Subject Seven by James A. Moore Page A

him, studying the cracks in the plaster and the water stains that ran in odd patterns from a few different locations.
    â€œNo. Not again.” His voice broke, sounding more like it was supposed to than it had in a long, long time. “Not again, please. Just let me have my life back, okay? Just, please, God, let me have my mom and dad and everything else again.”
    He didn’t cry, exactly, but his vision broke up as the tears ran to the edges of his eyelids and stuck there. He closed his eyes and wiped them angrily, hating it when he felt like crying. His dad had always looked at him like he was a loser when he cried, and he hated disappointing the man.
    At least he thought he did. He couldn’t remember for sure, but it felt right to think that way.
    Hunter sat up and listened to the mattress under him creak and groan. His head throbbed and he clutched it, holding on and hoping it wouldn’t shatter.
    There was a new, clean and starched white shirtsleeve covering each arm to the wrist. He looked himself over for a moment and saw the charcoal gray slacks, the polished black dress shoes. He didn’t know anything about suits.
    There was a wallet on the dresser in front of him. It was stuffed with bills and a driver’s license that had the name William Carter, along with an address for an apartment in Alexandria, Virginia.
    He looked at the picture on the ID. It looked nothing like him.
    â€œOkay, this is just crazy now….”
    There was a suitcase on the battered dresser in front of the bed. Above the suitcase, there was a message written on the stationery pad he saw to the left of the suitcase and taped in place.
    It said: BEHAVE YOURSELF. NO MORE GAMES.
    A lot of things had changed in Hunter’s life. Okay, almost everything had changed, but at least one thing was the same. He recognized the handwriting. It was the same as he’d seen on hotel mirrors and the occasional note for a long time now.
    Oh, the rage that seared his mind was huge. He closed his eyes and clenched his teeth and tried his best not to let the anger out again.
    â€œHow do you keep doing it? How are you finding me, you bastard?”
    No one answered. No one could. He was all alone. Again.

Chapter Fourteen

Cody Laurel
    CODY PACED IN THE waiting room, his entire world revolving around a blood test. He wished Jeremy was there. Or Will. Anyone he could talk to.
    He’d gone back to school after his folks took him home, and nothing was quite right. First, Hank and Glenn were avoiding him like the plague, not that he was complaining, and he heard from Jeremy that the same night he disappeared, they got their asses handed to them in a big way. The proof of that was in the casts they were wearing on their hands. Matching casts, only Glenn’s was a little bigger. Since then, every time he saw them in the hallway, they did their best to avoid him.
    That didn’t help make his life much easier, though. His folks were still having trouble with the whole idea of him just losing four days. So now they were looking into other possibilities, like maybe whether or not he’d started experimenting with hard-core drugs.
    He knew he was innocent, he knew the test should be negative, but he wasn’t stupid. Just because he didn’t take any drugs didn’t mean there weren’t any involved. He’d heard the stories from time to time. It was always possible someone had slipped him something at the football game. He couldn’t think of anyone who would—or why—but you never knew. His friends weren’t that stupid and neither Chadbourn nor Wagner had the brainpower to come up with the idea—but it could have been someone else or even a random thing, so yeah, he was worried.
    And right now his parents were talking with the doctor who’d taken the test. Not Dr. Talbot, the usual physician they saw, but a different man, a specialist who’d been hired to give him a full battery of drug