Basilisk by Rob Thurman

me for graduation or downstairs where they took the failures and dissected them to see where they’d gone wrong. I wasn’t that Michael anymore. I was Misha, claimed son of a dead Russian mobster and brother of a live one, and Misha wasn’t going back to Jericho-land fucking ever. Stefan had encouraged me to live the life of a teenager, a kid, to catch up on all I’d missed out on. But that time was over. Just as that logic-defying, contradictory book said: It was time to leave childish things behind. I was not a victim any longer. I was a man. I’d been saying it for a while now, and it was time to start acting like it.
    â€œMichael?”
    â€œMisha,” I corrected him as I stood up, solid as a rock, inside and out. “You touched the hood of the car with your left hand. Wipe off the prints, finger and palm,” I ordered.
    He gave me a skeptical look but did so, using the long sleeve of his shirt. “You’re sure you’re okay? Because I don’t feel too goddamn great.” He jacked in another round and put the gun back in his shoulder holster—one thing the fifteen-minute-escape plan had allowed him to grab. “At the end, when we finally finished Jericho, I know I killed his homicidal thugs, but not this close up.” And with that, his eyes went a little colder. “I guess if they’re going to up the stakes, so will we.” He rested his foot against the bumper for a second and said, “All right. Help me push the car and our lying-ass tourist into the river.”
    â€œWhat about his ID?”
    â€œIt’ll be as fake as he is. He’s not a tourist and he’s not a civilian, and he fooled us both, which made him smart, tough, and highly trained.” Stefan was already pushing the car, the sleeves of his shirt pulled over the heels of his hands to keep it print free, as the dead man’s slack legs scraped the ground.
    â€œI know they’ll be fake, but who made them will tell me something. Different methods, different materials.” I moved past him as he stopped pushing the car, rolled the dead body to its side with no sympathy for the bastard who’d almost killed my brother, and pulled his wallet out of his back pocket. “All right. Now we push.” I followed Stefan’s lead and in less than a minute the car plunged down a nearly straight embankment into the river below.
    He had fooled me, the son of a bitch, and that took a great deal of training . . . and a shitload of laziness on my part. But hadn’t I gotten lazy in Cascade Falls? I did my background checks, and I was properly suspicious of what lay behind all the friendly faces—at first. Then I’d gotten complacent. I filed this one under asshole tourist and didn’t use anything the Institute had taught me, didn’t take a second glance, much less the third and fourth he deserved. I’d thought earlier that you could read anyone if you bothered to look . . . but I hadn’t bothered to look. I, the shamefully stupid fucking asshole, had almost gotten us killed.
    â€œThat is a lot of frigging curse words from someone who has to study up on just how to say them.” Stefan had my arm and was dragging me back to the car.
    â€œDid I just say all that aloud?” I found my footing and ran with him.
    â€œYeah, it was damn impressive, but you did not almost get us killed.”
    â€œRight. It must’ve been that other Michael. The idiot.” I slammed the car door and buckled up. “I’m guessing no Canada. We fool Raynor or whoever into thinking we went there, but head south? We’d better head for the new Institute before they get nervous with our being so close and move it. The cure is more or less done anyway.” I looked through the wallet. The ID was fake all right, and shoddy. That had government subcontracting all over it.
    â€œI’ll call Saul and get the troops lined up then,” Stefan responded.