Chapter Nineteen: Fallen egg

The screaming woke me. The pain made me want to lose consciousness again.

“A hospital! We have to get her to a hospital!! How the hell does this dam machine work? It should understand that I need the nearest hospital in L.A. – not Chatham!”

“Mina. Stop.” I could feel myself saying the words but I couldn’t hear them.

“Use your phone and call 911!” It was Javier shouting over Mina’s hysterics.

I could not let them take me to a hospital and I really couldn’t let them call 911. I dug into a pocket on my pants leg and took out the collapsible baton. Once it was extended, I hit the backs of both front seats.

“What! What is it? Are you in a lot of pain?” Mina peered over her seat at me and I could see tears running down her face. She looked terrified.

“Find an open supermarket and park there. Do not – DO NOT – call 911 or try to get me to a hospital.”

I clutched Mina’s arm and squeezed hard. “Promise me, no matter what – no hospital – no police.”

I lasted just until she nodded before passing out again.

When I woke again it was to the sting of hydrogen peroxide being pressed into my wounds.

“Javi, she’s bleeding. What if she has serious internal injuries? What if she’s in a coma! We should just take her to a hospital. We don’t have to give her real name.”

Javi snorted. “As if we know her real name. No. Since you trusted her to help you, you have to trust her to know how to best help herself. She said no police.”

“Javier, my hero,” I croaked.

“Thank God! You’re awake. I was so afraid. I’m still afraid. You need medical attention.”

Panic made Mina’s voice about twenty decibels too high. I ignored her and took inventory of my injuries. A few superficial cuts and burns covered my arms and legs, my torso had been protected by a Kevlar vest and my head by a balaclava, but shards of metal and wood had left marks on my body. I could move legs and arms. Very good. I could take a full breath, so my lungs were still intact. I wasn’t spitting up blood, so it was unlikely that a major organ had ruptured. The danger, of course, was belated swelling and the body’s shock reaction to the trauma of the bomb’s concussive effect.

I told Javier, “We need a motel that has bathtubs and an ice machine.”

I gave him the name of a chain my father and I had often stayed at. It was owned by a recently emigrated Pakistani family and who were good about keeping questions and eye-contact to a minimum. Javier used Logan’s GPS to find a branch within a couple of miles of where we were parked. I pulled a wallet from the pocket of my Kevlar vest and tossed it onto Javier’s lap.

“Pay cash - whatever the desk clerk wants. Take Mina so they think it’s about sex. No i.d.s and don’t let them see the car.” Darkness was trying to roll into my head again.

Javier said, “Let it go, chica. I got this.”

I gave up on consciousness.

I was freezing and hot at the same time. Everything below my neck was in pain. I opened my eyes to see Mina hovering over me.

“Javi said this is what you needed. It’s what the football players do after getting battered on the field. An ice bath.”

I nodded. The pain of being submerged in near freezing water almost made me wish the bomb had killed me. But this was the best way to avoid an involuntary trip to the hospital or the morgue. I stayed in the tub until most of the ice cubes had melted and my teeth chattered so hard I thought they might shatter. After another twenty minutes, Mina helped me out and wrapped me in towels until I was dry. My clothes were a mess, covered in black soot, blood and debris. I emptied the pockets and put them in a plastic liner from one of the motel room’s trash cans. We would dump and burn them on the way out of town.

Mina helped me pull on an extra set of clothes from my pack and the cousins got me back into Logan’s car, where I passed out again.

A red sun was just peeking between the San Gabriel Mountains when I finally woke from a true sleep. Javier was driving and Mina stared out the window in silence. Her face was swollen and stained from dried tears.

“Alice, I am so sorry. I should never have asked you for help. Not when I knew how dangerous these people are.”

It hurt to speak but I couldn’t let her go on torturing herself.

“Considering I’m just a little bruised while you would probably be dead by now, I’m actually glad you asked me.” I thought this was pretty fair logic.

“I will never forgive myself for being so selfish!” Mina seemed intent on self-flagellation.

“Her family is very Catholic,” said Javier.

“Don’t you dare joke about this!” Mina slapped Javier’s arm with hysterical force. The car swerved halfway into the oncoming lane before Javier brought it back under control.

“Stop.” I took hold of the hand she was using to batter her cousin and held it tight. “Causing Javier to run off the road and wreck Logan’s car is not going to help. Just be grateful that we’re all alive.”

Javier looked me over in the rear-view mirror. “Yeah. Do you mind telling me how you managed that trick? The inside of that place was totally incinerated and a fire ball blew out the windows on the entire block.”

“The bomb was under a metal topped desk. I happened to be on top of the desk and it blew me back up the hole I came through.”

I didn’t need to say how lucky I had been. If I had been anywhere else, if I had come through one of the doors instead of the ceiling, little bloody bits of me would still be raining down on the parking lot of that strip mall.

We went to Mina’s farm first. The cousins needed a couple of hours of sleep and a change of clothes. Javier argued for ditching school altogether but I pointed out that if anyone wanted a culprit for the explosion, they might come looking at Mina’s family. Mina had to go to school and stick to her usual routine. Javier couldn’t miss Shop without risking expulsion. Really, the only person who could miss school was me. But I wanted to see Logan.

The screened-in front porch had a large collection of overstuffed chairs and benches. It was where the family and farmhands rested after a long day in the fields and caught the rare breeze in late summer. I curled up on a wicker loveseat with a blanket. Mina had an extra twin bed in her room but being inside felt too claustrophobic after such a close call. And there was still a chance that one or all of my internal organs would implode. A good guest tries not to spew blood and gore inside the house.

I didn’t tell Mina this. She would have started crying and sliding into another guilt-fest. Also, I really didn’t blame her. I could have refused to help her. I could have ignored the attack on Mina and Javier that day on the road. I could have done any number of things to avoid having anything to do with the Reyes family.

I had wanted to be involved. I wanted to protect decent people – although the jury was still out on Javier – from the kind of evil that killed my mother. I had also wanted to test myself. I needed to know if I was strong enough with my father’s training but without him there to protect me.

But last night had been a draw. I was alive only due to sheer luck – not skill. I needed to know that I could control the outcome of my own survival. Because sooner or later, I had to stop being my father’s problem.

I slept until the family’s adopted granny nudged my arm with a bowl of warm cereal. I ate it slowly, savoring the cooked grains mixed with dried fruit and cream.

“I put in pulp of willow bark to help keep swelling down. Also made it extra hearty. Too skinny won’t get you the pretty boy.”

I made a face at her and took another bite. “You don’t scare me,” I said for no reason.

“I’m very old. Only those who don’t understand age fear me.”

The Abuela stroked hair away from my forehead with a hand that looked like it had been left in the oven too long. But there was still a lot of dexterity and strength in it.

“I am no longer afraid of anything, but I grieve,” she said.

I chewed and waited, not sure if I wanted to know more. Anger and action were easy. Emotional pain was not something I endured well.

“You have had to be brave for too long, from too young an age. You saved this family and protected my favorite, Ramona, from death. I grieve because I cannot help you save the one you love.”

“Then I’ll just have to keep doing the saving,” I said.

“You are strong, stronger than those around you. But you are just a girl. Don’t blame yourself for what comes.”

I gave her back the empty bowl. At the bottom of the dish was a picture of a single wolf howling up at an indifferent moon.

“You need to work on your pep talk,” I said to her in Spanish.

Logan opened his front door as soon as we pulled into the driveway. I had planned on staying in the car to minimize movement of my battered body but the worried look on his face was too much. As soon as I stepped down from the backseat, he was there to kiss me. I didn’t care that his arms around my bruised body were painful.

After a minute of Javier making stupid noises and Mina shushing him, Logan stopped, looked me in the eye and said, “You.”

“That would be me.”

“I said you could borrow my car to drive to L.A. I didn’t say you could stay out all night without calling me.” He was angry.

“I didn’t know there were strings attached.”

“You don’t understand about guys and cars.”

“You were really worried about your car.”

He looked me up and down. “What did you do to yourself?”

“You have to be more specific.”

“You’re not moving.”

“You’re standing two inches in front of me and your precious car is at my back. Where is there to go?”

“It’s already ninety degrees hot, take off your jacket.”

“Can’t. It goes with my boots.” If he saw the bruises and cuts on my arms, the jig would be up.

“You lie by evasion.”

“That’s an SAT word, isn’t it?”

Logan whipped his head toward Javier. “What happened? Why did the Littlest Commando let you drive?”

Javier took a moment. He looked at me and then at Logan and seemed to weigh something in silence. Finally, he said, “It was a front. They knew Mina’s family was asking questions. They must have figured that the next step was a visit so they planted a nasty surprise.”

A haunted look washed over Logan’s face. He opened the driver’s door and unhooked the GPS device from its slot on the dashboard.

“It was on the news. An explosion in South L.A.,” he muttered as he thumbed through the locator’s menus. “And you were there.”

He pointed the screen at my face as if I needed to be reminded where we had been last night.

I took the GPS from Logan’s hand and turned it off before removing its battery and SIM card.

“Sorry. I’ll get you a new one,” I promised as I snapped the SIM card in half and crushed the device under the heel of my boot. I pulled a plastic baggy from my bag and scooped in the important pieces of broken tech.

I had been careful not to enter the address of Cash Brothers into the GPS. Every request for directions was beamed up and processed by a satellite in the sky which sent back down coordinates and routes. A person’s life could be plotted and tracked by where he or she used a cell phone, the directions requested from a GPS device and credit card purchases. Anyone checking the log on Logan’s machine would have seen the pattern of some kids hanging out at a coffee shop, stopping at a grocery for supplies and then checking into a motel for underage sex and/or drugs. That they happened to be rolling by as a strip mall exploded was less than optimal but Javier had assured me other cars were on the street at the same time.

“O.k.,” Logan said, eyeing the tiny remains of his GPS. “We’ll circle around later to why you keep destroying my electronics,” Logan said. “Right now I want to know how close you came to getting killed.”

“I’m here. You’re car wasn’t scratched. That’s all that matters.”

“Do I have to shake you to get a straight answer?”

“I’m not a cocktail.”

Logan looked ready to blow. He was furious and frustrated and frightened. But I didn’t see how telling him the gory details would do any good, especially since I knew what happened to his girlfriend. Old girlfriend. Dead former girlfriend.

I had not figured in the possibility that Mina would be the weakest link.

“They rigged a bomb in the office. It’s a miracle that Alice got out alive. She’s covered in cuts and bruises, except that she wore a mask that protected her face.”

I glared at Mina. “If we get captured by enemy forces, I’m cutting your tongue out.”

Logan took hold of my arm and immediately released it when I winced in pain. “Damn it! You’re going to have to tell me where I can touch you without hurting you. And I am not the enemy! I’m your – ” He went silent.

I felt my face flame in disappointment and humiliation. He couldn’t bring himself to use the B-word.

“Hey. Look at me.” Logan cupped my face very gently. “I’m not going to assume anything until I ask you to go steady with me and hear your answer. I’m also not going to do it in front of an audience. Plus, we all now know that Mina can’t be trusted with sensitive information.”

I ignored Mina’s protests and Javier’s jokes. I leaned into Logan and closed my eyes. I breathed in his scent and listened to his heartbeat.

We got to school just as the class bell rang. Mina ran ahead to catch up with Riley on the building steps. Logan took my bag and slung it over his shoulder. He tilted to one side, exaggerating the effect of the extra weight. I smiled. Then a strong hand caught my arm and jerked me to a standstill. Agony rolled up and down the side of my body. It was my father.

“Hey! Get your hand off of her!” Logan’s reaction was quick and angry.

I put myself between them. Logan’s hand was raised, about to form a fist at my father. I could not let them touch each other. My father could paralyze him with one hand.

“Logan, it’s all right. You go ahead. I’ll see you later.”

“I’m not leaving you alone with this jerk. I said get your hand off of her.” Logan was almost shouting now.

Logan tried to step around me. I heard my father’s breathing change into the measured cadence he used during sparring. I said the only thing I knew would stop them both in their tracks.

“This jerk is my father.”

I don’t know who looked more shocked, Logan or my father.

“But he’s the janitor.” Logan snapped his mouth shut. “Sorry, I didn’t mean it that way. I – uh – I – ”

“It’s all right. I can’t believe he works here either,” I said. “But at least I can keep an eye on him this way.”

I made it sound like joke. On some cosmic level, it was one.

“Please give us a minute.”

Logan hesitated and then took a step towards my father. He put out his arm. “Pleased to meet you, sir. My name is Logan.”

My father looked hard at Logan before shaking his hand. He didn’t say “Pleased to meet you too.” Because he wasn’t. Not “Hello, my name is blablabla.” Because he wasn’t going to give Logan his real name and probably didn’t see the point of giving him a fake name.

Instead, my father said, “Good morning, son. You better get to class and give me a moment with my daughter.”

When Logan was out of ear shot, my father let me have it.

“What the hell were you doing in L.A.? Have you lost your mind!”

Instead of answering, I scanned the parking lot. The Taurus was gone.

My father said, “I drove it home and had to jog back here to pick up my vehicle. What were you thinking taking that boy’s car instead of your own?”

“I was thinking that my father might have put a bomb in his car.”

I had to stop myself from laughing at that. Anything other than shallow breathing abused the new pain threshold for my body.

After a breath, I continued, “I was thinking that my father might not blow up the car if he knew his daughter was in it. But I couldn’t be sure of that so I made Logan stay away from his car.”

He looked at me as though I had lost my mind. It wasn’t so much that anything changed in his face that others would notice. It was just the tiny contraction of his pupils, his lips thinning into a straight line. “I do not kill children. In particular, I would never hurt my own child – no matter how much she might make me want to.”

He was angry – angrier than I had seen him since my mother died.

“I am your father – not a monster. You’re still here against my better judgment aren’t you?”

“You’re lurking around my school all day dressed in a jumpsuit named Bob!”

“What were you doing in L.A.?”

“Why didn’t you just follow me there too?”

“Someone has to make certain that Logan isn’t a threat.”

The hair on my skin rose and cold sweat bloomed all over my body. The only thing that stopped me from launching a full attack on my own father was the knowledge that Logan was still alive.

“What did you do?”

“Nothing that will harm him or his mother. I need to know who they’re contacting and what they’re saying.”

It hit me then, the reason he wore an earphone plugged into what looked like an MP3 player strung around his neck on a white cord. He had rigged wiretaps. My father was listening to every conversation Logan and his mother were having through their landlines and cell phones.

And I had installed a way to track Logan’s whereabouts through his car. Like father like daughter. I wanted to vomit.

And then I did.

I held a plastic bag under my chin while my father drove.

“Any blood?” he asked.

“Not yet.”

“What happened? And tell me the truth or I won’t know whether to take you to a hospital or a graveyard.”

“You are such a drama queen.” I ruined the delivery by dry-heaving.

“Tell me or you’ll never see Logan James a.k.a. Logan de Martine again. Because if you won’t leave here, I can make certain U.S. Marshalls take him away in less than an hour.”

“You’re an asshole.”

“Talk.”

In between stomach cramps that made me want to curl into a ball and die, I told him about the bomb and my injuries. His knuckles vacillated between red and white on the steering wheel.

“I’ve trained you better than any operative in the history of the CIA. You ignore all of it and almost get yourself killed.”

“I’m still here.”

“By sheer luck.

“How do you know? Maybe I’ve absorbed enough to know without knowing. Isn’t that one of your koans?”

“Did you see what the bomb was made of?”

“No. I started moving after spotting the trigger wire. Everything was on fire two seconds later. The burn smelled like C4.”

“How did you get away? Did anyone see you?”

“Javier and Mina drove through the alley after they heard the explosion and found me. It was against my orders – they were supposed to leave me if anything went wrong.”

“Right. They’re civilians. They operate on sentiment. Something I thought had been trained out of you. But in this instance, I’m glad they did. I might let them live now.”

“You’re not funny. I’ve told you that before.”

“And you’re in a lot of trouble. In fact, you’re grounded.”

I pondered that. I had never been grounded before. My father had never punished me in the past eight years – other than by the fact of our everyday existence.

“Any blood yet.”

I looked in the gross contents of the bag. “No.”

“How are you feeling now?”

“Cold. Very cold.” My teeth started chattering.

“It’s shock. Good old-fashioned shock.”

He drove us home and I got into bed as he piled blankets on top of me. He made hot lemonade with honey and made me drink a liter of it before letting me fall asleep. I didn’t get out of bed for the next three days. The adrenaline that had kept me going right after the bomb went off had exhausted my energy reserves, leaving me weaker than a newborn.

My body needed to heal. I slept, only waking to take care of bodily functions and eat when my father forced me. Every once in a while I wondered what Logan and the others thought of my disappearance. But I couldn’t hold any thought for longer than a minute before getting sleepy.

On the fourth day, my father brought me some solid food and a large white envelope. In it was a get-well card signed by Mina, Javier and Logan.

In Mina’s neat handwriting was: “I hope you feel better soon. Call me! My mother will cook for you.”

Javier’s surprisingly small scrawl said: “Not bad for a girl. Don’t be a stranger.”

Logan wrote in a doctor’s messy hand: “Why the hell isn’t your phone working! Call me!”

Each of their signatures had a phone number below it. I looked at my father.

“They accosted me at school and forced it on me. They want proof of life by tonight or they’re going to the authorities in an attempt to find you. Logan tried to follow me here.”

I scowled at him.

“He’s still alive. Just a little lost since he no longer has a GPS system.”

He put my mobile phone on the bed tray.

“You’d better call and tell them to back off – if you still want to stay in this strange little town.”

Surprised didn’t come close to describing how I felt about my father’s capitulation. I let my mouth hang open.

“It seems there is an upside to your believing that you have friends who need to be rescued repeatedly. You’re too busy to stay in a serious depression. That’s why you missed school while I was gone, isn’t it? It hit you again.”

I nodded. I had been waiting for the other shoe to drop. When the Zombie appeared, it was never a short visit – at least not in the past. This time had been different. All the precursors had been there: paralyzing migraine, indifference to living or dying, excessive sleepiness. But instead of burying me for weeks, it had evaporated in days. In the back of my mind had been the worry that it was just biding its time – that it would be back soon.

But maybe this was the upside to risking your life for others. I looked at my father. Was that why he had chosen to be what he was? Did he need the adrenaline to keep the dark side at bay? Depression ran in families. Was I prone to it because of his genes and not just because my mother was dead?

I asked him none of these questions. I wanted none of his answers. That would have meant relating to him as another human being.

“Where are you? I’ll come and get you,” Logan began without waiting for me to say hello. “You can stay with me or Mina – she’d probably kidnap you from my house anyway.”

I wrapped myself tighter in the blankets and enjoyed the sound of his voice.

“Can’t. My father grounded me.”

“Is he feeding you? Does he know what happened?”

“I’m not even sure what happened.” Not exactly true.

“Mina said you told them no police. Why?” he asked. “I can ask my handlers to look into it. They ought to be able to figure out who rented the space.”

Some of the blankets fell to the floor when I shot upright in bed. “No! I mean, that’s a really bad idea.” I hobbled over to the closet and pulled out jeans and a long sleeved t-shirt.

“Do you mind walking me through your thinking?” he said.

I thought furiously and threw out, “They’ll move you again if they find out your Chatham friends are being targeted by criminals with explosives. If you can’t stay away from trouble in a place like this, where will they put you and your mother next?”

He was silent for a moment. Then he said, “They tried to kill you. They could try again.”

“Mina’s family was the target, not me. After what happened, I don’t think Mina and Javier will try to go after them again.” At least I hoped so.

“Right. So you think the people who attacked two teenagers in the road, tried to burn a family alive in their house, and blew up a strip mall, have now given up.” Logan sounded testy.

“Not what I said.”

“They’re still in danger and, as long as you’re Mina’s friend, you’re in danger.”

“Getting your protectors involved will not help. Trust me.” I avoided saying “FBI” on the phone. Ever since 9/11, wireless transmissions were monitored by government agencies tasked with thwarting terrorists. I’m sure they would be more than o.k. with catching others like my father. Who is not a terrorist. As far as I know.

I shook my head. The call had gone on too long about topics we did not need to discuss on Logan’s unsecure line.

“Let’s meet. At the first place I tackled you to the ground.”

“I thought you were grounded,” he said.

“Fifteen minutes.” Then I hung up.

I looked at my bedroom door. It was closed. The chances of my father not eavesdropping on my conversation with Logan were zero and not likely. He was now expecting me to sneak out of the house.

I opened the door and called out, “I’m taking the bike. Don’t follow me.”

“Like hell you are,” returned his voice from downstairs.

“He needs to see that I’m all right. That you haven’t got me chained in some dark cellar.”

“Don’t tempt me.”

“If Logan calls the FBI, we’ll have to leave town. These kids know what I look like and what you look like. Like you said, you’re not a monster. You’re not going to kill them to protect our identities. Reassuring Logan will be the easier and safer thing to do at this point.”

He appeared at the bottom of the stairs. I took each step slowly; it was as fast as my sore legs would move. By the time we were face to face, he looked like he was still trying to decide what to do. I wasn’t strong or skilled enough to get through him against his will. I looked him in the eye and waited.

Finally, he folded his arms across his chest and stepped back.

Logan was taking an easy lap around the school track when I got there. He was still pretty fast but made it look like his legs were barely moving. When I turned my bike off, he sprinted towards me.

“Don’t you ever disappear on me again,” he said.

What was it with males telling me what to do? “I’ll take that under advisement.”

“Why were you gone for so long? Mina’s about to put on a hair shirt and start flagellating herself.”

“I hope you told her I was fine.”

“Why would I tell her something without proof?”

“Look at me. I’m fine. I just had a bit more recovery to do after a bomb exploded beneath my feet.”

He looked down. “Yeah. I now see how two inch rubber soles come in handy. Remind me to write Doc Marten a thank you letter.”

“You like to talk,” I said. “Too much.”

He smiled. “Come here and give me something else to do with my mouth.”