The Taking

CHAPTER TWELVE

FIRST OF ALL, THERE WAS NO WAY I BELIEVED A word he’d said.

Sure, he’d saved me and all. Or at least that’s what he expected me to believe. But now that I’d heard him out, I was starting to suspect I’d traded whatever Agent Truman and his band of Merry Men had in store for me for a straight-up nut job.

Besides, how did I know Simon hadn’t been wrong about them? Maybe they were trying to help.

It was certainly an easier pill to swallow than the one Simon was trying to shove down my throat. If only he hadn’t started his explanation with the words: “I was abducted in 1981.”

Uh, yeah . . .

I mean, even if I ignored the part where he’d used the word abducted, I could still do simple calculations in my head. I didn’t have to be a math whiz to know that, if what he’d said was true, that would put old Simon here somewhere around balding and middle-aged. And there was no way in hell that Simon—this Simon who was sitting right in front of me—was a day older than eighteen. Nineteen at the most.

“Sooo . . . ,” I drawled, stretching out my skepticism to epic proportions. “You were ‘abducted’”—I used air quotes in case he hadn’t grasped the doubt oozing from my tone— “back in 1981 and didn’t return until, what, three days ago?”

But my cynicism didn’t rattle him. “No,” he clarified matter-of-factly, without skipping a beat. “I was only gone a day and a half. Most of us are returned within forty-eight hours.”

I wilted; my hero was looking more and more like a fruitcake. “‘Most of us’?”

“Kyra,” Simon offered sympathetically. “I know this is difficult to believe, but you need to hear it. People—teens, mostly—have been abducted for years. Decades. I can’t say why, for sure, but we believe we’re part of some kind of experiment. There is a purpose—we’re sure of it; we just don’t know what the end goal is yet.” He reached out and placed his hand on my shoulder. “Your father isn’t crazy.”

I flinched. From his explanation. From his touch and from his mention of my dad. My back dug into the gearshift behind me, and I winced. “My dad? What does he have to do with any of this? How do you even know about him?”

He dropped his hand but stayed where he was, conviction written all over his face. “Your dad—his online activity—that’s how we found you. That’s how we knew you’d been returned. You’re the first of our kind to come back after all this time. No one’s ever been returned past the forty-eight-hour mark. It’s unheard of. Anyone who’s ever been gone that long . . . well, they’re never heard from again. We’ve always assumed the experiments have failed after that point. That the body . . . that it didn’t survive.”

I heard so many things wrong with what he’d just said that I couldn’t process any of them: our kind . . . never heard from again . . . the body . . . didn’t survive . . .

I waved my hands to ward him off even though he was no longer touching me. Hysteria was creeping in on me, threatening to consume me. My throat was swelling shut, and in a matter of seconds I was pretty sure I was going to suffocate. He was literally killing me with his words. “What the . . . ? What do you mean, ‘our kind’?”

My panic was obviously visible, and Simon inhaled deeply. Watching him, the way his chest was rising and falling rhythmically, hypnotically, I swore he was prompting me to do the same. “Kyra.” He inhaled. “Please.” He took another slow and steady breath. “Just let me talk. I’ll do my best to make sense of it, and then you can ask anything you want.” He exhaled calmly, easily.

I squeezed my eyes closed, trying to breathe the way he was. Slowly. In and out. So very, very slowly . . .

After a few seconds I felt . . . well, okay. Who was I kidding? I still felt like I was trapped in a storage locker with a maniac, but at least I could breathe again. “Fine,” I muttered. “You have five minutes. And then I’m leaving.” I crossed my arms and waited for him to continue. I was angry and frustrated, but most of all confused and scared.

“Let me tell you what I remember,” Simon began again, not at all rushing his explanation just because I’d decided to put him on the clock. “I remember walking to my girlfriend’s house; I’d just had a fight with my parents.” He looked at me as if this was somehow significant, but he kept talking. “We lived in Boise, and it was August, so even though it was getting late, I remember it was still hot as hell. Man, the mosquitoes were eatin’ me alive that night.” He chuckled slightly, and I wondered if he thought this was funny, because I so totally didn’t. I didn’t appreciate his stroll down memory lane. I just wanted his five minutes to be up already so I could tell him, “Thanks for saving me from the Men in Black, but I gotta be on my way now.”

Oblivious to my surliness, Simon continued, his gaze going deep and faraway, “And then there was this light . . . and it was so . . . I couldn’t see anything but that light.” He closed his eyes as if he’d gone someplace else. Faraway. Another place in time.

When he opened his eyes again, he shook his head. “I was ten miles south of home when I woke up, at place called Lucky Peak. Almost two days had passed, and I had no idea where I’d been or what had happened to me.”

I stopped sulking as I broke out in goose bumps. His story was different from mine but so very much the same all at once.

Except I’d been gone way, way longer.

I sat up straighter, not convinced by any stretch but a little more curious. “So how’d you figure it out? And how are you still . . .” I didn’t know how old I thought he was. “Shouldn’t you be like fifty or something?”

“Forty-nine,” he stated, as if the answer was simple. “We just don’t age at the same rate as everyone else.” And then his eyes narrowed. “At the same rate as normal people.”

I laughed then. A small, breathy sound, and I was frowning and grinning at the same time. “Okay, what?” I stopped smiling then, because it really wasn’t funny. “This is . . . You’re just . . .” I narrowed my eyes back at him. “Did my dad put you up to this?” I wasn’t sure if I was amused or pissed, or freaked out that someone would go to this length—even my own father—to prove a point. But I was definitely alarmed.

Because Simon didn’t look like he was joking. Or like anyone had put him up to anything.

He looked completely, stone-cold sober and drop-dead serious.

“What do you mean ‘normal people’?” I didn’t use the air quotes this time, and my voice was way, way quieter.

“I’m not saying we’re not normal, Kyra. I’m just saying we’re different. We can do things other people can’t after we’ve been returned.”

I spoke slowly, like he was dimwitted. “Like not aging?”

He shook his head, a patient smile replacing his serious expression. “Not at all. We age. I aged. I was only fifteen when I was taken, the same way you were taken.”

I shook my head because what he was saying was utter-complete-absurd nonsense. He was nothing like me.

He only nodded in response. “I was. And you’ll age too.” He was speaking slowly, too, now, as if I was the one who didn’t get it. As if I was the one who was crazy. “Just way, way, way slower than everyone else.”

I studied him and tried to see him as fifteen. He could be fifteen, I supposed, if I squinted just so. But more likely he was lying, and honestly, I was getting tired of being toyed with. “Prove it,” I said at last, knowing there was no way he could convince me.

“Are you sure, Kyra? You want me to prove it to you?”

“Yeah. Sure. I guess that’s what I’m saying. Prove it.”

And then he did the absolute last thing I anticipated: he cut himself.

The knife came out of nowhere. It was one of those pocketknives, like the Swiss Army kind that has all the gadgets. It cut across the soft, unblemished skin of his forearm.

I opened my mouth to say “Oh my god!” but no words came out. All I could do was pant in jagged breaths. I twisted around in my seat then, as I searched for something to stop the blood that was already spilling from the inch-long gash he’d inflicted on himself.

“No! Kyra, don’t. Just watch.” His other arm was on my wrist, demanding I stop rummaging for a makeshift bandage and pay attention to what was happening on his arm.

Recoiling, I reluctantly turned back and did as he said. I looked at the cut. It was wide and deep, and I could see far too far inside of it, and I was sure it would need stitches and probably a tetanus shot, because who knew where that blade had been before he’d shoved it into his own arm!

I felt queasy, and the possibility of me throwing up right there in the front seat of his car skyrocketed.

And then the weirdest thing happened, and the world beneath me spun out of control. The thing started to close. The wound—it started to heal, right before my eyes.

It was still bleeding, but the flow began to subside as the blood itself became thicker, darker, and then the edges at the ends of the slash began to . . . I had to blink to make sure I was seeing it right, but they did, they began to seal back together.

I sat there, mesmerized, for at least five minutes, the total time it took for the process to complete. In the grand scheme of things, it had to be some kind of miracle.

But when all was said and done, his injury had spontaneously healed in mere minutes.

There was only one question left as I sat there, staring at his perfect, completely uninjured and unscarred skin. “What . . . are you?”

I could’ve used one of Cat’s tequila shots right about then. I wasn’t sure I’d ever felt so disoriented, not even when I’d first come back and realized I’d lost five entire years. Or when I’d gone to the dentist and learned I hadn’t aged a single day during that time.

Because what Simon was telling me now went beyond farfetched and ventured straight into no-freaking-way territory.

Except that I’d just watched him heal a gash that surely needed serious medical attention in less time than it took to make Top Ramen in the microwave.

“Let me get this straight. You’re saying that when we’re ‘returned’”—I pulled out the air quotes again because it was too weird not to use them—“we’re not the same as before? And you think you were taken by . . . ?” I couldn’t finish the sentence. I knew how—I just couldn’t say the word.

“Aliens,” he filled in for me, completely nonplussed by the whole deal.

“Seriously?” I asked, my voice chock-full of disbelief.

Simon nodded, the same way he had the other three times I’d asked the very same question, trying to phrase my doubts in different ways and hoping for a different response. “I am, Kyra. I’m saying we both were. That’s what happens when we’re taken. We’re not the same when we come back. Not the same at all.”

“And when you say ‘not the same,’ you’re talking . . . ?” I’d never had such a hard time completing sentences in my entire life.

Simon looked at me like I was being intentionally dense. “Well, this for one.” He held his arm wrist up for my inspection. “Have you ever seen anyone else do that? And what about sleep? I’m guessing you haven’t slept much since you’ve been back.” He studied me, waiting for me to answer, and I wanted to deny the truth.

Really. I wanted to flat-out lie to avoid feeding his delusions, but he was right; I’d barely slept, and not in the way people say that so they have something to complain about, like it’s a competition.

I shook my head and shrugged. “So, I have some insomnia issues. It’s been a big adjustment. I’ve had a lot on my mind.”

“That’s not it, and you know it. You’re not even tired.”

He didn’t bother asking if he was wrong, and he wasn’t. I hadn’t even considered that before this minute. That it had been five long nights without more than an hour in any given night, and I wasn’t the slightest bit drowsy. I hadn’t yawned once.

“What about that?” I pointed at the dried blood on his arm. “I can’t do that.”

He shot me a challenging look. “You so sure about that?”

I jolted in my seat. “Are you freaking kidding me? You don’t seriously want to test it out! You’re even crazier than I thought, you know that?”

Suddenly I needed to get out of there. Simon wasn’t just a fruitcake, he was a dangerous fruitcake.

But before I could open my mouth to tell him I was out of there, either with or without a ride, he’d reached out and snatched my arm, and the edge of his blade was sliding into my wrist.

This cut was longer than his, though, probably because I’d flinched and the blade had slipped. Blood spurted out, spilling onto my lap and seeping from between my fingers as my hand instinctively shot around it, trying to staunch the seemingly endless flow.

“Why did you . . . ?” I cried. But I knew why.

I opened my mouth but only gulped in air. My chest burned.

Beneath my fingers, even while Simon was trying to pry them away from my injury, I could feel something happening. There was the sensation of hundreds of needles all around the injury—not painful but prickling.

Somewhere in the back of my mind, I remembered this feeling.

“It’s okay,” he promised, his voice so soothing that my pulse slowed and my breathing evened out. And even without releasing my grip to look beneath my fingers, I knew he was telling me the truth, because the surge of blood began to slow. Then it stopped altogether.

I waited only a few seconds before venturing a glance. I removed first one finger and then another, peering beneath, only to find my suspicions confirmed. The wound was completely healed. Or rather, absent. If it hadn’t been for all the blood still covering my hands and my legs and the seat of the car, I would never have believed it had been there at all.

That was when I remembered where I’d felt that before, that sensation of tingling—of skin closing and healing. It was the day I’d been in the hospital and had my blood drawn, when the guy couldn’t get the needle out.

Had I healed around it? So quickly that was why he’d had to yank it back out again?

“Less than a minute.” Simon breathed the words as if it was some accomplishment I should be proud of.

“What are you talking about?” I shot back at him, furious that he’d cut me at all. What if he’d been wrong? What if I hadn’t healed and I’d bled out, right there in his car?

“This is a new record. No one’s ever healed this fast. I had a feeling. I’m sure it has something to do with how long you were gone. They’ve done something different to you—to make you special.”

At that moment, all I really wanted to do was kick his teeth in. I’d show him how “special” I was. But for now I had to know more. For every answer he provided, I had five questions of my own.

I continued to rub the still-tingling spot where his blade had sliced me. My fingers were covered in sticky blood that settled into my cuticles and beneath my fingernails, making dark-red crescents. “You said we were ‘taken’ as part of some experiment; what did you mean by that? And how can you possibly believe it was . . .” I swallowed. I had to say it. “Aliens?”

I had the feeling this wasn’t the first time Simon had had to convince someone, and a look of patience settled over his face. He sat back and nodded. “I think you already know why, Kyra. We’ve been tracking your father’s online comings and goings for years. You don’t have to pretend he didn’t try to tell you this already.”

I closed my eyes and wished that were enough to block him out. How could any of this—anything my dad had said—really be true?

Yet how could I argue when I’d just witnessed my own body healing itself? Simon was right; no normal person could do that.

“When they take us, they don’t just take our temperatures, or poke and prod us, Kyra. They’re advanced—way more so than we are. They do things to us.” His eyes met mine. “We’re no longer like our old selves. Our bodies heal faster, and age slower. We need less sleep and sustenance. I assume you haven’t eaten much either. That nothing tastes the same.”

He was right about the sleep, and the food, even if I didn’t tell him so.

I swallowed, trying to make sense of what he was saying.

I looked down at my hands. They were the same hands as they’d always been. I was exactly the same as I’d always been. I looked the same, sounded the same, had the same tan and bruise I’d had right before I’d vanished.

Which was weird. “If I can heal, why do I still have this?” I showed him my bruise, the one on my shin.

“You had it when you vanished, right?”

I nodded because I finally had him.

“Right,” he said. “And you always will. I can’t explain everything; I wish I could. Occasionally someone will come back with a bruise or a scar, and if they do, they’ll always have it.” He lifted his sleeve to show me a circular scar on the upper part of his left arm. “I still have this—from my small pox vaccination.”

I examined his scar, and then leaned over and looked at my bruise, trying to decide if it had changed, even a little bit, since I’d been back. It had been almost a week, and as much as I didn’t want it to be different, I was pretty sure it was exactly the same as the day I’d disappeared. “So, you’re saying it’ll be there the rest of my life?”

Simon nodded.

“Which is going to be, like, forever?” He didn’t say anything; he just lifted his eyebrows, which I took as Yes. “So are you invincible?” I couldn’t bring myself to say “we” because the whole idea was so . . . out there.

“Invincible? No. We can be killed, just not that easily. I mean, cut off our heads, and I’m sure we wouldn’t just”—he made air quotes to emphasize his next word—“‘heal.’” He grinned at me, letting me know he had a sense of humor about all this before continuing. “Certain poisons have been known to be lethal as well.”

“And diseases?” I asked.

He shook his head. “Don’t really know. So far, I’ve never seen any of the Returned get sick.”

“The Returned?” I echoed distractedly.

“That’s what we call ourselves. Those of us who’ve been taken and sent back.”

I thought about the way I’d woken up behind the Gas ’n’ Sip and tried to imagine there were others like me, who had been through the same thing I had. “But you said no one comes back after forty-eight hours. What about me? I was gone five years.”

Simon’s head dipped forward thoughtfully. “That’s why we thought you were gone for good. We’d all but written you off. Mostly, we were still tracking your dad’s activity because he keeps intel on the others who’ve been taken. He tracks when they go missing and from where, how long they’re gone, if and when they’re returned. He knows ages, dates, locations, genders, religions, family backgrounds . . . he even knows what their last meal was. He documents everything about them. He never gave up on you, you know?” My heart squeezed, knowing how easily I’d given up on him. “When we saw his post on one of his message boards that you’d come back, I left camp and drove all day to get here.”

“Camp?”

Simon leaned closer. I watched his hand, the one that had, just moments earlier, yielded the pocketknife, warily. But he stretched right over the top of me and grabbed something on the floor on the other side. “There are camps where there are others. Like us.” He held out a pack of Wet Ones wipes to me.

I took the container and popped the plastic top, pulling out one of the premoistened towelettes while I reflected on his words. “Is that where you live?” When he nodded, I inhaled and asked, “And what about them? Can they do this, too?” I glanced down at my arm. I still wasn’t sure I believed him, but I couldn’t deny it completely as I wiped away the blood and there was nothing but unscathed skin beneath.

“Not quite as efficiently as you.” I was glad he didn’t say fast, because for once in my life this wasn’t a race I wanted to be in.

“So . . . how many more are there?”

“Of the Returned?” Simon shrugged. “Who knows. Hundreds for sure. But there could be thousands. A lot of us prefer to stay together. It’s safer. And that way we can network with others like us.” He raised his eyebrows as he kept explaining. “Some who come back prefer to remain in isolation. They move from place to place, never getting close to anyone, not even to other Returned.”

I was still confused. It was too much information at once. “Safer, how? Who exactly are you hiding from?”

His mouth formed a hard line. “More people than you can imagine. Scientists, crackpot conspiracy theorists, government agencies. You’d be surprised how many people would like to get their hands on . . .” He stopped midsentence, and I wondered what he’d been about to say. “ . . . well, on people like us. I’m sure that Agent Truman was able to find you the same way we did: through your dad’s online chatter. That’s why I couldn’t approach you sooner, Kyra. I had to make sure you hadn’t been compromised.”

“What does that even mean?” I asked pointedly.

“It means exactly how it sounds. I wanted to make sure Agent Truman hadn’t gotten to you first. That you weren’t being used as bait to lure me out.”

“Bait? Are you kidding me?” I crossed my arms. “You really think they’d use me as bait to catch you?”

Simon leaned close, his expression so grave it nearly took my breath away. “Not just me. All of us.”

I stared into his eyes, noting how much more amber they were up close than I’d first guessed, flecked with chips of gold. “So how did you know I wasn’t? Compromised, I mean?”

His nostrils flared as he reached out and caught my wrist. “Because I saw them coming for you. And I knew exactly what they planned to do to you when they got you.”

My throat felt tight, and my chest ached, but somehow I found my voice. “You’re scaring me,” I managed.

Simon didn’t blink when he answered me, “Good, Kyra. You should be scared. This is serious. I know it’s hard to believe, all of it, but you’d better start believing it, and fast. Your dad, as well-meaning as I’m sure he is, puts you—puts all of us—at risk. Agent Truman and those NSA guys, they’d love nothing more than to get their hands on us. You saw them—all that equipment. What did you think they wanted to do, interview you?” He gave a slow shake of his head. “No, Kyra. They do their own kinds of experiments, and they’re not pretty. No one ever returns from those.”

“Things like . . .” I turned a pointed glance in the direction of my arm, letting Simon know what I thought of his tactics. “Cutting someone open?”

“Worse,” he informed me, his nostrils flaring and the muscle in his jaw leaping. “Way, way worse.”

My mind reeled with the implications. “You mentioned that some people are taken and never come back. What happens to them?”

He paused, reaching for a wet wipe and absently scrubbing at the blood on his own hands. “We think those people don’t survive, like failed experiments. For all we know, we’re just lab rats to them. Expendable. And I’ve never heard of anyone who wasn’t a teen being returned. Maybe we’re the only ones who are ever truly taken in the first place. Maybe the rest who say they are . . .” He shrugged. “Really are just crazy.”

“Teens? Why’s that?”

He turned his palms over and got lost in examining them. “Beats me. Maybe because our bodies are stronger and can survive all that shit they do to us.” Sitting straighter, he rubbed his hands over his knees, his eyes searching me out. “Or maybe it’s just that teens are more disposable. You can yank them out of their lives for a few days and then drop them right back in, and it’s just a blip on the radar. Younger kids get AMBER Alerts and milk cartons. Families send out search parties because they were likely abducted by some psycho sex offender. People are quick to give up on teens, to call them troubled or runaways . . . especially those who’ve been fighting with their parents.” He raised his eyebrows at me.

My dad and I had been arguing.

“When we turn up again and can’t remember what happened, either no one believes us or they suspect we’ve had some sort of drug-induced blackout.” He shrugged. “You know, because that’s what teenagers do.” Something flashed behind his unusual eyes.

“Is that what your parents thought happened?”

“They never came out and said it, but I knew they never bought that I didn’t know what happened to me.” He shook his head, shrugging it off. “It doesn’t matter anymore. It was a long time ago.”

“Where are they now? Your parents?”

His brows squeezed together, and this time his pain was evident. “I couldn’t stay. Eventually I had to distance myself from them to keep them from asking questions about why I wasn’t getting any older.”

“Why didn’t you just tell them?” I couldn’t imagine not telling my parents something so huge.

But then I knew I was lying. That had been the old me. The me from five years ago who had parents I could confide in and trust, and whose dad was her number one fan.

Now . . . I wasn’t so sure.

Simon wrung his hands in front of him, and I realized the subject was just as touchy for him as it was for me. Families were a complicated matter. “I tried once.” He exhaled. “I tried to tell my dad because we were close like that and I used to be able to tell him anything. But when I tried to explain . . . to tell him I’d changed . . . he wanted nothing to do with it. He said it was crazy talk, and if I ever said it again, he’d have to send me away . . . to get help.” His copper-colored eyes sought mine. I thought of the way I’d shunned my dad when he’d tried to share his theories with me. “We never mentioned it again, but my dad . . . he never looked at me the same after that.” He curled his fingers around his knees and squeezed them while he leaned back. “I’m not the only one with a story like that, or with no place to go once the lack of aging becomes too obvious. The camp gives us a place to go, and others who understand what we’ve been through.”

The sound of a car’s engine beyond the metal door made us both freeze. I held my breath as my gaze shifted between the entrance and Simon, wondering what we’d do if the NSA had somehow followed us here and was surrounding us at that very moment. From what I’d seen, there wasn’t another way out.

When the car kept going, passing us by entirely, I released the breath I’d been holding.

Simon voiced the concerns I’d been keeping bottled up inside. “We can’t stay here. I have no idea how long it’ll be till they figure out where we are. If we leave now, we can be back at my camp sometime after midnight.”

I nodded, but only because he was right about leaving. The storage space wasn’t a good place to hide out.

He went to the bay door and opened it, the noise echoing off the walls around us. He checked both directions before coming back and getting in the car.

“I’m not going with you,” I told Simon when he started the engine. “I have a family here.” I was surprised to hear myself say the words, surprised by how strongly I felt about the thought of abandoning them again: my dad, my mom, even Logan. “And someone else.”

“Yeah. Tyler Wahl. I saw you with him, at the coffee shop.” He grinned at my surprised expression. “I’ve done my homework. I guess I also expected you to say that.” Shaking his head, he forced me to meet his gaze. “I can’t make you come with me, but you’re taking a huge risk, Kyra, and, to be honest, I think it’s a big mistake.” He reached into his glove box and dug out a new cell phone. This one was way less fancy than the one he’d destroyed. “It’s a burner, but it’ll do the job. Plus it can’t be traced to anyone. Only turn it on when you need to use it—my number’s programmed.”

I took the phone, relieved that he wasn’t trying to stop me.

“I’ll drop you someplace safe,” he went on. “But you have to promise you’ll be careful. You can’t go back home, even if your family insists. The NSA will be waiting for you, and no matter what they or anyone else says, they can’t be trusted. Understand?”

I nodded numbly.

“Be careful, and trust no one.” He nodded toward the car door, indicating for me to close it. “I’ll stay in town for the next twenty-four hours. But I definitely think you should reconsider coming with me. It’s the safest option—for everyone. There are things about us, Kyra, that make us dangerous to be around—and I’m not just talking about the NSA. Call me when you’re settled somewhere.”

Simon’s idea of a “safe” place was literally a travel agency called Safe Travels that he dropped me off in front of. If we’d been playing a game, which we weren’t, I’d have given him minus five points for lack of creativity.

But he’d earned at least fifty bonus points when he handed me a wad of cash stuffed into a manila envelope along with a fake ID that, when I saw my face staring back at me, was so convincing I almost believed that my name really was Bridget Hollingsworth. As cool as the whole falseidentity thing would have seemed at any other time, it was less cool right now, while I was still attempting to process what he’d just told me. About me being different from everyone else.

I tried to convince him there was no way I’d need the driver’s license or the three hundred dollars he’d given me, although, to be perfectly honest, I didn’t hate the driver’s license.

But Simon had insisted I keep them both, and ultimately I’d agreed to hold on to them for the time being, with the promise that I’d give everything back once I could convince my parents to square things away with Agent Truman, which shouldn’t take long. Regardless of what Simon had told me about what I could or couldn’t do now, I was counting on them to clear up this whole mess with the NSA.

And then I’d start fixing things between me and my dad.

My dad, who wasn’t as crazy as I’d believed. Who hadn’t been wrong about aliens and abductions.

It was all still so hard to believe.

Me able to heal within a matter of seconds. Barely needing sleep or food. Aging at a snail’s pace. Crazy.

I caught a reflection of myself in the glass exterior of an insurance office as I strolled along the sidewalk. Slowing, I scowled at the girl staring back at me, a girl who wasn’t Bridget Hollingsworth . . . but wasn’t really Kyra Agnew either. She still looked like the same girl she’d always been: dishwater-blond hair, freckles splashed across the bridge of her nose, and eyes that were too big—no matter how Tyler saw them.

I didn’t want to be an anomaly. I just wanted to be the old me again.

I searched the other side of the glass, hoping to find a clock, just to get a glimpse of it so I could ground myself in the time, but there were none. Reaching up, I tucked a piece of my ordinary hair behind my ear before I turned the corner. Keeping my head down, I tried to maintain a low profile, the way Simon had warned me. It was harder than it seemed, considering my jeans were covered in smears of drying blood. When I came to a bench, I perched uneasily on the edge of the seat and pulled out my new phone and powered it on.

I called my dad three times, because he seemed most likely to believe me, but each time it went straight to voice mail, and I didn’t leave a message. I didn’t text him either because I didn’t want to take the chance that Simon had been wrong about the burner not being traceable. I figured I’d try him again later.

My knees bounced up and down nervously as I punched in a different number, waiting for someone to answer on the other end. I was afraid that what Simon had told me would change everything. But I was afraid, too, that everything had already been changed because of Agent Truman and his men.

“Hello?” The voice was tentative, and I hoped it was just because I was calling from an unfamiliar number.

I hesitated, but only for a second before exhaling into the mouthpiece. “Tyler?”

He didn’t say anything at first. There was a pause, and shuffling. It stretched out, and after a minute I started to worry about whether he was coming back at all. Then I heard him, his voice a sharp whisper. “Kyra? Where are you? I’ve been trying to reach you. What’s going on?”

I shook my head. “I can’t explain right now. What’s going on over there?” My palms were sweaty, which seemed like a “normal-person” thing to do. “Are those people . . . are they still at my house?”

“Most of them are gone now,” His voice was still hushed, but insistent. “But they were here, and they were asking questions about you, asking my parents and me if we knew where you were. What did you do?” He stopped talking, and then, with just the barest hint of a laugh because I swear he couldn’t help himself, he added. “You know I was only joking when I asked if you were planning to knock off a bank.”

I wanted to laugh, too, but instead I groaned. “I wish it was that simple,” I admitted. “Can you get away without anyone knowing? I’ll tell you everything if you meet me.”

“My dad would shit a brick if he knew I was even talking to you. He got all ‘yes, sir’ and ‘no, sir’ when he was talking to that douche bag agent guy.” My heart sank. I’d been sure I could count on Tyler. And then his voice, husky and absurdly beautiful, found me from the other end. “So of course I’ll be there. Name the place.”

And despite the whole crappy situation, I smiled.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

I KNEW THE SOFTBALL FIELD WAS A BAD IDEA. Agent Truman had already followed me there once; it made sense he’d think to look there again, waiting for his chance to pounce on me.

That was why I didn’t choose the softball field. I picked the bookstore instead.

I had a hard time believing Agent Truman knew anything about Tyler’s bookstore. Still, I couldn’t afford to take any chances. I stayed hidden behind one of the gross, garbage-filled Dumpsters in the alley, waiting until I was sure Tyler had come alone. And until I couldn’t stand the stench of warm rot emanating from inside the giant metal bin any longer.

When he got out of his car, I made the psst sound at him until I got his attention.

Despite the cloak-and-dagger circumstances, a spark lit up his face when he saw me, making me realize he had been the exact right person to call. At least until he got a good look at me.

“What the hell?” The grin fell from his face as his eyes raked over my blood-covered jeans. He gripped my arms, making it impossible to avoid his inspection.

“Don’t worry. It’s mine.” I tried to laugh it off. “I’m fine. Really.”

But my explanation had the opposite effect, and his expression shifted from frown to scowl. He reached for my hand and dragged me toward the bookstore’s back entrance, again not bothering to knock, just letting us inside. “What the hell happened to you?” he demanded. “First those government guys surround your house and ask a shitload of questions. And then you turn up covered in . . .” His eyes were so much softer than his tone as they captured mine. It would have been impossible not to see the fear in them. “. . . It is blood, right?”

I nodded, guilt welling up inside me. He didn’t need to be involved in my mess.

I guess I do have another option, I thought, feeling the manila envelope crumpled up in my back pocket. I could always run away with Simon and actually become Bridget Hollingsworth. Essentially, I could start over.

The idea had its merits.

But so did staying here.

Because here meant Tyler.

Tyler, who was watching me with his incredibly sympathetic green eyes and who had a dimple to die for and kisses that made me forget my name—the real one and my fake one. And who was reaching for me now in spite of the fact that I had blood smeared all over my clothes.

When his arms circled me and he pulled me up against him, his chin settling on top of my head, I breathed in and braced myself. I could do this.

“Remember when you said if I believe it, you believe it?” I raised my eyes to his. He frowned back down at me, the weight of that look like lead settling over my chest. “You might want to wait till you hear what else I have to say.”

Tyler was a way better listener than I had been. He didn’t interrupt me the way I had Simon. In fact, the only interruption to my explanation had been Jackson, who’d come into the back room to locate a book he’d put on hold for a customer. He offered us a sheepish apology for the disruption, even though we were the ones hiding out in his bookstore. He cast a few awkward glances my way, making me even more uncomfortable about the fact that we’d made ourselves at home in the dark recesses of the cluttered storeroom.

Tyler didn’t seem at all uneasy and was so focused on me that he barely registered Jackson’s presence at all. He offered his friend a quick nod but impatiently waited for me to continue my explanation after Jackson slipped back into the front of the bookstore once more.

Relaying the things Simon had told me was harder than I’d expected, and I’d expected it to be damn near impossible. I’d worried that Tyler was going to up and bolt at any second, because hearing myself repeat the information, hearing the way it sounded coming out of my mouth, it seemed even stranger and more far-fetched than it had when I’d been in his shoes.

I was sure I was forgetting to relay some vital piece of information, something that would convince him I didn’t deserve to be carried away by Agent Truman and his agents in one of their black vans with the tinted windows. I tried to make it sound somehow logical that I was going to age slower than everyone else and that I no longer needed normal amounts of sleep or food.

Tyler didn’t comment.

Heck, he barely blinked.

He just did that thing where he went all silent and introspective, as if he was assessing every word. Every syllable while I sat there, terrified I was losing him.

My chest tightened as I waited for his verdict. And then I realized what it was I’d forgotten.

“Here. Let me show you.” I rotated on the overturned crate I was sitting on across from Tyler.

I spied the box knife on top of a stack of old magazines. It was the kind with one of those razor blades that can be raised and lowered with just the flick of a thumb. I snatched it and, before I could chicken out, took a deep breath and flipped my wrist over, ready to slice into my own flesh.

But before I could prove I wasn’t lying about my ability to heal—that what I’d told him was the God’s honest truth—Tyler’s hand shot out and snagged mine. “Have you lost your mind! There’s no way I’m letting you cut yourself.”

I looked up, searching his earnest green eyes. I wished I knew what he was thinking, that I could see inside his head.

I lowered the blade, nodding considerately. Because I didn’t have to be a mind reader to recognize that look: I’d pushed him too far.

“I understand,” I said at last when I couldn’t take another minute of his placating gaze. It was the same look I’d given my dad when he’d first tried to tell me where he thought I’d been for five years. Humor mixed with pity. “I get it. It’s too weird. Accepting that I’m still sixteen is one thing, but this . . . that I was abducted and experimented on . . . by aliens . . .” I made a face to drive my point home. “It’s too much. I know how it sounds, and if I were you, I wouldn’t want anything to do with me. I mean . . .” I looked down at myself, at the blood on my jeans and at the box knife in my hand, and let out a derisive laugh. “So crazy, right?” There was nothing more for me to say. Nothing I could do but wait for him to make up his mind about whether he was okay with this. With me.

Tyler’s grip on my hand tightened. “You think I won’t believe you unless you cut yourself? You think you have to prove yourself by showing me what you can do? Jesus, Kyra. Jesus. Haven’t I already convinced you . . . I trust you.” He loosened his hold, and without thinking, I did too. The box knife dropped to the floor between us.

Tyler got up and stared down at me. “You’re stupid,” he stated matter-of-factly, and I shot to my feet, immediately taking offense.

“You’re stupid.”

He laughed then. “No, I mean you’re stupid if you think I’d give up on you that easily.”

My voice lowered to barely a whisper. “But even if you believe it . . . how can you even want . . . ? God, it’s just so . . .” I exhaled, trying to get rid of all the awkwardness bundled up inside me, vibrating my every nerve fiber. “I’m not going to age, Tyler. I’m a freak.”

“Okay, now you’re just insulting me.” Tyler reached over and put his finger beneath my chin, dragging my eyes to his. Not that I’d want to look anywhere else. I could stare into those eyes for the rest of my life—which, evidently, was a lot longer than his would be. “God, Kyr. I don’t care about any of that.” His finger moved away from my chin and lingered near my jaw, caressing, stroking, making it hard to pay attention to his words. “I care about you. You, Kyra. The you I know. The you I might be falling in love with. It doesn’t matter to me how old you are or will be; all I care about is who you are, and that hasn’t changed from this morning. You can’t stand there and tell me you’re not that same girl, because I’m telling you, you are. You’re more perfect than anyone I know.” His hands slid up to my cheeks until he was holding my face. His mouth was mere millimeters from mine, and I could taste the intensity behind his words as his breath fused with mine. “The person you are has nothing to do with anything you’ve just told me about healing or aging. It’s your memories and life experiences, your hopes and fears and dreams and passions that make you who you are, and none of those things have changed, have they?”

I shook my head, fervently wanting to feel half his passion as our lips nearly brushed. My breathing was already coming in shallow gasps, and my eyes stung as I blinked to hold back my tears. It hadn’t escaped my notice that he’d said he might be falling in love with me.

His grip on my face remained secure. “I’m glad. I’m glad you’re back here with me. I’m glad you’re mine instead of Austin’s.” His lips were soft as they grazed mine at long, long last. “And,” he said, pulling away just enough so he could add one more thing. “Everyone else will feel the same way I do if you just give them a chance. If you don’t believe that, then you’re underestimating them. They’re your family. They love you.”

I grinned, unable to stop myself. “They’ll be glad I’m yours?” I teased.

He dropped his hands to my waist and tugged me until my hips were pressed against his. “You know what I mean. I think you need to tell your parents the truth. What you told me. They’ll help you figure out how to handle that agent guy, and if he’s really as dangerous as you say he is, they’ll keep you safe. That’s they’re job. That’s what parents do.”

Tyler stopped talking, and his eyes flicked down to my lips, lingering and clouding over. He inhaled, as if it was taking every last ounce of will to keep from kissing me, and I didn’t want him to hold back. I wanted him to give in. I wanted to feel like a normal girl. Like me. So I stepped up, balancing on my tiptoes, and wrapped my fingers around the back of his neck.

He surrendered easily, lowering his head in an instant. A sound somewhere between a growl and a moan escaped his throat the moment his mouth covered mine.

And then we were lost, the two of us. And I no longer cared about whether I was a normal sixteen-year-old girl . . . or something different. Because I was Tyler’s.

He’d said as much with that amazingly perfect, ravenous kiss.

It was that very same kiss, though, that masked the footsteps. And it was the kiss, too, that kept me off guard, making me unaware that we were no longer alone.

It wasn’t until I heard the click—until we both heard the click—that we jumped apart. My lips were still swollen and pulsing, but my heart raced like mad.

I fixated on the gun, so when the guy spoke, it took me a second to realize it wasn’t Agent Truman talking. “Don’t move.” The voice—and the gun too—crushed any hope I’d had that everything was going to be okay, that I would just go back to being plain old Kyra Agnew, regular girl. The guy behind the gun was a younger, fresher-faced version of the stiff NSA agent who’d been shadowing me wherever I went.

Like the others back at my house, this agent had one of those walkie-talkie things, and he lifted it to his mouth and pressed a button. “I found her,” he spoke into the crackling radio. “We’re at . . .” He shot a quick glance at Jackson, who was cowering in the doorway behind him. “Where are we?”

“Second Chance Comics and Books. On Pine.” Jackson answered, keeping his gaze on the gun in the agent’s other hand, the one he was holding on Tyler and me.

The agent repeated what Jackson said into the radio and then told Jackson, “Good. Now go out front and wait for someone to arrive so they know where to find us.”

Jackson flashed Tyler an “I’m sorry” expression even though he didn’t say a word. He avoided my gaze altogether and did as he was instructed, leaving us alone with the young NSA agent.

“What do you want?” Tyler asked the agent, taking the lead and moving to stand in front of me, putting me out of the path of the gun.

I didn’t have a plan—everything was happening too fast to think. But I didn’t stay where Tyler put me. Instead, I reached down and snatched the box knife off the floor, clutching it in my palm.

The agent saw what I’d done, probably because I hadn’t been exactly smooth about it, but he stayed where he was, his gun still cocked and trained on the two of us. I didn’t blame him, really. I guess he’d heard the expression “You don’t bring a knife to a gunfight.”

“Son,” the agent said to Tyler like he was decades older than we were, even though he looked like he’d barely graduated from whatever training academy the NSA sent their agents to. “You need to step away from the girl. You have no idea what you’re dealing with here. She’s putting you in danger.”

That was when I realized it, the way he held the gun. He’d never really been pointing it at me at all.

He’d kept it aimed at Tyler the entire time. And the way he looked at me, all meaningful, the way he challenged me with his steady gaze, made it more than clear that he was in on my little secret, and he suspected what I did: that it wouldn’t do any good to shoot me.

Not that I was immune to pain or anything—I’d definitely felt the blade when Simon had cut me. But I’d healed all the same. And, most likely, if what I’d learned then was true, I’d probably heal from a gunshot too.

Tyler . . . not so much.

“Turn yourself in,” he told me, “and no one has to get hurt.”

“Don’t do it, Kyr.” Tyler ordered, his eyes never straying from the agent’s. He reached into his pocket and tossed me his keys. “Run.” He said it so calmly it was hard to believe he’d even noticed the gun at all. “Get out of here. Now!”

I looked from Tyler to the agent with the gun and down to the gun itself. There was no way I was leaving him.

It was over. The NSA had found my Achilles’ heel.

Still clutching the box cutter, I held up both hands, showing the agent that I surrendered.

Grinning with a kind of condescending arrogance, the agent took a step toward me. “I knew you’d make the right choi—” He stopped then, right where he was, midsentence and midstride. His eyes flicked down to my right arm, falling to my wrist.

I looked too.

A trickle of blood made its way down my arm from my closed fist where I clutched the razor-sharp blade curled against my palm. I recoiled, opening my fingers, but it was too late. The blade had already done its job, cutting a wide trench across my hand.

The pain was there again, a sting that started in the cut and burned all the way up my arm to my shoulder.

“Kyra!” Tyler started to lunge for me but stopped himself. His eyes were trained uncertainly on my injury, and I suddenly hoped he wasn’t one of those people who fainted at the sight of blood.

“It’s okay,” I told him, nearly forgetting we weren’t alone. “Wait . . . watch.” Already I could feel the telltale prickling sensation that told me the wound was beginning to heal. The tingling that meant my body was working. “It’s okay. It’ll heal.”

But he was shaking his head, his actions slow and skeptical. Despite everything he’d said, he hadn’t been entirely convinced. He remained where he was, transfixed, and he saw the same thing I saw.

It did heal. Same way as before. First the flow of blood around my palm became a mere trickle. And then the wound began to mend itself. To close, until there was nothing but the streaks of blood to indicate it had ever existed at all.

Tyler was still shaking his head when the agent lifted the walkie-talkie to his mouth. “We have a situation here,” he stated numbly, his eyes as wide as Tyler’s. “I repeat,” he said, this time taking an entire step back from us. “We have a . . .” His eyes dropped again to the blood that had dribbled down my arm. I didn’t know this guy, but if I had to guess, I’d say something about me or my cut had frightened him. “We have a Code Red,” he finished.

He lowered his weapon. “Come with me, son,” he said to Tyler, using the barrel of the gun as a pointer, indicating Tyler should step away from me too.

When we heard a door opening at the front of the store, the agent stopped backing up and whispered to Tyler, “It’s too late for both of us.” And then he closed his eyes and lifted his gun to his temple.

I gaped at him, at the scene unfolding in front of me, wondering what the—

But Tyler didn’t hesitate. He grabbed my hand, the one without the newly healed cut on its palm, and he dragged me. We were running when we reached the door that led to the alley, and were still running when we spilled out into the narrow, garbage-filled street, to his awaiting car beyond.

Running away from the earsplitting sound of the gunshot that came from the bookstore behind us.

We sat dazedly in Tyler’s car while we tried to collect ourselves after what we’d just witnessed, which we still weren’t entirely clear about. Had that agent really just shot himself?

Tyler recovered before I did. I wiped the blood on my already-stained jeans and stared blankly out the windshield at the quiet street beyond, trying to take a page from Tyler, the way he seemed to be able to channel that silent inner calm whenever he was thinking. It was hard, though. I wasn’t like him.

Are you sure? I silently asked, my brows pinching together as I nervously gripped the cell phone he’d handed me. I’d already tried calling my dad again, convinced it would be easier to explain things to him since he already believed half the stuff I had to say.

Turning to my mom was an entirely different story. She’d always been more practical than he was. She was all about facts and numbers and puzzles—things that made sense. Things that were normal and fit and didn’t disturb the status quo.

Things unlike my dad and his alien conspiracy theories. And surely unlike a daughter who was no longer like everyone else.

Tyler clutched my hand. It’ll be okay, his squeeze assured me.

I glanced down at the scribbling on my damp palm—the one I hadn’t cut—surprised that the marker had survived all the perspiration and blood and scrubbing with Wet Ones. The numbers were blurred around the edges, but it was still my handwriting, exactly the same as it had always been—reassuring considering so much else about me wasn’t.

I checked the time and then dialed hastily, before I could change my mind. Holding my breath, I waited to find out if Tyler was right or not.

Even though no one said hello when the phone stopped ringing, I knew it had been answered. “Mom?” My voice was timid and shaky.

“Kyra? Oh my god, where are you? I told you to stay home.” Her words came out in a rush, her relief audible.

“Mom, I need you to listen to me. There were these guys from the National Security Agency who came to the house—you can’t trust them. I can’t explain why right now, but you have to believe me. They’re after me, and they want to hurt me.” I looked to Tyler for strength before going on. I choked on a breathy chuckle. “I know it sounds like I’ve been drinking from Dad’s crazy Kool-Aid, but what I’m saying is true. These guys are bad, Mom. Don’t tell them anything.” When she didn’t respond right away, I asked uncertainly, “Mom? Did you hear me?”

There was a pause, and then my mom repeated, her voice quieter, more hesitant than before, “Where are you now? I . . . I can come get you.”

I heard someone else then, in the background. It was Tamara Wahl. “Is Tyler with her? Ask her if Tyler’s with her. Is he okay . . . ?” It was strange, the way her voice warbled, and I knew even without seeing her that she’d been crying. The end of her sentence trailed off, like she’d been dragged away from the phone.

It was all so weird, I wasn’t sure what to make of it.

“I—I can’t tell you where I am right now.” I shifted, intentionally avoiding Tyler’s attentive gaze. And then things started to click into place. “He’s . . . he’s not there now, is he? The NSA guy I was telling you about?”

“Kyra, please. He says you need help.” Her voice cracked when she tried to talk this time, and I could hear her trying not to fall apart the same way Tamara Wahl had. “He says you were infected with whatever that guy from Skagit General Hospital had. He says you’re contagious.” She was shouting now, and I didn’t know if she was shouting at me or just shouting because she wanted me to pay attention to her. “He says you’re a danger to others, Kyra! He says you need to come in right away to be treated—” Her voice broke, and I could picture her covering her mouth.

Contagious? No wonder Tamara Wahl had been crying—she probably believed it, too, that I was out here infecting Tyler as we spoke.

I shook my head. “He’s lying, Mom. I’m not infected with anything. That’s not what he wants from me. He wants to do experiments—to hurt me.”

But when she answered me, there wasn’t a hint of flexibility, and she no longer sounded like she was losing it. “No, Kyra, you’re wrong. You’re confused. You need to turn yourself in so he can help. That’s all he wants, is to help you. They all just want to help before it’s too late.”

My face fell as I turned to stare out the side window. “Mom—”

I thought about the message she’d left me, the text that had been on my phone right before the people from the NSA had pulled up in front of our house: Don’t go anywhere. I’ll be home soon.

She hadn’t been on her way home. She’d known then. Agent Truman had gotten to her and filled her head with lies, and she’d given him permission to come and take me. To “help” me.

For all Tyler’s words about family and that it was a parent’s job to protect us no matter what, my mother had been willing to hand me over to a bunch of strangers who’d lied to her, without even talking to me.

Simon was right; I couldn’t trust anyone.

Not even my own mother. My mom.

I hung up on her and sat there clutching the cell phone in my fist while tears streamed down my face. I wondered why—when I’d been taken—they couldn’t have stripped me of my emotions too. Because it sucked to feel this way: betrayed and alone.

Tyler didn’t move or say anything right away. He knew, of course. It was written all over my tear-streaked face.

And then the phone in my hand made a strange, clicking sound, and my eyes flew wide as I gaped at it. The call was over. But the phone had come back to life, and the screen was all lit up.

The message on the face flashed: CONNECTING . . .

CONNECTING . . .

CONNECTING . . .

“Dammit,” I cursed, throwing the phone—Tyler’s phone—away from me. How had I been so careless, so stupid? Of course they’d traced the call. Agent Truman had probably been there the whole time, standing over my mother’s shoulder as he listened in on us, tapping the phone line to find out exactly where we were. “Dammit, dammit, dammit!”

Tyler was reaching for his keys now, too, understanding clear on his face as he snatched the phone and chucked it out the driver’s side window. “Let’s get outta here.”

Standing at the open door to my dad’s trailer, it was hard to say for sure if his place had been trashed or not.

Using the disposable cell phone Simon had given me, I had dialed my dad’s number at least half a dozen times on our way to his place. When he didn’t answer any of my calls, I’d finally turned off the phone and thrown it on the seat between us.

“It’s gonna be okay,” Tyler had offered consolingly. “When we get there you can talk to him in person. If anyone’ll understand, it’s him.”

“Yeah?” I’d challenged, in no mood to be comforted. “That’s what you said about my mom.”

I’d shut down for the rest of the drive, sulking because I was good at it—always had been. It wasn’t Tyler’s fault, but it was easier to be pissed at him than to admit how terrified I was. I didn’t want my dad to turn on me the way my mom had.

“Looks like they’ve already been here,” Tyler said when we saw the wreckage, which would have been stating the obvious if I hadn’t already seen my dad’s place on a “normal” day.

“I don’t know . . . it’s hard to tell.” I had no way of knowing whether the unlocked door should alarm me or not, but I stepped inside cautiously, kicking scattered newspaper out of my way. There were dirty dishes piled in the sink and over the countertops, and stacked on the kitchen table.

I assumed Tyler picked up on my meaning and wisely chose not to state the obvious, that my dad’s place was gross.

But beyond the grossness of it, something felt off. The skin at the back of my neck stretched tight, and the tiny hairs at the nape stood on end. “Nancy!” I called out, wishing more than anything that the mutty dog would lope in and greet me sloppily with her molten-brown eyes and her big, fat, juicy tongue. I thought about the way she’d placed her head in my lap and stared up at me all dreamily. She wouldn’t spurn me just because some stupid agent told her I was no longer who she thought I should be.

My hopeful plea was met with silence while that something-is-off feeling nagged at me.

I walked warily toward the hallway, kicking more and more of the litter out of my path, until it no longer seemed like just the clutter of a drunken slob. I looked down, paying more attention to the debris in my way, and recognized the papers I was wading through.

These were my father’s files and clippings, his maps and charts and missing-person flyers, all leading the way to his room like a haphazard trail. The door at the end of the hallway stood ajar, but it was the handprint on the door that made me stop dead in my tracks.

“Dad?” I called out, dread snaking its way around my windpipe. I was terrified about what I might find on the other side of that door.

Behind me, Tyler reached for my hand, and every muscle in my body tensed. “You stay out here,” he whispered, but I shook my head vehemently.

“I need to know.” And even though my voice shook, I’d already made up my mind. I needed to see for myself if that was my dad’s bloodied handprint. To know without a doubt if he was in there. Because if he was, it was all my fault.

I reached out and pushed the door open. I went into the tiny bedroom that my dad had been using for five long years to track others like me . . . those who’d been taken.

Once inside, I turned all the way around so I could see into every corner and every crevice of the tiny space.

The small bedroom-turned-office had been destroyed. Pictures had been ripped from the walls and were strewn across the desk and floors, some intact and some ripped to shreds. Same thing with the maps and charts. It was in a state of shambles.

But I didn’t give a crap about any of that. All I cared about was that my dad wasn’t there.

He was gone.

“Where do you think he is?” Tyler asked, and I jolted, nearly forgetting I wasn’t alone.

I knew, too, that I could no longer put Tyler at risk simply because I wanted his help. I’d already put him in too much danger.

I shrugged and shook my head at the same time, hoping more than anything that my dad had managed to get someplace safe.

Tyler held his hand out to me, and I took it, our hands fitting together seamlessly. The idea of leaving him was nearly unbearable, like losing part of myself—something I understood all too well.

As I let him pull me along, something in the wreckage caught my attention, and I hesitated.

“Hold on a sec.” I pulled my hand from his, reaching for the picture that was jumbled in with all the rest. A photograph.

I bent down, brushing aside broken glass to pluck it free. Beneath the first photograph was another. And beneath those, another and another.

I recognized all the images despite never having seen anything like them in real life. Fireflies. Picture after picture of fireflies.

There were faraway images of swarms and incredibly detailed close-ups. Others were artistic—shots taken in the night sky, making the fireflies look like stars against the black canvas of night—and others still that were clinical feeling and stark, in which you could make out each and every detail of the insects, right down to their delicate antennae and bulging round eyes. It was as if my dad had been studying the insects.

At the bottom of the haphazard pile was an image I’d seen before. I’d hadn’t made the connection between it and the nocturnal luminaries, with their delicate, vein-laced and swirl-tipped wings.

My fingers traced the image as I tried to recall the first time I’d seen it: the beetle-like version that depicted what a firefly looked like at rest . . . and burnished in gold.

Just like it had been in the center of Agent Truman’s badge. It hadn’t been a golden beetle at all. It had been a firefly.

My thoughts were interrupted when a single drop of blood fell onto the photo from above me. It landed right in the center of the picture and splattered outward, blooming like a flower. A feeling of icy alarm settled over me as I turned to glance over my shoulder.

I’d half expected to find my father there, with his bloodied hands outstretched to me.

But it wasn’t my father. It was Tyler, standing above me and studying the same images I was.

“Your nose.” I let the picture flutter to the floor. “Tyler, you’re bleeding.”

He frowned at me before using the back of his hand to check for himself. “You’ve got to be—” He shook his head, perplexed. “I haven’t had a bloody nose since I was a kid.”

But I was already on my feet and running toward the bathroom, kicking litter out of my way. When I came back, I handed him a wad of toilet paper. “I think you’re supposed to lean your head back. And pinch your nose. I think you’re supposed to pinch it.”

He did as I said, and without taking the paper away, he dropped his gaze and grinned at me. “So you’re saying I’m not gonna miraculously heal the way you did? I thought maybe some of your superpowers might rub off on me.”

I rolled my eyes, wondering how he could possibly make jokes during a situation like this. It would be hard to leave him when the time came. “They’re not superpowers.” I smirked back at him. He sounded ridiculous with all that toilet paper bunched up and plugging his nose. I grinned. “And I’m pretty sure they don’t work that way.” I nudged him with my shoulder as I shoved past him back into my dad’s room. “I just want to grab a few things and then we need to get out of here before anyone catches us. I was hoping my dad would be here. I have so many questions, and I think he might have some of the answers I need.” It felt so strange to admit that out loud, that my dad had been right after all. I looked around at the room. At the ripped papers and broken glass. Even the computer monitor had been smashed. I couldn’t bear to think that he might’ve been harmed because of me. “I just hope he’s okay.”

“Me too.” Tyler’s voice came out muffled by the toilet paper.

I began collecting what I could find, anything that looked even remotely useful, although most of it looked like junk. I gathered the firefly images and a map with a bunch of colorful dots and lines my dad had drawn, along with the one missing-person flyer I couldn’t ignore: the one of me.

While I was searching, I found the ball from the first baseball team I’d ever been on, back when I was in the first grade—when the boys and girls still played together. Our parents had signed Austin and me up for the same team, and my dad had volunteered to be our coach.

This was the very same ball Austin had hurled through my bedroom window after I’d accused him of throwing like a girl. His parents had grounded him for a whole week for breaking my window—one day for every year he’d been alive on this earth.

And for an entire week I’d regretted taunting him, because for seven painfully long days I’d had to come home from school and play all by myself. I’d lost my best friend because I’d made fun of the way he threw.

My dad, though, had saved that ball. He said it was one of his favorite mementos. I used to think he meant because it was from our first game—his as our coach and mine as a player. But now that I thought of it, I wonder if it was more than that. I wonder if it was because of the lesson I’d learned, about how to treat those I cared about.

My dad had always been big on the power of words and respect.

“The tongue pierces deeper than the spear,” he’d told me when I’d complained about Austin’s punishment. And even though I knew he was trying to teach me some sort of lesson, all I could remember thinking was that it was too bad if what my dad had said was really true, because how cool would it be if our tongues really were spears? First graders thought of things like that, I guess.

“We better get moving,” I told Tyler, putting the ball back. He had his own collection of things, and I appraised his findings with a dubious eye. His nose had stopped bleeding, and his toilet paper compress was gone.

“What do you think?” he asked, holding up a fanny pack by its strap. “You think your dad would mind if I kept this?”

I made a face at him. How long had my dad been holding on to that relic? “Are you kidding? You’re not seriously planning to wear that thing, are you?”

“You never know when you’ll need both hands free.” He strapped it around his waist and started filling it with the things he’d gathered: some newspaper and magazine clippings, a USB thumb drive that had been lying beneath the papers on the floor, and a CD with a handwritten 2009–2014 scrawled across it.

“This isn’t a looting mission.”

He looked meaningfully at all the junk in my hands. “Are you sure about that? Here, I bet you can fit all your stuff in this thing.” He held the pouch open for me.

“I’m not letting my stuff touch that thing. My hands work just fine. You know your nerd status just shot up like a million points, don’t you?” I didn’t tell him the real reason I wasn’t sharing space in his fanny pack, that I wasn’t planning to go with him.

He shrugged like it was no big deal, but I loved that he didn’t care that he was making a fool of himself with that ridiculous pouch.

His eyes shot skyward as his body went entirely rigid. “Shh!” The crooked grin melted from his face. “Did you hear that?” His head cocked slightly, and he strained—we both strained—to find whatever it was he thought he’d heard.

“No,” I whispered, slightly thrown by the sudden shift in his demeanor. “I don’t . . .” But I’d spoken too soon. It was there, and now, just barely and so faraway, I could hear it too. My throat ached, and I nodded this time. “We’re too late.”

The whomp-whomp-whomp sound of the approaching helicopter pounded within my chest and beat through my veins. I felt more human in that instant than I had in my entire life. More mortal. More defenseless and exposed, even within the suddenly-too-cramped walls of my father’s trailer.

“I have to go,” I said. I bundled the missing-person flyer and the map and the prints of the fireflies into a roll and stuffed them into my back pocket, right next to the envelope Simon had given me.

I made my way to the front of the trailer, where it was gloomier now that the sun had set. I didn’t turn on any lights along the way. Tyler was right on my heels, following me closely, and he’d noticed my slip. “You said ‘I.’ You said ‘I have to go,’ Kyra, and I don’t care what you think, but you’re not leaving me behind.”

Reaching the front door, I pulled back the musty-smelling curtain that drooped limply over the glass and realized how useless the windows in my dad’s crappy trailer were. They were textured. The surface of the glass was bumpy, meant for privacy rather than for visibility. He might as well have covered them with newspaper or tinfoil. All I could make out was the darkness beyond.

“I don’t have time to argue,” I shot back. “But you can’t go with me. Stay here and tell them this was all some sort of mix-up. That you didn’t know anything about me and what I am.” I dropped the curtain, ignoring the dust that puffed up when I did.

Tyler grabbed my arm and forced me to face him. “Kyra, stop being so stubborn.” When I opened my mouth to argue, he cut me off. “No. I mean it. You’re being stupid again, and this time not the good kind. You’re out of your mind if you think I’m not going with you.”

Bright lights filtered in through the impractical privacy windows and filled the darkened trailer, casting blurred beams along the wood-paneled walls. Others came from above, accompanied by the louder, and much closer, whomp-whomp noises of the helicopter, which was right on top of us now. They came from the window over the sink and the opaque skylight that was obscured by layers of fir needles and caked-on dirt.

I reached for Tyler’s hand, deciding that now wasn’t the time to argue over whether I would let him stay with me or not, because I didn’t think either of us was getting out of this mess anyway.

Red and blue lights washed over Tyler’s skin as his lips tightened. “Come on.” He hauled me back toward my dad’s trashed office. He ripped the curtain rod off the wall, where it had hung above the window, and pressed his face to the rough-surfaced glass. “I don’t see any lights out there. If we hurry, we might be able to slip out back before they catch us.”

“And then what? What will we do? Where are we gonna go?” I hated that I was saying this, but it needed to be said. “Tyler, please. Just stay here. You’ll be safer that way.”

He ignored me. Flat-out acted like he hadn’t even heard me.

“Here,” he ordered, tugging the crank on the window, because that was the kind of window it was. It didn’t move, not even an inch, as if it were glued in place. “Shit,” he cursed, growing more agitated by the second. The helicopter sounded like it was right on top of us now, making it almost impossible to hear ourselves.

No longer uncertain, Tyler reached for the broken computer monitor. Without skipping a beat, he hurled it through the window. The noise of shattering glass was swallowed by the helicopter that was right overhead. I kept looking behind us, checking the hallway, and the door beyond, waiting to be swarmed by the agents outside. My entire body was shaking, and I thought I was going to hyperventilate as I wheezed for each breath.

Tyler, though, was single-minded. Shielding his eyes, he used a heavy book to break out the remaining shards and then pulled off his hoodie, spreading it over the bottom edge of the opening.

“Come on,” he told me, cupping his hands together beneath the windowsill and motioning for me to step into them so he could hoist me over the edge.

Without the window’s glass in place, the sounds from outside echoed all around us. Not only could we hear the helicopter, with its constantly rotating blades, but we could make out voices shouting and car doors slamming. They were coming.

Behind us, the sound of the trailer’s front door crashing made me jump, and without waiting, or looking back, I went for it, lunging toward Tyler. I dropped my foot into his hands and let him throw me through the broken window. I didn’t have my balance, though, and when I landed on the other side, I fell on my hands and knees in the pool of broken glass. My heart was trying to pound its way out of my chest, and I barely had time to glance at my hands to see if I’d been hurt when Tyler was coming through the window right behind me, landing more gracefully than I had.

Somewhat shakily, I stood upright, relieved that we’d made it.

Until I heard Agent Truman, and my skin prickled. “We’ve got you surrounded. There’s no point trying to run.”

Even if he hadn’t said we were surrounded, I saw his gun. And he aimed it the same way the agent from the bookstore had. At Tyler.

I sagged, letting his frigid words settle over me. Letting the weight of their meaning—like an iceberg—crush me.

This was it. There was no more hope of leaving Tyler behind, because now all I could do was turn myself in and hope Simon was wrong.

“Kyra!” Tyler had to shout to be heard above the helicopter overhead.

When I turned to him, in the darkness behind the trailer, I was confused about why he’d said my name in the first place, because he wasn’t even looking at me. His eyes never strayed from Agent Truman.

I felt him slip something into my hand. Agent Truman continued to stare Tyler down, unaware of what had just passed between us.

And then, buried in the constant whomp-whomp of the helicopter’s blades, I thought I heard Tyler say, “You know what to do.”

I wasn’t sure I did at first, but then I squeezed my fingers around the laces of the ball Tyler had placed there, and I remembered that night at the ball field, when I’d tossed the ball at Tyler . . . when I’d nearly ripped a hole through the backstop.

Without a word, Tyler’s eyes slipped to mine. I don’t know how he conveyed it, or even if he did, but I swear he told me You can do this with that look.

And I believed him.

Agent Truman’s expression narrowed suspiciously as he surveyed us, and his gun moved to me. “Don’t do anything stupid,” he commanded. “I won’t shoot you,” he added, making a disgusted sound like a grunt. “But I will kill him.” The light from the helicopter landed on us, falling in a wide, spectral circle that encompassed all three of us, and Agent Truman moved the gun then, aiming it directly at Tyler’s head while a ruthless expression distorted his face, and I had no doubt that he meant what he said.

I didn’t think then; I only reacted. Like when I was on the mound. Like when the stands were filled with people cheering but I couldn’t hear a single one of them because all that mattered was me and the person holding the bat.

I focused on the gun.

The gun and the ball in my hand and the beating of my heart.

I breathed, and then I moved.

And I was fast. Man, was I fast.

Agent Truman couldn’t have dodged the ball even if I’d have given him fair warning. The ball was out of my hand like a shot. And any control I thought I was lacking had all been in my head.

I was precise. Crazy, uncanny, laser-like precise.

The ball, when it hit Agent Truman’s gun, and the fingers he had wrapped around its grip, exploded. It came apart—the laces, the leather—exposing the layer of worm-like yarns underneath the leather skin.

Agent Truman’s face went ashen as his knuckles exploded as well. Even above the helicopter, I was sure I hadn’t imagined hearing that sound.

And then he crumpled to his knees, and before anyone else could stop us or before he could pick up his gun with his other hand, Tyler and I ran. . . .

Disappearing beneath the canopy of trees into the jet-black forest behind us.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

I WAS STILL SHAKEN, BUT I KEPT RUNNING, WITH Tyler right behind me. My legs and my lungs were burning even though it didn’t seem like we’d gone all that far. But the woods kept getting deeper and denser and darker.

The helicopter overhead made it impossible for us to stop to catch our breath. It zigged and zagged, its light never pinpointing our location, but it was up there all the same. Which let us know they hadn’t given up on us.

We stayed as close as we could to the thicker patches of trees and brush, trying to keep low and out of sight. The leaves above us were thrashed by the blades, and pieces of projectile branches and dirt whorled around us whenever the helicopter came too close. Most likely they were tracking us on foot, too, and we had no idea how much of a head start we had on them.

“Here.” Tyler pulled me down beneath a layer of thick brush. “Let’s see if we lost them.”

I dropped in front of him. “How did you know I could do that?” I asked, panting. “Back there, with the ball?”

“You kidding? I saw you throw that night. I figured that was one of your new superpowers.”

“I don’t have powers,” I countered.

He shrugged dubiously. “Did you see the way you threw that ball—you have powers.” I couldn’t deny his accusation entirely. Simon might not have mentioned anything like that, but it would be one giant coincidence if my new ability to throw stupid-fast wasn’t somehow linked to everything else that made me . . . well, less than normal.

Reaching up, Tyler plucked a twig from my hair. “How you doin’?” he asked. “You okay?”

Nodding, I found my heart beating for a different reason now. “You?”

A lazy grin tugged at his lips. “Hell, no. But you’re still not ditching me.”

“It’s not funny.”

His hand dropped to my side, his fingers interlacing with mine. “I know it’s not. And I’m serious. You’re the most amazing thing that’s ever happened to me. I just don’t want you getting any crazy ideas about losing me out here.”

My heart faltered. Losing him was the last thing I wanted.

When the spotlight from the helicopter came too close again, it jerked us back to reality. We jumped up, breaking free from the bushes like startled animals, and darted across the overgrown forest floor. Branches whipped and pulled at us, snagging and ripping our clothes and skin.

“This way.” I clung to Tyler and towed him along, toward a stand of trees ahead of us. The glowing halo of the spotlight bobbed behind us, moving drunkenly in our wake.

Tyler stumbled again and again, and I wondered at how he couldn’t see the branches and vines he continuously tripped over. I tried to warn him whenever I remembered, but it was hard, and my words got lost in my gasping breaths. When his toe landed solidly against a large rock in the path, he staggered, dragging me down with him.

“It’s okay,” I panted, pulling him back up before he’d actually hit the ground. “Keep going. See?” I pointed toward the trees. “We’re almost there.”

The spotlight was nearly to us, trailing us like an unnatural shadow.

“No! I can’t see it,” he shouted back, fumbling for me once more and finding my hand. “I can’t see anything out here. Nothing but that stupid light.”

I dragged him along, pulling him out of the reach of the light that veered too far left to find us. “Nothing?” I managed to pant, still running.

Ahead of us there was a tunnel between the trees. I was almost certain we could squeeze through it. I had no idea what was on the other side, but I didn’t think the searchlight could find us there.

When we slipped inside, I exhaled heavily, collapsing on the damp ground. I surveyed our temporary hiding spot—essentially an opening in a blackberry thicket. If we moved too far in any direction, the pointed thorns would lance us. “You can’t see anything at all?”

“Shit!” Tyler cursed, brushing against one wall of the treacherous spikes, and then, trying to escape them, he lurched too far the other way and backing into yet another wall of them. He extricated himself carefully this time, cursing the entire time. I helped by pulling stray barbs from his T-shirt and hair.

“Are you saying you can?” he asked when the worst of his swearing had faded to a stream of unintelligible mutters. “See, I mean? That it’s not pitch-black to you?”

I blinked, looking around at our surroundings. At the thick vines and the jagged-edged leaves. I saw the angry red scrapes running down his right arm and on his cheek from the blackberry vines, and that he was frowning at me even though he wasn’t actually looking directly at me.

I reached out and moved a stray vine he was dangerously close to tangling with, saving him from more of the welts and scrapes.

I could see. And he couldn’t.

Tyler grinned then. “You have night vision,” he said to no one in particular, since he was staring directly at a wall of bushes. I could practically see his thoughts then, too, mentally chalking that up to yet another of my new “superpowers.”

“I think we should call Simon,” I told him, digging for the envelope in my back pocket. “Here.” I reached for the fanny pack I’d made fun of him for wearing. I unzipped it and stuffed the cash and the things I’d taken from my dad’s place inside.

I kept the phone.

As soon as I powered it on, light filled our hiding space, and I immediately covered the small screen with both hands. If there was anyone following us on foot, we’d just given ourselves away.

I dialed the only number that was programmed and waited. I had to cup my hands over the receiver to hear, even though the helicopter had veered away from us.

When Simon answered, his tone was clipped, and he got straight to the point. “We’ve already heard you’re in trouble. Where are you now?”

I kept my voice low. “We’re in the woods behind my dad’s place. I don’t know where exactly, but they’re following us. I don’t know how long we can hide.”

“We?” Simon started, but then he let it go. “Keep your phone on. We’ll find you.”

When I hung up, I flipped the phone closed and dropped it in the fanny pack too.

Above us, the helicopter was circling around. Coming back to where we were hiding.

I glanced up, looking at the jumble of vines and thorns. What I’d initially believed might be a tunnel was, in reality, a dead end. We would be trapped if they found us now. “We can’t stay here. There has to be a way out of these woods.”

“You’ll have to be my eyes,” Tyler said, holding out his hand to me.

“Great,” I muttered, taking it and wishing I’d shown a little more interest in Girl Scouts. Instead I’d given up when it was time to graduate from Bluebirds because I thought the Girl Scout uniforms were too . . . green. “It really will be the blind leading the blind.”

When we reached the river we stopped. We were at a dead end. The waters were fast and dark, and rushed wildly past us in frenzied surges with fat whitecaps that knocked the breath out of me just to witness.

But right now this river was our only way out.

“We can do this.”

I wasn’t sure I agreed with Tyler’s little pep talk, but those NSA thugs were approaching too fast to argue. The helicopter was whipping the treetops and making them lash wildly, as its searchlight flickered here and there, trying to locate us.

But it was the dogs that were likely to find us first. And I could hear them, their incessant barks and growls growing closer and closer to where Tyler and I stood on the ledge, our hands clasped together so tightly I was sure I’d left fingernail marks in his skin.

“This is crazy,” I shouted, easing closer to the rocky threshold.

Tyler smiled, and I thought it was the most amazing smile I’d seen in my life. I hoped it wasn’t the last time I’d see it. “Or the best.” He squeezed my hand in return.

The dogs and the agents and the flashlights all broke through the tree line behind us at the same time. Their lights bobbed frantically, converging on us in unison.

I wavered, scrambling to decide which fate was worse. But then Tyler squeezed my hand again, and I counted to three. And as if he’d been doing the same, we both leaped at once.

When the icy waters enveloped me, I forgot how—or why—to breathe.

There were only two things I knew for sure.

One, that I was trapped.

And two, I was going to die at the bottom of this effing river.

Most people talk about how their lives flash before their eyes right before they die. That didn’t happen for me. All I could think of, all that kept going through my head, was that it was a fanny pack that had gotten me killed.

And instead of spending my last minutes reflecting on the bucket list of things I should have done, or the things I wished I’d done better, or all the people I wanted to made amends to, I was pissed that I’d gone after the stupid fanny pack in the first place.

What had I been thinking? The current had been too strong, dragging the pack along the bottom until it had gotten caught in a tangle of fallen trees at the bottom of the river.

And here I was, my foot snared by that same twisted gnarl of branches at the bottom of the river. At least if Tyler finally decided to give up on trying to save me, he’d have the pack, because it would be clenched in my cold, dead fingers.

My chest ached as I desperately kicked and kicked and kicked again, trying to free my ankle from the fallen tree. I was no longer cold, even beneath the freezing waters, which I was sure was because of the panic that sent white-hot jolts of adrenaline surging through me every few seconds. The river’s currents continued to pull and drag and suck at me, although less so down here, so far beneath the surface.

I reached down and tried to wrench my foot free, but my hands were useless. I could see the way my ankle was wedged beneath the massive trunk, caught between the twisted branches, and I wondered how I’d managed to get it so lodged in the first place.

If I hadn’t been at death’s door I would’ve been impressed that I could see it all so clearly in the dark and murky riverbed.

I saw Tyler too. Swimming toward me from the water’s surface. I don’t know why he kept coming back down; I was a lost cause, but he refused to quit.

Again I tried to wave him away, gesturing for him to give up on me, but he ignored my flailing protests and went straight to work on my ankle instead. This time, the fourth time he’d come down for me, he had a hefty section of branch in his hand.

He used it like a tool while bubbles rose from his mouth, and from mine. He had to be tired from fighting the currents and from exerting himself time and again, but he refused to quit, stabbing at the branches and trying to free my ankle.

I reached for his shoulder, grasping a handful of his shirt and signaling for him to leave me. It wasn’t going to work, and I didn’t have much time left. He’d already had to go back up for air three times; how much longer could I possibly last?

He jerked away from my grip and positioned the sturdy piece of wood beneath the tree trunk that was pinning my ankle. He was crazy; there was no way that thing was going to budge. But he was far more stubborn than I’d given him credit for.

He leveraged his branch, which was far flimsier looking than the trunk he was determined to move, and when he put his weight on it—all the weight he could manage in the water—it moved all right. It shifted.

But in the wrong direction.

The weight of the trunk rolled even farther onto my ankle, shattering the bones with a crunch that may or may not have been audible beneath the water. All I knew was pain like no other.

I opened my mouth to scream, fire bursting in my foot and spreading everywhere. Bubbles and muted sounds rushed from my throat as the last of my air reserve burst out of me. It took everything I had not to inhale then. Not to gasp in huge lungfuls of the frigid river water in my next breath.

Black crept in around the edges of my vision.

Tyler’s face registered his mistake for only a second before he threw himself on top of his makeshift lever once more. Adrenaline and pure determination were propelling him now, and somehow, someway, that combination was enough, because that one last effort did the trick. The trunk rolled away from me.

Barely, but enough.

My foot, the bones crushed and still throbbing, slipped free from its trap.

Lying on the shore, Tyler and I stretched out on our backs and stared up at the sliver of a moon making its appearance between clouds that moved like tiny, silver-tinged vines, creeping in and over and across the sky.

Tyler was panting and breathless, while I shivered, my teeth chattering in an endless rhythm, waiting for the tingling in my ankle to subside.

It was the strangest sensation, the awareness of my own bone re-forming beneath my skin. I could feel the broken pieces moving and shifting, remodeling themselves. It pricked and itched and tickled and stung. I didn’t move. I just let it happen while I lay there, wondering at it all because it was too new and strange and unusual to do anything else.

I thought about Agent Truman and his shattered fingers, and guessed at how long it would take them to heal.

When the process was complete, when the last fragment of bone had knit itself back into place, I could roll my ankle without so much as wincing.

After what felt like an eternity, and when I was sure we were both still alive and relatively unscathed, I held up the fanny pack, still dripping with river water, and announced, “Got it.”

Tyler rolled onto his side and glared down at me. “You scared the shit out of me. You were down there way too long.” He cupped my chattering jaw. “How did you do that, Kyra? Could you . . . breathe under there?”

My eyebrows lowered. “Breathe? No?” But I thought about it. Tyler had gone back up for air three times while I’d been forced to hold my breath the entire time. “Of course not,” I maintained.

“Do you have any idea how long you were down there?”

I shook my head. I didn’t. I’d lost all sense of time.

“It had to have been ten, maybe even fifteen minutes.”

I let my head fall back until I was staring at the sky again, watching the viney clouds part and shift and reveal pieces of the moon. Behind us the river, the place that should’ve been my tomb, continued to gush and flow.

Fifteen minutes was forever. In fifteen minutes I should’ve been dead.

But here I was.

Tyler appeared above me then, his eyes glittering mischievously. “I’m glad you didn’t.”

“Didn’t what?” I asked, nearly forgetting to breathe again.

“Die,” he clarified. “I’m really glad you didn’t die on me.” His fingertips brushed my lips, and my pulse quickened.

I laughed, wishing I had half the control over my reactions to being near him as I did when I threw a ball. “Thanks. Me too.” And then I shot upright, my brow wrinkling. “Tyler? You’re nose. It’s bleeding again.”

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

MY ANKLE WAS GOOD AS NEW. ESPECIALLY FOR having been crushed beneath a giant tree. Unfortunately, the phone hadn’t fared as well.

We’d learned that fanny packs were not, in fact, waterproof. After having been submerged in river water for nearly fifteen minutes, its contents had gotten soaked. Enough to short-circuit the phone, which made it impossible to call Simon and let him know where we were.

In my estimation, that meant we were screwed. It was unlikely that Simon and the others from his camp were tracking us at that moment.

Tyler and I were on our own.

Fortunately for us, though, cash was waterproof, and so was the fake ID, both of which came in handy when we finally staggered out of the woods and found ourselves standing on a nothing of a road in the middle of Nowheresville, USA. But it was a nothing of a road that had a crappy little motel, and that crappy little motel had a VACANCY sign that blinked more brilliantly than any fireworks I’d ever laid eyes on.

Halle-freaking-lujah!

The girl behind the counter was considerably too young to hold a job, maybe too young to make it into a PG-13 movie, which meant she was probably the owner’s kid or grandkid. It also meant she didn’t raise an eyebrow over the fact that I was walking—rather than driving—and she barely seemed to notice that I was dripping wet from our river adventure.

I counted out my damp bills, which she also didn’t question, and signed the registration book. It was strange signing Bridget Hollingsworth’s name, and I wondered if I could just as easily slip into this other girl’s life.

As easily as waking up behind the Gas ’n’ Sip.

Tyler was waiting for me outside the motel’s office, and I handed him the key that was suspended on a red plastic chip that read #110.

We stopped at the vending machines on our way to room #110 and used the quarters the girl had traded me for my wet bills to pick up a couple cans of Coke, a pack of chocolate chip cookies, some Doritos, and a thing of beef jerky—all the major food groups.

The room itself was stale smelling and brightly colored. Orange, mostly. Orange bedspread and orange shag carpet and a bright-orange lampshade that was shaped like a pear. Supersweet.

Mostly, though, it had heavy orange curtains that were perfect for privacy, and a queen-size bed.

But that was the thing—I’d asked for two beds, and room #110 only had one.

I eyed Tyler, and he eyed me back.

“I like the way you think,” he finally threw out there, wiggling his eyebrows comically.

“Uh, yeah. I didn’t do this.” I wandered to the bed and sat on the end of it. Awesome—it squeaked too. “But we have to keep it. I don’t want to draw any more attention than we already have.”

“Suits me just fine,” he said, leaning against the wall and crossing his arms over his chest. “I just hope you can keep your hands off me.”

I rolled my eyes. “I’ll manage.” Another shudder gripped me. It had been like this since we’d rolled out of the water onto solid land. I couldn’t shake the bone-deep cold.

Tyler eased away from the wall and dropped down next to me on the bed. He dragged me against him and tried to rub the chill from my arms. He regarded me seriously. “You should jump in the shower. It’ll warm you up.”

“You’d say anything to get me out of my clothes, wouldn’t you?” I accused.

“Well . . .” He grinned. “You’re not wrong. But in this case, I think saving you from hypothermia comes before seeing you naked.” He paused a second and then added with a wry look. “Although seeing you naked runs a close second.”

He winked at me as he got up from the bed and then sauntered into the bathroom to start the water, as if he hadn’t just set my entire body on fire. It was hard to imagine I even needed that shower now.

If I ever had a daughter, I swore I would warn her about boys like Tyler—the kind who could turn you into a puddle of mush with a wink and a grin. And an innocent-looking dimple.

When he came out, steam was already wafting from the bathroom behind him. “There are towels and those little minibottles of shampoo. I’ll be back in a few. I’m gonna see if I can scrounge up something dry for you to put on.” He took the key and a couple of the bills we’d set out to dry, and left me to get naked.

I looked ridiculous in my Men’s triple-XL Asplund Motor Inn souvenir T-shirt, even though I was grateful that the owners thought enough of their crappy motel to have souvenir T-shirts made in the first place. The giant shirt fit more like a dress on me, falling to my knees, which was a good thing since they didn’t sell souvenir boxer shorts or anything else for the lower half, and I’d been forced to put on my wet underwear beneath it. My jeans were hanging over the heater, which only seemed to blow lukewarm air, alongside Tyler’s clothes.

This was one of those moments in life when I wished I were more disciplined. When I had to bite my lips against the images the sounds of his shower were producing in my head. Images of him naked. But instead of mountains of self-control, that was all I could think about.

Tyler undressing.

Tyler getting wet beneath the stream of steaming hot water.

Tyler lathering up.

I was worse than a fifteen-year-old boy whose hormones had kicked into overdrive.

To distract myself from thoughts of Naked Tyler, I started sifting through the things we’d salvaged from my dad’s place, even though there wasn’t much left to salvage after the river fiasco.

The fanny pack had saved things from drifting away, but that was about all it had done.

I took the phone apart, removing the battery in hopes that once all the parts had dried, it might power up again, at least enough so I could get Simon’s number off it.

“Dream big,” my dad always told me.

Most the things, though—the photos, the missing-person flyer, the map—were a soggy mess. I did my best with them, but I finally gave up, tossing everything but the map into the wastebasket. The map I’d painstakingly spread over a table until it looked a little less like something “my brother” had chewed up and spit out. I could still make out some of the diagrams my dad had drawn on it, but most were smudged beyond recognition.

I had no idea whether the USB stick had survived being plunged into the river; but like the phone, I hoped it would dry out and might eventually be useful, so I set it aside with the CDs.

The last thing I pulled from the fanny pack was the last thing I’d expected to find in there: the giant button of my fourth-grade picture that my dad used to wear. I hadn’t even seen it in the mess at my dad’s place.

“I couldn’t resist,” Tyler said from behind me.

I turned and saw him scrutinizing me from the bathroom, a towel wrapped strategically around his waist, blocking all the interesting stuff. Well, most of the interesting stuff.

My eyes traveled over the defined planes of his chest and down his muscled arms. His skin was damp still, and my fingers itched to dry him off the rest of the way. Any red-blooded American girl would’ve had the exact same thought.

“Um, yeah,” I said, averting my gaze back to the plastic-coated button in my hand. “It’s me, when I was little.” I smiled coyly, feeling silly that a trinket from my past had made me so happy.

He grinned. “Yeah, I know. I sorta recognized you.”

A flush burned my cheeks and made me hot all over again. “Thanks. That was sweet of you.”

Tyler coughed, and at first I thought I’d just made him uncomfortable with my praise and he was trying to cover it up by clearing his throat. But then he kept on coughing.

“Shit, Tyler. Your nose.”

And then there was that. He was bleeding again.

Snatching up the box of tissues from the nightstand, I rushed over to him with a wad already in my hand. He was as stunned as I was and pressed the tissues to his nose.

I knew then that something was wrong. Tyler had said it himself; he hadn’t had a bloody nose since he was a kid, yet this was his third one today.

My mom’s words rose up in my head: He says you were infected with whatever that guy from Skagit General Hospital had. He says you’re contagious.

This was the second time Agent Truman had brought up that lab tech from the hospital—first sending me his picture and then telling my mom I’d been infected by him. But now the lab guy was dead; that’s what it said on the news, right? That he’d been found dead in his apartment, and the cause of death hadn’t been determined yet.

But what if it had been?

I tried to make sense of it. What if I really was contagious, like Agent Truman said I was?

It would explain what was happening to Tyler, wouldn’t it?

And then I thought about that other guy—that agent at the bookstore. I’d seen the look on his face when he saw the blood trickling down my wrist. The way his hands shook, and his eyes had been filled with indecision and panic.

The lab guy had been exposed to my blood too.

I lifted my hand to my mouth. “Oh my god. It’s me, isn’t it? I’m the reason all those agents were suited up in biohazard gear.”

Tyler fumbled for me, his hand finding my cheek. Even behind the tissue I saw his lips quirk. “Don’t do this. Seriously, Kyr.”

My heart raced over the way he said my name.

“Think about it. I wasn’t infected, Tyler—I am the infection. Remember that agent? He was all set to shoot you, right up until I cut myself. What if it’s something in me that makes people sick—something about my blood? What if he shot himself because of me?” I was frowning so hard my head hurt, but I needed Tyler to take me seriously. “And what if that same thing is causing your nosebleeds?”

“Stop it,” he said through the filter of the tissues. “You’re making way too big a deal about this. It’s a nosebleed.”

But I stood there, watching him as he held the compress to his nose. I’d been so focused on drooling over his pecs and abs that I hadn’t really noticed the shadows beneath his eyes.

I reached up and pressed the back of my hand to his forehead.

Tyler grinned. “On second thought.” This time when he coughed it was totally and completely fake. He grinned some more. “If you want to play nurse, I’m all in.”

I didn’t share his enthusiasm, though. Because when I felt him, the moment I laid my hand on his skin, I knew . . . Tyler was sick.

“You’re burning up.”

“That’s what I’m saying. I need medical attention.” He refused to give it up. “See what I did there? I made you all worried, and now you sorta have to be nice to me.”

“Tyler. Don’t. This is serious. What you need is to lay down and stop acting like this is no big deal. I don’t know what’s going on or why this is happening, but we have a problem. I need to figure out how to get us some help. I think Simon might know what to do; I just have to find a way to get ahold of him.” I went to the bed and peeled back the tacky orange covers and gave him my best I’m-serious face, waiting for him to quit pretending this was some sort of game.

He tried. He wasn’t great at it, but at least he tried, pasting on a solemn expression for my benefit. He still held the tissues, but with one hand he reached out and stroked my arm. “It’ll be okay, Kyr. I really believe that. Everything’ll work out. I’ll get some rest, and I’ll feel better in the morning. And then we can find your dad, and you can explain your side of things to him, and you two will work things out. Your mom . . . well,” He winced. “I’m not sure about her. But everything else . . . things always have a way of working themselves out. You’ll see.”

He eased down onto the bed, getting beneath the covers. “How ’bout this? I’ll make you a deal. I’ll stay in bed if you promise not to worry.” He stretched out. “Come here,” he said, reaching for me, and I flushed all over again. When I hesitated, he grinned. “I know you don’t need much sleep or anything, but it’ll make me feel better just having you next to me. Humor me. Pretend you’re tired too.” He yawned, and I ached to feel that way again. To feel my eyelids grow sleepy and let my thoughts drift until dream was impossible to differentiate from reality.

I missed dreaming.

More than anything, though, I wanted Tyler to be right. I wanted whatever was wrong with him just to be exhaustion and for him to wake up feeling refreshed.

I frowned at him as I settled onto the side of the bed, testing the feel of it. “Just sleep,” I insisted, ignoring the way my body reacted to being so near him. To knowing what he was, or wasn’t, rather, wearing beneath the covers.

He caught me the second I was within reach and hauled me against him. I was hyperaware of every single thing about this moment. His skin, which was too hot and too dry and too tempting, and how badly I wanted to run my fingers over every inch of it. The tang of motel soap that clung to him, and the way it smelled different on him than it did on me. The itchy comforter I was lying on top of and how it kept us apart. The thrum of my heart and the sound of his breathing.

“See? This isn’t so bad.”

I grinned reluctantly, shifting my gaze to his, and he tightened his grip on me. “How’s your nose?” I asked.

He peeled back the tissues and checked it. “What did I tell you; nothing to worry about? Just a bloody nose.”

I didn’t know how to tell him I thought he was wrong.

Tyler talked in his sleep.

Like talk-talked. In full, coherent sentences.

Of course everything he said was out of context and made no sense, but it was more amusing than any late-night talk show or infomercial on TV.

He talked about washing his car, something about “wrong soap.” and “scratching the paint.” And later there was muttering about a dog. Whose dog, I didn’t know. He just said, “You can’t bring that dog in here.” He must’ve been serious about it, because he repeated it more than once, each time more forcefully than before.

I bit back my laughter, not wanting to wake him, until he said the one thing that made me freeze. Just a single word, but it sent shivers racing up my spine.

“Kyra.”

I stayed where I was, wanting desperately—so damned desperately—for him to say my name again. I probably would’ve waited all night, except that was about the time he started to shiver. The same way I had shivered after we’d climbed out of the river. I forgot all about my name on his lips and slipped back into Florence Nightingale mode, jumping up from where I’d been lying next to him, and pressed my hand against the side of his cheek.

If I’d thought he’d been burning up before, he was downright sizzling now.

Panic overrode logic, and I tried shaking him awake. “Tyler. Wake up. Your fever . . . it’s worse.”

He mumbled something less coherent than his dream babbling had been, something I couldn’t make out, and I shook him again. “Wake up,” I demanded, getting right in his face now. “I need you to wake up!”

When he didn’t respond, I went to the bathroom and ran a washcloth under cold water. I brought it back and laid it across his forehead. I wouldn’t have been surprised if steam had risen from the compress. It didn’t, but it also didn’t rouse him.

“Dammit.”

I grabbed the key and the ice bucket, not bothering with pants, and hurried out of the room.

When I came back, he was in the exact same state as when I’d left him: burning up and delirious. He responded, at least, to the ice.

“What the hell!” He shoved at me lethargically, but at least I could understand him. “Stop. I’m fine.” His “I’m fine,” however, was less than convincing, and I was stronger than he was in his fevered state.

“Here . . . ,” I said, my voice gentler as I wrapped the cubes in the washcloth and pressed them against his neck.

With the ice buffered by the cloth, he stopped thrashing against me and let me leave it. When the ice melted, I replaced it.

But I needed to do more.

“I’ll be back,” I whispered against his ear, and felt the heat coming off him in rippling waves.

The lady who staffed the office for the overnight shift was nice enough, if a little hard of hearing. Apparently they sold T-shirts but not Tylenol. Go figure. She didn’t “believe in the stuff,” she explained, so she couldn’t help me out.

I did my best not to roll my eyes, but it took every ounce of self-control to stop myself. Who didn’t believe in Tylenol?

She did, however, point out that there was an all-night gas station just “down the way a bit,” and she aimed a crooked finger indecisively. I assumed she knew by then I was on foot since there weren’t any cars in the parking lot, so I started jogging in the direction she’d indicated.

She was right. It didn’t take long to find the small, four-pump station, which was good since by the time I got there my not-yet-dry jeans were starting to chafe. Also because I was out of my mind with worry over Tyler.

The station was open but deserted at this hour. And it wasn’t the convenience store kind of place that had aisles of snack foods and miscellaneous household supplies and motor oil and beer. Instead there was one lone attendant’s stand in a center island that overlooked all four gas pumps. Behind the glass there was a limited assortment of sundries: cigarettes, condoms, cough drops—that sort of thing. I could see the display rack of individual packets of pain relievers sitting plain as day on the back counter.

Problem was, the attendant was nowhere to be seen.

If I’d wanted breath spray or condoms, I’d have been in luck. I could have busted out the BACK IN FIVE sign that blocked the small opening where people passed their cash and made a run for it. No such luck.

“Hello?” I called out, hoping that the cashier was right around the corner, maybe taking a smoke break or something; and when no one answered, I tried again, louder this time. “Hello!”

I paced nervously, chewing on my lip and then on my fingernail, trying to decide what I should do.

I didn’t want to go back there empty-handed. Tyler needed this medicine.

I went to the glass and pressed my face against it. It was right there. Right in front of me. If I had the balls—or the ovaries, in my case—I’d break the damn glass. I was already on the run from the law, wasn’t I? How much worse could my situation get?

Just one packet of Tylenol or Excedrin or ibuprofen. I wasn’t choosy.

I pounded my fists helplessly against the glass because I knew I’d never do it, even if it had been right where the breath spray was. I wasn’t a thief.

“Hello?” I yelled again, anxiety making my voice crack. “Is anyone here?”

And that’s when it happened.

The display of pain relievers . . .

. . . it moved.

Moved, as in wiggled. Enough that all the packets swayed side to side. A miniature earthquake.

Except it was only the pain reliever rack that was affected. Nothing else. Not the ground beneath my feet or the counters inside the booth or the condoms or the cough drops.

Just the pain relievers I’d been staring at longingly.

Shut. Up.

My eyes widened, and my fists fell to my sides. My throat tightened as I tried to make sense of what I’d seen. I looked behind me to see if anyone else had noticed it, but I was still alone.

All alone.

I turned back.

Nuh-uh . . . not me . . .

It wasn’t . . .

I glanced down at my hands—ordinary, normal hands. No way!

I curled my fingers back into fists and lifted them to the glass, mimicking my previous actions.

Nothing happened. There was nothing but me and the empty booth and all those pain relievers I couldn’t reach.

I stared. I stared hard.

I concentrated.

And then . . .

. . . still nothing.

I banged my fist on the glass, releasing a gust of frustration as I swore under my breath. “Dammit. Dammit!”

All at once the entire pain reliever display shot across the booth and crashed against the glass, scaring the crap out of me.

I jerked away from the explosion, my heart crammed in my throat and my eyes so wide I felt like they’d pop out of my head. “Holy . . .” I gasped. “Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god . . .”

But there was no one there to see. I checked.

I almost wished there had been. Someone to say, “I saw it too.” Or “Holy crap.” Or “Dude, you did it.”

Somehow, someway, by some freaking miracle I had just managed to move—like levitate or something—that whole entire rack across the attendant booth.

With my new superpowers.

When I finally recovered from what I’d done, when I’d accepted it was real and come to terms with it, and when I realized I’d better get the hell out of there before someone else showed up and figured out I was the one responsible for all that damage, I jumped into action.

It was all there, all the medicine I needed; I just had to shove—fine, break—the BACK IN FIVE sign to get it out of my way. It was a small feat after what I’d accomplished with the display stand, and it only took me a second. Hard to believe the cashier had left this place unattended in the first place.

After I’d filled my pockets with as many packets as I could carry, I laid three twenty-dollar bills on the counter inside, more than enough to pay for what I’d taken and to make up for the mess I’d made. Because, I might not be exactly human, but I certainly wasn’t a thief.

I ran the entire way back, anxious to get out of there before someone spotted me, and even more anxious to get back to Tyler. I stopped running, though, almost tripping over my own feet, the moment the Asplund Motor Inn came into view.

Not because I was winded or because I was no longer in a hurry to get back, but because of the car in the parking lot. The one that hadn’t been there before.

Black. Nice and shiny, polished black.

I felt sick. Not like Tyler, all fevered and nosebleedy, but straight-up, gut-puking sick.

If it hadn’t been for Tyler—Tyler who was still in there, still burning up, probably all because of me—I’d would’ve turned tail and run. Right back to the gas station, past it, and into the woods.

I would have disappeared forever this time.

I squeezed my eyes shut, pressing my fists into the hollows of my sockets, and did my best to come up with some sort of plan. But there was no good plan for how to get Tyler out of there. Not now.

As I passed the office on my way back, the old lady inside met me at the door. “Oh good, you’re back. Nice man’s been waitin’ on you.”

I ignored the woman, my stomach roiling as I kept walking. I glanced toward the black car parked right in front of room #110.

It was empty, I noted. Whoever was here was probably already inside the room. Waiting for me.

My heart climbed into my throat as I stood outside. My key felt heavy and my fingers too clumsy to work it. It took me forever to screw up the courage to slip it into the lock. Closing my eyes, I knew this was probably my last chance to change my mind.

I could still run.

I could still disappear and be Bridget Hollingsworth.

Instead, I turned the key.

The room was dark, but I could see everything clearly.

Tyler was out on the bed, curled in a ball, delirious and shivering. I wanted to shout at him to run, but it was no use. All our things were exactly where I’d left them, untouched and spread out to dry. The light from the bathroom was on, and the door was ajar.

The agent was in there.

The silence was palpable; each second I stood there waiting for him to make his appearance was physically painful.

When I couldn’t take it any longer, I finally let the door close behind me. “I know you’re here.”

When the bathroom door opened, I felt like I was going to jump out of my skin.

And when I saw who was standing there, framed by the light spilling out of the bathroom, my heart nearly stopped.

“Simon?” I breathed. “What the—? How did you know . . .” I looked to the electronic components that had once been a cell phone. “The phone you gave me was ruined when we jumped in the river.”

Simon’s eyebrows rose up a notch. “You jumped in a river?”

“To get away. The agents from the NSA were after us, and we didn’t have any other choice.”

Simon frowned and then nodded toward Tyler. “Did you cut yourself? While you were escaping?”

So that was it then. It was all the confirmation I needed. Bile rose in my throat, stinging all the way up. “It was me? I did this to him—my blood?”

“I don’t have time to explain right now. We need to get you both out of here. I can explain on the way.” Simon went to the bed. “Come on. Help me get him to the car.”

As if he’d heard Simon, Tyler moaned.

Ignoring Simon because he didn’t matter for the moment, I went to Tyler and stroked his face. “It’s okay,” I whispered, pulling one of the hijacked packets from my pocket and ripping it open. I eased his head off the pillow. The back of his neck was slick with sweat. “Take these,” I ordered, dropping the Tylenols into his mouth and grabbing the open can of Coke from the nightstand.

I was grateful for the pills he managed to swallow, and I prayed they did the trick.

I was suddenly unsure about what the right thing to do was. I wanted to take Tyler, to keep him with me and try to make him better. But what if being around me only made him worse.

“Maybe we should leave him here,” I told Simon. “Call 9-1-1 or something.”

Simon grabbed my arm, his grip firm. “I won’t stop you if that’s what you decide, but just be clear about what you’re setting him up for. If you do that, he won’t be getting the help you think he is. Those NSA guys, they will find him. And when they do, they’ll figure out why he’s there—what happened to him and why he’s suddenly so sick—and then they’ll cut him open—same way they would you and me.”

I jerked away from his grasp, rubbing my arm. Glaring at Simon, I lowered my voice and asked the question I so didn’t want to ask. “Why? Why would they do that?” I thought of that guy—the agent from the bookstore who’d raised his gun to his own head after being exposed to my blood. Suddenly the gunshot we’d heard made sense. He didn’t want to be a science experiment. “Why wouldn’t they just cure him?” I refused to think of the lab tech from the news.

Simon stared at me for a long, long time. His lips pressed together, and his expression shifted all the way from determination to compassion. It was the compassion that did me in.

I shook my head, denying what I saw in that look. “No,” I insisted. “There has to be something. Some way to fix this . . . to make him better.” I looked back to Tyler, and hated him for abandoning me like this. For being completely-totally-utterly unavailable when I needed him most.

I hated Simon, too, for telling me the last thing in the world I wanted to hear.

But most of all, I hated myself for being a toxic, fucking mess.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Day Seven

I RODE IN THE BACK OF SIMON’S CAR WITH Tyler’s head in my lap.

It had taken nearly twenty minutes after Tyler had swallowed those first two Tylenols for his fever to finally break. When he was alert enough, I was able to persuade him to swallow two more and then managed to sit him upright so we could get him dressed and into the car, where he collapsed again.

We talked for a while—Tyler assuring me still that he was all right and me knowing differently but keeping my mouth shut because inside I was barely holding my shit together. When he finally admitted that his head was killing him, I didn’t have the heart to tell him it wasn’t his head that was killing him; it was me.

The entire time it was hard for me to maintain eye contact with him, yet I couldn’t stop myself from touching him. My fingers were everywhere, stroking his cheeks and his forehead, his shoulders and his hair. “I’m so, so, so sorry,” I whispered beneath my breath whenever I thought he wasn’t listening. I repeated it inside my head, too, hoping there was some penance in the words. That I could somehow absolve myself for being an accidental murderer.

If Tyler heard me, he never mentioned it. His hand continued to clutch my knee, his fingers occasionally caressing my thigh, as if it made him feel better just holding on to me. Reassuring himself that I wasn’t going anywhere.

And I wasn’t. I swore I would never leave him again.

When he started mumbling, I knew he was dozing, and I turned my attention back to Simon, who kept casting uneasy glances in the rearview mirror, checking on how we were doing back here. “Whose car is this anyway? You know, it scared the hell out of me when I saw it in the parking lot.”

The sun was starting to rise, casting a golden glow over his dark skin in his reflection. “Sorry about that. The car . . . well, let’s call it a loaner.”

I shook my head, sighing. “So it’s stolen. Great, Simon. How long are we supposed to drive around in this thing before someone notices it’s missing and calls the cops? Then what? We can’t let them take Tyler.” When I said his name, Tyler shifted in my lap. I smoothed my fingers over his hair to settle him down again.

Simon dropped his eyes back to the road in front of him. “Don’t worry about it. We’re almost there. Willow is meeting us, and we’ll ditch this car. No one’s gonna catch us.” I didn’t ask who Willow was. I assumed it was another one of Simon’s Returned, from the camp he’d told me about.

I sagged back in my seat, letting my fingers sift through Tyler’s sweat-dampened waves. I couldn’t help being pissed at Simon. I blamed him. He should’ve warned me. I would never have risked cutting myself around Tyler—or anyone else—if I had known my blood was somehow toxic.

“You got it all figured out, don’t you? You still never answered me. How’d you find us anyway?”

Stupidly oblivious—or maybe just plain stupid—to my irritation, Simon grinned. “It wasn’t that tricky, just a little time-consuming is all. It would’ve backfired if you hadn’t checked into a motel or if you hadn’t used the ID I’d given you. After calling about fifty places, I finally found a Bridget Hollingsworth at the Asplund Motor Inn.”

“And they just gave you that info over the phone? I didn’t think they could do that.”

I don’t know why I was blaming him. Before he’d shown up, my entire goal had been to get ahold of him. Yet now that I was sitting in the exact place I’d wanted to be, the very sight of him made me want to puke.

Or maybe it was everything he represented.

Everything I hated about myself.

I shrugged and looked out the side window. Same difference.

We were in the mountain pass now, and I could see the summits in the distance where the snow still hadn’t melted and probably wouldn’t, even when the summer temps hit their highest. I wondered how far we’d be traveling, but I was too stubborn to ask.

I continued to run my fingers over and through Tyler’s hair, trying to calm myself as much as to soothe him while he slept. When I finally trusted myself to be reasonable, I leaned forward, closer to the front seat. “Are you sure, Simon, that there’s nothing . . .” Tears crowded my eyes, and I blinked furiously, swallowing hard to get my words out. “That there’s nothing we can do to help him?”

Simon’s golden-flecked eyes sought mine. He didn’t have to answer, but he did anyway. “I’m sorry, Kyra. I know it sucks. I didn’t tell you everything when I told you why I left my family. It wasn’t only because my parents were asking questions about why I wasn’t aging. There was more to it than that.”

I wasn’t sure I wanted to hear what he had to say, but I needed to know. “It was my sister. I mean, I didn’t know at the time . . . that it was me. But we were fishing . . . I was teaching her to fish, of all things, and I cut myself. I didn’t even know about the healing thing. But she was there and saw the whole thing. She’d sworn she’d never tell anyone.” He cleared his throat. “Turns out that wasn’t really an issue. Shortly after I’d cut myself, she got sick. We thought it was the flu at first—she had a fever, was vomiting, had a bloody nose. But then she lost all her hair. Within a day she was dead. My folks are Christian Scientists. They don’t believe in doctors, just the power of prayer, so they never even bothered calling for help.” His voice was hard now. Bitter. “They tried to pray the evil out of her.”

I wanted to catch his eye again in the mirror, but he refused to look at me. I wasn’t sure what I felt then, if I hated him still or if I wanted to hug him because he was the only person I knew who understood what I was going through.

I didn’t get the chance to decipher my feelings because that’s when I noticed it, the clumps of hair in my hands.

Tyler’s hair.

I was right about Willow being one of the Returned.

She was also crazy badass. Not like Cat, who gave off a take-no-crap vibe, but more like an I-could-rip-your-throat-out-and-leave-your-carcass-in-a-ditch kind of thing.

Add to that the fact that she had tattoos blanketing both arms and wore sleeveless leather like a biker chick, I was terrified of her. I was also glad she was on our side.

Or on Simon’s side, at least.

She and Simon did this half-handshake, half-shoulder bump thing when we got out of our car at the rest stop and they greeted each other.

Willow eyed me up and down. “That her?” she asked, spitting sideways as she checked me over.

Seriously? She chewed tobacco too?

I’d tried it once, on a dare from Cat because she’d said all the big leaguers did it. I’d swallowed more of the stuff than I could keep between my lip and my gums, and ended up feeling both dizzy and nauseas. After that I decided to stick to sunflower seeds.

As much as Willow scared me, I was far more scared for Tyler, and about losing him. “Help me,” I shouted to both of them. “We need to get going.” I didn’t care that she raised her eyebrows at being bossed around, or that she could easily do that leaving-me-in-a-ditch thing.

Simon nodded to her, indicating that she should do as I said, and she followed his lead. He was definitely the one in charge.

She stopped cold when she bent over and looked inside. “Holy mother of . . . Is he . . . ?” She stood upright again, her arm resting against the top of the car as she eyed Simon. “Are you sure we’re bringing him? What’s the point?”

Simon made eye contact with her over the roof of the car in a way that made it clear they understood each other, and I got the feeling it was for my benefit when he said, “Because Kyra says so.”

Tyler was more alert after he got out of the backseat and puked.

I’ve never really been good around sick people, I guess because I’ve never had much experience with them. But I stayed with him while he gripped his knees for support and heaved over and over and over again.

What came out of him was black and thick and sticky, and I tried to imagine what combination of food had caused that mess. I had to assume it had more to do with whatever poison or pathogen I’d inadvertently passed on to him and was now working its way through his system than anything he’d ingested.

The whole experience probably only lasted thirty seconds, but it felt like hours.

I rubbed his back and said things like “It’s okay,” and “It’ll be over soon,” and “You’re doing good,” which was a strange thing to say because it sounded like I was cheering him on. Like he was competing in the Puke Olympics or something.

When it was over and he’d wiped his mouth on his sleeve, he leaned on me while he stumbled to the ginormous purple truck Willow had brought to meet us. I wasn’t sure how we weren’t supposed to draw attention in that beast, but I didn’t bother mentioning it as I helped Tyler step onto the running board so he could climb inside.

The engine, when she started it, was ridiculously loud, giving the NSA’s helicopter a run for its money. Everything about this truck made me uncomfortable, right down to the fact that we had to shout to be heard, even from inside the oversize cab.

Willow drove, and when she jammed the truck into gear, we lunged from the rest stop parking lot and onto the highway, making our way out of the mountains and into the eastern side of the state, which was flatter and browner and more desertlike than where we’d just come from.

Willow kept her suspicious gaze directed at us from her place in front, as if she expected Tyler—who was sitting upright now—to suffer another bout of stomach-blasting nausea. I couldn’t say she was wrong—he was pale and had a sheen of perspiration across his forehead—but it irritated me, the way she watched us all the same.

“I have the bags,” I snapped, even though she hadn’t said a single word. I waved the plastic grocery bags she’d forced on me like flags, hoping she’d get the point and stop giving us the evil eye.

When she went back to watching the road, I turned to Tyler. My chest tightened painfully.

He was still achingly beautiful, his eyes even more green against the washed-out pallor of his skin, but already his cheekbones were more defined than they should be—even more than they had been just yesterday—and his lips were cracked and peeling.

“Tyler,” I started, but he reached across the space and gripped my hand.

“Don’t,” his voice rasped urgently. He squeezed my fingers tighter than I thought he should be able to, and I felt somewhat better, even if it was foolish to let myself hope. I leaned my head against his shoulder.

Willow interrupted from the front. “So Simon tells us you mend at crazy speeds—that so?”

It was the last thing I wanted to do—make small talk with Willow—especially about myself, but Tyler seemed to perk up just a little. “She totally does. And she can hold her breath forever.”

Simon twisted around so he was facing me, his arm resting on the back of his seat as his eyes devoured me. “Really? How long’s forever?”

“At least fifteen minutes. That’s how long she was trapped in the river.” Tyler met Simon’s eyes, his cracked lips attempting to grin. I hated how breathless he sounded. “She can see in the dark too. Can all of you do that?”

“No.” Simon answered Tyler firmly. “We can all regenerate—heal,” he explained. “And we age more slowly and are more resistant to disease, but I don’t think any of the other Returned have shown signs of night vision or the ability to go long periods without oxygen.” He and Willow exchanged another look, sharing another of their secrets. “Have you heard of that?”

Willow gave a decisive shake of her head.

“Anything else?” Simon probed, this time directing his inquiry at me.

I thought about the gas station, and the way I’d moved an entire display of pain relievers—sent it shooting across the attendant’s stand until it smashed into the glass—simply by concentrating on it. I wondered if any of the Returned could do that. Move things with their minds.

I shook my head and shrugged. “Not that I know of.”

There was a brief silence, and then we were back to front-seat and backseat conversations when Willow dropped her voice and told Simon, “I talked to Jett while we were stopped, and he said there was chatter about the No-Suchers widening their search. We were hoping they’d pack it in when they lost her, but I don’t think they’re letting this one go.”

Since I was sure the “her” in question was me, I didn’t feel bad for eavesdropping.

I glanced curiously at Tyler and then, tilting my head sideways, I interrupted them. “The No-Suchers, who’re they?”

“The NSA, or as some people call them, the No Such Agency because everything they do is on the DL.”

“So what’s the deal with them? They just go around chasing those of us they think were experimented on?” It was still almost impossible to say the part about them being “alien” experiments out loud, so I didn’t try.

“Officially, no. Officially, they were never even here.” He lifted a shoulder noncommittally. “Unofficially, you’re the biggest prize they’ve had their eyes on in years. Maybe ever. If Agent Truman can get his hands on you . . . you’re what they call a ‘career maker.’”

Inwardly I shuddered. The idea of Agent Truman, or any of those guys in hazmat suits, hunting me was disturbing. “Aren’t you afraid of them? Doesn’t having me with you put you all at risk?”

Willow lifted her chin in a nod. “We’re not scared of them. Buncha grade-A pussies is what they are.” I wasn’t sure about the “pussies” part, but I doubted Willow was used to being messed with. “Besides, they’ll never find us.” She grinned at me through the rearview. “Not unless we want ’em to.”

“So what happens now?” Tyler asked. “How long do we have to hide before they give up?”

A long silence engulfed the cab. Willow shifted her gaze away from us as if suddenly the road was the only thing worth noticing. Simon didn’t ignore us exactly. He continued to dart nervous gazes back and forth between us and Willow. But he’d gone all radio silent too.

Finally I said what neither of them would, because they were too afraid to say what we all knew. “Forever,” I answered. “We have to stay hidden for the rest of our lives.”

I didn’t say the part where Tyler’s life would be way shorter than it should be.

Three hours after we left the rest stop we were at Simon’s camp.

It was in the mountains, too, but these mountains were less snow-capped peaks and densely packed fir trees than the Cascades we’d just traveled through and more like scrubby sagebrush and rocky outcroppings and spare-looking pine trees that might burst into flames if a match were lit anywhere in their vicinity. This was what my mom had always referred to as “rattlesnake country.”

By late morning the temperature was already approaching the eighty-degree mark. It was hard to imagine what it was like out here in July or August.

I wiped the sweat from my upper lip as I climbed down from the truck, kicking up a cloud of dust as my feet hit the gritty earth.

Tyler was asleep inside the cab.

He hadn’t thrown up again, but he’d bled. Not from his nose this time but from his right ear. I’d dabbed at it while he slept. I didn’t say anything but caught Willow watching me as I swiped at the trickle.

He was getting worse.

“We’ve got a place for you two already set up in the bunkhouse. We can get him in there, and then we should talk,” Simon told me, coming around behind me while I watched Tyler sleep. “I know this is hard, Kyra, but there’s nothing you can do for him. He’s only got a day or so left.” He put his hand on my shoulder, and I shrugged it off, not wanting to hear what he had to say. “We’ll make him as comfortable as we can. We have drugs we can give him—they won’t cure him or anything, but they’ll . . .” He faltered, just like he should falter, I thought. Because this was bullshit. It shouldn’t be happening. “ . . . they’ll make it easier on him.”

I clenched my jaw, biting back every terrible thing I wanted to say to him because I knew he was right; it wouldn’t do any good.

The bunkhouse we were taken to was rustic to say the least: four walls and a few cots, which looked barely used and smelled like deep-rooted dust. With the windows closed it was even hotter in there, and I had to prop them all open just to get the scant breeze moving through the ramshackle building so Tyler wouldn’t suffocate when I laid him down. I sent Simon to get us some water and a washcloth so I could sponge Tyler’s burning skin.

When a boy came back with what I’d asked for, he offered me a grimy-looking water jug and a worn-looking rag. “I’m Jett,” he explained, pushing a mop of sandy-brown hair out of his eyes. “Simon had to take care of some things and asked me to look after you.” His eyes drifted to Tyler, to his limp form on the cot, and then skittered away from him again as if looking at him for too long was difficult. It was, really. I was the only one unwilling to admit it. “Can I get you anything else?”

I shook my head, turning back to Tyler and ignoring the boy.

After a minute I heard footsteps and knew the boy had left us alone. Good, I thought. I didn’t want him here anyway. I didn’t want anyone here unless they knew how to fix Tyler.

I dug into my pocket and pulled out another packet—Advil this time. I tore it open with my teeth and forced Tyler awake again. It was getting harder and harder to keep him conscious. “Tyler . . .” I tried not to sob when I said his name, but that was harder too. Guilt shredded me from the inside out. “Take these,” I ordered.

He opened his mouth listlessly but not his eyes, and I let the pills fall on his tongue, which didn’t really look like a tongue should—not pink and soft and moist. Instead it was desiccated, like leather. Pretending not to notice, I lifted the jug to his lips and trickled the water into his mouth.

After he finally swallowed, I thought he’d go back to sleep. Instead, he moved his lips to talk. At first all that came out were these garbled, whispering sounds, like muffled breaths, and then I heard him.

“Stuff your eyes with wonder,” he croaked. “Live as if you’d drop dead in ten seconds. See the world, . . .” He paused, taking a breath. I tried to figure out what he was saying and wondered if he was hallucinating. But he wasn’t finished. “It’s more . . . more fantastic than any dream made or paid for in factories.” I recognized it then. It was from Fahrenheit 451, the book he’d shared with me. His favorite one.

My eyes burned, and then that burning gave way to the tears, because I understood what he was saying. I bent over him, weeping as I clutched his hands, desperate to make him know how sorry I was. “You . . . you . . . know?” I managed to say between choked gasps.

Tyler’s face remained still, his eyes closed. When he breathed, it sounded like it was coming from too far down inside his chest and each breath had to be dredged up. Labored for. Speaking was an effort. “I heard you . . . when you were talking. I know . . .” He paused to take a long, determined pull of the dusty air around us. “I know I don’t have long.” He strained to open his eyes, and again it was a struggle, that task that should have been so incredibly simple.

Yet when he did, I nearly lost it.

His eyes . . . oh my god, his eyes . . .

What had once been beautiful and green, and had sparkled when he smiled, were now completely and totally devoid of all color. As if black ink had been spilled within them, blooming from the pupil and diffusing outward.

“I wish I could see you,” Tyler said, lifting his hand feebly and reaching for my face.

Trembling, and unable to stop myself from crying openly, I moved so he could find me, letting the tips of his fingers graze my cheeks until even that effort was too much for him and his hand fell back down. I captured his hand then and crushed my lips to it.

“I don’t want you to blame yourself, Kyra. Not ever.” He wheezed, and before I could stop him, he spoke again. “It was worth it, you know. I would trade a million lifetimes for the one I’ve had with you.”

“You’re wrong,” I insisted. “I would trade anything to give you your life back. Anything.”

I felt him then. Going quiet, completely motionless, once more. Exhaustion overtaking him.

I hovered above him, listening to the sounds of his breathing and hating how much I feared that this might be it. The way my stomach clenched at the rasping sound he made as he fought for each and every breath like it might be his last. I had a hard time swallowing as I willed his lungs to find a rhythm, for him to hang on.

When he found that calm at last, I relaxed, easing back and letting go of his hands.

“Simon wants you to come with me.”

The voice startled me, but I recognized it. It was Jett, standing in the doorway behind me.

“What? I can’t leave him,” I said, getting to my feet.

“He’ll be okay for now,” Jett explained, nodding toward Tyler, who was out cold. “He won’t even know you’re gone. Simon wants me to show you around.” When I looked like I might argue, which I considered, unable to bring myself to leave Tyler alone, Jett added, his voice quiet and persuasive, “You’ll want to see this. I promise.”

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

IT WAS HARD TO LEAVE TYLER IN THE FILTHY, rundown cabin while I followed Jett into what I could only describe as a maze of tunnels that extended far below the hot and dusty surface of the camp.

“What is this place?” I ran my hand along the cool concrete that made up the underground walls. I’d let Jett lead me down into what I thought was a sewer opening in the middle of the soil, one that had been concealed by a heavy iron cover that he had to drag off it, and once we’d dropped all the way to the bottom, I found myself surrounded by darkness. The tunnel we walked through seemed endless, and, unlike me, Jett needed a flashlight to find his way.

“Used to be part of the Hanford operation—the nuclear facility. They haven’t used this place in years, though. I’m not sure this bunker is even on the map.” He stopped in front of a closed metal door that blended into the cement wall around it.

“Nuclear facility? Is it safe to be here?”

Jett flashed me a boyish grin, and I wondered just how old he was. He looked younger than both Simon and Willow. Younger than me and Tyler, at least in human years. I had no idea how that translated in replaced time. At the delayed aging rate of the Returned, he could’ve been back for mere weeks or as long as decades. “It is for us,” he bragged.

Goose bumps broke out over my skin at his answer. He worked to unlatch the door, which involved rotating a handle the way you did with submarine hatches. “Okay,” I asked, rubbing the chill from my arms. “But what about Tyler? He’s not . . . like us?” The seal popped with a hiss, and the door burst outward.

Jett shot me a look that told me I was being unreasonable. “He’s also been exposed,” he said. “He can’t survive.”

I hated him for being so matter-of-fact about it, even if it was the truth.

Jett frowned at me. “I’m sorry,” he explained. “We’ve all lost people we cared about.”

I kept rubbing my arms, my skin no longer chilled but wanting to ward away the feelings that overwhelmed me. I turned my attention to the room in front of us.

Jett lifted his chin toward the opening, his eyes sparkling. “Welcome to my lair.”

From the other side of the open door came the hum of electricity, the buzz filling the air with its static charge. Jett stepped over the threshold, which was several inches high, and I leaned in closer to see what it was he was hiding in there.

Computers. There was a hodgepodge collection of computer workstations—monitors and keyboards and routers and modems of various sizes and designs—like they’d been salvaged from junkyards and thrift stores and yard sales—anyplace he’d been able to gets his hands on a piece of equipment. There were printers and cords and discs too.

And then there were the maps. Walls and walls of maps.

It was like the military version of my dad’s place. More organized and state-of-the-art, but it had that same feel to it. A similar command-center vibe.

“What do you do down here?” I questioned, taking a step inside and feeling slightly claustrophobic once I was on this side of the metal door.

“This,” Jett declared, interlacing his fingers and flipping his hands over, and then he cracked all his knuckles in front of him at the same time, “is where the magic happens.” He hit a power button on one of the computers, and at once they all crackled to life, monitors blinking furiously through a series of synchronized commands.

When they finished flashing the sporadic lines of script on their screens and came fully ablaze, there was a single glowing logo in the center of each and every one of them—a logo I recognized all too well—and the dusting of goose bumps that had prickled my skin when Jett had mentioned this was a nuclear facility came back with a vengeance.

It was an electronic image of a firefly.

“What the holy mother of . . . The fireflies . . .” I shook my head. “What are those . . . what does that mean?”

Jett flashed me a curious look. “Have you seen that before?”

“Yes. I mean, maybe not this one exactly, but ones like it. My dad had all these picture of fireflies at his place.”

He nodded. “That makes sense. Your dad would probably know.”

“Know what?”

“About the fireflies, and what they represent.”

“And that is what exactly?” I asked, blowing a strand of hair out of my eyes irritably.

Jett laughed at my reaction. “Oh yeah, I keep forgetting you’re new to all this.” He sat down at one of the computer workstations and twisted his chair back and forth, like a restless schoolkid. “There have been stories of UFO sightings that date back hundreds—maybe thousands—of years, but it wasn’t until the 1950s, when there was this Brazilian farmer—a guy named Antonio Vilas-Boas—who claimed he’d been taken on board one of those alien spaceships and ordered to impregnate”—he wiggled his eyebrows when he said the word impregnate, making me think he was as young as he looked—“this hot ‘humanoid.’ When he was returned, he was in pretty bad shape, like they’d beaten the crap out of him. And even though authorities claimed they didn’t buy his story, it caused a flood of other people to start reporting that they’d been abducted too. The thing is, some of these claims had certain things in common. Things that didn’t get reported to the general public.” He leaned back while he continued to twirl in his chair. “Wanna guess what those things might be?”

I raised my eyebrows; pretty sure the answer wasn’t rocket science or anything. “I’m gonna say fireflies?”

Jett gave an exaggerated nod. “Bingo! And not just a firefly here or there. According to those ‘abducted,’ for lack of a better word, or witnesses, there were always lots of them—swarms of them.”

“And you think the fireflies have something to do with the taken?”

“Oh, they have something to do with it, all right. We’re sure of it. And so were the government agencies and the scientists who were tracking the activity at the time. It wasn’t the No-Suchers . . .” He paused to clarify, unaware that I’d already heard the term. “I mean the NSA, who tracked that kind of thing back then. Rumor has it that after working with Winston Churchill during World War Two to cover up a UFO sighting in England, President Eisenhower had these covert meetings that were called the First Contact meetings with the aliens to forge a treaty with them. He also formed his own agency to look into these so-called ‘abductions’ as well.”

“This sounds like the kind of crazy conspiracy stuff my dad would spew.” I sighed, crossing my arms and feeling somewhat defensive.

He sat up straighter. “Anyone can Google it, but from what I know about your dad, he’s not all that crazy. There’s some truth to this. At least part of it. I don’t know much about the First Contact meetings or about who was really behind this new agency that was formed, but I do know that they got wind of people claiming to be returned, and of witnesses stating that they’d seen huge gatherings of fireflies around the time those people had been taken. Once it was proved that the Returned had the ability to heal, a plan was devised.” He winced. “A really terrible plan, somewhere along the lines of torture. But it got the job done.”

Cocking my head, I took a step closer, almost afraid to ask. “What did they do?”

Jett pulled up his sleeve and showed me his arm. “They used the whole firefly thing against us. They tracked us down and captured us. They questioned us, and if we didn’t admit to being one of these so-called ‘Returned,’ then they would use this thing that looked kind of like a car cigarette lighter, but it was more like a brand, really. It had a symbol in the center of it: a firefly.” He shrugged, as if it wasn’t a completely barbaric thing he was describing. “Since they couldn’t risk exposing themselves to our blood by cutting us, they used it to sear our skin instead. To test us.”

I frowned as I leaned closer, trying to figure out what I was missing. “But . . . there’s nothing there,” I stated solemnly, hating that someone could do something so vile to another person—human or not.

His voice lowered. He was quiet, so quiet, when he answered, “That’s how they knew. If you healed, you’d been returned.”

I closed my eyes. I felt sick. I didn’t say anything for a very, very long time. Finally, when I trusted myself not to throw up when I opened my mouth, I whispered, “I’m sorry.”

Jett looked up at me with eyes that couldn’t decide if they were blue or green or shades of gold. It was like staring into cut glass.

Or into the iridescent wings of a firefly.

“It was a long time ago,” he recalled with a faraway look in those mosaic eyes of his.

“This is what it looked like,” he said, pointing to the golden-beetle image on his screen.

“They were a different agency back in WW Two—I’m not even sure what jurisdiction they fell under. But the guys who are after you now are a part of the NSA, at least indirectly. They’re an offshoot agency that operates under the radar of the rest of the organization. The government doesn’t sanction what they do, and if the public ever discovered their true purpose, it would be denied. They’re kinda the Area 51 of agencies. Officially, they don’t exist . . . except that they totally do.”

I turned away from the screen, unable to stomach the idea of anyone, especially people in authority, doing the things Jett was talking about. It was murder.

I inhaled, still trying to steady my stomach. “How old are you, Jett?”

He came back to the present then, dropping his sleeve and offering me a small smile. “Twelve when I vanished.” He counted on his fingers then, his smile growing. “But now . . . sixty-four years young.”

“So how did you escape?”

Jett lifted his chin. “My pops wasn’t the kind of guy you messed with, not even if you were a GI.” He closed out the image with a sharp click, and even though I wanted to ask more about it, I got the feeling the discussion was over.

“What did I miss?” Simon asked, ducking through the doorway as he joined us. Willow was right behind him, and I wished she didn’t make me so uneasy. She just had that energy about her, like she was hoping a fight would break out at any second just so she could let off some steam.

Like punching was her hobby.

“I was just about to show her the Sats,” Jett said, turning to face one of the monitors.

“Sats?” I asked.

“Satellite images.” His fingers danced over the keyboard, and a series of images flashed up on the screen. At first it was like looking at Google Earth: generic images I’d seen searching the Web. But then they became more specific as he refined the shots, honing in, until I recognized the city . . . the street . . . the house he was converging on. The image was crystal clear; there was no mistaking it.

It was my mom’s house. The very house I’d grown up in.

Except that it looked so strangely different now, covered almost completely in plastic. Enclosed the same way my mom had wrapped the leftovers she’d set out for me. Surrounding the property, all the way around the yard, there was a tall chain-link fence that hadn’t been there before.

“Quarantined?”

It was Simon who answered me. “They’re probably searching for evidence as well as contaminants. I wasn’t lying when I said they’d do anything to get their hands on you.”

“Assholes,” Willow growled, reminding me that we had an enemy in common.

“What about my dad? Has anyone heard from him? Did they get to him too?”

Jett went to work on the keyboard. “We’ve been following the online chatter—his message boards and chat rooms, all the places he usually frequents. So far he hasn’t made an appearance. But we also haven’t heard anything on the police or No-Suchers’ frequencies to make us think he’s been taken in for questioning either. He seems to have gone off the grid for now.” A satellite picture of my dad’s trailer popped up, and it was like looking at my mom’s house. It, too, had been quarantined, tented in plastic sheeting and enclosed by a chain-link barricade.

This time I could read the signs that were hung on the fencing: WARNING: RESTRICTED AREA

And at the bottom of the sign, in bold red letters: USE OF DEADLY FORCE AUTHORIZED.

The whole thing—the signs, the fencing, the quarantine—it was all insane.

“So, I never asked this, but when we were at the bookstore, Tyler and me, there was an agent who . . .” I stopped because it was hard to find a way to put the words together just right.

But I didn’t have to finish my thought, because Jett turned around to look at Simon—another silent exchange. They already understood what I wanted to know.

“He killed himself,” Willow answered before either of the two boys had a chance. “Shot himself. That’s how we knew you were in trouble; their frequencies blew up with word of an agent being exposed to a Code Red and offing himself.”

Code Red. So that’s what he’d meant.

I turned to Willow, who didn’t seem to have any qualms about answering my questions. “And Jackson?”

“Was that the other guy’s name?” She shrugged, and again I was struck by how easily they accepted all this. “They got him. He was exposed, too, I guess. Must’ve been fresh blood still on the floor when he came in to see what happened.”

I shifted on my feet. “How do you know he was exposed?”

Simon and Jett exchanged a look again, and again it was Willow who didn’t mince words. “We already got confirmation that he died.”

“Died? How?” I asked, ignoring both boys and turning all my attention to her now.

“How do you think?” she answered as if I were dense.

My voice cracked. “Already?”

Simon pushed past Willow to stand in front of me. “He probably touched it—the blood. If it made contact with his skin, it would have reacted more quickly.”

But that didn’t make sense. “It was on my clothes,” I explained. “Tyler . . . he touched me after I saw you. He should’ve—”

Simon interrupted. “It wasn’t fresh then. There’s only about a sixty-second window when contact makes a difference. Airborne’s bad, but skin contact’s worse.”

I don’t know if that was supposed to make me feel better, that Tyler would outlive Jackson because he hadn’t touched my blood within that sixty-second window, but it didn’t. Dead is dead.

I shook my head, not wanting to be like them. Not wanting to be okay with all this, to accept death so willingly. Already, though, I could feel the hollowness consuming me, and I wondered if this was how it started. The carving out of your emotions. If I would soon be empty, a shell. “There has to be a way,” I murmured, collapsing bonelessly into one of the chairs.

And then it was Jett—Jett who’d only been twelve when he’d been taken but was now sixty-four years old. Jett who looked at me with those confusing, kaleidoscope eyes when he said the words that gave me back some of myself. “Maybe there is a way.”

I shot to my feet. “Wh—what are you talking about? What are you saying?”

Simon looked as confused as I felt, and behind me, Willow was silent.

Jett blinked rapidly and pushed his hair out of his eyes. “What if . . .” He rubbed his hands on his pants. “What if he could be one of the returned?”

It was as if Jett had poured gasoline on an open flame.

“What you’re suggesting is crazy!” Simon shouted, waving his hands as he spoke. “No one’s ever done that. Not on purpose. Even if we wanted to, there’s no way of even knowing where or when one of these ‘takings’ might occur.”

“Besides,” Willow added, a million times more subdued than Simon was but just as convinced. “There’s no guarantee he’d even come back. Most don’t.”

I didn’t know that. I knew some didn’t, but not most. It didn’t matter, though. What Jett was suggesting, it was crazy. Beyond crazy.

It was as good as murder as far as I was concerned.

It was taking a normal, living, breathing human and turning him into something . . . less than human.

I’d be sentencing Tyler to a life where he would no longer be normal. Where he’d be a walking time bomb because his blood was toxic to everyone around him. And where he’d never age like other people, so he’d be forced to give up all his friends and family in order to keep his secret.

He’d be a freak, like me.

“Think about it,” Jett went on. “What if we can figure it out? What if we can pinpoint a location and take him there?”

“How?” Simon interrupted. “Where?”

Encouraged by Simon’s questions, Jett sprang into action. He went to one of the walls where he’d already hung the mostly decimated map I’d taken from my dad’s place. He tapped it, looking at me. “I enhanced the map we got from you. . . .” He went to the nearest workstation and pulled up an exact replica of the map, only this one was easier to read, the smudged lines clearer and more legible. “I also tried the USB, but it’s too damaged. I couldn’t get anything off it.”

Impatient, Willow chimed in. “Will you please just get to the point?”

“The CDs were another matter,” Jett continued, oblivious to Willow’s short temper. He grinned like a kid on Christmas morning. “Those were your dad’s backup files for the past five years, and your dad is one righteous record keeper. Most of what he had on those discs we already knew: names, dates, locations—that kind of thing.”

“So?” Simon interrupted. “What’s your point?”

“The point is, there’s one place that comes up in his files numerous times as a taking site. One place that’s shown up again and again and again and again in the past five years that we’ve never been able to pinpoint.”

Jett jumped up from his chair and tapped a spot on the map with the tip of a pen. “And it’s not that far from us.”

I stared at the distorted map of Washington State. “Where is it?” I asked, because even if I wasn’t willing to entertain the idea of letting Tyler become like me—like us—I needed to hear Jett out.

“It’s called Devil’s Hole.” Jett breathed the name, filling it with as much wonder as he could manage.

“Devil’s? Hole?” The skepticism in Willow’s voice was obvious.

Again Jett didn’t seem at all discouraged by her cynicism. “It’s here, not too far north of the Oregon border,” he explained as he traced a path from where we presumably were—in an abandoned nuclear bunker below the ground—all the way to the place where Jett believed Tyler had a chance of being taken.

“There’s been a lot of talk about it being just an Indian legend. In fact, there was this Native American shaman named Red Elk who once told reporters that his father had first taken him to see the hole back in 1961. He claimed that not only was the hole ‘endless’ but that strange things happened whenever he went near it. He never really said what those strange things were, but there were others who swore that animals refused to go anywhere near the giant crater. Some have said it’s the gateway to hell.” He flashed a crooked smile.

“Of course, none of these things was ever confirmed. At least not for the general public. But here’s the interesting thing. . . .” He raised his eyebrows. “No one’s ever really known the true location of Devil’s Hole. But there are those who believe the government knows exactly where it is and that it’s always been a source of alien activity, and they’ve been trying to conceal the location for years. According to your dad”—he was looking at me again—“those people are right, because he seems to know exactly where it is too.”

He took off the pen’s cap and circled a pinprick of a spot on the map, making it clear that this was the location in question. I studied the distance between here and there. He was right; it wasn’t far. A couple of hours at most.

“And what? You think we can just show up there, and they’ll take Tyler and heal him?” I couldn’t help it. The idea was preposterous.

“Not just heal. Restore,” Simon corrected.

“But if his body’s already damaged, won’t he come back that way too? Like me, with my bruise and my tan lines?”

Jett was already shaking his head. “That’s not usually how it works. We’ve seen cases where people with cancer were returned completely healthy, and people who’d had gruesome scars came back unblemished.”

It was so incredibly, unbearably, outrageously tempting—the idea of saving Tyler’s life.

But it wasn’t really his life I’d be giving him back. It was a new life.

I knew because I wasn’t the same anymore. As much as I wanted to believe I was still the same Kyra Agnew I was five years ago, I couldn’t keep living that life anymore. How could I possibly subject Tyler to that? How could I take away his life like that?

He still had a family who loved him.

I shook my head, more confused than ever. “I don’t know. How can I force him to become one of us?”

Willow scoffed at my reluctance. “What choice do you have? If you don’t, he’ll die.”

I spun around to face her. “If I do, his old life is over. Isn’t that the same thing?”

No one stopped me when I left the underground bunker and made my way to the surface once more. I had to see Tyler.

Either way I was a murderer; there was nothing I could do to change that fact. But this way at least he could die with dignity. He could leave this world the way he was meant to go—as himself.

Still, knowing it was the right choice didn’t make it any easier when I knelt beside him and saw the blisters that had broken out over his lips and cheeks, spreading down his neck. I wanted to touch him, to feel his heart beating beneath my palms; but I was afraid my touch might somehow hurt him, so instead I whispered his name into the chasm between us.

“Tyler,” I breathed, holding back the flood of emotions that hearing his name stirred within me. A name I’d forever equate with humanity. A name that would forever brand me—the way the fireflies had been seared into the skin of those suspected of being returned—a killer. “Tyler, I’m here. I promise I’ll stay with you.”

His head lolled my way, and spittle foamed at the corner of his mouth. I shouldn’t have disturbed him. I should’ve left him in peace. “K—K—Kyra,” he finally managed.

“Yes. It’s me.” I reached for his hand but stopped myself before I grabbed it. The outer layer of his skin was peeling away. At this rate, even if what was inside of him wasn’t killing him, he was sure to get an infection from the pollutants in the air around us. “Don’t say anything. You don’t have to say anything.”

But he struggled anyway, trying to talk. “K—Kyra.” He panted my name. Panted. And I physically ached at the effort he put himself through. “I w—want you to . . . know . . .”

“Tyler, don’t. Just . . . shh . . .”

He reached for me, blindly, clumsily. His raw fingers searched for me. And I wanted to touch him so badly that when they found me, I clumsily grabbed them, clinging to them, unable to stop myself. Unable to care that I might be hurting him. Maybe he was past hurt. Maybe I didn’t even care anymore. I wanted to stroke him. Kiss him. To breathe him in so I could remember that smell forever. “I . . . love . . . you . . . ,” he gasped at last.

That was it. He undid me with those words.

It would have been better if he’d said nothing at all, because I could live with nothing. Love . . . well, love was another matter altogether.

Love required sacrifice and making hard choices and doing things that were bigger than just you.

It wasn’t something you asked for, or could control or change. It was something you accepted.

Love was a force of nature.

Lifting his hand to my trembling lips, I remembered when he’d told me that he might be falling in love with me. I remembered exactly what he’d said to me.

“You can’t stand there and tell me you’re not that same girl, because I’m telling you, you are. You’re more perfect than anyone I know.”

Tyler thought I was perfect. And even now, knowing that I was the one responsible for doing this to him, he was able to say those words to me: I love you.

He understood, maybe better than I did, what it meant to love.

I searched his face, wondering how I could possibly let him go when he had so much left to do. Even if his family turned their backs on him, or if he had to walk away from them, didn’t he deserve a chance? Was it really up to me to decide who was, and wasn’t, normal enough?

I got to my feet, easing his hand down and squeezing it as gently as I could. “I love you, too, Tyler. So goddamned much it hurts.”

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

I RAN OUT OF THE DUSTY CABIN, YELLING ALL their names. Screaming for Simon and Willow and Jett. There were other Returned living in the camp, and they stopped what they were doing to watch me, none of them looking alarmed by the stranger in their midst. But I didn’t know any of them, and I didn’t care that I was drawing attention by my hysterics. I only cared about one thing now.

Without pausing, I plunged, feet first, through the opening in the ground. I was still shouting for the others as I sprinted down the concrete corridor, their names echoing off the walls and bouncing back at me.

But they were already halfway to me when I nearly barreled into them.

“We need to go.” I was breathless and panting. “I changed my mind. I want to take him. To Devil’s Hole. I want to try to save him.”

“I’m not sure that’s possible now,” Simon said, pulling me aside. “We . . . have a situation.”

“What? No. We need to take Tyler. We don’t have time—”

“Kyra . . .” Simon didn’t lower his voice, but he gripped my arm, and it was clear from his tone that whatever was wrong, it was serious. “We have to get out of here,” he confided. “Somehow they know where we are.”

“Who knows? The NSA? How?” I turned to Willow, remembering what she’d said when she’d picked us up, that there was no way we could be found here. “I thought you said this place was safe?”

Willow took a step toward me, her shoulders hunched as if I’d just declared war with my accusation.

Jett jumped between us. “We don’t know how. Maybe your dad knew about us. Maybe there was something in his files—a map or a diagram with our location—and they found it.” He shrugged as if it was impossible to believe, even for him. “I thought we were more careful.”

Simon waved both Jett and Willow away. “Doesn’t really matter now. What matters is, they’re coming. And if they know where we are, it’s just as likely they’ll figure out about Devil’s Hole. It might not be safe to go there.”

I shoved Simon, pushing him against the wall. I couldn’t let him give up that easily. “Nuh-uh. No way. I won’t let you do this. You said it yourself—what choice do we have? If we don’t take him and at least try, he’ll die for sure.” I could feel my decision, and Tyler’s last chance, slipping like sand between my fingers, and I was desperate to keep hold of it. “We have to take that chance.” I lowered my hands. “Simon, please,” I begged. “Please. We have to try.”

Simon closed his eyes, clearly struggling with what to do.

My gut twisted, and I chewed nervously on the inside of my lip while I waited for his answer.

When he opened his eyes, he looked past me to Willow. “Stay behind with Jett and organize the retreat. Gather as many supplies as you can.” He turned to Jett then. “Collect all the hard drives, and any paper and electronic files we have. Don’t leave them anything they can use to track us. Understood?”

“Of course.” Jett nodded, and then took off back toward the computer room to start stripping it down.

Simon turned back to Willow. “When we’re done, Kyra and I will rendezvous with the rest of the group at the Silent Creek camp. I’ll radio ahead and let them know to expect us. They’ll take us in, at least until we can find a new place to call home.”

“And Tyler,” I added, relief overwhelming me.

But Simon just shook his head. “No, Kyra. Tyler will either be gone by then—taken by them—or he’ll be dead. We can’t wait around to find out which. Once we get to Devil’s Hole, we’ll have to leave him there. Even if we had the luxury of waiting around for the next day or so to see if he’s going to be returned or not, people are rarely returned to the same place they’re taken from.” He ignored me then and looked at Willow once more. “We should be meeting you there by morning.”

If it hadn’t been for the morphine, I definitely would’ve changed my mind.

As it was, the screaming had stopped once the drug had finally entered Tyler’s system, which was just about the time we reached the long, barren stretch of highway on our way to Devil’s Hole.

But the screams still echoed inside my head, as did the implications of what I was about to do.

Playing God.

Still, I prayed it worked. That we weren’t chasing a pipe dream. That I wasn’t pinning all my hopes on the impossible.

Next to me, in the driver’s seat, Simon gave up trying to find a decent station on the radio. “Jett was trying to help, you know? That’s just his way,” he explained. “He grew up in Vegas. He was young, but his old man was a bookie, so numbers—odds—come second nature to him. He thinks everyone gets the same comfort from them that he does.” I thought about what Jett had told me, about his dad not being the kind of guy people messed with, and I guess it made some sense.

With the radio off, I could hear Tyler’s gurgling breaths coming from the backseat. It wasn’t that I’d wanted to be in front with Simon, but I’d been too afraid to sit in back with Tyler. I didn’t want to accidentally brush any part of his skin, which had broken out in large lesions. My jaw tensed as I turned to check on him.

“Well, Jett and his stupid statistics only made me feel worse,” I shot back under my breath, not wanting to disturb Tyler. “Now it’s all I can think about.”

And it was true, I kept turning the numbers over in my head.

Most people who were taken were never returned, that much I’d already known—Willow had said as much—but Jett had hammered the point home. He didn’t have any hard numbers, but his best guess had been somewhere around 33 percent. That was one person returned for every three taken, he’d clarified.

I hated to think what might have happened to the other 67 percent.

Maybe they were returned, too, and had never come forward. Or maybe they were failed experiments. Maybe they hadn’t survived whatever torture we’d been put through.

Maybe we were all expendable.

I couldn’t afford to think that way, not when I had Tyler’s life in my hands.

According to my father’s records, Jett explained, the likelihood of being taken from Devil’s Hole was higher than anywhere else. In the past five years there had been seven people reported missing from that area. That was the highest incidence of repeat “takings” ever recorded.

Seven people missing. It made sense that Tyler had a chance of being taken if we could just get him there in time.

The problem was, of those seven people, only one had returned.

One.

That was only 14 percent, Jett had explained. Considerably lower than the 33 percent average. The idea of subjecting Tyler to those odds made me sick.

But listening to Tyler breath now, I knew time was against us. Devil’s Hole was his last chance.

“Can I ask you something?” I probed, trying to push aside numbers and statistics because Tyler was more than that. “Why do you think they’re doing it? The experiments, I mean? What’s the purpose? What are we being put back here for?”

Simon stared out at the road for a long, long time, and for a long, long time I waited. After a while I gave up, turning my attention to the road, too, convinced he had no intention of answering me.

And then I heard him. “I ask myself that every day. Every day since I realized what I was. We all have. A lot of what Jett does is search for theories. He coordinates with other camps and even tracks down the lone Returned, trying to come up with some . . . reason for what’s been done to us.” He went silent again, and I remained rigid. Eventually he sighed. “I think there must be a reason; we just don’t know what it is yet. But it’s something big, and I think the No-Suchers think so, too, and that’s why they want to get their hands on us so badly.” Swallowing, he looked over at me. “I believe there’s a reason you were gone so much longer than the rest of us before you were returned. That they’re perfecting what they do to us, preparing for something. And those things you can do that we can’t, I think they’re important.”

I shook my head, afraid he might be able to see how much he was scaring me with all his talk of plans and something coming. “I think you’re wrong,” I denied in a whisper. “I think we were just in the wrong petri dish at the wrong time.”

Simon smiled at me. “Maybe you’re right. I think that, too, sometimes. That they’re just fucking with us because they can. That it’s all just a game, and we’re the pawns.”

I turned away. I hated to think my life had been turned upside down for some cosmic chess match. “How much longer till we get there?”

Simon looked at the gauges in front of him. “About two-and-a-half hours. Three at most. It’ll be dark by then.” He cast me a wry look, and I knew he was making a mental list of things I could do that the other Returned couldn’t. “But that shouldn’t be a problem for you.”

I leaned my head against the window, wondering how I’d last for three more hours listening to the labored sounds coming from the backseat and wishing I could stop myself from asking “How much longer do you think he has?”

Simon didn’t stop to ponder his answer the way I would have. He didn’t candy coat it either. “He might not survive the trip.”

It was a strange location. Not as hidden or off the beaten path as I’d expected, considering all the weird things Jett had told us about the place.

Because he was so into legends and facts, and where the two intersected, Jett had given us the exact coordinates, along with driving directions for how we could find the real Devil’s Hole.

The directions, however, were relatively simple to follow, and like Simon had predicted, it was just starting to get dark when we pulled off the main highway and onto the gravelly side road that Jett had marked for us.

After a couple of turns, we found the place at the end of a dirt road. No warning signs—no signs at all.

The only thing that struck me as unusual were the crickets, which shouldn’t have since we were out in the middle of the desert. Even with my window up I could hear them, giving the whole scene—the dry, weedy grasses and scrub brush for as far as I could see—a poetic vibe.

I twisted around in my seat as we came to a stop at the top of the short hill where the road ended. I was relieved that Tyler was still breathing.

Reaching out to Simon, I let out a shaky laugh. “We did it.”

Simon shut off the engine, his expression reserved. “Let’s don’t get ahead of ourselves. We haven’t done anything yet.”

I frowned at him, wanting him to be more optimistic. This had to work.

Glancing back at Tyler once more, I bit my lip. He was still unconscious, and I told myself it was the morphine. “Hang in there,” I whispered softly.

Beside me, Simon reached over and pressed his hand over mine. “I’m sorry. I just . . . I don’t want you to get hurt.” He withdrew his hand. “You need to be prepared, because this might not work, Kyra. He might not be taken. And even if he is . . .” He didn’t finish.

I swallowed. “I know.”

Simon opened his door and switched on his flashlight. “Don’t let your guard down,” he said in the same voice he used when he spoke to Willow or Jett. I wondered if that’s who I was now, one of his Returned. “The last thing we need is to be caught unaware.”

Caught. My mouth went dry at the reminder that the NSA might know about this place.

I searched the spare terrain, looking everywhere the flashlight couldn’t reach—all the places Simon couldn’t see. The car had kicked up a cloud of fine sand behind us, dust that would take several long minutes to settle. And our tracks, if someone was looking for them, would be easy enough to find.

I joined him, pretending I was interested in the map, even though the lines and squiggles, the keys and symbols, and the scales were complete gibberish to me. “Where is it?”

He looked around and then pointed off to the right, just beyond a cluster of flat rocks past the end of the road. “About twenty meters that way. We’ll have to carry him the rest of the way.”

I nodded mutely.

From inside the car, Tyler coughed. A wet, hacking sound.

“We need to hurry,” Simon told me, throwing down the map and shoving the flashlight into his back pocket. “We’re almost out of time.”

Even though Simon carried most of Tyler’s weight, I was sweating by the time we reached the top of the short hill. My job was to hold Tyler’s feet and serve as lookout, but Tyler was more alert now, moaning every time we bumped or jarred him, which was pretty much always, making me cringe inside. The coughing was worse, too, growing deeper and wetter sounding by the second. I worried he was drowning in his own fluids.

“Simon,” I rasped, unable to hold back my tears. “We found it. This is it.”

He grinned back at me, and for the first time I thought he might feel it too. Hope. “Just a few more steps,” he beamed.

When we reached the edge of the legendary crater, we set Tyler down and I collapsed. Wiping my cheeks with the back of my hand, I approached the brick wall that surrounded the rim. Someone had gone to great care to look after this place. Even the perimeter was well manicured. The grasses and brush were trimmed back so they didn’t crowd the wall or the area surrounding it.

At my feet, Tyler wheezed, a rheumy sound that made my skin crawl. “Now what?” I turned to Simon fearfully.

He looked back at me, and I could see it . . . in his eyes. The look that told me he had no idea.

We’d been waiting for almost an hour.

Waiting for the taking. Or, it seemed more likely at this point, waiting for Tyler to die.

I was okay with that now. I just wanted him out of his misery already. It was too hard to watch him suffer. Too hard to listen to his pleas for relief.

The morphine was wearing off, and he’d begun clawing at his own skin—at the blisters we could see, and the ones we couldn’t. It was like watching him try to rip away his own flesh.

“Try singing to him again,” Simon said from his place near the edge of the cavernous pit, where he’d been chucking rock after rock into the hole. “He seems to like that.”

Simon was right; the singing had worked . . . for a while. I’d tried everything I could think of to keep Tyler calm: whispering, cajoling, soothing.

“It’s not working,” I shot back. “He’s in too much pain.” My face crumpled. “Are you sure this is the right place?”

He paused, his arm cocked midthrow. “I’m positive. How many giant holes could there be?” He flung the rock to emphasize his point, and I knew he was as frustrated as I was.

I didn’t want to freak out, but that’s exactly what I was doing. “Maybe we’re scaring them. Maybe they won’t take him with us sitting right here, in plain sight.”

His shoulders fell as he stepped away from the rim. “Kyra,” he explained, and even in the dark I could make out those eyes of his, the same way I had that first time I’d seen him, in the bookstore. “People have claimed for years to witness the takings. Obviously bystanders have never stopped them before.”

“Then what?” I complained. “What are we doing wrong?”

The sound of tires rolling over gravel stopped us both cold. My head snapped around, in the direction we’d parked, while my heart beat once . . . twice . . . and once more, hammering agonizingly, thunderously inside my chest. “It’s them, isn’t it?”

Simon lunged for the flashlight on the ground, and he switched it off, ignoring me as he scurried to the ridge to get a better look. He gave me his answer the second he dropped down again, his back pressed against the wall of rocks and his fingers to his lips. There was nothing I could do about Tyler’s whimpering.

“What do we do?”

He pulled a knife from his back pocket and rolled up his sleeve. “I don’t want to do this, but if we have to, I’ll infect them.”

“Simon, no . . .” I jumped up from my spot next to Tyler, meaning to go to him, to convince him that was crazy talk. How could he be willing to use himself—his blood—as a weapon like that?

But I stopped, unable to speak or think or breathe the moment I saw it . . .

. . . them.

So very many of them.

It was like looking at a constellation.

A radiant, sparkling, living constellation.

“Oh my god . . .” I covered my mouth with both hands and gasped between my fingers. Tears blurred the lights, blending and distorting them until they were one giant mass in my eyes. “They’re so . . . so beautiful. . . .”

Simon looked at me, confused. He lowered the knife and let go of his sleeve as he turned to see what I had. To know what I knew.

That we’d been in the wrong place all along.

“Fireflies,” he breathed.

They weren’t amassed near the mouth of Devil’s Hole like we’d believed they would be but were gathered at the top of a rugged stone peak instead. The site of them, with the moon hanging high above and the outline of local wild-flowers and brush below, was picturesque, and almost made me forget what they foretold . . . and the reason we were here in the first place.

I knew for certain then that I’d never seen anything like them before, not in real life, because if I had, if I’d ever witnessed anything like their spectral presence, I would have known. I would have remembered. They were as out of place as they were haunting, and I fell to my knees as I realized what seeing them meant.

Because they were too far away.

We could never reach them, not in time.

Tyler was going to die.

Tyler passed out the moment we tried to lift him, as if he’d just given up.

As if even he knew we were too late.

Everything inside of me knew the same, but I couldn’t afford to stop trying. Not when we’d come so close.

But when I heard the last voice I ever expected to hear all the way out here, in the middle of the night near this strange place called Devil’s Hole, I froze, my eyes prickling with tears and my throat squeezing tight.

“You have to put the boy down, Kyra.”

I turned to watch the man approach, and I had to blink several times because I was blinded by the approaching flashlight.

But as the light bobbed away from my eyes, I saw him clearly. I would have recognized that flannel shirt and scruffy beard anywhere. “Dad?”

It was true. My dad was there, but he was with Agent Truman—the starched man in the starched suit—who stood just behind my dad.

“Kyra,” my dad said to me, his voice all rough around the edges, like it was hard for him to talk.

That was when I realized I had no family left to go back to. Agent Truman had convinced my mom I was dangerous and turned my dad against me too.

Blood pulsed behind my ears while my eyes slid to the thick Ace bandages wrapped around the agent’s right hand.

Seeing Agent Truman’s lopsided wrap job made me feel a million times better. I hoped he ended up needing surgery that involved metal pins and rods and lots and lots of recovery time, the same way Carrie Dreyer had when that broken bone had come through her skin.

“Do as he says, and your dad here doesn’t have to get hurt,” Agent Truman snarled at me over my dad’s shoulder.

I looked down then and saw the gun in Agent Truman’s good hand—his unbandaged one. He held it awkwardly, his grip unnatural, pointing directly at my dad’s back.

My dad lifted his hands in the air, showing me he was the same as me—a pawn. “I’m sorry, Kyr,” he said hoarsely.

My gaze slid out of focus as tears welled fatter behind my eyelids. My dad hadn’t turned on me. He was still my number one fan.

Simon gave me a meaningful look, and we did as we were told, easing Tyler onto the dusty ground. I took extra care to make sure we weren’t laying him on any rocks, and then I turned to my dad.

I struggled to find the right words, but everything seemed wrong and not big enough, and definitely not sorry enough for the way I’d turned my back on him. “No . . . Dad . . .” I shook my head, wishing more than anything I could run to him so I could feel his bear-like arms around me. “I’m the one who’s sorry. For everything. For not believing you in the first place.” Then my gaze shifted to Agent Truman. “You can’t do this,” I told him. “It’s illegal. He hasn’t done anything.”

His mouth twisted into a snarl. “This isn’t about legal or not legal.” He lifted his bandaged hand. “You have no idea how special you are, and I’m not about to let you get away again.”

I’d been so focused on my dad that I’d nearly forgotten all about Simon.

“I don’t think you have much choice,” Simon stated. His voice was subdued when he spoke. “That,” he said, nodding at the poorly wrapped Ace bandage. “That’s nothing.” He clutched his knife in his fingers, clenching and unclenching his fist.

Agent Truman’s eyes narrowed as they fell on the knife, but he didn’t even flinch. “You wouldn’t. Not with Kyra’s old man here.” He lifted his gun then, holding it to the back of my father’s head, and my heart nearly exploded.

Simon’s eyes slipped to my dad and then to me. I could see the surrender in his eyes even before his chin dropped and he lifted his hands in the air. And then, as if all the will had been drained from him like a deflated balloon, he opened his fingers and let the knife slip to the ground.

But Agent Truman didn’t back down as easily. He shoved the nose of the gun hard against the back of my dad’s neck. There was something in the agent’s expression, the wild look in his eyes and the firm set of his jaw, that made him look determined. He settled his gaze on me. “The easier you make this, the less likely dear old daddy won’t end up at in the bottom of that pit over there.”

“Let him go.” I couldn’t tear my gaze away from the gun. I couldn’t let him do what he was threatening. I couldn’t go with him, and there was no way in hell I was letting him hurt my dad. “Drop the gun,” I warned, trying to sound reasonable. “I mean it.” I concentrated, my hands curling into fists so tight my fingertips ached. A throbbing started in the back of my head.

I thought about the way I’d felt when I was at that gas station, when I wanted—when I needed—those pain relievers for Tyler so he wouldn’t die from fever.

And now what I needed was for Agent Truman not to kill my dad.

I blinked slow and hard. I forced all my attention on the gun, on the barrel.

I clenched and unclenched my fingers, balled and unballed my fists. “No!” I screamed. “Let! Him! Goooo!”

When the gun jerked from his grasp, it flew end over end so fast that I could barely track it. It was that fast. A blur.

But I did see it, and so did everyone else, watching as it hurtled like a rocket toward the crater.

We never heard it hit the bottom.

For a moment I just stood there with my mouth hanging open. I’d done it. I’d actually moved something with my mind . . . on purpose. And this time there were witnesses.

Simon didn’t take as long to react, and he turned to me in an instant, his copper eyes finding me as he demanded, “You . . . you did this.” It wasn’t a question because, of course, he’d seen the truth with his own two eyes.

He looked stunned, and maybe a little pissed that I hadn’t told him everything I was capable of, when we heard Tyler. He exhaled, releasing a gut-wrenching gurgle.

And like that, I was no longer concerned with Simon or Agent Truman or even my dad. I dropped besides Tyler as blood trickled from the corner of his mouth. This was it, I thought, even as I was silently screaming not yet . . . not yet . . . not yet!

“Tyler,” I whispered, leaning as close to him as I could get so no one else could hear us. My windpipe felt crushed, and it was hard to swallow. My eyes ached.

He was burning up again, but I guess none of that mattered anymore. It would soon be over. He’d be at peace. “I’m here. I’m staying right here.” I reached for his hand, no longer worried about hurting him, and his eyelids fluttered open.

He tried to focus, but his sightless eyes made it impossible, and his gaze darted wildly about, making him look lost and confused. I finally gave myself permission to cry, because there was nothing left to do. I’d taken him to the wrong place.

Maybe, I thought desperately. Maybe if we all tried . . . maybe there is still time.

I petitioned Agent Truman, who was just standing there, gaping at his empty hand. “Please. If we can just get him up to that hill. If you help me, I promise I’ll go with you.” I pointed to the place where the fireflies had been just a few short minutes ago.

But the rocky peak was dark now. The fireflies were gone.

Beside me, Tyler sputtered, and I turned to see blood spewing from his mouth and trickling from his nose now too. When he gasped, he choked on it, and then choked some more.

He really was drowning, and soon it would be over.

“What the—”

I didn’t know what Agent Truman was trying to say, but Tyler’s hand suddenly went weaker in mine, his fingers going limp as his gasps grew frail and reedy.

“Kyra.” My dad said my name, but it barely registered. How could I care? How could anything else matter when Tyler was dying? When I was losing him?

And then a cloud of light passed over the top of me.

I wanted to ignore it, but it was far too radiant to be overlooked. Still holding Tyler’s hand, because I wasn’t ready to say good-bye, I glanced skyward; and when I did, my chest tingled and I felt light-headed.

They were amazing this close-up. The fireflies. They were so close I could single out individual clusters of the tiny, glowing insects. It wasn’t like before when they’d appeared to be one enormous knot. Rather, they were like a collection of several groups that had all come together. Like tribes working in unison.

And they were positively breathtaking.

Dropping Tyler’s hand at last, I stood up as I watched while this swarm—this giant, undulating cloud—began to break apart. Beyond me, at the crater, something was happening, and there was light pulsing up from below, from deep down inside Devil’s Hole.

Whatever was down there was alive. And it was coming closer. It was bright and fast, and loud, and it sounded vaguely like the fireflies above us—like the millions of wings that beat. Only louder. Angrier.

And when they were finally there and we could see them at last, we knew what they were. They were fireflies too. But there were so many more of them as they emerged from Devil’s Hole. So many it was impossible to see anything but them. They were everywhere. All around us. Eating up all the space until there was no room, no air, no nothing left at all.

I would have run, but I didn’t know where to go. I couldn’t move or breathe without touching wings and legs and antennae. I could feel them crawling and fluttering and bumping into me, tangling in each and every strand of my hair, creeping beneath every layer of clothing, crawling up my nose, and nesting in my ears.

I slapped and scratched and flung them away from me, knowing it was useless because there would only be more to take their places but totally unwilling to accept their infestation all the same.

The flash, when it came, was nothing like the first time, when I’d felt it throughout my entire body. When I’d tingled and been weightless and felt tugged by whatever force had been pulling me from the ground.

This flash was the same, but different.

It was blinding, exactly the way it had been before, the night I’d disappeared from Chuckanut Drive while my father had watched helplessly. Blinding to the point that I couldn’t see, or sense, anything for several long minutes. I tumbled to the ground, entirely disoriented. I couldn’t tell up from down or left from right.

I opened my mouth to call for help, but no sound came out. I was speechless, sightless, helpless.

And then, like before, on that fateful night on Chuckanut Drive, there was nothing. . . .