He blew out a breath. “Well, then find them.”
The phone was slammed down on a counter.
I pressed my bare feet firmly into the floor, trying to get as much force as I could.
Will started back toward the living room. I braced myself, counted to three, and swung.
Will caught the armillary with his left hand, grabbed my throat with his right, and shoved me into the wall.
I gasped for air.
He wrenched the statue out of my grip and tossed it to the side. It left a gouge in the floor and nearly knocked over a tall vase.
“Now listen,” he started. This close, I noticed that not all of the marks on his face were freckles. Some of them were scars, tiny dots of discolored skin, like old burn marks. “We can do this the easy way—you cooperate and come with me, no fighting—or the hard way. Are we clear?”
“Yes.” I would take the easy way only until I found another opportunity to escape.
“Good.” He let me go. “Then we’re leaving. You will find shoes and a jacket on the hook behind the couch.”
As I tied my shoes, Will produced another cell phone from his pocket and dialed a number. “Ready the jet,” he said. “I’ll be there in less than a half hour.”
“Jet?” I muttered.
“I’m taking you out of the country until this thing with Sam blows over.”
He said this thing with Sam as if it were nothing more than an argument over who left out the milk.
I steeled myself. “I’m not leaving the country.”
“Yes, you are. You’ll be safe there. I’ll have someone tend to your injuries.”
“I’m not going.”
“You are.”
We had a silent standoff. His threat loomed over me. Now was not the time to argue.
“Will you wipe my memory?” I asked.
The center of his brow clenched with sadness. His voice cracked when he spoke. “It’s for the best.”
Of course he thought it was. He and Dani. They thought they’d wipe the slate clean with a memory alteration, as if that would fix everything forever.
It wouldn’t.
I couldn’t let him put me on that plane.
31
WILL HAD A CAR MEET US IN FRONT of his place. Wherever we were, we were completely surrounded by woods. He’d moved me from the warehouse laboratory. Which meant the boys could be anywhere by now.
Would they reach me before Will reached the plane?
And where was Trev?
“Buckle your seat belt,” Will ordered as an agent drove down the long, winding driveway.
“Which way would you like me to take?” the agent asked.
“The freeway. It’ll be harder to spot us in traffic.”
In order to reach the freeway, we crossed through some nameless town. There were only a few cars on the roads, which made me wonder absently what time it was.
“Where exactly are we going?” I asked.
“Europe,” Will answered.
“What’s in Europe?”
He smiled when he turned to me. “Are you fishing?”
I was.
A traffic light flicked to red, and the agent slowed to a stop. The idling engine was the only sound in the vehicle. Will kept ducking just enough to check the rearview mirror and the scene outside the tinted windows.
“Did the second unit do a sweep?” Will asked the driver.
“They did. Found nothing. No sign of them.”
The boys. He had to be talking about the boys.
I had to come up with a plan, and quickly. I could open the door while the car was in motion and leap out. I’d escape injury-free if I rolled properly. But could I outrun Will and his agents?
I might have an opening while we boarded the plane, unless we went to a proper airport. Security would make it nearly impossible to escape without a scene.
And even if it was a smaller, private airport, I’d have nowhere to hide when I ran.
Jumping from the vehicle was my best option.
We drove through several more intersections, hitting all the green lights, and then turned right onto Brennon Street.
The next light was red. We squeaked to a stop.
I tensed every muscle in my body as I anticipated making my move.
The driver pressed a finger to the device in his ear.
I relaxed enough to focus on his words.
“Where?” he said quietly. Then, “Copy.”
He whipped the wheel around, performing a U-turn in the middle of the street.
“What is it?” Will asked, on edge.
“They’re here.”
“Where?”
“One of them was just spotted two blocks over.”
Will cursed and ran his hand through his hair. “Which one?”
“I don’t know, sir—”
“Find out which one!”
“Yes, sir.”
My heartbeat echoed in my ears.
I wanted to know who was spotted just as much as Will did.
We waited. The agent stepped on the gas.
“Copy,” he said again. To Will he said, “It was unit three.”
We neared another intersection. The light was green. The agent swerved around a car, and the tires squealed. I clutched the door handle to keep me steady and because the closer I was to it, the easier it would be to pull it open so I could escape when the time was right.
“Give me an update,” Will said. “I want a location on Trev and a sweep of the town, a clearing of the freeway—”
I glanced out the window, searching for a familiar face. My boys were here. We just had to find one another.
The car raced through the intersection. I pressed my face against the glass, looking ahead for a place to bail.
Something on the rooftop of a building on the next street corner caught my eye. A figure, arms propped on the edge, a rifle trained on us. At first I thought it was one of Will’s men, covering our getaway, but then there was a pop from below our car, and the driver swerved.
Another pop. The sharp, cutting sound of metal against concrete. The tires had been blown out.
There was no way this car was going to make it out of town now.
I glanced over at Will. Jaw clenched, hands tight, he looked on the verge of hitting something. But below that was a sadness, a fear, etched into the tiny lines around his eyes—he knew he was losing.
As we crossed the next intersection, and I looked past Will out the window, I saw Sam. I saw him behind the wheel of a black cargo van. Saw him just seconds before he drove that van straight into our car.
32
THERE WAS A MOMENT WHERE NOT even the seat belt could keep me grounded. It was as if I were floating. My hair swung forward, blinding me, so that I couldn’t tell which way was up and which way was down.
Shards of glass bit into my skin.
When the car landed, the impact slammed me into the frame of the door. Blood ran from a new wound at my temple. It took me a second to realize the car was on its side, that my door was on the ground.
The car slid that way for several more feet, filling my ears with the hideous scraping sound of crunched metal and scratched pavement.
When the car came to a rest, it teetered before flipping over on its roof, suspending us from our seats.
“Anna?” Will croaked. He cut his belt loose with a pocketknife and scrambled over the twisted metal of the roof to my side. “Are you okay?”
“If you’re smart,” I said, “you’ll start running now and get a head start.”
He frowned and met my eyes.
It was a test. I think he knew it.
I wanted to see what he would do. If he ran, then his life and his business and his Branch were clearly more important than family—than me.
I wouldn’t have blamed him.
He threaded his fingers through my hair and pushed it back behind my ear. He kissed my forehead, and I shrank away. “Everything I’ve ever done has been with your best interests at heart,” he said.
A car door opened and slammed shut somewhere in the street. Tires screeched to a halt. People were shouting. Someone said there was a gun.
“You did all the wrong things,” I said.
He pursed his mouth, somber. “I know.”
He kicked my door open, crawled out, and ran.
As the shouting and fighting grew outside of the car, I clutched my seat belt, the nylon material digging into my chest. I pressed my eyes closed.
I could let Will go.
Or I could kill him.
These were my options, neither of them good. I didn’t want to kill him, but there’d already been too much death, caused by Will and the Branch. And letting him go would result in so much more.
This would never be over as long as the Branch was operational.
We would never be free.
What I wanted more than anything was some semblance of a normal life, of safety. I wanted to wake in the morning, nothing more than a girl with a boy beside her. A boy she loved.
I deserved those things.
Sam deserved those things.
And Cas. And Nick. And even Trev.
So had Dani.
I freed myself from my seat belt, and still shaky with adrenaline, scrambled to the front seat, to the dead agent crushed against the steering wheel, and stole his gun.
I kicked the passenger-side door till it gave way, and slipped into the light. Fresh air filled my lungs.
I turned.
The intersection was a pile of wreckage and a buzzing, flailing mass of agents getting their asses kicked by the boys.
My boys.
I locked eyes with Sam across the undercarriage of the car. His face was covered in bruises and scrapes and deliberate cuts, as if someone had tortured him one slice at a time.
His lip was split on the side. His dark hair was covered in old and new blood.
An agent made a run for him, but Sam was quicker and slammed a fist into the man’s face. The agent fell over backward.
Wait for me, he said with a look. Give me two minutes, and I’ll come with you.
I can’t.
I didn’t have any minutes to spare.
I ran in the direction Will had disappeared.
If I were him, where would I go?
The airport.
To his waiting jet.
It was safe to assume, I thought, that Will would have to find some other kind of transportation to reach the airport. If he still had his cell phone, he’d call in another agent. If he didn’t, he’d probably steal a vehicle or—
I heard the distant sound of metal rattling, as if a garage door were opening.
Following the sound, I took the next street, running as fast as the grips on my shoes would allow me. The streets had been plowed, but there were patches of ice here and there, and rivets of slush to navigate.
I slowed when I neared a car garage, the large bay door open, revealing the inside. Chipped and faded lettering at the top of the building said it was once Nate & Frank’s Garage. Now, instead of broken cars inside its interior, there were rows of four-wheelers, dirt bikes, motorcycles, and two black Suburbans.
A showroom? Or, more likely, a Branch stock garage.
The other bay doors were closed, hiding whatever else was inside. I couldn’t see Will from my vantage point, so I brought my gun up.
A woman stopped me. “Can I help you?” she asked in a tone that said she didn’t plan on helping me with anything.
I sized her up. She was lanky, with sharp eyes and a straight nose and an even sharper mouth.
Judging by her clothes—black cargo pants, black undershirt, black armored vest—she wasn’t simply a woman manning Nate & Frank’s Garage. She was a Branch agent.
I peered over her shoulder in time to see Will shoot past us on a four-wheeler.
I watched which direction he went, giving the lanky woman the chance to catch me off guard. She threw a left-handed punch to my cheek that spun me around and landed me on the pavement.
I lost my gun.
On all fours, as I tried to catch my breath, she kicked me in the ribs. I cringed and rolled to my side. She wound a hand into the collar of my shirt and raised me off the floor just enough to punch me again in the face. The coppery taste of blood coated the back of my teeth.
The phone was slammed down on a counter.
I pressed my bare feet firmly into the floor, trying to get as much force as I could.
Will started back toward the living room. I braced myself, counted to three, and swung.
Will caught the armillary with his left hand, grabbed my throat with his right, and shoved me into the wall.
I gasped for air.
He wrenched the statue out of my grip and tossed it to the side. It left a gouge in the floor and nearly knocked over a tall vase.
“Now listen,” he started. This close, I noticed that not all of the marks on his face were freckles. Some of them were scars, tiny dots of discolored skin, like old burn marks. “We can do this the easy way—you cooperate and come with me, no fighting—or the hard way. Are we clear?”
“Yes.” I would take the easy way only until I found another opportunity to escape.
“Good.” He let me go. “Then we’re leaving. You will find shoes and a jacket on the hook behind the couch.”
As I tied my shoes, Will produced another cell phone from his pocket and dialed a number. “Ready the jet,” he said. “I’ll be there in less than a half hour.”
“Jet?” I muttered.
“I’m taking you out of the country until this thing with Sam blows over.”
He said this thing with Sam as if it were nothing more than an argument over who left out the milk.
I steeled myself. “I’m not leaving the country.”
“Yes, you are. You’ll be safe there. I’ll have someone tend to your injuries.”
“I’m not going.”
“You are.”
We had a silent standoff. His threat loomed over me. Now was not the time to argue.
“Will you wipe my memory?” I asked.
The center of his brow clenched with sadness. His voice cracked when he spoke. “It’s for the best.”
Of course he thought it was. He and Dani. They thought they’d wipe the slate clean with a memory alteration, as if that would fix everything forever.
It wouldn’t.
I couldn’t let him put me on that plane.
31
WILL HAD A CAR MEET US IN FRONT of his place. Wherever we were, we were completely surrounded by woods. He’d moved me from the warehouse laboratory. Which meant the boys could be anywhere by now.
Would they reach me before Will reached the plane?
And where was Trev?
“Buckle your seat belt,” Will ordered as an agent drove down the long, winding driveway.
“Which way would you like me to take?” the agent asked.
“The freeway. It’ll be harder to spot us in traffic.”
In order to reach the freeway, we crossed through some nameless town. There were only a few cars on the roads, which made me wonder absently what time it was.
“Where exactly are we going?” I asked.
“Europe,” Will answered.
“What’s in Europe?”
He smiled when he turned to me. “Are you fishing?”
I was.
A traffic light flicked to red, and the agent slowed to a stop. The idling engine was the only sound in the vehicle. Will kept ducking just enough to check the rearview mirror and the scene outside the tinted windows.
“Did the second unit do a sweep?” Will asked the driver.
“They did. Found nothing. No sign of them.”
The boys. He had to be talking about the boys.
I had to come up with a plan, and quickly. I could open the door while the car was in motion and leap out. I’d escape injury-free if I rolled properly. But could I outrun Will and his agents?
I might have an opening while we boarded the plane, unless we went to a proper airport. Security would make it nearly impossible to escape without a scene.
And even if it was a smaller, private airport, I’d have nowhere to hide when I ran.
Jumping from the vehicle was my best option.
We drove through several more intersections, hitting all the green lights, and then turned right onto Brennon Street.
The next light was red. We squeaked to a stop.
I tensed every muscle in my body as I anticipated making my move.
The driver pressed a finger to the device in his ear.
I relaxed enough to focus on his words.
“Where?” he said quietly. Then, “Copy.”
He whipped the wheel around, performing a U-turn in the middle of the street.
“What is it?” Will asked, on edge.
“They’re here.”
“Where?”
“One of them was just spotted two blocks over.”
Will cursed and ran his hand through his hair. “Which one?”
“I don’t know, sir—”
“Find out which one!”
“Yes, sir.”
My heartbeat echoed in my ears.
I wanted to know who was spotted just as much as Will did.
We waited. The agent stepped on the gas.
“Copy,” he said again. To Will he said, “It was unit three.”
We neared another intersection. The light was green. The agent swerved around a car, and the tires squealed. I clutched the door handle to keep me steady and because the closer I was to it, the easier it would be to pull it open so I could escape when the time was right.
“Give me an update,” Will said. “I want a location on Trev and a sweep of the town, a clearing of the freeway—”
I glanced out the window, searching for a familiar face. My boys were here. We just had to find one another.
The car raced through the intersection. I pressed my face against the glass, looking ahead for a place to bail.
Something on the rooftop of a building on the next street corner caught my eye. A figure, arms propped on the edge, a rifle trained on us. At first I thought it was one of Will’s men, covering our getaway, but then there was a pop from below our car, and the driver swerved.
Another pop. The sharp, cutting sound of metal against concrete. The tires had been blown out.
There was no way this car was going to make it out of town now.
I glanced over at Will. Jaw clenched, hands tight, he looked on the verge of hitting something. But below that was a sadness, a fear, etched into the tiny lines around his eyes—he knew he was losing.
As we crossed the next intersection, and I looked past Will out the window, I saw Sam. I saw him behind the wheel of a black cargo van. Saw him just seconds before he drove that van straight into our car.
32
THERE WAS A MOMENT WHERE NOT even the seat belt could keep me grounded. It was as if I were floating. My hair swung forward, blinding me, so that I couldn’t tell which way was up and which way was down.
Shards of glass bit into my skin.
When the car landed, the impact slammed me into the frame of the door. Blood ran from a new wound at my temple. It took me a second to realize the car was on its side, that my door was on the ground.
The car slid that way for several more feet, filling my ears with the hideous scraping sound of crunched metal and scratched pavement.
When the car came to a rest, it teetered before flipping over on its roof, suspending us from our seats.
“Anna?” Will croaked. He cut his belt loose with a pocketknife and scrambled over the twisted metal of the roof to my side. “Are you okay?”
“If you’re smart,” I said, “you’ll start running now and get a head start.”
He frowned and met my eyes.
It was a test. I think he knew it.
I wanted to see what he would do. If he ran, then his life and his business and his Branch were clearly more important than family—than me.
I wouldn’t have blamed him.
He threaded his fingers through my hair and pushed it back behind my ear. He kissed my forehead, and I shrank away. “Everything I’ve ever done has been with your best interests at heart,” he said.
A car door opened and slammed shut somewhere in the street. Tires screeched to a halt. People were shouting. Someone said there was a gun.
“You did all the wrong things,” I said.
He pursed his mouth, somber. “I know.”
He kicked my door open, crawled out, and ran.
As the shouting and fighting grew outside of the car, I clutched my seat belt, the nylon material digging into my chest. I pressed my eyes closed.
I could let Will go.
Or I could kill him.
These were my options, neither of them good. I didn’t want to kill him, but there’d already been too much death, caused by Will and the Branch. And letting him go would result in so much more.
This would never be over as long as the Branch was operational.
We would never be free.
What I wanted more than anything was some semblance of a normal life, of safety. I wanted to wake in the morning, nothing more than a girl with a boy beside her. A boy she loved.
I deserved those things.
Sam deserved those things.
And Cas. And Nick. And even Trev.
So had Dani.
I freed myself from my seat belt, and still shaky with adrenaline, scrambled to the front seat, to the dead agent crushed against the steering wheel, and stole his gun.
I kicked the passenger-side door till it gave way, and slipped into the light. Fresh air filled my lungs.
I turned.
The intersection was a pile of wreckage and a buzzing, flailing mass of agents getting their asses kicked by the boys.
My boys.
I locked eyes with Sam across the undercarriage of the car. His face was covered in bruises and scrapes and deliberate cuts, as if someone had tortured him one slice at a time.
His lip was split on the side. His dark hair was covered in old and new blood.
An agent made a run for him, but Sam was quicker and slammed a fist into the man’s face. The agent fell over backward.
Wait for me, he said with a look. Give me two minutes, and I’ll come with you.
I can’t.
I didn’t have any minutes to spare.
I ran in the direction Will had disappeared.
If I were him, where would I go?
The airport.
To his waiting jet.
It was safe to assume, I thought, that Will would have to find some other kind of transportation to reach the airport. If he still had his cell phone, he’d call in another agent. If he didn’t, he’d probably steal a vehicle or—
I heard the distant sound of metal rattling, as if a garage door were opening.
Following the sound, I took the next street, running as fast as the grips on my shoes would allow me. The streets had been plowed, but there were patches of ice here and there, and rivets of slush to navigate.
I slowed when I neared a car garage, the large bay door open, revealing the inside. Chipped and faded lettering at the top of the building said it was once Nate & Frank’s Garage. Now, instead of broken cars inside its interior, there were rows of four-wheelers, dirt bikes, motorcycles, and two black Suburbans.
A showroom? Or, more likely, a Branch stock garage.
The other bay doors were closed, hiding whatever else was inside. I couldn’t see Will from my vantage point, so I brought my gun up.
A woman stopped me. “Can I help you?” she asked in a tone that said she didn’t plan on helping me with anything.
I sized her up. She was lanky, with sharp eyes and a straight nose and an even sharper mouth.
Judging by her clothes—black cargo pants, black undershirt, black armored vest—she wasn’t simply a woman manning Nate & Frank’s Garage. She was a Branch agent.
I peered over her shoulder in time to see Will shoot past us on a four-wheeler.
I watched which direction he went, giving the lanky woman the chance to catch me off guard. She threw a left-handed punch to my cheek that spun me around and landed me on the pavement.
I lost my gun.
On all fours, as I tried to catch my breath, she kicked me in the ribs. I cringed and rolled to my side. She wound a hand into the collar of my shirt and raised me off the floor just enough to punch me again in the face. The coppery taste of blood coated the back of my teeth.
