Page 67 of Uncontrolled

“Well?” I demand.

“He’s not…” She trails off, then pauses, frustrated. “You’re wrong,” she says, but the words hold no conviction. “And anyway, I said I’d go after him. First, I’ll find out everything he knows about the hunters.” She gives me a solid once over that clearly finds me wanting. “Then I’ll kill him. He betrayed you. Twice now. Don’t forget that.”

Talia pivots and I watch as she grabs her bag and stomps toward the door of the gym. Her hand slams against the metal guard on the door, and I hear the pneumatic springs as it closes to latch behind her. The air-conditioned chill sends goosebumps racing across my skin. I hurt. Every part of me is in pain, but it doesn’t matter.

Talia’s going to kill Christopher. My insight might have bought a few hours of hesitation from her at most, but once she gets over the sting, she’ll come down on him hard.

I limp to my gym bag and rustle through the side pocket until I come out with my phone. What the hell am I supposed to text him? “We need to talk” is too vague. “You’re in danger” is too dramatic or not dramatic enough. “I think I just signed your death warrant.”

Then I remember I deleted him from my contacts last night. Erased our message history and took his number off the call list, leaving no temptation to contact him. It was a childish move. The exact sort of thing Talia’s accusing me of.

Damn it, I think. I have no way to warn Christopher.

I’m still too angry to consider maybe there was a little truth to what he said last night. Without him, there’s zero chance I would have been able to keep CJ safe or known what the hunters were planning. If I’d trusted him from the start, given him my blessing, how differently would this have gone?

He crossed me, I think. He crossed me. He crossed me. It’s a mantra that makes my stomach churn.

I open a side pocket on my bag and find a couple of wet wipes near the bottom. It’s disturbing how often I find myself prepared to clean up blood. What’s more disturbing is, with every second that passes, I’m drawing closer to my other pressing problem. I have a cluster to prove myself to before they’ll trust me, and that means exterminating the nest of hunters here in Fissure’s Whipp.

I need to act. Focusing on the cluster will cost me a chance at saving Christopher. Choosing him might cost me everything.

He makes you weak, Talia’s voice repeats in my head. As I clean up the used wet wipes and wrappers and get ready to start toward the bus, though, I can’t deny my mind is on Christopher.

For the first time, I wonder if she might be right.

Ploy

I walk all night, dimly aware of the rising sun, the morning cracking over the city, infecting the shadows until they shrink into nothing. I walk until my calves ache and then go numb, until the burn in my feet subsides and the hollow ball inside me swells, until it fills my chest and there’s no room for anything else.

I tighten the hold I have on shoulders empty without the straps of my pack, keep my gaze lowered, fade. My foot sloshes into a puddle.

I stop, staring at it. The gray water soaks into the white fabric of my shoe and suddenly I’m aware, here, awake. My brain’s on overload as a strange déjà vu crawls over me.

The dew on my skin chills to clammy. It’s nearing seven in the morning. I’ve been up twenty-four hours, a little longer. I’m spent. I shake what water I can from my shoe and squelch forward, heading for the rusted run of tracks in front of me.

Suspicion follows me as I pass a small group gathered around a pile of smoldering sticks. I nod to one of the ancient bums. The coffee he’s heating smells stale, the grounds likely dried and rebrewed until they’re nearly useless.

This side of the boxcars is mostly older veterans. Just after come the junkers, blitzed on anything they can shoot into their veins, huff, smoke. I cross through, hopeful no one will be moving around yet.

A certain gloom sulks through the air. I drop my hand to my hip, the knife under my shirt at my waist. When I bolted I was smart enough to have it on me, even if the rest of my brain went to shit.

“Hey,” someone calls. The bark echoes through the quiet as the drone of insects falls silent. A bullfrog booms a croak. I startle and then keep walking. “Talkin’ to you!”

I raise a hand in a wave of acknowledgement and speed my steps, hoping whoever it is yelling will lose interest. I only make it a few yards before I stumble on loose gravel, catching myself at the last moment.

A harsh laugh rolls through the camp.

Three cars later and I’m in more comfortable territory. Still, I don’t move my hand from my weapon, just in case. I skirt the boxcars, most of their doors rusted open.

I haven’t been here since the night Brandon was murdered. I stare at my old car, near the end of the line on the unused tracks. A streamer of yellow sways in the slight breeze kicking up through the swamp, through the trees, and for a second, I’m confused before I realize it’s a plastic length of crime scene tape.

I can’t be here.

I can’t go to Allie’s.

I don’t know what to do.

A hand clamps onto my shoulder and I almost jump out of my skin. My fingers are going for the knife when a familiar laugh reaches my ears.

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