Reborn

by Jennifer Rush

  That night, the place had been in complete chaos. I could still recall the distant thumping of feet, the shouting of voices, and the constant wailing of an alarm.

  There was a heady feeling of escape in the air, and for the first time in a long time, I’d felt like maybe the captivity was finally over.

  And then a man rounded into the hallway and shot me.

  The bullet had hit me in the chest. My rescuer hollered and shot back. The man dropped where he stood as I slid to the floor, all the air leaving my lungs.

  My chest felt like it was on fire. Like someone had built a pyre in my lungs and set a match to it. When I’d looked down at my white T-shirt, it was painted black with my own blood. And I realized that my hand was stamped over the wound, my fingers shaking.

  “Can you walk?” my rescuer asked.

  I’d nodded, because while I couldn’t feel the beating of my heart, I could feel the curling of my toes.

  “Am I dying?” I’d asked her as she hauled me to my feet. “Am I finally dying?”

  “No.” She examined me with a quick brush of her fingers. “It hit high in the chest. Missed the vital organs.”

  I’d nodded again, like, Okay that’s good, but really I couldn’t think of anything else but the pain in my chest, the pulling of inflamed muscle, and the pulsating beat of singed nerves.

  I’d been injured so many times before, but I’d never been shot. I didn’t know if it was an injury I’d survive, and I worried, like I had so many times before, that I’d die in that place and no one would ever know what had happened to me.

  We’d threaded through the main area of the building, a maze of gray office partition walls. My rescuer seemed to know where we were going, but I couldn’t tell the difference between one hallway and the next.

  We pressed ourselves against a wall when a line of black-clad guards thundered past, but we failed to watch our backside and a man grabbed me by the wrist, yanking me back.

  I caught sight of a knife at the man’s waist and pulled it from its sheath. I wasn’t a fighter, but I would fight now, because there was no way I’d be shoved back in that cell.

  In the struggle, I was cut, from breast to hip bone, and it took me nearly five seconds to realize I didn’t feel anything at all.

  My rescuer stole the knife from the man’s hand and shoved it in his gut. Two people dead in less than ten minutes. I’d never seen anyone killed before, and I was numb from the sight.

  We made it out of the maze to the other side of the building, and my rescuer led me to a supply closet. She nodded at a vent in the ceiling. “Climb up. Go straight, then right, then left, then up the ladder.”

  She turned to go. “Wait!” I’d called. “My mother is here somewhere.”

  “I’ll get her,” she’d said, her voice low and indistinct.

  More shouting sounded from the recesses of the building, and the girl slipped out the door.

  I’d crawled through the vent and up the ladder and came out in a forest. But I never did see my mother again.

  Whoever had held me captive had used her twice to get me to cooperate. They’d threatened her life, and I’d done whatever they’d asked of me after that, but I worried now, like I always did, that they’d killed her as a punishment for my escape.

  I pushed aside several glass bottles to get to the one labeled MOM. Her scent had been a difficult one for me to mix. It still wasn’t quite right. I pulled out the cork and breathed in deeply. Roses, for the rose water she used to dab behind her ears. The scent of clean linen, for the hospital scrubs she wore to work, and a hint of lemon, because her breath always smelled like it, like lemon and tea.

  My therapist said that hope was a powerful thing, and I’d been clinging to the hope that my mother was alive ever since I’d escaped. But the more years that stretched between now and then, the more the hope dwindled.

  If she hadn’t returned yet, then she wasn’t going to return.

  I set her bottle back on the shelf and buried it behind the others.

  I reached out for Gabriel’s bottle next but pulled back at the last second. I’d already relived enough of that night. I wasn’t sure if I could relive much more.

  I turned away and curled back into bed again. I fell asleep quickly.

  10

  NICK

  THE DRIVE TO TRADEMARR, ILLINOIS, took me less than six hours. I arrived before the sun. The GPS system in the truck brought me to the center of town, so I parked behind a row of shops and got out to walk.

  The streets were dead and dark, save for spots of light from the lampposts. Even though it was the middle of August, the air was cold, so I threw on a flannel. It made it easier to hide the gun tucked against my back.

  I shoved my hands in my pockets and tried to look disinterested in case a cop drove by. But really, I was scanning the surroundings, not only for signs of the Branch, but for things that looked familiar.

  When Anna had found the name of this town in my file, I’d thought arriving here would dislodge whatever memories the Branch had buried. It didn’t.

  Nothing looked familiar.

  It’d been over six years since I’d been here, but I should have recognized something.

  I walked to the main street and cut left, crossing at an intersection marked Washington and Ash. The shops were pretty standard. A New Agey store. A bookstore. A coffee shop. A bakery. A bar. Another bar. Good to know. Just in case I needed a drink.

  I always did.

  Everything was closed at this time of night, which made it easier to examine and mark what was here.

  I crossed the next street, the streetlights flashing yellow in the gloom. A neon sign hanging in a window cast harsh shadows over the sidewalk.

  MERV’S BAR & GRILL, the sign read. I peeked in the windows as I passed. The restaurant was separated into two rooms. One side held the bar and booths. The other side had some booths, tables, and a pool-table area. Maybe I’d go there first. Less likely to get into trouble in a family restaurant. Anna would be proud.

  I kept walking until the shops thinned out and residential houses picked up. Nothing looked run-down here. The lawns were cut. The hedges were trimmed. The windows and shutters of the houses were clean and freshly painted.

  It was exactly the kind of place where I felt like I didn’t fit in.

  A lot of my life before the Branch was still a muddy mess, but I acutely remembered the house my dad and I had lived in. Run-down piece of shit in the middle of a bunch of pine trees. Our driveway was dust and dirt, with patches of grass on the perimeter. Nothing that ever needed to be mowed. And even if it had, my dad wouldn’t have bothered.

  We’d moved there after my mom left us because my dad didn’t like living in the middle of town. Probably because his neighbors hated him.

  At the end of Washington Street, I found a park. A fountain stood in the center. A huge playground took up the back corner. A fenced dog park spanned the opposite corner. A garden took up the front, with benches stuck in between the flower beds.

  I picked a bench in the back of the garden, hidden in the shadows cast by an oak tree, and sat. I looked out on Trademarr and took a deep breath, the cool air filling my lungs.

  I thought of the girl and wondered if she lived in one of those perfect houses with the cut lawns and red shutters and trimmed hedges.

  Or maybe she was dead already, her house six feet in the ground. And maybe I’d been the one to put her there.

  After a few hours’ sleep in the truck, I went in search of food. I walked straight to the coffee shop I’d passed earlier, since it was big enough to disappear in and small enough that I could keep track of who came and went.

  A bell dinged as I entered the place, and a few heads glanced up. My skin crawled at the attention, and I worried my reasons for being here were immediately clear. And then one of Anna’s comments came back to me, reminding me not to panic.

  “Women watch you everywhere you go,” she said once when we were shopping together in a boo
kstore. “You could walk in here in a garbage bag and they’d still look at you.”

  At the time I thought it sounded like complete bullshit, but then I had a flashback of me in a club, before the Branch, talking a woman into fucking me in the bathroom before she even knew my name.

  It was memories like that that made me want to keep the past buried. I didn’t want to remember who I used to be.

  I ordered a coffee and an egg sandwich and took a seat near the front windows. The streets were busy with foot traffic, but not a lot of vehicles. I liked that about this town already. The buildings were mostly one story, another good thing. It meant it was harder for people to hide on the rooftops.

  As I ate, I watched the faces of the people passing by, looking for the one face that mattered. The girl would probably be eighteen or nineteen now. I remembered her eyes the most. Big green eyes. As round as quarters. And freckles on the bridge of her nose.

  There hadn’t been any mention of her in my file, only of someone or something called Target E. The case file itself was labeled TURROW and talked about a doctor developing some kind of serum. Anna had said she’d continue digging while I was gone, but I wasn’t holding out hope.

  My first stop today was the public library. I wanted to read the newspapers from the month when I was here six years ago.

  I took my coffee with me as I checked my phone for the library’s location. Just as the GPS brought it up, a new text came in.

  How are you?

  There was no name with the text, since I hadn’t programmed it in, but I knew right away who it was. Anna.

  Fine, was all I said.

  Then, I told you to text me the second you got into town.

  I sighed and took a gulp of the now lukewarm coffee. Anna was sometimes impossible to placate. And I wasn’t used to people constantly worrying about me. It made me uneasy. And annoyed.

  I arrived, I wrote back. And I’m fine.

  Text me later to let me know you’re not dead. Got it?

  Yes, fine, I replied, and activated the GPS again. I memorized the directions and quickly put the phone away.

  The Trademarr public library was four blocks to the east, so I crossed the street with purpose, head up, shoulders loose. I didn’t want to stick out, even if I looked like a tourist.

  When I left Washington Street behind me, the foot traffic disappeared. It made it easier to focus my thoughts, instead of scanning the faces I passed, looking for someone who might register as familiar.

  The public library was another one-story building, and it was made of brick the color of old blood. A flyer taped to the front door announced an arts festival in the park the following weekend. More people in town meant more distractions, more ways for the Branch, or Riley, to hide if they were still around and looking for me.

  Sam was convinced Riley wouldn’t let the Branch die, and while I didn’t always agree with him and his unchecked paranoia, I had to side with him on this one. Riley was a weaselly son of a bitch, and he’d always been 100 percent dedicated to the Branch. He wouldn’t let it go so easily.

  As soon as I stepped through the second set of doors of the library, a short girl with white-blond hair smiled at me from behind the front desk and called out hello. Another thing I’d learned about small towns was how obscenely friendly people were. Like they were trying to make up for the fact that their town sucked ass.

  I liked bigger cities. It was easier to disappear. And there was always something to do.

  “Hey,” I said to her, and flashed a grin, wondering what she’d think if she knew there was a Browning Hi-Power stuffed in the back of my pants. It was a reassuring weight, the cold metal a reminder that I was only inches—seconds—away from a weapon. I felt safer with a gun.

  “Can I help you locate anything?” the girl asked, tilting her head to look up at me as I approached.

  I felt her scanning me appreciatively. “Well,” I started, and leaned in to the waist-high counter, closer to her. “I don’t come to the library very often, so I’m kinda an idiot about how to use the stuff around here.”

  When she laughed, her eyes lit up, and a fake smile spread across my face.

  “It’s okay,” she said. “I can definitely help you out. What are you looking for?”

  I told her the dates of the newspapers I was hoping to find, and she led me to a glass-walled room. The door was labeled RESEARCH.

  “Everything is digital nowadays and much easier to find,” she explained as she brought up an archive program. “You just type in the newspaper name here”—she pointed at the screen, at a search bar—“and add your dates and hit search.”

  In a matter of seconds, several selections popped up.

  “Thanks,” I said, and took the seat she’d just vacated. “You saved me.”

  She threaded her fingers together and shrugged her shoulders. She was cute. And nauseatingly innocent. “It’s no biggie. If you need help, just call for me.”

  When she was back at her post, I started opening newspaper selections. The first two weeks of newspapers brought up zero info. Nothing about a girl being injured or killed.

  Then, on the Thursday newspaper for the following week, the front headline pulled me upright.

  MISSING GIRL DELIVERED TO ER

  I selected the clip and started reading.

  Elizabeth Creed, who’s been missing for the last six months, was brought into Hallowell General early this morning by an unknown man.

  When Creed arrived, she was covered in blood and barely conscious, but after the ER doctors performed an examination, she appeared to have no injuries. She remained unconscious through the night and the next day. When she woke, she had little to offer police as to the details of her disappearance.

  Creed’s mother, who disappeared at the same time as her daughter, has not been located.

  Police are still looking into the identity of the young man who brought Elizabeth into Hallowell General. He’s said to have been sixteen or seventeen years of age. Tall, dark-haired, muscular in build, and reported to have been wearing jeans, a black T-shirt, and a black jacket.

  If you or anyone you know has any information on the young man, please call the sheriff’s department.

  I read the article several more times, something cold creeping up my spine. The article said the girl hadn’t been injured, but in my flashback, she’d been shot and cut up. Was this the wrong girl? Wrong article? Although the details didn’t match up, something told me it was the right girl. But it still didn’t explain any of the other shit.

  So I’d shot her, then saved her months later? After her initial injuries had healed? I had no concept of time in the flashback. For all I knew, the gunshot wound could have taken place after I saved her.

  I scrubbed at my eyes. None of this made sense. And I wasn’t as good at piecing together research clues as Anna. Even Trev, the lying bastard, was better at this stuff than I was. If he hadn’t double-crossed us, I would have gladly taken his help right now.

  I spent the rest of the afternoon reading every article I could find, starting a year prior to and leading up to the day I’d taken Elizabeth Creed to the ER.

  There was an article about her and her mother going missing. Elizabeth hadn’t shown up for school for three days straight, and when the principal called her mother and got no response, he called the police.

  They found the house torn up, like it’d been robbed, but only a few things had been taken. There was an investigation into the disappearance, but nothing turned up. The whole thing reeked of the Branch. Three months after the Creeds disappeared, Elizabeth’s father was found dead in his apartment. He’d shot himself.

  I did a search on Jonathan Creed, Elizabeth’s father, and found tons of shit about how he was the number one suspect, that the police were building a case against him, despite the fact that he wasn’t even in town when the disappearance occurred, and that the little town of Trademarr had turned him into a pariah.

  No wonder he shot himself.
<
br />   Which left Elizabeth with no one after she’d been found.

  I skimmed the newspapers after the date of Elizabeth’s return, but she was never mentioned again.

  The problem with the information I did have was that I didn’t have any concrete dates to go off of. I had no idea how long I’d been in Trademarr. For all I knew, I could have been the one to kidnap Elizabeth on the Branch’s orders, and she could have been injured in the process. Then, months later, maybe my moral compass started working again and I saved her. That would explain why she’d been found uninjured once she was delivered to the ER.

  That made a lot more sense than anything else I could come up with.

  When I was done in the research room, I headed back to the librarian—the blond girl—and asked her if she knew Elizabeth. She gave me this look like, Who doesn’t know Elizabeth Creed? And then she went on for a good twenty minutes about Elizabeth’s life after the rescue. How she hopped from foster home to foster home, had several mental breakdowns in public, and was later diagnosed with PTSD.

  “Do you know where she lives?” I asked, because I hadn’t found a current address listed for her, and it wouldn’t surprise me if she’d eventually left town.

  The girl grew wary at that point, and said she didn’t feel comfortable telling me.

  I gave a vague excuse, saying I was a distant cousin on her father’s side, but she didn’t budge.

  By the time I left the library, it was just after six, and my eyes were wrecked from too much reading. I hit up the closest hotel I could find and rented the cheapest room they had. I just needed a few hours of sleep. Maybe when I woke—and after I had a drink or two—all the shit I’d found today would make more sense.

  Maybe.

  11

  NICK

  I WOKE AFTER DARK AND TOSSED BACK two shots of whiskey before leaving my room. Outside on the street, I headed north and walked for a while before catching the distant thumping of bass. I found a nightclub with a sign out front that read ARROW in big neon-green letters. The line was short, and my thirst for booze was large, so I decided the club was good enough.