Earthbound
Page 53

But my phone is a tether to them and I can’t keep it anymore.
I walk over to the printer and gather up the small handful of papers and clutch them to my chest. “I gotta go,” I mumble, not sure who I’m talking to. What I’m doing.
The phone.
Get rid of the phone.
Completely distracted, I turn to walk out and almost yelp when I feel Benson’s hand on my arm. My instinct is to yank it away, but rational thought wriggles into my consciousness and I remember who he is.
He’s Benson. He’s helping me.
He’s the only one who can.
“Tavia?” His hand is still on my arm.
I slow my breathing and make myself focus, feeling a semblance of calm start to fill me again. “Yeah?”
“Wait for me,” he says quietly. “Let me grab my stuff.”
Everything I’m feeling about Quinn and Reese and Jay and Elizabeth right now is too big. It fills my mind and heart until I’m too full to feel anything for Benson. And I can’t be around him when I feel this way.
Flee! my mind is shouting at me, and my breath is shallow and short. The desperation to get rid of my phone—to cut off all contact with Reese—is like a compulsion it almost hurts to resist.
As soon as he turns, I start walking again—making my way to the doors.
“Miss, miss?” It’s not Quinn’s voice, but the memory of the words he said last night covers me, smothers me with despair. I duck my head and walk faster.
“Tave!” Benson’s voice is too loud for a library, but still I don’t stop. I know I’m running away, but it’s too much. I can’t stay in there, not one second longer.
“You need to pay for your copies,” the librarian calls after me, scolding.
As I pull on the doors, I chance a look back at Benson, standing by the reference desk with desperation in his eyes and pulling out his wallet in a panicked hurry.
It’s now or never.
The wind hits my face as I exit the library and stride out onto the street. I don’t know anything about this town, so I just pick a direction and start power-walking with my head down, my phone clutched in my hand.
I wish I could close my fingers and crush it to pieces.
Once I’m out of sight of the library I pause to catch my breath and lean against the red-brick wall of a nondescript office building. I glance down at the printouts, now wrinkly from being crushed against my chest. When I hold them out to get a better look, a big raindrop plops down, smearing some of the text. I gasp my dismay and jog a few more steps to the shelter of an overhang before crouching down against the wall. At least it’s not snowing. Yet.
My thoughts whirl as I stare at the sketch. It looks exactly like Quinn. I mean, it’s not a photograph, so there could be subtle differences, but they would have to be damn subtle. Their faces are the same, right down to the bone structure. I’ve drawn the shadows beneath that prominent brow, the rise of those cheekbones, the square straightness of that jaw. You can’t fake that kind of thing with a costume and a dye job.
I’m not sure you could reconstruct it even with surgery.
Who the hell is Quinn Avery?
As if hearing his name in my thoughts, Quinn walks around the corner of a building, kitty corner from where I’m crouched. My head turns to him, and I realize I don’t need to see his tall, lanky form to know when he appears; I feel him. He’s walking my way and my eyes find his face. He looks right at me and the purpose in his eyes terrifies me.
Paralyzes me. My limbs are stone. He’s still coming, his steps long and leisurely. I finally jerk into action when he’s less than twenty feet from me. The clatter of my phone hitting the sidewalk and shattering means nothing as I spin around, running in an instant.
I don’t know where I’m heading, only that it’s away from him.
But then the screams start.
My eyes widen and time seems to slow as I look back to see a dark blue car slam into Quinn’s body and pin him against a wall for an instant. An endless, slogging instant. Then a sharp crack reaches my ears, fills my world, the wall giving way and burying Quinn in a mound of broken bricks.
The last thing I see before my world begins to spin is a familiar face. The face that means they’ve found us again.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
I wake in a comfortable darkness, floating slowly out of a haze to the sight of an orange sun piercing through a canopy of nearly bare-branched trees. It takes me a few seconds to remember where I am.
Reese’s car. Quinn. Benson. Quinn!
Through the lingering haze of sleep, I try to remember what happened. What happened after—
After the car hit Quinn.
After the car killed Quinn.
There’s no way anyone could have survived that.
The scene flashes through my mind even as I try to push it away: the mangled car covered in shattered bricks, its hood swallowed by a gaping hole in the brick wall.
Don’t make me see it. Him. The blood.
I squeeze my eyes shut and try to push the memory away. Try to forget the last time I was surrounded by blood and death. But closing my eyes only makes it worse. I have to get out of the car. I shove the door open, desperate for a breath of fresh air, fighting not to puke on the upholstery.
Thankfully, when I push the door open and swing my legs out, my head doesn’t pound like when I first woke up from the coma after the plane crash.
I really was just sleeping this time.
I manage to stand, but it takes more effort than I feel it should. My body is completely wrung out, like I’ve been climbing a mountain for the last three days. It feels like those first few weeks after the plane crash, when even simple movements were tasks of herculean scope.