Unleashed

  I watch them wrestle, my body growing cold. So cold as I lie on the floor. It doesn’t take long for Caden to gain the upper hand. He twists the knife from her, not even flinching at her cry of distress.

  He slaps her when she lunges for it again, a madwoman, desperate to win. The slap spins her back to the ground. “Enough, Junie!” he shouts, wielding the knife.

  Panting, she curls up on her side on the floor. “Caden,” she whimpers. “It’s for you. For us.”

  Shaking his head, he scrambles over to me. “Davy, Davy, baby.” He carefully lifts me against his chest. “Let me see.” He peels back my fingers from my neck and his face goes white.

  “Bad?” I rasp between my labored breaths, no longer cold. Just numb.

  His eyes lock on mine, and the anguish there is all I need to know. “No, not bad. Nothing Doc can’t handle.” He places my hand back over my neck. “Push down for a sec.” He pulls his shirt off and carefully wraps it around my neck, removing my hands and tying off the fabric, assessing my face. “Not too tight?”

  I murmur some form of assent. I can still breathe.

  “Caden!” Junie is standing now, holding another knife. It’s her room. I guess she would know where to get one. She cocks her head, looking at him with wounded eyes. “I only wanted you to want me. I did it all. For you.”

  He sweeps me into his arms and stands, holding me close, his body wired tight, ready to react. “Get out of the way, Junie.”

  Her gaze travels over me in his arms and then darts back to his face. “Why? Why wouldn’t you let me love you? That’s all I ever wanted.”

  “Let us pass. Now, Junie.”

  The angle of her head sharpens, and her eyes cloud like she can’t quite believe he doesn’t understand . . . doesn’t care. With a small whimper, she lifts her chin and turns the blade so that it points to her chest. With a cry, she plunges it into her body, defiance bright in her gaze.

  Caden turns away before her body even hits the floor. Bellowing for Phelps, he races me toward the infirmary.

  Phelps is up, standing in the doorway as we arrive.

  “Hang on, Davy. You’re going to be fine,” Caden says as he lowers me to an exam table. He clings to my hand as Phelps comes over, snapping commands to Rhiannon. I don’t look at them, though. My eyes stay on Caden, darting, memorizing, loving his face, the angles and hollows, the slope of his dark eyebrows over his deeply set eyes.

  He’s still too pale, and his eyes are bloodshot. Moisture gleams in the agonized depths. “It’s not so bad,” he assures me.

  I choke a little on a weak laugh. “Still a liar.”

  My hand slips from my neck, no longer able to hold on.

  I always thought death would be something blissful, but it’s not. It hurts.

  A piercing ringing stabs me in the ears. My body is one giant wound, every nerve expanding and contracting in agony. And then there’s my neck. It burns fire, and each time I turn my head the barest fraction it feels like someone is taking a hacksaw to my throat.

  A moan slips past my lips, and I frown. That’s not right. Should I be making sounds? Moaning? Should I be feeling pain? Feeling anything at all? I inhale thinly, dragging air through my nostrils as I take in the aroma of astringent.

  Should I be able to smell when I’m dead?

  “Davy, Davy. Come back to me, Davy.”

  Now that whisper, that voice, should definitely not be floating around in the land of the dead. I whimper, my head rolling to the side, and then gasp at the burst of wildfire that shoots lancing, blistering heat through my neck. The reason I’m dead at all is because I let Junie stab me. And I did that so he would be safe from her. Caden shouldn’t be dead.

  And if he’s here, then he’s not dead . . . I’m not dead.

  My eyes pop open and I gasp.

  “Davy!”

  My gaze flies around, squinting at the bright light, at the face above mine, his midnight-dark hair haloed in so much yellow. And that voice, saying my name.

  I lift a hand to shield my eyes from the light and focus on his features. He looks gaunt, pale beneath the tan of his skin. A smile cracks his face. “You came back to me, Davy.”

  I work my lips before managing to get out, “I’m not dead.”

  He laughs hoarsely, the sound laden with relief. He smooths a hand over my forehead. His fingers catch on something prickly and sharp, and I wince.

  “Oh, sorry, those are your stitches. Are you okay?”

  I gingerly touch the one-inch row of stitches on my forehead.

  “Might leave a scar,” Phelps volunteers, peering around Caden at me.

  Caden shoots him a brief glance. “Doc?”

  “Hm?” Phelps sends him a mild look.

  “Can you give us a minute?”

  Caden’s attention turns back to me as Phelps shuffles from the room. The door clicks after him.

  He leans down, propping his elbow on the mattress, his eyes scanning my face, staring at me like he can’t believe it’s really me he’s looking at. “I’m so sorry, Davy.”

  For what? Lying to me? Being someone I can’t possibly have in my life? Or does he mean the almost dying thing?

  He presses his mouth to mine. I close my eyes at the warm texture of his lips. My mouth moves slightly in response. I can’t help myself. I cling to his bottom lip, savoring him, reveling in the taste that’s so innately him, something I know I would recognize in the dark—crisp, clean, faintly salty—even years from now.

  I turn away, severing our kiss, even though the movement makes me hiss in pain. He stares down at me, searching my eyes, reaching, looking for something in me that isn’t there. Not anymore.

  I work my throat and find some words. “How long have I been out?”

  “Since yesterday.”

  “I thought she cut my throat.” I cringe, remembering. Junie pressed over me. That knife arching high, bearing down, slicking through my flesh like butter . . .

  “She did. Missed the artery. Doc stitched you up. You need to be careful. Stay in bed. No ripping those stitches.”

  I do have a tendency to do that.

  He takes my hand and brings it to his mouth. “So cold.” His warm lips move against my knuckles. He chafes my hand between his, working heat into my bloodless fingers. Suddenly he stops and closes his eyes. “I thought I lost you.”

  You did. The words whisper through my mind, but I don’t say them. They seem cruel. And even though they’re true, I don’t want to hurt him. But it’s like he hears them anyway. He looks up from my hands, his amber gaze hot with intensity. He shakes his head at me, conveying what he thinks of this.

  “I have to go.” I manage to get the words out, even as impossibly thick as they feel in my throat.

  “No,” he says, still shaking his head. “We can send word to your friends that you’re staying—”

  “Caden, I can’t stay with you.” I can’t be with you. “You and me . . . we don’t fit.” Me, a carrier. Him, passing for a carrier.

  He moves so suddenly I think he’s going to climb up on the bed with me. Our noses almost touch as he thrusts his face closer, planting both hands on either side of me and looming so close I can count those flecks of gold in his eyes. “How can you look at me and lie like that?”

  “Me? I’m not the one who lies.” My voice falls hard as flint.

  “This is all because of a piece of paper you found?”

  “It’s what it means.”

  “What about what we mean?”

  Forgetting about my neck, I shake my head and then freeze in pain.

  “You’re still running, throwing up your walls,” he accuses. He takes my face between his hands, his thumb grazing my cheeks in small, roving circles. “You’re grabbing on to this because it’s the excuse you need to run. I love you, Davy. Nothing about that scares me. Nothing, you hear me?”

  But it scares me.

  And it’s not just an excuse. What would I do the day he wakes up, regretting sentencing himself
to the life of a carrier? He has a choice. He doesn’t have to live this way. He has a mother and sister out there waiting for him. He can embrace normal. College. Marriage. Kids of his own someday. What happens when he realizes that being with me is just too hard? What happens when he turns his back on me? I won’t survive that.

  I moisten my lips. “Your traitor is dead. No reason you can’t let me go now.”

  He shakes his head, his expression bleak, and something shudders inside me at the sight of it. “You’re not going to listen to me, are you?” He inhales, his chest swelling.

  “This isn’t my world here.” I brush a hand over his cheek. “It’s not my life to live.” It’s yours. Your lie you’re living. At least until you decide not to live the life of a carrier anymore. I don’t say the words, but he hears them nonetheless.

  “You want me to go out there and tell everyone the truth? Is that what you want? I’ll do it. Right now.” His voice softens. “For you, I’ll do it, Davy.”

  I shake my head. “No. It doesn’t matter what any of them know. I know.” I’m the broken one. Not you. You deserve more. Everything.

  Moisture brims in his eyes. “You can’t go. I won’t let you, Davy.”

  “Yes. You will. Because it’s the right thing to do. And you always do the right thing.”

  He stares at me for a long moment, silent. Some of Phelps’s equipment hums in the corner, but that’s the only sound.

  In the quiet, there’s just his searching eyes and the steady pain thrumming through my body. The pain will fade. My body will heal like it always has. My heart is another matter.

  * * *

  It is with a heavy heart that I address you today. Recent events have proven to me that this country needs me more than ever now. I firmly believe that things will not improve. And yet I stand before you no longer with the support of this administration . . . the Wainwright Agency is closing its doors. God help us all.

  —Dr. Louis Wainwright in a press conference

  upon the termination of the Wainwright Agency

  TWENTY-FOUR

  IT TAKES A WEEK AND A HALF FOR PHELPS TO PRONOUNCE me well enough to travel, and four more days for Caden to make all the arrangements for the crossing.

  Caden didn’t ask any of the other scouts to escort me to the border. He did it himself.

  It would have been easier in the company of Boyce or someone else. Anyone. No tension. No uncomfortable silences. No staring at the hard, strong back moving in front of me, leading me away from the compound and his life, remembering the texture of his skin beneath my fingers. No stopping heart and seizing breath when he accidentally brushes against me. And the worst is when we actually look at each other. When my eyes meet his and the connection sparks between us. When that thing that’s been there from the start flares up, reminding me that what I feel for him isn’t something that’s going to be forgotten or replaced in a month.

  But he isn’t interested in making it easy for me. Our final good-bye is torture. Misery in a way I could not have anticipated. I made my choice. My decision. It shouldn’t hurt so much.

  The dark pull of his eyes, the deep velvet of his voice is my new ghost. I know he’ll haunt me. “Stay, Davy,” he asks so simply, his gaze stark. “Come back with me. You don’t have to go.”

  He doesn’t give up easily. Anger radiates off him. He wants to shake me. I can tell, can feel the urge seeping from him. I moisten my chapped lips.

  “If I could force you to stay,” he adds, “I would, but I know you’d hate me.”

  I nod even though it’s not true. I could never hate him, but it’s better he doesn’t know that. No sense revealing the power he has over me.

  My feelings for him, the love I feel . . . it terrifies me. It’s not something I can trust.

  It’s more than him lying to me. He’s not a carrier. Such a simple distinction, and yet it weighs heavily. I’m scared enough. Almost every waking moment for so long now I can’t remember any other feeling. I can’t choose a fate where that fear has no hope of fading. With him, each day, there would be fear. Fear of disappointing him. Losing him. Fear of just being who I am—what I am—around him.

  So I smile at him and stamp down on the impulse to touch him, caress his face. “You’ll be glad someday—”

  “Stop telling me what I feel. You have no idea. If you understood how I felt, you wouldn’t go. You’d believe in us.”

  I stop talking for good then, sealing my lips tightly shut. Our farewells are done.

  There’s nothing left to say.

  My guide in Mexico is an old man not much taller than me. If he speaks English, he keeps that fact to himself. All communication is conducted in nods and gestures. No sound passes his withered lips. Not even a grunt rises up from his frail-looking chest. His face is as weathered and lined as the brown earth taking each hit of my boots. His cheeks are sunken like the many ravines and gullies rutting the broken landscape. His black eyes remind me of an animal, staring out with some manner of prescience.

  Before we parted ways, Caden assured me he was the best. “Mauricio is smart. Do as he says.”

  I nodded, holding silent. That was enough recommendation for me. Caden would never leave me in the hands of someone unqualified to get me safely to refuge number four. Caden would never leave me. . . .

  I squashed the thought. I forced this on him. Well. Short of putting a gun to his head. I made him turn and walk away from me.

  He adjusted my straps on my shoulders. “That comfortable?”

  He still cared, still worried about me even though I was leaving him.

  I nodded my answer . . . my thanks. Even if I wanted to talk, the golf ball–size lump in my throat made that impossible.

  His hands stilled, gripping my straps. His gaze flickered over my face like he was memorizing it. “Be careful, Davy. I hope you find what you’re looking for.”

  I watched him go, trying to remember what that even was.

  Oddly, I feel comforted by my guide’s presence—this quiet old man who seems a part of the land. Small talk isn’t necessary. He got me across the river with none of the drama of my first crossing, and I’m confident he’ll get me the rest of the way, where I need to be. Where I need to be. I worry such a place doesn’t exist for me.

  At night, he directs me to smooth the ground of rocks before unrolling my sleeping bag. As I stare up at the stars flung across the immense sky, I’m convinced I’ll never be able to sleep out here in the open with a stranger only a few feet away from me. I keep seeing Caden’s back walking away from me, his long strides taking him farther and farther away, his figure growing smaller on the horizon until Mauricio made me start walking.

  But then suddenly it’s morning again. We pack up and get moving, drinking from our water bottles and eating power bars as we head out, walking hard through the day.

  It’s dusk when we arrive there. Refuge number four emerges almost magically out of the land. We crest a ravine and it lies below like some village of old except with modern conveniences. Vehicles are scattered through the assortment of buildings. Mostly small houses, a few trailers, but there’s a large metal-sided building. The closer we inch, the more I can see of the hangar and the nose of an airplane inside it.

  When I’m finally standing in the middle of the bustling camp, a dog trots up to me and sniffs at my legs, tail wagging in greeting. I pat its head, feeling like the new kid on the first day of school. Anxious and uneasy—like I might be sick any moment and puke all over my shoes. In this case, not expensive leather but my well-abused hiking boots.

  Mauricio motions me forward now. Like a parent shooing their child into the classroom. I made it here. I just need to walk. Step forward, left foot, right foot, and find my friends, and everything I set out to do will be done. I get some curious looks as I pass through the refuge, but no one seems overly concerned at my presence. A small group of women sit beneath a tree, shelling beans into bowls. I feel their eyes on me. One waves, and a quick glance over my
shoulder reveals Mauricio waving back. Of course they would recognize him. He probably brought a lot of them here, too.

  I spot Sabine first. Her chestnut hair shines with gold highlights in the sun as she walks out of a flimsy-looking building balanced on cinder blocks. She’s wearing a blue sundress. It’s casual and a bit faded, the hem frayed at her tan calves. The sight of her gives me a start. I’ve never seen her in a dress before. It shows off her shoulders. She has lovely shoulders, slim and smooth, slightly toned. She seems more grown-up somehow. Not that girl who shadowed me at Mount Haven. Those days suddenly feel so long ago.

  She’s carrying a box, propping it on her hip for support. I stand frozen. I glance down at my grimy clothing. The green cargo pants and the ill-fitting, long-sleeved button-down shirt. I’ve been wearing button-downs ever since I was shot. I’m covered in dust and grit from the journey. I touch my cheek, certain I look a mess. Stitches mar my forehead. My neck is covered in gauze that must be more brown than white. Phelps insisted I keep it on and only change it out once I got here, so the wound stays as clean as possible.

  I stand motionless, my voice locked in my throat. She spots me then. Her gaze passes over me and then jerks back.

  Then she moves. Drops her box and races toward me, crying my name. She grabs me and hugs me, squeezing so tightly I have to wince—I’m still pretty much one giant walking bruise.

  She pulls back, both hands gripping my arms. “You made it! They said you were alive, but that was, like, over a month ago. We were beginning to doubt it!” Her smile is huge, probably the brightest I’ve ever seen from her.

  “I’m here now,” I say dumbly.

  Her gaze strays to my forehead and neck, and she frowns. “What happened to you?”

  “Nothing that won’t heal.”

  Except my heart. That won’t ever heal. That still feels like a twisting, crushed mass in my chest. Or an empty ache right dead center because it’s gone. Left behind.

  “Well, come on. Sean and Gil will be so happy to see you.” She loops her arm through mine and God help me . . . but I feel the impulse to pull away.