The rain fell harder now, plastering my hair to my face. Water dripped from Sam’s nose.
“Are you sure about this?” he asked.
I took in the sight of the house. “We don’t have much of a choice, do we?” I cut through the grass and darted up the steps to the front porch. The neglected wood creaked beneath me. Under cover of the roof, I took a second to wipe the rain from my face as Sam pushed through the warped front door. He let me take the lead.
We entered into a foyer, its hardwood floors pitted and dusty. Cobwebs hung from the ceiling corners. A torn couch sat in the family room, to the right. I crossed to the back of the house, to the kitchen, where the cupboard doors hung from the cabinet frames like broken wings. An old-fashioned stove butted up against a window that looked out on the cedars. I tried to picture the family that had inhabited this space. Dad at the table, reading a newspaper. Mom at the stove. Two daughters chasing each other through the house.
It was almost as if the memories hung there among the cobwebs, waiting for someone to pick them free. And if I could, could I make them mine again?
We backtracked and followed the hallway to the very end, to a bedroom. A four-poster bed sat in the middle of the room without its mattress. Cobwebs made their own canopy on the frame. I looked in the closet, finding the hanging bar empty, a pile of forgotten things in the back corner. I crouched, dug through the belongings.
A hairbrush. A shoestring. A torn newspaper. A tiny decorative box.
I pulled the box out, flipped the saffron lid open. Inside lay an origami paper crane, a knotted beaded necklace, and a picture, the edges crisp and torn, the photo itself folded into a crescent.
In my hands it felt brittle with age, and when I straightened it out, a corner fell away, fluttering to the floor. I sat back on my butt, in line with the light coming through the window, so I could better see the image.
A breath danced in the hollow of my throat. The girl in the picture was me.
A ten-year-old version of me. My hair was tied back in a high ponytail, but a few loose strands hung in front, hiding my hazel eyes. Dani stood behind me. She must have been fifteen or sixteen, and where my hair was fair, hers hovered between dark brown and auburn. We didn’t look alike, not in the way you would expect sisters to. But we shared the same smattering of freckles, the same narrow nose.
I held the picture tightly in my hands, feeling something stir. A memory, a wish, an emotion, I couldn’t tell. But what I did know was that it was a connection. “She was really beautiful.”
Sam dripped rain on the floor and said nothing. He leaned against the wall between the door and the closet, his shoulder the only thing holding him up. His eyes were closed tightly, as if the very sight of Dani had brought on a new wave of memories and the emotion attached to them. His mouth twitched and the fine lines at the corners of his eyes deepened.
I wrapped my arms around his neck.
“Do you remember her yet?” I said, my voice muffled against his chest.
“I can remember the way she made me feel.”
“Tell me.”
He shook his head, as if the new emotions were alien to him, and he wasn’t sure how to put the feeling into words. “Happy. Safe.”
I wanted to ask, How do I make you feel? But it was selfishness and jealousy that fueled the question, and no amount of bravery would pry the words from my mouth. I was too afraid to find out the truth—that I couldn’t make him feel the things Dani had made him feel. And what did it matter now, anyway? Dani was my sister. Sam had loved my sister.
A flash of lightning filled the dark corners of the room, and a crack of thunder followed.
“We should keep looking,” Sam said, his voice leaden in the quiet between thunderclaps.
I looked once more at the picture still clutched in my hand. I could sense the ghosts of the house around me, welcoming me home.
Sam started for the door. I folded the picture and put it in my jeans pocket, hoping the rain wouldn’t ruin the only image I had of a life I couldn’t remember.
31
SAM AND I SPLIT UP TO CHECK THE rest of the house. I looked in the kitchen cabinets and the pantry. It was hard to guess where we might find a clue, and I wasn’t about to overlook something, no matter how inconspicuous it might have seemed.
Back in the foyer, I checked a coat closet and found it empty. I was making my way through the living room when I heard a crash from the bathroom.
“Sam?” I hurried down the hall and found him lying on the floor on his back. “What happened?”
He blinked several times, like he couldn’t see straight, and then rolled over and rose to his knees. “Shit,” he muttered as he got to his feet. A bolt of lightning illuminated his face for a split second. He looked ashen and wary.
“Was it a flashback?”
He rubbed at his eyes with his thumb and index finger. “I’m fine.” He ushered me back into the hall.
“You’re sure?”
He finally looked at me. “Yes. I’m just tired.”
We had been up all night, and though I’d slept in the car on the way to Port Cadia, he probably hadn’t.
We made our way back to the foyer. “So now what?” I said. “There’s nothing here I would consider suspicious. We’re missing something.”
“The clue said that once I found the location, the tattoo would mark the spot. I thought it was the address, but maybe it means the tattoo is a depiction of the spot.”
“The birch trees seem to be a running theme.”
We headed outside. The rain had stopped since we’d been in the house, but the dark clouds hadn’t cleared up. The boards of the back porch creaked worse than the ones in the front, so I took as few steps as I could.
When I reached solid ground, I looked up and gaped.
Birch trees. Everywhere. At least a hundred of them.
“How are we going to find anything that matches your tattoo in this?” I said.
Sam stepped up beside me. “There has to be something else.”
I went over everything in my head. The scars. The note Sam left himself. The clues I’d found in the tattoo. When I came up with nothing, I went further back. The UV light. The cipher. The picture…
“Do you still have the picture of you and Dani?”
Without questioning my line of thought, Sam dug the picture out of his pocket and handed it to me. In it, Sam and Dani stood in front of four birch trees. Sam’s tattoo was of four birch trees. That seemed like more than a coincidence. I held the picture up to the woods in front of us. The trees here were too thick, and while I tried to account for years of growth, nothing seemed to match. I examined every other tiny detail and felt a pang of excitement when I noticed the cows in the background.
“Here, look. We passed a farm on the way here. The woods in this picture—maybe they’re back that way.” I gestured to the left. “It would make sense that you wouldn’t hide whatever you stole in the one place the Branch would look. It’d be close, but not that close.”
“It’s worth a shot,” he said, and we started through the woods.
I didn’t know how long or how far we walked, but it seemed like forever, like we were walking in circles. Finally, the trees thinned out and the farm we’d passed earlier came into view. Cows grazed in the field. The old tractor in the picture was gone, but the landscape itself looked similar.
We walked parallel to the farm fence until we reached the farthest corner. From there, we headed north, trying to match our surroundings to the picture of Sam and Dani.
A few birch trees dotted the landscape, but none in a group of four like in the picture or the tattoo. We walked until we almost couldn’t see the farm anymore before we found something that might match. We moved around the cluster of trees so that we could see them from the same angle as in the picture. Over the years, they’d gotten bigger, widening at the trunks. The branches were bare now, the bark peeling in lengthy ribbons.
Sam and I stood shoulder to should
er, staring at the scene in front of us. He held up the picture and, sure enough, it was a match.
“They don’t match the tattoo, though,” he said.
“But it still feels familiar, doesn’t it? There’s something…”
The dozens and dozens of drawings I’d done of my mother at the lake came to mind. I’d spent a crazy amount of time analyzing every detail in her photo to get the sketches right—the shadows, the highlights, the angle of the trees. I knew what to look for, how to see a pattern that I could copy onto paper. And something about Sam’s photo and the tattoo seemed off.
Think, Anna.
There was nothing wrong with the photo. It hadn’t been altered, as far as I could tell. All the angles were right, the proportions, the shadows—
“The shadows!”
Sam frowned. “What about them?”
The pattern started to form in my head. The trees in front of us went large tree first, slightly in front of a skinnier tree, then a space of three feet, then a crooked tree. One more foot, and then another skinny tree.
I knew that pattern.
“Turn around,” I said. “Let me see the tattoo.”
Sam grasped the sides of his shirt and lifted it up to his shoulders. I looked to the shadows the trees cast. They were wrong. I’d thought they were an error on the artist’s part, but maybe not.
I put the photo against Sam’s back, checking the shadows from left to right.
Large tree in front of a skinnier tree. Space. Crooked tree. Space. Skinny tree.
“The shadows in the tattoo match the trees here,” I said in a rush. “The tattoo itself is reversed.”
Sam hesitated for a sliver of a second before going to the third tree and from there counting out the steps to meet sixty paces. That’s what the clue said, the one he’d found at the cabin: sixty paces north from the third tree.
The path led us away from the cluster of trees and farther into the woods. Soaked ferns left trails of fresh rain at our calves. Sam reached sixty steps quickly, and we stared down at the dirt. This was the spot where all the answers lay buried.
“We need a shovel,” I said.
“Stay here. Don’t move.” He ran off toward the farm. I lost sight of him when he disappeared over a hill.
In the quiet, every thump sounded like a footstep, like boots crushing twigs. I made a complete circle, checking for signs of trouble. Thankfully, I found none, and when Sam reappeared, I exhaled with relief.
“Where did you get that?” I asked, nodding at the shovel in his hands.
“Does it matter?”
“No, I guess not.” I stepped aside as he plunged the tip of the shovel into the dirt.
The earth came up easily and he snagged only a few roots, the shovel snapping through with a crack. It took him at least a half hour to dig a hole deep enough to stand in. I stood at the top and fidgeted, shifting my weight from one foot to the other, every tiny little noise putting me on alert.
What would we do if Riley or Connor found us now?
Sam grunted, heaving another shovelful of dirt onto the pile.
“Are you sure you counted right? We could try another hole. I’ll dig for a while.”
Sam looked up at me, dirt and rain covering his forehead. “I counted right. I just don’t know how far down to go. Or whether it’s even still here.”
The sky brightened to a grayish shade of yellow as the sun rose. We were running out of time. Trev and Nick were probably worried by now; we’d been gone for hours. And Cas? I hope he’s all right.
Sam swung down with the shovel and the sharp clang of metal hitting metal answered back, just like in the graveyard. An unwieldy sense of déjà vu rose in me. Sam scraped away the earth with his fingers, revealing a thick metal safe stuck in the ground, its door facing up. He tried lifting it, but he had trouble getting it to budge. He must have had help lowering it down there five years ago.
“Can you open it?” I asked. There was a simple combination lock on the door above a levered handle.
He grabbed the shovel and swung it down again. Sparks exploded from the safe as the shovel made contact. He swung again and the lock crunched in on itself. Another swing popped the lock out entirely.
He tossed the shovel aside and wrenched the door open. Loose dirt avalanched through the open door and Sam swiped it away, revealing a package. It was wrapped in tattered cloth, tied tight with twine. He handed it to me before hoisting himself up onto level ground.
After wiping his hands on his pants, he tore off the twine and unwrapped the cloth, revealing a plastic zipper bag stuffed with papers and a curled notebook. He pulled the contents out and started flipping through them.
“Does it mean anything to you?”
He scrutinized the loose papers. “They’re logs and graphs, similar to what you and Arthur used in the lab. Blood results and logs of mental tests, but the names… Look.”
I read over his shoulder.
Matt. Lars. Trev.
“Trev was part of a different group?”
I held the files as he inspected the notebook. It was a simple spiral-bound book with a black cover, no writing on the front. He opened it, revealing lined paper on the inside, the pages yellowed.
The first page read:
February 14
Results going well. New group showing
promise, abilities are similar to Sam’s. Control
still an issue. Cohesion only stable throughout the
unit. They will not listen to commander or me.
Thoughts: If we can alter units to work
as one, can we alter them to take
orders from a “programmed”
commander? Must explore.
Sam and I looked at each other.
“Keep going,” I said.
He turned another page.
March 22
After interested parties grew impatient,
released three of the units. Sam grew
agitated when he realized they were
missing. Will monitor situation closely.
**Operation ALPHA under way**
Sam flipped through a few more pages, to May 2.
Outsourced units not performing well.
Memory flashes render them useless. Must
look into more permanent memory wipes.
Will send one of the others for cleanup.
Sam is out of the question. Aggression
has gotten worse. Will listen to no one
except Dani. Are these attributes
we can relate to ALPHA?
**Arthur has agreed to undertake
Operation ALPHA**
“I don’t know whose handwriting that is,” I said.
“It’s not Connor’s.” Sam shifted his weight so that he could prop the notebook open on his lap. He flipped through several more pages, but the rest were blank.
I searched through the logs, looking for Trev’s files. In the middle of the stack, I stalled. “Look at this.”
Sam’s name was written across the top, and next to it, SUCCESSFUL MISSIONS.
There were names listed below that, with titles and statuses. A scientist in Texas—Eliminated. A U.S. senator—Eliminated. A CEO based in New York—Eliminated.
I stifled a horrified shudder. “You had a résumé.”
Sam snatched the pages away and scanned the info. “There are kill sheets for all of us. Nick. Cas. Trev. There are several other names here, too.” He flipped to another sheet. “Bank account numbers. Wire transfers from foreign countries.” Anger notched the space between his brows. “They were taking deposits on us.”
“Sura said the Branch has immunity from the U.S. government, provided they’re given first pick on whatever they develop. This”—I nodded at the evidence—“promising the ‘units’ to other countries, taking money from them, would probably strip them of that immunity.”
“Worse than that,” Sam said. “They’d be shut down. I must have stolen this, with Dani’s help. And whe
n they found out, they took her.”
“With the intent to use her to get to you,” I added. “So you came here five years ago to retrieve the evidence, but they must have apprehended you before you could make it back to this spot.”
“And then they cleaned out my memories.” He snapped his head up, like he’d heard something.
I jolted. “What is it?”
He tucked the evidence beneath his arm. “Run.”
We were up on our feet and running in a heartbeat. We headed north, away from the farm, away from my old house. I trailed behind Sam by two or three feet, but came to a jarring stop when Trev stepped out from behind a tree.
Sam hunched over. “Damn it, Trev. I thought you were one of Connor’s men. I almost shot you.”
Trev slid a gun out from beneath his shirt and pointed it at Sam. “I’m sorry,” he said, so quietly I wasn’t sure I’d heard him.
I took a step back, but Sam held his ground. “What the hell are you doing?”
I cast a glance over my shoulder and gasped. “Sam.”
Riley was behind us, along with two of his men. Nick was there, too, arms pinned behind his back.
“Trev?” Sam said.
Riley spoke first. “Number one rule of an operation, Samuel: Have a man undercover.”
As I looked at Trev and he looked at me, several things clicked into place. Trev was the one who’d lost the guns. He was the only one who escaped the cabin unscathed, having been conveniently outside with the dog. And he was the one who had the other cell phone, who could call whoever, whenever he wanted, to alert them to our location.
“No.” The word came out strangled.
I’d trusted Trev the most out of all the boys. He was my best friend.
I stumbled back. My eyes blurred. “Trev?”
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