The Revelation of Eden Pruitt, page 14
The door flew open and slammed against the wall.
“Enough!” Lady Justice commanded as she strode inside with eyes ablaze.
The guard removed his knee from Cassian’s neck, but the gun remained.
“You had no authority to tase him,” she reprimanded.
The knuckle-cracker spluttered. “But he—he was going to—”
“What, exactly? His hands are cuffed behind his back.”
The knuckle-cracker looked incredulously at his counterpart’s bruised eyes. His crooked nose. There was a lot Cassian could do with his hands cuffed behind his back. But the woman didn’t wait for an answer. She grabbed Cass beneath one arm. The guard with the broken nose grabbed him beneath his other. Together, they pulled him to his feet and shoved him into a chair.
The woman cinched a taser cuff to his ankle. “If you don’t want that to happen again, don’t move.” She snapped her fingers at the monster, who stood with his back pressed against the far wall. “Sit.”
He did so quickly, obediently.
Cass glared—his chest heaving, his nostrils flared. The man across from him wasn’t a reflection in a mirror or a lookalike in the ring. He wasn’t a memory or a nightmare. He was real. In the flesh. Whole and healthy and neatly dressed.
“We’ll give you some privacy,” the woman said.
The monster’s face drained of color. “You’re leaving?”
“If he moves, he’ll be tased. The second time is no less painful and even more debilitating.” The door closed behind them with a boom.
Privacy was an illusion.
Cass had only to glance from the two-way mirror on the wall to the mounted camera in the corner to understand that this interaction was being watched and recorded. For what purpose, he didn’t know. Rage so consumed his mind and body, he couldn’t even make an educated guess. “What are you doing here?”
“I—I couldn’t …”
“You couldn’t what?”
“I couldn’t believe my eyes. When I saw you on the news. When I realized it was you. I—I knew it wasn’t true. I knew it couldn’t be true. My son is not a terrorist.”
“I am not your son.” He delivered the words with such unwavering animosity, such low and ominous warning, the monster flinched.
It was gasoline on fire.
Because monsters didn’t flinch. Monsters didn’t obey women like contrite school boys. Monsters didn’t feel or fear. Nor did they clasp their hands imploringly like this one was doing right now. “Listen, Cassian, you have to cooperate with these people. If you don’t, you will be executed. The date is already set. They plan to announce it to the public tomorrow evening.”
Cass stared incredulously. Was this a joke? A set-up? An attempt to throw him so far off balance he’d accidentally give them a morsel of information that might lead to Eden?
The monster leaned forward, his forearms flat on the table, his fingers spread wide, a gold band glinting on the ring finger of his left hand. “If you know something, if you have any information at all, tell them and they will let you go. There’s no reason for you to sacrifice your life for a group of people who wouldn’t return the favor. There’s no reason for you to die.”
“Says the man who beat me with a baseball bat and left me for dead.”
Another flinch, followed by a cagey glance at the mirror. “I—I’m not that person anymore.”
“Go to hell.”
“I already did!” The monster pounded the table with an angry, familiar fist. And despite everything—Cassian’s strength and training and the anger he donned like an impenetrable shield, the pit in his stomach filled with the fear of a pre-pubescent boy.
“You want me to go to hell,” he said. “But I was already in hell. For years.” The monster dragged his hands down his face. He sat with bowed shoulders, as though some terrible, invisible weight rested upon them. “But I got out. You can, too. Just tell them what they want and they will strike a deal.”
“Why do you care?”
“Because. I want a second chance. I want to make things right.”
Make things right? Was he kidding? Was he delusional?
“Please. Tell me what to do and I’ll do it.”
“Bring my mother back from the grave.”
His body sank. His arms dangled pathetically by his sides. “You have no idea how much I wish I could undo what I did.” The monster clutched the silk knot of his tie. “I loved her. I loved her so much, I couldn’t think straight. When I thought you were both dead, when I thought you had drowned, I nearly died from the grief. I tried to drink it away. For years. Then I found out you were alive. She was alive. She took you away from me. She took herself away from me.”
“For our protection.”
“I know that now. But I didn’t then.” He buried his face in his hands. “God forgive me, I didn’t know. I was out of my mind. When Mona found me. When she told me—”
The name came like a sharp ping in his brain. Like the bursting of a blood vessel. Spots danced in his eyes. “What did you say?” Cass interrupted.
The monster stopped his pathetic blubbering and looked up from his hands. “I was out of my mind. I—”
“Who found you?”
“A—a woman. Her name was Mona. She told me you were alive.”
“Liar.”
The monster blinked several times, as though truly confused by the accusation. “I’m not lying. She found me in Colorado. She told me you were alive. I didn’t believe her, of course. Until she showed me a photograph. She gave me your location in exchange for money.”
And just like that, a second grenade detonated.
His mother’s friend.
His mother’s betrayer.
The woman who’d found Cass after his mother was dead, after his father nearly beat him to death. The woman who had taken him to Beverly’s like she cared. That woman had led the monster to their doorstep.
She had a lot of mouths to feed.
It was true back then. It was still true today. And he’d brought Eden to the Damen Silos. Mona had known they were going to Bethesda. There was a bounty on their heads—an increasingly large and lucrative bounty. And now he was in here and Eden was out there with no idea that Mona was a monster, too.
23
A high-pitched pinging sound dragged Eden awake. She opened one eye, groggy from the late night, and wiped drool from the corner of her mouth before realizing where the pinging was coming from. The gadget on her bedside table! She jerked upright and snatched it off the nightstand.
The incoming code wasn’t from Barrett. It was from Mona, who they’d been trying to reach last night to no avail. Eden kicked the comforter off her legs and hurried across the hall into Cleo’s room. She flipped on the light.
The mountain of blankets on the bed mumbled an incoherent objection. The pair of them had stayed up past two, playing round after round of Texas Hold ‘Em with the deck of cards they’d retrieved from The Landing’s concierge. Eden plopped down on the bed and gave the mountain of blankets a shake as she accepted the call.
A holographic projection appeared.
She expected a miniature hologram of an old woman with a grumpy face and sagging jowls. Instead, it was the young, skinny teen who’d greeted Cassian and Eden when they first arrived at the Silos. The same young teen who’d fetched their supplies before they left on their train trek east. Mona’s gopher, munching on one of the largest, shiniest apples Eden had ever seen.
Cleo peeked out from her cave, registered what was going on, and hurled herself upright. “Twig!” she exclaimed, before cupping her forehead like one staving off a bout of dizziness. Apparently, she’d lurched upright too fast.
The kid’s eyes went round. “Cleo?”
She pressed herself close to Eden, nearly cheek-to-cheek so the kid called Twig could see her in the projection.
His eyes went rounder. “You’re alive!”
“And kicking,” Cleo said. “Where’s Mona?”
Twig shrugged. “Usually when she leaves, it’s to stock up on provisions, but we have more than usual at the moment.” As if to prove his point, he bit into the flesh of his apple, spraying holographic flecks of juice through the air.
“You can thank my Tesla for that,” Cleo said.
And Cassian’s bike. Mona would have traded both in for cash by now. Eden was glad the people living in the Silos had plenty of food. Although, considering what was happening in Minneapolis and the impossibility of knowing how it might affect communities such as this one, they would do well to maintain their current rations.
“When is she due back?” Cleo asked.
“She didn’t say.” Twig took another bite and talked around the mouthful. “She’s been gone an awful lot, so she put me in charge of communication.”
“That’s a pretty big job for a kid,” Cleo said.
“Who you calling a kid?” Twig wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “She knows she can trust me better than anyone.”
Cleo sat up straighter, hugging an armful of comforter to her chest. “Well, good, because we need you to pass a very important message to her as soon as she returns.”
He wedged the apple between his teeth and picked up a pencil and one of Mona’s sticky notes.
“I need Mona to call me. I’m hoping she can pass a message along to my mom, and my mom can pass a message along to Eden’s parents.” Cleo gave him the code that would allow Mona to contact them.
When Twig finished recording, he removed the apple and said, “America Underground, huh?”
The statement caught Eden off guard. She wasn’t aware the code linked them directly to Alexandria. It made her feel queasy as Cleo and Twig finished their back-and-forth.
He took another big bite of his apple and offered them both a salute before Cleo signed off and disconnected.
She asked for her crutches.
Eden handed them over. “You think it’s okay he knows our location?”
“Twig?” Cleo scooted to the edge of the bed and hobbled to her feet. “I’m not worried. He has no reason to share it with anyone but Mona.”
Eden bit the inside of her cheek, wishing she felt reassured.
“Let’s grab some breakfast,” Cleo said, crutch-walking to the door. “Then we’ll head to the boardroom and convince the council that you are their ace in the hole.”
Lady Justice brought Cass to his cell with the taser pressed against his spine like a warning. He didn’t fight. He didn’t count his steps or study the keypads or calculate the time it would take to incapacitate the woman and disappear down one of the darkened hallways. His mind was a smoking field of ruin and wreckage—a war zone in the aftermath of a battle. The death count yet unknown.
Mona.
She’d pretended to care about his mother, about him. And yet, she was the one who had betrayed them. Had she planned it from the beginning? Had she deceptively gained his mother’s trust, weaseled her way into his mother’s confidence, intending to sell them out? Or had she carried out the betrayal on a whim, in exchange for money that would feed all the mouths she needed to feed? Did it matter?
They reached his cell.
The woman in the suit opened the door.
Cass shuffled inside. Dazed. Stunned. Sick.
The woman unlocked his cuffs.
He sat down on the bench and rubbed his wrists. Eden was out there. Mona was out there. Eden’s parents were out there. He tried to remember if they’d mentioned anything about Dr. Norton and Milwaukee in front of the old woman. He couldn’t recall, but that didn’t mean they hadn’t. The unknown of it turned his gut to rot. Authorities were offering a bounty to anyone who might point them in a helpful direction. Mona had only to point them to Eden’s parents. If authorities threatened them, Eden would turn herself in. Of this, Cass was certain. And if the government got Eden, they would destroy her. Of this, he was also certain.
“Your father looks a lot like the man you killed in the ring,” Lady Justice said.
Cass closed his eyes, wishing he could stuff the memory away, but there was no place to stuff it. The boxes had been blown to pieces.
“What did he do to warrant such hatred?”
“He killed my mother.” The rot in his stomach churned. He looked up at the woman standing in the doorway, studying him with her head slightly cocked. He looked at the pin on the lapel of her suit coat. “Does that matter to you? Does your vow to protect the innocent extend to those living off the grid, or are they outside your jurisdiction?”
“People who step off the grid remove themselves from anyone’s jurisdiction.”
“She stepped off the grid to save my life.”
The woman’s face paled. The change was slight. But it was there all the same.
Cass rested his head against the wall behind him.
Voila. Tout au mieux.
His mother’s voice.
Eden’s voice.
They circled into a sword that pierced his soul.
As much as he ached for those words to be true, they weren’t.
It wasn’t all better.
It couldn’t be all better.
Not with him in here.
And Eden out there. With Mona and his father and the government and the Monarch.
“I looked into your accusations,” the woman said.
He lifted his head and stared back at her—listlessly, hopelessly.
She cast a paranoid glance over her shoulder and stepped further into his cell. “You were right,” she whispered. “A lot of things don’t add up.”
“I’m really good at poker,” Eden blurted as the door began to close.
“I’m better,” Asher replied.
Cleo used her crutch like a doorstop. “Wanna bet on that?”
The taunt snagged his attention. He looked from the end of Cleo’s crutch to the challenging gleam in her eye. Behind him, Lark, Francesca, Jericho, and the young woman named Nairobi watched from the conference table.
Cleo raised her eyebrows, one lower than the other because of the glued-together gash over her right eye. “Or is the high and mighty Gollum afraid to lose in front of his buddies?”
He narrowed his eyes.
She crutch-stepped past him, inviting herself into the boardroom. She leaned her crutches against the table, plunked her satchel next to Asher’s queen, and took an empty seat. She removed a deck of cards and shuffled.
“What do you possibly have to wager that’s of any value?” Asher asked.
“Have a seat and I’ll tell you.”
He stared at her for a beat, then sat in the seat to Cleo’s left. He crossed his ankle over his opposite knee—his large body occupying every inch of space the chair had to offer. Cleo handed the deck to Lark and asked her to take a look. This was a standard deck. There were no tricks up their sleeves. Whoever won would do so fair and square. Once Lark completed her examination, Cleo gathered the cards into a pile and shuffled once more. “If Eden wins, she gets to join the hustle.”
“And the prison break,” Eden added, taking a seat across from Asher.
Francesca scoffed.
Cleo kept going. “If Asher wins—”
“When I win,” he cut in with an eye roll.
Cleo responded with an eye roll of her own. “Both of us are banned from setting foot in this boardroom ever again.”
Eden choked.
Cleo tapped the cards against the table. “We’ll stay out of your business and let you do your work.”
The corners of Asher’s half-opened mouth curled upward like this was too good to be true. Everyone else exchanged looks while Francesca shook her head vehemently. “Uh-uh. No way.”
“Oh, come on, Fran,” he said. “I’ve got this. I’ve more than got this. If we take the bet, you don’t have to worry about them crashing our meetings anymore.”
Eden had to bite the inside of her cheek to keep from reacting. He really had no idea what he was getting himself into.
Asher looked at the others, giving them the opportunity to object. When nobody did, he turned to Cleo with a Cheshire grin and stuck out his hand. “You’re on.”
Cleo shook it.
With a huff, Francesca pushed back in her chair and folded her arms like a kid on the playground who wanted to play kickball, but was overruled in favor of four-square.
Cleo removed a sandwich bag filled with Skittles and Whoppers from her satchel. The concierge—as resourceful as it was—had no poker chips on hand. They had to get creative.
She launched into the rules. They would play Manny’s game of choice, Texas Hold ‘Em. She would deal ten hands. Whoever had the most candies after the tenth game would be considered the superior player.
Asher and Eden agreed and the competition began.
Subject 006 versus Gollum.
The creator of the Amber Highway versus one of the Monarch’s super freaks.
It wasn’t a trick deck. But it wasn’t a fair fight, either.
Eden pretended to focus. She even pretended to make a few minor misjudgments. Even so, by the time the last hand was being dealt, Asher had a meager three Whoppers and two Skittles. Eden had a whole pile. And any hope that he might make a comeback shriveled and died as soon as she turned up a full house. Francesca went bone white. Eden raked in the last of Asher’s candy as he leaned back in his seat looking like a man with some serious indigestion.
Cleo smiled triumphantly.
They had hustled the hustler.
24
Asher honored his bet. They got right to work and neither Cleo nor Eden were kicked out of the boardroom. Francesca was mutinous. The others, resigned. And Asher, surprisingly well mannered. Instead of increasing his hostility, besting him in poker seemed to earn Eden and Cleo his grudging respect.
He was dubbing their scheme the Halloween Hustle. According to him, tomorrow night was the biggest, busiest gambling night of the year. Every high roller worth his or her salt would log in to partake in the holiday festivities.
For the past three years, Manuel Van Cooper spent the night partaking at The Cage, the triple black diamond of gambling dens. Only those with the highest scores and the best track records were allowed in. Of those, only a small percentage reached Big Betty, a special table in the back. Earn your seat there, and you’d no longer have to pay for admission. The Cage would pay you. Last year, Manny earned his seat and made out like a bandit. This year, they knew he’d be looking to do the same.
