Chapter Twelve
As much as I wanted to, I didn’t visit Devin that night. Instead I jumped into Ginger’s dream to see how Dez was doing. Dez had gotten really sick not long ago, and in order to get the medicine she needed, her boy Kale was forced to trade himself to uncle Marshal. I knew she was having a hard time with him being gone, and hated not being able to be by her side when she needed me, but what I was doing was important. If I went to see her again directly, I might be tempted to drop everything and run home.
I asked Ginger not to mention to anyone what we were doing just yet because I didn’t want to get anyone’s hopes up about the cure. Getting the formula from Wentz was only half the battle. From what Ginger told me, we’d still need to get our hands on uncle Marshal’s mysterious component.
Ginger told me not to worry. She hadn’t told anyone other than some guy named Dax what I was doing
The next day was Saturday. Both Devin and I had the day off from Dromere and had the usual weekend plans. Chores. We didn’t pay rent to live at the boarding house, but Anderson felt it was only fair for everyone to chip in and take care of the place. Anyone not in training or assigned a specific job was given a list of chores to do.
When I rolled out of bed and stumbled from my room, I found mine taped to the front of my door. Great. Number one on the list. Yard work. I wasn’t even living at home and my least favorite chore in the world still haunted me.
Two hours and about a gallon of sweat later, the leaves were raked, the weeds pulled, and the hedges trimmed. I’d just sank into a chair in the kitchen to suck down a soda and ease the blisters on my feet—Cain hadn’t been a manual labor kind of guy—when Devin blew through the room and yanked me off the chair. “What the—”
“Shh! Just follow me and keep it down.”
I let her drag me from the kitchen and in the direction of Anderson’s study. With a quick glance down the hall, she pushed through and closed the door behind us.
“Ya know, closets work much better for—”
She glared at me.
“I was just sayin’…”
“We’re not here for a grope fest,” she snorted. “As if I’d go there again. We’re here to snoop.”
I liked this girl more and more with every passing minute and knew my father would approve. I’d dated a few high maintenance types—afraid to get their hands dirty or break a nail—and Dad always rolled his eyes when he met them. He kept telling me I needed to find a real girl. Someone with a stomach for horror movies and an insatiable thirst for knowledge. I’d always wondered about that because my mother hated the sight of blood and ran screaming from the room the moment anything remotely scary came on the television.
Pushing Dad out of my head, I made my way around to the desk and started pulling open drawers, while Devin dove into the filing cabinet. The first one was loaded with file folders. All the residents that had arrived in the last two months. Cain’s folder was in there, along with five others and nothing else.
The next drawer had an array of office supplies. Everything from number two pencils and a box of ball point pens, to a handful of loose paper clips and rubber bands. Pads of paper, erasers, Post-It notes—nothing nefarious or suspicious. Just general desk stuff.
The last drawer was empty.
Thirty minutes later, we’d gone through pretty much everything—not that there’d been much. Anderson seemed to settle in the less is more school of thought. The furnishings were scant and he kept very little in the room.
“Crap.” She sank into Anderson’s chair. “This was a waste.”
“Not at all,” I said bending to look her in the eye. “This was a good start. It made sense to think he wouldn’t keep any important info stashed in his office, but you never know. This wasn’t a waste. This was a check mark.”
“Check mark?”
“Yeah. You know, like a thing on the list to check off. We checked here, and we know it’s not here. We can move on to the next.”
She just stared at me for a moment. “That’s pretty insightful for—well, you.”
“Me?” I feigned insult. “I’m not the least bit insightful. I used to know an investigative reporter. He showed me a thing or two.”
My name is Brandt Cross, and everything I know I learned from my dad… Oh, and cable television…
She let her guard down for a second and graced me with a smile that made my stomach do an odd little flip. “That’s pretty—”
“I want that list by five,” a voice said from the hall. I clamped my hand over Devin’s mouth and held my breath. Footsteps. Getting closer.
“Anderson?” I whispered, frantic.
“No way,” she insisted, prying my fingers loose. “He was supposed to be gone until four. I checked his schedule book. He went into town!”
“And make sure we have everything ready to go. I have people on the inside that should ensure the acquisition of the formula with no problem. This needs to be wrapped up by early next week. The council wants to see results and Cross is breathing down my neck.”
Council?
“Well, he’s back early.” I pointed to the closet on the other side of the room. If I got caught, it was all over. “Quick. Hide!”
She jumped from the chair and stumbled to the closet, nearly tripping over the obnoxious shag rug in the middle of the room. I beat her to the door and threw it open. Suddenly I understood why the office itself had little—because Anderson had shoved everything into the damn closet. I wedged in next to Devin—he must have been a pack rat because there wasn’t enough room for one person, let alone two—and got the closet door closed just before the office door opened. Footsteps rattled the floor as Anderson made his way across the room. A moment later, the chair creaked and I prayed he didn’t look this way. The closet door had slats, so anyone looking too close would surely see us.
I tried to put my finger across my lips as if to say Shh, but we were crammed in so tight, that the move—super smooth in my mind—didn’t go as planned. I got my arm free, but when I tried to bring it to my face, my hand caught on the edge of Devin’s shirt. Panicked, I jerked my hand away, pulling up the material in the process.
With a flash of lacy white, my fingers rubbed against warm, bare skin, and while I would have loved to blame the whole thing on Cain, truth was, I was a seventeen-year-old guy. Watching paint dry made me think about sex. Being crammed into a closet, crushed up against one of the cutest chicks I’d met to date? Yeah… There was bound to be some kind of reaction.
Devin’s eyes widened and her mouth opened as my traitorous body gave me away. “You— Eww!” she mouthed.
Heat flared in my cheeks. “Sorry!” I mouthed.
“Get me Marshal,” Anderson’s voice said from the other side of the door.
I froze. He was on the phone. This time, I effectively managed to put my finger to my lips—without ripping Devin’s clothing off.
Several moments passed before he spoke again. “Yes. It’s Anderson.” Pause. “Good, good. I just wanted to update you on the state of things here.”
Papers shuffled, and the chair squeaked again as Anderson got to his feet. Peering through the thin slits in the door, I watched him begin to pace. If that was uncle Marshal he had on the line, then I understood. The guy had that effect on people.
“No. My residents haven’t been able to locate it yet, but I can confirm your tip. Franklin Wentz has found a way to alter the Six mutation.”
Pause.
“I believe so. And if that’s true, sir, then not only will you be able to amp the abilities of unborn Sixes in utero, but also modify the abilities of existing Sixes. The Council should be very pleased.”
Another pause.
“Yes. I’m confident that one of the three people I have on the inside will have it before tomorrow night.”
Three? So there was someone else skulking around Dromere.
“From the information one of my people presented, there seems to be a flaw in Wentz’s calculation, but I believe with the component you tried to use previously, it will work to not only cure the second trial, but create a new, successful one.”
There was a short pause.
“I understand,” Anderson said with a bit of bite. “I’ve discussed this with the Council.”
The Council again. I’d never heard it mentioned before and wondered if Ginger knew anything about it. I made a mental note to ask her, and pressed myself a hair closer to the door.
Anderson chuckled. “Denazen would have a new army of powerful Sixes at its disposal—without waiting for them to grow into it.”
My throat was like the Sahara. Cain Jr. lost all his umph as I strained to hear the last few words of Anderson’s conversation. Modify existing abilities? There was no limit to the damage they could do if able to play God like that. This was getting bigger by the minute.
Anderson disconnected the call and sat back down, the chair giving a loud squeal. Crap. We needed him to leave. If we didn’t get out soon, someone was going to notice we’d gone missing.
I shifted to reposition my ear to the door. When I looked back at Devin, her eyes were closed. Something beeped on the other side of the door, followed by a curse from Anderson. A moment later, the chair squeaked again, followed by the echoing slam of his office door.
Devin opened her eyes and shoved me. “Hurry. Move!”
“What—I don’t get it.”
She reached around and turned the knob, pushing me out. She crept to the door, pressed her ear against it, and listened for a minute. “He just got an email from Fitz. You know, that whiney guy with the wonky Midas touch ability? He wanted to meet him ASAP to discuss something important.”
When she was sure the coast was clear, she cracked open the door and peeked through.
“You can do that?” I said in awe as we stepped into the hall.
She shrugged it off like it was no big thing. “’Course. I just hacked Fitz’s email address and sent it. Not a challenge at all.”
“Well, I’m impressed.”
She snorted. “Then my day is complete.” She turned and marched down the hall, making sure to keep her face turned away from me, but I could tell she was smiling.
My name is Brandt Cross, and I think I’ve got a mad crush…