She looked around the barn once before shaking her head emphatically, her blond hair flying around in the darkness. She ducked down and squeezed through the hole. When it was my turn, I looked once more at Dex and Dad, then turned my back on them to leave. When I finally crawled out, there was a fear piercing through my chest, but it wasn’t for me.
On the other side, Reese reached down to grab my hand and help me up. The trees around us were still and quiet; there was no more than the faint rustle of leaves in the wind. Still, we spun in a whole circle, alert for any sign of light or movement.
Nothing.
Without saying a word, we took off running toward the road, still holding hands. We raced through the trees, then past the area in front of the barn that was littered with red plastic cups and cigarette butts. Smoke still rose from the fire pit, curling a bit in the air as we rushed past. We ran down the dirt road and hit the street, then turned and sped in the direction of Dex’s and the sheriff’s cars. Our feet slapped against the old concrete of the two-lane road, and my eyes darted from one side of the woods to the other. I tried not to think about how the shadows in between the gnarled, twisted branches of the trees could be hiding anything inside them.
“Where’s . . . the car?” Reese panted out after a few minutes.
“I don’t know,” I said, fear gnawing at my insides. Then up on the side of the road, we saw the familiar white-and-brown paint of the sheriff’s car, still pulled off at an angle. Only this time, it was alone.
Dex’s car was gone.
We both pulled up short at the same time. The muscles in my calves were on fire, and I worked to pull air into my lungs.
“Where is it?” Reese shrieked, once again forgetting to stay quiet.
Micah. I hadn’t thought before about how he’d get to the agents’ storage unit, but now I remembered he didn’t have his own car. Had he taken Dex’s instead?
The keys are inside. That’s what Dex had told me. If Micah had seen them . . .
“It doesn’t matter where the car is,” I said, shaking my head. “It’s not here. So we need a new plan.”
I walked quickly over to the sheriff’s car and opened the driver’s-side door. “Does your dad keep spare keys anywhere in here?”
Reese shrugged, looking nervously into the stand of trees beyond the car. But she still came over to help. We looked under the seats, in the cushions, in the glove compartment. I tore my fingernail when I jammed my hand into the small space between the gearshift and the driver’s seat. Every time one of us thought we heard a noise coming from the woods, we whipped around to face the trees, trying to stare through the dark.
“Oh my God, we’re such idiots!” Reese suddenly exclaimed, diving up to the dashboard and wrapping her hands around a small, boxy device. A police radio.
Relief hit me like a wave. “Let’s call ourselves idiots later.”
Reese nodded and held the radio up to her mouth and pushed a button. It connected her right to someone at the police station. A woman’s voice, one I didn’t recognize, but that Reese did. She explained in a rushed voice that we’d found Ike Hardjoy and the sheriff was hurt and there was someone in the woods.
“Come now. Like, five minutes ago now. Send everyone.”
The woman on the other side of the radio made Reese repeat herself, but then promised help was on the way. As soon as she said, “Over,” for the last time, the radio went silent, and Reese and I both collapsed against our seats—me in the driver’s seat, her in the passenger’s. The only thing we could do at that point was wait.
“Are the doors locked?” I whispered.
Reese nodded. She still clutched the radio in her hand, her knuckles going white. She scanned the area around us through the windshield. I thought we would stay like that, vigilant and quiet until help came. But then Reese turned to me, the whites of her eyes shining in the dark.
“Thank you. For saving my dad back there. When Micah wanted to leave him behind.”
The comment was so abrupt, so un-Reese-like, that I didn’t know what to say.
“And . . . I’m sorry I didn’t believe you,” she said, her voice rushed and barely above a whisper.
“What?”
Reese made a face like she was annoyed with me, then she sighed and turned to face the windshield, peering out into the night. “My mom’s been acting so weird the past few days. Like, much weirder than usual. Any time your dad’s name came up, she would just be like la-la-la and change the subject.”
I stayed quiet, sensing that there was more.
She sighed heavily. “So I pressed her on it, and she finally admitted it, after all these years. What went down between her and your dad. I guess it ended that night—the night you caught them. My dad knew, but he promised to never bring it up again as long as Mom kept me out of it and stayed away from your dad. Isn’t that messed up? That they lied to me?”
It was hard to believe what I was hearing, hard to process Reese’s words. It had been years since she’d talked to me like I was a person, let alone opened up and told me anything real.
“I think maybe I always knew,” she whispered, her eyes dropping low. “Or a part of me did. I just couldn’t face what was right there. . . . I mean, they’re my parents, you know?”
“Yeah,” I finally whispered back. “I do.”
“Anyway, I’m sorry. For . . . all that stuff.”
And even though “all that stuff” was a pretty lame way of summing up the shitty way she’d treated me back then and this summer, I suddenly didn’t have the heart to call her out on it. We’d been so young that night, riding our bikes through the street, believing nothing could ever hurt us.
Reese had just wanted to believe it a little longer.
“It’s okay,” I said, finding that as the words came out of my mouth, I meant them. “Really.”
And she smiled, the smallest of smiles. Then, in true Reese fashion, she flipped her hair, and the moment was over. “God, how long does it take for the cops to get here, anyway? Do they not know what emergency means?”
“They’re probably . . .” My voice died in my mouth as I caught a glimpse of light out of the corner of my eye, reflected in the car’s side mirror. It was moving fast and heading right in our direction, a glaring brighter than a flashlight, brighter than headlights. . . .
Reese screamed.
“Shh!” I said, pushing myself down in the seat. “Stay quiet, stay low. Maybe he won’t see us.”
Reese threw herself down into the seat. Neither of us dared to turn around or move a muscle. So we watched as the light got closer and closer, filling up first the side mirror, then the rearview mirror. The shadows inside the car began to fade, pushed away by the light, as though the sun were slowly rising right outside.
As the light got closer, I craned my neck to look out the passenger-side window. At first the light was too bright to look into directly. But then I squinted—and I saw him. Not just the glowing, moving burst of light, but the figure inside. I saw the outline of a shoulder, hips, legs. His head. I couldn’t make out his features, but I knew he was facing us.
Looking right at us.
Or maybe looking wasn’t the right word. It was hard to believe any human could look out of those eyes, which were more like two black pits surrounded by a brilliant light. They looked like emptiness, like hunger, like wanting. But whatever lurked inside those shadowed holes was definitely aimed right at us.
I pushed myself back against the driver’s-side door, and Reese scrambled to get as close to me as possible, her hip digging into the middle console. The light was so bright now that I had to blink against it. But I couldn’t look away, not when he was so close.
This Mr. Jameson–like being reached out with one arm—or at least a solid block of light that was vaguely shaped like an arm. Five thin, black shapes that might have been fingers pressed up against the window.
“What is he doing? What is he doing?” Reese whimpered.
“Just stay close. He can’t get in
. The doors are locked,” I whispered back.
“What’s that smell?” Reese yelled.
It was burning.
The glass was turning into liquid and dripping away, running at first in small rivulets down the window, leaving only a hole that grew bigger and bigger. I felt the heat then—that oven-intense heat, one that brought up an animal panic inside that made me want to scramble away, away, away.
This time, Reese and I both screamed as I fumbled for the door handle behind me. But Mr. Jameson was faster. The light moved inside the window, through the car, stretching out until it landed on skin.
Reese’s shriek pierced my skull. There was no longer just fear in her voice—but pain. The light was near her legs, but I couldn’t see where it was touching her; it was just too bright. Too hard to see anything. But the burning smell grew worse, not just glass this time, but metal and plastic . . . and skin.
The driver’s-side door finally crashed open, and I went tumbling out onto the ground. I reached back up and grabbed Reese under her arms to pull her after me. The heat coming through the window was enough to singe the hair off my arms. But I couldn’t focus on that. Reese’s screams blocked out all my other senses. I’d never heard a noise like that, not ever.
I squeezed Reese and pulled back with all my might, leveraging my foot against the bottom of the driver’s-side door. She finally pulled free, landing on top of me in a heap. Her face crashed against mine, and I could feel hot tears on her cheeks. I looked down at her legs, and even in the dark I could see that one was burned, red welts already rising up just above her calf.
I got up to my feet and tried to get Reese off the ground, too, but she was still crying so hard, one arm wrapped protectively around her injured leg.
The light got brighter again, and I felt the heat before I saw Mr. Jameson moving around the front of the car, toward us.
“Reese, come on!”
She stood up on her good leg, but as soon as she tried to take a step, she buckled, falling against me with a whimper. I tried to take a step back, dragging her with me, but she was too heavy. A prickling feeling of dread spread over me—I’d never be able to carry her away before Mr. Jameson reached us. The car wasn’t safe. There was no place to go, nowhere to hide.
I took another awkward step back, Reese essentially a lump of dead weight in my arms. Mr. Jameson was getting closer. I had to close my eyes against the brightness—it was like looking directly into the sun. Through the slits of my eyes, I could still make out some of his burned features, his collarbones, his jaw. The dark space of his mouth opened and closed, opened and closed. Like he was trying desperately to say something, to talk to us.
And then I did hear his voice, low and creaky and barely audible.
“Please,” he said, moving closer. “Help.”
He reached out an arm, so close that it grazed against the fabric of my T-shirt. I smelled burning cloth, and then after that was the pain, like a hundred sparks flicked against my skin.
“Stop!” a voice screamed.
It wasn’t coming from Reese or what was left of Mr. Jameson, but from another figure, one who raced up from behind us, jumping in front of me and Reese like a shield.
“Stop, Dad! Please, it’s me—me, Micah!”
The glowing light that was Mr. Jameson paused. Micah held his hands out to him like he was trying to calm an animal. I used that moment to drag Reese another few steps away.
Micah kept his eyes on his dad, but turned his head slightly to speak to us. “I shouldn’t have left you in the barn. I’m sorry, I just, I didn’t know what to do. But it’s okay now. It’ll be okay. Right, Dad?”
The light didn’t move away, the dark shape inside staying eerily still.
“Please, Dad,” Micah pleaded, his voice rising like a child’s. “I can still fix everything. You just have to leave them alone and go hide in the woods. I’ll come back for you. I will. Please.”
The dark mouth in the glowing light opened, and one word escaped—“Help.”
Mr. Jameson moved forward again, toward us—and Micah.
“Dad?” Micah asked, taking one unsure step backward. “Dad, it’s me—it’s Micah.”
“Heeeelp,” came the voice from the glowing light. Two arm shapes reached out wildly in our direction.
“D-dad?” Micah stuttered. He took another step back, landing hard on my foot. “Stop—please. The fire will fade away eventually, just like always. You have to hide until then, and then we’ll leave, we’ll go away. No more people getting hurt.”
The mouth in the fire opened and closed, opened and closed. If Mr. Jameson was still Mr. Jameson in there, he seemed beyond hearing. Beyond Micah’s reach. His hollow features were twisted up with what something I recognized now—pain.
But Micah refused to see it. Another arm reached out for him, and he dodged.
“It’s me! Dad, stop—”
The glowing arm reached Micah’s shirt, burning through it instantly. Micah’s whole back stiffened in shock.
“Micah, we have to run. Help me with Reese—”
But Micah stood still, transfixed.
“Dad,” he pleaded. “Dad . . .”
Mr. Jameson reached out again, this time for Micah’s chest. And I knew in that second that Micah wouldn’t get away in time, and that Mr. Jameson would burn through him as easily as he’d burned through the glass of the window. I was behind Micah, and the heat from Mr. Jameson was so hot I had to turn my face away. The air so hot I was choking on it.
That’s when I saw the gun tucked into the back of Micah’s waistband. The sheriff’s gun, its handle resting flat against Micah’s back. I’d never held a gun before, not a real one. I was still staring at it when Micah screamed. Mr. Jameson had reached him and placed one bright, glowing hand on his own son’s chest.
I gripped the handle and pulled it out, aiming it quickly around Micah’s shoulder, toward the middle of the glowing ball of light. I put my finger against the trigger, pulled—
And nothing happened.
Micah’s screams grew louder, but still he couldn’t—or wouldn’t—move. But he also couldn’t shield us for much longer. I bit my lip, re-aiming the gun. That’s when I felt a hand reach up beside me. Reese quickly flipped a switch on the gun—the safety, I realized—before giving me a small nod. She wrapped her hand around mine on the handle. I swallowed hard as she helped me aim again, and we fired.
It took a second for the glowing figure to register what had happened. Through all the light, I couldn’t even see if we’d hit him, or where. But then he crumpled, folding in on himself, sucking the light back inside as quickly as turning off a flashlight. For a few moments I couldn’t see; the afterimage of the light was too burned into my vision. I blinked heavily and turned away, making out just the outline of Reese beside me in the suddenly dark night.
Micah fell to his knees, reaching down for his dad, for the sprawling figure on the ground. I could just barely make out Mr. Jameson, now free of any light or heat, just an average-size shape holding his hands over his thigh. Through his long fingers, I saw blood.
As my eyes started to slowly adjust to the dark, Micah’s dad became more clear. The skin of his face and arms was rippled and puckered, blackened in places. He was completely bald on one side of his face, the ear on that side nothing more than a black hole. The skin of his face was stretched and shiny where it met his neck. Whatever had been done to him all those years ago in the plant’s secret laboratory, he hadn’t gotten a chance to truly recover, not really. His eyes were closed, his mouth still open and moving, trying to push out words none of us could hear.
Micah ignored his own injuries, reaching instead to place one gentle hand on his dad’s head. I thought he might cry, or yell, or ask his dad why—why put him in such an awful position? Why hurt the one person who was still looking out for him? Why? But Micah said none of those things.
“I’m sorry,” he whimpered, hunching over his dad, defeated. “I’m sorry.”
We heard the sirens then, coming up the road. As they got closer, they blocked out the sound of Mr. Jameson’s struggling cry, of Micah’s apologies, of the gun slipping from my hand and falling to the ground below.
Thirty-Two
THE TREES WERE awash in lights: red, blue, white, yellow. Three police cars were pulled up to the side of the road, along with an ambulance, a fire truck, and Dex’s car, parked haphazardly where Micah had left it.
A black SUV was parked in the shadows across the street. I watched quietly as agents Shanahan and Rickard loaded two figures into the SUV on stretchers—an unconscious Mr. Jameson and a silent Micah, both with fresh bandages over their injuries, both in handcuffs. A town deputy went to go speak with Rickard, and he looked impossibly young next to the agent, his expression confused and even a little scared in the swirling lights.
Rickard just put one hand on the deputy’s shoulder and shuffled him back toward a waiting car from the local station. “. . . federal concern . . . We got it from here,” I heard him say as he passed. The deputy tried weakly to protest, but Rickard guided him into the car, then leaned to whisper something in the younger man’s ear before firmly closing the car door and walking back to his partner.
I strained to hear, but I was too far away, sitting next to Reese in the back of an ambulance while two medics tended to her burned leg. She was going to be fine, but they still needed to take her to the hospital. Reese jutted out her chin and said she wasn’t going anywhere until she saw her dad. One of the medics started to argue with her, and when I saw Reese’s eyes go dark in response, I almost pitied him.
My heart jumped into my throat when I saw a group of people moving down the road toward us, and I threw myself out of the back of the ambulance.
There were my dad and Dex, walking slowly but still safe, their faces lit up in the alternating police lights. Next to them, the deputy and two other officers were carrying the sheriff between them.
I started running to meet them, but the two agents swiftly intercepted my dad, blocking my path. But before they could say anything, my dad held up one hand to silence them and turned to me.
The Truth Lies Here Page 27
