Hawk - James Patterson Page 0,35

out loud, coming up with plans and tweaking them as he went. A shouting voice interrupted his thoughts, and mine.

“Phoenix!”

I looked at Clete with an oh, god, not this again look. Clete gave a tired, sad bit of a smile, and I waved at him to go on without me. He was exhausted, and my day couldn’t get any worse. A street gang had carved up my face, marking me. My family was in chains and possibly altered for life. There was nothing a child killer who claimed to be my father could say that could shock me more than what I’d seen in the Labs.

“Go on, get some sleep,” I said to Clete and he continued on the path toward the Children’s Home.

The tiny window opening into the hall was enough for the criminal to see us—if he was standing on his chair, on his bed.

“Phoenix!” he whispered. I could see only his eyes and eyebrows and the top of his head.

“My name is Hawk!” I whispered harshly back.

“Okay, Hawk,” the prisoner said patiently. “Listen. I’m your Dad-man. Don’t you remember me? You and me and your mom—we were always together.”

I crossed my arms over my chest. “Sure we were, creep. Leave me alone!”

“Hawk! Wait. I’ve been looking for you for years!”

“Okay,” I said. “Prove it. Tell me something about myself. Anything.”

“You have wings,” he said, and I froze in place. “They’re dark brown with tan undersides—more like your mom’s than mine. But you have a spray of black feathers around your shoulders—so black that when they’re in the sun, they look iridescent.”

I bet my own gang couldn’t have described my wings so well.

“I know because I’m Dad-man,” he said, apparently reading my mind. “I was there when you were born.”

“Were you there when I was left by myself on the street?” I asked, practically spitting.

“Yeah, I was,” he said, sounding surprised. “But you weren’t left on your own—a good family friend, Rose, was ten meters away from coming to get you. We didn’t leave till we knew she was super close.”

“No one came and got me,” I said, putting all the meanness I could into my voice. “I was left by myself on a street corner. I was a little kid.”

“Rose was almost there,” the murderer said more strongly. “We saw her! She was ten meters away!”

I sighed. “You know what? I’m tired and depressed and not going to argue with a child killer.” Once again I turned to go, but he said, “Why are you depressed?” Almost like he gave a shit. That’s not something you heard on the streets. Nobody cared about a stranger. But this guy… either he meant it, or I was so run-down and hard up that I’d talk to anybody right now. Even him.

“The rest of my friends—kids I live with—have been taken to the Labs, where they’re being experimented on. Clete and I tried to rescue them, but we couldn’t.”

He said, “I can help.”

Without turning around, I waited. If he really was a child killer then he was certainly crafty, probably had a whole book of lies and tricks in his head to get people to do what he wanted… But he knew that stuff about my wings, and I was flat out of options.

He said, “I have friends, too—people your mom and I grew up with. Some of them are waiting for me in the city. I wasn’t supposed to get caught, get put in here. You can go find them—tell them what happened. They can probably help.”

“Probably isn’t good enough,” I said, feeling exhausted. The glazed look in Calypso’s eyes had seared a hole in my heart. “I need promises.”

“They’ll help you,” he said more strongly. “They know more about rescuing freaks than anyone in the world.” He put his mouth closer to the tiny window and whispered directions to where his friends were. Flying directions. “And hurry—if these labs are like labs I’ve known, time’s already run out. Tell ’em Fang sent you.”

I gave him one last look: should I trust him? No. I shouldn’t trust him. He was a child killer. The worst of the worst. But he had known my wings. My wings.

“Wait—you say you’re my dad. So you have wings, too?” I almost smiled at how easy it was to catch him in his own trap. Let’s see how he lied his way out of this.

“Of course,” he said, sounding surprised again.

My eyes and my mouth were all as round as O’s as I heard