Sometimes it was hard to remember that, despite their still-teenage appearances, Jett was an old man compared to Simon, and that both of them were practically geriatric compared to me. As the most recently Returned, I was by far the baby of the group.
I shot a cursory glance at Willow’s toned and tattooed arms as she hefted a duffel bag into the back of the SUV.
“Need a hand?” I asked.
Her response was a terse glare, pretty much the only kind of look she gave me, right before she slammed the back hatch closed and stomped away, putting an end to yet another attempt to make nice with her.
Jett nudged me in the ribs. “Someone’s making progress . . .” He said it singsongy, like a deranged cheerleader.
“Why, because she didn’t growl at me this time?” I watched as Willow trudged toward Simon.
Jett chuckled, while Willow spit in the dirt and then rubbed it in with the toe of her scuffed leather boot. It wasn’t hard to guess the topic of their discussion. Willow didn’t second-guess Simon or his orders, but she had a hard time keeping her opinions to herself. And her opinion today was that we should definitely-absolutely-for sure not be going to the Tacoma facility.
Least of all on some jacked-up mission that would get us all “sliced-and-diced.” Her words, not mine.
Thankfully, Simon disagreed.
“What do you think?” I asked Jett.
“About you, or about the Tacoma facility?”
I considered that and then sighed. “Are they really all that different?”
His gaze slid sideways. Without realizing it, he did that rubbing-his-arm thing as he contemplated both me and my question. “I think neither of you is as impenetrable as you’d like to seem.” He dropped his hand, and a slow grin eased over his features. “Besides, I think Simon’s right. There’s a reason the No-Suchers keep that place under such tight security. They’re hiding something. If we can just get in there . . .”
I didn’t really care what else they were keeping there—if they had Tyler, that was all that counted. I watched as Willow crossed her arms while Simon said his piece, probably something along the lines of what Jett had just told me, and then he walked away, leaving her there. She didn’t look too happy about whatever he’d said, and almost immediately she turned her attention back to me. This time, even from all the way over here, I felt her growl.
“See?” Jett said, nudging me again. “If that’s not a smile, I don’t know what is.”
Groaning, I turned away from Willow’s glare and glanced down at Jett’s wrist. His old-school digital watch made it easy to catch the time because its backlit face was ginormous.
It was 11:38—only twenty-two minutes ’til we’d be leaving camp. I was anxious about the possibility of finding Tyler. But it was more than that, because there was another possibility as well: the very real chance I might run into Agent Truman again.
In almost every comic book I’d ever read, or every cartoon or movie or TV show I’d ever watched, there was a bad guy. A nemesis for every hero. A villain.
For Superman, that enemy was Lex Luthor. For Luke Skywalker, it was his very own father, Darth Vader. For Cinderella, there were three of them out to get her: her evil stepmother and her two ugly stepsisters.
For me, it was Agent Truman. I’m definitely not saying I’m a hero or anything. I was just trying to get by, to survive this craptastic situation I’d been dropped into. But that didn’t make me hate Agent Truman any less. Ever since I’d been back, he’d done everything in his power to ruin my life, which was pretty much my definition of “nemesis,” and why I’d been blindsided when I’d seen his name on that NSA email about Tyler.
So why, then, had Agent Truman referred to Tyler as an “unidentified male” in his email? Assuming they actually had Tyler at all, why had he gone out of his way not to name him? The only thing that even kinda-sorta made sense was that he was worried that if he leaked Tyler’s name that we—those of us looking for Tyler—would somehow find out he’d been returned. That the NSA had gotten to him before we had.
He wasn’t wrong. We had discovered the email, after all.
Still, it wasn’t just Agent Truman and the other No-Suchers I was worried about—I mean, yeah, I was worried about the whole breaking-Tyler-out thing and all. Anything that had Simon packing the SUV full of explosives must be pretty risky.
But as crazy as it sounded, I was almost as worried we would find Tyler as I was that we wouldn’t. Not because I didn’t want to save him or anything—it’s just that I worried about what his return would even look like. And I didn’t mean that in the shallow I-won’t-still-love-him-if-he-has-scars kind of way, because I swear nothing could change my feelings for him, even if he was a complete mess on the outside.
That wasn’t it at all. It was more about what all of this—this being infected by me, and then taken and experimented on—might have done to him on the inside I was worried about.
Being one of the Returned had done a serious number on my head. I’d lost my friends, my family, my home, and even who I was in a sense, since I was now a danger to those I used to care about. Case in point: look at what I’d done to Tyler.
Jett dragged me back to the present when he asked, “What d’ya think that’s all about?”
I glanced up in time to see Natty—my quiet-as-a-mouse Natty—charging like a determined bull toward the SUV we’d just loaded. She was dressed in head-to-toe black—fitted black T, black fatigues, black boots—and her hair was pulled back in a supertight ponytail that made the attack-mode expression on her face seem all the more serious. Hot on her heels was Thom, and he looked as pissed as she did adamant.
When he caught her, he grabbed her arm and yanked her to a stop. Fire flared in Natty’s eyes as she whirled to face him. Almost as quickly as he’d touched her arm, she yanked it away from him.
The argument, and it was most definitely an argument, went on for several seconds, and when she folded her arms across her chest, much the way Willow had when she’d been talking to Simon just moments earlier, I was pretty sure she was letting Thom know that whatever she was saying, whatever decision she’d made, was final. Unlike Simon, Thom looked defeated by her refusal to back down, and he just shook his head. And then he did the last thing I expected.
He reached out and brushed an invisible strand of hair from her cheek, tucking it neatly back into place behind her ear.
She didn’t flinch, or even react, but the gesture was so intimate that I nearly did. I’d spent almost three weeks here, holed up with these people, confiding in Natty about Tyler, and somehow I’d missed this . . . whatever it was, if it was anything at all.
But it was something, I was sure of it.
I glanced at Jett and his eyes widened back at me, an I-didn’t-know-either look, before I let myself spy on them once more, feeling more than a little voyeuristic now. And just when I thought the show was over, Thom’s nearly black eyes shifted away from Natty and slid all the way to where Jett and I stood—scratch that, to where I stood.
I wanted to turn away or to blink or anything to stop him from looking at me the way he was, but I couldn’t. The blame I felt coming from him had triggered my defiant streak—it was the same thing that had kept me from speaking to Simon for days on end, the same thing that had caused me to get out of my car after my championship game back on Chuckanut Drive the night I’d been taken in the first place. That condemning gaze rubbed me all kinds of wrong and I knew why, even without being told. I knew that Thom thought whatever Natty was up to was all my fault.
It was Natty who broke up our little staring contest, when she swiveled on her heel and shoved past Thom on her way to where Jett and I stood next to the vehicle.
“Check it out,” I said beneath my breath, trying my best not to crack a smile. “I think Natty’s planning to come with us.”
Jett leaned back on his heels and let out a low, almost inaudible whistle. “Didn’t see that coming.”
“Nope,” I added.
Natty didn’t say a word to either Jett or me, but she didn’t need to. She just climbed into the backseat and waited the remaining—I looked down at Jett’s watch—nineteen minutes.
And for once, even Simon managed to keep his mouth shut.
So Simon never really got the chance to say if he hated having Natty with us or not, because Thom seemed to have made his own decision the second Natty climbed in the SUV.
As if it were nothing, as if he weren’t abandoning his entire camp by doing so, Thom marched right up to Simon, getting closer than I’d ever seen the two of them get to each other, and announced, “I’m coming too.”
It wasn’t what Simon wanted to hear.
They faced off for a long tense minute, neither looking like they were going to blink first—not Thom, who intended to go wherever Natty went, and not Simon, who didn’t want Thom anywhere near his mission. The air was so thick with guy hormones it was hard to breathe. I was convinced someone was getting punched, and as I anticipated who it would be, my insides felt like someone had set a weed whacker to them.
And I guess that’s when I had the answer to my whole where-do-I-belong? thing, because I knew exactly who I was rooting for, no question.
Simon.
It was weird how quickly it came to me, especially considering how close I’d grown to Natty, and even to Thom and some of the other Silent Creek Returned. But as much as I liked being here, I’d mentally drawn my line in the sand in that instant, when I’d bristled at the idea of Thom hitting Simon.
Not that Willow would’ve let that happen anyway. I saw her reaction as clearly as I felt my own. She was there, ready to spring into action to defend her leader—any excuse she could get to swing a fist.
But it never came to that. Simon stepped aside, and all at once everything inside of me loosened as I realized there’d be no fight. “We can always use an extra set of hands,” Simon said, like it was no big deal that Thom was leaving his camp behind to join us.
Thom ignored Simon’s olive branch, if that’s even what it was, and shoved past him, making his own statement with his actions: he wasn’t doing this for Simon. He climbed all the way in the back, to the third row, where no one else was sitting. He didn’t acknowledge anyone, not even Natty, like she wasn’t the reason he was there in the first place.
“Can he do that?” I whispered to Jett before we got in too.
Jett just shrugged. “He can do whatever he wants. It’s his camp. Besides,” Jett said, looking back to where a few members of Thom’s camp council had gathered to see us off. “In case you hadn’t noticed, this place is like a well-oiled machine. I think they can spare him for a day or two.”
True, I thought, sliding in beside Natty and ignoring the tension already mounting inside the vehicle. If it kept up like this, I’d have a raging headache before we made it fifteen miles.
It felt strange leaving Silent Creek. It might not be my home, exactly, but I’d gotten sort of used to the orderliness of it here.
Silent Creek’s remote mountain location made it ideal for what Thom needed: hiding an entire camp of eternal teens from civilization. What had once been a thriving logging community had turned into a virtual ghost town when timber laws had changed decades earlier. Most of the locals fled, leaving only a handful of holdouts who’d refused to vacate the outlying areas. The decaying old church in the center of the small settlement had turned out to be the perfect operation center for the Returned.
During my time there, I’d only seen a single car pass through Silent Creek, which Natty said almost never happened, mostly because the place was so far off the beaten path. And since there were no stores or cafés or gas stations, not even a single latte stand, there were zero reasons to stop, even on those rare occasions when someone did stray their way.
And it hadn’t escaped my notice that up here, cocooned in the mountains the way we were, it felt somehow safer. I mean sure, Jett had to “jack” his internet connection, which I assume meant he’d illegally hacked into someone’s satellite service or something, and the closest groceries were some forty miles away at a convenience store where truckers and RVers stopped to stock up on energy drinks and chips while they filled their tanks, but at least we didn’t have the No-Suchers breathing down our necks.
Plus, the stars here were so bright they were practically fake, and yet every night they appeared, they sort-of-totally-absolutely took my breath away.
According to my calculations, and trust me, I’d done the calculations, the drive from the central Oregon camp to Tacoma should have taken somewhere along the lines of six hours. If I was being completely honest, I knew precisely how long it should’ve taken—you know, because of the calculations and all—six hours and seventeen minutes. And I’d planned to count down every last second on Jett’s watch.
But things didn’t go exactly as planned, and instead of taking just over six hours, we were closing in on eight and a half, none of which was because Willow had decided to take the scenic route. A mere fifteen minutes had been eaten up at a run-down little nothing of a gas station we’d stopped at to refuel. Simon had picked the stop because he doubted they had surveillance cameras the NSA could tap into. He was so certain, in fact, he even let us get out and stretch our legs while we waited. But fifteen minutes was nothing, no big deal.
The other hour-plus was taken up by the tire we’d blown in the middle of the winding two-lane mountain highway. I shouldn’t complain—we were lucky. One, Willow had mad driving skills and had somehow managed to keep us from crashing into the guardrail, or worse, from plummeting over the side and ending up in a fiery heap of scrap metal at the bottom of the mountain. And two, and significantly less dramatic, we’d had a spare. So we’d been able to change the flat.
And when I say we, I mean Willow and Simon. I was useless, mostly because there was no way Willow would ever have let me help, so I stood there watching, along with Jett, Natty, and Thom—who was still doing everything in his power to avoid everyone. Even Simon wasn’t a huge help, mostly just serving as Willow’s one-man pit crew, while she was the one who got her hands dirty.
But apparently our “spare” was just that, a temporary fix until we could get a replacement. When we finally made it to the next crappy little station—also presumably without cameras—Simon managed to procure us a not-necessarily-new but definitely-not-flat tire to get us back on the road again.
Every time Simon mentioned security cameras, my shoulders tensed up all over again. I didn’t want to admit it, but the closer we got to Tacoma, the more worried I became. But none of these things changed the countdown in my head.
The hours, the minutes, the seconds . . .
All potentially leading me to Tyler.
I might not be able to get back any of the time I’d lost during the five years I’d missed, but at least with Willow, who didn’t worry about such insignificant matters as speed limits or laws or anything like that, behind the wheel we might make up some of the time we’d lost on the road.
When we crossed the bridge over the Columbia River, I found my eyes glued to the sign indicating we were entering Washington—the state where I’d been born . . . the state Tyler had vanished from, and where I hoped to find him again.
As I glanced over my shoulder, I saw that Thom was still staring resentfully out the window, pretending there was some invisible barricade between him and us.
Super. Mature.
I turned back around to Natty, deciding enough was enough. “I don’t care what anyone thinks.” I made sure I was loud enough to be heard in both the front and the back seats. “I’m glad you decided to join us.”
Natty’s surprising hazel eyes got all huge and her cheeks flushed pink. “Um, thanks . . . ?” She hedged over her words, like even acknowledging my approval might keep her in the doghouse with Thom.
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br /> I twisted around again, this time to Thom. “You too,” I added, and now I was probably the one in trouble. I could practically feel Simon’s disapproval drilling into the back of my head. “Everyone’s acting so calm, like this is no big deal, but I’m freaking out. It makes me feel better you guys are here.”
Thom stopped staring out the window and faced me, and even though he didn’t actually answer me, his expression softened just the slightest bit and his nod said what he couldn’t. We were cool.
Jett was the first one to use real words. “I’m glad you’re here too,” he said, from the other side of Natty.
From the driver’s seat, Willow followed Thom’s lead and jerked her head in an almost nod while her eyes strayed briefly from the road to the rearview mirror. It was the closest to an acknowledgment that she didn’t at least hate me that I’d gotten from Willow.
Simon kept his mouth shut, but the second I caught him glancing my way, I made a face at him, letting him know what I thought of his ridiculous pigheadedness.
“Fine.” He let out a long, dramatic sigh. “Me too.” And then he gave me an are-you-happy? look, to which I smiled, because I so was happy.
If we were really doing this—going into an NSA stronghold, a place no Returned had ever gone into on purpose—I’d rather we not do it wearing our angry eyebrows. If I could have convinced everyone to hold hands and sing a chorus of “We Are the World” or “Kumbaya” or some other can’t-we-all-just-get-along song, I probably would have. But for now, I was satisfied we weren’t at one another’s throats.
I’d take my victories where I could get them.
CHAPTER FOUR
ONE TIME, WHEN I WAS MAYBE THREE YEARS old, my dad took me to this mall where they had this giant stuffed polar bear—a real one that was posed so it was standing upright on its hind legs. Its front paws were outstretched with its claws fully extended so it was in a perpetual state of attack mode. People stood in line to get their picture taken with it, smiling and posing and petting its patchy fur.
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