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He put his hands on his knees, tried to get some blood back into his head. Swooning dead away in front of Parrish would not do wonders for his hard-core, meaner-than-shit intimidation machine.
Fortunately, Con and Davy’s meaner-than-shit machines were in fine working order. He just hung on, concentrated on staying conscious.
An ungentle hand stabbed him hard between the shoulder blades some time later, to get him marching down the corridor. Past the red-hot blonde with the take-me eyes. No security personnel stopped them, no police were waiting. Parrish was going to play both sides until he could tell which way to jump. Prick.
When they got to the parking lot, Davy seized him by the scruff of the neck and slammed him against the SUV so hard he almost howled.
“I told you we weren’t going to get physical,” he snarled into Sean’s face. “And you lost it. Both times. We do not need this kind of trouble, punk. If you cannot hang on to your shit, I will tie you and gag you and stuff you into the trunk, I swear to God.”
Sean glanced to Connor for support, and got just a twitch of his mouth and a shrug. “I’ll hold you down while he ties you,” Con said.
He looked at Miles, who gave him his what-the-fuck-do-you-want-from-me look. He grunted, shrugged. Whatever. He was too boggled to get his feelings hurt. He rubbed the lump on his head as he got into the vehicle. “The twenty-third of August,” he murmured.
Davy pulled out of the lot. “I knew that would set you off,” he said grimly. “It was fifteen years ago. The guy could be lying. Or just wrong.”
“And if he’s not?” Sean said. “We put a body in the ground on August twentieth. If this guy saw Kev on the twenty-third, then…”
“Who’s lying up there on the hill?” Connor finished.
There was a stony silence in the car while they pondered this.
“Didn’t you…aren’t there…dental records?” Miles faltered.
Con shook his head. “None of us ever went to a dentist until we were adults. Dad was dead sure they’d implant transmitters in our teeth.”
“Oh. Uh, never mind,” Miles mumbled. “Maybe DNA?”
“Forget it,” Davy said harshly. “It doesn’t matter. Kev isdead, Sean. There’s no other reason he would not have contacted us. They got him. Face it, deal with it. We can’t spend our whole lives like this.”
Sean shook his head.
“Fuck,” Davy’s voice was bleak. “This means another freak-out?”
Sean met his brother’s furious eyes in the mirror, and stared into them calmly. He said nothing. Nothing needed to be said.
Con looked miserable and worried. He massaged his bum leg.
“Great,” Davy muttered. “So now what?”
Sean shrugged. “That’s obvious,” he said. “We go to the library.”
“First,we run you through a series of tests to identify your learning style. Dr. O personalizes each subject’s program,” Jared explained, as he merged onto the interstate. “The tests are the hard part, but it’s just the first couple of days. Then the fun begins.”
Cindy stared out the windshield, bug-eyed. Tests? Her goose was cooked. To a crunchy crisp. “Wow.” Her voice strangled. “Super cool.”
Jared waited for some enthusiastic, intelligent, intellectual comments from her, but anything she said would betray her for the bubble-headed idiot that she was. In over her head. And going down.
“Uh, OK,” Jared tried again, gamely. “So. I liked that abstract you wrote about predictions of formant-frequency discrimination in noise based on model auditory nerve responses. I even showed it to Dr. O. I was thinking, maybe we could try combining temporal and rate information for a smaller population of model fibers, and tune them—”
“Um, could we talk about non-technical stuff?” Cindy rubbed her damp palms over her jeans. “I really prefer to get to know people talking about, like, you know. Normal stuff.”
“OK.” Jared looked baffled. “What’s normal?”
“You know. Everyday life. Movies. Current events. Fashion. I believe in being well-rounded. You can’t sit around obsessing on plane wave solutions all day, you know? You gotta make space for red cowboy boots, and espresso brownies, and the Howling Furballs.”
Jared frowned. “Who the hell are the Howling Furballs?”
“They’re an acid punk band that’s doing some cool multimedia stuff,” Cindy explained. “They’ve got a totally wild sound, and the engineer uses the signals the musicians generate in real time to create a freaky interactive light show. I’ll show you their website, if you want.”
