A/N: Hey look at me updating exactly a week later, such productivity! Also, this is the longest chapter so far.
Happy (early) Independence Day to all you Americans!
Don't forget to review :)
Alex stared for a moment, horrified. How had he missed the convicted felon creeping up through the Blakemore's front yard?
Because you were distracted, he silently berated himself. You weren't paying attention.
His brain started churning out possible ideas, all involving Catie miraculously escaping and being able to call for help. But, if she got away, then everyone inside the house would know something was wrong, which would put them in danger too.
Alex processed all this in under a second, and he stared straight at Troy and tried to summon the familiar, numbing calm that had allowed him to survive his missions with MI6.
"Catie, go inside," he said to Troy.
Catie's grip on his arm didn't loosen, which was just as well because Troy gestured to her with what was undoubtedly the silhouette of a gun, as Alex had expected him to do, and ordered, "Catie, stay right where you are."
She made a small noise and Alex wanted to look at her, but he didn't dare take his eyes off Troy.
"What do you want?" Alex growled, frantically trying to stall, to come up with a plan, any plan that could help him. . . but there was none. This was the perfect ambush. No blazing guns or backup, just one man, his gun, and two teenagers outside a house full of kids. Troy must know that Alex couldn't hope to raise any kind of alarm, not with the kids inside, and Catie . . . she was just fortunate collateral, right? They were both sitting ducks, huddled together on the stairs with railings on either side and the raised surface of the porch behind them. The easiest way out would be forward, right where Troy was standing.
"I'm not going to kill you," Troy said, moving closer. "You don't just deserve death."
The porch light shone on his face. He looked just like he had in England, only more unbalanced. There was something in his face that made Alex instinctively want to recoil.
It was a look of madness.
Troy's eyes were a bright, harsh kind of blue, and now they glinted like razors. He had a slash across the left side of his face - a scar? - and it rippled as the muscles in his jaw clenched. He was about average height but stocky, definitely heavier than Alex. Any hand-to-hand combat with him would be risky, especially because he was armed.
"So, Catie." Troy gestured to her with the gun again, and Alex felt her tense up beside him. "You're Randal's brat, yeah? Get over here."
When Catie didn't move, he sighed and pulled back the safety catch on his gun. Alex wished he could see what model it was, maybe then he could figure out the best way to jam it.
"Catie," Alex said quietly.
Slowly, her grip on his arm slackened as she got to her feet, keeping her arms clamped down to her sides, and walked with slow, jerky steps over to Troy. Alex counted her paces. Okay, she was five steps away, and he was taller so his stride was a little longer. He could get to Troy in three steps, maybe two if he lunged.
Alex started to stand up as Troy's left hand clamped down around Catie's wrist and yanked her next to him as his other hand brought the gun up so that the barrel rested against her forehead. Acutely aware that the safety on the gun was now off, Alex closed his eyes for a second. What could he do? He couldn't let Troy take Catie away, if he wasn't going to shoot her where she stood.
His foot knocked against something on the porch: Catie's water bottle. At the same time, he realized that his phone was still in his pocket.
He had an idea.
Danielle was having trouble sleeping. She restlessly rolled over, making the mattress squeak against the creaky floor in Catie's bedroom. Agnes was sound asleep, buried beneath a pile of blankets and stuffed animals, so Danielle wasn't worried about waking her.
What was taking Alex and Catie so long? It had been nearly an hour, surely they should be inside.
Unless something happened, Danielle thought, feeling the familiar spike of worry in her chest even as she tried to ignore the irrational thought. Nothing was wrong. She was okay. Everyone was okay.
She closed her eyes and tried to fall asleep, but she just couldn't relax. Her mind continued to whirr, spinning out memories of people, nightmares, and other things that usually plagued her sleep.
Sleeplessness was an ordeal that she was very familiar with. Most nights of her childhood, she hadn't been able to sleep from the noise that her mother had made, yelling, banging things down on counters and tables, cursing a husband that had never come home. During those nights, Danielle would lock the door to her bedroom and huddle farther beneath the mountain of clothes on her bed that she used for warmth because she didn't have a blanket. She would squeeze her eyes shut and try to think of happier things, of music or her friends, because that was safer than flipping on her lamp and reading a book. Sometimes, her mother had stormed into her room and flung the door open so hard that the knob dented the plaster of the opposite wall.
"You look just like him! You're barely my child!"
Now, Danielle swung her legs off her mattress and got to her feet, swaying from a sudden rush of dizziness. She stumbled through the darkness, feeling for the door to the hallway, and managed to get to the bathroom. After flipping on the dimmest light, Danielle leaned over the sink with her palms pressed flat against the smooth, cold surface and stared at her red-eyed reflection in the mirror. She just wanted to sleep. Even here, in the States, she wasn't safe or free. The dreams would always be with her.
Suddenly, Danielle heard a faint noise from downstairs. It sounded a lot like a scream.
Alex knew the light cast a shadow to his left, near the railing, so he subtly shifted his weight so that his left side was covered by the darkness. The street was dark too, no lightposts, no other houses had their front lights on, there was only night. A circle of night, with Alex, Troy, and Catie in the middle.
He slid his hand into the pocket of his trousers and felt around for his phone, gingerly removing it.
Then Troy spoke again, and Alex nearly dropped the phone to the porch stairs.
"Do you know why I want to kill him, Catie?"
Alex risked a glance at her. She was shaking her head, eyes wide with fear.
There was a dull, sickening thud and she cried out in pain. Alex felt a great and terrible rage rise up inside him, thundering through his blood as every fibre in his body wanted to fly at Troy and beat him into the dirt. He forced himself to stay still but the rush of adrenaline made his hands tremble as he tried to use his left hand to pry the back off of his phone.
Just a few more seconds. A minute. Please.
"Answer me," Troy snarled.
"No," Catie sniffed, hurrying to add, "I don't know why."
"He killed my wife."
There it was, the damning mantra that Alex heard over and over again every time he closed his eyes. Murderer. Failure. It should have been you.
No, he silently commanded himself. Focus.
He didn't look at Catie again. He didn't want to see the shock-horror-revulsion that he was sure was on her face, because that was the normal, human response to hearing that someone was a murderer, even if it wasn't true. Which it wasn't. Part of Alex wanted to protest and argue that Agent Troy's death, five years ago, wasn't his fault. She and that other CIA agent, Carter, had gone ahead underwater to see about a cave. . . they couldn't have known that the cave had been tampered with and rigged with motion sensors so that whenever a living thing swam inside, the top of the cave came crashing down with deadly stalactites to skewer and kill the animal had been unfortunate enough to venture inside.
Or in this case, the humans.
Even thinking about that day made Alex feel sick to his stomach, as if he was going to double over and puke any moment, but now was not the time for that. He had to stay in control of his mind, otherwise Catie was going to die.
"You want to know who else he's killed?" Troy continued, making Alex's stomach twist in dread. "Another kid, some freak who was engineered to look just like him."
Julius Grief.
"Alex-" Catie began, but her voice faded and died in the cold evening air. Alex still didn't meet her eyes. He had finally pried the back of his phone off and was now tracing the outline of the battery with his thumb, feeling the surrounding circuitry for the familiar metal catch. . . there it was.
With a soft snick, the battery slot released the warm, rectangular, lithium battery into his palm. Now, all Alex had to do was somehow peel open part of the insulating casing, which was easier said than done.
"He's right, Catie," Alex said, clearing his throat as his voice rasped. He had to keep stalling. "I did kill a fourteen-year-old kid. I was fourteen, too. And that kid had just killed the only person that I had left because he was a psychopath. But I didn't shoot him because of that. No, " Alex managed to wedge his thumbnail into a small crack where the parts of the battery casing had been welded together, "He was trying to kill me too."
Another idea came to him. "That was your revenge, Galen Troy. I was alone too."
Danielle felt her way down the stairs in the dark, gripping the railing so tightly that her fingers ached. She crossed the kitchen and stood on her toes to lean over the sink and move the window curtain aside.
What she saw nearly made her scream.
Troy, Galen Troy, the convicted felon who wouldn't settle until Alex was destroyed and dead, was standing on the Blakemore's front sidewalk with a gun pointed at Catie's bleeding face.
Alex was standing on the stairs, seemingly frozen in place, with a horrible look on his face as if the world was collapsing around him. Which, in a way, it was.
Danielle recoiled from the window, nearly tripping over her own feet in the process, and fumbled blindly for the phone on the counter. When she finally grabbed it, she punched in Mr. Blakemore's cell phone number with a trembling finger.
"Hello?" his voice crackled over the line after the second ring.
"Troy's here," Danielle breathed. "He has Catie. Do I-"
"Don't call the police," Mr. Blakemore shouted, loud enough that Danielle yanked the phone away from her ear. "Hold on. I'm almost home."
The line went dead with a final-sounding click, and Danielle sank to the floor with her head in her hands.
Fragments of ideas whirled through her mind so fast that she barely had a chance to latch onto a single thought. Troy. Troy August Mum Drugs Fire Ow.
Should she go outside?
No! Her mind screamed.
Danielle had to agree. She couldn't possibly help Alex. She wasn't strong, she wasn't a spy. . .
Helplessness washed over her as she sat on the kitchen floor, her head back against the cabinet door. She was only a few metres away from her brother but there was a wall and a madman with a gun between them.
Alex knew that Troy was too far gone to reason with, but he still had to try. Reason was his last chance if he didn't open this battery soon.
"You moved on!" Troy yelled, and Alex grimaced. He'd wake up the entire neighborhood. "You couldn't have cared about her if you didn't grieve-"
Oh, if only you knew. Alex was out of his depth rolled his eyes with a short, impatient sigh and shifted his weight to his right leg, trying to pretend that being cornered on the porch by a lunatic was an everyday occurrence. "Look. If you were here to kill me, I would be dead. You're not a killer, Troy. You left me alive back at the theatre. You haven't killed Catie yet. Sure, you say you're trying to run around and ruin my life, but you haven't done anything yet. Even now, you're holding ba-ack." Alex ground out the last word as he finally jammed his nail into the battery cartridge. Judging by the pain lancing up his thumb, the entire nail had snapped off.
He felt the battery widen as one side was cracked open. Inside, the internal circuitry and wiring was copper and lithium.
Now he just had to get to the water bottle. And open it. And since the battery wouldn't fit inside the opening, figure out how to get water onto lithium.
Lithium, Alex knew, was in the first column of chemical elements. That meant that it would react violently - and explosively - with water.
For a second, Alex dared to hope that he had gotten to Troy, but in the next second Troy silently stepped back and, faster than Alex could see, kicked Catie's legs. Her arms flailed out as she fell to her knees and he jammed the barrel of his gun to the back of her head.
She was shaking. Alex felt the blood drain from his face as she raised her head to look at him. Her eyes were full of fear and terror, but her mouth was drawn back in pain. It was then that he noticed the dark blood dripping down the right side of her face from a cut above her eyebrow.
That thud from a couple moments ago - that had been Troy's gun, striking Catie in the face.
And now he was going to execute her.
Three steps. Two if I lunge. She's in the way, right in front of him. Coward.
"I am not joking, Alex Rider," Troy said coldly. "You will die. But first, you will suffer. You will suffer like I suffered. And for you, the best way to make you suffer is to-"
Suddenly, up the street, tires squealed against pavement harsh and loudly as a black SUV sped around the corner, headlights turned to their highest, blinding setting as the car drove towards them, fast enough that Alex was certain it wasn't going to brake.
Troy paused for a second, glancing back over his shoulder, and Alex used his momentary distraction to bend down, uncap the water, and throw the open battery towards him. It clattered to the sidewalk. Alex started to yell at Catie to move because the car was coming and it wasn't stopping and Troy still had a gun but she was already gone, rolling onto side out of the way.
Launching himself off the porch, Alex overturned the water on the battery and dove for Catie, hooking his hands under her arms and hauling her out of the way. For a terrible second, nothing happened.
Then, as Troy turned around with a murderous gaze, the battery exploded with a brilliant flash of light and a cloud of smoke. He stumbled backwards into the street with a hacking cough, right into the path of the oncoming vehicle.
Catie gasped, horrified, but Alex gently let her fall back to the grass as the car stopped with centimetres to spare and Mr. Blakemore got out with something in his hand.
He faced Troy, who straightened up and squared his shoulders with the look of a tragically defeated soldier. "Randal."
"Galen. Get the fuck away from my daughter."
Troy lunged with a punch that Mr. Blakemore dodged under and straightened up to slam his elbow down on Troy's right shoulder, making him fall to the ground with a groan. Satisfied, Mr. Blakemore turned around and -
"NO!" Alex shouted loud and raw as a flicker of motion caught his eye and he saw Troy, cradling his right arm, reach for his gun. As he started to run his legs felt leaden because he was too far away, too far , too -
The bang echoed through the neighborhood.
Mr. Blakemore fell to the grass.
Catie screamed and rocked to her feet, trying to run to her father, but Alex caught her around the waist and tightened his grip even as she punched and hit and pummeled his arms to try and break free.
"LET GO OF ME!" she sobbed, screaming, and finally Alex released her. He felt numb all over. This couldn't be happening. Mr. Blakemore wasn't dead.
She ran over to Mr. Blakemore and fell to her knees beside him. He stirred, mumbling something that Alex was too far away to hear, but Alex didn't care as he whipped around, intending to stop Troy or die trying, but Troy was gone.
Alex ran over to the SUV and checked under it, inside, everywhere around the circle of street, but Galen Troy had vanished as suddenly as he had appeared.
He was gone, as if he had melted into the shadows.
As if he'd never existed.
Mr. Blakemore wasn't too badly injured. The bullet had entered the muscle on his left hamstring and exited without clipping the bone, which rendered the wound much easier to stitch up and repair even though he still had to stay at the hospital overnight. He was advised by the paramedic not to walk for the next ten days, but Alex was guessing that the suggestion wouldn't hold.
Mr. Blakemore had insisted on driving himself to urgent care, not wanting Catie to be dragged into the investigation with any questions that the doctor would ask, as the law required all suspicious injuries to be reported to the police. Given Mr. Blakemore's line of employment, Alex figured he could probably get around that particular stipulation.
In the kitchen, Catie had just gotten off the phone with her dad. She set the handheld receiver back into its cradle and felt behind her on the counter's surface for her mug of tea. Her eyes were glazed over with residual shock, but she had enough presence of mind to be able to talk to her dad and send her siblings back up to bed. They had been woken up by the commotion outside.
Alex walked into the living room where Danielle was sitting hunched over on the couch, hugging herself. The leather upholstery creaked as he sat next to her.
"Hey. You okay?"
She scooted closer to him and leaned against his shoulder with a small sigh. "Yeah. I'm sorry. I should have done something else-"
"No," He interrupted her. "Don't start thinking like that. You can't - you can't do everything. How did you know?"
"That something was wrong?"
"Yeah."
Danielle bit her lip. "I couldn't sleep. There was this feeling, you know? Like something awful was wrong. So I got up and went to get some water, and I heard Catie scream."
"That's incredible." Alex shook his head, still not believing the sheer luck of it. "If you hadn't called Blakemore, we would've both been dead."
"Don't say that." She fidgeted with the silver pendant on her necklace and frowned, her brow wrinkling. "Your bomb thing was pretty brilliant."
Alex felt his left thumb give a sudden throb when she mentioned the battery incident and remembered that he needed to wash the blood off his hands and bandage up the raw tip of his thumb. The nail had been completely torn off.
As far as injuries went, Alex was doing pretty well this time. Nothing permanent, at any rate, which was more than he could say for most of his other missions
Danielle glanced at his hand. "You should take care of that."
He stood. "Yeah."
When he went back to the kitchen, he held his hand under the steady flow of tap water until most of the drying blood was washed off. There was a First Aid kit on the table from Catie cleaning up the damage to her forehead - the cut wasn't deep, she hadn't put anything on it, but she would have a massive bruise - so Alex fished out a piece of gauze and bandage tape with his good hand.
"Here." Catie pushed back her chair and used her foot to kick it over to him. "Let me help you."
"It's fine-"
She gently but firmly shoved him down into the chair and grabbed his left hand. With quick, jerky movements she tore off strips of gauze, wrapped them around his thumb, and practically mummified it with the roll of tape. Definitely overkill, given that Alex had dealt with much more severe injuries, but he kept his mouth shut except to thank her when she finished.
"Was any of it true?" Catie asked suddenly, her voice sharp.
Startled, Alex looked up and met her gaze, seeing the myriad of questions on her face. He sighed heavily and leaned back in his chair. "Yeah."
"How much?"
"Everything I said."
"Did you really kill Tr - that man's - wife?"
". . . No."
"God." Catie sniffed and plunked down in the chair opposite Alex, leaning to the side to rest her elbow against the table. Her eyes were red. "What about the kid?"
"His name was Julius."
"So he- he was, like, made?"
Alex nodded woodenly.
"What kind of psychopath-"
"Dr. Grief."
"You're kidding. That was his name? Good grie- good lord, that's such a villain-y name." Catie's fingers drummed against the tabletop as she scrutinized Alex's face, making him feel slightly uncomfortable. Her inhaler sat right next to her hand just in case her asthma started acting up again. She had come inside coughing and wheezing, and for one terrifying second Alex had thought that something had happened and she was still going to die.
"You're bleeding again," Alex said abruptly as he noticed the red beads forming on the cut above her eyebrow. "You might need stitches." He offered her a cotton ball.
"No, it's okay." Catie dabbed it against her forehead, wincing.
"You don't like to let people do things for you."
"And you do?"
Well, she had him there. "Whatever. Hey, you should try and sleep."
She snorted. "Right, like that will be happening tonight."
"Seriously," Alex sighed, "Your body needs to repair itself."
She glowered at the table and mumbled something under her breath.
"Sorry, what?"
"What about my mind?"
Alex hadn't been expecting that, because suddenly he looked at Catie and really saw her, saw the blood matted in her hair and the stiff way she was holding one of her legs from where Troy had kicked her, and the dark shadow of a bruise on the right side of her face, and the small, scared, fractured look in her dark eyes as she suddenly leaned forward with her head in her hands and started crying.
He didn't know what to do but reached out anyways, and Catie seemed to take that as some sort of signal because she hugged him, almost falling out of her chair so Alex quickly knelt on the floor and wrapped his arms more securely around her. She sobbed wretchedly, her entire body trembling as he hugged - no, held - her. He could feel her tears soaking into his shirt where her face was pressed against his chest.
"I'm sorry," she gasped, sniffing. "I'm not like you, I can't-" her voice broke, and suddenly she was clinging to him like a drowning man. "I thought I was going to die. I thought that I was dead."
Catie Blakemore had never been more embarrassed in her life than when she finally came back to her normal, rational, controlled self. She rubbed her eyes on her sleeve and tried to pull away from Alex, but even has her mind told her to stop being a kid get away, her body instinctively stayed frozen.
"Sorry," she rasped, dragging her sleeve across her eyes again and clearing her throat.
"Don't worry about it."
She shifted, crossing her legs and lacing her hands together. Her legs were sore from being pressed against the cold tiles. "It's so embarrassing."
"You're fine. Really."
I'm scared. No matter what she did, drank, or ate, Catie couldn't shake that horrible unsteady feeling in the pit of her stomach, as if the ground had been yanked out from beneath her feet and she was falling into a bottomless abyss. The feeling had started when that man appeared on the sidewalk outside. She wondered if it was ever going to stop.
She knew that she wouldn't forget that rush of paralyzing, overwhelming fear for a very long time. The way her knees and arms had locked up and refused to move, all her nerves screaming at her because of the cold metal barrel jammed against her head, the realization that it was really there and she was one involuntary - or deliberate - twitch away from never coming back. Her last sight would have been Alex, angry but afraid.
"I've never been that scared before," she mumbled.
Alex gently jostled her shoulder. "I would hope not."
She looked up at his face. "What do you mean?"
"Well, I hope nothing you've done has been more terrifying than being the short-time hostage of a psychopath with a gun." The words rolled off his tongue with ease as if they were a phrase he had delivered several times before. He shifted to the side, reaching up towards the counter for one of two ceramic cups that he had to stretch to get his fingers around.
Catie took the first one from him. "Coffee? At this hour?"
"Decaf. Danielle made them."
Hmm. Catie vaguely remembered something about Danielle coming into the kitchen with another man, someone fit with short dark hair and olive skin. That was probably the point where her mind hit its limit of weird things with no warning and mercifully forced her to zone out from reality.
"Decaf coffee is a tragedy," she murmured as she stared at the steam curling off the liquid. That was all she could think to say besides could you please tell me that I've dreamed the last three hours because that's all I really want to hear and I feel like I'm going crazy, which wouldn't exactly suffice.
Alex agreed. "Indeed. Hey, there are two other guys here. One's MI6. The other is - is SAS, that's Special Air Service. They'll be here until your dad gets back."
She slowly sat up and pushed herself to her feet, swaying unsteadily for a moment from a sudden rush of vertigo. "Where?"
Alex almost managed to cover up a grimace as he got to his feet, arching his back outwards and stretching his arms out. He pushed his shaggy hair out of his face and gestured towards the living room. Catie stepped aside so she could follow him.
His hair's nice, she thought to herself, Like a painting. Her mind wandered back to the National Gallery of Art and the exhibit of ancient Icons from eastern Europe and the Mediterranean, remembering how happy she always felt in that museum. Looking at art was like escaping to an entirely different world inside someone else's mind. She wished she had an escape now.
Danielle was sitting on the couch next to a slender, tall man with brown hair just long enough to appear wavy, who was showing her how to access the different functions of a brand-new looking Swiss Army Knife. Catie trailed after Alex as he sighed, straightened his shoulders, and walked around the front of the couch.
"Ben, this is Catherine. Catie." Alex gestured to her with a wide sweep of his arm, and she was suddenly very conscious of how wretched she looked as the man turned to look at her. He had kind eyes but a hardened face that crinkled into a friendly smile when he saw her. No doubt he had been a soldier, but there was something in his face that made Catie think that this man - Ben - was more like Alex. Or maybe Alex was more like him.
"Catie," Alex continued. "Ben Daniels."
She lifted her fingers in a small wave, which was about as much movement as she could manage.
Ben patted the couch next to him. "Do you want to sit down? You probably should. Here, Danielle's knife is . . ." he launched into a succinct explanation of what exactly the knife was supposed to do and why he had it, while Danielle shot Catie a look over his shoulder that screamed 'help me'. For the first time, Catie almost felt like smiling. She sat down next to Ben, far away enough not to touch him, and tried to listen.
Alex stepped back out onto the front porch as Catie settled in with Ben and Danielle. Instantly, he saw Galen Troy standing in the middle of the sidewalk with a gun.
"Screw off," he muttered at the memory.
Someone shifted near the stairs. Wolf. "Any particular reason that you're out here?"
"Curiosity."
"For?"
As Alex's eyes adjusted he could see Wolf, hidden mostly by the shadows, standing inside the pocket of shadows in the garden bed beside the stair rail. "He disappeared. Vanished. Into thin air. How?"
Wolf grunted. "I dunno. Look, there's stuff set up around the back and sides of the house. Don't let the kids out." He said kids as if he meant something else, probably brats.
Alex descended the stairs and wandered down the footpath towards the street. Skid marks marred the road from Mr. Blakemore's SUV, and nearby . . . well, there was nothing except a sewer drain across the street.
"There's no way," Alex muttered, but he started towards the drain.
"Cub."
Bristling at the nickname, Alex hurried his pace until he knelt down over the heavy metal cover that had been hauled away from the pipeline.
That could explain the materializing and vanishing. Still, the thought that Galen Troy lowering himself to the point of climbing through a sewer seemed a bit outlandish. The man had taken the most lavish hotel in London and filled it with all manner of illegal firearms and listening devices. He seemed to like nice things, clever things. A pipeline was none of those.
Or was it?
Alex glared at the dark, gaping entrance to the pipe, feeling tempted to crawl down now and see what awaited him, but he knew better than that by now. Going in alone was too impulsive, too dangerous. Besides, what if Troy wanted him to find the uncovered drain? Sure, he could have been in a hurry to leave with his injured shoulder, but he had shot Mr. Blakemore. Alex and Catie hadn't had any protection. So why run?
Alex wanted to scream in pure, unadulterated frustration. Why all the mind games?
Because they work, he thought grimly. Indeed, Troy had been very successful in manipulating and trapping him. He could get inside Alex's head, know where his loyalties were.
And now Troy was aware that Catie could easily be a bargaining chip. That meant that Alex couldn't simply leave the Blakemore's house. Catie would be wide open.
Besides, a small, selfish part of him wanted to stay there. Catie was clearly out of her depth. She had cried, for heaven's sake, completely broken down. She would be different now. Everyone changed in some way after their first near-death experience.
Alex reluctantly returned to the Blakemore's front yard.
"Anything good?" Wolf muttered.
Unsure if he detected sarcasm in his voice, Alex merely shrugged as he went back inside.
By the time Ben had gone outside with Wolf, Danielle and Catie were sitting on the living room floor around the coffee table with some kind of board game spread out in front of them. Alex had his earbuds jammed into his ears and was watching one of his old recordings of the Sibelius Violin Concerto on Danielle's phone. Unfortunately if not surprisingly, he'd hardly had any time to think about music or school in the past few weeks.
Catie eventually went upstairs for a shower, only after swearing Alex and Danielle to secrecy about the details of the night's events in case the twins or Agnes woke up. The younger Blakemores knew that something had happened; the noise had woken them. Catie stated in very clear terms that neither the twins nor Agnes were to know anything about the gun, which Alex understood. That would terrify most little kids.
Danielle stood up and swung her arms up in a stretch. "Can we go outside?"
Alex shook his head. "Wouldn't be the best idea. Besides, it's four in the morning. You've been up all night, go to sleep."
"I don't know." She swung her arms around in front of her and hugged herself. "I'm already awake."
"You could Skype Tom. "
"Shut up."
"Make me."
She snatched a pillow off the couch and half-heartedly chucked it at his head. Ducking, Alex readjusted his position on the couch and tried to distract himself with the recording. He lost track of Danielle when she wandered to another part of the house and resisted the urge to follow her, see if she was really okay. The past few months she had calmed down, not panicking as much - at least, not during the day - and not acting as nervous around Ben and K Unit, but that was probably because she had taken to spending most days out at the Academy, so she was rarely at home when they came over to see Ben.
Then there was the incident with the break-in and, now, the incident with Troy. Danielle had done exactly the right things in both situations.
Alex was proud of her. Of course he was. But he also hated that she had grown accustomed to situations of imminent danger, because that was just another sign of the troubles the past year had brought to her. Part of him wished Danielle was more like Catie, still able to be shocked and horrified at the lengths people will go to for revenge and other short-lived victories.
As Alex listened to the concerto, his mind drifted back to the events of the case with Troy. Music always helped him think. So, the hospital - Elise was there. Alex hadn't recognized her, having only seen her once or twice before she vanished, and Troy was too. He'd tried to kill Catie via lethal injection, but . . .
Had Elise really intended to save Catie, or had her action been twisted further into Troy's plan?
And there was that woman, that aide, Christie Dome, who was dead because of a flash drive jammed halfway down her throat.
The dead man, who'd dragged Alex into this entire mess.
Between Troy, Christie, and the Arab, there was only one thing in common: The Senator. Either Troy was using her, or she was using him. Alex was more inclined to believe the prior.
He glanced back at the video playing on the YouTube app just as the angle switched during an interlude to focus on Danielle, who had offered to accompany Alex for that performance, and the image tugged at Alex's memory. Something about the light, the way it hit her arm. . .
The pictures! Alex had almost forgotten. The entire reason Danielle was here was the envelope of glossy, professional-grade stalker photos of her that Alex had received back in Blakemore's office. Had that really been only a few weeks ago? He had been worried. Panicked, even.
"Delivery for Alex Rider."
Alex slowly got to his feet, chair creaking, and strode over to the door. "Do I have to sign anything?"
"No," said the man, handing him the envelope. "I was instructed by the Director to deliver it personally."
Dread sank deep inside Alex's stomach as soon as his hand touched the thick paper. From the weight of the envelope, he guessed it was filled with papers of some sort - his file? Was this some crude attempt at blackmail?
"The Director?" Elise asked, her lips pursing. "Must be from your people."
Elise had been the first to suggest that the contents were from MI6 and her suggestion had momentarily caused Alex to think that Danielle was in some kind of danger due to MI6 blacklisting him for working with Blakemore. So, Alex had reluctantly agreed with Blakemore that Danielle should fly over and visit.
Then, later, the mercenary's camera was found in the backyard.
Alex got to his feet and ran up the stairs, taking them two at a time, and frantically rummaged around the papers on his desk in search of the familiar envelope. Where was it? For a moment, panic seized his chest as he feared that the envelope had been stolen, but then he saw the corner peeking out of the top drawer. He yanked on the handle hard enough to jostle the entire desk and lifted the envelope up by the bottom, shaking the glossy photographs out onto the carpet.
You've gotta hide stuff better, he thought absently as he searched through them. You're lucky the twins didn't find this. Or Agnes.
Maybe there was a way to check the photos against the camera that the FBI had confiscated to see if they were taken by it.
Alex could feel himself getting closer to the connections between all these seemingly random events, but the bigger picture continued to elude him. Why wasn't he dead? Why hadn't Troy just shot Catie where she sat, instead of taking her hostage? He had taunted Alex, wanting him to see how helpless he was to do anything. . .
Shaking his head, Alex gathered up the photographs and shoved them under his mattress. He would have to ask Blakemore when he returned.
Someone knocked on his door. "Alex?"
He got to his feet as Catie leaned against his doorway, wet hair dripping onto her purple shirt. "Hey."
"Hey. Um," she glanced down for a second then hesitantly looked up. "Were you serious earlier?"
"About what?" he asked, confused.
"Staying up downstairs. With me. Because I don't think - I don't think I can sleep."
As soon as she said sleep, Alex felt all the energy drain from his limbs as the buzzing adrenaline rush finally petered out. He wanted to say no and collapse onto his bed to sleep for twelve hours, but he had been serious even if that was before a psychopath showed up in the front yard.
"Sure," he said.
The next morning, Alex woke up to the smell of pancakes with an overwhelming sense of deja vu to the first morning he had met Catie. She'd been cooking downstairs and singing something in French, something he'd understood immediately. What was it? I've told you, you have that smile when you . . . lie? Had that been it? Whatever. Alex rolled off the couch and stretched, pushing his spine out in an arc as several parts popped and cracked from the unusual sleeping position.
"Well, took you long enough to wake up," someone said from across the room.
Alex stifled a yawn as he glanced over at Danielle, who sat curled in one of the plush arm chairs with an oversized mug of coffee in her hands and a newspaper balanced on her lap. Her pale face made the dark circles under her eyes stand out even more but at least she was smiling.
"What time is it?" Alex asked, his voice hoarse from sleep.
She carefully set her mug on her leg to check the watch on her wrist. "Around eight. You were out for almost four hours."
"You look like you have two black eyes."
"Thanks, Alex."
"Any time."
Danielle rolled her eyes and turned to another section of the newspaper with an aggressive rustling noise. "Go back to sleep."
Instead, Alex wandered into the kitchen for a glass of water. His throat felt like he had tried to chug an entire litre of acid. Was he getting sick? No. No, that was not an option.
Catie was in the kitchen and she was talking to Wolf of all people, a sight surreal enough to make Alex wonder if he was dreaming. Since when did Wolf come inside?
Since you were sleeping, Alex thought to himself as he tried to slide unnoticed into the room, reaching for one of the cabinet doors.
"Hey Alex," Catie said, breaking off her conversation with Wolf.
With an internal groan, he turned and forced himself to smile. "Hey."
Wolf pushed his chair back and stood, pushing a plate back across the table. "Thanks for cooking, Catie. You have excellent taste in music."
Her eyes flicked down for a second but she was smiling despite the faint blush on her face. "Thanks."
Alex resisted the urge to roll his eyes in favor of wondering what kind of magic Catie had worked to make Wolf. . . human. "What music?"
"The Cure," Catie replied.
Wolf snorted. "Don't bother. He won't know."
Alex scowled at his retreating figure as he shoved his cup under the tap and yanked the faucet on, watching the frothy water rise.
"He's nice," Catie said noncommittally.
Glancing over his shoulder, Alex saw her carefully prying cooked pancakes off the bottom of a frying pan. Her hair fell in soft, shiny waves over her shoulders. "You think?"
"Yeah. But also kind of terrifying. Like a wolf."
"Very much like that."
"So, how's the hand?"
He glanced down at the bandages on his thumb. "It's fine. Could be worse."
"I'm guessing you've probably had worse, but still." Catie handed him a plate. The bottom was warm from the hot pancakes, eggs, and bacon on it. "I'm making breakfast because I don't think I can make dinner."
"Thanks. Hey, Catie. . ." he faltered. Now that she was facing him, he could see the angry bruise blooming around the right side of her face. The skin around the cut from Troy's gun was purple, fading to black around her eye and forehead. She raised her eyebrows, silently prompting him to continue. "Uh - how are you feeling?"
"It's fine," she mimicked him. "Could be worse."
He made a face at her as she gave a light, tired laugh and leaned back against the counter with her arms braced against the edge. "Does Danielle want food?"
"Yes," Danielle said, and it was then that Alex realized she was standing in the doorway. "Thanks, Catie."
Two sets of footsteps thundered down the stairs as Agnes and Nic appeared, both still in their pajamas. Agnes gasped when she saw Catie. "Catie! What happened to your face?"
"Yeah," Nic added, suspicious. "There was all that noise last night."
"There was a car wreck," Alex said quickly as Catie seemed to be at a loss for words. "Right in front of your house. Someone almost hit your dad's car. Catie ran over to help, but. . ." he gave her a quick glance. "The door flew open and hit her."
Agnes frowned as Vince sleepily stumbled down the stairs. "Where's Daddy?"
"He'll be home soon," Catie reassured her. "He had to go see the doctors. Everything's fine. Now, go sit down in the sunroom, okay?"
Nic started to protest, but Danielle managed to usher him, his brother, and Agnes out of the room before he could say anything else.
"I hate lying to them," Catie muttered after they left.
"Yeah, me too," Alex said, and he was surprised that he meant it.
So far, there were no sightings of Troy, which wasn't entirely surprising given that he seemed to be able to materialize and vanish at will. The Blakemore's backyard was rigged with enough wireless motion sensors and security cameras that any person coming from that direction was bound to trip some kind of alarm and the front yard was being observed by a team of FBI agents from various discrete vantage points. There had been some talk of moving the Blakemore children to a more appropriate location, but as soon as Catie got wind of that suggestion she flat-out refused to even entertain the idea. In fact, she managed to slip her siblings out through the front door to her car and took them out ice skating.
After they left, Alex texted Sebastian and asked him to go to the rink and keep an eye on them.
"Good idea," Danielle muttered. She was pacing restlessly from the living room to the kitchen with her hands jammed into her jacket pockets and her shoulders hunched up around her neck, trying to hide how nervous she was feeling, but Alex knew her well enough to see that she was uneasy.
"I'm really sorry that you got dragged into this," he said. "I didn't mean for it to happen." Speaking of which, the photographs were currently being analyzed to see if the Serbian mercenary was the person who'd been stalking Danielle.
"Eh." She shrugged, pausing to hover by the kitchen door. "It goes with the territory."
"Unfortunately."
Ben pushed his way inside through the front door, holding his ID in one hand and his phone in the other. His face was flushed from the cold. He looked directly at Alex. "I need to talk to you."
Alex swung around to face him. "What is it?"
Instead of speaking, Ben let his eyes slide over to Danielle, and Alex gave her a pitying look.
"Oh, come on," she complained, throwing her hands up in exasperation.
"Sorry," Ben said. He didn't sound very apologetic. "Please, Danielle."
"But-"
"Leave!"
She recoiled as if he'd slapped her and, after staring at him for a second, spun on her heel and stormed out of the living room. The sound of a door slamming echoed from another room.
Sensing that something was seriously wrong, Alex refrained from telling off Ben for snapping at Danielle and instead sat down in an armchair as he waited for Ben to say what apparently only Alex could hear.
"Alex," Ben started, but his voice died in his throat as he reached up and rubbed his forehead with a heavy sigh, suddenly seeming infinitely older than just twenty-six. "Alex. Everything has gone to hell."
A/N #2: LET ME JUST SAY that the lithium and water idea came from an experiment we did in Chemistry a few years ago where we did pry open old cell phone batteries. However, this was done in full safety gear because of electrical charges and violent chemical reactions. Do not try this at home.