Breaking Point (26 page)

“No! I went with Cara. That’s all.” Tucker’s face twisted.

“Get out of this house!” I shouted suddenly.

“Keep it quiet!” warned Stephen in the background.

“You can’t be here! Have you brought soldiers here? Are they following you?”

“No!” Tucker shook his head. “No, I got rid of them in Tennessee. But I didn’t know where to go. I don’t know the other check station … things.
I don’t know!
”

His fingers twined before him, as if he were praying, and for the first time since I’d known him he looked genuinely panicked.

“How did you get here?” asked Chase. His pacing was getting faster. I began to feel my heart keep time with the cadence of his voice.

“A car … I took a car. Her cousin’s car.”

“Where is it now?”

“I parked it at a dump a few neighborhoods over. Hid it, you know? So no one would look twice. And then … then I started walking. I remembered this place from the overhaul but couldn’t get the street right. I didn’t know where else to go. Man, she’s dead.”

“Shut up,” said Chase coldly. “It’s not your first time.”

My spine zipped straight up my back.

“We have to leave,” I said. “Right now. Right this second. He can’t be in this house.”

“We’ll get the other car,” said Sean.

“No.” I wouldn’t leave here knowing that Tucker could come back for Beth.

“No,” Chase agreed. “He’s coming with us. He doesn’t leave my sight until we clear the area.”

Tucker nodded gratefully.

“Thank you,” he said quietly. I felt sick. First an apology and now a thank-you? It felt all wrong.

“Beth, get out of here,” I said. “Go home.
Now
.”

That was all there was. I pushed her out the back door and she ran, and I hoped she would never,
never
come back to this place. Stephen watched on blankly, but I had nothing to offer him.

“Good-bye,” I said quietly, watching the spot in the black hole of night where she’d vanished. I hadn’t even told her to her face. I wasn’t going to say how much I loved her and how the memories of her kept me sane. It was just the same as it had been with my mother, only now, I was the one disappearing.

Good-bye,
I said. To the little girl with the crooked eyebrows who cut her hair with her mom’s scissors. To the smell of vanilla candles after curfew. To the drooping plants on the kitchen windowsill, the shared hairbrush on the bathroom sink, and all the
goodnights
before bed.

Good-bye, Mom.

We passed through Chase’s yard, running in silence on numb feet. My head felt muddled. Cloudy. A sense of disillusionment filled the night air. I knew without a doubt that I would never come home again.

It’s just a house, Chase had said. Just a house, not a home. Just a shell. A vessel. I wanted it buried, just like I wanted my mother’s body buried. So that it could rest. So that I didn’t have to wonder what happened to it after its life had passed. I wanted Beth to be safe and alive. For tonight she was, and I guessed that was all we could ask for.

I didn’t know why Tucker was here. I didn’t know how Cara had been killed, or why he’d driven all these miles to find us, of all people, for help. One second I wondered if he’d murdered her. The next I was sure he’d been telling the truth. Whatever the case, we had to get him out of town fast. He was a grenade. He was poison.

We got to the car and once inside, Chase started the engine. He made Tucker sit behind the partition, right behind me, so that he could always see Tucker in his peripheral vision.

We drove away from our houses, from the haunted apartments where we’d met, from the wall where I’d watched him run faster than Matt Epstein. Past Beth’s street. Past the turn to Western High. Onto the highway where the black night before us blended with the black asphalt in defiance of the cruiser’s high beams.

“Don’t stop,” I said.

Chase didn’t answer. He didn’t even look at me.

*   *   *

TUCKER
and Sean talked some. I tried my best to listen, but it was too muffled through the glass. I hated that he was right behind me. I felt like there was a loaded gun aimed at my back. I sat at an angle with my back to the window so I could see all of them. Tucker kept his eyes down.

The atmosphere grew increasingly tense. Chase was starting to worry me. The long hours without sleep were wearing on him, but it wasn’t just fatigue that tightened his jaw and the cords on his neck. He’d been deeply upset by Tucker’s presence in my home; I could feel his anger crackle between us. And we weren’t going anywhere that might offer comfort. Chicago had not been kind to him; its presence represented War, scavenging for food and shelter, and later, the FBR. It was not a place of happy memories.

Signs started cropping up for Indy.
CLEARED
, they said in big spray-painted letters. Indianapolis had been evacuated during the Chicago bombings. It was thought the Insurgents would hit there next. I’d heard rumors that people had tried to return, but the MM had barred them because they’d intended on making it a Yellow Zone, occupied by soldiers.

A cautious glance out the window revealed nothing but the sickle moon and the silver-streaked long grass that had overgrown on the side of the road. The highway was down to two lanes here, and quite suddenly Chase slammed on the brakes and parked just off the pavement at a slant. There was no forethought, not the usual care he’d take to hide the car or limit attention. No, he was in a hurry. My eyes scanned the night to see if I’d missed some obvious danger.

Chase jerked open the car door and unlocked the back.

“Stay here,” he growled.

I didn’t.

He rounded toward the back where Tucker was getting out, and slammed him into the side of the car.

“Hey!” Sean raced around the trunk and attempted to separate them, but Chase was almost five inches taller and outweighed him by a good thirty pounds.

“Stay out of this,” Chase warned. Sean took a step back.

“Give me your firearm,” he said. “That’s all I’m asking.”

Tucker gasped, the breath knocked out of his lungs. He tried to stand again but Chase shoved him back down and kicked him hard in the gut.

“Chase!” I yelped.

He seemed to register the sound of my voice through his fury. Though he didn’t face me, I saw his shoulders roll back.

I didn’t know what he was thinking. We couldn’t stop here. The roads were mostly empty, but we were closing in on a base. What if a cruiser drove by?

At the same time I wanted this. I wanted him to hurt Tucker, to beat the truth out of him. But Tucker was unarmed, and Chase in his rage could kill him. He would carry that blood on his hands for rest of his life, and I would, too, because I’d stood by. This couldn’t happen. This was wrong.

“I saved your life!” Tucker gasped. “The woman in the holding cells—Delilah—she was going to tell them she’d seen you alive! I couldn’t hide that Ember escaped, but I covered for you! I made her disappear!”

“You did have her killed.” I felt sick. Her death was my fault. If I hadn’t escaped, she would still be alive.

His green eyes stayed on Chase. “I just … scared her. That’s all. So she wouldn’t talk.” He was on his knees. Begging.

“Why,” said Chase.

“I don’t know,” Tucker spat. “We were partners.”

Chase laughed, a low, frightening sound. He leaned down, so that his face was right in front of Tucker’s. “You ratted me out to CO, and let them crucify me in the ring night after night, and killed someone I cared about. No. We were never partners.”

“Don’t you want to get into that facility?” Tucker shouted. He rubbed the back of his head, where it had connected to the metal above the window when he’d tried to get out. The other hand was braced before him in defense.

“What facility?” Sean asked.

“The one where they’re holding your girlfriend.” He siphoned in a deep breath. “It’s right next to the hospital. I did a rotation there after they discharged Jennings. Training for the Knoxville holding cells. I know a guy there. He’ll let me in.”

A long beat of silence passed.

“If you knew all this, why didn’t you say something before?” Sean’s voice was raised. “I’ve asked you a dozen times if you knew anything else about Rebecca!”

“I didn’t know if I could trust you!” Tucker pleaded. “I didn’t know who to trust.”

There was fire in his petulant green eyes, but Sean didn’t see it. He swore softly, and then his hands unclenched, and he said, “All right. I get it.”

“Sean,” I warned.

Chase’s words from Greeneville echoed in my head:
This is what he does. He digs his way in and gets under your skin. And before you know it, he’s ripped your life apart.

“I’ll make it up to you,” Tucker told Sean. “I’ll get you in. From here on out, I’ve got your back. That goes for all of you.”

I was about to tell him to shove it, but Sean had shifted and, to my disgust, held out his hand to help Tucker up.

Chase very deliberately removed his gun from the holster. I held my breath and squeezed the skirt in my fists.

“Chase,” Sean’s voice quaked. “Come on, man. He knows how to get Becca.…”

Chase handed the gun to Sean.

“Talk,” he told Tucker.

With pressured speech, Tucker explained how he and Cara had walked across Greeneville toward her cousin’s. She’d pointed out the house; a small place with a white sedan out front. Tucker had guessed that they were wealthy, and Cara had told him her cousin’s husband worked for Horizons Weapons Manufacturing. As they’d gotten closer, they’d noticed the squad car tracking them a block back.

“It was close to curfew,” he said. “I thought they were going to give us a citation for an Article Four.”

I shook my head, crossing my arms over my chest. Chase and I were always careful to portray ourselves as married in order to avoid a citation for indecency, but a couple walking the streets so close to curfew was bound to draw attention. Maybe Tucker was still too impenetrable to anticipate this, but Cara should have known.

In order not to endanger Cara’s cousin, they’d passed the house and ducked into a nearby ditch.

“But the patrol hit the sirens,” said Tucker. “So we ran.”

They’d hidden in a large, tubular cement drain packed with trash and waited for the MM to lose them.
Thirty minutes,
Tucker said. Until the rats got used to their presence and came to visit.

After a while Cara had ventured out, but Tucker had gotten a cramp in his leg. He’d stayed under cover while shaking it out.

“It happened fast, man.
Fast
. I heard someone on the road overhead, and I looked over at her and she fell. Just like that. Shot in the shoulder, straight through the heart. Done before she hit the ground. I went out the opposite side of the drain and hit the road running.”

“Coward,” muttered Chase.

“
I’m
the coward?” said Tucker in disbelief. “It was a code one, Jennings. No arrest, no questioning. They’re killing any girl they think might be Miller.
They’re
the cowards.”

For a moment Tucker’s words made no sense. It was like he was speaking another language. And then their meaning set in.

Code One,
Chase had told me.
They can fire on suspicion alone.

It had happened. Someone had been killed in my name. Someone had died as the sniper. A girl I’d known. I didn’t feel relief—my name wouldn’t be cleared once they realized it wasn’t me. I felt like I was going to throw up.

I didn’t kill her,
I told myself. But I didn’t believe it. She was dead because I’d escaped those holding cells, because I lived. Because my death was the death the MM wanted. What kind of world was this where people had to die for others to live?

I backed away. I couldn’t listen anymore. Not just because I’d known Cara, because I’d worked beside her in the resistance and now she was gone, but because of the sincere pain in Tucker’s voice. He hadn’t hurt so much when he’d killed my mother, whom
he’d
shot in cold blood. When
he’d
been the coward. What was it that made Cara so much better than her? What made him care? Why could he feel remorse now, but not then?

And Billy. We’d left him alone with Marco and Polo, and now he was gone.

I wandered back into the grass, until I came to a wooden fence, glowing silver in the moonlight, cracked and splintered just like me. I tilted my head back and stared at the sky and felt the exhaustion bend me and weaken me and make my knees tremble. I hadn’t slept in almost twenty-four hours, but I was too afraid to close my eyes.

My hands filled the deep pockets of the uniform skirt Cara had worn, and I felt it. A copper bullet, caught in the wool folds. The one I’d shown her that I’d found. She must have put it in her pocket and forgotten it when we were changing.

I heard Chase before I saw him. I recognized the way his boots rolled on the grass. That tentative step when he thought I might bolt like a rabbit. I released the bullet, but felt it, solid against my leg.

“It’s not your fault,” he said quietly.

“I know.” I grasped the fence hard.

“No, you don’t.”

I punched the fence hard enough to break the rotted wood. My hand stung, but my breath came more steadily. He didn’t crowd me, but stayed close, knowing exactly the kind of comfort I needed.

“Let’s go,” I said.

We returned to the car, and drove north.

CHAPTER

15

I JARRED
into consciousness in the cold silence, with the acute awareness that I was alone in the car. An eerie intuition crept over my skin. The others were in trouble. Something had happened.

These thoughts had me out of the door before I drew another breath. It was frigid, but not so much that the puddles on the asphalt had frozen. The air cooled my knuckles, heated and swollen from hitting the fence. I clutched my elbows and scanned the shadowed parking garage, heart racing, furious at myself that I’d fallen asleep. Dawn cracked through the pewter thunderheads outside—I’d been out for
three hours
at least.