Untouched The Girl in the Box - By Robert J. Crane Page 0,9

cuts you.” Her smile became a smirk, a self-satisfied look that either Wolfe or I found insufferable and wanted to destroy along with the rest of her sculpted face. I think that was Wolfe. Mostly.

“Sir.” Roberto turned to Old Man Winter. “Would you like us to make our report now or in the morning?”

Old Man Winter kept his silence. Everyone waited for his pronouncement, which came with all the gravity his position and deep voice afforded. “Come to my office at noon. We have other matters to discuss.”

“Yes, sir.” Roberto saluted, then nodded to Glen and Eve, and the three of them headed toward the dormitory building, Kurt in tow.

I looked back to Clary and Sessions, almost to the science building now. The capsule carrying Aleksandr Gavrikov looked heavy, and Clary was struggling to readjust it again. Let him loose, Wolfe said from somewhere in the depths of my brain.

Shut up, I told him, as if that would work.

If you let him loose, Wolfe will tell you what he knows about your mommy.

Son of a bitch. That immediately put me on guard; if Wolfe wanted someone out of confinement, there was no stronger indication that said person should remain under lock and key, preferably buried under several tons of soil, indefinitely.

You don’t know anything, I thought back to him. You’re just lying to get your way.

He was quiet for a split second, and a thought floated to the surface of my mind. 3586 Curie Way, Bloomington, Minnesota.

I blinked, and Ariadne caught it. “Tired?”

“No.” My mind was racing. “Just remembering something. Wolfe mentioned an address—3586 Curie Way in Bloomington. Is that close?” It wasn’t a lie; I didn’t say when he had mentioned it.

Zack, Ariadne and Old Man Winter were the only ones remaining on the helipad. Zack was the one who answered. “It’s about forty minutes away. Ten minutes south of your house.”

“Wolfe gave you this address?” Ariadne looked skeptical. Old Man Winter looked blank, as always.

“He did.”

“Why would he give you an address?” Her eyes were narrowed, and you could see her crunching the odds in her head—wondering if it was some sort of trap. Leave it to Ariadne to ask the tough questions I wanted to avoid. I guess it could have been a trap, but if it was, it seemed counterproductive for Wolfe to kill me, since he lived in my head. I had this feeling that even after thousands of years of life, he was clinging to even this little half-life in my skull like lint clings to a sweater.

I chose my words carefully so as to avoid a flat-out lie. “I don’t think he intended for me to survive our final encounter.” True enough. “So anything he mentioned wouldn’t have mattered, would it?”

I looked from her to Old Man Winter then Zack. All three of them were studying me with varying degrees of suspicion, which worried me. Even though what I was saying was technically true, I was leaving a lot out—lying by omission. Based on my experience with Mom, who could always tell when I was being false, I was a bad liar. Ariadne shot a look at Old Man Winter, who had a cocked eyebrow and very little else to tell me what was going through his mind. Zack was looking at the snow.

“Zack,” Old Man Winter spoke. “You and Kurt will take Sienna to the address she provided.” He turned, gracefully for a man with such a tall frame, and lumbered down the path to Headquarters.

The worry was evident on Ariadne’s face. “Be careful,” she said to Zack and me before following Old Man Winter.

Zack had his cell phone out and was already talking on it. I could tell it was Kurt by the way he was speaking. His cheeks were red and he shivered as he ended the conversation; I realized for the first time he wasn’t wearing a coat. “You’re cold,” I said, feeling a blush for being so stupid as to state the obvious.

“Yeah, I should have grabbed a coat at the airport before we got on the chopper, but for some reason it slipped my mind. Was in a hurry to get back here, I guess.” He cast a sidelong look at the retreating backs of Ariadne and Old Man Winter. “I get the feeling that you’re not telling us everything you know about that address.”

“Oh, no,” I said, “I’ve told you all I know about the address; it’s as much of a mystery to me as it