IT WAS RICK’S turn to be furious.
“You’re going to tell me what’s going on,” he shouted. He jabbed his finger in Miss Ferris’s direction. “You’re going to tell me now, lady! Or you can take your stupid MindWar and eat it!”
They were in the conference room again. Rick was back in his chair at the long glass table and Miss Ferris was standing in front of the blank TV screens. Juliet Seven was at his station in the corner, where his enormous arms were once again crossed on his enormous chest as he watched them both, smiling with his eyes.
“We told you this would be dangerous,” Miss Ferris said calmly.
“For me!” Rick shouted. It hurt to talk through his swollen lips, but he didn’t care. “You said it would be dangerous for me! You never said people would break into my house and come after my family!”
Rick saw Miss Ferris swallow, maybe even a bit harder than usual. Just very slightly, he thought she averted her gaze, as if she were embarrassed. “We were guarding your house all the time,” she said flatly.
“Oh, well, good job!” said Rick. “Except for the guy with the gun breaking in and nearly shooting me. Other than that, you did great.”
“We were nearby the whole time. Your family wasn’t in any danger.”
Rick silently cursed the crippled legs that forced him to sit where he was. That flat, unemotional tone of hers was making him crazy. He wished he could jump up, tower over her, grab her by the front of her suit jacket, and shake some feeling into her. It was probably just as well he couldn’t. He was so mad at her right then, he might have lost control and strangled her.
“That guy was going to kill me,” he said, forcing himself to keep his voice steady. “Then he was going to kill my mom and my brother. Don’t tell me we weren’t in danger.”
Once again, she swallowed hard, as if something were caught in her throat. But if she had any real sense of shame or guilt, she didn’t let on. She only gave a brisk nod. She said, “You have to understand: this operation is different than any we’ve undertaken before—different than any operation anyone has undertaken. Normally, we would put you and your family under high-tech security. But that’s just the problem. Our high technology may be completely vulnerable to Kurodar’s infiltration. In fact, it may just make him stronger. We don’t know. For now, we feel you’re safer in your own home with a guard posted.”
“Oh yeah! Real safe!”
“Look, one of them got by us, that’s all. We’re not perfect. We came to help you as soon as we could, just as we did when you were attacked before, just as . . .” She stopped suddenly.
Rick stared at her. “Just as what?”
Miss Ferris, gave a quick shake of her head. “Never mind. I misspoke.”
“No, no, no. Just as you did when what? When did you ever come to help me before? When have I ever been attacked before? This is the first time anyone’s ever . . .”
The words died on Rick’s split and purple lip. He gaped at Miss Ferris, and Miss Ferris looked back at him with a grim poker face.
“The accident,” Rick whispered. The thought astonished him. “You’re talking about the accident, aren’t you? Are you talking about the truck that hit me, that destroyed my legs? I don’t remember how I got to the hospital. Or what happened to the driver. Are you saying you took care of all that? Are you telling me that the accident . . . that it wasn’t an accident? Are you telling me that truck hit me on purpose?”
“I’m not telling you anything,” Miss Ferris said coolly. “I can’t tell you anything.”
Rick went on gaping at her as ideas he could barely believe raced and tumbled through his mind. “You have to,” he said finally. “You have to tell me. That thug was asking me about my father. What’s he got to do with this? What’s the accident got to do with it? You’re telling me that everything that’s happened to me over these past months—it’s all connected. That’s right, isn’t it? It’s all connected to the MindWar.”
Miss Ferris could not have looked at him with any less emotion if she had been a department store mannequin. “I don’t know,” she said.
The anger exploded in him again. “What do you mean you don’t know? I don’t believe you.”
“It doesn’t matter,” she said flatly. “It doesn’t matter whether you believe me or not. I’ve told you everything I can.”
“You’ve lied to me, you mean! You’ve lied to me all this time. And now my family is in danger!”
Miss Ferris didn’t answer. She only gazed at him. Standing there in her stupid black suit. Or maybe this was a new stupid black suit, who could tell? Rick glared back, his swollen lip curling with rage. Their eyes remained locked together.
“My brother’s terrified,” Rick told her, his voice coming from somewhere deep in his throat. “My mother’s scared out of her wits.”
“I thought I took care of that. I explained to your mother that there was a break-in, that we were the police, and that we’d taken the intruder into custody.”
“Right,” Rick sneered sarcastically. “And that worked great, because my mom’s an idiot! Because she would never think to call the police and ask for more information and find out they never heard of any break-in at our house at all. Oh wait, that’s exactly what she did!”
Well, that really disturbed Miss Ferris. It must have, because she actually took a deep breath! She said, “All right. I’ll fix that.”
“Oh, you’ll fix that.”
“I’ll have one of the local detectives follow up with her.”
“Good,” said Rick. “Because there’s just nothing I like better than being tangled in a web of lies, especially with my mom.”
“You signed on for this,” Miss Ferris snapped back, almost raising her voice. Almost. “Commander Mars told you that you would have to keep the mission a secret.”
“Commander Mars!” Rick said, disgusted. “The guy’s a hologram! He’s not even a real person. I’m not sure you’re even a real person.”
“I’m a real person, Rick,” Miss Ferris answered quietly.
“Then why don’t you act like one?” he shouted. “Why don’t you . . . lose your temper or . . . or change your tone of voice or . . . or something? Do something. Feel something. Why don’t you feel anything?”
“Because it doesn’t help,” she said flatly.
And again Rick thought he saw in her the slightest indication of—something—confusion—distress. Her mouth turned down in the briefest frown and her eyes broke away as if she could no longer meet his furious stare. To his annoyance, Rick found this little sign of weakness touched him somehow. In spite of himself, his anger at her started to ebb.
Who is this woman? he wondered. What was going on in her mind? He’d never met anyone like her. He’d never met anyone so absent emotion—certainly not a girl, anyway. And she was actually kind of a pretty girl, too, when you took the time to look at her. She had this perfect pink-and-white complexion and crystal-blue eyes that he might have called soft had they belonged to anyone else. Her hair was cut boyishly short, and her outfit was boyish, too, but it was all boyish in a cute girlish way that Rick liked. In fact, he sensed there was something in Miss Ferris that he would have liked altogether—if only she weren’t working so hard to keep it from coming out.
“You’re hiding something from me,” he said, his tone a little less ferocious than before.
Slowly, she raised her eyes to meet his again. “I’m hiding all kinds of things from you, Rick,” she told him. “It’s a top secret operation, remember?”
“All right. I get that. Sure. But if you know something about my father, that’s different. You have to tell me that.”
“Really?” Miss Ferris asked him—and any sign of distress he might have seen in her had vanished. She had gone all robot on him again. “Why? So the next time someone puts a gun to your head and asks you where he is, you’ll be able to tell them? We don’t tell you things, so that you can’t tell anyone else. That way, everyone’s a little safer.”
Rick swallowed. He had to admit he could see her point. But he couldn’t stop himself from going on. “You don’t know what it’s been like in my house these last months. So just tell me one thing, all right? Just tell me: Did my dad walk out on us or not?”
In the long pause that followed, Rick began to hope she would break down and answer him. But all she said was, “I’m sorry.” Then she glanced briskly at her watch. “It’s been more than twelve hours. We need to get you back into the Realm.”