Ten feet, give or take.
I could reach it.
“It’s just me, dumbasses,” someone called.
Nick.
I came out of my hiding spot and headed for the front of the house.
Cas was just tossing aside a flashlight when I walked in.
“What did you plan on using that for?” Nick said. “Were you going to blind me to death?”
Cas picked the flashlight up again. “Would you like a demonstration?” He cocked it over his shoulder. “Bet I can brain you faster than you can punch me.”
Nick’s shoulders rocked back. He tightened his jaw as if he were trying to decide which was more important—besting Cas or looking like the mature one who wouldn’t take the bait.
“Bet you can’t,” he finally said, and Cas grinned.
“Stop it,” Sam said. He wrenched the flashlight out of Cas’s hand.
“Come on!” Cas whirled around. “I had it in the bag!”
“Like we need to be dealing with a concussion right now.” Sam set the flashlight upright on the fireplace mantel. He nodded at Nick. “You get the space you needed?”
“I guess.” Nick dropped onto the corner of the couch. “I came home earlier than I wanted.”
Sam, face blank, voice even, said, “No one forced you.”
“No.” Nick scrubbed at his face, then said, “Sit down. We need to talk.”
Sam pulled himself straighter, suddenly on alert. “About what?”
Cas sauntered over to the second chair and sat down. I sat on the other end of the couch.
“I went out last night with the girl who works at the grocery store in Millerton,” Nick said, looking at me. “Remember, the dark-haired girl?”
“How could I forget?”
He ignored me. “We were talking this morning, and she ended up telling me that someone came into the store asking for Anna.”
I sat forward. “What do you mean, asking for me?”
“Asking if anyone had seen you. They knew your name. Had an outdated picture of you.”
Sam paced in front of the fireplace, arms crossed over his chest. “Did the girl have a description of whoever was doing the asking?”
Nick nodded. His expression was pinched, stressed at the eyes, as if he already had a theory as to who it was. “Girl our age. Reddish-brown hair. Skinny. Five-seven or so.”
“Branch agent?” I said.
The boys were silent.
Sam was the first one to speak. “A Branch agent wouldn’t be dumb enough to ask about us in a grocery store. They would know it’d tip us off if word got around, and asking about a missing girl in a place like this—small town, safe—it’d turn into a local story by week’s end.”
“It was a message,” Nick said.
I frowned. “Who would it be, though? If not a Branch agent?”
Cas cleared his throat, which was his way of warning me that what he was about to say wouldn’t be good. “We know only one girl our age with reddish-brown hair who would be asking for you, Banana.”
Nick and Sam shared a look. Sam gave the barest of nods.
“Who?”
“Dani,” Sam said.
My first instinct was to laugh, but it clearly wasn’t meant as a joke. All three of them were staring at me, tense, waiting for my response.
“No,” I said quickly, matter-of-factly. “Dani is dead.”
“Says the Branch,” Sam said.
“And they’re trustworthy,” Nick added sarcastically.
“It could be anyone. Anyone. Someone who used to work for the Branch. Someone who knows Trev.” I felt like I was sputtering, making up excuses. It couldn’t be Dani.
There wasn’t even a tiny part of me that believed it.
“That store in Millerton, it have a security system? Cameras?” Sam asked.
“Yeah,” Nick and I said in unison.
Sam gestured to Nick. Nick stood up.
“Wait,” I said. “What are you going to do?”
“Look at the tapes.” Sam pulled on his coat. “See who it was.”
“I’m coming with.”
He checked the magazine in his gun, making sure it was full. “No, you’re not. If someone was there asking for you, then you’re at a greater risk than any of us.”
“How are you going to access the security footage?”
Sam gave me a look from under the heavy furrow of his brow, like that was the silliest question I’d ever asked and no way was he going to answer it.
“It’d be far easier to ask to see it, don’t you think?” I said. “Instead of sneaking in?”
“Because I’m sure they let any customer who walks in the door access their security system?”
“Let me come,” I said. “I have an idea, but you’ll need me there to do it.”
“Anna.” Sam sighed.
Cas walked up behind me. “Oh, let her come, Sammy. She might be useful.”
I wasn’t sure if I should thank Cas or scowl at him.
“Fine,” Sam said. “But if there is any sign of trouble, you leave. Right away. No questions asked.”
I nodded. “Fair enough.”
He started for the door. “And make sure you have a gun on you.”
Worried that he’d leave without me if he had the chance, I grabbed the closest gun—the one from the laundry room—and hurried after him.
6
TREV ONCE TOLD ME THE ART TO LYING was in telling as much of the truth as you could.
“I lost touch with my sister a long time ago,” I said to the grocery store manager. “And your store clerk said there was a girl here the other day asking about me, and it sounds like she fits my sister’s description.” I wrung my hands in front of me, trying to act as desperate as I could. “Is there any way you could show us the security footage from that day? Just so I could see if it was her?”
The manager, a woman in her forties with long black hair and wide brown eyes, looked from me to Sam, who stood just over my shoulder. Per the plan, Sam had come with me posing as my boyfriend, while Nick stayed in the car on lookout and Cas sauntered around the store.
“I don’t know,” the woman said. Her name tag read MARGARET, but I thought she looked more like a Maggie.
I sensed her wavering, so I charged on. “Please? I miss her so much.” I let my voice hitch at the end, my eyes water.
Her keys jangled in her hand. “All right. I suppose we’re not hurting anything. Follow me.”
She led us through an unlabeled door near the front of the store, just past the checkout lines. On the other side was a small office. There, two black-and-white TVs played security footage from several cameras spread around the store.
Margaret took a seat at the desk and unlocked the lone computer. “Do you know what day it was that your sister supposedly came in?”
“Thursday,” I answered.
Sam hovered near the desk, arms crossed in front of him. I could just make out the shape of his gun holster slung over his shoulders, hidden beneath his jacket. Before all of this, when I was just a normal girl living a semi-abnormal life, seeing someone with a gun always made me nervous. Riley, the Branch’s second-in-command and the one who usually made the checkup visits to the lab, carried a gun with him at all times. Maybe that was why I’d avoided him. Well, that among other things. He was a weaselly, unpleasant person who’d do anything for the Branch. He didn’t question what the entity did and how they did it, which made him that much more dangerous to us.
I was glad for the gun now strapped to my shoulders. Going anywhere without it would’ve left me feeling vulnerable and na**d. We’d learned that Riley had the unfortunate ability to pop up at any time.
Margaret queued the footage from Thursday and fast-forwarded through the afternoon, starting at one o’clock, when Nick’s “friend” had been working. Several people came and went through the checkout lanes. The time readout on the screen said over an hour had passed on the footage.
And then, finally, we found what we were looking for.
“Wait. Go back,” I said. A girl fitting the description Nick relayed had come and gone on the footage. I’d seen only a flash of her face, but it was enough to put me instantly on alert. Trepidation crept up my spine. “Can you play it here?”
Margaret pressed a button and the footage slowed to real time.
The girl came through the checkout lane, long hair loose down her back. She faced away from the camera at first and handed something to the clerk. A picture, I thought.
The clerk scanned it and nodded quickly before handing the picture back.
After a few more words were exchanged between the two, the girl finally turned toward the exit, toward the camera.
A startled breath rushed down my throat.
“Shit,” Sam said.
I blinked back the sudden welling of tears and covered my mouth with my hand to stop the choked sound of surprise threatening to escape me.
Dani.
It was her.
Margaret glanced over a shoulder, a smile spread across her face. “Is that your sister?”
The reply to that question was just one word, easy enough to say but impossible to get out. Because saying it brought her back from the dead. Saying it meant I was no longer the last remaining member of my family.
I wanted it to be true more than anything, but after what I’d been through in the last few months, the cautious, rational side of me said don’t believe it just yet. This could be another trap. Another lie told by the Branch. They were capable of anything. Had the security feed been tampered with? Had they somehow added Dani’s image to the footage?
I couldn’t allow myself to give in to the hope.
“I can ask my employee if the girl left any contact information,” Margaret said.
Sam gestured to the screen. “You got cameras on the parking lot?”
Margaret frowned. “Well, yes, but…”
“Bring it up, please? Find the time stamp for directly after this one here, with the clerk.”
“All right.” Margaret typed in a few commands, and new footage replaced the interior shots. Dani emerged from the store, crossed the parking lot, and started for the alley. So she wasn’t driving. Or if she was, she’d parked out of sight.
“Should I rewind it?” Margaret asked and moved to type in another command when Sam stopped her.
“Wait.”
A black sedan pulled up behind Dani. The taillights glowed red against the slushy asphalt. Someone got out from the passenger side.
Dani kept walking, hands shoved in the pockets of her coat. Did she know someone was behind her?
The man pulled a gun from a hidden shoulder holster.
“Oh my God,” Margaret said.
Dani whipped around.
The man didn’t have enough time to react, and Dani caught him in the nose with a left-handed punch. He spun back, facing the camera.
Even in the static of an old TV screen, I knew the man was Riley. Dread knotted in my gut.
Another agent eased out of the sedan. He came around behind Dani and kicked the back of her knee. She buckled forward. Riley brought down the butt of his gun, catching her across the cheek. Blood poured from her mouth.
Margaret gasped. “We need to call someone,” she said, and reached for the phone, knocking over a cup of pens. They rolled off the desk, clattered to the floor. “Oh, that poor girl! I can’t believe no one saw it happen. She could be dead by now.…”
Sam hit the receiver button. Margaret looked up at him. “What are you doing?”
“Listen very carefully.” He gently pulled the receiver from her hand and hung it up. “You can’t tell anyone what you just saw.”
“But… her sister…”
Sam set his hands on the arms of her chair and spun her toward him, caging her in place. “That girl isn’t her sister,” he lied, crafting a tale quickly. “She’s a fugitive on the run from the Russian government, and those men are two of their agents. If they know what you saw, they will hurt you and anyone you care about. Do you understand me?”
I could reach it.
“It’s just me, dumbasses,” someone called.
Nick.
I came out of my hiding spot and headed for the front of the house.
Cas was just tossing aside a flashlight when I walked in.
“What did you plan on using that for?” Nick said. “Were you going to blind me to death?”
Cas picked the flashlight up again. “Would you like a demonstration?” He cocked it over his shoulder. “Bet I can brain you faster than you can punch me.”
Nick’s shoulders rocked back. He tightened his jaw as if he were trying to decide which was more important—besting Cas or looking like the mature one who wouldn’t take the bait.
“Bet you can’t,” he finally said, and Cas grinned.
“Stop it,” Sam said. He wrenched the flashlight out of Cas’s hand.
“Come on!” Cas whirled around. “I had it in the bag!”
“Like we need to be dealing with a concussion right now.” Sam set the flashlight upright on the fireplace mantel. He nodded at Nick. “You get the space you needed?”
“I guess.” Nick dropped onto the corner of the couch. “I came home earlier than I wanted.”
Sam, face blank, voice even, said, “No one forced you.”
“No.” Nick scrubbed at his face, then said, “Sit down. We need to talk.”
Sam pulled himself straighter, suddenly on alert. “About what?”
Cas sauntered over to the second chair and sat down. I sat on the other end of the couch.
“I went out last night with the girl who works at the grocery store in Millerton,” Nick said, looking at me. “Remember, the dark-haired girl?”
“How could I forget?”
He ignored me. “We were talking this morning, and she ended up telling me that someone came into the store asking for Anna.”
I sat forward. “What do you mean, asking for me?”
“Asking if anyone had seen you. They knew your name. Had an outdated picture of you.”
Sam paced in front of the fireplace, arms crossed over his chest. “Did the girl have a description of whoever was doing the asking?”
Nick nodded. His expression was pinched, stressed at the eyes, as if he already had a theory as to who it was. “Girl our age. Reddish-brown hair. Skinny. Five-seven or so.”
“Branch agent?” I said.
The boys were silent.
Sam was the first one to speak. “A Branch agent wouldn’t be dumb enough to ask about us in a grocery store. They would know it’d tip us off if word got around, and asking about a missing girl in a place like this—small town, safe—it’d turn into a local story by week’s end.”
“It was a message,” Nick said.
I frowned. “Who would it be, though? If not a Branch agent?”
Cas cleared his throat, which was his way of warning me that what he was about to say wouldn’t be good. “We know only one girl our age with reddish-brown hair who would be asking for you, Banana.”
Nick and Sam shared a look. Sam gave the barest of nods.
“Who?”
“Dani,” Sam said.
My first instinct was to laugh, but it clearly wasn’t meant as a joke. All three of them were staring at me, tense, waiting for my response.
“No,” I said quickly, matter-of-factly. “Dani is dead.”
“Says the Branch,” Sam said.
“And they’re trustworthy,” Nick added sarcastically.
“It could be anyone. Anyone. Someone who used to work for the Branch. Someone who knows Trev.” I felt like I was sputtering, making up excuses. It couldn’t be Dani.
There wasn’t even a tiny part of me that believed it.
“That store in Millerton, it have a security system? Cameras?” Sam asked.
“Yeah,” Nick and I said in unison.
Sam gestured to Nick. Nick stood up.
“Wait,” I said. “What are you going to do?”
“Look at the tapes.” Sam pulled on his coat. “See who it was.”
“I’m coming with.”
He checked the magazine in his gun, making sure it was full. “No, you’re not. If someone was there asking for you, then you’re at a greater risk than any of us.”
“How are you going to access the security footage?”
Sam gave me a look from under the heavy furrow of his brow, like that was the silliest question I’d ever asked and no way was he going to answer it.
“It’d be far easier to ask to see it, don’t you think?” I said. “Instead of sneaking in?”
“Because I’m sure they let any customer who walks in the door access their security system?”
“Let me come,” I said. “I have an idea, but you’ll need me there to do it.”
“Anna.” Sam sighed.
Cas walked up behind me. “Oh, let her come, Sammy. She might be useful.”
I wasn’t sure if I should thank Cas or scowl at him.
“Fine,” Sam said. “But if there is any sign of trouble, you leave. Right away. No questions asked.”
I nodded. “Fair enough.”
He started for the door. “And make sure you have a gun on you.”
Worried that he’d leave without me if he had the chance, I grabbed the closest gun—the one from the laundry room—and hurried after him.
6
TREV ONCE TOLD ME THE ART TO LYING was in telling as much of the truth as you could.
“I lost touch with my sister a long time ago,” I said to the grocery store manager. “And your store clerk said there was a girl here the other day asking about me, and it sounds like she fits my sister’s description.” I wrung my hands in front of me, trying to act as desperate as I could. “Is there any way you could show us the security footage from that day? Just so I could see if it was her?”
The manager, a woman in her forties with long black hair and wide brown eyes, looked from me to Sam, who stood just over my shoulder. Per the plan, Sam had come with me posing as my boyfriend, while Nick stayed in the car on lookout and Cas sauntered around the store.
“I don’t know,” the woman said. Her name tag read MARGARET, but I thought she looked more like a Maggie.
I sensed her wavering, so I charged on. “Please? I miss her so much.” I let my voice hitch at the end, my eyes water.
Her keys jangled in her hand. “All right. I suppose we’re not hurting anything. Follow me.”
She led us through an unlabeled door near the front of the store, just past the checkout lines. On the other side was a small office. There, two black-and-white TVs played security footage from several cameras spread around the store.
Margaret took a seat at the desk and unlocked the lone computer. “Do you know what day it was that your sister supposedly came in?”
“Thursday,” I answered.
Sam hovered near the desk, arms crossed in front of him. I could just make out the shape of his gun holster slung over his shoulders, hidden beneath his jacket. Before all of this, when I was just a normal girl living a semi-abnormal life, seeing someone with a gun always made me nervous. Riley, the Branch’s second-in-command and the one who usually made the checkup visits to the lab, carried a gun with him at all times. Maybe that was why I’d avoided him. Well, that among other things. He was a weaselly, unpleasant person who’d do anything for the Branch. He didn’t question what the entity did and how they did it, which made him that much more dangerous to us.
I was glad for the gun now strapped to my shoulders. Going anywhere without it would’ve left me feeling vulnerable and na**d. We’d learned that Riley had the unfortunate ability to pop up at any time.
Margaret queued the footage from Thursday and fast-forwarded through the afternoon, starting at one o’clock, when Nick’s “friend” had been working. Several people came and went through the checkout lanes. The time readout on the screen said over an hour had passed on the footage.
And then, finally, we found what we were looking for.
“Wait. Go back,” I said. A girl fitting the description Nick relayed had come and gone on the footage. I’d seen only a flash of her face, but it was enough to put me instantly on alert. Trepidation crept up my spine. “Can you play it here?”
Margaret pressed a button and the footage slowed to real time.
The girl came through the checkout lane, long hair loose down her back. She faced away from the camera at first and handed something to the clerk. A picture, I thought.
The clerk scanned it and nodded quickly before handing the picture back.
After a few more words were exchanged between the two, the girl finally turned toward the exit, toward the camera.
A startled breath rushed down my throat.
“Shit,” Sam said.
I blinked back the sudden welling of tears and covered my mouth with my hand to stop the choked sound of surprise threatening to escape me.
Dani.
It was her.
Margaret glanced over a shoulder, a smile spread across her face. “Is that your sister?”
The reply to that question was just one word, easy enough to say but impossible to get out. Because saying it brought her back from the dead. Saying it meant I was no longer the last remaining member of my family.
I wanted it to be true more than anything, but after what I’d been through in the last few months, the cautious, rational side of me said don’t believe it just yet. This could be another trap. Another lie told by the Branch. They were capable of anything. Had the security feed been tampered with? Had they somehow added Dani’s image to the footage?
I couldn’t allow myself to give in to the hope.
“I can ask my employee if the girl left any contact information,” Margaret said.
Sam gestured to the screen. “You got cameras on the parking lot?”
Margaret frowned. “Well, yes, but…”
“Bring it up, please? Find the time stamp for directly after this one here, with the clerk.”
“All right.” Margaret typed in a few commands, and new footage replaced the interior shots. Dani emerged from the store, crossed the parking lot, and started for the alley. So she wasn’t driving. Or if she was, she’d parked out of sight.
“Should I rewind it?” Margaret asked and moved to type in another command when Sam stopped her.
“Wait.”
A black sedan pulled up behind Dani. The taillights glowed red against the slushy asphalt. Someone got out from the passenger side.
Dani kept walking, hands shoved in the pockets of her coat. Did she know someone was behind her?
The man pulled a gun from a hidden shoulder holster.
“Oh my God,” Margaret said.
Dani whipped around.
The man didn’t have enough time to react, and Dani caught him in the nose with a left-handed punch. He spun back, facing the camera.
Even in the static of an old TV screen, I knew the man was Riley. Dread knotted in my gut.
Another agent eased out of the sedan. He came around behind Dani and kicked the back of her knee. She buckled forward. Riley brought down the butt of his gun, catching her across the cheek. Blood poured from her mouth.
Margaret gasped. “We need to call someone,” she said, and reached for the phone, knocking over a cup of pens. They rolled off the desk, clattered to the floor. “Oh, that poor girl! I can’t believe no one saw it happen. She could be dead by now.…”
Sam hit the receiver button. Margaret looked up at him. “What are you doing?”
“Listen very carefully.” He gently pulled the receiver from her hand and hung it up. “You can’t tell anyone what you just saw.”
“But… her sister…”
Sam set his hands on the arms of her chair and spun her toward him, caging her in place. “That girl isn’t her sister,” he lied, crafting a tale quickly. “She’s a fugitive on the run from the Russian government, and those men are two of their agents. If they know what you saw, they will hurt you and anyone you care about. Do you understand me?”
