His hand presses harder. “Really sick.”
“I wish you’d started talking to me sooner.”
He lets out a frustrated sigh, not unlike the one he gave Baby Bigfoot a moment ago. “So do I,” he whispers, his lips brushing across my forehead. He stops suddenly, listening. I don’t know what he hears, because I can’t hear anything over the hissing of leaves rushing across the ground around us. A high whistle sails from his lips, carrying over the sound of the wind in the trees. Suddenly, my world is flooded in light. Two shapes silhouetted from piercing headlights hurtle toward us. The boy stiffens, and I feel his arms move around me like he might run.
“Leah!” Matt’s voice is raw, like he’s been screaming or maybe crying. My relief is so strong that tears fill my eyes.
“He was supposed to come alone,” the boy says, stepping back.
“Who else . . .” I stop when I see the tall shape next to Matt. Ben comes into sharp clarity, and then blocks the light out completely when he slides to a stop, his eyes shifting between me and the boy.
“The hell?”
“Just come on and help me,” Matt says, his hands brushing my hair back, flinching when he touches the bandage.
I can’t believe he’s standing here. “Aren’t you hurt?”
“I’m fine. Your side hit the tree. Jesus, Leah, I’m so sorry.”
“Can you put her down?” he asks the boy. “I can’t take her from this side. Her arm looks broken.”
Slowly, reluctantly, the boy lowers me to the ground.
When my feet touch, I keep sinking. With a chorus of curses, all three of them reach for me. At least two smack heads. The boy swoops me back up into his arms, the look on his face daring anyone to protest.
“Who are you?” Ben asks, looking as if he’d like to snatch me away. “What is going on?”
“It’s complicated,” Matt says, waving the boy on. “Hurry.”
“So you’re okay with the fact that some nearly naked dude just walked out of the dark with your sister? ’Cause I’m sure the hell not.” Ben reaches out to stop the boy and accidentally grabs my arm.
I bite my lips but a scream rips from them anyway. I hear a smack and a grunt, and then the boy’s other arm loops under me again, a deep growl coming from his chest. Ben is doubled over holding his stomach and nose, blood gushing over his pinched fingers.
“Did you not see her arm?” Matt yells, grabbing Ben and shoving him toward the Ranger.
“I’m going to . . .” Ben gasps out.
“We’ve got to get her out of here, Ben.” He turns impatiently to wait for us. “Just help me.”
“It’s fine. I’m okay,” I whisper, feeling the tension radiating from the boy’s body as he stares death at Ben.
“He hurt you.”
“He didn’t see. Ben wouldn’t hurt me.”
He snorts, eyes narrowing. “He’s blind.” The boy looks like he’d like to take another shot at Ben, so I say the first thing that comes into my head.
“Come with me.”
That might not have been the best idea. His head jerks down, eyes widening as he stares at me in disbelief. “Just as far as the pasture,” I say before one of us changes our mind. “You can get out before we get to the house.”
The furrow between his brows deepens. I would think he was mad if it wasn’t for his increasing heart rate, beating against my arm at an alarmingly fast pace. “You want me to?” The vulnerability in those eyes does strange things to my already pounding heart.
“Please.”
He stares at me until warmth creeps up my face and it gets uncomfortable with the others watching. “I’ll stay until you tell me to leave.”
Something twists deep inside me. My vision blurs, but I can’t tell if it’s from the fever or his words. “And if I don’t?”
His eyes shift from bright emerald to deep jade, and with a shy grin he carries me past Ben and Matt like they don’t even exist. The boy doesn’t hesitate when he walks up to the Ranger, holding me carefully as he navigates the backseat.
Matt hops into the driver’s seat. “It’s going to be rough,” he says with a warning.
“Just go.” I press my feet against the side bar, gritting my teeth in dread. Ben glances over his shoulder, eyes drifting from my head to my arm, and finally stopping where the boy’s hands are wrapped around me. His head jerks back around when Matt cranks the motor and shifts gears. Ben will never understand this. I should have told him sooner. He’s going to hate me.
We slowly navigate the turn, and I know Matt’s torn between hurrying and not hurting me. I don’t think it matters. This is going to hurt no matter how slow he goes. I can see the trail lit up ahead of us. It’s wet enough that Matt’s following their tracks from earlier, deep depressions still visible in the muddy ground.
The boy pulls my head close to his chest when the first good bump takes my breath away. I dig my nails into his arm, but he endures it and rubs small circles on my back. I know when a dip in the road is coming, because he increases the pressure just before it happens. He’s completely at ease, though I know this must be strange for him.
It seems like hours, but before I’m ready, I see the lights of our house breaking through the trees ahead. It would be so easy to stay quiet, to let Matt take us right up to the front door and the boy carry me in. But I can’t let anyone know about him. Not now, not like this.
“I’ve got cell service,” Ben says, holding his phone up above his head.
“Call Dad first and tell him we’re taking her to the hospital, then call yours.”
“Where’re Mom and Dad?”
“Out looking for you. Everyone’s been searching for days.”
“Days?”
“The car crashed two days ago.” Matt drags a hand over his face. “You can’t imagine . . .” His eyes are red when he looks back at me. “It’s been a nightmare, Leah.”
I think I might faint because I can imagine. Actually, the whole ordeal might be easier if I did faint. Like for the next three or four days. Long enough for Mom and Dad to calm down from all of this without me having to witness it.
Matt swerves to a stop in the backyard. Ben sprints around the house to get his truck, yelling into his phone, and Matt waits by the Ranger, arms out, ready to help me.
But the boy doesn’t move.
In fact, his arms are like iron bands around me. I tilt my head back to see his face. “It’s okay, I’ll be back soon.” I expect him to relent, because I’m sure that’s what he’s upset about.
Except he’s not looking at me.
A gasp comes from the direction of the house.
I follow the boy’s line of sight to the back porch. It’s flooded with light, highlighting a figure emerging from the shadows. Ashley’s horrified face appears, and her hands cover her mouth. Something about the way she is standing feels wrong. I expect her to yell at me for being stupid and causing worry, or at least to run down and hug me until I scream. But all she does is stand and stare. Slowly her hands drop from her face and tears follow them.
“Ash? I’m okay.” My words sound hollow and pointless. I don’t even think she heard me.
Ashley steps down off the porch and the boy stops breathing. The closer she gets, the more I realize she’s not looking at me either. Shouts abruptly come from the other side of the house, strobes of light tearing through the night from flashlights on the move, but Ashley ignores it all. She sidesteps Matt completely in her efforts to reach the Ranger. Shadows move around the house, and I see Dad followed by the sheriff and others.
For some reason Matt’s suddenly frantic. He moves around Ashley and takes me from the boy’s arms. “You need to go. Now.”
I reach out and grab Ashley by the shoulder. “Look at me.” I shake her, willing her haunted eyes to see me. “Ashley, what is it?”
“Reed.”
That one word from her lips is enough to make me forget everything, even as people converge and chaos ensues.
“W
hat did you say?” As if pretending I didn’t hear her erases the truth that I’ve known for a while now. But hearing it, it makes it real, and for the first time the weight of it falls on me, more overwhelming than I imagined.
“It’s Reed.” The tears are pouring from her eyes as she points behind me. I turn around, wanting to see his face, to see if the truth is in his eyes as well.
But the backseat is empty. The boy is gone, back into the night from where we came.
chapter twenty-five
The hospital room is sterile and white and it makes me sick. Or maybe that’s the dislocated shoulder, fractured arm, and gash across my temple. Either way, I crave green walls instead of white, and dark earth beneath my hands instead of crisp sheets. I’m on just enough painkillers that I can bear it.
I already tried pushing the little morphine button in my hand until I passed out, but it didn’t work. I’m supposed to answer questions before they’ll let me sleep.
“Leah, if you’re able, I’ve got a few things to ask you,” Sheriff Hanson says apologetically, pulling a chair from the hallway into my room. The other two are occupied by Dad and Matt, situated next to my bed between me and the dark window. Mom is perched on the foot of my bed, and Ben is hovering outside the room, his shadow pacing on the other side of the closed blinds.
“Go ahead, Sheriff,” I mumble, wishing this was already over with. Dad’s eyes flicker my way before drifting down to settle on the bright green cast now decorating my arm. I thought it was appropriate, though the nurse gave me a look when I asked if they had forest green instead.
“Do you remember the crash?” The sheriff pulls out a pad of paper and a pencil from the front pocket of his uniform. He resembles his son, with the same dark eyes, straight nose, and confident air that Ben wears so well. He flips the cover over and taps the eraser three times. His first two fingernails are stained brown underneath, and I stare, waiting for him to tap the eraser again.
He clears his throat, jolting me back to the question. “No. I mean, I remember before. It was wet, the road was slick. A deer came out. I don’t remember hitting the tree or anything after.”
“But you got out of the car? You were able to walk away,” he says expectantly.
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t remember if you unbuckled yourself and opened the door?”
Lie. Protect them. “I guess I would have if I made it to the woods.”
Sheriff Hanson stares at me, only glancing away when Dad shifts in his seat. “Where were you when you first realized you weren’t where you were supposed to be?”
I’m about to say Aldridge, the abandoned mill town, but he’s not going to buy that. It’s miles from where we crashed, and I likely wouldn’t have been able to walk there fully healed in the woods, much less hurt the way I am. “I . . . I really don’t . . .” I look at Matt, stalling.
He swoops in for the rescue, as I hoped. “Can’t she rest for a while? She’s been through a lot, and she obviously can’t remember what happened. I mean, look at her head.” He leans forward, elbows on knees, gaze intent on me, face taut with guilt and anguish. I can’t imagine how awful he must be feeling, thinking he’s responsible for all of this.
The sheriff waits for a nod from Dad. “Sure. We can do this later.” He taps the eraser again, then flips the notebook closed and places them both back in his pocket. “Get some rest, Leah. I’ll be back to check on you tomorrow.”
Dad gets to his feet and joins him. “I’ll walk you out, Paul.”
They don’t speak until they close the door to the room. I can hear their voices outside, and Ben is still there, peering in from the hallway. “I’m going to get some coffee,” Matt says, giving me a pointed look before sliding out the door.
“How do you feel?” Mom asks for the gazillionth time, placing a hand on my arm.
“Tired. I wish I could sleep.”
“I’ll get the nurse. I’m sure she can give you something to help.”
I reach out and grab her hand. “How’s Matt? He’s really not hurt?”
“A bump on the head. They released him shortly after they brought him here.” Her smile is sad. “He didn’t really give them a choice.”
“So he could find me?”
“We’ve been terrified, Leah. I can’t . . .” She stands suddenly, as if it’s too much for her to sit here and talk about, and tucks my hand back under the blanket. “I’ll be right back.”
As soon as she closes the door, Matt appears, sans coffee cup. There is a light in his eyes that accelerates my heart. “What is it?”
“I got the details from Ben. He overheard them talking earlier while you were getting stitched up. The door was ripped off the car from the outside, and the seat belt was cut with a knife.”
“Oh God.”
“They know you didn’t get yourself out of the car.”
It’s what he doesn’t say that I need to hear. “And?”
“They found footprints.”
I close my eyes, fighting the urge to rip the catheter out of my arm and demand Matt get me out of here.
“They think someone tried to kidnap you, and that you either don’t remember or you’re covering it up.”
“That’s ridiculous.”
“Is it? I mean, he did take you from the car, didn’t he? No one’s going to believe he’s harmless, Leah. Or the . . . others. They’re planning to go looking for whoever took you.”
“Did Ben tell anyone about him? Or Ashley?”
“They haven’t said a word, but there’s no way this will stay a secret.”
“Where is Ashley?”
“She went home to tell her mom you were okay, said she’d be by later to check on you.”
“I’m sure Ms. Hutton was upset. Did . . . did you hear what Ashley said?”
At that moment the nurse walks in. I can see Mom standing in the hallway talking to a new group of visitors laden with flowers. My room already smells like a garden. I glance at Matt when the nurse turns to my IV line, syringe in hand. The nurse checks a few more machines, tells me to rest well, and leaves quietly.
“Matt, you’ve got to get me out of here,” I whisper through the haze of painkillers she just dumped into my IV.
Matt’s white knuckles are fisted into my sheets near my waist. The beep of my heart monitor has steadied back into a quiet rhythm, and the tingling warmth of morphine spreads through my body like a wave. I’m afraid I’m going to sleep, and when I wake up, it will be too late to do anything.
“Matt, did you hear me?”
“I heard you.”
“Then help me. What if they go after them with guns? I just need to warn him. They can get away from here, go somewhere safe.”
“Why don’t you want them to bring him in? He’s a human, Leah, not an animal.”
“It’s his choice. If he wanted to come back, he would. It would be cruel to take him away, and imagine what they would do to Bee and the others. She’d never see the light of day again.”
“Bee?”
“Bee. She’s the one who got me out.” The warmth is too comforting now. My eyelids are growing heavy with sleep. “He needs to know they’re coming.”
Matt grabs my hands. “Even if I agree, and I’m not saying I will, because you look like hell, how can I get you out? This is a hospital, and Mom and Dad are here around the clock.”
“Call Ashley. This is her area of expertise.” I glance past him at the window, already wondering how Matt is going to get me out of here. “Good thing we’re on the first floor.”
Matt rolls his eyes and shakes his head when he sees where I’m going with that. “I haven’t had enough coffee for this.”
“Just call Ash . . .”
Honestly, no one is more surprised than me to be lying in the backseat of Ashley’s car when I wake up. The aged Accord is motionless, and I can hear distant voices, muffled from the closed car doors, but nothing else. I’m also completely underneath a blanket. Like someone doesn’t want
me seen.
Imagine that.
I slowly pull the blanket down over my eyes and peer out the window. All I can see are tall pine trees towering over the car in the morning light. A car door slams nearby, followed by Ashley’s elevated voice. Whoever she’s talking to is having most of their backside chewed off.
The next thing I know, the door beside my head swings open. “Are you awake?” Ashley says.
“Do I want to be?” I mumble beneath the blanket, tilting my head to see past her. Matt is standing behind her, his face red with rage. Before I can ask what’s wrong, Ashley waves her hand at me to scoot over.
“Shake it off. You’ve got to see this.” She plops down on the seat, barely letting me move my head in time. “Sit up, hurry.”
“Geez, Ashley, have you ever just woken up from morphine? Give me a freaking minute.” I struggle through the dizziness and sit up beside Ashley, leaning against her for support. “Where are we, by the way? And how did you get me out?”
“I pulled the fire alarm in the hallway.”
I suck in a breath and start coughing. “You what?!”
“It was tricky getting your dead-weight ass through the window and over the bushes, but we managed it.”
“You know they have cameras. Someone is going to find out what you did.”
“Trust me, this is worth a little time in juvie.” She slaps a thick file folder in my lap. Written on the outside in thick black marker is “work stuff.” Innocent enough, until I open the cover.
I’m not sure if this was supposed to be the first page or if Ashley put it there on purpose. Either way, the lance of pain that shoots through me makes me glad I’ve still got the painkillers flowing through my blood.
It’s a flyer, one of the first ones made, when everyone thought our brothers were kidnapped. Sam and Reed stare back at me from their individual pictures, the ones made for the school yearbook with the blue backgrounds. Matt and Sam had the same blue striped shirt that year, and both wore them on picture day. I remember Mom laughed when they walked into the kitchen of our old home, twins down to their shoes. The last time I saw that shirt, it was being packed into a box the week before we left that house for good.
The Shadows We Know by Heart Page 18
