The girl shrugged. “It’s been slow today. This place is so boring.”
Nick laughed, the sound hoarse and deep. “This town is boring.”
“Totally.” The girl rolled her eyes, commiserating with him. “My friends and I go to the city almost every weekend just to escape.”
Nick leaned in closer. “Where do you go?”
“Usually a club called DuVo. It’s pretty rad.”
Rad? Who uses that word?
I watched the register screen for the total and handed over enough cash to cover it.
“Maybe I’ll check it out,” Nick said.
“You totally should.” The girl gave me the change and the receipt. “We’ll be there tomorrow night for sure.”
“What’s your name?” Nick asked, using the excuse to check out the girl’s chest, like he meant to find a name tag.
“Teresa,” she said.
Nick smiled. “I’ll see you later, Teresa.”
She smiled back as I scooped up the shopping bags, twice as annoyed as I had been five minutes ago. If that was even possible.
In the parking lot, I threw the bags in the back of the SUV and slid into the passenger seat. “How do you do that, anyway?”
Nick stuck the key in the ignition, and the engine cranked to life. “Do what?”
“Act normal and fake.”
“It’s a learned skill.”
“Are you really going to that club?” The question came out holding more weight than I meant it to. As much as Nick and I disliked each other, I still cared where he went and how long he was gone. Our relationship might have been dysfunctional, but it was safer to stick together. No one else could possibly understand what we’d gone through or what we still had to deal with every day.
I set an elbow on the door’s arm rest and looked out the window, trying not to care what Nick’s answer was.
“Maybe,” he said as he pulled out of the parking lot. “Not that it’s any of your business.”
“Yes, it is. Because we have rules, and the rules are we don’t separate.”
He frowned at me briefly before turning his attention back to the road. “That’s bullshit and you know it. I can manage just fine on my own.”
“At the risk of dying.”
He grunted. “Dying would be preferable to this conversation.”
I sighed. Of course, we all had the right to leave the group whenever we wanted.
I hadn’t thought any of us would actually do it, though.
4
I PULLED A QUILT OVER MY LAP AND propped myself up against the headboard of my bed, setting my journal on my knees. I flipped through the pages, my fingers coming away covered in graphite dust.
I stopped at a sketch of a boy with amber eyes, and my stomach clenched.
Trev.
He’d been the fourth boy in the farmhouse lab, and had been working undercover for the Branch all along. I had thought he was my best friend, but he’d turned on me when I’d needed him the most and put a gun to my head.
I closed my eyes as the memory came back. Some nights I dreamed that he’d pulled the trigger.
I missed him. Or at least the old him. More than I could admit to Sam or the others without feeling like a traitor.
Trev had been the one I went to when I needed advice. Especially when it came to Sam. Trev never made me feel weak, or silly, or any of the other things you’d think you’d feel growing up around four genetically altered boys.
To Trev, I’d been an equal, always.
I tried reminding myself that the Branch had wiped his memories, planting false ones in the void, just like they had with me. He’d believed he was working for the Branch to protect someone he loved.
If anyone understood what that felt like, it was me. But forgetting that he’d manipulated all of us and almost cost us our lives was another story.
With a pencil in my hand, I turned to a blank page and started roughing in a sketch, trying to banish all thoughts of Trev from my mind.
The idea for the sketch had come out of nowhere a few days before. I didn’t know what it meant, but I couldn’t shake the image, and I thought getting it out on paper might help to decode it.
I started with the foreground, because that was the clearest in my mind. There were two people on a porch overlooking a yard. It was just after dusk. They sat on the steps, hunched close, as if they were sharing secrets.
In the background was a line of tall, skinny trees, not unlike the birch trees that made up Sam’s tattoo.
I’d seen the place that matched Sam’s tattoo; it’d been not far from my childhood home, and this—the porch, the birch trees, it all seemed awfully familiar.
Was the sketch an old memory?
When I finished, I held up the journal.
The two people, though they were faced away, were a boy and girl. The boy was taller, older. His hair was a silhouette of loose curls against the landscape beyond the porch. The girl’s hair was pulled back in a bouncy ponytail.
The girl was me.
I was almost sure of it. A phantom scent came to me, and I closed my eyes. The smell of wet earth. Of summer air. Of a boy.
Immediately I knew he was someone important to me. Or had been at one time. He was a feeling more than he was a specific person or face.
Sadly, I didn’t know enough details about my biological family to know if he was a part of it. As far as I knew, I had only one sibling: Dani. But I supposed it could have been a neighbor or a cousin. These were the answers I wanted, the reasons I needed to look into my past.
Maybe someone else knew how Dani had died. Or maybe they knew more about our family.
After shutting the journal, I eased beneath the quilt and closed my eyes again, hoping something might come to me.
I pictured my old house, the bedrooms, the kitchen, the back porch.
In my head, I re-created the scene, trying to fill in the details that I hadn’t been able to with my pencil, when a footstep sounded from the doorway.
I opened my eyes.
Sam stood inside the bedroom, a cup in each hand. “Hey,” I said. “Aren’t you supposed to be on watch?” It was late, and I’d heard Nick and Cas go to bed not too long ago. Whatever had brought Sam here was more important than him guarding the house, apparently. A thrill went up my spine until I saw the disquieted look on his face. All thoughts of the old memory faded.
Nudging the door shut, Sam came farther into the room. “I brought you something to drink.”
I took the offered coffee. He didn’t have to say anything for me to know he was worried about me. Probably because of my mistake earlier, during our perimeter sweep. This time I’d almost walked into a bear trap—next time it might be a Branch agent.
“I’m fine,” I said. “I know you came up here to check on me.”
He let out a breath and sat on the edge of the bed. “None of us are fine, Anna.” He leaned over and set his coffee on the bedside table. “I know what I went through when I started having flashbacks. I know what it felt like to withdraw from the treatments they were giving us in the farmhouse. And who knows how it’ll affect you. Your treatments were different from ours, and they weren’t documented very well. We have nothing to go on.” He paused, then said, “I just want to be sure you’re feeling okay. Because if you’re not—”
“I would be a liability.”
He didn’t say anything.
“I’m fine,” I repeated. “I swear it.”
He glanced at me over his shoulder. “I think you’re lying.”
“I think you’re overreacting.” I took a drink of coffee before putting the mug next to his on the table.
And that’s when he lunged.
He grabbed me by the wrist and twisted, his back to my chest, flipping me over. A second later, he was on top of me, my arms pinned, his legs tight against my hips.
The springs in the bed squeaked and settled before I could catch my breath and comprehend what he was doing.
He was testing me.
And I’d failed.
I hadn’t defended myself. I hadn’t fought back. I hadn’t reacted at all.
He leaned forward, eyes tight. “You. Are. Not. Fine.”
“Of course I’m not going to fight you. I know you won’t hurt me.”
“Your brain shouldn’t have had time to distinguish between enemy or friend. We’ve been training you. You had years of combat classes. Defending yourself, even against someone you care about, shouldn’t be a secondary reaction. It should be your first.”
I licked my dry lips. Sam’s attention shifted downward, and heat touched my cheeks. I unclenched my hands, moving beneath him.
His hold lessened, and I felt his legs loosen. I seized the opening, arching my back. He lost his balance and pitched to the side, so I followed the movement, rolling us over so I pinned him.
Finally, he relaxed and grinned. It was a treat I didn’t get often, and I found it ridiculously hot.
“Better?” I asked with an arch of my eyebrows.
“Better. But we still need to talk about what’s going—”
I cut him off with the press of my lips. He tensed at first, but didn’t stop me, and finally his hands moved downward to the curve of my butt, pulling me closer. I dropped forward as Sam’s mouth sank lower, down my jaw, down my neck to my collarbone.
A board creaked on the first floor.
Sam and I both froze. My heart beat at every pulse point from the leftover thrill of Sam’s body pressed against mine and the sudden adrenaline bursting through my veins.
Sam retrieved one of his guns from beneath the mattress and quietly pulled the slide, loading a bullet in the chamber. I rolled over, edged off the bed, and dropped to my knees, retrieving the gun I’d hidden beneath the bed frame.
Sam crept toward the door, hands wrapped around his gun. He put his back against the wall, taking the lead position. I grabbed the doorknob and pulled. The door opened silently. Sam had oiled every hinge and lock on the upstairs floor for this very reason, so we could move through the house undetected.
I counted to three in my head, and I knew Sam was doing the same. On three, he swung around the edge of the doorway, gun first. The muscle in his forearms tensed. I followed him out, skipping over the floorboard stained from old water damage. That was the one that popped when walked across, and I’d made a mental note to avoid it ever since our first night here.
In the stairwell, we paused as a shadow crossed the moonlight spilling through a living room window. The front door creaked, followed by the soft click of the latch.
Sam took two steps down.
I echoed his movements, sticking close to the wall.
When the stairwell opened up, Sam crouched and waved for me to hold as he scanned the living room through the banisters.
He flicked two fingers a second later. All clear.
The descent down the remaining steps seemed to take forever, but when we finally hit the ground level, we broke up, Sam taking the left, toward the dining room, me the right, to the living room.
Since I already knew it was empty, I went straight for the windows and pushed aside the thick blackout curtains.
There were no vehicles out front other than ours. No Branch agents.
Just a lone person walking down the driveway.
I whistled, signaling Sam. He hurried to my side.
“Look,” I whispered.
Sam glanced out the window. “It’s Nick,” he said. “What the hell is he doing?”
He tucked his gun in the waistband of his pants, threw open the front door, and jogged down the porch steps. I was only in a tank top and shorts. I pulled on a jacket and boots and thumped after him.
Thick snowflakes fell from the darkened sky. The night was eerily still, the snow covering everything in a blanket of pure silence so that every step I took seemed to echo through the woods.
“Where are you going?” Sam called to Nick.
“Out,” Nick said, and kept walking.
Nick laughed, the sound hoarse and deep. “This town is boring.”
“Totally.” The girl rolled her eyes, commiserating with him. “My friends and I go to the city almost every weekend just to escape.”
Nick leaned in closer. “Where do you go?”
“Usually a club called DuVo. It’s pretty rad.”
Rad? Who uses that word?
I watched the register screen for the total and handed over enough cash to cover it.
“Maybe I’ll check it out,” Nick said.
“You totally should.” The girl gave me the change and the receipt. “We’ll be there tomorrow night for sure.”
“What’s your name?” Nick asked, using the excuse to check out the girl’s chest, like he meant to find a name tag.
“Teresa,” she said.
Nick smiled. “I’ll see you later, Teresa.”
She smiled back as I scooped up the shopping bags, twice as annoyed as I had been five minutes ago. If that was even possible.
In the parking lot, I threw the bags in the back of the SUV and slid into the passenger seat. “How do you do that, anyway?”
Nick stuck the key in the ignition, and the engine cranked to life. “Do what?”
“Act normal and fake.”
“It’s a learned skill.”
“Are you really going to that club?” The question came out holding more weight than I meant it to. As much as Nick and I disliked each other, I still cared where he went and how long he was gone. Our relationship might have been dysfunctional, but it was safer to stick together. No one else could possibly understand what we’d gone through or what we still had to deal with every day.
I set an elbow on the door’s arm rest and looked out the window, trying not to care what Nick’s answer was.
“Maybe,” he said as he pulled out of the parking lot. “Not that it’s any of your business.”
“Yes, it is. Because we have rules, and the rules are we don’t separate.”
He frowned at me briefly before turning his attention back to the road. “That’s bullshit and you know it. I can manage just fine on my own.”
“At the risk of dying.”
He grunted. “Dying would be preferable to this conversation.”
I sighed. Of course, we all had the right to leave the group whenever we wanted.
I hadn’t thought any of us would actually do it, though.
4
I PULLED A QUILT OVER MY LAP AND propped myself up against the headboard of my bed, setting my journal on my knees. I flipped through the pages, my fingers coming away covered in graphite dust.
I stopped at a sketch of a boy with amber eyes, and my stomach clenched.
Trev.
He’d been the fourth boy in the farmhouse lab, and had been working undercover for the Branch all along. I had thought he was my best friend, but he’d turned on me when I’d needed him the most and put a gun to my head.
I closed my eyes as the memory came back. Some nights I dreamed that he’d pulled the trigger.
I missed him. Or at least the old him. More than I could admit to Sam or the others without feeling like a traitor.
Trev had been the one I went to when I needed advice. Especially when it came to Sam. Trev never made me feel weak, or silly, or any of the other things you’d think you’d feel growing up around four genetically altered boys.
To Trev, I’d been an equal, always.
I tried reminding myself that the Branch had wiped his memories, planting false ones in the void, just like they had with me. He’d believed he was working for the Branch to protect someone he loved.
If anyone understood what that felt like, it was me. But forgetting that he’d manipulated all of us and almost cost us our lives was another story.
With a pencil in my hand, I turned to a blank page and started roughing in a sketch, trying to banish all thoughts of Trev from my mind.
The idea for the sketch had come out of nowhere a few days before. I didn’t know what it meant, but I couldn’t shake the image, and I thought getting it out on paper might help to decode it.
I started with the foreground, because that was the clearest in my mind. There were two people on a porch overlooking a yard. It was just after dusk. They sat on the steps, hunched close, as if they were sharing secrets.
In the background was a line of tall, skinny trees, not unlike the birch trees that made up Sam’s tattoo.
I’d seen the place that matched Sam’s tattoo; it’d been not far from my childhood home, and this—the porch, the birch trees, it all seemed awfully familiar.
Was the sketch an old memory?
When I finished, I held up the journal.
The two people, though they were faced away, were a boy and girl. The boy was taller, older. His hair was a silhouette of loose curls against the landscape beyond the porch. The girl’s hair was pulled back in a bouncy ponytail.
The girl was me.
I was almost sure of it. A phantom scent came to me, and I closed my eyes. The smell of wet earth. Of summer air. Of a boy.
Immediately I knew he was someone important to me. Or had been at one time. He was a feeling more than he was a specific person or face.
Sadly, I didn’t know enough details about my biological family to know if he was a part of it. As far as I knew, I had only one sibling: Dani. But I supposed it could have been a neighbor or a cousin. These were the answers I wanted, the reasons I needed to look into my past.
Maybe someone else knew how Dani had died. Or maybe they knew more about our family.
After shutting the journal, I eased beneath the quilt and closed my eyes again, hoping something might come to me.
I pictured my old house, the bedrooms, the kitchen, the back porch.
In my head, I re-created the scene, trying to fill in the details that I hadn’t been able to with my pencil, when a footstep sounded from the doorway.
I opened my eyes.
Sam stood inside the bedroom, a cup in each hand. “Hey,” I said. “Aren’t you supposed to be on watch?” It was late, and I’d heard Nick and Cas go to bed not too long ago. Whatever had brought Sam here was more important than him guarding the house, apparently. A thrill went up my spine until I saw the disquieted look on his face. All thoughts of the old memory faded.
Nudging the door shut, Sam came farther into the room. “I brought you something to drink.”
I took the offered coffee. He didn’t have to say anything for me to know he was worried about me. Probably because of my mistake earlier, during our perimeter sweep. This time I’d almost walked into a bear trap—next time it might be a Branch agent.
“I’m fine,” I said. “I know you came up here to check on me.”
He let out a breath and sat on the edge of the bed. “None of us are fine, Anna.” He leaned over and set his coffee on the bedside table. “I know what I went through when I started having flashbacks. I know what it felt like to withdraw from the treatments they were giving us in the farmhouse. And who knows how it’ll affect you. Your treatments were different from ours, and they weren’t documented very well. We have nothing to go on.” He paused, then said, “I just want to be sure you’re feeling okay. Because if you’re not—”
“I would be a liability.”
He didn’t say anything.
“I’m fine,” I repeated. “I swear it.”
He glanced at me over his shoulder. “I think you’re lying.”
“I think you’re overreacting.” I took a drink of coffee before putting the mug next to his on the table.
And that’s when he lunged.
He grabbed me by the wrist and twisted, his back to my chest, flipping me over. A second later, he was on top of me, my arms pinned, his legs tight against my hips.
The springs in the bed squeaked and settled before I could catch my breath and comprehend what he was doing.
He was testing me.
And I’d failed.
I hadn’t defended myself. I hadn’t fought back. I hadn’t reacted at all.
He leaned forward, eyes tight. “You. Are. Not. Fine.”
“Of course I’m not going to fight you. I know you won’t hurt me.”
“Your brain shouldn’t have had time to distinguish between enemy or friend. We’ve been training you. You had years of combat classes. Defending yourself, even against someone you care about, shouldn’t be a secondary reaction. It should be your first.”
I licked my dry lips. Sam’s attention shifted downward, and heat touched my cheeks. I unclenched my hands, moving beneath him.
His hold lessened, and I felt his legs loosen. I seized the opening, arching my back. He lost his balance and pitched to the side, so I followed the movement, rolling us over so I pinned him.
Finally, he relaxed and grinned. It was a treat I didn’t get often, and I found it ridiculously hot.
“Better?” I asked with an arch of my eyebrows.
“Better. But we still need to talk about what’s going—”
I cut him off with the press of my lips. He tensed at first, but didn’t stop me, and finally his hands moved downward to the curve of my butt, pulling me closer. I dropped forward as Sam’s mouth sank lower, down my jaw, down my neck to my collarbone.
A board creaked on the first floor.
Sam and I both froze. My heart beat at every pulse point from the leftover thrill of Sam’s body pressed against mine and the sudden adrenaline bursting through my veins.
Sam retrieved one of his guns from beneath the mattress and quietly pulled the slide, loading a bullet in the chamber. I rolled over, edged off the bed, and dropped to my knees, retrieving the gun I’d hidden beneath the bed frame.
Sam crept toward the door, hands wrapped around his gun. He put his back against the wall, taking the lead position. I grabbed the doorknob and pulled. The door opened silently. Sam had oiled every hinge and lock on the upstairs floor for this very reason, so we could move through the house undetected.
I counted to three in my head, and I knew Sam was doing the same. On three, he swung around the edge of the doorway, gun first. The muscle in his forearms tensed. I followed him out, skipping over the floorboard stained from old water damage. That was the one that popped when walked across, and I’d made a mental note to avoid it ever since our first night here.
In the stairwell, we paused as a shadow crossed the moonlight spilling through a living room window. The front door creaked, followed by the soft click of the latch.
Sam took two steps down.
I echoed his movements, sticking close to the wall.
When the stairwell opened up, Sam crouched and waved for me to hold as he scanned the living room through the banisters.
He flicked two fingers a second later. All clear.
The descent down the remaining steps seemed to take forever, but when we finally hit the ground level, we broke up, Sam taking the left, toward the dining room, me the right, to the living room.
Since I already knew it was empty, I went straight for the windows and pushed aside the thick blackout curtains.
There were no vehicles out front other than ours. No Branch agents.
Just a lone person walking down the driveway.
I whistled, signaling Sam. He hurried to my side.
“Look,” I whispered.
Sam glanced out the window. “It’s Nick,” he said. “What the hell is he doing?”
He tucked his gun in the waistband of his pants, threw open the front door, and jogged down the porch steps. I was only in a tank top and shorts. I pulled on a jacket and boots and thumped after him.
Thick snowflakes fell from the darkened sky. The night was eerily still, the snow covering everything in a blanket of pure silence so that every step I took seemed to echo through the woods.
“Where are you going?” Sam called to Nick.
“Out,” Nick said, and kept walking.
