He rose to leave. Inside I was screaming: Stay. Stay. Stay. I didn’t care if we talked or not. His presence was enough.
At the door, he paused.
“What color would you use?”
I frowned. “What?”
“When I came in, you were staring out the window.”
Drawing, was what he didn’t say. You had that look on your face like you were drawing.
That familiar burn came back and my vision blurred. It seemed like forever ago that we’d last discussed the weather, the outside world, and how I would draw it. I missed it. I missed it so much. “Lavender gray.”
He nodded and turned away. “Good night, Anna.”
“G’night.” I let out a breath of relief as his footsteps thudded down the stairs. I hadn’t realized until that very second how badly I wanted him to trust me. No matter what we’d gone through, I was on his side. Always. Even if it killed me.
The house was eerily quiet when I woke late the next morning. I put a hand up to hood my eyes from the daylight that blasted through my window. My head pounded on all sides. The trek down the stairs seemed to take forever; every step was agonizing. Every joint in my body creaked in misery. I felt like I’d taken a week’s worth of combat courses.
In the kitchen, I barely registered Trev at the table as I shuffled past him. I pulled the bottle of ibuprofen out of a drawer and downed two pills with a gulp of water.
When I turned around, Trev was barely a foot away. “You okay?”
“No. I feel like hell.”
“You look like hell.”
I managed to part my lids a fraction, only enough to glower. “Geez. Thanks.” I started to move around him, but he stopped me with a tug on my wrist.
“Hey. Come here.” He wrapped me in a hug, and I melted instantly. He smelled like tea and pinesap, probably from gathering wood. I stalled there for a second, loving how comfortable and familiar he felt.
“Where is everyone?” I asked, my voice muffled against his sweatshirt.
“Sam went for a run. Cas and Nick are in the garage messing around with the generator. Something shorted out last night.”
I pulled away. “And you? What are you doing?”
A lock of black hair fell across his forehead. “Me? I am tending to you.”
I sighed. “No need for that.” I peeked over his shoulder and saw the table covered in loose sheets of paper. “What’s all that?”
“That is what Sam spent most of the night doing.”
I dropped into a chair and picked a page from the pile. Sam’s handwriting, a barely legible scrawl, filled the paper. None of the notes made sense to me.
Trev rooted around in the kitchen and came back a minute later with a steaming mug of liquid. “Drink this.”
“Thanks.” I sipped gingerly, expecting coffee but tasting freshly brewed green tea. I didn’t drink tea a lot, except for when I was sick. Dad would brew up a cup using loose tea leaves and a little metal basket with a chain on the end.
“Your mother liked doing it the old-fashioned way,” he’d say.
Trev slid into the chair next to mine. “I just pulled the kettle out of the fireplace. It’s not quite the same as putting it on the stove—it tastes like burning wood, if you ask me—but it’s something.”
“It’s perfect. Thank you.” I held up Sam’s notes. “Did he crack the cipher?”
“Ah.” Trev plucked a page from the stack. “This is what he has so far.”
There was a series of letters running along the top of the paper. A lot of Xs and Is, and a few other letters. Then, at the bottom, Retrieve evidence from Port Cadia. Use scars and tattoo to find your location. Once you find it, the tattoo marks the spot. When you find the spot, it’ll be the third tree, sixty north.
The back door burst open and Sam sauntered in, his dark hair glistening with sweat. He wiped his forehead with the back of his sleeve and disappeared into the pantry, returning a second later with a fresh bottle of water.
I gave the paper a shake. “You broke the cipher. So now what?”
Before answering, he examined my face with a quick sweep of his eyes. I hadn’t bothered to check my reflection in the mirror before coming downstairs, and now I wondered if I really did look like hell.
My face felt puffy in spots. I was sure I sported new bruises that’d formed while I slept.
“How are you feeling?” he asked.
“Fine.” I shook the page harder.
Trev rose to his feet. “Now that you’re back, I think I’ll go out for a run.”
“You got a cell?” Sam asked, and Trev patted his pocket. “Stay alert.”
With a nod, Trev left through the front door. Sam sat at the head of the table, the water bottle crinkling in his grasp. “The first portion doesn’t make any sense. So I don’t know if it’s deciphered.”
“How do you think you have to use the scars? Or the tattoo? Maybe the UV light—”
He shook his head. “Cas checked me again this morning.”
I slumped. “Oh.” Not only was I disappointed that that wasn’t the answer, I was disappointed that he hadn’t asked me to check him. Though I suppose at that stage, he wanted to be as thorough as possible, which probably meant…
I blushed thinking about what “thorough” meant.
“But you know where you’re supposed to go,” I said, flattening the page in front of me. “Port was mentioned in your file. Whoever wrote those notes, they must have been talking about Port Cadia, right?”
He shoved the mess of discarded paper aside and set his elbows on the table. “Maybe. But I can’t go there without knowing where to look.” He scrubbed at his face with his hands. “The first part of the note could be a warning for all I know. I need to have a clear plan before making a move.”
I looked at the mixed-up letters at the top of the paper. The Xs and Is seemed vaguely familiar, but I couldn’t place them. And the longer it took us to decipher the rest of the message, the closer Connor and Riley would be to finding us.
23
I LOOKED AT THE CLOCK HANGING ABOVE the fireplace. It’d been six hours since my last dose of painkillers. I’d spent most of the day in one of the easy chairs in the living room with my mother’s journal. I alternated between sketching a new picture of Trev, analyzing my notes about the boys, and rereading my mother’s passages.
One of the very first recipes she had added to the book was one she titled “Dinner for Two on a Rainy Night.” It was a tuna casserole that seemed all right, but at the bottom she’d written,
DISASTER. Arthur hated it.
Dad. It seemed like I hadn’t talked to him in weeks. I didn’t even know if he’d had his wound tended to, if he was out of the hospital. And still I wondered about the house: Who would take care of it now that I was gone? The leaves needed to be raked and dumped in the woods. The winter rug had to be dug out of the garage and unfurled in the mudroom. The windows in the living room needed to be weatherproofed. Would Dad remember to do those things on his own?
I wished I could call him, hear his voice, know that he was okay.
I set the journal aside and pushed myself out of the chair. My body grumbled and my head swam. The headache had returned in full force. I was not built for real combat, apparently.
I shuffled across the living room and froze midway to the door.
The clock.
I looked at it again. It was an older model, with Roman numerals for the hours. Xs and Is and Vs. The first half of Sam’s coded message was in Xs and Is.
“Sam!” I called and instantly regretted it as the vibration of my voice intensified the pounding in my head.
He came tromping down the stairs, eyes heavy with sleep. I hadn’t realized he’d been napping and felt a pang of guilt for waking him.
“What is it?” He held his gun loosely at his side. The others crowded in the doorway between the living room and kitchen.
“I think I know how to decode the rest of the message.”
&nbs
p; I saw the message in a whole new way once I knew what to look for. Sam hovered over my shoulder. Cas had been excited about my revelation for all of five seconds, until his dinner was ready. Now he sat across from me, stuffing his face. Trev was next to me, and Nick had pulled himself up onto the counter at my back.
“I think these are Roman numerals,” I said, pointing at the beginning of the message. “So if we translate them into actual numbers, maybe it’ll give us an address or coordinates or a phone number.”
Sam put his hands on the back of my chair and leaned forward, sending a wave of nervous flutters down my back. I held tighter to the pen. “There were breaks in the code,” he said. “I thought it meant a space between words, but it might be a break between numbers.”
I read the first set: XXIII. “Twenty-three.”
Then XV. “Fifteen.”
We went down the row until we had 23 15 55 85 82.
“Ten numbers,” I said.
“I don’t think those are coordinates.”
“I think the obvious answer is that it’s a phone number,” Cas said around a mouthful of rice.
I broke the numbers into a phone number: 231-555-8582.
“Should we try it?” Trev said.
Nick slid off the counter and landed with barely a sound. He was wearing another of the found button-down shirts with a pair of jeans. “We should pack everything before we do. Be ready to run.”
It took us all of ten minutes to gather everything that was important enough to take. We regrouped at the table. Everyone tensed with trepidation as Sam punched in the numbers.
The kitchen sink dripped in the open drain. Plink. Plink. The generator chugged in the garage. Sam paced. He made it from one end of the room to the other, then froze.
I could faintly hear a voice pick up on the other end. Sam looked right at me, his eyes wide and incredulous. “Yes,” he said. He rubbed his face with his free hand and then rattled off the address of the cabin.
“How long?” he said. Then: “All right.” He hung up.
I pounced. “What did they say?”
“She knew who I was.”
She? Please don’t let it be the girl from the photo.
“Do you know who it was?” I asked.
He picked up his gun from the counter, pulled out the clip, checked the bullets. He’d done that once already, before making the call.
“Sam?”
“I think it’s best if we wait till she gets here, in case….”
I rose steadily, rocking my shoulders back with resolve. “Who was it, Sam?”
He blinked slowly, like he meant to close his eyes and sigh but thought better of it. “Sura. She said her name was Sura.”
My vision dimmed. The air in my chest retreated to a place where I couldn’t seem to find it.
My mother was not dead. And she was on her way here.
24
MY HEAD POUNDED EVEN HARDER. Sura—my mother—told Sam she was four hours away. Four hours. In four hours I would see my mother. The butterflies in my stomach wouldn’t quit. Did she know I was with Sam? What did she know about me at all?
I couldn’t understand why she’d left. I couldn’t understand why my dad had lied to me almost my entire life. I couldn’t understand why my mother knew Sam, why she’d left him that first clue in her Pennsylvania house.
That clue should have been mine. If she wanted to lead anyone to her, it should have been me. Only an hour into the wait, the questions fueled the hurt, calcifying it into a lump in my throat. Mothers were not supposed to abandon their daughters. I’d needed her. And I’d mourned her. And she’d been only hours away, living a secret life as Mrs. Tucker.
The excited butterflies burned and fizzled.
Nick opened the gun bag, the zipper making a sharp-edged sound, followed closely by the snick-rack of a gun being loaded. What if this was an elaborate setup? What if Connor had gotten to my mother? There were a million what ifs, and one wrong decision would cost us so much.
But it was my mother. My mother.
The boys rotated through a watch of the front and back windows. They each had a gun nearby, if not in their hands.
Four and a half hours into the wait, Cas shifted at the front window and snapped his fingers. It was somewhere close to eleven PM, and we’d been sitting in the dark for a while.
Headlights flooded through the canvas curtains, and Sam leapt off the couch. I ran to the window in the dining room, despite Sam’s earlier instructions to stay put. I had to see. I had to know if it was her.
An old, dented pickup truck parked next to the latest SUV Cas had stolen. The engine cut out, the lights shut off, and the driver’s-side door opened. I could just make out her silhouette and the shape of a thick braid hanging over her shoulder. A dog barreled out of the truck behind her and dashed for the cabin.
The woman came up the steps, still shrouded in darkness; I couldn’t make out her facial features. A knock sounded on the cabin’s door. I started for the living room, but Sam held me at bay with a wave of his hand. He raised his gun, motioned to Nick. Trev. Cas. They formed a loose circle around the door, guns up.
My knees went cold, numb. Sam twisted the knob. My heart felt like it might leap from my chest.
The door opened.
She stepped in.
“Hands up,” Sam said. Even tone. Cool as ever.
She did as he asked, but the dog—a chocolate lab, from what I could tell—trotted in, uninhibited.
“Are you armed?” Sam asked.
With a nod of her head, she pulled a gun from a shoulder holster tucked beneath her fleece jacket. Then she pulled a knife from her boot. She placed both weapons on the floor, and Nick swept in, kicking them out of range.
“I am a friend, Sam,” she said.
While she didn’t sound old or haggard, I could tell she wasn’t younger than thirty. Her voice had a depth to it, an authoritative edge, like she’d seen a lot and wouldn’t take crap from anyone.
Sam motioned to Cas and Trev. They squeezed past us and left through the back door. Checking the perimeter, as planned.
Turn on the lights, I thought. I want to know if it’s really her, see her with my eyes. But we stayed in the dark as Sam gestured her forward. “Sit,” he said. She sat. I peeked around the doorway from the kitchen. When she saw me, I swear something flashed in her eyes, but whatever it was, it was gone before I could name it.
The dog came to her side and lay on the floor, tail swishing.
No one said a word.
When the boys returned with the news that the perimeter was clear, Sam finally flicked on the lights. It took me a second to adjust, and I blinked the light burn from my eyes. When my vision cleared, a woman came into view. Black hair. Willowy. Eyes the color of summer grass. Wrinkles at the corners of her mouth like wind cutting through sand.
I sucked in a breath and the air crystallized in my lungs.
“Oh my God,” I breathed.
It was her. My mother. Alive.
The words didn’t seem to want to come together in my head. She’d never been more to me than pages and words in a journal. A woman in a picture. But she was flesh and blood. Real. Alive.
This woman might have been older than the woman in my photograph. Her hair might have grayed around the temples. Her cheeks might have looked thinner than those of the twentysomething woman at that lake’s edge. But it didn’t matter. I knew it was her.
“Sura?” Sam said. The name sounded foreign spoken aloud there in the cabin’s modest living room.
She nodded. The dog sat up.
A million questions washed through my head and I couldn’t grab on to one of them long enough to ask. Why hadn’t she ever gotten in touch with me? Did she recognize me?
Sam sat on the couch and dragged me down next to him. He threaded his fingers with mine. His hand was cool and dry and sturdy. Mine trembled, slick with sweat.
“I’ve been waiting for you boys to contact me for days,” she said. “I caught
word through the line that you’d escaped. I was going to wait for you in Pennsylvania, but I got spooked and took off.” She shook her head. Her braid shifted. Why wasn’t she looking at me?
“So, tell me, what is going on? I had no idea….” She trailed off, wringing her hands in her lap. “I’m sorry, Samuel. I really am. I tried looking for you for a few years after you disappeared, but I couldn’t find you.”
I fidgeted, and Sam’s hold on me tightened. Not yet, was the message, loud and clear.
“One of the clues led to your phone number,” Sam said.
She nodded. “That was the plan, in case they cleaned you out. You gave me a phone and asked me to keep it on, always. I didn’t know about this place.” She gave the room a cursory glance. “But then, you never were forthcoming with details.”
“How do you know me?” Sam asked.
“You and Dani came to me a little over five years ago and asked for my help. I knew Dani through her uncle.” Her eyes lost focus for a second, but she quickly shook it off. “Anyway, you stole something from the Branch that you were going to use to buy your freedom. But then Dani disappeared. You planted the clues as a backup plan before going after her.” The dog whined. “You never came back.”
“Hold on a minute.” Cas held up his hand. “I’m having trouble keeping up. Who is Dani?”
Sam dug the picture of himself from the back pocket of his pants. It’d been folded in half, and the edges were worn to the white paper beneath the ink.
An odd, nameless emotion stirred in me. What did it mean that he kept the picture folded in his back pocket, like a memento?
He showed Sura the picture. “Is that Dani?”
Sura didn’t need more than a second to decide. “Sure is.”
“I don’t remember her.” Sam took it back, hid it away. “Why was I going after her?”
“Well… you loved her. It’s as simple as that. And Connor took her from you.”
The nameless emotion intensified, brittle and tangy on the tip of my tongue. And suddenly I knew what it was: heartache. If she was the whole reason Sam had planted clues, the whole reason he’d eventually been caught, that meant that if not for her, Sam would never have been locked in the lab. I never would have met him. I both loved and hated this girl.
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