the headaches get better after the movies . . . but only for a little while. A shorter little while each time.

  “Another fun night at the movies,” George muttered.

  “All right, children, what have we learned?” Nicky asked. “That somebody somewhere don’t much care for the Reverend Paul Westin, of Deerfield, Indiana.”

  Kalisha zipped a thumb across her lips and looked at the ceiling. Bugs, she thought at Nicky. Be careful.

  Nick put a finger-gun to his head and pretended to shoot himself. It made the others smile. It would be different tomorrow, Kalisha knew. No smiles then. After tomorrow’s show, Dr. Hendricks would appear with his sparkler lit, and the hum would rise to a white-noise roar. Levers would be pulled. There would be a period of unknown length, both sublime and horrible, when their headaches would be banished completely. Instead of a clear fifteen or twenty minutes afterward, there might be six or eight hours of blessed relief. And somewhere, Paul Westin of Deerfield, Indiana, would do something that would change his life or end it. For the kids in Back Half, life would go on . . . if you could call it living. The headaches would come back, and worse. Worse each time. Until instead of just feeling the hum, they would become part of it. Just another one of the—

  The gorks!

  That was Avery. No one else could project with such clean strength. It was as if he were living inside her head. That’s how it works, Sha! Because they—

  “They see it,” Kalisha whispered, and there it was, bingo, the missing piece. She put the heels of her hands against her forehead, not because the headache was back, but because it was so beautifully obvious. She grasped Avery’s small, bony shoulder.

  The gorks see what we see. Why else would they keep them?

  Nicky put his arm around Kalisha and whispered in her ear. The touch of his lips made her shiver. “What are you talking about? Their minds are gone. Like ours will be, before long.”

  Avery: That’s what makes them stronger. Everything else is gone. Stripped away. They’re the battery. All we are is . . .

  “The switch,” Kalisha whispered. “The ignition switch.”

  Avery nodded. “We need to use them.”

  When? Helen Simms’s mental voice was that of a small, frightened child. It has to be soon, because I can’t take much more of this.

  “None of us can,” George said. “Besides, right now that bitch—”

  Kalisha gave her head a warning shake, and George continued mentally. He wasn’t very good at it, at least not yet, but Kalisha got the gist. They all did. Right now that bitch Mrs. Sigsby would be concentrating on Luke. Stackhouse, too. Everyone in the Institute would be, because they all knew he’d escaped. This was their chance, while everyone was scared and distracted. They would never get another one so good.

  Nicky began to smile. No time like the present.

  “How?” Iris asked. “How can we do it?”

  Avery: I think I know, but we need Hal and Donna and Len.

  “Are you sure?” Kalisha asked, then added, They’re almost gone.

  “I’ll get them,” Nicky said. He got up. He was smiling. The Avester’s right. Every little bit helps.

  His mental voice was stronger, Kalisha realized. Was that on the sending or receiving end?

  Both, Avery said. He was smiling, too. Because now we’re doing it for ourselves.

  Yes, Kalisha thought. Because they were doing it for themselves. They didn’t have to be a bunch of dazed dummies sitting on the ventriloquist’s knee. It was so simple, but it was a revelation: what you did for yourself was what gave you the power.

  14

  Around the time Avery—dripping wet and shivering—was being pushed through the access tunnel between Front Half and Back Half, the Institute’s Challenger aircraft (940NF on the tail and MAINE PAPER INDUSTRIES on the fuselage) was lifting off from Erie, Pennsylvania, now with its full assault team on board. As the plane reached cruising altitude and set out for the small town of Alcolu, Tim Jamieson and Wendy Gullickson were escorting Luke Ellis into the Fairlee County Sheriff’s Department.

  Many wheels moving in the same machine.

  “This is Luke Ellis,” Tim said. “Luke, meet Deputies Faraday and Wicklow.”

  “Pleased to meet you,” Luke said, without much enthusiasm.

  Bill Wicklow was studying Luke’s bruised face and bandaged ear. “How’s the other guy look?”

  “It’s a long story,” Wendy said before Luke could reply. “Where’s Sheriff John?”

  “In Dunning,” Bill said. “His mother’s in the old folks’ home there. She’s got the . . . you know.” He tapped one temple. “Said he’d be back around five, unless she was having a good day. Then he might stay and eat dinner with her.” He looked at Luke, a beat-up boy in dirty clothes who might as well have been wearing a sign reading RUNAWAY. “Is this an emergency?”

  “A good question,” Tim said. “Tag, did you get that info Wendy requested?”

  “I did,” the one named Faraday said. “If you want to step into Sheriff John’s office, I can give it to you.”

  “That won’t be necessary,” Tim said. “I don’t think you’re going to tell me anything Luke doesn’t already know.”

  “You sure?”

  Tim glanced at Wendy, who nodded, then at Luke, who shrugged. “Yes.”

  “Okay. This boy’s parents, Herbert and Eileen Ellis, were murdered in their home about seven weeks ago. Shot to death in their bedroom.”

  Luke felt as if he were having an out-of-body experience. The dots didn’t come back, but this was the way he felt when they did. He took two steps to the swivel chair in front of the dispatch desk and collapsed onto it. It rolled backward and would have tipped him over if it hadn’t banged into the wall first.

  “Okay, Luke?” Wendy asked.

  “No. Yes. As much as I can be. The assholes in the Institute—Dr. Hendricks and Mrs. Sigsby and the caretakers—told me they were okay, just fine, but I knew they were dead even before I saw it on my computer. I knew it, but it’s still . . . awful.”

  “You had a computer in that place?” Wendy asked.

  “Yes. To play games with, mostly, or look at YouTube music videos. Non-substantive stuff like that. News sites were supposed to be blocked, but I knew a work-around. They should have been monitoring my searches and caught me, but they were just . . . just lazy. Complacent. I wouldn’t have gotten out, otherwise.”

  “What the hell’s he talking about?” Deputy Wicklow asked.

  Tim shook his head. He was still focused on Tag. “You didn’t get this from the Minneapolis police, right?”

  “No, but not because you told me not to. Sheriff John will decide who to contact and when. That’s the way it works here. Meanwhile, though, Google had plenty.” He gave Luke a you might be poison stare. “He’s listed in the database of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, and there are also beaucoup stories about him in the Minneapolis Star Tribune and the St. Paul Pioneer Press. According to the papers, he’s supposed to be brilliant. A child prodigy.”

  “Sounds that way to me,” Bill said. “Uses a lot of big words.”

  I’m right here, Luke thought. Talk about me like I’m here.

  “The police aren’t calling him a person of interest,” Tag said, “at least not in the newspaper stories, but they sure do want to question him.”

  Luke spoke up. “You bet they do. And the first question they ask will probably be ‘Where’d you get the gun, kid?’ ”

  “Did you kill them?” Bill asked the question casually, as if just passing the time. “Tell the truth now, son. It’ll do you a world of good.”

  “No. I love my parents. The people who killed them were thieves, and I was what they came to steal. They didn’t want me because I scored fifteen-eighty on the SATs, or because I can do complex equations in my head, or because I know that Hart Crane committed suicide by jumping off a
boat in the Gulf of Mexico. They killed my mom and dad and kidnapped me because sometimes I could blow out a candle just by looking at it, or flip a pizza pan off the table at Rocket Pizza. An empty pizza pan. A full one would have stayed right where it was.” He glanced at Tim and Wendy and laughed. “I couldn’t even get a job in a lousy roadside carnival.”

  “I don’t see anything funny about any of this,” Tag said, frowning.

  “Neither do I,” Luke said, “but sometimes I laugh, anyway. I laughed a lot with my friends Kalisha and Nick in spite of everything we were going through. Besides, it’s been a long summer.” He didn’t laugh this time, but he smiled. “You have no idea.”

  “I’m thinking you could use some rest,” Tim said. “Tag, have you got anybody in the cells?”

  “Nope.”

  “Okay, why don’t we—”

  Luke took a step backward, alarm on his face. “No way. No way.”

  Tim held up his hands. “Nobody’s going to lock you up. We’d leave the door wide open.”

  “No. Please don’t do that. Please don’t make me go in a cell.” Alarm had become terror, and for the first time Tim began to believe at least one part of the boy’s story. The psychic stuff was bullshit, but he had seen before what he was seeing now, while on the cops—the look and behavior of a child who has been abused.

  “Okay, how about the couch in the waiting area?” Wendy pointed. “It’s lumpy, but not too bad. I’ve stretched out on it a few times.”

  If she had, Tim had never seen her do it, but the kid was clearly relieved. “Okay, I’ll do that. Mr. Jamieson—Tim—you still have the flash drive, right?”

  Tim took it out of his breast pocket and held it up. “Right here.”

  “Good.” He trudged to the couch. “I wish you’d check on that Mr. Hollister. I really think he might be an uncle.”

  Tag and Bill gave Tim identical looks of puzzlement. Tim shook his head.

  “Guys who watch for me,” Luke said. “They pretend to be my uncle. Or maybe a cousin or just a friend of the family.” He caught Tag and Bill rolling their eyes at each other, and smiled again. It was both tired and sweet. “Yeah, I know how it sounds.”

  “Wendy, why don’t you take these officers into Sheriff John’s office and bring them up to speed on what Luke told us? I’ll stay here.”

  “That’s right, you will,” Tag said. “Because until Sheriff John gives you a badge, you’re just the town night knocker.”

  “Duly noted,” Tim said.

  “What’s on the drive?” Bill asked.

  “I don’t know. When the sheriff gets here, we’ll all look at it together.”

  Wendy escorted the two deputies into Sheriff Ashworth’s office and closed the door. Tim heard the murmur of voices. This was his usual time to sleep, but he felt more fully awake than he had in a long time. Since leaving the Sarasota PD, maybe. He wanted to know who the boy beneath the nutty story really was, and where he had been, and what had happened to him.

  He got a cup of coffee from the Bunn in the corner. It was strong but not undrinkable, as it would be by ten o’clock, when he usually stopped in on his night-knocking rounds. He took it back to the dispatch chair. The boy had either gone to sleep or was doing a hell of a good job faking it. On a whim, he grabbed the looseleaf binder that listed all of DuPray’s businesses, and called the DuPray Motel. The phone went unanswered. Hollister hadn’t gone back to his rat trap of a motel after all, it seemed. Which meant nothing, of course.

  Tim hung up, took the flash drive out of his pocket, and looked at it. It also meant nothing, more than likely, but as Tag Faraday had been at pains to point out, that was Sheriff Ashworth’s call. They could wait.

  In the meantime, let the boy get his sleep. If he really had come all the way from Maine in a boxcar, he could use it.

  15

  The Challenger carrying its eleven passengers—Mrs. Sigsby, Tony Fizzale, Winona Briggs, Dr. Evans, and the combined Ruby Red and Opal teams—touched down in Alcolu at quarter past five. For purposes of reporting back to Stackhouse at the Institute, this short dozen was now called Gold team. Mrs. Sigsby was first off the plane. Denny Williams from Ruby Red and Louis Grant from Opal remained onboard, taking care of Gold team’s rather specialized baggage. Mrs. Sigsby stood on the tarmac in spite of the staggering heat and used her cell to call her office landline. Rosalind answered and handed her off to Stackhouse.

  “Have you—” she began, then paused to let the pilot and co-pilot pass, which they did without speaking. One was ex–Air Force, one ex-ANG, and both were like the Nazi guards in that old sitcom Hogan’s Heroes: they saw nothing, they heard nothing. Their job was strictly pickup and delivery.

  Once they were gone, she asked Stackhouse if he had heard anything from their man in DuPray.

  “Indeed I have. Ellis sustained a booboo when he jumped off the train. Did a header into a signal-post. Instant death from a subdural hematoma would have solved most of our problems, but this Hollister says it didn’t even knock him out. A guy running a forklift saw Ellis, took him inside a warehouse near the station, called the local sawbones. He came. A little later a female deputy showed up. Deputy and forklift guy took our boy to the sheriff’s office. The ear that had the tracker in it was bandaged.”

  Denny and Louis Grant emerged from the plane, each on one end of a long steel chest. They muscled it down the air-stairs and carried it inside.

  Mrs. Sigsby sighed. “Well, we might have expected it. We did, in fact. This is a small town we’re talking about, right? With small-town law enforcement?”

  “Middle of nowhere,” Stackhouse agreed. “Which is good news. And there might be more. Our guy says the sheriff drives a big old silver Titan pickup, and it wasn’t parked in front of the station or in the lot for town employees out back. So Hollister took a walk down to the local convenience store. He says the ragheads who work there—his term, not mine—know everything about everyone. The one on duty told him the sheriff stopped in for a pack of Swisher Sweets and said he was going to visit his mother, who’s in a retirement home or hospice or something in the next town over. But the next town over is like thirty miles away.”

  “And this is good news for us how?” Mrs. Sigsby fanned the top of her blouse against her neck.

  “Can’t be completely sure cops in a one-stoplight town like DuPray will follow protocol, but if they do, they’ll just hold the kid until the big dog gets back. Let him decide what to do next. How long will it take you to get there?”

  “Two hours. We could do it in less, but we’re carrying a lot of mother’s helpers, and it would be unwise to exceed the speed limit.”

  “Indeed it would,” Stackhouse said. “Listen, Julia. The DuPray yokels could contact the Minneapolis cops at any time. May have contacted them already. It makes no difference either way. You understand that, right?”

  “Of course.”

  “We’ll worry about any messes that need to be cleaned up later. For now, just deal with our wandering boy.”

  Killing was what Stackhouse meant, and killing was what it would probably take. Ellis, and anyone who tried to get in their way. That sort of mess would mean calling the Zero Phone, but if she could assure the gentle, lisping voice on the other end that the crucial problem had been solved, she thought she might escape with her life. Possibly even her job, but she would settle for her life, if it came to that.

  “I know what needs to be done, Trevor. Let me get to it.”

  She ended the call and went inside. The air conditioning in the little waiting room hit her sweaty skin like a slap. Denny Williams was standing by.

  “Are we set?” she asked.

  “Yes, ma’am. Ready to rock and roll. I’ll take over when you give me the word.”

  Mrs. Sigsby had been busy with her iPad on the flight from Erie. “We’ll be making a brief stop at Exit 181. That’s where I’ll turn command of the operation over to you. Are you good with that?”

  “Excellent with it.”
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br />   They found the others standing outside. There were no black SUVs with tinted windows, only three more mom vans in unobtrusive colors: blue, green, and gray. Orphan Annie would have been disappointed.

  16

  Exit 181 dumped the Gold team caravan off the turnpike and into your basic Nowheresville. There was a gas station and a Waffle House, and that was the whole deal. The nearest town, Latta, was twelve miles away. Five minutes past the Waffle House, Mrs. Sigsby, riding up front in the lead van, directed Denny to pull in behind a restaurant that looked as if it had gone broke around the time Obama became president. Even the sign reading OWNER WILL BUILD TO SUIT looked desolate.

  The steel case Denny and Louis had carried off the Challenger was opened, and Gold team gunned up. The seven members of Ruby Red and Opal took Glock 37s, the weapon they carried on their extraction missions. Tony Fizzale was issued another, and Denny was glad to see him immediately rack the slide and make sure the chamber was empty.

  “A holster would be nice,” Tony said. “I don’t really want to stuff it down my belt in back, like some MS-13 gangbanger.”

  “For now, just stow it under the seat,” Denny said.

  Mrs. Sigsby and Winona Briggs were issued Sig Sauer P238s, petite enough to fit in their purses. When Denny offered one to Evans, the doctor held up his hands and took a step back. Tom Jones of Opal bent to the portable armory and brought out one of two HK37 assault rifles. “How about this, Doc? Thirty-round clip, blow a cow through the side of a barn. Got some flash-bangs, too.”

  Evans shook his head. “I’m here under protest. If you mean to kill the boy, I’m not sure why I’m here at all.”

  “Fuck your protest,” said Alice Green, also of Opal. This was greeted by the kind of laughter—brittle, eager, a little crazy—that only came before an op where there was apt to be shooting.