Among the Barons (9 page)

“Nothing to lose, eh?” Mr. Grant said.

Luke struggled to find his voice. “What do you want from me?” he demanded.

Mrs. Grant looked back at him, very solemnly, and announced, “We want you to die.”

CHAPTER 21

Luke jerked back and made a panicky grab for the door. But the doorknob had vanished somehow.

“Oh, very nice, Sarinia,” Mr. Grant said. “Now you’ve terrified him. She doesn’t mean for
real,”
he told Luke. “We just want to stage your death so—well, it’s a long story”

“Tell me,” Luke said through gritted teeth.

Mr. Grant frowned at Mrs. Grant.

“This isn’t the way to get started,” he said. “You’ll have to forgive us. We’re still a Little... grief stricken. It’s been very hard for us today, dealing with another boy pretending to be
.....

Luke looked around frantically. It was the middle of the night, and for once there were no servants in sight Still, his heart began pounding with fear at the thought that someone might have heard Mr. Grant say that Luke wasn’t Lee.

“It’s all right,” Mr. Grant said soothingly “This is a soundproof, secure room. We can speak openly here.”

“Have a seat,” Mrs. Grant offered, turning a chair toward Luke. “We’ll explain.”

Luke was thinking that a soundproof, secure room would be a great place to kill someone. But what could he do? He sat down.

Mr. and Mrs. Grant sat down, too, in chairs opposite his. Mrs. Grant leaned forward.

“Our son Lee was a wonderful boy” she began in a sad voice. “Everything a parent could want. He was good at sports, musically gifted, a top student
.. .“
She paused to dab at her eyes. “But he was a bit, urn, idealistic.”

“He was a troublemaker,” Mr. Grant said harshly. “Stubborn as a rock. From the day he was born, he thought he could run the world.”

Luke tried to make those two descriptions fit together. So Lee had been a peffect, gifted, stubborn troublemaker.

“Like father, like son. Right, dear?” Mrs. Grant purred.

‘Aah..
.“
Mr. Grant waved her question away “When he died, he was, urn, breaking the law ever so slightly” Mr. Grant continued. “He was—well, there’s no need for you to know the whole story. But suffice it to say that it would have been a bit difficult for us to explain the circumstances of his death.”

If Luke had only been a little braver, he might have asked, “Did the Government really kill him?” But Mrs. Grant had already taken over the conversation.

‘And when he died, as you can imagine, we were distraught,” Mrs. Grant added. “Simply overcome.”

She sniffed daintily and Let Mr. Grant continue the explanation.

“So when our friend George Talbot approached us with a possible solution, a way to make it Look as though Lee
hadn’t
died—and, by the way to help you—we surely couldn’t be faulted for taking advantage of that opportunity Could we?” Mr. Grant asked.

He sounded as though he truly expected Luke to answer. Like he wanted to know what Luke thought

“Urn, no,” Luke said. “And believe me, I was happy to...” It didn’t seem right to say he was happy when they were talking about their son dying. “I mean, I’m very grateful that you made the decision you did.”

“Right. And you’ve had, what—five, six months now of using Lee’s name?” Mr. Grant asked.

“Five months, three weeks, and two days,” Mrs. Grant said faintly

Luke could only nod. Lee’s mother knew exactly how long it had been since Lee died. Somehow that made Lee seem real, as much as if Luke had found pictures Lee had drawn, letters he had written, initials he had carved in his room.

Luke had liked it better before, when Lee Grant was only a name to him, a name he could hate if he wanted to.

“So here’s the thing,” Mr. Grant said, ignoring his wife. “We’ve given you these past several months of freedom. So we’re just asking a small favor in return. Smits—our other son, Smits—has had quite a few problems accepting his

brother’s death. We asked him to keep the news secret, but—”

“Maybe it was too much to expect. Maybe it was too much to expect of anyone,” Mrs. Grant said, aLmost to herself.

Luke could tell which one of them had decided to hide Lee’s death.

“We hired a bodyguard for him,” Mr. Grant continued. ‘We let him go meet you. We thought that might help somehow. But he’s only getting worse.”

Luke wondered how the Grants could know that. Had Oscar told them about Smits setting the fire? Had Smits confided in his parents?

Luke couldn’t imagine Smits telling Mr. and Mrs. Grant anything personal at all.

“So we came up with an alternate plan,” Mr. Grant said. “We thought we’d have some parties, show you off very publicly as Lee, and then—”

“Do I look like Lee?” Luke asked quietly

He wanted Mr. Grant to pull a picture out of a bilLfold or off the top of his desk. Suddenly he desperately wanted to see what the real Lee had looked like. If only he could see the real Lee, he thought, he could decide for himself whether Lee had been a troublemaker, as his father said, or the brilliant saint Mrs. Grant had described. It mattered, suddenly

Lee Grant, who were you?

“We think you could pass as Lee,” Mrs. Grant said with

a catch in her voice. “We think. We’ve been debating this issue alL day”

“Can I see—,” Luke began, but Mr. Grant interrupted.

“Anyhow, as I was saying, we’d show you off, then stage your death. Then Smits—and Mrs. Grant and I—could grieve openly And there’d be no danger of anyone accusing Lee of dying during any um, iLlegal activities last April, because everyone wouLd just have seen you now. In September.”

Luke considered not being Lee anymore. It would actually be a relief to take on some other anonymous name—some name that didn’t come with the complications of a grieving brother and powerful parents. Still, he remembered Mr. Hendricks’s worries about Luke taking a name that might save some other third chiLd in hiding, or of taking a name that carried even more danger than Lee Grant’s. He wondered if he could still go back to Hendricks if he used a different name.

“Isn’t there some other way to help Smits?” Luke asked. “If you kept him at home, and you taLked about Lee, just the three of you—”

“What would the servants think?” Mrs. Grant asked.

“You could talk in here,” Luke said hesitantly “You could help him yourself, in private.” He couldn’t quite see the Grants, alL cozy and grieving together. Crying together. He couLdn’t picture Mrs. Grant hugging Smits, or even Mrs. Grant hugging Mr. Grant. And he couldn’t see this room as a place for comfort. It was too cold, too formal, too clearly a place for business deals and crafty thoughts, not raw emotions.

“No, no, you don’t understand.” Mr. Grant waved away Luke’s suggestion. “You’re just a child. You don’t know what you’re talking about. You’ll just have to follow our plan.”

“I suppose Mr. Talbot could find another fake identity for me,” Luke said reluctantly

“Oh, no,” Mrs. Grant said. “You couldn’t get another identity Not after being seen as Lee. Someone might recognize you. And then where would we be?”

Luke stared at her in horror. “Then, what would happen to me? Where could I go without Lee’s I.D. card?”

Mrs. Grant shrugged. “Well, wherever you were before you began passing yourself off as Lee.” She made it sound like Luke had stolen Lee’s identity—like he’d maybe even killed Lee himself.

“You want me to go back into hiding?” Lee asked incredulously

And Mrs. Grant looked straight back at him and said, “Of course.”

CHAPTER 22

For just an instant Luke let himself imagine hiding again. He could go back home with Mother and Dad, Matthew and Mark. But he’d be living in the attic, taking his meals on the stairs again, out of sight. He wouldn’t be allowed to look out windows or even to walk past a window.

“I can’t,” Luke said weakly “I can’t go back into hiding.”

“Why not?” Mr. Grant said. ~You were hiding before you got Lee’s name. What’s the big deal about hiding now?”

“It’s
.. .“
Luke could only shake his head. They were rich and powerful. How could they possibly understand? Having tasted freedom, having been brave, having volunteered to do something grand for the cause—he absolutely could not return now to the nothingness of life in hiding.

“How would you like it if someone told you that you had to go into hiding?” he asked the Grants.

Mrs. Grant stood up with a flounce.

“Oh, this is ridiculous,” she said. “I’ve never had to hide. I’m a legal individual. I have rights. I’m a
Baron.
It’s not the same.”

“Don’t you think I should have rights, too?” Luke asked.

Then, looking at the two adults’ stony faces, he began to lose hope. They didn’t care about third children. They’d never thought about whether Luke or anyone else like him should have rights or not. He was just a pawn to them, someone they could use for their own purposes and cast aside when they didn’t need him anymore.

“That’s not the point,” Mrs. Grant said. “The point is...” A sly smile crept over her face. “The point is, it doesn’t matter whether you like our plan or not If you sabotage our plan, if you don’t act like Lee, you sabotage yourself. Don’t think we wouldn’t be happy to call the Population Police on you.”

She was threatening him. Luke felt the color drain from his cheeks. He stared into Mrs. Grant’s exquisitely beautiful face, still perfectly made up at three in the morning. She was even still wearing a pearl necklace. What could he possibly say in response?

“But if you want me to help in staging my death...,” Luke began. He was ashamed that his voice came out in a whimper.

“Oh, don’t you worry about that. We’ve got everything

planned. We don’t need your cooperation,” Mrs. Grant said with a sickly sweet smile.

And then the secret meeting was over, and Mr. Grant walked Luke back to his room—to Lee’s room. In a daze Luke changed out of the rumpled tuxedo and into his own pajamas. And then he lay in bed, replaying the whole conversation in his mind. The more he thought about it, the more it seemed like a nightmare.

We want you to die....

You couldn’t get another identity....

You were hiding before.
. . .
What’s the big deal about hiding now?

The Grants might as well kill him for real and be done with it, Luke thought Hiding again would be practically as bad as dying.

And then a resolve began to steal over him. No matter what, he wouldn’t go back into hiding. Surely he could do something, secretly, as part of the underground resistance to the Government. Mr. Talbot had hinted before at the existence of secret workers for the cause. Luke wasn’t sure if any of them had legal identities or not. He remembered three kids he’d met through his friend Nina—Percy, Matthias, and Alia. They’d once been involved in making fake I.D.’s. He wasn’t sure what they were doing now, but maybe he could help them.

Luke’s plans were vague and shadowy at best, but they made him feel better. He wasn’t a Baron like the Grants, he wasn’t legal like the Grants, he wasn’t even an adult. But that didn’t mean he had to roll over and play dead when they said to. That didn’t mean he didn’t have any choices. All he had to do was get in touch with Mr. Talbot, secretly. Mr. Talbot could protect him from the Grants’ schemes.

CHAPTER 23

Comforted by his plans, Luke had fallen back to sleep when someone began shaking his shoulders once again.

“Wake up!” a gruff voice whispered.

It was Oscar this time. Luke actually had the nerve to say, “We’re home now. How can Smits be homesick?”

“Shh,” Oscar said. “Follow me.”

Mystified, Luke obeyed. But Oscar didn’t lead Luke next door to Smits’s room. He guided Luke on a convoluted path through the entire house. Only when they stood before a dark door did Luke realize: Oscar had led him back to the secret office.

“Wh—,” Luke began.

“Shh!” Oscar said again, urgently

He didn’t look around the way Mr. Grant had, only jammed a key in the lock. The door swung open and Oscar yanked Luke inside. Oscar seemed to be pressing buttons the same way Mr. Grant had. The lights came on

once again and, Luke noticed this time, the doorknob vanished. Somehow the door seemed to have turned into a smooth wall.

“How—how did you know about this room?” Luke asked.

“Lee told me,” Oscar said. “Lee gave me a key.”

Lee. Luke gulped.

“I’m Lee,” he said without much conviction. “I never said a word to you about, um, our house. I’ve never given you anything.”

Oscar gave Luke a look that almost seemed compassionate.

“We’re in a soundproof room,” he said. “We both know the truth. There’s no need for lies here.”

Stunned, Luke sank into a chair, the same one he’d sat in with the Grants.

“Don’t worry,” Oscar said. “I’m on your side. We’re fighting for the same cause.~~

“How do I know that?” Luke asked. “Why should I trust you?”

To his surprise, Oscar laughed. “Tough little brat, aren’t you? Not like that namby-pamby rich boy I’m supposed to be guarding all the time. You’re not really a Baron, are you? Let me guess.” Oscar narrowed his eyes, staring directly at Luke. “You grew up poor, I bet Really, really poor. Like me. I just don’t know how
you
were picked to take over Lee Grant’s identity.”

Luke didn’t tell him. He stared straight back at Oscar.