Page 121 of Anchor

David Hill, the director.

If only I could think of a reason why, then I would believe that voice. If only I didn’t know for a fact that Hill still needed Madeline because she still had a lot of power over the Council. They still respected her, and she could still influence their decisions.

If only I didn’t know this for a fact, I’d have believed that it was Hill behind this all along.

Except it didn’t add up. Hill ordering Michael to kill me—it didn’t add up.

“We’re sorry, Rosabel,” Jam said after a moment.

“We always liked you,” said Jim.

“We didn’t want to lie, but we had no choice. They said we’d die.”

“And we will if someone finds out.”

Jam shrugged. “If they haven’t already.”

Jim met my eyes. “You’re not going to tell on us for real, right?”

I sighed. “Of course not. Who would I even tell?” I was a fugitive, wanted for helping a criminal escape from Headquarters, and I didn’t even want to know what more they’d put on my name.

“Cool,” Jim said.

“Cool,” Jam agreed.

Just like that.

They were seriouslygoofs, and I smiled as I watched them grab another cigarette from their pack, then Jim went and got the bottle Jam had apparently left outside—it was red wine. They drank off it right there atop the counter, and smoked, and watched me as if to say,well, aren’t you going to leave now?

“I need one more favor from you guys, and you’ll probably never see me again.”

Their eyes lit up. “Sure thing. What do you need? Booze? Weed? The strong stuff? We got you covered.”

Did I even want to know whatthe strong stuffwas? Highly unlikely.

“I actually just need to use your phone for a minute.”

“Oh. Cool,” Jam said.

“Cool,” Jim agreed, and offered me his battered phone without hesitation.

Chapter 24

Rosabel La Rouge

The voices in my head had turned chaotic. So much uncertainty around me. I had no idea what was happening and who to trust. I had no idea what tothink,either, so I thought everything all at once, and it fucked me up within minutes. No amount of my forcing myself to calm down, to breathe, to clear my head was working because two days were already as good as done and Taland was nowhere to be seen and I still had no clue how to find him.

Well, no clue except forone,and I wasn’t even sure that was going to work. In fact, I was fifty percent certain that it wouldn’t. There was a good chance that I was going to end up in a jail cell in Headquarters before sunrise because, not only was I a fugitive, I’d showed my true face to a stranger in Dackston (because let’s face it, that ten grand wasn’t going to keep her mouth shut for real). And not only had I gone to the McMurray twins’ house and threatened them (easy to see how they could have called it in the moment I left their house,afterI practically begged them to pay someone to deep clean their place), but I’dhad Jim talk to the Information Desk to get Cassie’s number, and then I’d texted her to meet me in a small woods in a human neighborhood at the back of a trailer where a Mud family lived.

Yeah, I must have gone out of my fucking mind, now that I thought about it.

Get up, leave, run!insisted most of those voices in my head (there were many). But I still sat there on the ground with my back against a tree trunk, looking out in the darkness of the forest, waiting.

I hadn’t even gone close to the trailer on my way here because Taylor might have been just a kid, but she had this nasty habit ofalways knowingwhen I was close by, so I didn’t want to risk it. I’d come into the woods from the other side just in case, and I’d stopped far away from the tree where she’d one day build her tree house. I doubted she’d be there—it was two in the morning anyway.

My stomach was growling because I hadn’t had the balls to eat. Even so, I waited—to either be saved, imprisoned, or…just as confused as I was now. There was no telling if I’d misunderstood this entire thing or if memory just sucked, but we’d find out soon, I supposed. I either got taken down by a team of agents in the next few minutes, or…

I didn’t.

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