It was why I wanted to help destroy the Branch, make my life count, no matter how long, or short, it was. And it was why I wanted to do it with Sam, Anna, Cas, and Nick. They were as much a part of my life now as the Branch was. Maybe more so.
I wanted to win back their trust, and their respect, but also their friendship.
No life is worth living without the people who matter most living it with you.
Charlie settled into the seat across from me and while we waited for the pizza to arrive, Charlie told me about her friends, her school, and her mom, but she didn’t mention her uncle again, and that piqued my interest.
When our pizza came, I was happy to see it had pepperoni, mushrooms, olives, and green peppers on it. “I hope this is okay,” Charlie said, nodding at the pizza.
“Pizza is great any way.”
She spread her hands out. “Right? That’s what I think. Unfortunately, no one seems to agree with me. Well, except you.”
“Serendipity,” I said.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, perhaps it was fate that we met. The only two people in the world who like pizza any way.”
She smiled and cocked her head to the side. “You don’t talk like any guy I’ve ever met.”
“I don’t?”
“No.” She laughed, so soft it was almost a whisper. “I like it.”
My heart shrank until it was nothing more than an empty husk. The amusement was still there, in my expression, but inside I was dying.
I was supposed to kill this girl. And if I did, what did that make me?
I already knew the answer to that question. It would tear away any last vestiges of humanity I had left, and turn me into something unrecognizable.
The trench coat was suddenly pressing, like a funeral shroud, killing who I used to be, birthing something new in its place.
It would start with the coat and end with killing Charlie.
I tore the coat off before grabbing a slice of pizza. I tried not to think about the mission or the Branch as I ate and listened to Charlie tell a story about one of her coworkers. I tried and failed.
When Charlie excused herself to use the bathroom, I took the opportunity to do some more digging, one last-ditch effort to suss out anything that might damn her. She’d left her cell phone on the table, and I swiped it quickly, keeping an eye out for the counter guy.
I figured I had five minutes, tops, so I started by checking her text messages. There were a ton from Melanie. Already she was asking for an update on the date. I scrolled through a few days’ worth of texts, and came up with nothing of importance. There were a half dozen more text threads with several of her other friends, and her mom.
With less than three minutes left, I checked her e-mail account, her Twitter feed, and her Facebook page. Still nothing. I checked her photo album last. The bar at the top said there were 947 pictures, and I definitely didn’t have time to view them all. I scrolled through them as quickly as I could, burning as much detail as I could to memory.
And then an image of two people caught my attention, and I stopped scrolling to select it.
When it popped up on screen, in full size, I cursed loudly and nearly lurched out of my skin when several pans clattered together back in the kitchen.
I closed out of the album and turned off the screen, placing the phone back down barely seconds before Charlie returned.
My breathing had increased, my heart rate, too, and when Charlie sat across from me, she picked up on the change right away.
“What’s wrong?” she asked. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
She had no idea.
“Do they use garlic on their pizzas here?” I asked, knowing it was likely they did.
“Yeah, I think so.”
“I’m allergic.” Lie. The best I could come up with.
“Holy shit. Do you—are you okay? Should I call nine-one-one?”
I waved her off. “No. It’s only a minor allergy. I’ll be okay, but I should probably get home and take my meds.”
“Sure. Okay.”
I dug a few twenties out of my wallet and threw them on the table. “Thanks for showing me around town.” I leaned in and gave her a half hug, hoping she didn’t notice the rapid beating of my heart.
“No problem.” When she pulled back, her frown had deepened. “You sure you’re okay?”
“Yeah. Totally fine. I’ll talk to you soon.”
I didn’t wait for her to follow me out. I pushed through the door and cut left, and stumbled back to the SUV, the picture on Charlie’s phone burning behind my eyes like a pyre.
It’d been a picture of her and a guy in his late twenties, his arm over her shoulders, protective, like a father, or an uncle.
It was a man I knew, someone who had stolen the last five years of my life when he promised to save the girl I loved if I signed up for his program.
A man who ran the Branch.
A man who was now dead.
A man I wished I could have killed myself.
Connor.
Connor was Charlie’s uncle.
“Charlie is Connor’s niece!” I yelled through the phone. “Why did you not tell me this?”
Marie was quiet for a second, and I had a feeling it was to get me to calm down, and not to allow her time to put together an answer. “It wasn’t relevant.”
“Christ, Marie, it’s more relevant than her love of obscure rock bands.”
“Well, did you complete the mission?”
“No!” I paced the apartment. “And I don’t plan on it until you tell me what’s going on. Why does the Branch want to kill Connor’s niece?”
“Because she’s a loose end, and loose ends pose a threat.”
“To who?”
“To the Branch.”
I sighed and ran a hand through my hair, but it fell out of place a second later, several chunks hanging in my line of sight. “She doesn’t seem like a threat. If anything, she seems young and naïve. I’m not doing it.”
“Fine. Then report back here and I’ll send someone who will.”
“And what will happen to me?”
She laughed, but there was nothing funny about her tone. “I’m sure you already know the answer to that question.”
“Then I’ll run.”
“We’ll find you.”
I sighed again. This was going bad quickly.
“I’m sending someone else to take over the mission.” I could hear her typing something in the background. “If you plan on going AWOL, I suggest you get moving now. You might as well enjoy a few days of freedom while you have them.”
“Wait.”
“Good-bye, Trev.”
“Marie!” Silence. I squeezed my eyes shut. “Marie?”
“What?”
I let out a breath. “Fine, I’ll do it.”
“Good. You have until tomorrow night.” She hung up and I pulled the phone away from my ear and stared at the dimmed screen.
What was I doing?
Rage, rage, I thought.
It was survival. I was doing what I needed to do in order to return to who I was, and who I was when I was with Anna and Sam and Cas and Nick.
This was a necessary step.
Wasn’t it?
Even though the apartment had twenty-foot ceilings, and enough square footage for two modest houses, it felt like the walls were closing in on me, narrowing like a vise.
My heart thumped wildly in my chest. I couldn’t breathe. I had to get out of here.
I took the emergency stairwell down to the ground floor and burst outside, gasping for air. I staggered to the lawn to the left of the building and collapsed in the grass, the blades cold and wet with dew.
I couldn’t do this. I was going to die. The Branch was going to kill me.
A hand clamped down on my shoulder and I turned, reacting before thinking, my other hand already tightened into a fist. The sight of Charlie standing behind me, her platinum hair like a halo around her
head, was what stopped me.
“You scared me,” I gasped.
“You are not all right. I’m calling for an ambulance. Is your airway closing? Let me see.” She grabbed my chin with long, pale fingers, and pulled me toward her as she knelt beside me in the grass.
She stared at me. Really looked, and a frown etched itself into the space at the center of her brow. “This isn’t an allergic reaction,” she said.
I was still gasping for breath. “It isn’t?”
“It’s a panic attack.”
I pressed a hand to my chest, pushing against the tightness in my lungs. As if that would help.
“Listen to me,” Charlie said. “You trust me?”
I didn’t trust anyone.
She didn’t wait for an answer. “Close your eyes,” she ordered.
After a beat, I did, and felt her take my face in her hands. “Count to ten,” she said. “Slow, even breaths. Listen to the sound of my voice, and only my voice. I’ll count with you. One.”
I sucked in a breath. “Good,” she said. “Two. Three.”
The blackness behind my closed lids burst in tense white stars.
“Four,” Charlie said. “Five.”
Slowly, air trickled down my throat, the coolness of the night washing out the burning in my lungs.
“Six,” she said, her voice steady. “Seven.”
In the distance, I heard the tolling of a bell, the baying of a dog.
“Eight. Nine.”
Charlie’s hands pulled away from my face. My heart had slowed, my breathing even. I opened my eyes.
“Ten,” she whispered.
She licked her lips, and they gleamed in the dusky light. I couldn’t stop looking at them, at her mouth, the faint curve of a frown. I couldn’t stop thinking about her hands on my face, her fingers pressing along my jaw.
I couldn’t stop thinking about dying and about living and about the infinite connection between both.
I straightened, threaded my own hands through her night-silver hair, and pulled her to me. A breath rattled down my throat a beat before I kissed her, feeling the warmth of her driving away the coldness in my heart.
I wasn’t dead yet. I was living, living until I couldn’t live anymore.
Charlie brought her hands to my wrists and inched closer until our bodies seemed to occupy the same space.
She didn’t pull away for a long time and I didn’t stop kissing her until she did.
And then we just stayed there together, breathing heavily in the dying of the light.
“Trev,” she whispered. “I—”
I cut her off, running my thumb over her swollen lips. She shivered, her eyes closing in concession.
“I have to go,” I said.
I have to start running before they kill me.
“Thank you for saving me.”
A faint smile pulled her lips together. “It was just a panic attack. Nothing to die over.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“Then what—”
“I have to go.” I pulled her back toward me and kissed her forehead. Before I turned away, I whispered through her hair, “ ‘Rare is the union of beauty and purity.’ ”
I left her sitting there in the grass, the night bleeding in around her.
I was going to do everything in my power to save her. I just needed a plan. I needed to think.
I wasn’t going to let the Branch kill one more innocent person. Even if it killed me to do it.
I paced the apartment for what felt like hours. I couldn’t waste the night by sleeping through it, so I tried to keep myself awake with black coffee and the constant state of activity.
There had to be a way to save Charlie without telling her about the Branch, and about my mission, and without forcing her out of her hometown.
What I needed was something big enough to put a spotlight on her, so not even the Branch would risk making a move.
Somewhere around four AM, I pulled my gun out, intending to field strip it. Cleaning a gun, for some reason, always helped me think. I sat at the table along the wall of windows that overlooked Lower Red Lake, a hanging ceiling fixture the only light by which I worked.
I dropped out the clip first, checked the bullets to make sure the clip was full, then set it aside. I double-checked the chamber before pulling off the slide and popping out the barrel. When the rest of the gun was dismantled, I grabbed a cloth. As I cleaned the barrel, I thought, letting my fingers do the work as my mind took over.
I stared at the gun pieces in front of me.
I tried to think of what might draw enough attention to Charlie to keep her safe. Something that would spread through the media, hopefully. That was my safest bet, but it would help if I got the local police force involved, and the only way to do that was to threaten Charlie’s life.
When I was satisfied with the cleanliness of the barrel, I grabbed the recoil spring and—
I glanced again at the magazine sitting less than six inches away. It faced out, away from me, so the bullets were in my line of sight.
Something was off about them.
I set aside the recoil spring and grabbed the magazine, inspecting it and the bullets loaded inside.
The etchings on the bullets were unfamiliar. Usually 9mm rounds said 9mm Luger on the bottom, but these were labeled 9mm munition. I popped a round out of the clip and immediately knew they were not regular rounds.
A flash of suspicion raced through me.
Something wasn’t adding up.
We were playing a game, a dangerous game…
An idea, a hunch, was taking root inside me.
I assembled the gun in record time, grabbed my coat and the car keys, and raced out the door.
I parked the vehicle more than a mile away from Sycamore Woods, where Charlie reportedly biked every Saturday morning. I walked in from the north end.
The early morning was crisp. My breath puffed out in ragged, white bursts. I’d left my coat in the SUV, because it was bulky, not easy to move in, and the color wasn’t good camouflage. I had on a black sweatshirt, and already the cold was seeping into my bones.
When I found a good spot that gave me some coverage, but a clear sight line, I stopped, pulled the gun from beneath my sweatshirt, and aimed at a cherry tree three yards away.
I pulled the trigger and the bullet left the chamber, lodging itself in the tree with a resounding thwack.
I hurried over and ran my fingers over the spot where the bullet had pierced the bark.
My fingers came away wet, and stained red.
We were playing a game, a dangerous game…
And everyone was in on it but me.
It was Charlie who gave it away. Dropping hints about her uncle. Leaving her cell phone unattended on the table. The fact that she knew where I was staying, having met me outside when I burst from the apartment.
Anger pulsed beneath my ribs. Or maybe that was just the heavy thudding of betrayal in my heart.
Maybe I deserved it anyway, after what I’d done to Anna and the others.
I should have known. I should have seen it coming from a million miles away.
Charlie had played me, and Marie had loaded my gun with fake bullets. I only hoped this was a test, and not an ambush. Of course, if they’d wanted me dead, they could have killed me in that holding cell. They wouldn’t have had to go to all this trouble.
I guess I was “killing” Charlie after all.
I heard her before I saw her. Her bike had a squeaky front wheel. I estimated she was two minutes out.
I tightened my hold on the gun, my fingers numb from the cold but slick with sweat.
Daylight had started to spread through the forest, and everything was painted in a shade of blue-black. A few birds chirped overhead. Somewhere in the distance, a boat blew its horn.
I leaned a shoulder into an oak tree, planting my feet in the ground to give me a good base.
I saw Charlie’s blond hair first, glowing silver in
the half-light.
I waited until she passed, following the curve of the bike path, putting her back to me.
I brought the gun up, steady in two hands, and pulled the trigger twice.
Thwap. Thwap.
One shot in the kidney, another in the back of the neck. Shots that, even with fake bullets, would hurt like hell.
She collapsed from the bike, and the bike fell on top of her. She didn’t move.
For a split second, I worried I’d been wrong. But then, just a flicker of muscle barely visible through the thickness of her sweater.
I eased from my hiding spot. My boots hit the pavement with a crunch of gravel. I walked up to her, kicked her foot. With a quickness I didn’t anticipate, she swiped my legs out from beneath me.
Her teeth flashed in the light as she scrambled on top of me and slugged me with a deft right hook.
“That was for the kidney shot,” she said. “And this is for the second.”
She grabbed a hunk of my hair and slammed my head against the pavement.
Everything went black.
I awoke in a bed, tangled in sheets, and shot upright.
The entire wall to my left was nothing but windows. Lower Red Lake, disappearing into the early morning mist. Two figures stood off to my right.
Charlie and—
“Marie?” I croaked, and sat upright. My head was pounding, my vision swimming. “What the hell are you doing here?”
“Did you really have to knock him out?” Marie said to Charlie.
Charlie shrugged, flexing her fingers. “He shot me in the kidney. He knew they were fake bullets and yet he shot me in the kidney.”
I set my feet to the floor. My boots were still on. I was fully clothed. I could run if I wanted. I had to bet I was faster than both of them, though maybe not with a concussion. And from the swimming in my stomach, I definitely had one.
“Are you even really Connor’s niece? Or is your entire backstory a fabrication?” I winced with each spoken word, and pressed my fingers to my temples.
“I am,” Charlie said. “Who do you think taught me how to punch?”
I stood up, shook off the teetering in my head, and crossed the room. “Tell me what’s going on.”
Betrayed Page 3