The Collide. Kimberly McCreight

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СКАЧАТЬ the one who pays. I’ll personally make sure of it.”

      “WHERE ARE THEY following you?” Leo asks. “What do you mean?”

      Riel didn’t mean to freak Leo out. She feels bad now for telling him. “I mean, not all over. There’s not like an army of them or something. But every once in a while when I’m out, I’ll spot someone watching me. Maybe. I haven’t seen that asshole Klute again, luckily. But I think I have seen that white van they were in at my grandfather’s house.”

      “But Wylie’s in jail, and you haven’t spoken to her,” Leo says. “How much farther do they want you to stay away?”

      Riel shrugs. “Wylie isn’t the whole thing, you know?”

      “But you have been staying away from the rest, too, right?” Leo asks.

      “I haven’t even been to Level99 since my grandfather’s house. You know that,” Riel says. “I barely leave your room.”

      “Good.” Leo lies back down. Exhales like he’s relieved. He isn’t. “They’ll lose interest eventually, right?”

      “I hope so,” Riel says. “Because it kind of feels like I’m running out of places to hide.”

      WHEN RIEL WAKES again, it’s nine a.m. The shades are up and Leo’s small dorm room is filled with light, the small slice of bed next to her empty. Riel runs a hand over the cool, crumpled sheets. Leo has Harvard summer program classes and an internship. That’s the only reason he even has a dorm room right now. A tiny single—desk, bed, that’s it. Long-term visitors, much less roommates, are against the rules. But Leo insisted that Riel stay. Hard to argue when she had no place else to go.

      Before, Riel had been sleeping at the Level99 house, ever since Kelsey died in March. But it’s not safe for Level99 if she’s there now. She doesn’t want Agent Klute coming after her and finding them. And also, maybe she just wants a break. From everything. Leo’s felt like such a safe place to hide.

      Riel picks up her new burner off the nightstand. She’s been changing them out weekly. The only people who have the number are Leo and Level99. The phone has one text. Maybe even one that just woke her. A ?, and nothing more. It’s from Brian. It means, You coming in? Brian checks in every day. He doesn’t actually want Riel to come in, of course. He likes being in charge of Level99. He just likes to confirm that he still is.

      Riel reminds Brian all the time that she is coming back when things cool down. That him being in charge is temporary, and only to protect Level99—even if it is more complicated than that for Riel right now. Maybe Brian even knows she’s conflicted. Someone has been jumping in and out of Riel’s online life. She’s noticed. Brian, checking up on her for sure. And fair enough. That’s his job now. To protect Level99.

      But then what’s Riel’s job? To protect herself? Wylie? The Outliers? She’s not sure anymore, and it makes her feel more lost than she wants to admit.

      “My dad is with your grandfather.” That was what Wylie said that night right before she dove into the water. And then there was that guilty twitch from Agent Klute when Riel had pursued the lead. Her grandfather. He’s an asshole, no doubt. But connected to the Outliers and Dr. Ben Lang? How and why? It doesn’t make any sense.

      And, if so, how the fuck hadn’t she seen him coming? What kind of an Outlier was she?

      That’s the problem, isn’t it? Reading’s not ESP. It’s not a crystal ball. Feelings and instincts are fuzzy things. They change. Shift. Blur. And people will want Outliers to prove they can read minds. Or they won’t believe they can do anything. It will be all or nothing. Neither here nor there is the place you get crushed in between.

      Senator David Russo was Kelsey and Riel’s maternal grandfather, and he’d always hated their dad. According to their grandfather, their dad and his Communist, a.k.a. liberal, ideals had ruined their mother. Making Riel and Kelsey the fruit of his poisonous tree. Their dad was also black, which Riel has always suspected was their grandfather’s bigger issue with him, and them.

      When their parents died, it was decided that the girls were old enough to take care of themselves. This was true in theory, if not in fact. Riel was three months in at Harvard, studying computer science. The plan was that she would move home and commute to school until Kelsey graduated high school. No problem. They had plenty of money through their mother’s trust, too. No problem. Their mother’s sister—childless Aunt Susan, a banker from Manhattan—would check in on them occasionally. No problem. They were good kids anyway, responsible.

      Of course, just because they could take care of themselves didn’t mean that they should.

      They hadn’t seen their grandfather in years when he came to their parents’ funeral—the cameras were watching, after all. And he didn’t speak to either one of them at the funeral. He spoke at them: a few polite words tossed in their direction like stale candy from a parade float.

      It was only after the funeral that Riel had tracked down her grandfather’s Cape house and started breaking in on occasion, to mess with him. It wasn’t something she was proud of, but it was satisfying.

      Riel is about to answer Brian’s text—nope, not coming in—when she sees an envelope slide under Leo’s door. Nope. That’s what Riel thinks about that, too. Don’t want that. But these days ignoring a note under a door is not an option.

      Riel pushes herself up out of bed and heads over to pick it up. She lifts it carefully. Inside the envelope is a single sheet of paper, on it a single handwritten sentence: They know you have them.

      Goddamn it. Fucking enough. Riel jerks open Leo’s door and looks up and down the hallway, trembling with rage. She’s ready to scream at Klute or whoever left it. But there’s no one in sight.

      Riel closes the door, heart beating hard as she studies the paper again. The words are still there, unfortunately. Riel was right, there was somebody following her—her grandfather, his people, Klute. They’ve known all along exactly where she is. Leo’s room, that small square of safety: gone. Like so much else.

      They know you have them? Have what? It takes Riel a beat. Wylie’s pictures? The eight-and-a-half-by-eleven envelope she shoved at Riel before racing out of her grandfather’s house.

      Riel has only ever taken a quick look just so she knew what she had: pictures of buildings—shitty, blurry pictures. Obviously, they were important to Wylie, but just looking at them it wasn’t obvious why. Once, Riel had seen Leo late at night flipping through them in the darkness. He’d told her the next day she should get rid of them. Not because of what was in them. But because they were Wylie’s. And he’d been right. Of course he had been.

      BREW IS THREE blocks from Leo’s dorm. It has long, knotty tables, perpetually packed with nerdy types hunched over laptops. These are Riel’s people, even if she doesn’t exactly look the part with her fashionable tank top, low-slung jeans, gameboard tattoo, and piercings. But Riel will always be a complete nerd at heart.

      As usual in the morning, there is nowhere to sit at Brew. Riel has to hover for ten minutes before a table finally opens up. As she waits, she realizes she can’t be sure that it’s safer to be in Brew than Leo’s room. But at least in Brew, there will be witnesses to any abduction.

      After Riel sits down, she pulls out the eight-and-a-half-by-eleven envelope of Wylie’s pictures СКАЧАТЬ