He grunted and tried to turn away from her. She wouldn’t let him.
“Avery, where did Luke go?”
“Prekile,” he muttered.
She had no idea what Prekile was, and didn’t care, because it wasn’t the truth.
“Come on, where did he go? I won’t tell.”
“Up the red steps,” Avery said. He was still mostly asleep. Probably thought he was dreaming this.
“What red steps?” She whispered it in his ear.
He didn’t answer, and when he tried to turn away from her this time, Frieda let him. Because she had what she needed. Unlike Avery (and Kalisha, at least on good days), she could not exactly read thoughts. What she had were intuitions that were probably based on thoughts, and sometimes, if a person were unusually open (like a little boy who was mostly asleep), she got brief, brilliant pictures.
She lay on her back, looking up at the ceiling of her room, thinking.
17
Ten o’clock. The Institute was quiet.
Sophie Turner, one of the night caretakers, was sitting at the picnic table in the playground, smoking an illicit cigarette and tapping her ashes into the cap of a Vitaminwater bottle. Dr. Evans was beside her, with a hand on her thigh. He leaned over and kissed her neck.
“Don’t do that, Jimmy,” she said. “Not tonight, with the whole place on red alert. You don’t know who’s watching.”
“You’re an Institute employee smoking a cigarette while the whole place is on red alert,” he said. “If you’re going to be a bad girl, why not be a bad girl?”
He slid his hand higher, and she was debating whether or not to leave it there, when she looked around and saw a little girl—one of the new ones—standing at the lounge doors. Her palms were on the glass, and she was looking out at them.
“Goddammit!” Sophie said. She removed Evans’s hand and squashed her cigarette out. She strode to the door and unlocked it and jerked it open and grabbed Peeping Thomasina by the neck. “What are you doing up? No walking around tonight, didn’t you get the message? The lounge and canteen are off-limits! So if you don’t want your ass slapped good and hard, get back to your—”
“I want to talk to Mrs. Sigsby,” Frieda said. “Right away.”
“Are you out of your mind? For the last time, get back—”
Dr. Evans pushed past Sophie, and without apology. There would be no more touchie-feelie for him tonight, Sophie decided.
“Frieda? You’re Frieda, right?”
“Yes.”
“Why don’t you tell me what’s on your mind?”
“I can only talk to her. Because she’s the boss.”
“That’s right, and the boss has had a busy day. Why don’t you tell me, and I’ll decide if it’s important enough to tell her.”
“Oh, please,” Sophie said. “Can’t you see when one of these brats is scamming you?”
“I know where Luke went,” Frieda said. “I won’t tell you, but I’ll tell her.”
“She’s lying,” Sophie said.
Frieda never looked at her. She kept her eyes on Dr. Evans. “Not.”
Evans’s interior debate was short. Luke Ellis would soon have been gone for a full twenty-four hours, he could be anywhere and telling anything to anyone—a cop, or please God no, a reporter. It wasn’t Evans’s job to pass judgement on the girl’s claim, farfetched as it was. That was Mrs. Sigsby’s job. His job was not to make a mistake that ended him up shit creek without a paddle.
“You better be telling the truth, Frieda, or you’re going to be in a world of hurt. You know that, don’t you?”
She only looked at him.
18
Ten-twenty.
The Southway Express box, in which Luke slept behind the rototillers, lawn tractors, and boxed outboard motors, was now leaving New York State for Pennsylvania and entering an enhanced speed corridor along which it would travel for the next three hours. Its speed rose to 79 miles an hour, and woe to anyone stalled on a crossing or asleep on the tracks.
In Mrs. Sigsby’s office, Frieda Brown was standing in front of the desk. She was wearing pink footie pajamas nicer than any she had at home. Her hair was in daytime pigtails and her hands were clasped behind her back.
Stackhouse was in the small private quarters adjacent to the office, cat-napping on the couch. Mrs. Sigsby saw no reason to wake him. At least not yet. She examined the girl and saw nothing remarkable. She was as brown as her name: brown eyes, mouse-brown hair, skin tanned a summer café au lait. According to her file, her BDNF was likewise unremarkable, at least by Institute standards; useful but