UnBound - Neal Shusterman Page 0,78
a place you gotta be invited to—especially poor folks who never get invited nowhere by anyone who isn’t family. I buy ’em gowns and tuxedos that they get to take with them when they go, and I feed ’em the kind of meat you don’t gotta put ketchup on. I make ’em my family, on accounta my real one didn’t work out so well.”
She looks away then, probably thinking about her brother. Hayden never met Argent, but he knows he played a crucial role in saving Connor from a ruthless black marketeer.
“So I imagine you invited me here because you want me to interview you on my radio show,” Hayden says.
“I don’t wanna talk about that yet,” she says. The butler arrives with lemonade and chocolate chip cookies. “Eat, drink, and be merry,” she says. “Isn’t that how it goes?”
“There’s a second part to that expression,” Hayden points out. “But it’s not nearly as much fun.”
“So you were with Connor and Risa down in Sonia’s basement the first time they were there, huh?” she asks with her mouth full of cookie.
“Once upon a time.”
“Wasn’t no fairy tale, I’m sure.”
“A different kind of ‘grim.’ ”
“And then you was with them in the airplane graveyard. That’s where you started the Radio Free Hayden thing, right?”
“You know a lot about me.”
Grace shakes her head. “Just the stuff Connor told me. And the stuff you say on your show. You know, you talk about yourself an awful lot.”
“I know; it’s a bad habit.”
“So where are they?” Grace asks, and says no more as she waits for his answer. When he isn’t forthcoming, she adds, “I mean, you were closer with them than just about anybody, so you gotta know where they are now, right?”
Hayden sighs. “Not exactly.”
The fact is, ever since that infamous TV interview that Connor and Risa did more than six months ago, he hasn’t heard from them. No one has. He could hardly blame them. Hayden wasn’t there—he just heard about it like everyone else. It was a big deal. An interview on a national prime-time talk show. How the guy got a gun into the studio audience is still a mystery—there were metal detectors and security up the wazoo, and then some. It was, after all, their first public interview after their testimony before Congress—the testimony that shamed lawmakers into making the moratorium on unwinding permanent. But there are still plenty of people who support unwinding, and they’re not going to let that dark era of history go without a fight.
Connor or Risa or both of them would be dead now, had it not been for the actions of some anonymous woman in the studio audience who saw the shooter rise and pushed his arm as he fired.
There, before the world, on live TV, the beloved host of a beloved talk show was shot through the chest by the stray bullet and killed. He never had a chance. Risa and Connor were spirited off the stage by security and neither has been seen since.
“C’mon,” Grace cajoles. “You know where they are—you hafta know!”
“If they want to say hidden, why would they tell a blabbermouth with a nationally syndicated radio show?”
Grace considers that. “Good point. Damn.”
There are a few theories out there, of course, as to where Risa and Connor are. Some people think they’ve joined Lev on the Arápache Reservation and are enjoying peaceful sanctuary there. Others say that Connor, Risa, and Connor’s family entered the witness protection program, and all have brand-new identities. With faces that recognizable, Hayden can’t imagine how they’d remain anonymous for very long. Conspiracy kooks think they’re in a high-security prison or dead. Religious kooks think they’ve been raptured. Every tabloid claims unconfirmed sightings, and the WHERE’S CONNOR? and WHERE’S RISA? T-shirts that were so popular before they resurfaced at the Washington rally are back in vogue. Too bad for them. The more they try to hide from their legend, the more it asserts itself.
Hayden, on the other hand, has no problems with fame or infamy. He loves the vitriolic haters as much as he loves the fans who adore him. To be the cause of such passion tickles him to no end. And of course there’s the free stuff.
“I got a theory,” Grace says. “And I’m very good with theories. Theories and games and strategies. So tell me what you think.”
“I’m listening.”
“Connor needed something from his parents before he could forgive them for reals. He needed a sacrifice. So after that awful interview thing, he