Escalate Read online

  Copyright © 2018 Sigmund Brouwer

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

  Brouwer, Sigmund, 1959-, author

  Escalate / Sigmund Brouwer.

  (Retribution)

  Issued in print and electronic formats.

  ISBN 978-1-4598-1484-4 (SOFTCOVER).—ISBN 978-1-4598-1485-1 (PDF).—ISBN 978-1-4598-1486-8 (EPUB)

  I. Title.

  PS8553.R68467E83 2018 jC813'.54 C2017-904536-9

  C2017-904537-7

  First published in the United States, 2018

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2017949690

  Summary: In this installment of the high-interest Retribution series for teen readers, Jace tracks down his birth family.

  Orca Book Publishers is dedicated to preserving the environment and has printed this book on Forest Stewardship Council® certified paper.

  Orca Book Publishers gratefully acknowledges the support for its publishing programs provided by the following agencies: the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund and the Canada Council for the Arts, and the Province of British Columbia through the BC Arts Council and the Book Publishing Tax Credit.

  Edited by Tanya Trafford

  Cover image by iStock.com

  Author photo by Curtis Comeau

  ORCA BOOK PUBLISHERS

  www.orcabook.com

  Printed and bound in Canada.

  21 20 19 18 • 4 3 2 1

  To Katherine Oviatt,

  for all the lives you’ve changed for the better through your love of sharing literacy

  es·ca·late (ˈe-skə-ˌlāt)

  verb

  to increase in extent, volume, number, amount, intensity or scope

  CONTENTS

  ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  FOUR

  FIVE

  SIX

  SEVEN

  EIGHT

  NINE

  TEN

  ELEVEN

  TWELVE

  THIRTEEN

  FOURTEEN

  FIFTEEN

  SIXTEEN

  SEVENTEEN

  EIGHTEEN

  NINETEEN

  TWENTY

  TWENTY-ONE

  TWENTY-TWO

  TWENTY-THREE

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  ONE

  Victor Lang was in eighth grade—the highest grade at M.T. Matthews, a middle school in the posh area of West Vancouver. You would think someone his age would be able to figure out that the smallest of the three kids in front of him was about to hand Victor his butt on a plate. As in beat the snot out of him.

  The names of the other three? I didn’t know and I didn’t care. Of immediate importance was the smallest kid’s stance and balance and body language. He was a full head shorter than Victor, but I could see Victor was in trouble.

  It was a sunny afternoon, and they were in the shade of an elm in the park across the street from the school. From where I sat, it was obvious to me that the kid’s shoulders showed tension, and his fists had formed into tight balls of solid bone. As clearly as a pitcher going into windup, he was prepping himself to throw a punch.

  For the smaller kid’s sake, I hoped he’d go for Victor’s softer body mass. Translated, a punch in the gut. If the kid smacked Victor’s cheekbone or skull, he’d probably break a finger or two.

  Best thing, if you want to hurt someone, is to use your elbow. Less damage to you. More to them. I’m aware of this because part of my skill set is hurting people.

  I box. I’m good at it. I only punch if I’m in the ring, with gloves to protect my hands. Outside the ring, I believe anything goes—the dirtier you fight, the better your chance of winning.

  This impending punch should have been as obvious to Victor as it was to me.

  Two key words—should have.

  I knew a lot about Victor. I knew, for example, that when it came to street smarts, Victor had none.

  Zero.

  It wasn’t that he was stupid. Victor’s school records showed that his IQ was off the charts. He got straight A’s in all his subjects. But book smarts are not the same as street smarts.

  I knew Victor’s middle name—Stephen, ph not v. I knew his age, right down to the hour and minute he was born. I knew in which room in which hospital he had taken his first squalling breaths of air. After a breach delivery at 2:32 in the morning.

  I knew Victor’s home address. I knew where his mom worked, her credit rating and how much she weighed. I knew that she did not carry mutated growth hormone receptor, or GHR, genes.

  I knew about Elias, Victor’s older brother—exactly my age—who had disappeared six months earlier.

  I knew about his sister Jennie—middle child, dark hair, sixteen and the kind of girl who knew how to get her way.

  I knew Victor’s blood type. It was the same as mine. We both carried the A and B markers, along with the Rh factor: AB Positive. It’s that boxing thing again. I’m familiar with blood. I’ve had my own blood smeared against an opponent’s gloves, and I’ve had a bigger share of my opponent’s blood splashed onto my own bare skin.

  If I were to write it all down, I would have at least twenty pages of information about Victor Stephen Lang. Because I’d been stalking him, both in person and in cyberspace, for nearly a month.

  Two more things I could add to those pages.

  One, Victor deserved what he was too stupid to see coming.

  Two, Victor was a bully who was about to get some payback.

  And I was going to sit back and watch that first punch connect.

  Even though I was almost certain that Victor Stephen Lang was my brother.

  TWO

  Five minutes later I crouched beside Victor. He sat knees to chin, arms around knees, head bowed.

  I tapped his shoulder, and he lifted his head. “Leave me alone.”

  He was blubbering, a mix of tears, snot and blood dribbling onto his upper lip.

  It hadn’t been a gut shot like I thought it would be, but a good pop to the nose. Just a single punch. I had decided I would step in if the other two joined in or if the smaller kid kept punching, but that had not been necessary.

  Victor had reacted to the punch by dropping to the ground and flailing around like a turtle on its back. Except turtles don’t bawl like a baby pulled away from mommy. I’d seen the contempt on the faces of all three kids before they’d walked away.

  When I didn’t move, he said it again, with more attitude. “Leave me alone.”

  “Can’t,” I said. “You sent for me.”

  I had parted my hair neatly on the left side and slicked the bulk of it sideways with heavy-duty gel. I wore a pair of nerd glasses. I had a pen protector in the chest pocket of my shirt. My blue corduroy pants were too tight and an inch too short, showing off thick wool work socks. It was so over the top that nobody in the world should have seen it as anything more than a terrible Halloween costume.

  Victor studied me and lifted a lip in scorn.

  “Geek like you?” He sniffed, finding composure in a chance to belittle me. “Hardly. I don’t need my computer repaired.”

  I had discovered that when I dressed like this, I was invisible. I’d even conducted an experiment at Starbucks. Three in the afternoon, things slow, I ordered an Americano and gave the name Bill. Girl behind the counter smiled at me, letting the smile linger. While the coffee was being made I went into the restroom, slicked my hair back and quickly changed into geek mode. With the firs
t coffee on the counter waiting for Bill to pick up, I ordered a hot chocolate from the same girl, watching her eyes to see if she’d recognize me. Nothing. No lingering smile either. Geeks might rule the world, but good luck on the dance floor.

  Victor, nose still dripping, lifted his cell phone, waited for his thumbprint to register, then tapped a number. Without looking up, he said, “Go. Away.”

  I took the phone from his hand and touched the screen to stop the call. I glanced at the contact information. It had been stored in Favorites.

  “Think running to your principal for the fifth time this month is going to solve this for you?” I asked. “She did nothing for you the other times.”

  “My next call is the police,” Victor said, holding out his hand for the phone. “Then a lawyer. Punching me was the stupidest thing he could have done. Don’t they know that anti-bullying is a hot buzzword? The trouble those three just got into is—”

  Victor stopped. “Wait a minute. You said fifth time this month. How did you know?”

  Took him long enough.

  “You sent for me,” I repeated. “The message said nobody was helping you and that your life was miserable.”

  It took him another moment.

  “You?” He snorted with disbelief. “Part of the so-called shadowy legend? As in When those in power have turned on you, you can turn to us for help? Sorry, man, didn’t realize you were actually Team Joke, not Team Retribution. I thought it was a boxer and a hacker and a climber babe and a pickpocket artist who could be a supermodel.”

  My brother Bentley was the hacker. Raven climbed buildings. Jo often disguised herself as a boy. Pickpocketing was a strength but it was in forgery that she really excelled. And I punched people.

  “What, I don’t look like a hacker?” I said. I had an infinity tattoo on my right shoulder. A team symbol. But I didn’t really like to think of us as a team. More like independent contractors who traded favors. Reluctantly.

  “Hacker would always be behind a computer or carrying a laptop,” he said. “So if you are a hacker, you’re not a good one, and I’m not interested. What I want is someone with some muscle.”

  He pulled a tissue from his pocket. And he thought I was the geek? Who in eighth grade walked around with tissues? Really.

  He blew his nose and tossed the tissue to the ground.

  “Not a fan of litter,” I said. I took two pens from my pocket protector and used them like chopsticks to pick up the tissue and shove it into the pocket protector. The pens I put in my back pants pocket.

  “If I throw a stick,” Victor said, “will you chase it and leave?”

  Some forms of bullying were not physical. Victor, I’d learned, was an expert.

  “Victor,” I said, “we get a lot of messages. When we show up to help, you shouldn’t take it lightly.”

  The rumors about a hidden forum on the Internet were true. Brother Bentley handled the incoming pleas for help.

  “You were five minutes too late,” Victor said. “What I need is a team of full-time bodyguards, not a pencil neck like you who bounced off every branch of the ugly tree on the way down.”

  “That’s not how it works,” I told him. “If you really want help, you might want to listen instead of practicing your insults. Although clearly you need the practice. Ugly tree? Not original. Or funny.”

  Truth was, his problem didn’t qualify at all for help from the Retribution crew. I'd kept this mission to myself. To learn what I'd learned about Victor, I’d had to lie to my brother.

  “I fart in your general direction,” Victor said. “Your mother was a hamster, and your father—”

  “Smelled of elderberries,” I finished for him. “Not original either. From Monty Python and the Holy Grail. And last Tuesday you used it to make a boy in third grade cry. ”

  “I’m trying to picture you with duct tape across your mouth,” Victor said. “It’s a pleasant daydream. Now give me my phone.”

  My own phone vibrated. Bat Cave. One hour.

  It was a message from Bentley. With traffic, it would take me a half hour to get there. Maybe longer. I’d want time to clean up first, so factor in a shower too.

  This conversation was over anyway. I handed Victor his phone and walked away.

  I really did not like this guy. But while things hadn’t gone as expected, I wasn’t walking away without something for my efforts.

  Proof of whether I would be forever stuck with him as a brother was crumpled up in my plastic pocket protector.

  THREE

  “Bat Cave” was the term Bentley mockingly used for the place where we’d grown up as brothers and still shared. While I knew full well what Bentley was implying, on three levels he was wrong, and Bentley is rarely wrong.

  First, in the caped crusader’s universe, it’s known as the Batcave. One word. Not two. In the original comic it began as a secret tunnel between Batman’s Wayne Manor and an old barn where he kept the Batmobile. Then, when later writers transformed the simple tunnel into a labyrinth with crime lab and workshop, they called it “The Bat’s Cave.” Eventually that morphed into Batcave, the newly created noun, I suppose, giving it an air of importance.

  Second, the place where Bentley and I live is not cave-like at all. Do a Google image search for “Vancouver mansions,” and ours will pop up in the first ten. Hint: it’s the biggest one. Our family owns more of similar size across the world. And we don’t fly commercial to get to those places.

  Third, in case it wasn’t obvious by my referring to it as the place where Bentley and I grew up, it’s not home.

  Recently, much to my satisfaction, our father had been arrested for a sensational front-page-news type of crime, and the reverberations at our family mansion had yet to die down. Given the tissue in my pocket, loaded with DNA to test, I expected the aftershocks of his crime were about to go seismic again.

  Let’s get this straight. I’m not proud in any sense to be part of this mansion. In the weeks right after my father’s arrest, I spent some time living on the streets, trying to make sense of how life had turned for me. I was only back at that mansion because Bentley had begged me. Our mother is a largely absent figure anyway, and he said he was miserable without a brother around.

  Again, given the tissue I had on me, Bentley’s declaration was a stab in the heart.

  So yeah, I was dealing with some crap in my life, long-term and short-term.

  I didn’t need a therapist to tell me that I fight some deep-rooted insecurities over the fact that tuition at the private school I attend costs per year what is considered a good level of middle income. While I’ve dumped the Ferrari for a black SUV with tinted windows to make it tougher for media to snap photos, the Ferrari is still parked in one of the garages. Next to a Lamborghini.

  And I literally fight those insecurities. Just about every night I park my SUV blocks from a boxing gym so nobody will guess where I came from. I prove myself in the ring, where no amount of money proves whether a person has heart or toughness.

  On that level, Bentley’s reference to the Batcave was bang on. Rich boy living a secret identity, fighting crime. That was me, I suppose. Jace Wyatt as a watered-down version of Bruce Wayne. Maybe reading Batman comics as a kid had influenced my subconscious.

  That, in essence, was the long-term crap of my life.

  The short-term was walking into the room in the mansion where Bentley had set up his bank of computers and having to put on a brave face and pretend I was not living with a secret that would devastate him.

  Bad enough I had to pretend cheerfulness. Batman, at least, didn’t have to deal with a couple of femme fatales named Raven and Jo, who were clearly waiting to pounce.

  Made me glad I’d first showered the gel out of my hair and changed out of my geek clothes. Because showing up as Johnny Nerd would have led to questions I wasn’t prepared to answer.

  FOUR

  “Hope you’re on the card later tonight for women’s wrestling,” I said to the two of them. “Oth
erwise, that would be a complete waste of makeup.”

  In my street life I made money playing speed chess with pigeons disguised as tourists. My entrance line was the equivalent of moving a white pawn to E4 as a game opener. Because with Raven and Jo the best strategy was something like the Sicilian Dragon. Direct offense. Something you should never do unless you’re prepared for continued carnage on both sides of the board.

  “Better bring up your translating app,” Jo said to Raven. Jo’s mixed heritage gave her an amazing exotic vibe that always took me a substantial amount of effort to ignore. “He’s speaking idiot already.”

  Bentley swung his head from Jo to Raven. She was dark-haired and intense—no surprise, given her name.

  “Jo,” Raven said. “That’s so totally not appropriate. Look at Jace. Wonderful. Intelligent. So clearly filled with love for all humans.” She paused. “Oh, wait. The lying competition is tomorrow night.”

  “I need to up my meds,” I said. “Maybe that way something you say will strike me as funny.”

  “Or,” Jo said, “maybe it’s time to—”

  “Time to talk about the reason we’re here tonight,” Bentley said.

  Apparently he wasn’t enjoying our witty banter.

  He pushed his swivel chair away from his desk. Bentley loved that swivel chair. Gave him a chance to spin in circles without effort.

  His feet didn’t get in the way because they didn’t reach the floor.

  Bentley was born with a recessive-gene thing. Both parents have to have the dormant recessive gene, and both have to pass along the recessive gene. Mom passes it down and Dad doesn’t, you’re okay. Dad passes it down and Mom doesn’t, you’re okay. One in four chance, then, that the throw of the dice at conception lands with both passing it down. When that happens, you’re insensitive to your body’s growth hormones. Short version of the explanation, you’re short and you stay short. Along with that comes a prominent forehead and a pushed-in nasal bridge.

  It’s called Laron syndrome. Dwarfism. Bentley did his own fighting, but from behind computer monitors that literally and metaphorically hid him from the world. Not difficult to guess what a therapist would make of that.