His hand went to my waist as his eyes met mine. His fingers found bare flesh beneath the hem of my T-shirt. Every nerve ending in my body thrummed in response.
“Sam,” I said, though I couldn’t pull together the rest of what I wanted to say, all the things I should have said.
He leaned in and brushed his lips against mine, feather-light at first, then more eager. My heart thundered as he exhaled, like he’d been holding the air in his lungs for far too long.
My hands walked up his biceps as his fingers threaded through my hair, sending ribbons of heat down to my skull. He pressed into me as if he couldn’t get close enough, and I pressed back. Because I wasn’t close enough. Because I’d spent the last several years of my life wishing I could be closer.
As his hands slid up, mine slid down, exploring the swell of muscle in his sides. I slipped my hands beneath his shirt and a voice in my head said, No, slow down, what are you doing? And every part of me ignored it.
His body felt fevered beneath my touch, and when his mouth found mine again, I leaned back into the wall, unsure of my ability to stay upright.
If he wanted to, I was ready to do anything. Anything. And as my mind opened to the possibilities, he pulled back.
“Anna,” he said. His voice was hoarse but firm.
The way he looked down at me, his fingers still pressed against my cheeks, I knew what he was thinking without him saying it.
We shouldn’t.
And maybe he was right. But I still wanted so much more of him.
I slid away, tugging down the hem of my shirt and smoothing it with a shaky sweep of my hand. I tried not to look at the sliver of hard stomach still exposed under his hitched-up shirt, but failed. If I couldn’t touch him with my hands, I wanted to touch him with my eyes and never let go.
“Anna,” he said again, but nothing else came out and I thought maybe, for once, he was the one at a loss for words.
“I’ll see you in the morning,” I said, my tone sharper than I meant it to be.
I didn’t wait for a reply. I hurried from the living room, from the fire, from Sam. The cold snuck back in, crawling up my arms.
What was I thinking?
I wasn’t. I wasn’t thinking, and that was the problem. If I’d learned anything about Sam in the years I’d known him, it was that he calculated everything he said and did.
And that kiss… that wasn’t in the plan.
I just wanted to retreat to my room, lock myself inside till dawn. But when I was halfway up the stairs, Sura came barreling down, eyes wide, hair wild and unbraided.
“Grab your stuff,” she said. “Connor found you.”
27
SAM HOISTED HIMSELF UP AND OVER the banister, landing on the stair above me. He drove Sura into the wall and pressed the barrel of his gun under her chin, forcing her head back.
“Did you bring him?” he asked.
Sura tried to shake her head, but Sam held her firmly in place. “No. I swear it. I am on your side, Sam.”
“Then how do you know Connor is coming?”
She swallowed. “I just got word from one of my contacts. I called to ask for help.”
“Who is this contact?”
“No one you know.”
A bead of sweat rolled down Sam’s temple. “How long do we have?”
“Ten minutes.”
“Shit.” He put the gun away and took the stairs two at a time, hurrying to rouse the others. One of them was probably outside somewhere, on watch, but I didn’t know which one.
Sura and I locked eyes. “I didn’t set you up,” she said. “I would never.”
“I want to believe you….”
She came down a step. “It doesn’t matter. Listen. There’s something else my contact told me. Something about you.”
I backed into the banister. “Me?”
Her hair hung in thick waves over her shoulders. “What’s your earliest memory?”
Nick darted across the landing on the second floor. Somewhere upstairs a door banged open.
“Anna! Think.”
I refocused. “What does this have to do with anything?”
“Where did you live before the lab? Before you knew the boys?”
Cas sailed past us on the stairs. That meant Trev was the one outside.
“In town. In an apartment.” I started up the stairs. “I have stuff to grab. I should—”
Her hand circled my forearm. “Was it an upstairs or downstairs apartment?”
“Upstairs.”
“What color was your room?”
“I have to go!” I shook out of her grasp.
“They’re false, Anna!”
I froze.
“Your memories. If you sit and think about them, you’ll realize you don’t actually know what color your room was. Or where you ate breakfast.”
Uncertainty cemented me in place. “I know the color of my old room.”
“Then what was it?”
A dog barked outside. Sura’s dog?
“It was…” I tried to picture the room in the apartment. Where the bed was. The closet. What color were the walls? Purple. Weren’t they?
The dog yelped. I heard a bag thunk against the landing above me.
“Anna,” Sam called. “Move it!”
“When I left the Branch,” Sura said in a rush, “they were testing a new way of wiping memories and planting false ones. I think that’s what they—”
A window shattered in the living room and blood sprayed across the front of me. Sura pitched forward, taking me down with her. I hit the hard edge of the stairs and felt the unnatural crunch of muscle against bone.
“Sura?” I gave her a shake, but she didn’t respond.
When I pushed her away, her wide-open eyes stared back at me, unblinking. Unseeing. There was a gaping bullet hole in her forehead, and I doubled over, retching.
Someone grabbed me beneath the arms. Dragged. Lifted. Hauled me to my feet. The blood had soaked into my shirt. Blood and other things. Meaty things. I screeched and swiped at the mess, trying to erase it. Get it off.
Cas swung into the stairwell as the front door exploded in a burst of splinters. Another gun went off and Cas dropped to his knees.
Sam pulled me back as I shouted down the stairwell, “Get up! Cas! Get up!”
Another bullet hit him in the shoulder, and he toppled back down the few stairs he’d made it up. Men barged into the cabin, gas masks concealing their faces. Another window shattered and a black cylinder whumped to the floor, hissing as it let out a cloud of gas. Behind me, Nick shouted.
“Cas!” My voice was lost in the sound of pounding footsteps. I fought against Sam’s arms, wrapped around my waist. Cas lay on the floor, blood leaking from his wounds, eating away at the white of his shirt. His eyes closed.
Sam carried me into my bedroom. Nick was already there, a bag slung over his shoulder. He opened the window. The wind caught the curtains and they ghosted out. Sam pushed the dresser in front of the door, while someone banged on it from the other side. What if it was Cas? And where was Trev?
Nick jerked me toward the window. “Out,” he said, and I scrambled onto the roof. The gritty shingles dug into my hands and the wind bit at my exposed arms.
“We can’t leave Cas,” I protested.
Nick climbed out behind me. Sam came next. Staying low, they steered me forward, to the edge of the roof. We peeked over. An agent stood between the cabin and the garage. Sam pointed to him and Nick nodded. What does that mean? I wanted to ask.
Sam rose to a crouching position and jumped off the roof. I gasped. Nick clamped his hand over my mouth, catching the sound before it fully escaped. He pressed his lips against my ear. “If you don’t keep your goddamn mouth shut, we’re all dead.”
I forced a nod and he let me go. We both looked down to where the agent lay sprawled in the dirt. Sam motioned us down.
He wanted me to jump? No. No. I couldn’t jump. It was two stories. I backed away.
“He’ll catch you,” Nick whispered.
“I can’t.”
His flame-blue eyes narrowed. “Fine. Don’t scream.” He placed his hand on my back and gave me a shove. I staggered over the edge, arms pinwheeling, hair whipping in my face. The sky blurred around me, and then I was in Sam’s arms and he was swinging me to my feet.
Nick came down with a graceful, almost silent thud as a second agent rounded the corner of the house. Nick attacked with a knee to the gut and an elbow to the back of the head. The man collapsed. Another agent appeared. Nick distracted him as Sam moved in from the other side and snapped the man’s neck with a quick twist of his hands.
My stomach churned.
Go, Nick mouthed.
“Outside! Outside!” someone yelled.
We ran through the woods, disappearing in the dark and the twist of trees. It didn’t take long for my lungs to burn, for my legs to cramp. Sam wasn’t even breathing heavily.
I tripped on uneven ground and staggered forward.
Nick caught me. Sam looked over his shoulder and asked, “Can you keep going?”
I sucked in a breath, trying to catch up. No, I couldn’t. I couldn’t even breathe. “Yeah… I’m… okay.”
The land descended the farther we went. I could just make out the line of the road, the barren stretch of dirt cutting through the woods. Sweat gathered at the small of my back. I wasn’t sure how long I could keep up this pace. Probably not long enough.
Headlights swung out of the driveway and Sam stopped running. Nick pulled me down to a crouch. Whoever was behind the wheel punched the gas and the back end fishtailed.
“Sam!” someone shouted.
“That’s Trev,” I said.
We cut across the woods to the road as Trev stomped on the brakes, the SUV swinging sideways. “Get in!”
A shot rang out. The bullet hit the back door a foot away from my hand, the metal folding in like a sinkhole. I stared at it, at the closeness of it.
“Anna!” Sam said.
The sound of his voice broke my trance and I ripped the door open, scurrying inside as Trev shifted into drive.
“Shut off the headlights,” Sam ordered. Trev did as asked and the lights cut out, the night swallowing us.
I stuck my head between my knees, sucking in air, and along with it the stale smell of an old fast-food bag that lay crumpled on the floorboard.
Cas had been shot. Shot. Was he dead? Sura was. She was truly dead this time. My shirt still felt hot with her blood. The material stuck to my chest.
Had she betrayed us? Her last warning rang through my head. My memories. My memories weren’t real. Had Sam overheard our conversation? Nick? No; if he had, he’d have already turned against me. He couldn’t find out.
“How did you escape?” Sam asked Trev.
Nick slid closer to me, putting himself in the middle of the bench seat so he could better see Trev and Sam in the front.
Trev messed with the radio. “I was taking Sura’s dog for a walk when I literally ran into an agent. We fought”—he pointed at his eye, the lid swollen and bruising—“but clearly I won. So I went to the truck and tore out of there. I saw you guys running from the house, but I lost you when you hit the woods.”
I sat up, watching Sam over the rise of Nick’s broad shoulder. Sam clenched his fist, then relaxed it, then clenched it again, the tendons dancing in the half light of the dashboard. “How many were there?”
“Fifteen, give or take.”
“Did you see Riley or Connor?”
“Riley’s there. I didn’t see Connor.”
Sam propped an elbow on the center compartment, running a hand over his chin, the stubble rasping.
“What are you thinking?” Nick said.
Sam closed his eyes, the dark fan of his lashes resting against his cheeks. He looked so worn out. “Maybe they held back to flush us out.” He opened his eyes. “That way, Riley can follow us to Port Cadia and retrieve whatever it is I left behind. Maybe that was the plan all along.”
“Sam,” I said, though I couldn’t pull together the rest of what I wanted to say, all the things I should have said.
He leaned in and brushed his lips against mine, feather-light at first, then more eager. My heart thundered as he exhaled, like he’d been holding the air in his lungs for far too long.
My hands walked up his biceps as his fingers threaded through my hair, sending ribbons of heat down to my skull. He pressed into me as if he couldn’t get close enough, and I pressed back. Because I wasn’t close enough. Because I’d spent the last several years of my life wishing I could be closer.
As his hands slid up, mine slid down, exploring the swell of muscle in his sides. I slipped my hands beneath his shirt and a voice in my head said, No, slow down, what are you doing? And every part of me ignored it.
His body felt fevered beneath my touch, and when his mouth found mine again, I leaned back into the wall, unsure of my ability to stay upright.
If he wanted to, I was ready to do anything. Anything. And as my mind opened to the possibilities, he pulled back.
“Anna,” he said. His voice was hoarse but firm.
The way he looked down at me, his fingers still pressed against my cheeks, I knew what he was thinking without him saying it.
We shouldn’t.
And maybe he was right. But I still wanted so much more of him.
I slid away, tugging down the hem of my shirt and smoothing it with a shaky sweep of my hand. I tried not to look at the sliver of hard stomach still exposed under his hitched-up shirt, but failed. If I couldn’t touch him with my hands, I wanted to touch him with my eyes and never let go.
“Anna,” he said again, but nothing else came out and I thought maybe, for once, he was the one at a loss for words.
“I’ll see you in the morning,” I said, my tone sharper than I meant it to be.
I didn’t wait for a reply. I hurried from the living room, from the fire, from Sam. The cold snuck back in, crawling up my arms.
What was I thinking?
I wasn’t. I wasn’t thinking, and that was the problem. If I’d learned anything about Sam in the years I’d known him, it was that he calculated everything he said and did.
And that kiss… that wasn’t in the plan.
I just wanted to retreat to my room, lock myself inside till dawn. But when I was halfway up the stairs, Sura came barreling down, eyes wide, hair wild and unbraided.
“Grab your stuff,” she said. “Connor found you.”
27
SAM HOISTED HIMSELF UP AND OVER the banister, landing on the stair above me. He drove Sura into the wall and pressed the barrel of his gun under her chin, forcing her head back.
“Did you bring him?” he asked.
Sura tried to shake her head, but Sam held her firmly in place. “No. I swear it. I am on your side, Sam.”
“Then how do you know Connor is coming?”
She swallowed. “I just got word from one of my contacts. I called to ask for help.”
“Who is this contact?”
“No one you know.”
A bead of sweat rolled down Sam’s temple. “How long do we have?”
“Ten minutes.”
“Shit.” He put the gun away and took the stairs two at a time, hurrying to rouse the others. One of them was probably outside somewhere, on watch, but I didn’t know which one.
Sura and I locked eyes. “I didn’t set you up,” she said. “I would never.”
“I want to believe you….”
She came down a step. “It doesn’t matter. Listen. There’s something else my contact told me. Something about you.”
I backed into the banister. “Me?”
Her hair hung in thick waves over her shoulders. “What’s your earliest memory?”
Nick darted across the landing on the second floor. Somewhere upstairs a door banged open.
“Anna! Think.”
I refocused. “What does this have to do with anything?”
“Where did you live before the lab? Before you knew the boys?”
Cas sailed past us on the stairs. That meant Trev was the one outside.
“In town. In an apartment.” I started up the stairs. “I have stuff to grab. I should—”
Her hand circled my forearm. “Was it an upstairs or downstairs apartment?”
“Upstairs.”
“What color was your room?”
“I have to go!” I shook out of her grasp.
“They’re false, Anna!”
I froze.
“Your memories. If you sit and think about them, you’ll realize you don’t actually know what color your room was. Or where you ate breakfast.”
Uncertainty cemented me in place. “I know the color of my old room.”
“Then what was it?”
A dog barked outside. Sura’s dog?
“It was…” I tried to picture the room in the apartment. Where the bed was. The closet. What color were the walls? Purple. Weren’t they?
The dog yelped. I heard a bag thunk against the landing above me.
“Anna,” Sam called. “Move it!”
“When I left the Branch,” Sura said in a rush, “they were testing a new way of wiping memories and planting false ones. I think that’s what they—”
A window shattered in the living room and blood sprayed across the front of me. Sura pitched forward, taking me down with her. I hit the hard edge of the stairs and felt the unnatural crunch of muscle against bone.
“Sura?” I gave her a shake, but she didn’t respond.
When I pushed her away, her wide-open eyes stared back at me, unblinking. Unseeing. There was a gaping bullet hole in her forehead, and I doubled over, retching.
Someone grabbed me beneath the arms. Dragged. Lifted. Hauled me to my feet. The blood had soaked into my shirt. Blood and other things. Meaty things. I screeched and swiped at the mess, trying to erase it. Get it off.
Cas swung into the stairwell as the front door exploded in a burst of splinters. Another gun went off and Cas dropped to his knees.
Sam pulled me back as I shouted down the stairwell, “Get up! Cas! Get up!”
Another bullet hit him in the shoulder, and he toppled back down the few stairs he’d made it up. Men barged into the cabin, gas masks concealing their faces. Another window shattered and a black cylinder whumped to the floor, hissing as it let out a cloud of gas. Behind me, Nick shouted.
“Cas!” My voice was lost in the sound of pounding footsteps. I fought against Sam’s arms, wrapped around my waist. Cas lay on the floor, blood leaking from his wounds, eating away at the white of his shirt. His eyes closed.
Sam carried me into my bedroom. Nick was already there, a bag slung over his shoulder. He opened the window. The wind caught the curtains and they ghosted out. Sam pushed the dresser in front of the door, while someone banged on it from the other side. What if it was Cas? And where was Trev?
Nick jerked me toward the window. “Out,” he said, and I scrambled onto the roof. The gritty shingles dug into my hands and the wind bit at my exposed arms.
“We can’t leave Cas,” I protested.
Nick climbed out behind me. Sam came next. Staying low, they steered me forward, to the edge of the roof. We peeked over. An agent stood between the cabin and the garage. Sam pointed to him and Nick nodded. What does that mean? I wanted to ask.
Sam rose to a crouching position and jumped off the roof. I gasped. Nick clamped his hand over my mouth, catching the sound before it fully escaped. He pressed his lips against my ear. “If you don’t keep your goddamn mouth shut, we’re all dead.”
I forced a nod and he let me go. We both looked down to where the agent lay sprawled in the dirt. Sam motioned us down.
He wanted me to jump? No. No. I couldn’t jump. It was two stories. I backed away.
“He’ll catch you,” Nick whispered.
“I can’t.”
His flame-blue eyes narrowed. “Fine. Don’t scream.” He placed his hand on my back and gave me a shove. I staggered over the edge, arms pinwheeling, hair whipping in my face. The sky blurred around me, and then I was in Sam’s arms and he was swinging me to my feet.
Nick came down with a graceful, almost silent thud as a second agent rounded the corner of the house. Nick attacked with a knee to the gut and an elbow to the back of the head. The man collapsed. Another agent appeared. Nick distracted him as Sam moved in from the other side and snapped the man’s neck with a quick twist of his hands.
My stomach churned.
Go, Nick mouthed.
“Outside! Outside!” someone yelled.
We ran through the woods, disappearing in the dark and the twist of trees. It didn’t take long for my lungs to burn, for my legs to cramp. Sam wasn’t even breathing heavily.
I tripped on uneven ground and staggered forward.
Nick caught me. Sam looked over his shoulder and asked, “Can you keep going?”
I sucked in a breath, trying to catch up. No, I couldn’t. I couldn’t even breathe. “Yeah… I’m… okay.”
The land descended the farther we went. I could just make out the line of the road, the barren stretch of dirt cutting through the woods. Sweat gathered at the small of my back. I wasn’t sure how long I could keep up this pace. Probably not long enough.
Headlights swung out of the driveway and Sam stopped running. Nick pulled me down to a crouch. Whoever was behind the wheel punched the gas and the back end fishtailed.
“Sam!” someone shouted.
“That’s Trev,” I said.
We cut across the woods to the road as Trev stomped on the brakes, the SUV swinging sideways. “Get in!”
A shot rang out. The bullet hit the back door a foot away from my hand, the metal folding in like a sinkhole. I stared at it, at the closeness of it.
“Anna!” Sam said.
The sound of his voice broke my trance and I ripped the door open, scurrying inside as Trev shifted into drive.
“Shut off the headlights,” Sam ordered. Trev did as asked and the lights cut out, the night swallowing us.
I stuck my head between my knees, sucking in air, and along with it the stale smell of an old fast-food bag that lay crumpled on the floorboard.
Cas had been shot. Shot. Was he dead? Sura was. She was truly dead this time. My shirt still felt hot with her blood. The material stuck to my chest.
Had she betrayed us? Her last warning rang through my head. My memories. My memories weren’t real. Had Sam overheard our conversation? Nick? No; if he had, he’d have already turned against me. He couldn’t find out.
“How did you escape?” Sam asked Trev.
Nick slid closer to me, putting himself in the middle of the bench seat so he could better see Trev and Sam in the front.
Trev messed with the radio. “I was taking Sura’s dog for a walk when I literally ran into an agent. We fought”—he pointed at his eye, the lid swollen and bruising—“but clearly I won. So I went to the truck and tore out of there. I saw you guys running from the house, but I lost you when you hit the woods.”
I sat up, watching Sam over the rise of Nick’s broad shoulder. Sam clenched his fist, then relaxed it, then clenched it again, the tendons dancing in the half light of the dashboard. “How many were there?”
“Fifteen, give or take.”
“Did you see Riley or Connor?”
“Riley’s there. I didn’t see Connor.”
Sam propped an elbow on the center compartment, running a hand over his chin, the stubble rasping.
“What are you thinking?” Nick said.
Sam closed his eyes, the dark fan of his lashes resting against his cheeks. He looked so worn out. “Maybe they held back to flush us out.” He opened his eyes. “That way, Riley can follow us to Port Cadia and retrieve whatever it is I left behind. Maybe that was the plan all along.”
