Page 57 of The Chain House

He didn’t know what to say to that and figured the moment maybe didn’t need a response; in fact, maybe what she needed most was to not be judged, in favor or against, but either way, they were fugitives in this together, and with every square inch of road he put under his tires, further distancing himself from his previous life, his purpose in the next increased tenfold.

“Last night,” she said. “You really … poured your soul out to me, Trevor. About who you were. The hell the world has given you. Those comics you did as a boy. But this morning, as soon as I got home, I Googled some things. And ravens,” she said, for the first time giving him a glance. “I read that they’re so intelligent that they can mimic human voices. They can gesture when they communicate. They can remember faces, Trevor.” She paused, as if for effect. “They have friends … and can have enemies.”

Trevor knew all this, but that she now knew as well emboldened him somehow, and he felt like he’d never driven with so much confidence. “A group of ravens is called an unkindness,” he told her.

She nodded, like maybe she’d learned that too from her morning Googling, right before the world, as she knew it, had been completely turned on its ass.

“The plural of mongoose is mongooses,” she said, and he fucking loved her for it. “They’re small but agile. They’re fearless and can even take down a cobra snake.” And when she asked, “Why are you smiling?”

He said, “I don’t know.”

But the truth was, he did; he was smiling because he was The Raven now and she was The Mongoose. He’d killed one bully and he wanted Justice Minks to be next.

As if reading his mind, she said, “Ravens are excellent hunters. They’ve been known to kill prey twice their size.”

He nodded, tears in his eyes, thinking Damn straight, and also thinking of the last words his son had said to him. Well, he wasn’t all talk anymore. Just ask Jake Hall.

Lizzie said, “So who we gonna get next?”

He hesitated, wondering if he’d heard her correctly. Not, what are we going to do next, but who are we gonna get next? As in …

As if they were The Raven and The Mongoose.

Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it. He’d said the famous quote often to his classes. But he’d learned enough from his own history by now to finally understand that’s all he’d been doing, failing to learn, running and repeating, hiding and dodging, and this was the climaxed doom of it all.

Monsters don’t go away until you face them head on. Even if I die trying, he thought.

Assuming he’d heard her correctly, he decided to answer her in turn. “You hear what they just said on the radio, about Justice Minks?”

“I did,” she said.

“Then that’s who we’re getting next.”

“That’s exactly what I was hoping you’d say,” she said, turning in her seat to face him, and he did his best not to notice how the seatbelt cut right between her breasts. She said, “Where to?”

“To the old Freedom Ranch,” he said. “What’s left of it.”

“And then what?”

“I’ll know when it comes to me.”

CHAPTER26

“YOU HAVE TO tell Sam,” Carl said as he steered down the street.

“Me?” Jennifer asked from the passenger seat as they hurried away from Trevor Harper’s house with the full stack of The Raven and The Mongoose comics in tow, along with a few pictures from the photo album she’d found open on the floor and the Mallard Malone novels she’d dropped on the professor’s porch the day before. “How about we?”

“We, fine, whatever,” Carl said, turning out of the subdivision, just as two fire trucks, lights flashing and sirens blaring, pulled in. “But he deserves to know.”

“What, that his father isn’t and never was who Sam thought he was?” Jennifer said. “That both his parents were members of The Collective? That they weren’t even his real parents?”

Carl watched his rearview mirror. “We should have stayed.”

“And done what?”

“I’m just saying, we called the fire department,” Carl said. “We should have waited for them.”

“And done what?”