Page 39 of Uncontrolled

Then she snaps her fingers at Quinn. “What’ve you got on you?” she asks him.

My own fingers spider closer to the knife at my waist. That horrid, uncertain feeling is back in my gut. They’re going to kill me. To get to Allie, or to get me out of the way, or just because.

With a sigh, Quinn produces his wallet. He sweeps the contents and passes them to her with a grumble about her conveniently never carrying cash. The day I met Quinn he peeled me off first one fifty, then another, without batting an eye. A very, very large offer, Nico said.

They sold Jason Jourdain and split the profit between them.

“Real talk?” Nico folds the money from Quinn in half and tilts the thick stack toward me, more a gesture than an offer. “I’m going to ask you something and I don’t want you to sugarcoat your answer.”

My nod is tight, neck muscles taut. “Okay,” I manage.

“Do you think Jamison’s dead?”

My fingers stray from my hip, the knife. I take a second to recalibrate. I point toward Quinn. “He tells me Jamison is missing and now you’re telling me he’s dead?”

She pivots and rips Allie’s photo off the wall, not bothering to remove the tack first. A small sound of protest escapes Keeley. Nico ignores it.

“This bitch knows what happened to Corbin at the least,” she says, letting the picture of Allie flutter to the desktop and then stabbing her fingertip into the empty foreground. “If I had to guess, she’s responsible for Jamison’s disappearing act as well. That never crossed your mind?”

Her gaze is penetrating, unrelenting. I don’t dare break it. Here we go, I think.

“He’s not missing. Is it weird he hasn’t called? Yes, but, I mean… He will call.” I drop my eyes to the scuffed wooden floor as if even considering he might be in trouble is a betrayal. “Jamison doesn’t check in with me. When he needs me, he finds me. He tells me what he wants done. I do it. I’m not his keeper. He wants me close to Allie, I’m staying close to Allie.”

“You slept at her place.” It’s not a question.

They’ve been watching me. How long? Quinn and I first talked three days ago. I mentally scan all of my movements since for anything incriminating. Aside from last night, Allie and I weren’t in public together. I was downtown busking both days. Did they follow me? They must have known where she lived, but I can’t shake the feeling I led them right to her.

“I’ve been crashing at her place a couple nights a week since early summer,” I admit. I step toward the dark paneling, eager to have sturdy wood at my back.

“And when you’re not there?” Nico asks.

A rush of hot embarrassment burns my cheeks. I don’t have to fake it. “When I’m not at Allie’s, I live at the Boxcar Camp.”

Keeley makes a sympathetic noise. At least I won’t have to explain.

“Ploy,” Nico whispers. “No one’s judging you. We’re scared for you.”

“Don’t be.” I don’t need their pity. “The camp’s not that bad.” I toe at a seam in the floorboards, the white of the shoes Allie bought me gathering a smudge of gray-brown dirt.

“No,” Keeley says. “She means we’re scared for you having sleepovers at Allie’s. She’s dangerous.”

I whip toward her, confused.

“We’re not supposed to get close to them,” she says with a mythical intonement reserved for old horrors passed around campfires. Don’t go into the swamps at night, don’t pick up hitchhikers at crossroads, don’t get close to resurrectionists.

“You did more than get close,” I say before I confront Nico again. “You think that’s why Corbin got taken? Or Jamison, if you’re right about him? Was it revenge? What happened to the resurrectionist you sold?”

She pauses, considering it. “The guy we took, he was a homesteader. No visitors. We weren’t spotted before or after.” A strange hesitation passes across her face. “I suppose he could have escaped after the pickup and blabbed.”

“He was alive?” I ask.

Quinn runs a hand through his hair and then replaces his ball cap. “Yeah, had to be. It was in the terms.”

I wonder if Jason Jourdain is still alive, being tortured the way Jamison planned to do to Allie, drained a syringe at a time, hurting and healing and broken. “Huh,” I say, attempting to sound uninterested. “You’re not sure what the guy wanted with him? Aside from blood?”

Quinn shrugs.

I should take the hint and drop it. “Could be they’re holding Corbin hostage for trade,” I offer. None of them seem interested in my theory.

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