“Raynor. Goddamn it.” He sat back down. “We knew the Institute had to have some sort of government contact to get away with what they did, but that he tracked down Anatoly when even I couldn’t have.” He shook his head. “That makes him one dangerous son of a bitch. Pack your shit. We’re going. If this bastard is involved with the Institute, and he obviously is, what he wanted from Anatoly is you. Anatoly didn’t know where we are, but it’s too close. This mother-fucker is too close.” He stood. “Go on. Get your stuff. You know the drill. Hell, you wrote the drill because mine wasn’t efficient enough. Fifteen minutes and we’re in the car. Go.”
I had mildly tweaked the drill, but that wasn’t the point. He was right, but . . . I didn’t want to leave. This was home. The first I’d had. “But—”
“Fifteen minutes,” he said, cutting me off, “and I toss you and your smelly, evil pets in the trunk of the car and drive until dark. If you don’t want to live in those clothes for the next week, I suggest you start packing. Don’t bother with the pictures of Raynor. Keep one; I’ll take care of the rest.” True to his word, fifteen minutes later, Stefan did take care of the rest.
He burned down the house.
Burning down the house had not been in my emergency drill. It should’ve been as it was the most efficient way of eliminating evidence and wayward genetic material such as hair or skin particles. I turned to watch out the back window as the Bumble—as my home—burned a cheerful red-orange against the green of the trees. Stefan had already called 911. They would get there in time for the house to burn to the ground but not for the fire to spread, which was good. I’d turned Mothra loose. He’d pecked me on the head and flown to freedom, wing as good as new. Gamera I’d put in the woods where he crawled off with a speed twice that of when I’d found him and eyes bright and open to the world. He was still old; he’d die sooner or later, but now it would be later.
You do what you can to make up for what you’ve done in the past.
We followed the bend in the road and there was only smoke to see then, a black fist hanging in the gray sky. No more rusty water out of creaking taps. No more raccoons squabbling in the attic every night. No more crickets or fireflies, the smell of free coffee from work soaking the air every day, no more wall of shelf after sagging shelf that held close to five hundred of my movies and old TV shows. Bottom line. . . .
No more home.
And no more “Harry,” the friendly but not overly friendly in a pedophile kind of way handyman. Harry was gone and while Stefan was always himself when Harry was officially out of sight of the townspeople and off duty, now Stefan was back all the way and then some, full-time. Almost three years had done a lot for me. I’d learned more things than I’d imagined existed; I’d developed social skills—of a sort; I became whole. Not normal, but as whole as I could hope to be, and that was good enough for right now.
That same amount of time had done something for Stefan too. I’d progressed and he’d regressed, but that wasn’t a bad thing for him. He’d lost some of the guilt he’d been drowning in. When I remembered Stefan first coming for me, it wasn’t a man in a black mask or a crazy guy shoving Three Musketeers bars at me as he tried to convince me that I was his brother. I remembered an ocean, dark as a universe without stars—black with guilt, despair, rage, violence, self-loathing. All I could see was his hand reaching out of the water; the rest of him was buried in a liquid Hell he couldn’t escape.
All of Jericho’s children could see, because we’d all been trained to look. I’d seen every one of Stefan’s weaknesses and vulnerabilities—I’d seen him as a target long before I’d seen him as a person.
But the past years had taken his hand and pulled him up, pulled him out. He hadn’t been on the shore, but he’d been in the breakers, close to being free. If he laughed, he meant it. If he was happy or at least content, he didn’t have to fake it. Now he had to step farther back into the water, if only for the violence. I watched the smoke disappear behind us, because I didn’t want to watch Stefan. He was a good man and when good men have to do bad things, that ocean will never let them go.
Be kind to Stefan, Anatoly whispered . . . because life hadn’t been.
“Where’s Raynor now?”
I didn’t turn, the road unspooling behind—the same road to nowhere as Stefan’s scar. “Gone. He lives in Washington, D.C., a house, so I was able to get into the utility companies there and take a look. His electricity and water use has been pretty much nil for the past two weeks, which means he left one light on and has a dripping faucet. I used Google Earth and his car is parked in the driveway, no airline has his name for that time, so either he had a nasty bathroom accident, statistics rank those very high on the scale, or he bought another car—a used one, with cash, because it hasn’t been registered yet.”
“He’s smart. Fuck.”
“I know. I think he might be as smart as me.” I did turn this time, offended as they came at the notion. No, offended as . . . hell. Right. Offended as hell. “Do you think that’s actually possible?”