Here Comes Mr. Trouble

14

Contrary to Uncle Carl’s wishes, Mr. Trouble had other ideas.

“Get the detector,” he said. “The Makers are going to be agitated. This might be our best chance to find out where they’re hiding.”

“One burger, that’s all I ask,” Uncle Carl said.

“Later.” Mr. Trouble’s tone made it clear his mind was made up.

With a sigh, Uncle Carl went through the whole process of getting into the trunk again. When he returned this time, he was holding a small case. From inside, he removed a cylinder the same size as a can of soda. It had a series of buttons ringing the bottom, a display screen in the middle, and four thin wires coming out of the top.

At the end of each wire was a tiny suction cup. He stuck one to the window next to him then gave the rest of the wires to Keira and Fiona, who stuck them to the other windows. When they were through, wires were attached to all four sides of the car.

He touched one of the buttons on the bottom of the cylinder and said, “Okay, it’s running. Now, does anyone have a candy bar, or maybe a piece of gum?”

Maggie pulled a granola bar out of the side pocket of her backpack. “You can have this.”

He took it from her and immediately started ripping open the package, but he hadn’t gotten the bar all the way out when Fiona reached over and tapped him on the back of the head.

“What?” he said.

She gave him a look and shifted her gaze to Maggie.

“Oh, right.” He turned to Maggie. “Thank you. That was very…kind.”

“Yeah, sure. No problem,” Maggie said, annoyance returning to her voice.

When they reached Tobin, Mr. Trouble began driving up one street then down the next. Every ten seconds or so, he would glance at Eric, then back at the road, then back at Eric again.

Finally, as they turned off Patrick Place onto Leann Lane, he said, “Here’s the deal. The trouble you’ve been having? It’s not the normal kind of trouble a kid your age would have.”

“Yeah. That’s not exactly news,” Eric said.

Fiona sat up. “Ronan, I don’t think we should—”

“He deserves to know what’s going on,” Mr. Trouble said.

“That’s not the way Dad would have done it,” she said.

“Dad’s not in charge anymore. I am.”

Silence.

Eric frowned at Fiona. “This is my life we’re talking about. I have a right to know what’s going on.”

“You do,” Mr. Trouble said.

When Mr. Trouble didn’t go on, Eric said, “So, tell me.”

“Right. Okay, uh, let’s see. What’s the best way to—”

“Just tell me!”

“Okay. In a nutshell, you’re being hunted.”

“I’m being what?”

“Hunted.”

“You mean like ‘let’s go deer hunting’ hunted?”

“Well, sort of. But without the gun part.”

For some reason that didn’t make Eric feel all that much better. “Why me? What did I do?”

Mr. Trouble was about to answer when the cylinder in Uncle Carl’s lap beeped twice.

“Something?” Mr. Trouble asked, suddenly tense.

Uncle Carl looked at the screen on the side of the cylinder and said, “Just a weak trace. They may have come through this way, but they’re not here now.”

Mr. Trouble relaxed and glanced back at Eric. “Okay, where were we?”

“You were going to tell me why I was being hunted,” Eric said.

“Right. See, you’ve recently done something that brought attention to yourself.”

“Not that I know of.”

“That wasn’t a question.” Mr. Trouble nodded once at Fiona. “Tell him.”

She took a deep breath, not looking particularly happy, then said, “Okay. See, part of my job as your point of contact rep is to do some research on you and try to figure out your triggering incident.”

“Triggering incident?”

“The thing that made them take a closer look at you,” she said. “Last summer you went to camp for a week. One of the kids did a belly flop into the lake and knocked himself out. You swam him to shore and saved his life.”

“I was right there when he hit,” Eric said, as if it wasn’t a big deal. “A few feet to the side and he would have landed on top of me. All I did was reach out and turn him over.”

“And swam him to shore,” Mr. Trouble reminded him.

“There was an article in your local paper,” Fiona went on, “with your picture.”

“What was the quote from his mother?” Mr. Trouble asked.

Fiona closed her eyes, thinking. “‘We’ve always told him to be aware of his surroundings and be a doer, not a watcher. We’re very proud of him.’”

“Yeah, that’s it,” Mr. Trouble said. “That’s your triggering event. A little life blip that made you stand out from the crowd. It doesn’t, however, guarantee you will become a target.”

“What makes the difference?”

“Your skin.”

Eric’s face twisted in shock. “My skin?”

“In the cells of your skin, actually.”

“You mean DNA?”

“Not DNA, but something like that. We call it the Maker Marker.”

“Oh, that’s cute,” Maggie said sarcastically. “Who thought that up?”

Eric’s eyes narrowed. “That scrape Uncle Colin took from my finger. He was testing me?”

“We had to make sure you had the marker.”

“And I do?”

He nodded.

“But how could the Makers test my skin?”

“They don’t need a laboratory. They use this.” He touched his nose. “They just needed to get close to you and take a long whiff to know for sure. Once they did, and knew for sure you had the marker, that’s when your troubles began.”

“Peter,” Eric said, making the connection. “The sniffing.”

“Yes,” Mr. Trouble said, somewhat hesitantly.

“But what happened last summer — what does that have to do with anything?”

Mr. Trouble was silent for a moment. “All fruits are not apples, but all apples are fruits.”

“Huh?”

“All the people who would do something like you did at camp don’t have the marker, but all people who have the marker would do something like you did. Understand?”

Eric thought for a moment then nodded. “So I’m one of the lucky ones the Makers want.”

“Officially, we call them Trouble Makers. That’s with a capital T and a capital M.”

“Trouble Makers,” Eric said to himself.

“Can you think of a better way to describe them?”

“No, I guess not,” Eric said. “So Peter Garr is one?”

Mr. Trouble immediately shook his head. “No. Peter Garr isn’t a Maker. He’s being used as what we refer to as a Maker surrogate. He may be a bad guy, but he hasn’t been in control of the things he’s been doing to you lately. The other day in the library, at Maggie’s house last night, the attempted kidnapping today — he’ll have no memory of any of it.”

“So the Makers have sniffed me out through him?”

Mr. Trouble hesitated. “We think the smelling is less precise when they use a surrogate. Kind of like breathing through a heavy scarf. The surrogates use your smell to track you, but the initial whiff, the one that confirmed you were a target, a Maker did that himself.”

Eric though for a moment, then said, “Peter isn’t the only one giving me a hard time.”

“All the people who have been directly bothering you lately are surrogates. The Makers take temporary control of them, using them for whatever they need.” Mr. Trouble paused. “Some are easier to manipulate than others. Those are the ones they use for their hardest work. Peter, for instance. Some are less so. A Maker might only use them to plant a suggestion or idea in their mind. Like having someone believe his wife has gone on a business trip.”

“Dad.”

Mr. Trouble nodded. “We believe he’s been touched.”

“Will he be okay?”

“There’s seldom any long-term damage so he should be fine.”

That wasn’t as comforting as it could have been.

“What about the Makers? Who are they?”

“It’s not really who,” Keira said.

“She’s right,” Mr. Trouble said, looking at Eric in the mirror. “The thing is, Trouble Makers aren’t—”

Suddenly, the cylinder began to shriek.