Fox Forever (13 page)

And then, before I know what I’m doing, my head is lowering to hers, my lips to hers, my breaths becoming hers, and I forget about everything but the taste of her mouth, the scent of her hair, and the knots of her spine as my hands pull her closer.

The Rules of the Game

I’m in trouble. Big trouble. I’m exhausted. Not at the top of my game by a long shot. And worried.

It didn’t stop with one kiss. Or two.

And then when I got home, I relived every moment. Her hands sliding along my back. Her tongue tracing my lips. Her hair brushing across my face when we fell to the ground. Her leaning over me, staring, and then lowering her face to mine again. Everything about her was sweet, and perfect, and dangerous. But I couldn’t stop and neither could she. Our mutual trust status made an instant leap to ten.

And I said things. Things I never should have said.
You fascinate me too. I couldn’t get you out of my thoughts. That’s why I came. You’re beautiful, Raine.
I don’t know where it all came from. The words rushed out. For a few minutes every bit of restraint I had vanished. She made it vanish. And right now, the one thing I need more than ever is restraint.

I can’t lose sight of the goal. I’m going to find Karden, no matter what—dead or alive—for Miesha and for everyone else too. Five years from now, if Security shows up in Xavier’s neighborhood, they’ll be begging on their knees for help, not demanding it, and I won’t be hiding in the shadows with a shawl thrown over my head.

Xavier is on his way over, ignoring Carver’s rule of no contact. He found out I was out again last night. He’s not happy. When he arrives, he rings the bell and is wearing a delivery uniform, a cap pulled down over his eyes. He walks in with two bags of groceries.

“Nice disguise,” I say, trying to lighten his mood. I even add the little lighthearted smirk that always defused Gatsbro’s concerns. It doesn’t work with Xavier. He slams the door and dumps the grocery bags on the living room floor.

“What were you doing in the Commons last night? Someone on the way home from the docks saw you across the street from Raine’s apartment. We have a
plan
in case you forgot! Who do—”

“The plan was for me to get in with Raine and her friends, in case
you
forgot,” I snap back at him, and then in a lower voice, I add, “I’ve gotten to know her.”

“You what?”

“She likes to go out at night.”

He stares at me, his jaw tight, his scar white against his reddening face. “How many nights has this happened?”

I pick the bags up from the floor. “Almost every night, if it’s any of your business.” A stupid thing to say. Of course it’s his business. Everything to do with the Favor is his business.

He looks at me for the longest time. His jaw goes lax. “No. No.” He shakes his head and turns.
“Noooo.”
He groans. “I can’t believe it.” He spins around to face me. “My God, you’ve fallen for her.”

I nearly drop the bags again. “That’s the jump of an insane man.”

“Look at you. It’s all over your face.”

“So now you read faces?” I turn and walk to the kitchen with the bags. “The only thing on my face is lack of sleep because I’m doing what you told me to do. I can’t just walk into this thing without—”

“Have you kissed her?”

I stop and turn back to face him.
“What?”
But I can tell I’ve already given it away. All I can do now is damage control. I force my shoulders to relax and I shrug. “So what if I have? It doesn’t mean anything.”

“Nothing? You sure?”

Am I? I haven’t been able to stop thinking about her for days. Not just the kiss, but even before that. Every time I try to focus on other things, I still circle back to her. But how could I fall for Raine when I still love Jenna? I’ve always loved Jenna. Thoughts of her are what got me through centuries of being trapped in a six-inch cube.

Locke, it just isn’t right.… I may look like the Jenna you knew so long ago, but I’m lifetimes from that girl. I’m two hundred and seventy-seven years old now.… You deserve the chance to live a life.…

Xavier waits for a reply. I turn away and unload the groceries on the counter. “There’s someone else in my life,” I answer.

“Good. It wouldn’t be smart for you to get mixed up with Raine that way. She can’t be trusted. She
is
the Secretary’s daughter.”

I whip around at the remark, ready to defend her. “She’s not like the Secretary. She’s adopted. Did you know that?”

“But he raised her. That’s enough to make her dangerous.”

He doesn’t miss a beat with his reply, which is more than a little odd. He’s not surprised with this new information about her adoption. Maybe because it’s not new to him. Why didn’t he include it in Raine’s files? If telling me that she likes fencing is important, it seems like this little fact might be important too.

“You look like hell,” he says. “You better get some sleep, Romeo. You have the performance of a lifetime tonight, and the Secretary’s going to be a much tougher audience than Raine to fool.”

I note how smoothly he changes the subject. He’s covering, trying to erase the ground he just gave me. I grab an orange from the groceries he brought and score the peel with the blade of my Swiss knife the way my dad used to. I sit at the kitchen table and plop my feet on top of it, lean back in the chair, and pull the neatly scored peel from the orange. Sometimes more can be said with silence than with words. I learned that from Miesha. Raine’s incomplete files weren’t just sloppiness. I wipe the oily orange residue from the blade with my fingers and fold it back into its red hilt, pulling out the scissors next, and then the tweezers.

“Why the sudden interest in the knife?” Xavier asks.

“Just paying attention to details.”

“Did you hear anything I said about getting some sleep?”

I look at his face, staring at every angle, every plane. He knows exactly what I’m doing. He wants to turn away, but he doesn’t. I have to give him that. I see anger. I see fear. But mostly I see a mountain of guilt.

And that’s when I know.

All the clues that didn’t add up before click into place. More than click—they explode. I drop my orange on the kitchen floor and run to the living room, swiping papers and maps aside as I bring up the file I need.

File 52

Raine Branson (pronounced: rayn)

Age: 17

Xavier follows me, talking, shouting, buzzing around me like an angry bee, but I block it all out, flipping through the virtual pages until I find the one I want. The image looms in front me, frozen on the virtual screen. Raine staring at me, her lips parted, the lips that made my hair stand on end. Raine’s features are dark, her hair, her eyes, her thick line of black lashes, all of these new and unfamiliar to me, features that threw me off, but her mouth, the distinct
V
of her upper lip, the wide pout of her lower lip, lips I had seen countless times trying to hold back information from me until they no longer could. Miesha’s lips.

I fall back in my seat, air trapped in my chest. That’s why they didn’t tell me she was adopted. That’s why there were no images of Karden.
Dark and dangerous
. That’s how Miesha described him, and exactly how you could describe Raine.

I shake my head in disgust. “You’re trying to save Karden, but not her?”

“From what? The only life she’s ever known?” Xavier doesn’t apologize for the lie he has perpetuated. His tone is accusatory. “Save her from her life of privilege and leisure? Believe me, I thought about it. No one hates the Secretary more than I do. How do you think I got this?” He touches the scar that slashes the entire length of his face. “He personally dragged a blade across my cheek while his security forces held me down. A little message he called it, to all Non-pacts who ever considered Resistance again. So when I found out who Raine was a few months ago, my first impulse was to expose the Secretary’s dirty secret.” He looks away, the sneer on his upper lip fading. His voice becomes softer. “But she
is
Karden’s and Miesha’s daughter. What would I be condemning her to? She’d be caught between two worlds, not fitting in anywhere anymore, not to mention what the Secretary might do with her.” He looks up at me. “But really, the bottom line is, after all this time she’s part of their world now. She has a
life
in that world. That’s where her loyalties are. Not with us. She can’t be trusted.”

I spring to my feet, jumping him, throwing him to the ground, moving so fast he doesn’t have time to react, moving faster than anything he’s ever had to react to. I wedge my hand against his throat. “It doesn’t matter!” I yell. “She’s a human being! Not merchandise! Not a pawn in this stupid game of yours!”

My hand tightens on his throat. He doesn’t struggle. I let go, pushing away from him, and walk to the other side of the room, trying to keep from putting my fist through the wall, trying to process what all this means. I know what it’s like to have other people playing with your life like you’re nothing more than a game piece.

Xavier gets to his feet, rubbing his neck where I’d held it. “It’s not a stupid game,” he says. “It’s a desperate one. One I’ve been playing for years. One I’m tired of playing too. But one I have no choice but to keep playing until the rules of the game are changed.”

He takes a step toward me. “We’re close, Locke. I can feel it. The climate’s right. Everything Carver told you is true. There are rumblings about reunification. We can only bring those rumblings to the next level with two things—serious money, and a serious leader.”

“And Karden can give you both those things.”

“The Resistance lost its heart after he disappeared, and the Secretary’s harsh crackdown afterward all but killed it.”

I study him. He’s only a man, the one I saw a few nights ago, the one who held an infant on his shoulder, the man quick on his feet when Security arrived, the man dancing with his wife. Not a calculating member of the Resistance, only one man doing what he can. But is it enough? Can all this ever be enough? And at what cost? I remember what Jenna said about the world always changing.
Just when we have one problem solved, a new one is created.
Xavier is one of those problems. So am I.

He sits down on the sofa. “I’m sorry we didn’t tell you. We were going to, but after our first interview with you, we saw how close you were to Miesha. We thought knowing Raine was her daughter might just complicate matters for you.”

“And make me slip.”

“Yes, and we can’t afford slips. It could cost people their lives. Since she was raised as the Secretary’s daughter, we don’t know a lot about Raine, but she does have a life and identity as a citizen. That means a whole different way of thinking. She has loyalties to that world now.”

I nod, remembering how she defended the Secretary when we first met, maybe even showed some pride about his prominent position. And of course, she proclaimed her adoptive mother as the best mother in the world. Yes, she has some loyalties, but how strong, I don’t know.

Xavier leans forward, tired lines creasing his eyes. “At the very least, if she were told the truth she might confront him and blow the whole thing.”

Knowing Raine, I don’t have any doubt about that. She would more than confront him. She would be an out-of-control force of nature, likely to sweep us all away in the process. But she doesn’t live a life of privilege and leisure as Xavier implied. She’s more like a prisoner in a tower.

Yes, knowing complicates everything.

The Meeting

The guard has rung the ninth floor. He whispers quietly through a privacy shield to someone on the other end. I examine a bowlful of green apples pretending I’m more interested in them than in what the guard is whispering. He eyes me suspiciously and nods, and then whispers again. A final affirmative dip of his chin and he signs off, turning his full attention back to me, suddenly all smiles.

“You may go up, sir.” He points to a hallway behind him. “North lift.”

I set the apple in my hand back in the bowl. The guard scrutinizes me as I step in the direction he pointed. I carefully control my movements and expressions. It feels like every single twitch is being watched, and not just by the guard. I saw the discreet surveillance eyes hovering near the crown molding the minute I entered the lobby, but I pretended not to notice. I need to look like a kid on his way to meet schoolmates and that’s all.

The moment of truth has arrived at last.

The elevator door is already open as I approach, making me uneasy, like I’m not just being watched. I’m being anticipated. I step inside but there are no buttons to push. The door closes and the elevator begins to rise. The surveillance eyes hover in the corners of the elevator as well. No wonder Raine never exits this way in the middle of the night. I want to wipe my palms on my pants but resist the urge. I don’t want to show nerves even though I have plenty right now. Everything has changed now that there’s actually someone up there on that top floor whom I care about—and someone Miesha cares about too. Bravado has taken a back seat to precision.

The elevator stops but the door doesn’t open. I wait, and then look around wondering if there’s a bell I’m supposed to ring, like I’m standing on a stoop. I run my hands along the back wall and suddenly I hear the whoosh of the door. I spin around and am greeted by Dorian, the household manager.

“Welcome, Locke. Is that right—Locke?”

“Yes,” I say. “Locke Jenkins.”

She leads me through a marble foyer into a large living room, very old-world style, with mahogany paneling, tapestries, and lots of lavish brocade furniture. Not at all what I expected.

“You’re the first to arrive. Please make yourself comfortable. May I get you a refreshment?”

“Just water would be great, thank you.”

“Yes, sir. Of course.”

I walk around the room when Dorian leaves, examining the decor. The first thing I notice is books. Lots of books. The old-fashioned leather-bound kind. Gatsbro kept his collection behind glass. The Secretary obviously flaunts his. Does he read them, or are they only for show? Something like Raine, the model daughter who jumps through all his hoops?