Dani called later that morning. “I got a message out to Uncle Will that I found you and that I was sending you his way. Hopefully I’ll hear from him later with a specific meeting time and place.”
“Thanks. Does Sam know you’re doing this?”
“No. I called while he and Cas were in the bathroom. We’re at a rest stop right now.”
I exhaled. “Thanks for that. I don’t want him knowing yet.”
Nick snickered beside me.
“No problem,” Dani said. “Will you make it to Port Cadia by tonight?”
“Yeah, I think so. We’re getting food right now and then we’ll be back on the road.”
“Good. I’ll call as soon as I know more.”
We said our good-byes, and I tossed the prepaid into the center console.
“What do you want to eat?” Nick asked.
“I don’t know. I’m not picky.”
He whipped the car into the nearest shopping lot and parked in front of a little café in the lower level of a huge redbrick office building.
Wind chimes rang out above us as we opened the door. The barista perked up. “What can I get for you guys?” she asked, readjusting the visor of her green hat. Her ponytail was wound in a loose bun and hung out the back.
“I just want black coffee,” Nick said.
“Nothing to eat?” I asked.
“Nope.” He sauntered off and picked a table near the windows but not directly in front of them.
I ordered a coffee and a sandwich and waited for our order to come up. When it did, I shuffled over to the bar area so I could add tons of cream and sugar to my cup.
My stomach grumbled at the sight of the food and the smell of the fresh-brewed coffee. I tore open a sugar packet and upended it over the cup. Out the corner of my eye, I saw Nick shove his chair back and wind his way through the occupied tables.
“Here’s your coffee,” I said.
“We have to go.”
Instantly I was on alert. “Why?”
“Why do you think?”
I glanced out the front windows. A black Suburban was parked in the street. And there were agents headed for the café.
“Oh my God.”
Nick gave me a shove toward the back of the building. We turned left down a hallway. There was an alternate exit there next to the stairwell and an elevator. Nick peered out the tiny window in the exit door.
He cursed beneath his breath. “We have to go up.”
“What?”
“Up the stairwell. Go.”
The sound of wind chimes clanging together got me moving. In the stairwell, we rushed up an entire flight. I was extremely grateful for having the endurance to keep up with Nick.
“This way,” Nick said and motioned me to the second floor. We entered a carpeted hallway. Two women in pencil skirts and suit jackets walked past. “Excuse me,” Nick said. “Is there another exit in this building?”
The woman closest to him nodded and gestured with a tip of her head in the opposite direction. “On the east side of the building.”
Nick smiled. “Thanks.”
When the women walked away, Nick pushed me down the hall. We took several wrong turns, passing office after office before locating the second stairwell. Nick reached for the door at the same time it rushed open.
A gun was shoved in Nick’s face. “Don’t move,” the agent said.
Nick put his hands up. A second agent came out of the stairwell. A woman. She positioned her gun on me.
Using his free hand, the man pressed a finger to his ear, to the device attached there.
“We got them,” he said right before Nick shot him in the head.
18
THE FEMALE AGENT WIDENED HER EYES and swung toward Nick. I ripped a fire extinguisher off the wall and whacked her over the head with it. She dropped next to her fallen partner.
“Jesus!” I shouted at Nick. “She had a gun on me. She could have killed me!”
“Start stripping them.”
“What?”
“Just do it.”
I peeled off the woman’s boots, then her pants. I tore off her hat, and a cascade of brown hair fanned over the floor. I had to wrestle with her jacket and T-shirt.
“Now what?” I asked.
Nick scanned the empty hallway before darting inside a darkened office. The door said it was an accounting business. “In here,” he said. He dumped the first agent’s clothes in a closet, but saved the walkie-talkie. I dumped the woman’s clothes next to the other pile and shut the door.
“Out,” Nick said, pointing at the window.
Without questioning this time, I unlatched the window and shoved upward. The wind pulsed inside, rattling the bamboo blinds. I eased onto the ledge, which overlooked an adjoining office building. Nick came out next and shut the window quietly. He held the agent’s earpiece between us. I could hear voices faintly through the device.
“Unit one, check in,” someone said.
“Unit one, roger,” a woman said.
“Unit two, check in.”
Silence.
“Unit two, check in.”
Nick spoke through a tiny microphone on the device’s cord. “Unit two momentarily knocked unconscious. We seem to be… um… missing our clothes.”
More silence. My teeth began chattering together as I pressed against the building’s exterior. I could already feel my nose turning red in the cold.
“All units,” the person said, “identify your partners. Suspects are believed to be posing as agents in uniform. I repeat, identify your partners.”
A smirk touched the corner of Nick’s lips. “Ready to jump?” he asked.
The next building was also a two-story building, but it was at least six feet shorter.
“What if I break my leg?” I said, more to myself than to Nick.
“What if an agent hits you with a tranq and takes you into headquarters, and they wipe your memory?”
I cringed. “Point taken.”
“On three,” he said. “One. Two. Three.”
I jumped and my arms spun. When I hit the roof of the next building, I tucked into a forward roll to avoid breaking any bones. Nick did the same, and we took off at a run. We leapt over a small ledge between buildings.
A bullet hit the brick chimney two feet to my left. I slid over a patch of ice as I slowed, glancing over my shoulder.
Riley was standing in the window we’d just escaped from, his gun aimed right at me.
Nick yanked me in the opposite direction. Another bullet blazed over top of me, pinging off a return air vent.
Nick ran to the edge of the roof, where the row of buildings ended in an alley. He didn’t slow, and every instinct told me to pull back, dig my feet in before I leapt to my death. But Nick had never put me in harm’s way.
I had to trust him. The alternative wasn’t any safer.
We leapt off the roof. My stomach sunk to my knees. The air in my lungs fluttered in the back of my throat. I didn’t even have the presence of mind to scream.
We landed in a Dumpster piled high with black garbage bags, enough to soften our landing. Without pausing, I jumped out onto the bare concrete, with Nick just behind me.
“Go right,” he said, so I did.
At the mouth of the alley, Nick and I slid to a stop as an agent rounded the corner, his gun directed at us.
“Got ’em,” the agent said. “Alley between West Fifty-Fifth and Huntley.” To us he said, “Don’t move.”
But, as I knew all too well, Nick didn’t like orders, and I was beginning to feel the same way.
I grabbed the agent’s gun, stepped to the left, shoved up. A shot went off, the bullet lodging itself in the wall next to us. Nick swept in, kicking the man in his now exposed left side. A rib cracked. Nick kicked again. The man’s grip loosened on his gun, and I wrenched it from his hands as his legs buckled. Nick kneed him in the jaw. I shot him in the leg.
Nick and I looked at each other. Something unspoken cros
sed between us. An understanding, maybe. That if we stopped butting heads so much and started working together, we’d be unstoppable.
“Go,” Nick said. Our path was clear for now, but who knew how long we had before more agents arrived.
I could guarantee it wasn’t long enough.
19
WE RAN FOR FIVE MILES. STRAIGHT. To say that I felt like dying at the end would be an understatement. Nick didn’t even seem winded. Since our car was all the way in the other direction and stealing another car would take time out in the open that we didn’t have, we hid in a nondescript diner, waiting for things to cool off.
Nick held his coffee between both hands as he watched the door and the front windows warily.
On our five-mile jog, Nick had worn the agent’s earpiece so he could track the Branch’s movements. When they’d located their downed agent at West Fifty-Fifth Street, they’d followed our footprints in the snow to Lucgrove Avenue, where we’d essentially disappeared into a brick wall.
That was thanks to Nick, who devised a plan to use empty milk crates to climb onto the roof of a sandwich shop. He’d knocked the crates over as he hung from the roof’s ledge to cover what we’d done. The Branch was probably savvy enough to figure it out, but we weren’t leaving any clues if we could help it.
From there, we covered the span of an entire block by rooftop, the city spread out around us. Hastings wasn’t a large metropolitan area, but I could make out a few skyscrapers in the distance and the streets below us were busy with foot traffic despite the January weather. When Nick and I finally climbed down a fire escape, out footsteps were easily lost in the hundreds already pressed into the snow.
That was forty-five minutes ago, and Nick hadn’t spoken since we’d ordered our coffee.
When his phone rang in his pocket, he nearly lurched out of his chair.
“You okay?” I asked.
He checked the phone’s display, ignoring the question. “It’s for you.”
The screen read Sam’s number. “Hey,” I said when I answered, trying to act casual when I was anything but.
“Where are you?” Sam said, his tone not at all conversational. If anything, it was suspicious.
I looked at Nick. He raised a brow.
“In a diner.”
“In Michigan?”
I winced. How did he figure these things out so quickly?
“I traced the phone,” he answered, sensing my unspoken question. “You’re two hundred miles from where you’re supposed to be. Did Nick talk you into something?”
“No.” If anything, it was me who talked him into coming.
“Why are you in Michigan?”
“I want to dig into my family’s past. I want to know more.” That was a close truth.
“Don’t tell me you’re going to Port Cadia.”
“Okay. I won’t.”
“Anna.”
“What else am I doing right now, Sam?”
He let out a breath. “Please don’t go to Port Cadia without me.”
I closed my eyes. I was so tired. I was tired of arguing. Tired of being treated like I was somehow more fragile than the boys. I might have been a girl, but that didn’t mean I needed to be coddled. I contemplated confessing that we’d encountered agents, that we’d seen Riley, that we’d had to fight for our lives and won. But he was already annoyed, and telling him all that would only make it worse.
“We’re already halfway there,” I answered. “I’m not turning back.”
If Uncle Will could give us anything, anything at all, it was worth meeting him. Plus I wanted to see him in person. See one more member of my forgotten family.
There was a long pause before Sam spoke again. “Be safe, then. Stay alert like I taught you.”
“I will.”
Nick reached across the table and snatched the phone from my ear. To Sam, he said, “You had any flashbacks about that night five years ago?”
I guessed Sam needed no clarification for what night Nick was referring to—the night my parents died, the night Sam and the others had supposedly been caught by the Branch.
Nick scanned the diner while he listened to whatever Sam’s response was. “If you remember anything, call me.” A pause. “Because something isn’t right about it, but I don’t know what yet.” Another pause. A grumble. “I will.”
He tapped the phone off with a finger and went back to analyzing every single person who entered the diner.
“What made you question Sam about that night?” I said gently.
“If I knew, I wouldn’t have had to ask the question.”
I slumped in the chair, stretching my legs out. He was so difficult sometimes.
I didn’t expect him to elaborate, not after that comment. But maybe there was something in the coffee that loosened him up, because he added, “I don’t trust your sister.”
I frowned. “Why?”
“I don’t know. The fact that she’s been gone five years, that we found her in the same lab as those brainwashed kids. Or how about the fact that she seems perfectly okay with you and Sam being together? Like she already knew.”
“How was she supposed to take it? Bitterly? For one, she has been gone for five years. She moved on. And two, I’m her sister.”
He screwed up his face. “So because you share blood, stealing her boyfriend is okay?”
I cocked my head to the side. “I did not steal Sam.”
The front door opened, and Nick’s attention flicked to it briefly before settling back on me. “Call it whatever you want. But if you ask me, she came to terms with it a little too quickly.”
I shook my head. “She’s my sister. I trust her.”
“You don’t even know her.”
“We’re family.”
Nick tightened his hold on his coffee cup. “Family means nothing. Your own blood can do fucked-up things to you.”
I stared at him. Did he know about his dad? That he used to abuse Nick?
I reached across the table. “Nick, I—”
He shrunk away. “Are you ready to get out of here?”
I pulled my hand back. “Yeah.”
He tossed a twenty on the table and walked toward the door, shoulders hunched.
Months ago, Nick had told me he thought it was better for him if he didn’t remember. His exact words were, “I might not remember who I was before all this, but I can bet it wasn’t all sunshine and fucking roses.”
I still sometimes wondered if that was true, if knowing would somehow make everything worse. Eventually Nick would have to talk about his past, wouldn’t he? It seemed like out of all of us, not talking about his issues or memories would damage him the most. Maybe that’s why he’d ended up with the Branch in the first place, because he hadn’t worked through the things his dad had done to him. But for me, it was different. There was a voice in the back of my head that said I would never feel complete if I didn’t fill in the missing pieces.
I wanted to know about my family, my past, who I was and why I was here, what had sent me on this path.
I only hoped Uncle Will could help.
20
OLD-FASHIONED LAMPPOSTS ON THE sidewalk had flicked on since we’d been inside the diner and now illuminated the street in a golden glow. The temperature had dropped, too, if that was even possible. It just went from cold to colder.
We walked a mile or so before Nick stole another car, thank God. As soon as the engine was warm enough, I blasted the heat. Feeling returned to my toes and fingers. I curled up against the passenger-side door and closed my eyes.
White light flashed behind my lids.
I saw Dani through a crack in a doorway.
“We had a deal,” she said.
“And I stuck to that deal,” a man answered.
“He’s relapsed, though. He’s not better, and Anna isn’t safe here.”
“What do you want me to do? Would you like me to take her in? Start her out young?”
Dani scowled. “No. I don’t want
her having any part of this.”
“Then quit asking me to make exceptions.
“I’m not. I’m just asking you to care for once.”
“Oh, Dani,” he said with an edge of laughter. “I care. That’s exactly why we’re here now, having this conversation. I care too goddamn much.”
A phone rang somewhere in the distance.
I jolted awake.
“It’s for you,” Nick said, handing me the prepaid.
I blinked the sleep out of my eyes and took the phone, reading the screen before I answered. It was Sam’s number again.
“Hello?”
“Hey.” But it wasn’t Sam. It was Dani. “I got a meeting set up with Uncle Will.”
I straightened in the bucket seat. “You did. Where?”
“There’s a bar in Port Cadia, Molly’s, it’s called. He’ll be there tonight. Eight p.m.”
“All right. Thank you for doing this.”
“No problem.” She paused. “Is Nick being nice to you?”
“As nice as he can be.”
Dani laughed. “That’s all you can ask for.”
“So…” I turned to the window, away from Nick, as if that would afford any privacy. “How’s Sam? Is he… okay?”
“Sam is fine,” Dani said. “You don’t have to worry.”
“And Cas?”
“Cas is Cas.”
“Yeah.”
“I should go. Be careful, bird.”
After promising her I would, we hung up.
“So?” Nick said.
“My uncle should be at a bar tonight.”
“So what do we do before then?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know. But I wouldn’t mind taking a nap in a proper bed.”
Nick veered to the right, to the next freeway exit. “How about breakfast, and then we find somewhere to crash?”
I nodded. “Yes, please. I could go for a gigantic pile of pancakes right about now.”
“With brown sugar,” Nick said in a voice so low I barely heard him.
“What?”
His jaw tensed. “Just… try it with brown sugar. And syrup. And butter.”
“All right,” I said, slightly suspicious.
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