Page 6 of Seal My Fate

“Wren,” I greet her, smiling despite everything. Just to see her face fills me with emotion, even if it is drawn and tired, her eyes jumping nervously around the room.

“Don’t call me that, not so loud,” she says hurriedly, pulling me down in the seat across from her. She’s nursing a soda, and has one waiting for me, too. “Did you tell anyone you were meeting me?”

“No.”

“No one?” Wren demands, grabbing my hand. “Not even Saint?”

“I told you that I wouldn’t.” I pull my hand away. She’s scaring me now, so sharp and intense, but none of this meeting makes sense. “I hated lying, but I made you a promise, and I’ve kept to it. Now it’s your turn to keep your side of the bargain,” I continue, leveling her with a stare. “Tell me what’s going on. Wren… I want answers. I deserve to know the truth!”

Wren exhales. She glances around the room again, but nobody’s paying us any attention. Finally, her posture relaxes. She gives me a nod. “You’re right. I’m sorry for all the sneaking around, but you’ll see, I’m only trying to protect you. All of it was to protect you.”

I shiver. “What are you talking about? Start at the beginning,” I add, needing to make sense of this. “Faking your death, the suicide note… You planned it? It was all an act? You never meant to kill yourself?”

Wren slowly nods. “I didn’t see any other way. You see, a few weeks after I got back from Oxford, I started getting threatening letters.”

“What kind of threats?” I ask, confused.

“They said I needed to keep quiet, that bad things would happen. Not just to me, but to Mom and Dad, and to you.” Wren swallows, fear flicking across her face. “They had photos, Tessa. Surveillance of you, at that nonprofit job you were working. Out running in the mornings. They drew a bullseye on the photo.”

“Oh my God,” I breathe. “Who was doing it? What did they want?”

“I didn’t see any other way out,” Wren pleads, not answering my question. “Everything was falling apart, you were already so worried about me, and I… I was losing my grip. I didn’t know what to do. I thought if I could just disappear, then they wouldn’t care about you guys anymore. You could be safe.”

“Who?” I demand again. “Who were these people? What did they want with you?”

Wren swallows hard. “There’s something I didn’t tell you, something that happened when I was in Oxford…”

“Connected to the attack?” I ask.

She shakes her head. “Something else. Something big…”

She trails off, clearly still terrified by whatever it is she knows, that made these people come after her.

I lean forwards. “You can trust me, Wren,” I promise her. “I won’t let anyone hurt you again.”

She gives me a faint smile, and for a moment, I see a spark of the old Wren in her eyes again. My beloved sister. My closest friend. “What are you going to do, beat them with your tennis racquet, the way you did with Marcy Littleton when she called me a stuck-up nerd at camp?” she jokes softly.

“If that’s what it takes,” I vow. I take her hand and squeeze it. “We’re in this together now. Please, Wren, whatever’s going on, you don’t have to deal with it alone anymore.”

She squeezes back. “I know. I hate to bring you into this, but I can’t stay silent, not when you’re with him now.”

Him? Does she mean Saint?

“I tried to warn you to stop digging,” she adds. “I sent you that note…”

“That was you? But why?”

I’m frowning at Wren in confusion when she takes a deep breath, and continues: “It was my research, at Ashford Pharma. I stumbled across something I should never have seen. It’s the Alzheimer’s drug, Tessa,” she says, looking stricken. “The results from the trials were all faked. The drugs don’t work.”

“No…” I gasp, stunned.

She nods. “That’s what they were threatening me about, to keep me quiet. They said…” Wren’s voice breaks, but she soldiers on, urgent. “They said that if I ever revealed the truth, then they’d get to you. They would show you the inside of that cell, the way they did to me. And they wouldn’t use the drugs, either. They’d make sure you remembered every single moment.”

Chapter3

Tessa

Ican’t believe it.

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