It was the portrait of a knife-edged moment lost in the greedy maw of time; two children who could’ve grown up to become anything at all. Instead one was now a criminal and the other a teenager lost, in body and mind. And both of us might very well be damaged beyond repair. All that and more was waiting behind velvet.
“Turn it over,” I commanded softly, hoping what was at once painful and wonderful to me might trigger something similar in him.
With one last petting motion, he did. There we were . . . in all our glory. And it was a genuine glory, despite the ache that hit me every time I saw it. I didn’t know what I would see in his face as he took it in. An explosion of memory that opened a floodgate in his mind? No, I didn’t think it would be that easy; nothing in life ever was. The most I could realistically hope for was a small sliver of recognition or a flash of yearning for something just beyond his reach—the tip-of-the-tongue syndrome, that he knew something was there even if he didn’t know what that something was.
I didn’t get any of those. What happened was a shade to the left of that and one step lagging. It wasn’t what I’d hoped for, but in many ways it was close to what I’d expected. You know what they say: Expect the worst and be pleasantly surprised. Not so. Expect the worst and find out your imagination is sorely lacking; that was my philosophy.
Confusion was the primary emotion that washed across skin that saw far too little sun. He truly hadn’t believed there was a brother at all, much less one who could be him. “He doesn’t look that much like me,” he murmured with automatic denial. The same finger that traced the velvet now touched the glass gingerly. “Just the eyes, that’s all.”
“Isn’t that enough?” He didn’t want to look past age-regressed features or the light hair of childhood. He wanted to hold on to something familiar, no matter how horrible the familiar was. It was understandable, the fear, but I wasn’t going to allow him to overlook the more obvious similarities. “That and the age. How many seventeen-year-old kids in southern Florida are running around with those eyes and are lacking parents? Go on, Misha, take a guess. How many?” It was a coincidence even too great for him to deny . . . or so I thought.
He hesitated, then turned the frame over again, the picture safely hidden against his legs. Our history was dismissed just that quickly. “I don’t know that I’m seventeen.” Strangely, it seemed as if he’d been about to say something else at first. What did finally come out was meant to be logical, I could tell, but it had more of a stubborn ring to my ears. It made the corner of my mouth twitch upward until the meaning of those obstinate words hit me.
“What do you mean by that?” I demanded. The semi was still ahead of us, ambling along, slowly and placidly, like an elderly elephant on Prozac. “Are you saying you don’t know how old you are?” I didn’t know why that surprised me. The Institute undoubtedly didn’t spend much on birthday cakes or clowns with balloons . . . unless the clown was hiding a hypodermic in one Day-Glo orange glove.
“No, I don’t.” He pushed up a sleeve that had slid down over the heel of his hand. “Nearly old enough for graduation, that’s all I know.”
“Graduation? What . . .” I wasn’t able to finish. The widening of Michael’s forward-facing eyes had me jerking my attention back to the road in front of the car. The back of the truck had opened to reveal five men, four of whom were wearing disturbingly familiar tan pants. It was hard to believe that I’d come to a point in my life where the sight of a pair of khakis or passing the Gap gave me the same surge of adrenaline than a hit attempt on my former boss once had. Marginally worse than the pants were the guns pointed in our direction. HK assault rifles were serious weapons, and I wondered if the concern was to get Michael back alive or simply get him back period.
The fifth man answered my question by pointing at us and saying something I couldn’t hear through the glass. It was our pal from the van. He was dressed this time and not in goddamn khakis either. A dark gray suit and black shirt set him apart from the others almost as much as the ferocious intelligence in his dark eyes. Then I decided to stop with the fashion assessments and try avoiding a shitload of bullets instead.
Yanking the wheel to one side with one hand, I took the car into the emergency lane. With my free hand I grabbed Michael’s shoulder and shoved him down into the small space between the seat and the dashboard. “But they’ve already seen me,” he protested, wincing as I crammed him pretzel fashion onto the floorboards.