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“See?” he said. “I knew you could fix it.”
I want to fix things now. I want to make everything better. But I can’t do it by myself. I can’t do it if he doesn’t share what he knows.
“I know this is scary,” I say.
“Scary is what you call a ghost story when you’re a kid.”
“I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t important.”
“You would, if you didn’t realize what might happen.”
He’s trying to protect me. My broken, half-dead brother is trying to keep me safe. Maybe I should appreciate his effort. But the truth is, he makes me want to scream.
“You do realize I’ve met Jonas and Ansel before?” I ask.
He twitches like a bird getting ready to fly from its nest.
That means I have to continue. “They came to Klaus’s house. The house where you left me. The house where I was a slave.”
He folds his arms around his belly like he’s trying to disappear. I know how it feels, to want to hide like that. To try to escape.
“Klaus gave me to them, Leo. He dosed me with Crash and let them do whatever they wanted to me. You understand what that means, don’t you? They hurt me. They hurt me bad enough that I was in a hospital bed for weeks. A hospital bed where I was a prisoner, not some cushy hideaway like this.”
He starts to rock back and forth. I know I should pity a man who’s been broken so thoroughly. But his very vulnerability lights a vengeful fire inside me.
“You’re safe now,” I say. “No one can get you. You’ve got doctors and nurses working to make you better. You’ve got Trap pouring thousands of dollars into getting your health back. Even if you don’t give a crap about me, I’d think you’d want to dosomethingto thank Trap.”
He shakes his head, fast, like a dog drying off after a rainstorm.
“Use your words, Leo.”
He just closes his eyes and hunches his shoulders.
“Dammit! I’m not asking you totalkto the Herzogs. You don’t ever have to see them again. Just tell me where they kept you. Tell me who watched over you. Tell me how they’re running their business, who they bought off to avoid the law, what they fucking eat for breakfast!”
Leo’s eyes pop open. He stares at me like I just burst into flame. I never used to swear.
He doesn’t have a clue how the past three years have changed me. How Trap has changed me. He doesn’t know who I am.
“Poached eggs,” he says. “With four triangles of toast. Butter. No jam.”
He’s actually telling me what those monsters ate. All the things I need to know, and he’s reciting a stupid menu.
“What about the rest?” I push.
His mouth snaps closed. I remember when we first took swimming lessons, how we’d both gulp the biggest breaths we could and fight to stay under water the longest. No matter how hard I tried, Leo always won. I’d gasp at the surface, spitting out chlorine until he drifted up to join me, his smile as wide as the sun.
“Tell me, goddammit! How can we get at Jonas and Ansel Herzog?”
“That’s just it,” Leo says, and his voice is as calm as I’ve ever heard him. His face is smooth. His eyes are clear. “You can’t. No one can get to the Herzogs. No one can go after them.Theycome after you. And there’s nothing you can do about that.”
For just a moment, I picture my brother strapped to the table I installed in my freeport gallery. I hear him pleading for hours, for days, for weeks. I smell his sweat and his piss and his shit, fermented for months.
But that never happened. It was my own sweat I smelled, in Klaus Herzog’s Holding Room. My own piss. My own shit. I was the one strapped to the table, helpless and pleading, because Leo put me there.
I leave the hospital before I give in to the urge to slap my brother blind.
16
