Hungry Daniel might have been, but he wasn’t too thrilled by the available supplies. He unenthusiastically chose a pizza, as she had, grumbling about Kevin’s deficiencies in the kitchen, which seemed to be long-standing, from what she heard. The conversation rolled easily, like she was just an ordinary person to him.
“I don’t know where he gets all that manic energy,” Daniel said. “Eating nothing but this.”
“Arnie can’t be much of a cook, either. Where’d he go, anyway?”
“He hit the sack before Kev left. Early riser, I infer. I think his room is back that way.” Daniel gestured in the opposite direction from the stairs.
“Does he seem a little strange to you?”
“What, with the mute thing? I figure that’s just the glue in his relationship with Kevin. You have to be able to stomach listening to someone else talk nonstop if you’re going to be friends with Kev. No room for your own words.”
She snorted.
“There was ice cream under the pizza. You want some?” he asked.
She did, so the search began for silverware and bowls. Daniel did locate an ice cream scooper and soupspoons, but they had to put the ice cream into coffee mugs. As she watched him ladle the ice cream out of the carton, something occurred to her.
“Are you left-handed?”
“Er, yes.”
“Oh. I thought Kevin was right-handed, but if you’re identical twins, doesn’t that mean—”
“Usually,” Daniel said, passing her the first mug. The ice cream was plain vanilla, not her first choice, but she was happy to have any kind of sugar right now. “We’re a special case, actually. We’re called mirror-image twins. About twenty percent of identical twins—the ones where the egg splits late, they think—develop as opposites. So our faces aren’t exactly the same unless you look at one as a reflection. It doesn’t mean much, for Kevin especially.” He savored his first bite of ice cream, then smiled. “I, on the other hand, will run into a problem if I ever need an organ transplant. All of my insides are reversed, so it’s very complicated to replace certain things unless they find an organ from another reversed twin who also just happens to be a genetic match. In other words, I better hope I never need a new liver.” He took another bite.
“It would make a lot more sense to me if it was Kevin who had everything backward.”
They laughed together, but it was much gentler than it had been earlier in the day. Apparently they’d gotten the hysteria out of their systems.
“What does the paper say—the one with the command for the dog?”
Daniel pulled the card from his jeans pocket, glanced at it, and then handed it to her.
It read, in all caps, ESCAPE PROTOCOL.
“Do you think something bad happens if we say it out loud?” she wondered.
“I suppose it’s possible. I’ll believe anything after seeing his secret lair.”
“Kevin really needs to hire someone to come up with better names for his commands. He’s not very good at that part.”
“I guess that could be my job now.” Daniel sighed. “I do like dogs. It might be fun.”
“It’s still kind of teaching, right?”
“If Kev lets me do any.” Daniel scowled. “I wonder if he sees me just mucking out stalls? I wouldn’t put it past him.” And then he sighed again. “At least the students all appear to be pretty bright. Do you think I could teach them to play volleyball?”
“Well… actually, yeah. They don’t seem to have many limitations.”
“I guess it won’t be so bad. Right?”
“Right,” she said confidently. And then mentally called herself a liar.
CHAPTER 14
When Alex woke up, the first issue was the soreness. Unconsciousness had given her a break from the pain, and that period of relief, though welcome, made the awakening to reality worse.
The room was pitch-black. She assumed there was a window somewhere behind the boxes, but it must be covered with a blackout shade. Kevin wouldn’t want too many lighted windows at night. Better to keep the house looking only partially inhabited. As far as any locals knew, Arnie was the sole occupant.
She rolled out of the cot, groaning when her left shoulder and hip hit the wooden edge, and then felt her way to the light switch. She’d cleared a wide path from the cot to the door so that she wouldn’t add to her injuries fumbling around in the dark. Once the light was on, she disarmed the leads and then removed her gas mask. Given that there were people here that she didn’t want to kill, she’d used a pressurized canister of knockout gas.