Geneva yawned. She glanced at her oil-smudged wrist, but she’d taken her watch off. Whatever time it was, it was late. She blinked and leaned over Brutus’s fender again.
The shiny new clamp she’d put on the heater hose was giving her trouble. It was tough to get a good angle to tighten it. She cursed herself for working on it this late, but she didn’t trust the old hose, and anyway Brutus couldn’t move now until she was done.
The old hose lay at her feet like a rubber snake, soft in the middle, pinched at the ends from the old rusted clamps. One of the clamps was crusted white with dried coolant, and that’s why she had decided to replace it.
She finally got the clamp screw turning. Got it tight, and tried to turn it a little more to be sure. The screwdriver slipped and nicked her finger. She sucked in a breath.
She straightened up and held her finger under the light to see. Just a scratch. She stepped back, pushing the hair out of her face with the back of her hand. She was finally done. Except for cleaning the carburetor.
The carburetor sat exposed, without the big chrome dish of the air cleaner to cover it. Its brassy throat showed a tinge of grime around the edges. She’d need to spray it out, fire a few squirts of carburetor cleaner down inside it with the engine running, rev it up and let it burn off the dirt.
She wished she could do that to her whole life. Hose it down and let the engine burn everything clean.
Michael had taught her about carburetors. It was years ago. She’d been sitting on the floor in the condemned garage they’d camped out in, beneath the light of a battery-powered lamp, wiping Brutus’s tailpipe clean with an old rag, her stomach clenched up with worry.
Michael had wandered in, carrying a little metal flask. He sat down on the step of a dusty old ladder and watched her for a while, not saying anything. She could feel the weight of his gaze on her back, while she sat there cross-legged on the cold concrete floor. She wiped as much of the powdery black soot out of the tailpipe as she could, then turned the rag inside out and went to work on the streaks of soot on the floor.
Finally, Michael broke the silence. “The floor’s plenty dirty all over, Genie. No sense bothering yourself about it.”
She leaned her head against the soft fabric that covered Brutus’s metal skin. “Something’s wrong with his engine.” She felt the wave of worry rise up inside her when she finally said it out loud. “He’s been burning something, leaving all this soot everywhere I go. I look in the mirror when I hit the gas, and I see black stuff shoot out of the tailpipe. I’m not going to have to …”
His forehead wrinkled. “To what?”
“Michael, I need Brutus.”
He stopped with the flask halfway to his lips. “Is that what’s been eating at you? A little puff of soot?” He took a swig and grinned. “Just running a little rich, is all. We can fix that. It’s all in the carburetor.” He used the Russian word, karbyurator, rolling the “r” ever so slightly. He did that sometimes, on those rare occasions when he let his guard down, let the real Michael show through.
“We can fix it? Really?”
“Well, yeah, really. Come on, you’re not really all torn up about this, are you?”
“No.” She dropped the soot-blackened rag on the floor. “Yes.”
“Come on.” Gently, he pulled her up off the floor. “We’ll have Brutus fixed up in two shakes. Go ahead and start him up. And get me a screwdriver, will you?”
She started up the engine and came around the front, feeling the first stirrings of hope. She watched Michael carefully lift the chrome air cleaner off and set it on Brutus’s roof. He smiled at her, as if he was letting her in on a little secret.
He pointed to a pair of small screws sticking out of the front of the carburetor. “Now, these two are your idle screws. They control how much fuel gets into the engine when you’re not actually going anywhere. Now listen carefully to the engine.” He tightened each screw a bit, and Brutus’s engine slowed down. “See? Too much fuel for the amount of air we’ve got. Too rich. That’s what makes the soot.”
He tugged the accelerator linkage on the side of the carburetor, where the cable from the gas pedal attached. The carburetor hissed, and the engine revved up, then settled down into a steadier rhythm. “Hear that? Smoother. Lot smoother.” He took another hit from the flask and hummed to himself, some deep-throated tune she had never heard.
She watched him, fascinated, as he worked, his strong fingers gentle on the dirty metal. He turned each screw a little tighter, then sometimes looser, playing with the mixture, revving the engine and listening, eyes closed.
“There we go, Brutus,” he whispered. “There’s a good boy.” He revved the engine once more, as if for emphasis, and when he let go, the engine settled down and purred.
He opened his eyes and smiled down at her. The heady smell of his liquor filled the air around them. She put her hands on his scratchy cheeks, pulled him down and kissed him.
Geneva held onto that memory as hard as she could. She didn’t want to let go of that feeling, that it was just her and Michael against the world, that everything was simple, and pure, and clean. Back then, Michael and Brutus were all she wanted, all she needed to be happy.
But somehow, everything had gone dark and wrong. Somehow, lies and secrets had wormed their way in, leading to wounded looks and shouting matches. All along, she thought she could fix it somehow. All she needed to do was learn enough, work hard enough, and she could make everything come out all right. Just like tuning a carburetor.
But that was before Michael had started taking prisoners at gunpoint.
Behind her, the garage door rattled open to the cold night air. The van pulled in, its grille all smashed, one headlight broken. Raph got out and slammed the van door hard, pacing as if he could barely contain his rage. He pulled the garage door closed and hammered the latch shut with the heel of his fist. Gabe shut off the van and got out. The two of them traded looks, and Raph stalked past Gabe without saying anything.
Geneva caught Gabe’s eye and nodded at Raph. “Not a good night, huh? You guys been playing bumper cars?”
Gabe didn’t smile. “Not a good night, no.” He looked a little pained, then shook it off. “Just bad luck, is all.”
Raph came around the other side of the van and stopped, pulling at his straggly beard. “Luck?” He came over and leaned on Brutus’s fender. “Luck? Maybe if Gabe knew when to pick up a gun and use it, we wouldn’t have this problem to deal with, uh?”
Gabe didn’t look at him, just kept staring at a spot somewhere between Geneva and Brutus’s engine. “Just drop it. You’re out of line.”
“Oh, am I?” Raph said, holding his arms out wide. “So what do you plan to do, hmm? Shoot me? Yeah? Or maybe you should go right to the source of the problem. Like you should have done in the first place.”
Geneva knew there was something bad going on. She’d always known Raph was a psycho, but now she was getting a weird vibe from Gabe, too. “Gabe?” she said, backing up a step, “What’s going on?”
Raph looked at her like he was thinking about killing her right there.
Gabe stepped between her and Raph. “Nothing you need to worry about. Okay?”
She nodded, feeling completely the opposite.
Gabe patted Raph on the back, telling him, “Come on, let’s go in. Come on.” They walked off. Raph kept looking over his shoulder at her.
He knew.
He knew she’d gone to talk to Jocelyn’s dad. He must have guessed what she’d asked him. But how could he know? Had they followed her? Had Michael hidden some sort of tracking device in Brutus?
She shut Brutus’s hood and leaned on it, her heart beating fast. If she ran, Michael would know she was a traitor. They’d hunt her down, and Raph would kill her. Michael wouldn’t protect her anymore, because she was a security risk. She’d compromised the mission.
But deep down, she knew something was wrong with the mission. There were too many things Michael wasn’t telling her. Why would he want to risk capturing the creature, rather than destroying it? That’s what they’d agreed on all along, since the night he’d saved her life.
She started to remember, to relive it again. The smell of blood. The way it soaked into the floorboards over her head. She pushed those thoughts away and grabbed her tools. Tossed them back into her old red toolbox. Screwdrivers, wrenches, scratched-up army flashlight. She couldn’t run now, and leave that poor guy tied up in the next room. They’d kill him.
But what was she going to do, break him loose and just take off? No, not unless she had some real answers. She had to learn what she could, fast. Because the moment she left, there was no turning back.
She’d never seen Michael kill anyone, and part of her couldn’t believe he actually would. But she had a bad feeling about the way things were going. She’d learned a long time ago to trust her feelings.
She shut the drawers of her toolbox one by one, pausing when she got to her brake tools. A plan blossomed in her mind. But it was too extreme, too dangerous. Too close to crossing that line. She shut the drawer.
But a little voice kept telling her she could protect herself. She could open the bleed screws on the van’s brakes. It wouldn’t do anything right away. But if she took off in Brutus, and they tried to chase her, the van’s brakes would bleed out in seconds. Then again, if she worked everything out and stayed, she could close the screws back up and undo the sabotage. Nobody would be the wiser.
It was wrong. She knew that. It could get somebody killed.
But the longer she thought about it, the more Raph’s cold eyes haunted her. He would kill her, if he got the chance.
She swallowed the lump in her throat. She slid the drawer open and picked up the angled chrome brake wrench. The cold steel chilled her fingers. Her chest felt tight, like the air had suddenly gotten a lot thinner.
She got down on the dusty concrete floor and crawled beneath the van.
*
The Toyota came back the next morning, just as Mitch finished cleaning up the pieces of the broken TV set. It had taken an hour to find the damn vacuum cleaner. It was a small red one, and he didn’t remember ever seeing it before. The old one must have died, and Bryce must have bought a new one.
It had been like that ever since he got out. This was his house, all right, but all the little details had changed. Like the vacuum cleaner. Mitch felt like he was a ghost come back from the dead, and the world had moved on without him.
He came outside to look at the Toyota. It was rain-spotted all over, except for the windshield and the back window. They were brand new, showroom clean, so clear they didn’t even look solid. It took him a moment to realize the back bumper had been replaced, too.
A kid got out of the driver’s seat, a young guy with his hair all slicked back, wearing squarish black-framed glasses. He hiked up his mechanic pants and held out a clipboard full of forms. “Hey, what’s up. You Mitchell Turner?”
Mitch looked the kid over. The name on his shirt said Ruben.
Mitch nodded his chin at the clipboard. “What’s all this?”
“Insurance claim. It states your car was appraised.” Ruben looked at the top form. “For damage sustained from an incident involving construction equipment.”
After a second, Mitch took the clipboard. “Construction equipment.”
The kid grinned. “Yeah. Kind of a little heartfelt screw-you to the insurance cartel. Know what I mean?”
“That would be fraud.”
“Hey, man. I’m just doing what Lanny told me.”
“It’s all right, kid. Relax.” Mitch put on his reading glasses and looked over the forms, started initialing where he needed to, signing at the bottom of each one. “Hmm. What do you know. Construction equipment. I should have thought that one up a long time ago.”
That reminded Mitch of something. He looked at the kid, standing there surveying the neighborhood. “Got the keys?”
“Huh? Yeah.” He got them out of his pocket, handed them to Mitch. His hands were dirty.
Mitch opened the trunk, pulled old newspapers and umbrellas and junk out of the way until he got to the spare tire. He pulled it out a little, so he could get a good look at the clear tape he’d put over the edge of the tire where it met the rim.
It hadn’t been broken. That meant what he’d hidden inside was still safe. Satisfied, he pushed the tire back into the trunk and buried it.
“Full-size spare, huh?” the kid said over his shoulder. “That’s a good idea. Looks a little flat, though. Want me to air it up for you?”
Mitch shook his head.
“I mean, you don’t want to ride on that.”
“You might be surprised.” Mitch slammed the trunk. He put his foot up on the new bumper and went back to the forms.
Name, address, Social Security number. God, he should be doing this under an alias. Too late for that.
“Careful of the bumper, man,” Ruben said. “The fascia’s plastic.”
“The what?” Mitch took his foot off of it. “One of these days, I gotta get a real car.”
“Hey, Toyota Camry. You know, this is one of the top ten most frequently stolen cars in America?”
“Now, there’s an idea. Maybe I should start leaving the keys in it.”
“Don’t like it much, huh?”
Mitch shrugged. “Bought it for my daughter. I read in a magazine, they said it was a safe car. And besides, I had, you know, a friend who owed me this favor. He got me a good deal.”
“She like it? Your daughter?”
“She did. She’s dead now.”
“Oh. Oh man, I’m sorry.”
“Yeah. I was in prison at the time. Couldn’t even go to the funeral.” He signed his name, and the pen ripped through the paper. “Life’s a bitch sometimes.” And suddenly he was blinking away tears.
He stared at the page, all the little fine print, none of it making any sense. He focused on it, read it, told himself to keep it together.
He breathed. In, out. The tears went away.
The kid, oblivious, said, “Yeah, I hear you, man. You’ve got to get yourself an American car. A real American car.”
“Yeah. I should do that.”
“Hey, I know where you could get a real sweet deal on an old Studebaker.”
Mitch looked over his reading glasses at him. “No.”
“What? Why not?”
Mitch cleared his throat and flipped the last form over. “I need something fast.”
“Yeah, fast, like an old Firebird. Camaro. Something like that?”
Mitch thought about the black car streaking away through the rain, sheets of water flying up on both sides. “I’m looking for a Cougar, as a matter of fact. Or maybe a Shelby Mustang.”
“Really? No kidding. Man, this sixty-eight Cougar stopped by my shop yesterday. Black. It was bad, and I mean bad, man. And this girl who was driving it …” The kid made a face like he’d just bit into a lemon. He gave Mitch the OK sign.
Mitch held out the clipboard, but didn’t let go when the kid tried to take it. “Cute girl, huh? Long black hair? With the, uh, the face paint?”
“Yeah. All goth. You know her?”
“She was a friend of my daughter’s. Or so I hear.” Mitch looked real hard at the kid until he knew he had his complete attention, then let go of the clipboard. “So tell me. Where exactly is your shop, Ruben?”