I sighed and dragged my attention back to Victor. I looked from Preston to Hayden. The others had left the questioning to them so far.
“Victor,” Preston said, “where were you taken after you were bitten for the first time?”
“The guy had a big Toyota Sequoia. He told me to get in and just sit there. I did, and he just drove around. He was spotting other guys and picking them up. I guess I was his first catch of the night. He caught five more guys, then he took us all out to some houses up above Altadena, up in the San Gabriel Mountains, kind of all by themselves on a dead-end road. His family was there. They all looked like him—tall, lean, pale guys. And there were a lot of other just ordinary people.”
There was a stir among the Gordons. They didn’t say anything, but I could see that they knew something. Most likely, they knew which Ina family lived above Altadena in the San Gabriel Mountains. I had no idea how far away these places might be, but they did.
“Victor,” Hayden said, “when did all this happen? When were you taken and bitten for the first time?”
He frowned. “More than a month ago? Yeah, it was that long. Maybe six weeks.”
I could see what was coming. I stared at the rug, needing to hear more, needing to hear everything, but not quite wanting to hear it. It was only reasonable that Victor had been one of those used to kill both my families.
“So you’ve done other jobs, then, haven’t you?” Hayden continued.
“Up in Washington State, yeah,” Victor agreed. “We did three jobs up there.”
“How did you get there?”
“They flew us up in private planes with all our gear. Then we rented cars. Followed the maps we were given.”
“So they gave you new identities? Credit cards?”
“Not me. Five of the other guys. And they gave them plenty of cash. They had cell phones, too. They’d call in when we were ready to do a job and tell us to go ahead. Then they’d call in afterward and we’d be told what to do next, which was mostly to get motel rooms and wait for the call to get into position for the next job. The five guys they chose, they were all ex-military. One used to be Special Forces. They told the rest of us what to do.”
So by now, with no phone call, their bosses must have realized that something was wrong. I wondered how long it would take these enemy Ina to collect new human tools and send them out to try again.
“You said you did three jobs,” Preston said. “Where in Washington did you do those … jobs?”
“One a few miles outside a little town called Gold Bar. Another not too far from a town called … Darlington? No, Darrington. That’s it. And one at a house near the town of Arlington. That’s all up in western Washington. Pretty country. Trees, mountains, rivers, waterfalls, little towns. Nothing like L.A.”
“You were successful in Washington?”
“Yeah, mostly. We hit the first two, and everything went the way it was supposed to. Something went wrong at the third. People got killed. The cops almost got us.”
“Weren’t people supposed to get killed?”
“I mean … our people got killed. We didn’t know what happened at first. Later we heard on the radio that two got shot and three had their throats ripped out. The rest of us never saw what did that—a dog, maybe. A big dog. Anyway, the cops were coming, and we had to run.”
I thought about telling him exactly what had killed his friends, then decided not to. None of it was his doing, really. Even so, I didn’t want to be sitting next to him any longer. I didn’t want to know him or ever see him again. But he was not the one who would pay for what had been done to my families. He was not the one I had to stop if I were going to survive.
I took a deep breath and spoke to Preston. “Do you know who’s doing this?”
He looked at Victor. “Who are they, Victor? What’s the name of the family who recruited you and sent you to kill us?”
Victor’s body jerked as though someone had kicked him. He looked at me desperately, confusion and pain in his eyes.
Hayden picked up the question. “Do you know them, Victor? What is their family name?”
Victor nodded quickly, eager to please. “I know, but I can’t say … please, I can’t.”
“Is the name ‘Silk’？”
Victor grabbed his head with both hands and screamed—a long, ragged, tearing shriek. Then he passed out.
I didn’t want to care. It was clear from the Gordons’ expressions that they didn’t care. But I had bitten him twice. I didn’t want him, wouldn’t have kept him as my symbiont, but I did care what happened to him. I couldn’t ignore him. It seemed that the bites made me feel connected to him and at least a little responsible for him.