Chapter Seventeen

Eli

I could feel the eyes on my back as soon as I crossed the threshold of Paper Treasure. I scanned the street. It was still a Thursday afternoon in the city, and even though no one bothered the bookstore with the CLOSED sign, the street remained busy outside of our bubble. Cars lingered on the road. People chatted and loitered and jogged. I searched for the eyes that were on me, and I made eye contact with everyone around me. But none of them looked like Freaks. A dark sedan parallel parked and idled, the driver not climbing out or driving away. Men in suits smoked cigarettes and fiddled with their phones in the distance. It was impossible to tell. They were all looking at me.

Shake it off. You’re imagining things. There’s no Freaks out here.

I strode down the path toward Toasty’s, but I couldn’t shake the certainty that a pair of eyes were burning two holes in my back.

I whirled, and a rotund, older man in a simple-looking suit glanced away from me. I wanted to bellow about Jon-Pierre to him, but I couldn’t be sure that man was one of his emissaries, in spite of the staring. People stare at me all the time. I’m huge. I kept walking and settled at a post when I reached the bus stop, even though I had no goddamn intention of riding that bus. I scanned for the fat man in the suit and found him quickly.

He was standing almost a block away, speaking on his cell phone, but I caught him glancing over at me again and again. Why? What the fuck? Was he following me, or was he a regular guy walking on this route, talking on his phone, trying to look around without being questioned?

He glanced over at me again, and my jaw clenched. That was it. I vaulted off my post and strode directly toward him. It was time to satisfy my curiosity.

I was almost on top of the fat man when he started scrambling in the opposite direction. My heart pounded harder. I didn’t know if he was scared of me because I was a target that had become self-aware, or if he was scared of me because I looked fucking scary right now.

Before I could reach the man in the suit, he took off running, and my heart sank. There was so much fear and gracelessness in him, I couldn’t imagine that he would be one of JP’s associates, which meant that I was terrorizing an innocent man.

But then the fat man pulled a Glock out of its holster, hidden beneath his suit jacket, and I hesitated. The suit wasn’t so innocent after all. His barrel trained on me, and I put my hands into the position of surrender, immediately.

“You were warned, Eli,” the man called out, and my head cocked to the side, further intrigued. “You of all people know that JP won’t stop.”

The gun shook in the old man’s hand, and one of the pedestrians noticed the scene and screamed. People ran and threw themselves down onto the sidewalk, but I didn’t. I held eye contact with the man and kept my hands in the position of surrender, but I still slowly advanced. He wasn’t going to shoot me. Look at him. He was a man with a lot to lose if he chose to commit a murder in front of an entire midday street. Even the crooked cops wouldn’t be able to overlook that, would they?

They probably would, but I could hope that the old man didn’t realize as much.

“JP won’t stop what?” I asked, still creeping closer. I had to distract him and disarm him, restrain him and question him. He must have been an important piece of the puzzle if he was placed on surveillance detail. That was a sophisticated position. He didn’t look anything at all like a Freak, either. They tended to at least be young, if not also colorful and wild. They were the worker bees, so what kind of bee was this motherfucker?

“You know JP,” the man called.

“You certainly seem to know me,” I replied, sauntering toward him, arms still in the position of surrender. I was almost on top of him now. His gun shook, and he looked terrified. He hadn’t threatened to shoot me yet. People were probably filming this with their cell phones by now. “Why, though? Is JP scared?” I lowered my voice and leaned closer. “Are you scared?”

Keeping his gun out and poorly aimed, the fat man took off down the sidewalk on his bad knees, casting panicked looks over his shoulder at me every few seconds. I hesitated, uncertain about whether this man could sink a bullet, and then bolted after him. He might be taking me directly to Redman Corporation.

The man spilled around corners and ducked between cars at red lights, trying to put distance between us in every way he could. He still couldn’t fire that gun. He definitely wasn’t one of the Freaks. They had no problem squeezing triggers. His suit and his age and the fact that he was following me made it clear that he was close to the top.

“I’m not going to hurt you!” I yelled after him, and a bullet came whizzing overhead, ricocheting off a streetlamp with a sharp ting and then burying itself in the brick of an abandoned warehouse. Still, I glared after him. “Hey! You can’t fire guns like that, you idiot!”

The fat man spilled down the long stairwell into the subway, and I followed. His gun was put away, and he scrambled to pay for a ticket and suck in his gut, passing through the turnstile. I gripped either side of the same turnstile and vaulted over it, but it was already too late. A subway car slowed to a halt with a hiss and every door swished open. Hundreds of Hinton locals thronged the narrow subway, and the fat man disappeared, wedging his gun out of sight and leaving me winded, raging, way off-course from where I’d been headed. Before, there had only been a few blocks between Nina and me. But now, she was on the other side of Hinton, and I would have to board the metro and pray that she was okay.