MOST people were clustered together. I moved from group to group, hastening them to carry the injured toward the exit route immediately. That way when it was cleared, we’d be ready to evacuate the city. They grabbed what provisions they could carry—weapons mostly, but uniforms, blankets, and medical supplies, too. The thick scent of mud and sewer water hung in the air, gagging me in some of the more stagnant spaces.
Some recognized me, and those that didn’t followed those that did. They believed me when I told them Truck, the carrier, would be ready to transport them to a nearby checkpoint. They believed me because they thought I was the sniper, and how could the sniper lead them astray? But my confidence was as hollow as my identity. I was deceiving them even now, when they were most frightened. I didn’t know if any of us would live through the night.
I moved toward the cave-in that blocked the mess hall from everything behind it, and raised the lantern I’d picked up off the ground. The sight before me stole my breath.
The way was blocked completely by a wall of concrete and pipe. Water sprayed from one corner. On the opposite side, several guys were struggling to put out a fire, but every time they got close, the rock base they climbed upon gave way, and they all crashed back into one another. Those that were digging nearby had to abandon the area on account of the heat.
A boy about Billy’s age was screaming. His leg was trapped beneath a hollow pipe with a greater circumference than his core. Sitting against the wall in the shadows I spotted a tall, slender man and shouted my plea for help. He stared into space, unmoving.
“Clear!” shouted someone. The call was infectious. “Clear! The exit’s clear!”
I wanted to run, follow them toward the tunnel that led to the lake, but couldn’t. Not with this boy here, staring at me through pain-glazed eyes. Trapped, as I had been.
Sean, having been close at the cave-in, came sprinting toward me. He assessed the situation with a tight grimace and bent down to help.
I planted my shoulder against the pipe, favoring my sore wrist against my chest.
“On three,” he said.
The boy began to pant. “Wait,” he begged. “Just wait…”
On three we pushed. The boy passed out, but we got the pipe off of him. His leg was bent at an awkward angle. A sharp piece of bone from his shin stuck out through his denim pants.
I covered my mouth, biting back the bile climbing my throat. Sean hoisted him over one shoulder. The boy’s head bobbled limply to the side.
When I hesitated, Sean glanced toward our exit. “We’ve got to go.”
I caught sight of Chase then, digging into the rock with his bare hands, calling out orders to those around him. Something about the desperation in his movements finally brought reality home. The MM had done this. They weren’t just skulking around prison cells taking out defenseless individuals. They were attacking on a large scale now. Like with the fire, they meant to destroy us all. Today, they’d done a pretty good job.
Get out, I heard with each thump of my heart. Get out, get out, get out.
Sean followed my gaze. “Hurry up,” he said, and took off.
I limped toward Chase, but on the way tripped over a man’s long legs, splayed out from where he sat against the tunnel wall. His arms were down loosely at his sides. His face was almost completely blackened by dirt.
“Jack?”
I touched his knee, unsure if he was dead or in a trance.
“Jack!” I shouted. He clawed at his ears, smearing the trickle of blood that veined down his neck. He couldn’t hear me.
I moved closer to his face. “Jack! It’s me, Ember. We need to go, okay? We’ve got to get out of here!”
He blinked. His mouth was moving slightly. I leaned close to hear him.
“Run,” he whispered. “We’ve been hit. Mags is down. Run.”
I touched his hand. It was ice-cold. Vaguely, I recalled someone once telling me this was a sign of shock. I rubbed his arms rapidly, hoping this would help. My swollen wrist sparked with pain. I pulled him to a stand and he sagged back against the wall.
Finally a sound interrupted his mumblings. He began to laugh. It was a highly disturbing sound given the shouts and moans of pain.
“The sniper,” he said. And then laughed again. “The sniper, from Knoxville.”
“Okay,” I said. “You’re right. It’s hilarious.”
He stopped laughing and shook his head as if to clear it. “We need to evacuate.”
“Yup,” I said, shoving him down the hallway. “I’m two steps ahead of you.”
WORD traveled fast down the tunnel. Thirty minutes after I’d emerged from the rubble, a scout up top radioed down a sighting of soldiers on the airfield. They were combing the area looking for a safe entrance to the tunnels. The signal didn’t need much interpretation: they knew how we got in, which meant that someone had snitched, like Truck had said, or been followed. I hoped that it had not been us.
After I’d sent off Jack, I went for Chase, but he was already barreling in my direction. He grabbed my uninjured hand, and I could feel the slick sweat and blood between our palms. Without another word we ran, hearts in our throats, fate on our heels. His grip never faltered.
The way became less cluttered by rock and debris as we approached the barracks and the exit route, but the ceiling had begun to rumble again. Another collapse was imminent. We could not move fast enough.
A crash came from behind us—an aftershock of the original bombing that had weakened the whole infrastructure. The roar of the rock and hiss of broken pipes shattered my eardrums, the repercussion reverberating in my chest like the smack of a bass drum. The floor trembled, then seemed to lift and pitch, and we were on an ocean of sand and rock, clinging to each other, fighting to stay upright.
I willed myself not to look back, but I knew the landslide was coming. It swallowed each remaining lantern, until behind us was only black, and all that remained ahead was the wreckage that appeared in the bouncing beams of our flashlights.
Finally the barracks came into view, and Truck darted through a metal door that said BOILER ROOM—EXIT. Sean had been waiting; he motioned us to hurry. We passed him, colliding into the bodies that were stacked inside.
“Stop! It’s this way!” I heard Sean yell behind me. I turned in time to see Tucker staring farther down the hall, toward the airfield exit where we had entered the tunnels, a desperate look on his face.
Sean grabbed his sleeve and jerked him back toward us, just as the cave-in reached the barracks. The crunch and squeal of the medical car dissipated in seconds beneath the rubble; any visual of the tunnel was suddenly blocked behind the slamming metal door. Tucker stumbled, pale panic stretching his features thin.
This hallway was damp and dark, and my eyes watered from the acrid fumes of gasoline. I remembered the flames beside the cave-in; there were probably multiple gas leaks. My breath felt dense and palpable in my throat as the tunnels outside collapsed.
“Eyes open!” Truck yelled, and ran on.
He shoved through a door on the opposite end of the corridor to a stairway and we ascended five levels, exiting into a room filled with rusted pipes and human-sized cobwebs. Rats scurried across the floor. For the first time in my life, I welcomed the sight of them: we were heading toward the living. Below us, the collapse had halted, and though we knew the reprieve wouldn’t hold, the air wafted with the shudder of one collective breath.
We emerged on the other side into a women’s restroom, like those in the old department stores we’d visited when I was a kid.
“No joke,” Truck laughed thinly. “My biggest nightmare in high school was accidentally walking into the girl’s bathroom.”
Chase’s hand came around the back of my neck. “You okay?” He was breathing hard.
I nodded, checking him and then Sean for injuries.
“Where are we?” asked Tucker.
“Near the lake. We’re on the dark side of town—there’s no standardized power over here,” Truck said. “The Bureau doesn’t come out this way. The worst we’ve got to watch for is flooding.”
“They never replaced the levee after the War,” Chase explained at our blank looks.
When Chicago had been bombed, the flood walls had been destroyed, bringing Lake Michigan’s shore a block farther inland. The fallen buildings had pushed the waterline even higher. On the news I’d once seen a woman’s furniture floating away with the current.
Truck led the way into an open lobby, where at least thirty people were crammed onto the left side of the broken tile floors. The ceiling on the right half had collapsed. Broken wires, fluorescent lights, and fluffs of insulation hung down to the damp linoleum.
I’d thought the underground had looked bad. In our urgency, I’d temporarily forgotten what the War had done to the top half of the city.
It was past curfew, but only just; I felt like I could finally breathe when the muted colors and shadows became decipherable through the cracks in the ceiling. If I never went underground again it would be just fine by me.
The medic was triaging those most injured, giving his approved list to Jack, who boarded them into an FBR supply truck outside. From the looks of it, he’d come back to his senses, but now seemed too embarrassed to acknowledge me.
“What are they doing here?”
I stiffened. My eyes found the boy who’d been crushed beneath the pipe. His leg was wrapped now with a wool blanket tied off with bungee cords, and he slouched against the back wall, clearly a recipient of a high dose of morefeen.
“Shut up already,” grumbled Jack. “They weren’t followed.”
So this wasn’t the first time this boy had made this accusation. I hoped no one else shared his views.
“You think we did this?” Sean asked.
“Odd timing,” the boy slurred. “Sniper shows up and they bomb the tunnels all to Hell.”
“We didn’t have to roll that pipe off your leg, you know!” I wanted to confess everything then, to tell them I wasn’t the sniper, Cara was, and now that she was dead, there was no sniper. But those people in the tunnels had listened to me because they thought I was important, and maybe that had saved their lives. I couldn’t take it back.
On some level I understood that Chicago needed someone to blame. But we were the last to leave the tunnels. We had sweat and bled beside them. Didn’t that mean anything?
Chase seethed beside me. The indecipherable muttering from the survivors rose in volume.
Truck, who had gone outside to check the vehicle, returned and cut the tension with his trademark missing-tooth grin.
“Sit tight, ladies,” he said. “Checkpoint express is pulling out of station. I’ll be back as soon as I can to get the rest of you.”
A communal groan. At least half would be left behind, some badly injured.
“I’m not going.”
All eyes turned toward Tucker, mine included.
“I won’t be further trouble,” he continued. “If they meant to smoke out the sniper like that kid says, we’ll be putting the convoy in further danger. I’ll stay back. Draw them away from the transports.”
What a hero, I thought.
“We’ll all stay,” said Chase, a wary eye on his ex-partner. “We came here for someone. We’re not leaving without her.”
My heart pounded in my chest. Beside me, Sean exhaled.
THE first batch left for the Indiana checkpoint, and though I’d made my decision to stay, I couldn’t bring myself to watch them leave. For the first time since I’d learned the truth about my mother, I wanted to go to the coast. I wanted peace.
In Truck’s absence, a grim anticipation settled over us. It thickened, until someone finally joked about how a guy named Stripes had cried like a baby when the bombs went off.
“You think that’s bad,” a bald man with a goatee responded, “you should have seen Boston sprint for the exit. You’d have thought his boots were on fire.”
Some nervous chuckles.
They called one another girls’ names. Sally. Mary. They laughed about who pissed their pants and who broke down. It was sexist and crass, but I didn’t even care. You said what you could to pull yourself out.
I thought of how Jack had laughed in the tunnels after the blast, and wondered if he’d had it right. When things got really bad, the horror came full circle, and even violence got to be funny again. It didn’t have to make sense.
We inventoried the supplies, ate salvaged rations of crackers and canned mix-meat, and waited for cover of darkness to sneak to Rebecca’s rehab. In our quest to stay, we’d been granted a break from the accusations and were donated fatigues, rations, and two handguns. The boy from the supply room, still lightly dusted and streaked with sweat, approached me shyly and handed me a Sister uniform he’d salvaged from the supply room.
“Thought you might need this again,” he said, face filled with hope.
I paid him a guilty thank-you, knowing it was far too late to say anything to the contrary.
THERE were two water drums from the delivery truck that were brought inside the hideout to make more room, and since the water was too dirty to drink, we used it to clean the grime and blood from our bodies.
As I waited in line, Chase’s presence pulled at me, drawing my attention to where he and Sean had removed themselves from the others. Against the wall, behind a ripped curtain of gray insulation hanging from the ceiling, they conspired. Though I couldn’t hear what they were saying, Sean’s movements were animated, as if he were trying to make a point, and curiosity had me leaving my place in line to see what had set Chase’s shoulders in a defensive hunch and his thumb tapping against his thigh. Before I reached them, Chase broke the conversation and stalked away.
“What was that about?” Sean’s head jerked up as I spoke. He glanced after Chase, then, in a low voice, explained how we were to break into the facility.
When he was done, my head was throbbing even harder than before.
No one removed a patient from the premises without the presence of a Sister, so Tucker and Sean would claim that they were assisting me with transporting Rebecca to a Sisters of Salvation home, where she could dedicate her life to service. Tucker knew the soldier managing the facility and felt confident he’d let us through. Just as long as he hadn’t heard about the dishonorable discharge.
Chase was not going to be coming in with us.
“It took twenty seconds for an AWOL to make him,” Sean tried to reason. “Don’t you think there are soldiers at the base who still remember him?”
So now Chase was the liability, and the rescue plan depended on me.
He was going to love that.
Without a word, I sought refuge in the women’s bathroom. The minutes lost their meaning as I stood before a sink, knees locked, eyes unseeing. A blank expression fixed itself onto my face, and it was no lie. I felt nothing. Not rage. Not despair. Nothing. I’d placed a bucket of water in the bowl, and absently washed my hands, my arms, my hair, now crunchy with dried blood, and watched as droplets of red and black splashed the old, forgotten porcelain.
The mirror before me was marred by black, mutated roses of corrosion, and within one of them something moved— a reflection from the empty stalls at my back. I spun, and the world spun with me, forcing me to grip the sink behind with white knuckles.
Tucker sat on the floor, his legs bent at sharp angles, his hands clasped between his knees. He leaned back against a stall door, shrouded by shadow and so still he could have been a fixture in the room. Still, I couldn’t believe I hadn’t noticed him.
We stared at each other for a long moment, until I finally asked the question ringing through my skull.
“What are you doing here?”
His shoulders rose with a long, drawn-out sigh, but his voice was weak. Defeated. “Same thing as you. Taking some much-needed me time.”
“What are you doing here?” I repeated. And when he didn’t answer, I asked again.
He looked down, and his legs fell straight.
“I don’t know.”
He crumbled forward, folding over himself like a discarded marionette, and began to shake. At once, conflicting desires rose within me. To leave. To force him, however I could, to tell the truth. To crouch down, and lower my voice, and say something soothing. And because they were all equally strong, I didn’t dare let go of the sink.
He is a liar.
He was with us in the tunnels.
I slowly dropped down, careful that I could rise quickly if necessary.
“Tell me something you do know then.”
He looked up, his eyes red and his face stained, and for a moment he looked so young I barely recognized him. He wiped his nose with the back of his hand.
“They cut me,” he said with a weak laugh. “I was everything they wanted, and they cut me.”
“The FBR,” I realized.
“Every test. Every level. I was perfect. But all they saw was Jennings. They wanted him. He screwed up everything, on purpose, and they still wanted him. It was unbelievable.”
Chase had told me he bucked the system trying to get home, but that had made his officers even more intent to break him. When he finally did comply, it was for my protection. It was unsettling to hear Tucker speak of it now.
“You know I enlisted early? Before my senior year,” he continued. “The first day I could. I was waiting for that day. I’d been waiting since I was nine years old.”
“What happened when you were nine?” I found myself asking.
“The War,” he said bitterly. He rolled his ankle in a slow circle, winced. “My dad managed a grocery store. It was a small place, not one of the chains, one of the first to go under when the economy tanked. We lost everything.” He looked up. “My dad’s car. Then our stuff. The house. My mom lost her job, too. We had to get rations vouchers and stand in lines for food we used to sell.”
My calves were falling asleep, and reluctantly I kneeled, feeling a strange connection to his story.
“It takes a toll,” he said, and his jaw twitched. “That’s what my mom used to say. It takes a toll, Tuck. That’s why he drinks so much. That’s why he beats the crap out of us. Because it takes a toll.”
I didn’t want to hear this. I didn’t want to feel sorry for him, of all people.
“And then the soldiers came to town.” He was wistful now. “And Dad got a job with Horizons, and things got all right after that. His boss knew a recruiter, and he’d come over to the house and talk to me about joining up. It made sense, you know? This officer, he had everything we used to have. Cars and a house and nobody screaming at each other. I made up my mind right then that that’s what I was going to do.”
“And when you saw what they did? What you did?”
His eyes blazed into mine with a sudden sharpness, and he stood, as if suddenly remembering who we both were.
I stood, too, and asked one more time. “Why are you here?”
He looked uncertain. “Because I’m a soldier,” he said. “If I’m out there, I’m not anything.”
The door swung open, making us both jump. Chase walked toward me, hands clasped behind his neck. They dropped when his gaze flicked to his old partner.
Without a word, Tucker left the room, but the doubt remained, deep in my chest.
“Everything all right?” Chase asked.
I nodded, but he stared at the closed door as if willing my answer to be different.
By now he’d have heard the plan. I knew he was going to argue. Say we couldn’t do this. Say that I wasn’t going without him. He was going to fight tooth and nail until we found another way, and I was going to tell him there was no other way. This was our window. It was a matter of time before the MM figured out I wasn’t dead.
I placed my hand on his chest, steeling myself for a fight, but when our gazes met, I faltered. I remembered those minutes trapped beneath the table; how the question of his survival drove me to live. How panic and despair stalked just beyond the border of our memories. Maybe he was thinking of the same things, because he cast his gaze away, as though he couldn’t look at me any longer.
He pulled a silver key from his pocket. “Chicago keeps a spare key to an FBR van at the hospital. Truck gave it to Jack before he left in case they needed a set of wheels before he got back.” He shoved the key back into his pocket. “Looks like we’ve got our getaway car.”
“Okay,” I said.
Without further discussion, we left.
REFORMATION Parkway was only nine blocks west from where we’d left the others. The hospital was easy enough to find; it was right beside the FBR Recruit Barracks, where Chase and Tucker had lived during basic training.
I’d known our stakeout would be there before I saw it. I’d known because Truck, Jack, and the Chicago medic had told Sean and me about it in sick bay. This abandoned building, just across the street from the hospital and rehab center, was where Mags had been when she’d sniped off her own man.
We entered through a weakly boarded door in the back and climbed to the seventh floor, where we could spy on the five-story facility below without anyone catching a lateral glimpse of us across the street. As the hours passed we kept watch on that building, as if Rebecca might appear in any window, hip cocked, arms crossed, wondering what was taking so long.
Tucker sketched a layout of the building on one of the walls with a jagged piece of glass, identifying all exits and stairways. We split our meager rations. We slept in shifts. Chase woke me every half hour to check my pupils; it was like when we’d first joined the resistance, when he’d been healing from a concussion, only now our positions had been reversed. The disruptions didn’t matter; after a couple hours I couldn’t fall back asleep anyway. No one could. When Sean got too restless, Tucker agreed to relocate with him to the bottom floor to watch the rehab’s entrance, leaving Chase and me alone.
“YOU’LL be fine. Tucker can’t do anything to you once you’re inside, not with all those soldiers standing around. He was right; he’s got nowhere else to go if he screws this up.”
Chase was already in uniform, methodically taking apart the gun Jack had given us, and cleaning it with the ripped remains of his T-shirt. I turned back to face the window, because it wouldn’t do much good to mention he’d already cleaned it twice, or that we’d reviewed tomorrow’s plan double that. I let him talk because he needed to, and I needed it, too. It eased the pounding in my head.
It was well after curfew, but the power across the street remained on at the hospital and rehabilitation center, as it did at the massive base behind it to the west. The triangle was completed by the prison across town. Three twinkling lights in the darkness. Their glow filtered in enough light to throw long, condemning shadows across the room.
I gazed down at the stone entranceway of the facility, wondering what lurked inside. I found myself imagining the strangest things—if the floor was tiled or linoleum, what color the walls were painted—grasping for something.
Did my mother know, walking into that jail cell, that she would never again come out? It seemed impossible that she couldn’t have felt mortality breathing down her neck, as I did now. I wondered if she’d felt brave. I wondered if tomorrow I would be.
A chill took me despite the warm temperature in the room.
Before I realized what I was doing, I’d begun a list. An inventory of all the things I wanted to do before I died. There were trivial things, of course. Take a hot shower. Eat ice cream, like in the days before standardized power. But there were more important things, too. Find Billy, and if I could, get him to the safe house. Put up a memorial for my mother.
Be with Chase.
Hold his hand without keeping the other on a weapon. Have long talks about nothing important, but everything essential, like we used to. Not just fight, but live. We had to live fast these days, because we died fast, too.
I slid the uniform scarf over my head and let it fall to the floor, then opened the top buttons of my blouse, finding it suddenly too tight around my neck. I took a deep breath, then another.
Chase trailed off, and for an instant I thought he might be preoccupied by the weapon, but then I heard the click of the metal atop the table and the rustle of clothing when he stood.
He approached slowly, like a stalking wolf, or maybe it was the nerves burning low in my belly that seemed to exaggerate each second. Before he reached me he stopped, close enough that I could feel his warmth. Feel his eyes traveling over my reflection in the window, more intimate than any touch.
He shook his head and glanced back at the table, as if he’d forgotten how he’d arrived here. Then he swallowed. Raked a hand through his hair. Tried to conceal an embarrassed smile behind a serious mask.
“Are you paying attention? Or just trying to distract me?”
“Trying to distract you,” I said. “Obviously.”
His amusement swelled, then faded, leaving me anxiously awaiting his next move. It came slowly: his tentative fingertips found the back of my jaw and trailed down the nape of my neck, stopping right before my collarbone. Making me aware of nothing but the feel of him.
“I remember you used to like to be kissed here,” he said, voice thick. “Do you still?”
I had to concentrate in order to respond.
“I don’t know,” I whispered. “No one has since you.”
In the reflection I saw his lips part slightly. My heart beat so loudly in my chest I wondered if he could hear it. If he knew it beat that way for him, and no one else.
He leaned down, the tip of his nose skimming my earlobe and lowering, until his lips found that spot, his spot, that made my knees weak and my whole body tremble.
He turned me slowly, fingers weaving through my hair. He came closer, until we shared the same breath. His lips were warm and soft and full of restraint, but as the seconds melted together his arms pulled me tighter, and his mouth became more urgent, hot breath and grazing teeth, and the firm, soft feel of his lower lip between mine. He felt it, as I did. The moments counting down, pulling us apart, and if we didn’t hold on to each other fate would beat us, separate us, and we would be lost to each other forever.
His large, calloused hands surrounded my ribs, untucking the coarse blouse, sliding gently down to my hips. Each place he touched lit with goose bumps and sparks of heat. Remember that, I told myself. How his hands feel right now. Remember every second with him.
Our breathing became ragged and uneven. I grabbed the hem of my blouse and pulled it over my head, expecting to feel self-conscious or too skinny or too plain, but his lips parted, and his eyes grew round, and all of those thoughts disappeared. His fingertip slid just under the waistband of my skirt, circling my belly, and I grasped at the round wooden buttons of his canvas jacket, feeling an unquenchable thirst to be close to him. When my injured wrist made the task cumbersome, he tried to help, but our nervous hands fumbled. We laughed at our lack of grace.
Then, I took a step back and laid his jacket on the floor, spreading it out like a blanket. He watched, silently realizing the weight of my intentions.
He didn’t respond at first, but then nodded once, seemingly at a loss for words.
I sat down on our clothing and he kneeled before me, holding my face in his hands, his bruised thumbs stroking my cheekbones. This is it, I thought, swallowing. And I didn’t even have to remind myself to remember this, because I knew without a doubt, I would.
But his eyes drifted over my bare shoulder, to the floor and his coat, and his brows pulled together.
I covered my chest with one arm. “What’s wrong?”
“Is this okay?” The vulnerability in his gaze startled me. Made me realize he wasn’t asking if I was okay with this dusty room, but with him.
“Yes.”
He said nothing for a moment, then blinked. “You wouldn’t regret…”
“No,” I said. My eyes lowered.
He hesitated. “I’ve screwed up so much already. If you had second thoughts…”
“I wouldn’t,” I said.
He sighed through his teeth. “You say that now.” But he was already leaning back over me, brushing my hair out of my eyes and skimming his fingertips along my jaw.
“I wouldn’t,” I whispered again. “This might be our only chance.”
He stopped. “What?”
“Nothing,” I said hurriedly.
He sat back. “What do you mean?”
I pulled his jacket over my shoulders, feeling very exposed suddenly.
“We don’t have much time left in case… you know. In case something happens tomorrow.”
His jaw fell slack. “You’re not planning on coming back.”
“I am. I mean, I want to.” As if dying were a choice? I stared at my feet. “You haven’t thought about it?”
He jolted up and began to pace, leaving me alone on the floor.
“Of course I’ve thought about it,” he said roughly.
“Then what is it?”
“I’ll find you. If something happens I’ll find you. We’ll be okay. We’re going to South Carolina.” He sounded so desperate to believe that truth that I knew it was thin enough to shatter.
“And if it’s not okay?”
“It will be!” he shouted, making my back straighten. He inhaled sharply, trying to recompose himself.
“You’re not going.”
“Chase—”
“You don’t even think you’re going to live through this! What was I thinking?”
I stood as tall as I could, the tears threatening to spill over. My heart was breaking. I could feel it tearing apart inside of me. He knew, he had to know what this felt like, this guilt-punched hole inside of me.
“You were thinking that if you could change things, you would,” I said.
My mother’s spirit filled the room. Without blame or accusation, but she was there nonetheless.
He stopped suddenly and stared out the window, not at the facility, but down the street at the barracks where he’d lived when we’d been apart.
A minute passed. Two.
“I would do anything to bring her back,” he murmured.
“I love you.”
The words were out before I’d even thought to say them, released by some force beyond my control. Instantly they consumed me, overwhelmed me, like the fact of my love was the only truth I’d ever known. The only truth there was. Chase Jennings, I love you. I love the boy you were and the man that you’ve become and even when I don’t like you at all I still love you because you are you, kind and safe and good, because you understand me and are not afraid.
As the honesty of my words sunk in, he became very still. Statue still. And I waited, more raw and vulnerable than ever.
He took a long shaking breath, and in it, my heart clutched.
“You don’t fight fair.”
“Yeah, well, neither do you,” I said. It was true. Risks weren’t so risky when you had no one to lose.
With a short, dry chuckle he came to me and wrapped his arms around my waist and lowered his forehead to mine, closing his eyes. My fingers traced the pink corkscrew scar across his biceps, and I was reminded of a day he’d nearly died for my protection.
“Now’s where you say it back,” I prompted.
“Say what?” When I hit him he grabbed my hand and pressed it against his chest. “I love you, Em. I’ve loved you since I was eight years old, and I’ll love you my whole life.”
His smile was so unguarded, so true. The tears clouded my vision, and my chest hurt, and I didn’t know how it was possible to feel so happy and so terrified at the same time.
“What happens now?” My hands flattened over his chest.
“Now I go find Tucker,” he said reluctantly.
Of all the things I’d hoped he’d say, this was not one of them.
“Why?”
He kissed my temple, letting his lips linger there while he continued. “Because tomorrow, I need him to do what I can’t.”
CHASE came back an hour later looking edgy. I didn’t know what he’d said to Tucker, and he didn’t offer it. Instead we sat beside each other, watching the rehab center, and talked, really talked. About everything else.
We talked about Cara, about Wallace and Billy, about Sean and Tucker and Rebecca. About the guys from Chicago, and how I’d found Jack, in shock, on the tunnel floor, and seen my mother in some concussion-induced vision. We talked about Beth and the place we’d once called home, knowing that history carried itself in the body and soul, not a physical location, not in letters burned in a fire or a magazine trapped beneath the rubble, and that now we had each other when we needed to remember. And we kissed. Sometimes gently, sometimes with the same frenzied passion as before. Sometimes in the middle of our sentences, when we’d simply forget what we were talking about. In those short hours we purged our secrets and held each other and prayed that time would both slow and hasten because just like the night before he was drafted, we knew tomorrow would leave us forever changed.
Eventually, I fell asleep on the floor with my head on his thigh. The last thing I remembered was the feel of his fingers combing through my hair.
BEFORE dawn he snuck across the street to the hospital parking garage with the spare key given to us by Chicago. I bit my nails to nubs until light, when he pulled out onto the street like any other driver, and appeared around the backside of the abandoned building in an FBR van. Tucker sat in the front, and Sean and I slipped silently into the middle row of seats, where I rubbed the St. Michael pendant around my neck and hoped that I hadn’t used up all its luck.
“I wouldn’t blame you if you backed out.” It took me a moment to realize Sean was talking to me, not Tucker.
Was he crazy? Our plan was contingent on my presence. “I’m not going to back out.”
He nodded out the window, as if expecting this answer.
“What if I said I didn’t want you to come?”
“I’d say good luck getting Rebecca without me.”
He shrugged. “I’d figure something out.”
“Well you don’t have to,” I said. “I’m coming.”
He was quiet for a several seconds. “Don’t do anything stupid, okay? I’m not losing you, too.”
“Sean.” I forced a smile, but it might have looked a little scary. “When have I ever done anything stupid?”
“Perfect,” he muttered.
It took less than five minutes to reach an intersection with Reformation Parkway. My pulse thrummed with the engine motor as we weaved through other FBR vehicles onto the main street. Chase slowly veered across the lane to park in front of Horizons Physical Rehabilitation.
The sidewalk was crowded with people. Most of them wore navy FBR uniforms. I spotted a couple other Sisters, hustling to their destinations with their heads down. They didn’t exude the same confidence in this setting that the men did.
The sideling patches of grass were all manicured. There were trees planted, too, surrounded by little wrought-iron fences and landscaped flowers. The stone face of the building was graffiti-free, with high glass windows and a trash can to the right that wasn’t overflowing with garbage. I felt like we’d driven into the past. It looked like someplace from before the War.
We’re coming, Rebecca.
Anticipation dripped through me. Here, at last, was my chance to make things right. To fix what I’d broken when I’d blackmailed her and Sean into helping me escape. Here was my chance for redemption.
“Hopefully this won’t take long,” said Tucker.
Sean was out of the car first. Tucker followed, and then Chase and I were alone. He stayed in the front seat and kept his head down, so as not to attract the attention of the passersby. We hadn’t said good-bye and we wouldn’t now.
I pulled off the gold band he’d stolen from the Loftons’ and reached for his hand, pushing it onto his pinky finger. His fist began to shake as soon as I let it go.
“Thirty minutes,” he said. “And then I’m coming in.”
I nodded and stepped outside, knowing I would rather die than have Chase follow me into that building.