Uninvited
Page 26
I ignore her question, crossing my arms over my chest. “What do you want?”
“Was just returning from a meeting with one of the instructors when I saw you slip out. Yeah,” she sneered. “You aren’t the only one they think has potential. Turns out I’m excelling so much at Spanish that they’ve started tutoring me in Russian, too.” She takes a single step closer, her shrewd gaze narrowing on me. “Where are you going?”
I stare at her a long moment, weighing my answers.
“I’m getting out of here.” I settle on the truth. She already suspects as much. It would be foolish to lie. “Running away.”
She considers me thoughtfully. I do the same, trying to read her expression and glean something from it. Maybe she wants to leave, too. Who really wants to be here, after all? Surrounded by guards with their electric prods? Instructors with their judging eyes. The threat of detention camps and death hanging over us.
I exhale. Only one way to find out. “Come with me.”
She snorts. “Oh, that’s funny. Nice joke. We wouldn’t last ten minutes out there. Especially with that imprint you’re sporting. No, thanks.” She crosses her thick arms, a smirk on her lips. “But you know what I will do? I think I’ll just go ahead and rat you out. Score me some points with the powers that be. Could always use the advantage.”
I point to my face. “It won’t help you. They’re going to keep pitting us against each other, thinning us out until we’re just a few. Your ratting me out isn’t going to save you. You should come with me.”
She shakes her head. “No.”
“Then at least give me a chance. You don’t have to tell anyone you saw me. Just go back to your room.”
No emotion registers on her face. “Go ahead. It will take me about five minutes to alert the staff. That can be your head start.” Turning, she starts to walk away.
Something inside me snaps. I only see her back walking away from me, on her way to destroy me. To destroy Sean and Gil and Sabine. This twists inside me like a hot poker. I can’t let her do that. I can’t let her go.
I don’t even feel myself moving, but I’m aware that I’m running, launching myself at her, landing heavily on her back. The bigger girl hits the ground with a sharp cry. She doesn’t take it without a fight. She bucks beneath me. I try to stay atop her, squeezing my thighs around her hips.
I grab a fistful of her hair and pull her head back to growl into her ear, “You’re. Not. Telling.” I pull back my arm to strike her.
“Davy!” Suddenly, my arm is caught in an iron grip. I try to pull it free, but there’s no budging. I look at the hand on my arm. My gaze skips up to Sean’s concerned face.
I look back down at Addy, my hand twisted in her hair. I release her and climb off. She flips over, her acne-mottled face red and seething. “You’ll pay for that.” Her gaze moves to Sean. “Your boyfriend, too.” She opens her mouth to scream, but suddenly a rock strikes her in the head. She topples over.
My gaze swings. Stops on Sabine. She stands with her hand poised in midair, as if still pitching the rock.
“Sabine,” I breathe.
She blinks at the sound of her name. “She was going to tell.”
I look back down at Addy, motionless on her side. “Oh, God. Is she . . .”
Sean checks her pulse and shakes his head. “She’s still breathing.”
I exhale heavily. I wanted to hit her. Hurt her. Sean had to stop me. This frightens me maybe the most.
“We need to go.” This from Gil, his gaze scanning the grounds.
I shake my head, staring from Addy to Sabine. She looks so small, so innocent. For the first time I wonder what I really know about this girl.
Sean grabs Addy’s ankles and drags her into the bushes, out of sight.
Then he’s back at my side, seizing my hand and pulling me along after Gil. “C’mon. We have to go while she’s still passed out.” There’s no time to talk. And no going back. Sabine follows us. I can hear her light tread under the heavier beat of our own. Sean’s running fast. I keep up, panting beside him. We break off the trail and head into the trees. It’s dark, but Gil whips out a flashlight from his backpack, guiding us through the grasping press of foliage. We stop at the perimeter wall. I blink, feeling dazed, my head fuzzy like it’s wrapped in cotton.
I glance over my shoulder into the dark woods behind us, wondering if I’m leaving the place where I truly belong. I am a killer, after all. Maybe Sabine, too, for all I know. She didn’t blink an eye using that rock on Addy.
I’m lifted off my feet as Sean swings me over the wall. Sabine drops down without any help. She’s like a jungle monkey. Sean follows, landing lightly on his feet. A car waits, rumbling in the dark. The headlights flip on and we’re bathed in the sudden flood.
“He’s here!” Gil exclaims, rushing ahead, waving excitedly to the person behind the wheel. No stranger to him, apparently.
The guy is in his forties, plain and unassuming looking. Nervous. His gaze darts everywhere all at once.
“Who’s that?” I pause warily beside Sean, watching as Gil and the driver step close to talk.
Sean faces me, his features cut in harsh lines from the glow of the headlights. “The guy that’s going to get us out of here.”
“Oh,” I murmur as though that explains everything. But I don’t press. I’m still reeling from the last few moments. From what I’m actually doing. From all that I’ve done. All that might happen yet.
He turns me to face him. “Don’t start questioning yourself now. We’re doing the right thing. We have no other choice.”
I nod. I don’t want him to worry about me or that I’m about to break, crumple to bits and pieces in front of him. “I’m not.”
“Hey.” He tilts my chin with one finger, his eyes mesmerizing me. “You trust me, right?”
This time my nod is sincere. “Yes.” I do. I trust him. It’s just me I doubt. Glassy brown eyes keep flashing before my eyes. A reminder of what I am, what I’ve done. The peace that will never be mine. A painful lump rises in my throat.
Gil and the driver get in the front of the car. Sean pulls me into the backseat. Sabine follows. Sandwiched in the middle, I settle alongside Sean’s solid warmth. His arm wraps around me. I take comfort in his embrace. Security, however imaginary. Gil looks back at us with a reassuring smile.
Sean leans closer. His warm lips brush my ear. Goose bumps break out over my arms. “We’re going to be fine.”
I absorb these words and try to believe them, but I’m not sure what “fine” is anymore. Everything feels desperate and hopeless. Everything is “have to.” Every time I close my eyes, I see the face of a dead man and know that I’ll kill when cornered. I guess that makes me no different than any other wild animal.
I lace my fingers with Sean’s, squeezing tightly, looking for something to hang on to, something warm and beautiful and precious. Something that brings meaning in all of this.
Anything to slow my descent.
I wake to sunlight. I can even smell it. Warm and rich as loam on the air. The small room is bathed in its warm rays, making the white walls appear even whiter, a colorlessness that seems to stare back at me, waiting for my next move.
I stretch on the bed with a noisy yawn, luxuriating in sleeping so late, enjoying my body’s sense of languor. Right or wrong, for the first time in months, I feel safe. Logically, I know I shouldn’t lower my guard. We could be captured at any time. My hand brushes the sheet beside me, the indentation from Sean’s body still there. I smile slowly. For now, I feel free. If I’ve learned anything, it’s that now—this moment—is all that matters.
Rising slowly, I dress and brush my teeth in the trailer’s single bathroom across the hall. Clothes hang over the shower rod to dry. Yesterday, Sabine and I washed our things in the sink, figuring that even wrinkled, clean was clean.
Walking out into the main room, I find Gil and Sabine at the small kitchen table, playing cards. Ever since Gil’s contact dropped us here
three days ago with instructions on how to cross the border, we’ve played cards a lot to amuse ourselves. With nowhere else to go and no television or books to pass the time, there’s not much else to do as we wait.
Sabine munches on dry cereal. “Hey,” she greets after swallowing her mouthful. She looks different since leaving Mount Haven. With the lines of her face less strained, she’s pretty in a way I had never noticed before.
Gil offers me a distracted wave as he studies his cards intently.
“Hi.” I take an apple off the counter.
I nod to the trailer door. “Sean outside?”
Gil flicks his gaze away for a split second. “Yeah. The usual spot.”
I take a noisy bite from the apple and slip on my shoes sitting beside the door.
Stepping outside, I blink against the glare, holding a hand over my eyes. It’s not too hot yet, at least in the mornings, but the promise is there, in the day to come, in the weeks ahead. I move over the broken ground, skirting patches of mesquite scrub and small cacti. I pick my way to where Sean sits, his back to me.
He’s parked on an outcropping of rock, looking down with binoculars at the valley below. Sunlight shines off his hair, gilding the long strands a brilliant shade of dark gold.
He lowers the binoculars as I take a seat beside him. “Morning, sleepyhead.”
I shrug. “What can I say? It feels good to sleep in.”
Smiling, he leans across the space between us and kisses me. Slow and lingering. It’s like this now. Kisses. Touches. All freely given and taken. In just three days, being with him has become as necessary as breathing. It’s like being here, time suspends. We forget Mount Haven and everything that happened there. The outside world is forgotten.
I nod to the valley below. “How’s it going?”
He follows my gaze. “I think I have their patterns figured out.”
I take the binoculars from him and study the river, a thick serpent amid the sloping mountains, the water more brown than blue. “It looks quiet.”
“A patrol just went by. Like every day at this time.”
“What about the construction crews?” My gaze narrows on the orange flags and stakes, indicating where the wall will go to divide Mexico from Texas.
“No sight of them in two days. I think we have some time while they’re surveying and setting the rest of the pins along the border north of here.”
I nod and lower the binoculars. “So when do we cross?”
“Well, according to Gil’s guy, they pick up on Mondays on the other side, but I think it’s safer to leave Sunday around four a.m. Our chances should be good then. We’ll just have to lay low and camp out one night.” He touches my cheek, his fingers a whisper-soft brush on my skin.
A night with him under the stars? I could handle that. I lean into his caress, looking from him to the river below and the wild stretch of land beyond. Where we’re headed. Where our future awaits.
“I’m ready.”
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HarperCollins Publishers
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About the Author
SOPHIE JORDAN is a former high school English teacher and the bestselling author of the YA Firelight series as well as the adult historical romances In Scandal They Wed and Sins of a Wicked Duke, among others. She lives in Houston with her family. You can visit her online at www. sophiejordan.net.
UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE
HarperCollins Publishers
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Also by Sophie Jordan
The Firelight Series
Firelight
Vanish
Hidden
Breathless (a digital original novella)
UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE
HarperCollins Publishers
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Copyright
HarperTeen is an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.
UNINVITED. Copyright © 2014 by Sharie Kohler. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Jordan, Sophie.
Uninvited / Sophie Jordan. — First edition.
pages cm
Summary: When seventeen-year-old Davy Hamilton tests positive for Homicidal Tendency Syndrome, everyone believes it is only a matter of time before she murders someone.
ISBN 978-0-06-223365-3 (hardcover bdg.)
EPub Edition July 2013 ISBN 9780062233653
1. Science fiction. 2. Genetics—Fiction.
3. Psychopaths—Fiction. 4. Murder—Fiction.] I. Title.
PZ7.J76845Un 2014 2013015448
[Fic]—dc23 CIP AC
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14 15 16 17 XXXXXX 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
FIRST EDITION
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