Basilisk by Rob Thurman Page A

We’d been planning this for a long time. Saul and about twenty mercenaries were on call, more or less, for when they were needed. They could meet us there. They’d be hours behind us, but that would give us a chance to check out the place close up and not just from satellite pictures.
    Stefan had left the car running. He jerked the steering wheel and headed back the way we came, adding roughly, “And it’s not your fault.”
    It was definitely my fault, but I’d fix it. Kids let someone else fix their mistakes. Adults fixed their own. It was time Stefan had an equal now, not a responsibility.
    Time to grow up.
    Â 
    There were actually more than two ways out of Cascade Falls, but the third way was known only by locals or handymen the locals trusted. It also would rip out the bottom of your car by the time you made it out, but destroying—no, trashing; that was the more apt word—trashing a car was better than meeting Raynor face-to-face before we were ready. An adult, but an adult with a completely average vocabulary to go with completely average brown hair, eyes made as average by contacts—camouflage, you have to work at it. If we were ever free, then I could talk like the genius I was—if I stopped making mistakes and made it back to genius status.
    I started to reach for my computer but stopped to dig a shirt out of Stefan’s bag in the backseat. “Do you want to get into something less . . . ummm . . . covered in ex-tourist?”
    Anyone and everyone he’d killed he’d killed to save me, and as he’d said, I don’t think he’d ever done it literally face-to-face, mere inches away. Wearing the evidence of it probably wasn’t pleasant. Saying thanks, he let me grab the wheel as we bumped over the narrow excuse for a dirt road, and quickly took off his jacket and holster and changed the shirt. Once he was armed again and back in his jacket, he took the wheel. “Now, go e-mail your girlfriend.”
    I was going to deny that I was intending to e-mail her, although I had been planning to, and certainly say that she wasn’t my girlfriend. I hadn’t met her in person yet. She lived across the country in New York, not to mention many other obstacles. I didn’t have a chance to get any of that out, however, as Stefan, instead of going with “holy shit” this time, went with “mother-fucker.” He was looking in the rearview mirror. So much for locals giving out private town info only to their good-old-boy handyman.
    The SUV behind us was built for this type of road while our used, low-slung Toyota wasn’t. It gobbled up the dirt and rocks behind us. It was black and I couldn’t see more than a shadowy shape through its tinted windows. Raynor? The Institute? Raynor working for the Institute? It didn’t matter. I couldn’t do to him what I’d done to the dead tourist—make him vomit up his breakfast or cut off the blood flow to his brain for a few seconds. The latter would cause unconsciousness, and maybe he would veer off the road, and we could leave him behind. But I had to be able to touch the person to do those things. We all did, Jericho’s legacy. All but one. And she wasn’t here now, although if she had been, she would’ve gleefully had his brain melting out of his ears, blood spurting from his eyes, ears, nose, and mouth. Then she would’ve done the same to us.
    Even the Institute had been glad there had been only one Wendy. She’d be ten this year. I’d seen what she could do at seven. I didn’t want to know what she could do now.
    But I could do something too. It was more mundane and might not work as well, but if it got the SUV off our trail, that was good enough. “Hold the wheel again,” I heard Stefan say as I dived back into the backseat for one of my bags this time. “Let me take a few shots at the son of a bitch.”
    With this being more of a