11 

When Sarah banged out of the house an hour later, Noah pushed out of bed. He was light-headed, and the room spun, but he made it to the bathroom. His skin crawled with sweat, and he felt oily. He was too freaked to check under the bandage.

Washing his teeth and taking a shower made him feel a little better, except he couldn’t get warm. Shivering, he tugged on jeans, heavy socks, a button-up shirt because of his arm, and a bulky wool cardigan. He tottered downstairs, still feeling woozy. Debated about eating but didn’t have an appetite.

He tried Joey on link, audio only. Joey’s mom said he was out at soccer practice, and then when she started in about the night before, he told her he had to go, and clicked off. He debated about calling Troy. Troy’s mother would be out because she was almost always “out,” either out as a waitress at Ida’s, out drinking, or—literally—out: dead drunk and sleeping it off.

No matter what, I gotta call Troy. We got to get his bike back.

Troy’s mother was out—grocery shopping. Relieved, Noah switched to full vid and then got worried all over again. Troy’s face was fish-belly white, with purple smudged under his eyes. He had on an old pair of glasses held together at the bridge with duct tape.

“You look crummy,” Troy said.

“So do you. Did you get into trouble?”

Troy’s mouth curled. “Mom was so worried, she didn’t even notice that I wasn’t home in time to eat. What about you?”

“I’m grounded, probably forever.”

“How’s your arm?”

“Hurts.” Noah didn’t want to get into it. “You heard about the car fire? You think it was the same guy?”

“Yeah.” Troy’s eyes were wide behind his glasses. “Even if it isn’t, I got to go back and get my bike. If the guy who killed him comes looking . . .”

“I know. I’ll come with you.”

“But you’re grounded.”

“My mom works the shop today. She won’t be back until after five. It’s”—he squinted over at the wall chronometer—“almost ten-thirty. Plenty of time.” Then he thought of something. “Uh-oh.”

“What?”

“How are you going to get there? Your bike’s out there, and I don’t think I can steer so good with my arm racked up. Joey’s at soccer, and he’ll be gone all afternoon.”

“Maybe we should just tell Joey’s dad.”

Noah shook his head. “Too late for that. Besides, Joey’s the one who stole the cigarettes. He’ll really get grounded for life.”

“We don’t have to tell about that.”

“I’ll bet they got ways of finding out. Besides, if his dad finds out we saw and didn’t tell, then they get us for withholding evidence. My mom would kill me.”

“Okay.” The way he said it, Noah knew that Troy wasn’t okay but would go along. Troy said, “I’ll take my mom’s bike. All I have to do is lower the seat a little bit.”

“But then her bike will be gone,” Noah pointed out. “That’s no good.”

“She’ll never notice. Anyway, it’s better than leaving mine, right? Besides, you got a better idea?”

Noah didn’t. They agreed to meet at the cemetery in two hours, and then clicked off.

 

Time to kill.

He wished there was someone to talk to, even his sister. But what he really wanted was an adult, someone who could tell him what to do and how not to be afraid. Maybe Scott . . . but if his mother found out he’d called or gone to see his stepbrother, she’d have a stroke.

He crawled back upstairs, his arm complaining with every step. Instead of going to his room, he turned left, went to the end of the hallway and stood before his parents’—no, his mom’s room. A knotted string dangled from the ceiling, and now he grabbed that with his left hand and pulled down a panel with folding steps.

The attic was cold and smelled of dust, old cardboard and chilled steel. After his father died, his mother packed everything into boxes and stored them here. She even asked Sheriff Ketchum to get a few men together and move his father’s gun safe into the attic. That had taken a whole day: unpacking all the guns and ammo, and then taking out the attic window and winching the safe up the side of the house. Noah had gone into the attic a few times over the past few years, usually when he really got to missing his dad, to huddle in the dark. But today, he sensed that something was . . . different and, after another moment, he knew what. One of the boxes was open.

Noah eased down, squatting by the cardboard container. He ran the tip of his left finger under a flap and levered the cardboard back. He frowned. These clothes were unfamiliar. When he riffled the stack, he heard the crinkle of pryolene pouches. He gently tugged a corner of one pouch, and his breath caught.

The shirt was military blue. Butter yellow rank insignia decorated the collar. Above the left breast pocket was a small embroidered insignia—a whorl of ten white stars cut by the tail of a comet set against a black background—and the name of a militia unit. Other pouches contained military trousers, a dress tunic, a pair of black boots with the outlines of his father’s toes visible against the buffed leather. But it wasn’t until Noah bent over to replace the pouches that he spied a square of pryolene wedged beneath a bottom flap. He teased out the pouch and held it to the light.

The medal was a burnished five-pointed gold star within a circlet of gold-veined, dark blue enameled oak leaves arranged in pairs, two between each of the star’s five points. In the center of the star, also in gold, was a portrait in profile that Noah recognized immediately: Devlin Stone. The star dangled from a golden crossbar upon which the word GUARDIAN was cast. The entire medal hung from a length of sky-blue ribbon, with the ten stars, blue disc, and gray ribbon of the Republic embroidered above the point to which the star was attached.

Why did his father have a Republic medal? There hadn’t been any action on Denebola that he knew about. And what did “guardian” mean? Guarding what?

Finally, he put all the clothes back, piece by piece. But he slipped the pouch with the medal into his hip pocket. He just wanted it.

He’d pushed up and was about to back down the attic stairs when his father’s gun safe caught his eye. Odd. He’d have sworn the last time he snuck up here boxes were wedged up against the door. But now he tracked the entire door, all the way down to the seam along the bottom edge. When they’d moved the safe, his mother had to call a locksmith to come and open it because only his father knew the combination. She’d had the locksmith program in a new code, and now she was the only one who knew that. So—his mother? But why? She hated guns. Why she’d kept his dad’s was a mystery.

This is getting a little weird.

The safe was solid twenty-centimeter steel two meters tall and one wide and painted the color of money. A rearing seven-point Morin odopudu was embossed in gold above a five-spoke gold-plated wheel. A combination digital lock was set at shoulder height left of the wheel. Enter the code, then twirl the handle to open the safe.

He didn’t know the code. But . . . Noah reached out with his left hand, hesitated, then grasped the handle and jerked it counterclockwise, thinking the whole time:

It’s locked, you watch, it’s gonna be locked and . . .

A perceptible thunk. The lock disengaged. He pulled, and the safe’s door glided open on smoothly oiled, soundless hinges, releasing an odor of gun oil and steel.

The interior of the safe was carpeted in a deep, rich green the same color as the safe itself. A door-mounted rack held shotguns and rifles, and his eyes skipped over his own Erral Colt that his mother had confiscated, his father’s pump Winchester Astro, and more rifles but . . . Noah frowned. The rifles were out of order. He knew just how they ought to line up: from eldest to youngest. His father’s Astro should’ve been on the far left. But the Astro had been moved and traded out for Scott’s old Tharkad Griffin.

There were four carpeted shelves for gun cases and ammunition, and again Noah had the same sense of things being moved, replaced, taken away again, shifted. He chewed on his lower lip then flipped up the latches of a case he recognized at a glance. He lifted the lid, and a smell of oiled wood pillowed out. The case was lined with foam cut to the gun’s contours. A soft beige chammy covered the gun, and when he lifted the cloth, he saw his father’s service weapon, a stainless steel seven-shot revolver with walnut grips. He stared at the gun a long time, then carefully rewrapped it, thumbed the latches shut and was replacing the case when he noticed that another had been left open.

He knew what was in that case. He’d only seen it a couple of times, but he remembered: a .70 mm AE Skye Talon. A cannon—that was what Scott used to called it. A really, really big gun.

He also knew when he hefted the case that the gun was gone. The case was too light. But he looked anyway. Then he pawed open a box of ammo and stared at seven empty slots.

Seven shells missing. And the gun. From a safe for which no one had the combination.

Except his mother.