Sinless

by Sarah Tarkoff

  I slipped out to my car, panicking. The prophet’s flash drive was sitting in Marko’s computer. Should I go back for it? Would Marko find it? Maybe he wouldn’t . . . maybe I could just drive around the block, wait for him to leave, and then sneak back in and grab it. But what if he did find it, with all that incriminating information on it? Then I would be so, so screwed. I had to go back.

  So I stepped back into the building, went directly to Marko’s office, where he was sitting down at his computer. The drive was untouched. “Hey,” I said, trying to draw his attention.

  He looked at me. “Well, aren’t you the speedy traveler.”

  “I think my aunt was looking for one more thing. But I can’t remember what it was. It was something to do with like a brain chemical. I think the name started with like an ‘E’ or an ‘O’ . . .” I sounded like a complete moron.

  “Oxytocin?” Dr. Marko asked.

  I pretended to be thinking. “Maybe. Something like that but I don’t think it was exactly that.” I was moving ever so carefully toward his desk, hoping I could reach out and grab the drive without catching his attention.

  Marko smiled. “We’ll work it out together.” I was starting to regret this plan—now the hopelessly helpful Marko was determined to help me solve a problem that had no answer.

  “I don’t know. There are a lot of chemicals in the world,” I said. Marko’s unbroken eye contact unnerved me. As close as I was getting, there was no way I could grab the drive without Marko noticing. I looked around desperately for another solution.

  My eyes landed on Marko’s bookshelf—lots of books on neurochemistry. I grabbed one more or less at random. “I think maybe it’s in here? This title seems familiar. Does my aunt have any research related to this?”

  I handed him the book, hoping it would distract him for just a moment. “I can’t think of anything,” he said as he flipped through.

  I watched his eyes, flitting across the pages—could he see the computer out of the corner of his eye? I reached out my hand tentatively. Did he notice the movement? Did he notice how nervous I was, could he hear my heart beating wildly? He was still engrossed . . . I had to make my move. I took a deep breath . . . and darted out my hand. Grabbed the drive as quickly as I could. As I put it in my pocket, Dr. Marko looked up, eyed me. Had he seen? “I know what it is,” he said.

  My adrenaline rushed. “What?”

  “Sucrose.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Sugar. Just sugar. If she’s looking through Dr. Smith’s research, I bet that’s what she’s working on.”

  He hadn’t seen me grab the flash drive . . . but he knew something about Dr. Smith’s research. My curiosity got the better of me. “Why sugar?”

  “Well, do you have a basic understanding of how the digestive system works? How the food we eat turns into energy?” I didn’t really, so he explained, with as much detail and concern as if I were a biology student preparing for a test. I managed to more or less grasp the basics, but it was what he said next that really surprised me. “Every calorie we consume gives our bodies a certain amount of energy. But we’re finding, some of that energy is going missing in ways that can’t be accounted for.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Let me give you an example. It’s a silly example, but I think it will help. The other day, my wife baked five dozen cookies for my son’s class. She put them in a Tupperware container on the counter, and the next morning, she saw there were only four dozen cookies in there. They didn’t just disappear—energy can’t just disappear, cookies don’t just disappear. Someone ate those cookies, but she doesn’t know who or when. Could have been one of my sons, could have been me.”

  “Was it you?” I asked.

  “Not the whole dozen,” he said, chuckling. “So what we know is, there’s energy, sucrose, missing. Energy that has to go somewhere. Dr. Smith was trying to figure out where it was ending up.” I saw a look of sadness cross his face, and I realized for all he knew, Dr. Smith had just disappeared one day. The lab was named after both of them—they must have been close.

  “What do you think?” I asked him. “Where do you think the energy is going?”

  “I’m actually devising an experiment to study just that,” he said. “But here I am, talking your ear off. I’m sure Amy’s wondering what’s taking you so long.”

  I nodded, a little disappointed that the science lesson was over. “Nice to meet you. Thanks for the help. Sorry to bother you.”

  “Never a bother. Stop by anytime. Tell Amy I think her niece is a delight.”

  I blushed, and wondered—as nice as Marko had been, was he still suspicious of me? And if so, did it matter? As long as I got out of here with all the data, I’d be fine. Joshua didn’t expect me to be some kind of master spy. Past Marko’s inquisitive gaze, I hurried to my car, drive in hand.

  I drove back to Jude, handed him the hard copy files, and made him a copy of everything on the flash drive—Marko’s files, as well as the people the prophet seemed to be targeting. “You did a good thing tonight,” Jude said.

  I smiled, proud. “A breakthrough!”

  Jude kissed me, and I was certain I’d never get tired of doing that. I was relieved, and I felt safe for the first time in a very long time. I was going to be able to run away with Jude. Everything was going to be okay. I spent the next couple days dreaming and secretly packing, interrupted only by the doorbell—the guard with ice-blue eyes, coming to take Dr. Marko’s data. As I handed over the drive, a chill went down my spine. I tried to push those feelings aside. It would all be worth it.

  But something was nagging at me—something didn’t feel right. I told myself, You felt this way last time, and it turned out to be nothing. I let a day go by, but the feeling didn’t pass. And then I saw the news article: “Prominent Neuroscientist, Dr. David Marko, Missing.”

  It had to be a mistake. I drove in a daze to Smith-Marko again, forgetting any concern for my cover, and I ran inside, past a few confused office workers.

  I stood outside his office and looked in—everything was gone. Stripped bare, leaving only strewn family photos. I looked down at those pictures of Marko with his kids . . .

  The receptionist had caught up with me, was on edge. “Can I help you?”

  “What happened to Dr. Marko?” I asked, knowing the answer.

  She seemed a little nervous. “Are you with those people who came here earlier?”

  I shook my head, going for a spin on a familiar lie. “I’m his niece. I heard he was missing. I didn’t believe it.”

  She looked at me with sympathy. “You should talk to your family,” she said gently. I saw the answer in her eyes. There was no question—Marko had been disappeared just like his colleague. But this time, I was the one responsible.

  Chapter 6

  Marko’s children would grow up without their father. That nice, overly helpful man would be a prisoner. It hit me in the gut. Every moment I’d felt alone since all this madness had started, all the reasons I’d wanted to run away with Jude—I’d just subjected someone else to that same hell, to that same loneliness. To worse, because he was in prison, locked up away from everything and everyone he’d ever loved. I’d been monumentally selfish, trading another person’s life for my own. There had to be some way to take it back.

  I showed up at Jude’s door in a frenzied state. Before I could utter a word, Jude noticed my distress. “What’s wrong?”

  “Dr. Marko’s gone. You have to tell Dawn, maybe she can intercept him . . .”

  But then I saw the look on Jude’s face. A twinge—he felt guilty. “I’m so sorry, Grace.”

  “What?”

  He tried to figure out how to tell me. “Dawn already knows about Marko.”

  I was initially relieved. “So she’s going to save him?”

  He was mumbling, bits of the story squeezing out in dribs and drabs. “Well, sort of. She just told me, I didn’t know before . . .”

  “What?” I wa
nted to pull the information out of him.

  He took a deep breath. “It wasn’t just the data she wanted.” I could guess before Jude even said it. “All she needed was his name. She had someone put a tracking device on him. She wanted to find out where they were taking him.”

  “You mean this whole thing was a setup? She wanted Marko to never see his family again . . .”

  “That’s not . . .”

  “She lied to me!”

  Jude tried to calm me down. “Now we know where all the scientists are disappearing to. Look.” He pulled up a map on his phone, a dot marking a road in the mountains of West Virginia. “Now we can go in and save everyone else. It’s all for a good reason, I promise.”

  “Why should I believe that? Why wouldn’t Dawn just lie again? Placate me, keep me quiet . . .”

  “Because I told Dawn I’d help her rescue them. All of them, including Dr. Marko. It’s happening tomorrow.”

  “If that’s true, then let me help.”

  “It’s dangerous,” he said.

  “I don’t care about that.”

  “You should. If I get caught, if any of the others get caught—we’re all people with no identities. People the world thinks are dead. We have no cover to protect, nothing at stake . . .”

  “You think you have nothing at stake?” I asked, my anger at him for disappearing coming roaring back.

  “You have no training . . .”

  “I faced down Samuel and Joshua and convinced them I knew nothing. I stole data right out from under Dr. Marko’s nose and he never noticed. Tell me again why I’m a liability?”

  “Do you know how to shoot a gun? Can you defend yourself if you’re attacked?”

  “If your plan is to shoot your way in and shoot your way out, you need a better strategy.”

  “You have a cover to protect. You’re valuable.”

  “Yeah, well my ‘cover’ got an innocent man wrongly imprisoned. That doesn’t seem that valuable to me.”

  “Dawn will save him.”

  “She just lied to you! Why do you trust her?”

  “She saved my life.” I had to admit, I admired his loyalty. “Even if you don’t trust her, do you trust me?”

  Did I? Should I? If there was any person in the world I should still trust, it was Jude. But there had been so many things I’d trusted that had turned out to be lies. “I trust you,” I said, hoping that by saying it, I could make it true.

  “Then stay here. And try not to worry about it. If it hadn’t been you stealing Dr. Marko’s files, it would have been someone else. I don’t mean to be callous, but . . . so many terrible things have happened to so many people . . . you can’t let yourself feel responsible for every one of them.”

  “But I am responsible for this one. Dr. Marko is a good man. If I’m willing to put someone away for life like that, I should be willing to be the one to give my life.”

  It was clear this was not the attitude Jude was expecting. “There’s no convincing you of anything, is there?”

  “Not anymore,” I said, a little proud.

  Jude shook his head. “You’re a good person, I’ll give you that.” My heart soared. For the first time since all of this had started, I finally did feel like a good person. And it was that feeling, as much as anything, that made me certain I had to follow through. But Jude’s tone was resolute. “I wish you could come. I really do.”

  “So that’s it. You’re just taking Dawn’s side.”

  Jude was boiling over with frustration. “Don’t throw a tantrum, it’s not going to get you anywhere.”

  I furiously went silent. There was no greater authority I could protest to, no way of winning this fight. And after the way she’d just lied to me, there was no way I trusted Dawn to save Dr. Marko, unless I was there to witness it.

  A feeling overtook me, a feeling that I was being compelled to action. It was the first time I’d feel that way, but not the last. I knew in my gut, with a deep kind of certainty, that I couldn’t trust Dawn to save Dr. Marko. I had no idea why, or what I was about to do, but I knew I’d have to break into that compound myself.

  I pasted on a smile for Jude. “Fine.”

  And as he stepped away to make some dinner, he left his phone behind. Quickly, before he could see, I snapped a picture with mine—a picture of the location where Dr. Marko was being held. One way or another, I was going to right my wrongs.

  Chapter 7

  With the GPS on my father’s car still disabled, I set out early. I told my dad I was going to a prayer rally with Macy, a lie I knew he’d believe since she’d been attending them any chance she could. As I sped across the West Virginia border, my nerves began to creep up on me. Jude was right—I was risking a lot. Logically I knew this was a terrible idea.

  I imagined how angry Jude would be when he found out. Maybe I’d never get to see how angry. Maybe I’d be locked in one of those prison cells like Dr. Marko, or worse. But either way, I knew I was likely giving up my chance to run away with Jude by taking this action. I was on my own now, and it felt right, it felt honest, it felt moral. Though my faith in Great Spirit had been shaken by discovering the truth about the Revelations, this feeling, this certainty that there was something I needed to do, was giving me something to believe in again. Great Spirit had finally put me on the right path, and I was going to follow it through to the bitter end, wherever it took me.

  I’d never navigated without a GPS before, and I got lost more than once trying to follow the paper maps I’d bought at a gas station. And then, in my rearview mirror, I saw it—a motorcycle, its driver wearing a blue helmet. Jude. I tried to drive faster to evade him, but he still gained on me, pulled up next to me. Honked.

  I pulled over, and the bike screeched to a stop in front of my car. Jude pulled off his helmet as I hopped out. “What are you doing?” he yelled at me.

  “Saving Dr. Marko. Why are you following me?”

  “To stop you from doing something insanely stupid.”

  “So I’m insane now. Stupid and insane.”

  “Grace, you don’t have any idea what you’re walking into, what this place is. You have no plan for how to get in or out. No idea where Marko is, what kind of security he’s under . . .”

  “I get it!” I said, and I did. “But what else am I supposed to do?”

  “Trust me.”

  “Why should I? You don’t trust me. You’ve been following me.”

  “And if I hadn’t been? Do you wish you’d gone into Walden Manor on your own? Do you wish you’d died in your driveway?”

  I looked down, a little ashamed.

  “You know, Dawn did tell me to keep watching you. That wasn’t a lie, I wasn’t just trying to push you away. I told her you didn’t need to be watched, that you were all right on your own—I told her I trusted you, that you wouldn’t do anything that would endanger us . . .”

  “And now you’re glad you had to babysit me,” I spat back.

  “If you go in there ahead of us, you blow the whole rescue operation and your cover. You lose any chance of actually rescuing Marko. And accomplish what?”

  “So what do you want me to do?” I asked. “Wait at home and see if Dawn’s being honest this time?”

  “Yes!”

  “Well, tough,” I said, moving back toward the car.

  Jude sighed. “Fine. You wanna come? We’ll give you a front-row seat.” Jude pulled something from his bag—an ugly wig with long thick hair. I took it.

  “This is for me?”

  “If you’re going to risk your life anyway, you might as well try to help.”

  “I thought I was too valuable to help.”

  “Well . . . there’s no convincing you of anything anymore, is there?” Jude gave me a little smile, an olive-branch smile.

  I took the wig, wrapping my arms around him. “Thank you.”

  “Don’t die, okay?”

  “Same to you,” I said.

  Jude grinned. “I died once. I wasn’t a fan.”<
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  So I’d forced my way onto the mission . . . hopefully that would be enough to satisfy the voice that nagged me in my head. Though I knew Jude was right, that every argument he made was completely logical, I couldn’t shake this feeling in the pit of my stomach. There was still something wrong with this plan, I still shouldn’t be trusting Dawn to mount this operation. But I pushed those feelings aside, dismissed them as paranoia. I’d been wrong so often recently, of course I’d be distrustful, of course I’d want to handle everything myself. But Jude . . . I knew Jude, I’d known him for so long. He was smart, he had the kindest heart I’d known, and he’d been dealing with these people for far longer than I had. If Jude believed this was the best way to save Marko, I had to trust him.

  A half hour or so later, an eighteen-wheeler rolled up next to us, driven by a big guy with a red beard who Jude told me was named Owen—another rescued man with no traceable identity. Owen glared at me as he opened the back of the truck, clearly not pleased I’d shoehorned my way into this expedition. “Get in.” Owen scowled. Jude gave me an apologetic look and a pill—the nasty kind, to disguise my face—before getting into the passenger seat. I hid deep in the cargo container behind cartons of fruits and vegetables, and the truck rumbled ahead.

  After an hour or more of lurching back and forth up winding mountain roads, the truck finally stopped. “Produce delivery,” I could faintly hear Owen say.

  A second muffled voice, “Can I see your badges?” Then, “I’m just going to take a look in the back.”

  I closed my eyes and held my breath as sunlight streamed in. I could hear cartons near me scraping against the metal walls. The guards were searching the truck. Methodically, working their way back to where I was hidden.

  The door slammed shut. Darkness again. “Have a nice day,” the voice said, and the truck lumbered forward.

  We were in.

  Chapter 8

  Owen drove the truck across a dirt road, where we bumped along for a mile or so. Once we were well inside, Owen opened up the back and let me ride in the front, so it’d seem like I was part of their team when we approached the prison. The compound was massive and strangely beautiful, full of trees. I couldn’t help but marvel at the landscape as we drove.