Cameron pulls me close, puts an arm around my shoulder, and I spend way too long wondering if this is part of our disguise or if he just wants to do it. Casey pauses and separates herself from us, waiting for us to walk about fifty feet before she starts moving again.
Disguise, then.
Okay, then.
We stop at the end of the alley, and Cameron puts his hands on my waist, tips his head so it rests against mine, as if we’re sharing a moment, but it’s a lie. “We can’t go in there,” I say. “We have to find his office in the school.”
“I know,” he says. “We need to get back to the van. There aren’t enough people out here. We’ll be noticed.”
I nod against his forehead, though I want to stay this way, to keep on pretending that this is our normal and something like this moment could last forever, but I know it isn’t safe. He pulls me close as we walk back to the van. Nobody seems to notice us in the visitor lot, so we crack the front windows and move to the back, hoping nobody knows we’re here.
“One at a time,” Cameron says. “We leave here only one at a time. It’s too risky.” He squeezes Casey’s shoulder. “Me first,” he says.
I grab his arm. “What are you going to do?”
“I’m going to see if these buildings are locked, and if they are, I’m going to find a way in. Casey, then you can see what you can find in his office, wherever that is. Once you find what you need, it’s all yours, Alina. Sound good?”
I don’t answer, and neither does Casey, but it does actually sound good. But every time he leaves I feel this overwhelming terror, that he is risking too much, that this is the last I will see of him. It has always been only myself on the line. I’m not used to worrying about others.
Casey doesn’t speak the entire time he’s gone. In the dark of the van, as the sun drops below the horizon, at first I think she’s sleeping, with her head leaning back against the wall. But then I see her lips just faintly moving, and I wonder if she’s praying. I’m scared to break her trance, so I close my eyes, and I try to imagine all the possible outcomes of this moment. But all I can see are the people who would stop us, who would punish us. All I can imagine are the words people will say, twisting the facts into their own version of events. The rooms that will hold us; the places that can contain us.
And then I am picturing that truck going over the bridge seven years ago, and my mother holding my wet and tattered body to her own as she pulls me from the ocean. I am imagining the lullaby she sings: Duérmete, mi niña, duérmete, mi amor, duérmete, y nos vemos en la tierra de sueños …
“What does it mean?”
I open my eyes to find Casey watching me. I must’ve been saying it aloud. “Literally, ‘go to sleep, my girl, go to sleep, my love, go to sleep, and we will see each other in the land of dreams.’ ”
It’s the only place she said I could find her.
“It’s nice,” she says. “Soothing.”
I close my eyes again.
Because in this moment, it truly is.
Cameron doesn’t knock before opening the back doors, and it makes us both jump. The streetlight is on behind him, and the sky is completely dark beyond.
He hops inside and says, “Doors are locked, but I have an access card.” Then he looks at Casey. “You can yell at me later.”
“I would never,” she says.
He climbs over us and starts the car.
“Where are we going?”
“Hiding the car,” he says. “After hours, security will run checks.”
We drive behind a building, and he eases the van underneath a willow tree, out of sight, its hanging leaves covering us like a blanket. He gets out, removing the license plates—“Just in case,” he says—before handing the access card to Casey.
“Do you know what you’re doing?” he asks.
“Computer lab. Find his office. Get in. Get out.” She nods to herself, leaving off everything important she intends to do in that office. Find the way Mason accesses the database. Find Ava. Find proof she’s still alive.
Cameron grabs her arm as she leaves. “Stay safe, Case,” he says.
“Be right back,” she says.
We sit across from each other in the back of the van, not speaking, not touching. Everything between us, that got us to this point, hovering in the air. Every choice we’ve made, in this life and in June’s, hanging in the balance. Tomorrow is only hours away. Tomorrow this will all be done. Tomorrow we’ll no longer be bound to one another.
“What are you going to do after this?” I ask him.
“I guess that depends on what happens in the next few hours.”
“What do you want, then, if you could do anything?”
He stares at me. “That’s a dangerous question, Alina. Because I can’t. I can only think about today. And the only thing I want right now is the girl sitting on the other side of the van.”
Such a simple thing to want. Such a simple thing to give him. I crawl across the space between us, but he meets me before I get there, pulling me on top of him, one of my legs on either side of him, as he leans against the wall. I kiss him as if this is the last time, because it might be. I kiss him like it will have to last in my memory for the rest of my life. I kiss him like I’ve been imagining doing since the moment I let the pieces of glass drop from my fingers in surrender.
I feel his teeth softly against my lips, and I remember the blade that got us here. That got me out. I pull back, place my finger on the sharp point of his false canine, and say, “How’d you get this?”
He runs his tongue across it, but his eyes never leave mine. “Lost it in a fight. Had a friend take me to a place that would do this, for a trade. Before I went into the system. I don’t like the idea of being stripped to nothing but my fists.”
And here I thought it was just for me. But it was for him, before that. Because there are other prisons besides mine. More dangerous ones. I think, in truth, I could’ve had it worse. A prison where I am left and forgotten. A prison where I have no access to information or education. A prison where I have no hope. I think of June, hiding alone underground. I think of Cameron, locked in a cell. His soul was not meant to be caged, either.
“Never had to use it, thank God,” he says.
“It saved me,” I say.
He nods. “Casey told Dom about it. I guess they were brainstorming how to get a blade onto the island, and she mentioned this.” He bites down, and I hear the sound of teeth on teeth. “She told him about this, and I guess he figured, why not just use me?”
And so, here he is. And here I am. “This is what got you involved?”
He shakes his head, and his nose touches mine. “I would’ve gotten involved either way.”
“Regrets?” I ask.
“None,” he says. “On the contrary. You?”
I smile and say, “None,” the moment before I kiss him again. My hands are on his shoulders, and then they are lower, on his waist, and then under his shirt. He pulls me so we’re chest to chest, stomach to stomach, hips to hips, and my hands trail up his back until I feel the ridge of the scar. “What about this?” I ask.
I lean back, and he lets me pull the shirt up over his head. I have never seen this look on him before. I like it. I love it. “Tell me,” I say, overcome with the rush of power.
“Random attack,” he says. “Outside a convenience store. Happened when Casey entered the National Guard training, and me and Dom were setting up the cabin. Dom was inside the shop, stocking up on supplies. I was out, loading the trunk with our first batch of stuff, and some guy jumped me from behind.” His body tenses as he speaks. “There was a knife in my back before I could even process what was happening.” I feel the shudder roll through him. “Took my wallet and left me there, bleeding in the parking lot.”
I run my fingers along the scar—it covers the span of at least four ribs. I am imagining him bleeding on the blacktop, and I cannot stand the way the scene looks in my head, even though I know it isn’t r
eal.
“I know Dom’s a dick, and probably a psychopath, but I couldn’t go to a hospital, and I couldn’t reach Casey. He took me somewhere safe, gave me some drugs, stitched me up right. He’s got some good in him somewhere, Alina.” He laughs. “Or maybe he needed me too much.”
While talking, his hands have made their way under the hem of my shirt, onto my bare waist, and I cannot speak. I want to get impossibly closer. I want to back up to the far wall. I am full of want. He trails his fingers up my stomach, until they reach the fresh wound that had once been a scar on my third rib. “Tell me this story,” he says.
“It’s a long story,” I say. “And you already know it.”
“I like hearing you talk,” he says.
“I was a baby, just a baby in a nursery, and they stuck a needle in my back,” I whisper. “They said I was June Calahan, and so they cut, right here,” I place my fingers over his, over the scar, “and put a tracker there. Then my mother cut through the same line, and she took the tracker out. They came for her, threw her in jail, cut through the scar tissue, and put the tracker back. And it stayed that way for seventeen years.”
“You still had the scar,” he says.
“Mm-hmm. And then this boy showed up in my bathroom—”
“Boy?” he asks.
“Guy?”
“Good enough.”
“So this guy shows up in my bathroom, and he takes a freaking blade from his jaw, and I think, who is this boy—sorry, guy—with a freaking blade in his jaw? And he cuts the tracker from me again. And then he stitches me back up, even though he doesn’t know how, and then he touches the scar, and he asks how I got it …”
“You tell the best stories,” he says, raising my shirt off my stomach. “Let me tell you about this girl I met …”
I feel real and solid. I feel his heart through the layers of his rib and muscle and skin, and my own. I feel his lips, brushing against mine, as he is talking. And when I cannot take it any longer—of being so close, and yet not close enough—I make him stop talking. I press my lips more firmly on his. And his arms become solid around my back.
The moment is filled with all the never-haves and never-wills and every possible outcome of the day. In short, the end is coming—the end of this, whatever this is—and right now it looks like a cliff. Like the end of the world. I kiss him—even though I understand, like Casey said, that this is not the time—because we’re hurtling toward it. “We’ll be okay,” I say, waiting for him to say of course we will, but he doesn’t.
He moves away from the wall, rolls onto his back, and drapes an arm across his eyes. So I sit beside him, and I run my fingers up his stomach, and he doesn’t move—he stills. I trace the muscles, the skin, up to the bones of his rib cage, and I bring my face down to his chest, resting my cheek against him. His free hand goes to my hair, down to my shoulder, and he holds me to him like that. “Cameron,” I say.
My heart is in my head and my stomach—everywhere all at once—when we hear footsteps racing toward us.
I back away, back against the front seats, my hands groping for anything I can use to defend us. The back doors start shaking, and Casey’s voice carries through in panicked nonsense.
Cameron opens the double doors, and Casey doesn’t take a second to chastise us or even take in what was happening, or what was about to happen. “He’s here,” she says, and she can’t calm down.
“Who?” Cameron asks, but she’s staring over her shoulder, pulling us out the back. Cameron barely has time to pull his shirt back on.
“Dominic,” she says. “Dominic is here.”
We run along with her, to the side of an academic building. The doors are all locked, but Casey slides the ID through the card reader and pulls us inside. We race down the hall until we reach the next door, leading to a glass-walled atrium that spans the distance between buildings. There’s another hall, off to the side, but we stay where we are, contained in the safety of this building—two exits, one hall, and we can see them all.
“I saw him get out of his car,” Casey says, her voice shaking. “From the window of the computer lab. He was walking down the road in your direction. I ran—he didn’t see me, too busy staring at his GPS screen. I sprinted ahead through the trees to get there first.”
“Did he see the van? How did he know where we were?” I ask.
“I don’t know,” she says. “I don’t know. Maybe—”
The sound of the door being pulled against the lock echoes through the hall, and Casey grabs my arm. “Is that him?” I whisper.
“How the hell would he know we were here?” she whispers back.
Cameron creeps into an open classroom and cranes his neck around the window before diving back down behind the desk. He motions for us to stay away, out in the hall, and keeps low as he exits the dark room. “It’s him,” he says.
We don’t speak as we stay pressed against the wall, but we hear Dominic moving around the building. His footsteps pace the perimeter, he pushes at the windows—gently first, then with more force. It won’t take forever. If he wants a way in, he will make one. Brick walls and glass windows and locked doors are not enough.
I grab them both by the hand and start running down the long, dark hall. There must be someplace else. Someplace to hide. “Tunnels,” Cameron says. “In the winter, students use tunnels to get from building to building.” We can use them, too.
“Mason Alonzo’s office is on the fifth floor of the next building. We head that way. And then we get the hell out,” Casey says.
Where the stairs go up, they also go down. There’s a door at the bottom of the stairs, and it’s also locked. Casey uses the student ID to gain access, and we race down the murky hall toward the next building. There are a few computer stations down here, and a few storage units for A/V equipment. There are no windows. We stay in the tunnel, hidden underground. Safe, for the moment. But I worry.
I worry because he found us once, in the van.
I worry because he found us again, moments later, in the building.
“He’s tracking us,” I say.
Chapter 24
We stand, staring at each other, in the muted glow of the basement hallway. We look at the clothes that don’t belong to us and the shoes that we’ve been wearing since the sewer. “Shit,” Casey says as she strips them off.
Cameron removes the tooth from his mouth, flips the blade, and runs it through the rubber sole of his sneaker in sharp, harsh lines. He drops it to the ground, finding nothing, and picks up the next. He tosses each shoe, getting more frustrated each time, as he finds nothing. He checks Casey’s shoes. My shoes. Strips of rubber litter the ground. Still nothing.
We search each other frantically for things that came from our time together with Dominic. I take the blade from Cameron as he examines his watch—it’s sharper than I imagined. Cameron takes off his watch and uses the butt of the empty gun to smash it, his fingers sorting through the battery, the display, the metal pieces. He throws the fragmented pieces across the room with a grunt. He does the same with Casey’s watch.
Casey dumps her bag, June’s notebook and the papers in a heap on the floor, and runs her fingers through the fabric.
I take the blade to the buckles of the bag, tearing them off, but still, we find nothing. I fold the blade back in half, tucking it inside my closed fist.
I lift the bottom of my shirt, feel the patch of skin over my ribs, the fresh stitches done by Cameron’s hand.
He grabs my hand, pulls it away, his fingers sliding between mine, and looks into my eyes. “We got it,” he says. “I got that out of you. If there was something else, your guards would’ve noticed, or they would’ve found you. It’s not you.”
I should feel relief.
But I watch his mouth, the way his lips turn down in worry. I step closer to him as Casey takes apart the empty gun, which even she must know is a long shot.
“Cameron,” I whisper, and he freezes at the way I’m looking at him.
/> I bring my fingers to the bottom of his shirt and then underneath to his back. I run my fingers up to the scar running the length of four ribs. He sucks in a breath and takes a step back, tearing off his shirt as if it has the power to burn him. He spins, his back facing us, his fingers stretching, reaching, for the scar.
Casey’s staring as well. “Oh, God,” she says. “Please tell me you were conscious when Dom stitched you up.”
He stares at Casey. Then at me. The panic in his eyes, the answer. His silence, the answer.
“No,” she says. Then she turns to me, her breath coming in a panic. “Where would he put it? Where’s the tracker?”
I feel sick, and I have no answer. “Take it out. Take it out,” she says.
It could be on the underside of any of those four ribs. Under muscle, under cartilage. His scar is at least five times the length of my own, and I am imagining five times the damage, five times the pain, five times the blood.
“I don’t … I don’t know.”
I passed out when Cameron removed mine. I choked on a scream and passed out, and Cameron knew exactly where to look, what to do.
“Pack the bag back up,” Cameron says, in a voice eerily low. Casey looks confused but places everything back inside—June’s notebook, the studies, the hard drives—her hands shaking. “Now pick it up,” he says to me, and I do, the fabric hanging limply over my shoulder, hoping this is part of some master plan that I don’t understand that will save us all.
Now what? I think. I look at Cameron. Now what?
“Now go,” he says.
Casey puts her hand to her mouth. “I’m not leaving you here while—”
“I’m sure he hasn’t come here unarmed,” Cameron says. “If he gets to us, he can use us to get into the database. And if he gets in the database—he can’t. You can’t let him.”
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