Erased

by Jennifer Rush

  Of course, there was one common denominator in all of this. The whole reason Sam had gone to so much trouble before the farmhouse, the whole reason he’d had clues to retrace in the first place.

  Dani.

  The sister who had been stolen from me.

  Sam’s old girlfriend.

  Dani was a huge part of Sam’s past. I knew he was at least curious to fill in the blanks about her death, even if he wouldn’t admit to it. And finding out more information about her would also give me more information about my family and my past.

  It didn’t escape me, though, the fact that I was in love with my sister’s old boyfriend, and that if she were alive, Sam and I probably wouldn’t be together.

  What if digging into our past reminded Sam of what he’d lost with Dani? What if it brought on the guilt that was already creeping into my thoughts?

  And what would that mean for us?

  I wasn’t sure if I was willing to take that risk.

  3

  NICK BACKED INTO A PARKING SPOT in the grocery store lot, facing the SUV toward the exit so we could escape quickly if we needed to. Out of habit, I checked the lot and the street beyond, pausing on anyone that looked suspicious. There was a woman hurrying a child down the sidewalk, both of them hunched against the wind.

  A gray-haired man got out of his sedan in front of the paper goods store and raced inside. A small black truck with tinted windows crawled past the grocery store. It might have been suspicious, but the streets were slick with snow and salt, making traveling over thirty miles an hour almost impossible. Regardless, Nick and I watched as it rounded the next corner.

  “Are we good?” I asked.

  Nick checked his rearview mirror one more time before pulling the keys out of the ignition. “We’re good.”

  I hurried toward the store, arms clasped tightly in front of me, trying to ward off the wind. Inside, I grabbed a cart as Nick sauntered up behind me.

  Without saying a word, we started down the first aisle, where all the discounted items were, and started picking things off our list. While Sam still had cash on reserve, we were trying to be smart with the money we had left, and food generally came in second behind weapons. Food could be stolen if it came down to it, but guns were harder to come by. You couldn’t pluck a gun off a gas station shelf while someone distracted the store clerk.

  At the end of the sale aisle, I paused to check out a display of winter gear. I’d been running every day but was finding it more difficult in the colder air. My throat tightened up too quickly, and my lungs burned. I couldn’t make it a full 5k without having to walk.

  I grabbed something called a neck gaiter and held it out in front of me. It was really nothing more than a tube of fleece meant to cover half your face. That’d help keep my throat and lungs warm.

  Nick nodded at the gear when I tossed it in the cart. “What are you getting that for?”

  “To help me run better.”

  He snatched it from the cart and hung it back up. “Don’t train yourself into a crutch. You think the Branch is going to wait for you to”—he read the tag—“put your neck gaiter on before chasing you down?”

  I gave the fleece a wistful look before following after Nick. He was right, of course, and that only annoyed me more.

  Halfway through the store, Nick disappeared, but I didn’t bother looking for him. I was happier shopping alone anyway. I filled the cart with the necessities, making good time. Sam liked us to be in and out of the store in less than thirty minutes. As I headed into the condiments aisle, I checked my list, tossing ketchup and mustard into the cart before crossing them off. I started for the peanut butter and grumbled when I found my favorite brand gone.

  “Is there something I can help you find?”

  I whirled around. A boy wearing one of the store’s green uniforms stood behind me. His name tag read BRAD in crinkled sticker letters.

  “Umm…” I pointed at the shelf over my shoulder. “Do you guys hold stock in the back? I’m looking for Mountain Valley peanut butter, and the shelf’s empty.”

  The boy smiled, showing a crooked front tooth. “I can check. Hold on just a sec.” He pulled a walkie-talkie from his belt, pressed a button, and said, “Lori, can you look up a UPC for me?”

  The handheld crackled with static, and then a woman said, “Read me the numbers.”

  “You don’t have to go to this much trouble,” I said and started backing up.

  We were running out of time, and I still had to find Nick and check out. Sam would worry if we took longer than an hour. And who knew what he’d do in response.

  “It’ll just take a second,” Brad said, and started rattling off a series of numbers into the walkie.

  I checked both ends of the aisle. Sam had been teaching me surveillance techniques, and one of his biggest points was Know your surroundings.

  The woman’s voice sounded a second later. “Out of that product until the truck comes in.”

  “All right. Thanks.” Brad turned to me. “I suppose you heard that.”

  I smiled. “I did. I appreciate you checking.”

  I pushed the cart forward, but Brad followed. “Are you new around here? I don’t think I’ve seen you before. Do you go to Bramwell High?”

  “No. I mean, yes, I’m new here, but I’m homeschooled. Or was. I’m done.” That was a lie. I still had a few months left.

  “Cool,” Brad said as he clipped his walkie-talkie onto his belt. He shoved his hands in his pants pockets, causing him to hunch forward. He was quite a few inches taller than me, maybe six foot even. The same height as Sam.

  “Where do you live?”

  That question caught me off guard, and immediately all my senses went on alert. Was he asking because he was being friendly or because he was part of the Branch?

  Fortunately, Nick appeared and answered for me. “She doesn’t live anywhere close by. Come on, Frannie. We have to go.”

  Frannie? I frowned. That was the best alias he could come up with?

  “Right. I’m coming, Gabriel,” I said.

  Nick narrowed his eyes. Gabriel was an alias he’d used before the farmhouse lab. We’d found mention of it in one of his old files. He detested that name. “Sounds like the kind of guy I’d hate,” he’d said.

  Brad looked between Nick and me.

  Cas once described Nick as a shark masquerading as a panther, which pretty much summed it up. Even strangers could pick up on Nick’s terrible personality, or lack thereof, if he wasn’t trying to hide it.

  And right now, he wasn’t.

  Brad straightened his shoulders. Whether consciously or unconsciously, he was going into defense mode.

  I could tell Brad thought Nick was my boyfriend, which made me want to deny it quickly and vehemently. But then Nick put his arm around me and pulled me closer. The denial got stuck in my throat.

  “Umm… thanks for your help,” I said as Nick steered us away.

  “No problem,” Brad said quietly, still rooted in place.

  When we were out of the aisle and on to the next, I shrunk away from Nick. “Was that really necessary?”

  He plucked a box of cereal off the shelf and tossed it in the cart. “Was what necessary?”

  I sighed. “Sometimes I hate you.”

  “Yeah, well, the feeling is mutual.” He grabbed a canister of rolled oats. “What were you doing, anyway? Chatting up the stock boy? You know better, Frannie.”

  “I’m not a child, Gabriel.” I blew an exasperated breath past my lips. “All I wanted was some peanut butter.” I crossed off cereal and oats on the list. “And I was handling it just fine before you showed up. I’m smarter than you seem to think.”

  “Maybe so, but you’re not as prepared for any of this as the rest of us.”

  True. But I was learning. And I was willing to do whatever it took to be prepared.

  We finished filling the cart and chose the only checkout lane that was open. It was run by a girl a few years older than me with bl
ack hair and one stripe of cheery red in her bangs. A hoop pierced her lower lip and another hung from her left eyebrow.

  When she saw Nick, she smiled, showing off a steel ball in the center of her tongue. “How are you today?” she asked him, totally ignoring me.

  Nick might be surly around me, but he knew when and how to turn on the charm, and apparently now was one of those times.

  He leaned a hip into the counter and crossed his arms over his chest, making his biceps bigger. He grinned. “I’m good. You?”

  The girl shrugged. “It’s been slow today. This place is so boring.”

  Nick laughed, the sound hoarse and deep. “This town is boring.”

  “Totally.” The girl rolled her eyes, commiserating with him. “My friends and I go to the city almost every weekend just to escape.”

  Nick leaned in closer. “Where do you go?”

  “Usually a club called DuVo. It’s pretty rad.”

  Rad? Who uses that word?

  I watched the register screen for the total and handed over enough cash to cover it.

  “Maybe I’ll check it out,” Nick said.

  “You totally should.” The girl gave me the change and the receipt. “We’ll be there tomorrow night for sure.”

  “What’s your name?” Nick asked, using the excuse to check out the girl’s chest, like he meant to find a name tag.

  “Teresa,” she said.

  Nick smiled. “I’ll see you later, Teresa.”

  She smiled back as I scooped up the shopping bags, twice as annoyed as I had been five minutes ago. If that was even possible.

  In the parking lot, I threw the bags in the back of the SUV and slid in the passenger seat. “How do you do that, anyway?”

  Nick stuck the key in the ignition and the engine cranked to life. “Do what?”

  “Act normal and fake.”

  “It’s a learned skill.”

  “Are you really going to that club?” The question came out holding more weight than I meant it to. As much as Nick and I disliked each other, I still cared where he went and how long he was gone. Our relationship might have been dysfunctional, but it was safer to stick together. No one else could possibly understand what we’d gone through or what we still had to deal with every day.

  I set an elbow on the door rest and looked out the window, trying not to care what Nick’s answer was.

  “Maybe,” he said as he pulled out of the parking lot. “Not that it’s any of your business.”

  “Yes, it is. Because we have rules, and the rules are we don’t separate.”

  He frowned at me briefly before turning his attention back to the road. “That’s bullshit and you know it. I can manage just fine on my own.”

  “At the risk of dying.”

  He grunted. “Dying would be preferable to this conversation.”

  I sighed. Of course, we all had the right to leave the group whenever we wanted.

  I hadn’t thought any of us would actually do it, though.

  4

  I PULLED A QUILT OVER MY LAP AND propped myself up against the headboard of my bed, setting my journal on my knees. I flipped through the pages, my fingers coming away covered in graphite dust.

  I stopped on a sketch of a boy with amber eyes, and my stomach clenched.

  Trev.

  He’d been the fourth boy in the farmhouse lab and had become my best friend during our years in the program together.

  But he’d turned on me when I’d needed him the most.

  He’d put a gun to my head.

  I closed my eyes as the memory came back. Some nights I dreamed that he’d pulled the trigger.

  I missed him. Or at least the old him. More than I could admit to Sam or the others without feeling like a traitor.

  Trev had been the one I went to when I needed advice. Especially when it came to Sam. Trev never made me feel weak, or silly, or any of the other things you’d think you’d feel growing up around four genetically altered boys.

  To Trev, I’d been an equal, always.

  I tried reminding myself that the Branch had wiped Trev’s memories, planting false ones in the void, just like they had with me. He’d believed he was working for the Branch to protect someone he loved.

  If anyone understood what that felt like, it was me. But forgetting that he’d manipulated all of us and almost cost us our lives was another story.

  With a pencil in my hand, I turned to a blank page and started roughing in a sketch, trying to banish all thoughts of Trev from my mind.

  The idea for the sketch had come out of nowhere a few days before. I didn’t know what it meant, but I couldn’t shake the image, and I thought getting it out on paper might help to decode it.

  I started with the foreground, because that was the clearest in my mind. There were two people on a porch overlooking a darkened yard. It was well after dusk. They sat on the steps, hunched close, as if they were sharing secrets.

  In the background was a line of tall, skinny trees, not unlike the birch trees that made up Sam’s tattoo.

  I’d seen the place that matched Sam’s tattoo; it’d been not far from my childhood home, and this—the porch, the birch trees, it all seemed awfully familiar.

  Was the sketch an old memory?

  When I finished, I held up the journal.

  The two people, though they were faced away, were a boy and girl. The boy was taller, older. His hair was a silhouette of loose curls against the landscape beyond the porch. The girl’s hair was pulled back in a bouncy ponytail.

  The girl was me.

  I was almost sure of it. A phantom scent came to me, and I closed my eyes. The smell of wet earth. Of summer air. Of a boy.

  Immediately I knew he was someone important to me. Or had been at one time. He was a feeling more than he was a specific person or a face.

  Sadly, I didn’t know enough details about my biological family to know if he was a part of it. As far as I knew, I only had one sibling: Dani. But I supposed it could have been a neighbor or a cousin. These were the answers I wanted, the reasons I needed to look into my past.

  Maybe someone else knew how Dani had died. Or maybe they knew more about our family.

  After shutting the journal, I eased beneath the quilt and closed my eyes again, hoping something might come to me.

  I pictured my old house, the bedrooms, the kitchen, the back porch.

  In my head, I tried to re-create the scene from the sketch, when a footstep sounded from the doorway.

  I shot upright.

  Sam stood just inside the bedroom, a cup in each hand. “Hey,” I said. “Aren’t you supposed to be on watch?” It was late, and I’d heard Nick and Cas go to bed not too long ago. Whatever had brought Sam here was more important than him guarding the house, apparently. A thrill went up my spine until I saw the disquieted look on his face.

  Nudging the door shut, he came farther into the room. “I brought you something to drink.”

  I took the offered coffee. He didn’t have to say anything for me to know he was worried about me. Probably because of my mistake earlier, during our perimeter sweep. This time I’d almost walked into a bear trap—next time it might be a Branch agent.

  “I’m fine,” I said. “I know you came up here to check on me.”

  He let out a breath and sat on the edge of the bed. “None of us are fine, Anna.” He leaned over and set his coffee on the bedside table. “I know what I went through when I started having flashbacks. I know what it felt like to withdraw from the treatments they were giving us in the farmhouse. And who knows how it’ll affect you. Your treatments were different from ours, and they weren’t documented well. We have nothing to go on.” He paused, then said, “I just want to be sure you’re feeling okay. Because if you’re not—”

  “I would be a liability.”

  He didn’t say anything.

  “I’m fine,” I repeated. “I swear it.”

  He glanced at me over his shoulder. “I think you’re lying.”
/>   “I think you’re overreacting.” I took a drink of coffee before putting the mug next to his on the table.

  And that’s when he lunged.

  He grabbed me by the wrist and twisted, his back to my chest, flipping me over. A second later, he was on top of me, my arms pinned, his legs tight against my hips.

  The springs in the bed squeaked and settled before I could catch my breath and comprehend what he was doing.

  He was testing me.

  And I’d failed.

  I hadn’t defended myself. I hadn’t fought back. I hadn’t reacted at all.

  He leaned forward, eyes tight. “You. Are. Not. Fine.”

  “Of course I’m not going to fight you. I know you won’t hurt me.”

  “Your brain shouldn’t have had time to distinguish between enemy or friend. We’ve been training you. You had years of combat classes. Defending yourself, even against someone you care about, shouldn’t be a secondary reaction. It should be your first.”

  I licked my dry lips. Sam’s attention shifted downward, and heat touched my cheeks. I unclenched my hands, moving beneath him.

  His hold lessened, and I felt his legs loosen. I seized the opening, arching my back. He lost his balance and pitched to the side, so I followed the movement, rolling us over so I pinned him.

  Finally, he relaxed and grinned. It was a treat I didn’t get often, and I found it ridiculously hot.

  “Better?” I asked with an arch of my eyebrows.

  “Better. But we still need to talk about what’s going—”

  I cut him off with the press of my lips. He didn’t stop me, and his hands moved to the curve of my butt, pulling me closer. I dropped forward as Sam’s mouth sunk lower, down my jaw, down my neck to my collarbone.

  A board creaked on the first floor.

  Sam and I both froze. My heart beat at every pulse point from the leftover thrill of Sam’s body pressed against mine and the sudden adrenaline bursting through my veins.

  Sam retrieved one of his guns from beneath the mattress and quietly pulled the slide, loading a bullet in the chamber. I rolled over, edged off the bed, and dropped to my knees, retrieving the gun I’d hidden beneath the bed frame.