There was only one other person who had access to the flash drive: Dani. And she’d been the last to speak to Greg. What had she said to him?
It was something odd, not a frequently used word. I remembered that much.
It was… vigilant. Be vigilant.
Had Dani activated Greg and the others? Hadn’t she tried to get me to leave then? While the boys fought Greg?
“Where’s your phone?” I asked.
“Center console.”
I dug it out and punched in Sam’s number. It rang. And rang and rang and rang.
I ended the call and dialed Nick. No answer there, either.
“Can you turn around?” I said. “We need to go back to Grand Rapids.”
Dad glanced across the truck cab. “You sure?”
“Yeah. I just… I need to talk to Sam face-to-face. I should have talked to him in the first place.”
At the next intersection, Dad took a left, made a U-turn when the street was clear, and headed in the direction we’d just come from.
As he drove, I went over every conversation I’d had with Dani since we’d found her.
One of the first things we talked about was my relationship with Sam. Nick thought it was odd that Dani hadn’t reacted more to the news, but Sam and Dani had been separated for five years.
Nick had said he didn’t trust her.
And he had the best gut instinct of anyone I’d ever met.
It seemed to take forever for us to reach the condominium complex. Even longer because I couldn’t remember exactly where it was. When we finally pulled into the parking lot and found it empty, I nearly lunged from the vehicle.
“Wait,” Dad called, but I couldn’t.
I had to see the boys with my own eyes and assure myself that they were all right. That I hadn’t just made the stupidest mistake I could ever make.
I’d trusted Dani over Nick, and Sam and Cas.
Dani may have been blood, but I didn’t know anything about her.
Nick had warned me, and I’d totally disregarded him.
Inside, I whipped open the entrance to the stairwell. The elevators were inoperable, which meant I had seven whole flights of stairs to run up before I reached the floor where the boys were.
“I can’t keep pace with you,” Dad shouted as I pulled ahead.
“Meet me on the seventh floor, then. It’s unit 722.”
I made good time up the stairs and stopped at the door to the seventh floor to peek through the tiny square window. The hallway was dark despite the late-morning hour, and nothing seemed out of place.
With my heart drumming in my ears, I tugged on the door latch and pulled it toward me. It didn’t make a sound. I eased into the hallway. Looked left, then right. Still, nothing seemed amiss.
I crept toward 722.
The door was slightly ajar.
I reached for my gun and peered inside, ducking to make myself a smaller target just in case.
There was no movement.
No lights.
Nothing.
I nudged the door with my boot and it creaked open.
Shattered glass glittered on the tile floor. A cupboard door had been ripped off its hinges and lay smashed near the pantry. One of the cast-iron stove burners had been tossed clear across the room.
I froze just inside the door, knowing that once I searched the condo and found it empty, I’d realize they were really gone, that my sister had betrayed me, that I’d trusted the wrong person.
So if I just stood here a minute longer, it wouldn’t be true.
Please don’t let it be true.
“Nick?” I called out, and my voice seemed to boomerang back at me, as if to say, Who are you talking to? There’s no one here.
“Sam? Cas?”
Nothing.
Dad entered the condo behind me minutes later. “Oh no,” he said.
I rounded the kitchen island, raced down the hallway, checked the rooms, the bathrooms, the closets. Nothing. No one. They weren’t here.
I returned to the kitchen to find Dad staring at the stainless steel fridge, at a folded note stuck to the front.
“It’s written to you,” Dad said, handing it to me.
I opened it and recognized the handwriting immediately.
“It’s from Riley,” I said. “ ‘Thank you for your cooperation in this cleanup process. We couldn’t have done it without you. Sam, Cas, and Nick fought valiantly until we told them you were already at Branch headquarters. And then they came willingly. It made my job much easier. PS: The word you’re looking for is erased.’ ”
I frowned. “What does that mean?”
Dad walked past me and grabbed the cast-iron stove burner off the living room floor. He said nothing as he swiveled around and stared right at me.
“Dad?”
His eyes were blank, unblinking. His mouth was set in a straight line.
There was no emotion at all on his face as he swung the burner at my head.
I ducked. Stood. Ducked for a second attack.
“Dad!”
He cocked his arm back, swung again. I scrambled around the island backward so I could see the next blow when it came. But I tripped over the detached cabinet door and slammed straight down on the floor.
I saw the burner come flying toward me. I realized suddenly where I’d gone wrong.
The Branch hadn’t brainwashed a code word into the boys.
They had brainwashed my dad.
25
I FELT THE LULL OF MOVING TIRES beneath me, but I couldn’t seem to open my eyes.
Voices rang in my head, calling me back into a dream or an old memory. I couldn’t tell which.
There was a flash of auburn hair, spinning and spinning. And my hair, blond like dry wheat, tangled around my face.
“Fly, bird!” Dani shouted. She let me go, and I sailed through the air, landing with a splash. The water filled in the space around me, and I kicked up toward the surface, breaking through with a deep gasp of air.
Dani laughed. “Was that fun?” she asked.
“That was awesome!” I shouted back, and she laughed again.
Sam appeared behind her, wrapping his arms around her waist, and I stopped smiling. Because she was no longer looking at me. She was looking at him.
Air bubbles rose to the surface two feet away from me, and a second later, Nick popped up. He tossed his head back, like a shaggy dog, and water droplets hit my face.
Cas ran, leapt off an outcropping, and did a cannonball, fanning water over me.
“Cas!” I screeched when he broke through the surface laughing.
“You’re such an idiot,” Nick said.
“At least I’m a good-looking one!” Cas countered.
I looked to shore. Sam and Dani were gone.
“You think you can make it to that island over there?” Nick asked.
I squinted against the sun as I followed his line of sight. There was a small island several yards off, with a cluster of pine trees and not much else. But I wanted to go, mostly because Nick was challenging me to. And I wanted to show him I could make it.
“Yeah,” I said, and started swimming.
Cas pulled ahead of me. “I’ll beat you both!” he screeched right before he ducked beneath the water and disappeared out of sight.
I dog-paddled over because I didn’t know how to swim any other way. Not like Dani. Or the boys.
Nick swam ahead of me, too, and I paddled faster.
Soon my arms and legs were tired, and the island seemed a lot farther away than it had when I’d sized up the distance.
What if I couldn’t make it?
The doubt wedged into my chest, squeezing my lungs, and I started to panic.
I flailed, hands slapping against the water, but it didn’t do me any good. I sank beneath the surface, and water filled my mouth.
The lake seemed to press against me. I stretched with my foot, hoping to reach the bottom, but found only empty space.
My legs cramped. My lungs were on fire. I needed air.
I was going to drown.
A hand grabbed me by the wrist and hauled me to the surface.
I sputtered and gasped, drinking in the fresh air like I couldn’t get enough of it.
“You okay?” Nick asked, and I latched on to him, arms wrapped tightly around his neck.
“Hey,” Nick said. “Climb on my back, and I’ll swim to shore. Can you do that?”
I nodded and did as he asked, hanging on to him from behind.
Cas swam up beside me. “You all right, bird?”
No. I wasn’t. I felt like crying. “I’m okay,” I said, which made Nick snort.
Cas rushed ahead of us so he could help pull me out when Nick reached the shore. Cas sat me beneath a scraggly pine tree, on a bed of rust-orange pine needles. Nick reappeared a second later with his navy sweatshirt and draped it around my shoulders.
“Look at me,” Cas said, nudging my chin with his thumb. “Who am I?”
“Cas.” My teeth chattered together.
“What day is it?”
“Saturday.”
“She almost drowned, you idiot,” Nick said. “She didn’t get hit by a bus.”
“Yeah, which means her brain was starving for oxygen, which means brain damage, dickhead.”
“I’m okay,” I said again, still shivering.
The boys stared at each other.
“We can’t tell Dani what happened,” Cas said.
Nick tugged on his T-shirt. “I was thinking the same thing.”
I looked up at them hovering over me. “Why?”
“Because she’d kill us,” Cas answered, running a towel over his head. His blond hair stuck straight up. “Kill us dead. And then kill us again.” He ducked down and ruffled my hair. “There isn’t anything she wouldn’t do for her little bird,” he said.
We stopped moving. I opened my eyes to blinding sunlight and shoved myself to an upright position. Something tightened against me. A seat belt. Country music played softly through the car speakers.
Dani was behind the wheel.
“Hey,” she said.
I tensed. “Where are we?”
“You’re safe.”
“Where’s my dad? And the boys?”
“They’re safe, too.”
My head throbbed just above my left eye, and I reached for the spot, not thinking, and winced when I felt a lump. Old blood came away on my fingers. My stomach rolled, and I had to bite down on my lower lip to stop from barfing.
Concussion, for sure. My dad had given me a concussion.
“Where are we going?” I tried again.
“To a secure location.” Dani hit the blinker and turned down a side street.
“Why did you betray us?” I asked, because I needed to distract her while I made a plan.
I had no weapons. I was injured. I had no idea where we were. Or where the boys were.
First I needed information. Then I’d act.
“I didn’t betray you,” she said, her voice laced with sadness. “I did what I had to do to get you out of there.”
She turned left. Warehouses and factories lined the street. Gravel from the snowplows crunched beneath our tires.
“Get me out of where?”
“The Branch.” She pulled into a parking lot behind a three-story brick building that said WATCHCASE on the side in old, fading letters. Windows ran from east to west, some panes of glass smashed or missing.
She stepped out of the vehicle, taking the car keys with her. I scanned the interior, looking for anything I could use as a weapon, but the car was clean.
I fumbled with the door latch and nearly fell out of the vehicle when I managed to open it. Dani was there in an instant, holding me up by the arm.
“Are you all right?” Concern was pressed into the creases of her mouth.
I weighed the possible answers. I could lie and say I was fine, but if I was honest and told her I was in pain, she’d think of me as vulnerable. I could catch her off guard later when the time was right.
With a frown, I fingered the knot on my forehead again. “I don’t feel so well.”
It was something odd, not a frequently used word. I remembered that much.
It was… vigilant. Be vigilant.
Had Dani activated Greg and the others? Hadn’t she tried to get me to leave then? While the boys fought Greg?
“Where’s your phone?” I asked.
“Center console.”
I dug it out and punched in Sam’s number. It rang. And rang and rang and rang.
I ended the call and dialed Nick. No answer there, either.
“Can you turn around?” I said. “We need to go back to Grand Rapids.”
Dad glanced across the truck cab. “You sure?”
“Yeah. I just… I need to talk to Sam face-to-face. I should have talked to him in the first place.”
At the next intersection, Dad took a left, made a U-turn when the street was clear, and headed in the direction we’d just come from.
As he drove, I went over every conversation I’d had with Dani since we’d found her.
One of the first things we talked about was my relationship with Sam. Nick thought it was odd that Dani hadn’t reacted more to the news, but Sam and Dani had been separated for five years.
Nick had said he didn’t trust her.
And he had the best gut instinct of anyone I’d ever met.
It seemed to take forever for us to reach the condominium complex. Even longer because I couldn’t remember exactly where it was. When we finally pulled into the parking lot and found it empty, I nearly lunged from the vehicle.
“Wait,” Dad called, but I couldn’t.
I had to see the boys with my own eyes and assure myself that they were all right. That I hadn’t just made the stupidest mistake I could ever make.
I’d trusted Dani over Nick, and Sam and Cas.
Dani may have been blood, but I didn’t know anything about her.
Nick had warned me, and I’d totally disregarded him.
Inside, I whipped open the entrance to the stairwell. The elevators were inoperable, which meant I had seven whole flights of stairs to run up before I reached the floor where the boys were.
“I can’t keep pace with you,” Dad shouted as I pulled ahead.
“Meet me on the seventh floor, then. It’s unit 722.”
I made good time up the stairs and stopped at the door to the seventh floor to peek through the tiny square window. The hallway was dark despite the late-morning hour, and nothing seemed out of place.
With my heart drumming in my ears, I tugged on the door latch and pulled it toward me. It didn’t make a sound. I eased into the hallway. Looked left, then right. Still, nothing seemed amiss.
I crept toward 722.
The door was slightly ajar.
I reached for my gun and peered inside, ducking to make myself a smaller target just in case.
There was no movement.
No lights.
Nothing.
I nudged the door with my boot and it creaked open.
Shattered glass glittered on the tile floor. A cupboard door had been ripped off its hinges and lay smashed near the pantry. One of the cast-iron stove burners had been tossed clear across the room.
I froze just inside the door, knowing that once I searched the condo and found it empty, I’d realize they were really gone, that my sister had betrayed me, that I’d trusted the wrong person.
So if I just stood here a minute longer, it wouldn’t be true.
Please don’t let it be true.
“Nick?” I called out, and my voice seemed to boomerang back at me, as if to say, Who are you talking to? There’s no one here.
“Sam? Cas?”
Nothing.
Dad entered the condo behind me minutes later. “Oh no,” he said.
I rounded the kitchen island, raced down the hallway, checked the rooms, the bathrooms, the closets. Nothing. No one. They weren’t here.
I returned to the kitchen to find Dad staring at the stainless steel fridge, at a folded note stuck to the front.
“It’s written to you,” Dad said, handing it to me.
I opened it and recognized the handwriting immediately.
“It’s from Riley,” I said. “ ‘Thank you for your cooperation in this cleanup process. We couldn’t have done it without you. Sam, Cas, and Nick fought valiantly until we told them you were already at Branch headquarters. And then they came willingly. It made my job much easier. PS: The word you’re looking for is erased.’ ”
I frowned. “What does that mean?”
Dad walked past me and grabbed the cast-iron stove burner off the living room floor. He said nothing as he swiveled around and stared right at me.
“Dad?”
His eyes were blank, unblinking. His mouth was set in a straight line.
There was no emotion at all on his face as he swung the burner at my head.
I ducked. Stood. Ducked for a second attack.
“Dad!”
He cocked his arm back, swung again. I scrambled around the island backward so I could see the next blow when it came. But I tripped over the detached cabinet door and slammed straight down on the floor.
I saw the burner come flying toward me. I realized suddenly where I’d gone wrong.
The Branch hadn’t brainwashed a code word into the boys.
They had brainwashed my dad.
25
I FELT THE LULL OF MOVING TIRES beneath me, but I couldn’t seem to open my eyes.
Voices rang in my head, calling me back into a dream or an old memory. I couldn’t tell which.
There was a flash of auburn hair, spinning and spinning. And my hair, blond like dry wheat, tangled around my face.
“Fly, bird!” Dani shouted. She let me go, and I sailed through the air, landing with a splash. The water filled in the space around me, and I kicked up toward the surface, breaking through with a deep gasp of air.
Dani laughed. “Was that fun?” she asked.
“That was awesome!” I shouted back, and she laughed again.
Sam appeared behind her, wrapping his arms around her waist, and I stopped smiling. Because she was no longer looking at me. She was looking at him.
Air bubbles rose to the surface two feet away from me, and a second later, Nick popped up. He tossed his head back, like a shaggy dog, and water droplets hit my face.
Cas ran, leapt off an outcropping, and did a cannonball, fanning water over me.
“Cas!” I screeched when he broke through the surface laughing.
“You’re such an idiot,” Nick said.
“At least I’m a good-looking one!” Cas countered.
I looked to shore. Sam and Dani were gone.
“You think you can make it to that island over there?” Nick asked.
I squinted against the sun as I followed his line of sight. There was a small island several yards off, with a cluster of pine trees and not much else. But I wanted to go, mostly because Nick was challenging me to. And I wanted to show him I could make it.
“Yeah,” I said, and started swimming.
Cas pulled ahead of me. “I’ll beat you both!” he screeched right before he ducked beneath the water and disappeared out of sight.
I dog-paddled over because I didn’t know how to swim any other way. Not like Dani. Or the boys.
Nick swam ahead of me, too, and I paddled faster.
Soon my arms and legs were tired, and the island seemed a lot farther away than it had when I’d sized up the distance.
What if I couldn’t make it?
The doubt wedged into my chest, squeezing my lungs, and I started to panic.
I flailed, hands slapping against the water, but it didn’t do me any good. I sank beneath the surface, and water filled my mouth.
The lake seemed to press against me. I stretched with my foot, hoping to reach the bottom, but found only empty space.
My legs cramped. My lungs were on fire. I needed air.
I was going to drown.
A hand grabbed me by the wrist and hauled me to the surface.
I sputtered and gasped, drinking in the fresh air like I couldn’t get enough of it.
“You okay?” Nick asked, and I latched on to him, arms wrapped tightly around his neck.
“Hey,” Nick said. “Climb on my back, and I’ll swim to shore. Can you do that?”
I nodded and did as he asked, hanging on to him from behind.
Cas swam up beside me. “You all right, bird?”
No. I wasn’t. I felt like crying. “I’m okay,” I said, which made Nick snort.
Cas rushed ahead of us so he could help pull me out when Nick reached the shore. Cas sat me beneath a scraggly pine tree, on a bed of rust-orange pine needles. Nick reappeared a second later with his navy sweatshirt and draped it around my shoulders.
“Look at me,” Cas said, nudging my chin with his thumb. “Who am I?”
“Cas.” My teeth chattered together.
“What day is it?”
“Saturday.”
“She almost drowned, you idiot,” Nick said. “She didn’t get hit by a bus.”
“Yeah, which means her brain was starving for oxygen, which means brain damage, dickhead.”
“I’m okay,” I said again, still shivering.
The boys stared at each other.
“We can’t tell Dani what happened,” Cas said.
Nick tugged on his T-shirt. “I was thinking the same thing.”
I looked up at them hovering over me. “Why?”
“Because she’d kill us,” Cas answered, running a towel over his head. His blond hair stuck straight up. “Kill us dead. And then kill us again.” He ducked down and ruffled my hair. “There isn’t anything she wouldn’t do for her little bird,” he said.
We stopped moving. I opened my eyes to blinding sunlight and shoved myself to an upright position. Something tightened against me. A seat belt. Country music played softly through the car speakers.
Dani was behind the wheel.
“Hey,” she said.
I tensed. “Where are we?”
“You’re safe.”
“Where’s my dad? And the boys?”
“They’re safe, too.”
My head throbbed just above my left eye, and I reached for the spot, not thinking, and winced when I felt a lump. Old blood came away on my fingers. My stomach rolled, and I had to bite down on my lower lip to stop from barfing.
Concussion, for sure. My dad had given me a concussion.
“Where are we going?” I tried again.
“To a secure location.” Dani hit the blinker and turned down a side street.
“Why did you betray us?” I asked, because I needed to distract her while I made a plan.
I had no weapons. I was injured. I had no idea where we were. Or where the boys were.
First I needed information. Then I’d act.
“I didn’t betray you,” she said, her voice laced with sadness. “I did what I had to do to get you out of there.”
She turned left. Warehouses and factories lined the street. Gravel from the snowplows crunched beneath our tires.
“Get me out of where?”
“The Branch.” She pulled into a parking lot behind a three-story brick building that said WATCHCASE on the side in old, fading letters. Windows ran from east to west, some panes of glass smashed or missing.
She stepped out of the vehicle, taking the car keys with her. I scanned the interior, looking for anything I could use as a weapon, but the car was clean.
I fumbled with the door latch and nearly fell out of the vehicle when I managed to open it. Dani was there in an instant, holding me up by the arm.
“Are you all right?” Concern was pressed into the creases of her mouth.
I weighed the possible answers. I could lie and say I was fine, but if I was honest and told her I was in pain, she’d think of me as vulnerable. I could catch her off guard later when the time was right.
With a frown, I fingered the knot on my forehead again. “I don’t feel so well.”
