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Riel had reached out to grab her, but she was already gone.
“WAIT, WHO ARE you going with?” Riel asked that last night, as Kelsey raced around her still girlish bedroom—pink walls, boy band posters—getting dressed. It was March, six months since their parents’ deaths. For the first time, Kelsey seemed happy, and not because she was high out of her mind.
“My friend,” Kelsey said, fussing with her amazing head of dark curls. She was beautiful, but in a soft, graceful way. Riel was beautiful, too, but not that way.
“What friend?”
“You know, the one I met at the museum. Grace-Ann.”
“Grace-Ann. Right. Are you sure that’s even her name?”
“Why wouldn’t that be her name?” Kelsey asked with a laugh.
“I don’t know. It sounds made up. Like from Little House on the Prairie or something. Anyway, this Grace-Ann’s party is out in the middle of nowhere?” Riel had a bad feeling about this party. A really bad one. She’d had a bad feeling about this Grace-Ann girl, too, from the first time Kelsey mentioned her. “You live ten minutes from the middle of Boston. Go out there.”
“It’s her party and that’s where she lives. In a group home, by the way. Because she lost her parents, too. They took off, they didn’t die, but same idea.” Kelsey stopped fussing and turned to Riel. Sadness welled up in her, Riel could feel it. “She and I have that in common, and it makes me feel better. Okay? Besides, it sounds fun. The party’s in some old research place. Nothing illegal. Just fun. Nothing sounds fun anymore.”
Grace-Ann was the same girl Kelsey had spent much of the winter with, trolling the nearby university campuses, looking for boys. One time, they’d ended up stumbling into some psych test and using the twenty-buck stipend to buy beer. Riel was glad it hadn’t been Harvard. There was no chance she knew the boys they’d shared those beers with. Still, so many risks. Too many.
“No,” Riel said. “You’re not going.”
“No?” Kelsey laughed.
“No,” Riel repeated, crossing her arms. “I have a bad feeling. You can’t go.”
Kelsey just laughed harder. “Listen, I love you, Rie-Rie,” she said. “But seriously, what are you going to do to stop me?” She came over to hug Riel. “Don’t worry, I’ll be careful. I promise.”
Because that was the truth: Riel was in charge without being in charge. All she could do was stand there at the edge of the road, silently screaming Watch out! as her sister hurtled headlong into oncoming traffic.
THE NEXT MORNING, Kelsey’s bed was empty and unslept in. It wasn’t until Riel had searched the entire house and thought over and over, I could have stopped her, I should have stopped her, I could have stopped her, that she finally looked out the window. And spotted something. On the driveway.
Riel raced out the front door. Heart thumping. Body shaking. Already dialing 911 on the cell phone gripped in her hand. But when she finally reached Kelsey splayed out there, she could see it was far too late for help. Her sister was stiff and blue. Hours dead. Dumped, by Grace-Ann, no doubt, some girl without parents or a face and maybe a made-up name. Some girl Riel couldn’t find to blame.
And so, in the end, Dr. Ben Lang had to do.
ACCORDING TO WYLIE, somebody had written about that psych test in her and Kelsey’s copy of 1984. But that someone hadn’t been Kelsey. She’d had no way of knowing at the time that that test she’d taken had anything to do with the Outliers. It had just been about the boys and the twenty bucks and the beer and that terrible bullshit friend. It must have been that “fake Kelsey” Wylie had met.
Leo stirs finally. Without realizing it, Riel has been squeezing him too hard.
“Close your eyes,” he whispers. Though she is behind him, he knows. “Try to go back to sleep.”
Leo doesn’t ask what’s wrong. He never does. He doesn’t ask questions. Doesn’t expect answers. It’s why Riel stays. That, and because she loves Leo. Someday, she might even tell him. But then, she has an unfair advantage. She can already feel Leo loves her.
She stares at Leo’s back. “I’ve already been up for too long.”
“I could make you tea.”
Her dad would have liked Leo and his random cups of tea. Her mom would have approved of his loyalty. I can’t stop thinking about Kelsey. That’s the truth, but Riel doesn’t say that. If she does, she might cry. And once she starts, she’ll never fucking stop. As it is, her grip is slipping.
“There are people following me,” Riel says finally. This isn’t what she was thinking about. But maybe it should be. It’s definitely a good distraction from Kelsey.
“What?” Leo asks, sounding more alarmed than she was prepared for. He pushes himself up in bed and turns to look at her. Riel wishes she hadn’t said anything. “Who’s following you?”
“I don’t know.”
Though she has her suspicions. The agents who had showed up at her grandfather’s house, namely.
“IT’S IMPERATIVE THAT we find Wylie Lang,” Agent Klute declared once Riel had finally returned to the front door of her grandfather’s Cape house. By then, Wylie and Jasper had stroked safely into the darkness.
Klute was super pissed, too. Riel could feel how bad he wanted to slap the smug look off her face. And so she invited him in real sweetly. Just to get under his skin.
“Oh, do come in and look for her yourself,” she said, waving a gracious hand. “She’s not here. And I’ve got nothing to hide.”
Klute didn’t move, though—nothing like someone getting what they want to throw them off.
“Um,” Riel said. “Are you coming in or not?”
“Yeah, we’re coming in,” Klute said finally, waving her to the side and stepping in the door.
“Like I said, Wylie’s not here,” Riel said when Klute and his partner had finally pounded around the upstairs and downstairs. “Her dad, Dr. Lang, went missing in DC. She probably went there to look for him. Maybe she’ll even run into Granddad while she’s there?”
Agent Klute didn’t look Riel’s way, but she felt the split-second tremor when she mentioned Dr. Lang. It was unmistakable. There was a connection between Dr. Lang and her grandfather, no doubt. They might have followed Jasper’s phone, but that wasn’t the only reason these agents were at her grandfather’s house. Not by a long shot.
Hours later, after the agents had thoroughly searched the house and the grounds, once and then again, and they’d asked every possible question in at least three different ways, they finally let Riel and Leo go. Or to be more precise, they kicked them out of Riel’s grandfather’s house.
Agent Klute got into Riel’s face on her way out. “And stay away from Wylie Lang,” he growled. “Stay away from this entire situation.”
“What situation?” Riel asked snidely. Violence. A wave of it from Agent Klute. So strong, it almost took Riel’s breath away. “Maybe if you explain—”
Klute grabbed her arm then and jerked her close, the pain so sharp and unexpected it almost made Riel cry out.
“Stay away. From all of it. Especially Wylie Lang,” Agent Klute repeated through clenched teeth. He pointed at Leo then. “If you don’t, he’ll be the one who pays. I’ll personally make sure of it.”
“WHERE ARE THEY following you?” Leo asks. “What do you mean?”
Riel didn’t mean to freak Leo out. She feels bad now for telling him. “I mean, not all over. There’s not like an army of them or something. But every once in a while when I’m out, I’ll spot someone watching me. Maybe. I haven’t seen that asshole Klute again, luckily. But I think I have seen that white van they were in at my grandfather’s house.”
“But Wylie’s in jail, and you haven’t spoken to her,” Leo says. “How much farther do they want you to stay away?”
Riel shrugs. “Wylie isn’t the whole thing, you know?”
“But you have been staying away from the rest, too, right?” Leo asks.
“I haven’t even been to Level99 since my grandfather’s house. You know that,” Riel says. “I barely leave your room.”
“Good.” Leo lies back down. Exhales like he’s relieved. He isn’t. “They’ll lose interest eventually, right?”
“I hope so,” Riel says. “Because it kind of feels like I’m running out of places to hide.”
WHEN RIEL WAKES again, it’s nine a.m. The shades are up and Leo’s small dorm room is filled with light, the small slice of bed next to her empty. Riel runs a hand over the cool, crumpled sheets. Leo has Harvard summer program classes and an internship. That’s the only reason he even has a dorm room right now. A tiny single—desk, bed, that’s it. Long-term visitors, much less roommates, are against the rules. But Leo insisted that Riel stay. Hard to argue when she had no place else to go.
Before, Riel had been sleeping at the Level99 house, ever since Kelsey died in March. But it’s not safe for Level99 if she’s there now. She doesn’t want Agent Klute coming after her and finding them. And also, maybe she just wants a break. From everything. Leo’s felt like such a safe place to hide.
Riel picks up her new burner off the nightstand. She’s been changing them out weekly. The only people who have the number are Leo and Level99. The phone has one text. Maybe even one that just woke her. A ?, and nothing more. It’s from Brian. It means, You coming in? Brian checks in every day. He doesn’t actually want Riel to come in, of course. He likes being in charge of Level99. He just likes to confirm that he still is.
Riel reminds Brian all the time that she is coming back when things cool down. That him being in charge is temporary, and only to protect Level99—even if it is more complicated than that for Riel right now. Maybe Brian even knows she’s conflicted. Someone has been jumping in and out of Riel’s online life. She’s noticed. Brian, checking up on her for sure. And fair enough. That’s his job now. To protect Level99.
But then what’s Riel’s job? To protect herself? Wylie? The Outliers? She’s not sure anymore, and it makes her feel more lost than she wants to admit.
“My dad is with your grandfather.” That was what Wylie said that night right before she dove into the water. And then there was that guilty twitch from Agent Klute when Riel had pursued the lead. Her grandfather. He’s an asshole, no doubt. But connected to the Outliers and Dr. Ben Lang? How and why? It doesn’t make any sense.
And, if so, how the fuck hadn’t she seen him coming? What kind of an Outlier was she?
That’s the problem, isn’t it? Reading’s not ESP. It’s not a crystal ball. Feelings and instincts are fuzzy things. They change. Shift. Blur. And people will want Outliers to prove they can read minds. Or they won’t believe they can do anything. It will be all or nothing. Neither here nor there is the place you get crushed in between.
Senator David Russo was Kelsey and Riel’s maternal grandfather, and he’d always hated their dad. According to their grandfather, their dad and his Communist, a.k.a. liberal, ideals had ruined their mother. Making Riel and Kelsey the fruit of his poisonous tree. Their dad was also black, which Riel has always suspected was their grandfather’s bigger issue with him, and them.
When their parents died, it was decided that the girls were old enough to take care of themselves. This was true in theory, if not in fact. Riel was three months in at Harvard, studying computer science. The plan was that she would move home and commute to school until Kelsey graduated high school. No problem. They had plenty of money through their mother’s trust, too. No problem. Their mother’s sister—childless Aunt Susan, a banker from Manhattan—would check in on them occasionally. No problem. They were good kids anyway, responsible.
Of course, just because they could take care of themselves didn’t mean that they should.
They hadn’t seen their grandfather in years when he came to their parents’ funeral—the cameras were watching, after all. And he didn’t speak to either one of them at the funeral. He spoke at them: a few polite words tossed in their direction like stale candy from a parade float.
It was only after the funeral that Riel had tracked down her grandfather’s Cape house and started breaking in on occasion, to mess with him. It wasn’t something she was proud of, but it was satisfying.
Riel is about to answer Brian’s text—nope, not coming in—when she sees an envelope slide under Leo’s door. Nope. That’s what Riel thinks about that, too. Don’t want that. But these days ignoring a note under a door is not an option.
Riel pushes herself up out of bed and heads over to pick it up. She lifts it carefully. Inside the envelope is a single sheet of paper, on it a single handwritten sentence: They know you have them.
Goddamn it. Fucking enough. Riel jerks open Leo’s door and looks up and down the hallway, trembling with rage. She’s ready to scream at Klute or whoever left it. But there’s no one in sight.
Riel closes the door, heart beating hard as she studies the paper again. The words are still there, unfortunately. Riel was right, there was somebody following her—her grandfather, his people, Klute. They’ve known all along exactly where she is. Leo’s room, that small square of safety: gone. Like so much else.
They know you have them?Have what? It takes Riel a beat. Wylie’s pictures? The eight-and-a-half-by-eleven envelope she shoved at Riel before racing out of her grandfather’s house.
Riel has only ever taken a quick look just so she knew what she had: pictures of buildings—shitty, blurry pictures. Obviously, they were important to Wylie, but just looking at them it wasn’t obvious why. Once, Riel had seen Leo late at night flipping through them in the darkness. He’d told her the next day she should get rid of them. Not because of what was in them. But because they were Wylie’s. And he’d been right. Of course he had been.
BREW IS THREE blocks from Leo’s dorm. It has long, knotty tables, perpetually packed with nerdy types hunched over laptops. These are Riel’s people, even if she doesn’t exactly look the part with her fashionable tank top, low-slung jeans, gameboard tattoo, and piercings. But Riel will always be a complete nerd at heart.
As usual in the morning, there is nowhere to sit at Brew. Riel has to hover for ten minutes before a table finally opens up. As she waits, she realizes she can’t be sure that it’s safer to be in Brew than Leo’s room. But at least in Brew, there will be witnesses to any abduction.
After Riel sits down, she pulls out the eight-and-a-half-by-eleven envelope of Wylie’s pictures from her bag, sees the name on the envelope: David Rosenfeld. She’d forgotten about that.
Riel looks around the café again before she opens the envelope, feels like she’s being watched. But she doesn’t see anyone looking at her. Then again, these people’s whole job is to blend in. Finally, Riel flips through the pictures quickly: a blurry office building, a shelf or rack with what look like big white buckets on it. The buckets have writing on them, but it’s impossible to make out. Like she remembered, nothing to go on in the pictures, except how badly shot they are. That and the fact that her grandfather apparently really wants them. Probably her grandfather. Riel’s real evidence for this is super thin, but the feeling that she is right? Outlier, instinct, whatever you want to call it, it’s overwhelming.
David Rosenfeld. He’s the next logical step. Riel pulls her laptop out and jumps on the wide-open-to-tracking public Wi-Fi. It’s a risk, but there aren’t other options. A second later, she has a couple dozen possible Rosenfelds: a lawyer, a dentist, a high school baseball star. And then, there it is, the fourth entry down, a link to an author’s website: David Rosenfeld.
Riel clicks through to the site, which drops her onto a glossy home page with a bunch of New York Times bestselling books stacked up artfully. The headshot of the author—current reporter, former soldier—on the right-hand side. Rosenfeld. Curly hair, thick black-framed glasses. Cute, even if the picture is a little too much about his biceps. His books are all about Iraq and Afghanistan, except for the most recent, which is called APrivate War: How Outsourcing Is Changing the Face of the Military. And there is a related article: “Want Funding, but No Oversight? How the Federal Government Gets Away with Looking at Everyone but Themselves.”
This is the right Rosenfeld, no doubt about that. Military financing smells like her grandfather. But what does he have to do with the pictures? It would be a hell of a lot easier just to swing by the detention facility and ask Wylie. But Klute warned Riel specifically to stay away from her. It’s bad enough that she’s ignoring the other part of what Klute said: stay away from all of it. Riel is pretty sure the pictures fall into the “all of it” category.
Riel startles when her phone vibrates in her pocket. She pulls it out to read the text. Be back in fifteen. Forgot something. L.Shit, Leo will be back way earlier than she expected. And she left out that note: They know you have them. She needs to beat Leo back home and get rid of it before he sees it. He will freak out otherwise.
Riel’s still looking down at her phone when there’s a voice right next to her. “Excuse me?”
She jumps to her feet, clutching the pictures against her body. “What the fuck?” she shouts.
But there’s just a skinny, acne-spotted guy who looks about twelve years old, blinking at her. He holds up his nervous hands and moves them around in the air.
“Oh, sorry, no, I’m—” He touches the back of the open chair across from Riel. “I just wanted to borrow this chair.”
“Yeah, yes,” Riel manages. “Take it.”
But as she sits back down, she notices somebody else on the opposite side of the room. Baseball hat and glasses. A take-out coffee in one hand, a braided leather bracelet on his wrist. Sitting at a table. Alone. He was watching her a second ago. She can feel the echo of his stare. Worse yet, Riel has seen him somewhere before. The baseball hat is doing the trick, though—she can’t place him.
But she doesn’t need to. Between that and Leo about to beat her back to the room, it’s time to go. Riel snaps shut her computer and shoves it and the pictures in her bag before heading quickly for the door.
The fresh air is a relief, but Riel still feels jittery out on the sidewalk. She crosses the street quickly and picks up speed, checking over her shoulder a few times. But there’s no one behind her. She’s at a jog by the time she enters the gates to campus.
On campus, she feels alone, singled out. Scared. Despite all the people—professors, graduate students, summer program students, tourists.
As Riel dives into the flow, someone blows past her, knocking hard into her elbow. Running in the direction of Leo’s dorm at the far end of the square. Riel is about to yell at the guy when she notices that he isn’t the only one who’s hustling that way. Lots of people are. They are all rushing in the direction of Leo’s dorm.
No is what Riel thinks as she starts to run, too. No. No. No.
She sees the fire trucks first, right there by Leo’s building. She blinks hard. But they remain. Lights flashing. And then, only a second later, she sees the flames. Actual freakin’ flames. Coming out the windows.
The windows to Leo’s dorm room.
TOP SECRET AND CONFIDENTIAL
To: Senator David Russo
From: The Architect
Re: Outlier Identification Modeling
April 3
To summarize today’s meeting, they will proceed to run predictive modeling for two potential programs to identify and track subjects demonstrating specified skill set. One model will examine the use of identification cards. The second model will study the possible use of observable bracelets.
Aspects evaluated will include:
—Likelihood of subgroup compliance with protocol
—Cost of protocol
—Ease of enforcement
