Page 223 of Johnny

“No,” I say. “I’ve never seen him before. Who is he?”

“His name is Nicolas Tate.”

“What did he do?”

“He’s… killing children at the moment. Which leads me to the second picture. Do you recognize

that woman?”

I flick the picture of the thug over to the side and study the woman. Blonde hair. Blue eyes. Very pretty. But again, it only takes one look into those blue eyes to see the same thing I saw in Nicholas

Tate.

She’s one of us.

“No,” I say. “I have never seen her either.”

“Good. That’s good. But there’s one more. Please look at the last picture and tell me if you’ve seen

her.”

I flick the second picture over on top of the first one and study the one on the bottom.

The little girl from the lab.

Indie.

I look up at my mother and find her staring at me intently. Warnings flashing in those blue eyes that

look very much like mine. Do not lie now, that gaze says. Not when we’ve come this far and you’re

practically home free.

“Yeah,” I say. “She was at the lab yesterday.”

My mother glances up at the nearest drone and nods. “What happened to her?”

I know they’ve already gone back to that island and found what I did. They had to have noticed she

wasn’t among the dead. “I took her with us. But I killed her on the yacht. She attacked me and… I’m

sorry if she was important. I didn’t know. She’s dead. We threw her body overboard.”

My mother lets out a long sigh of satisfaction and leans all the way back in her chair like she just

got home from the most stressful day of work in her life.

And then I have a really crazy thought. Did she send me to that lab because she knew the little girl

was there? Did she want me to kill her?

Or… or did she want me to not kill her? And she knew I wouldn’t once I saw how young she was.

And she knows I’m lying right now.

I don’t know. There is no possible way to know that without asking. Which seems to be out of the

question right now.