James Patterson - Max

I nodded, then stood there like a dummy as the rest of the flock came out of the house to be hugged by Brigid. Watching her hug Fang, seeing his arms go around her, was almost enough to make me hurl.

I might need to rethink my protective armor a bit.

“Let’s hurry,” said Dr. Abate. “We’ve got a plane waiting. On the way, you can fill me in on what happened. And vice versa.”

“Max,” said Nudge, and instinctively I braced. I’d known something was up.

“Get in the car, sweetie,” I said, pretending not to notice anything was wrong.

She swallowed. “I’m staying.”

“You can’t. It’s not safe.”

“I’ll be safe at the school, in the dorms,” she said. She gestured limply to the house, its surrounding wreckage. “I can’t do this anymore. I want to go to school. I just want to be a kid. At least for a while.”

I had a million excellent arguments why she was wrong and making the biggest mistake of her life, and I opened my mouth to get started, and then it hit me: it would be pointless. Nudge wasn’t four or five. She was around eleven and would be as tall as me in another year or so. She really meant she couldn’t do this anymore .

If she didn’t want to be with us, didn’t want to fight, she would get hurt – bad. She might cause one of us to get hurt or killed. I needed my flock to be fierce, bloodthirsty warriors. Nudge’s heart just wasn’t in it, and I couldn’t fix that . Oh, God.

I swallowed hard, making my chin stiff, my mouth firm. I’m the flock leader because I can do the gnarly jobs. “You may not get your wings taken off,” I said sternly.

Wonder dawned in her big brown eyes as she realized what I was saying. A huge smile lit her face, and she hugged me fiercely, forcing the air from my lungs. “You may get your ears pierced,” I croaked, trying to breathe. “Or your nose. Or – actually, nothing else. And you absolutely, positively, may never, ever get your wings removed, or I swear to God, I will come kick your skinny, fashion-conscious butt into next week. Do you hear me?”

“Yes!” Nudge said happily. “Yes, yes! Thank you, thank you, thank you! I love you so much!”

Ever notice how often people say that right before they say good-bye?

THE ARMORED CAR drove for about an hour through the desert, ending up at a military airfield. Nothing like passing through heavy, barbed-wire-topped gates to make a girl feel secure! And by secure, I mean supertwitchy. At least we could fly out of here if we needed to. I eyed the antiaircraft guns mounted on turrets and hoped they’d be considered overkill for bird kids.

Despite the fact that we were really tired, really hungry, and really upset about my mom, we did manage to fill John and Brigid in on everything that had happened. John showed me the two faxes they’d gotten. Seeing my mom looking straight ahead, fear in her eyes as some goon held a gun on her, made my blood boil.

I was going to track down the kidnappers if it meant flying to every single boat in the entire world.

“We’re taking a military jet to San Diego,” said John. “The FBI is meeting us at the navy base there. We’ll go over all the information we have, and see what we can get out of it.”

I nodded numbly, looking at the soldiers bustling about, each one having somewhere to be. I wondered if Nudge was back at the school yet. I guessed she was.

The armored car drove right up to a small jet, its stairs already pulled down.

“Please tell me there’s food on board,” said Iggy.

“Yes,” said John. “A whole lot of it. I was warned about how much you guys ate on the Wendy K .” His tired smile made me think back to our days of living on that boat with Brigid and the other scientists.

I glanced over at Brigid as she talked quietly to Fang, and my stomach knotted. He was paying attention to her but also looking at me pretty often. The whole thing was complicated and messy, and I hated it.

But I loved him. And I guess the messiness went along with that.

“It’ll be okay, Max,” Angel whispered, patting my hand.

I looked at her, wondering if she was talking about my mom or Nudge or Fang.

“Everything,” she said softly. “Everything will be okay.”

I managed a tight smile, and then we were all climbing out of the Hummer and walking across hot tarmac to the jet.

A quick, happy bark made my head snap up. There, at the top of the jet stairs, was Akila!

“Oh. My. God,” Total breathed, stopping dead. He stared up at her as if he were a starving man and she was a Snickers bar. He shook his head. “I know it’s daylight, because the sun has started to shine again!” He inhaled deeply. “And the air – the air is suddenly perfumed with -”

“Jet fuel, hot tar, dirty bird kids, and a Malamute,” I said, nudging him forward with my foot. “Just get on the plane.” Not everything has to be a Broadway show, you know?

Total shot me an aggrieved glance as he trotted up the jet’s stairs. At the top, he and Akila happily licked each other’s faces, their tails wagging. It was – well, actually, I hate to admit – it was kind of sweet. In a slobbery kind of way.

We were all waiting for Total and Akila to move inside when Total stepped back and, with a flourish, opened his small black wings. Akila blinked. And if a Malamute can look surprised, she looked it.

“Regard, my princess!” said Total, fluttering his wings. “At last, I might be worthy of your beauty!” He knelt before her and kissed one of her front paws. She licked the top of his head. I glanced around, and everyone was grinning.

Oh yeah. Love is great, just great.

THE MAN IN THE CRISP WHITES saw us as soon as he came in the door. We were in some building smack-dab in the middle of the biggest naval base on the West Coast. Frankly, I’d rather be at the San Diego Zoo, but at least this place was air-conditioned.

We were in a conference room, ready to meet with some grown-ups, and I was thinking that I had already played in this scenario more times than I could count. Who remembers any of those situations ending well? Go on, raise your hand. No one?

Right.

However, using insidious and irresistible mind-control techniques such as offering us Mountain Dew and a ton of nachos, the naval bigwigs had managed to corral us in this room for a debriefing.

Unfortunately, every time someone said “debriefing,” the entire flock had one image: someone’s tighty-whities disappearing in a flash. We were smothering our giggles, but it was getting harder. Coupled with the whole “naval this, and naval that,” with its undeniable belly-button connotations, we were essentially turning into a sugar-jacked, sleep-deprived flock of incoherent, silly, recombinant-DNA goofballs. This was not going to end well.

This guy had come in, and everyone turned to him as if now the party could get started. Tucking a sheaf of papers under one arm, he frowned and looked at the woman in the blazer with all the stars on the shoulders. We’d met her. She was Admiral Bellows. (I am not making this up.)

“Why are these children here?” he asked brusquely.

“Thank you for joining us, Commander,” said Admiral Bellows. She had short, tidy gray hair and seemed extremely no-nonsense. “These children are integral to our investigation. For one thing, this child, Max, is Dr. Martinez’s daughter.”

Huh. She’d called me a child, not a mutant freak. And I was a daughter, not just the result of one of Dr. Martinez’s eggs being fertilized in a test tube. It felt weirdly – normal.