Never Fade (55 page)

“In a minute. I need to tell my kids where I’m going.”

“Because they won’t know what to do with themselves without Mommy fussing over them every two seconds?”

At that, I really did wrench myself away from him, feeling my temper spike dangerously. Cole held up his hands and backed away a step. “Take a joke, Gem. Smile. Today’s a good day, remember? Solid win.”

“Where are you going?” I asked Cate.

“Out with a few agents to try to find some kind of transportation for all of us.”

“But…”

“I’ll be back in a few hours, I promise. I think you know that…it probably wouldn’t be right to stay here after this.”

“Where are we going?” I asked. “Kansas? Or Georgia?”

“Roo!”

It was impressive we’d been able to stand there for that long before Jude’s radar started to ping. He was up and on his feet, pushing through the agents standing between us, nearly tripping over a group of kids who were clearly just trying to sit and eat and not burst into tears. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Chubs and Liam turn around, but just as quickly they were gone, and the only thing in my world was Jude as he threw his long arms around me.

“You scared the crap out of me!” he said. I hugged him back. My one-kid welcoming committee.

“I was worried about you, too,” I said. “Did anything happen?”

He shook his head, curls flying. “Did you find him?”

“I told you she was fine.” Vida put a hand on his shoulder and tried to peel him off by force. “Judith. Unclench.”

Cate laughed, patting his back. “Come on, I have to tell you two and Nico something.”

That was enough for Jude to ease up just a bit. “He still won’t talk. I can’t get him to say a word. He, like, shut down.”

I gave a faint wave as she led him and Vida back over to Nico.

“Ah.” Cole muttered. I felt him stiffen, adjusting his posture from a casual slump to one that was solid. Collected. Even his face seemed to harden. He kicked off where he had been leaning against the wall and pushed past me without another word. He threw a single warning glance over his shoulder.

That was less than what he gave Liam—and even less than what Liam gave
him
—as they brushed past each other and continued in opposite directions. I met Chubs’s look dead-on, and the expression there was enough to tell me there’d be a story later.

Alive, alive, alive, alive,
my heart sang. I let the poisonous memory of what Clancy had shown me bleed out until there was nothing but the buzzing brightness in my chest. It took my breath away.
Alive
. The dirt on their faces was nothing. The cut that had reopened on Liam’s chin was nothing. The crack in one of Chubs’s lenses was nothing.

They were everything.

The two of them stood in front of me, arms crossed over their chests, wearing identical disapproving looks.

“Are you guys okay?” I asked, since they clearly weren’t about to say anything.

“Are
you
?” Liam shot back. “What were you thinking, going after him like that?”

I bristled at his tone. “I was thinking that he let himself be dragged here for a reason, and I was right.” I reached into my pocket, fishing out one of the photos from the folded stash of documents. Chubs eyed the stained paper I held out with a measure of distaste.

“That blood wasn’t in your body at one point, was it?”

I pressed it against his chest, forcing him to take it. “I tracked him to Alban’s office. That’s what he was after.”

Liam leaned over to look. They didn’t have the same mental block I did, apparently. Recognition lit up their eyes. Chubs’s jaw actually dropped.

“He’s looking for her,” I said. “The photos were in a file with what I think is research she was conducting. I don’t know if he thought she was here or he knew Alban might have some kind of clue, but—”

Cole climbed up onto the table at the center of the room, clapping his hands twice. He cupped his hands around his mouth. “Can I get your attention?”

There was a formality to his tone that sounded unnatural. The Cole of sly smiles and infuriating teasing had apparently retired for the morning. Agent Stewart had no time for him.

“All right. I’ll make this quick.” The agents and kids in the room were shifting, flowing around the cots and tables so they were standing in front of him. “What happened here…it’s done. You did your part beautifully. And while I wish I could say they wouldn’t have gone through with their plan in the end, I think we all know that’d be a damn lie.”

Liam shifted, leaning back against the wall in the exact pose his brother had assumed a few minutes before. He kept his eyes focused on me, clearly waiting for something.

“Look, I’m not one for pretty speeches. I’m not going to lie, because you’ve been lied to all of your goddamn lives, and it’s got to stop. Here’s what you need to know.” He cleared his throat. “When Alban started this whole thing, he only ever wanted to expose the truth about IAAN and for Gray to own up about the camps. More than anything, he wanted this country to go back to what it was before—the place he was proud of and was happy to serve. The Children’s League was his dream, even if it turned to shit in the end. He wanted that life again. But I say we can’t go back.”

I turned more fully toward him, stepping around Chubs to get a better look. The other kids watched, riveted. Why wouldn’t they be? It was the same as all of those times I’d heard Liam speak about freeing the camps; the passion behind their words undercut all the doubt they claimed to have about their ability to express themselves. They let themselves burn when so many of us were afraid to be warmed by the fire.

He’s one of us,
I thought. The others had no idea, and they still felt that this was right. That he was supposed to be taking charge.

Liam scoffed, rolling his eyes. Chubs and I glanced at each other, and I wondered if he could feel the wave after wave of disappointment Liam was sending our way, too.

“It’s forward or nowhere for us now. We—all the folks who came back—are leaving this place, and this name, behind. I don’t know what we’ll be yet or if we’ll take another name, but I know what we’re going to do. We’re going to figure out what the hell happened to cause IAAN, expose anyone responsible, and get those poor damn kids out of those cesspools of misery. We are
leaving
; we’re going up to the ranch—there are agents reopening it right now. We want you to come. We want you to want to fight. We want
you
.”

Cate stood from where she’d been sitting with the others and gave me a wave as she exited through the door on the other side of the room. Vida, Jude, and Nico didn’t look up as she left. They were nodding, letting Cole’s promises sweep them up in the heady rush of possibility. I felt it fluttering inside me, too. There were no advisers feeding him lines, no locked filing cabinets, no dark hallways. This was honest. Real.

“What’s the ranch?” Chubs whispered.

“It’s the League’s old temporary headquarters near Sacramento,” I said. “They shuttered it when they finished this one.”

“We want you,”
Cole repeated, his eyes sliding our way. “But it’s your choice.”

I met his gaze dead-on, trying not to roll my eyes as he winked. He knew he had me.

And so did Liam.

He shoved away from the wall, but he let me catch him by the jacket as he passed. His shoulders shook with each deep, ragged breath he drew in. After days of regaining his strength and coloring, Liam was back to looking a step away from collapsing. His skin was ashy and his eyes burning as he stared at me.

“Tell me you’re leaving with us today,” Liam whispered. “Chubs and me. I know you’re too smart to buy all that bullshit. I
know
you.”

He saw the answer in my face. His hands captured my wrists and pushed them away.

Just before Liam reached the door, he turned back and said, his voice hoarse, “Then I have nothing left to say to you.”

Cole disappeared after his speech, muttering something about “going to check on it,” without giving another word of explanation to what or who “it” was. I had half the mind to follow him and make sure
it
wasn’t Clancy Gray, but I’m not sure I could have stood up from the table if I had tried. The five of us—Jude, Vida, Chubs, Nico, and I—had claimed one of the circular tables near a TV, mostly, I think, to stay out of the way of the agents who were trying to “retire” the building and strip anything and everything they might need from it.

An hour had passed. More than enough time for Jude to ask, “Is Cate back yet?” and me to start worrying about Liam. It felt like the longer I sat there, though, the heavier my limbs became, until I was mimicking Nico across the table and resting my head on my arms, easing that weight off my shoulders.

“She said it’d take a while,” Vida said, checking the time on her old Chatter again. “There’re seventy of us. That’s a lot of wheels to round up.”

“We’re coming to you live from the Texas State Capitol building, where President Gray and representatives from the Federal Coalition will start the Unity Summit in less than fifteen minutes now—”

Jude reached over to turn the volume up. He’d been the picture of calm all morning; there hadn’t been so much as a whimper of how hungry or tired he was. Of our sad group, he was the only one who was actually paying attention to the screen. Nico had retreated so far in on himself, he was basically comatose. Chubs kept glancing between the watch on his wrist and the door.

The news coverage of the Christmas Day peace summit had started fifteen minutes before at nine o’clock Texas time. There were mostly crowd shots, and of that only a very small section. When the cameraman had accidentally panned over a group of protesters and their signs, all of which were being kept as far from the building as possible, the feed had been cut.

Cole slid into the space between Jude and me, nearly knocking the kid off the bench. “Hey, Gem, need to borrow you for a sec.”

I turned and buried my face deeper into my arms. “Can it wait?”

“
It
is awake and very angry, and I would appreciate some guidance on how to approach, seeing as you are the only one who might be able to tell me if he’s trying to melt my brain.”

“People know what he really is?” Chubs asked, surprised. “You told them?”

“Alban already knew,” Cole said. “He saw Clancy influencing one of his Secret Service agents during one of his press tour stops after he got out of camp.”

I sat up at that.

If Alban already knew what Clancy was and what he could do, Lillian Gray’s first note could be taken a whole different way.
I need to get out of his reach if I’m going to save him.
Lillian might have realized, even before President Gray had, that her son was using his abilities to influence the people around him.

The timeline was coming together for me, finally. Alban would have seen Clancy do this just before he left to join the League—he removed himself from, as Lillian called it, Clancy’s “reach.” If she had tried asking her husband or any one of his advisers for help disappearing, Clancy would have had access to that information. It really had been a plan of desperation.

“Then why the hell didn’t he do anything with that?” came Liam’s voice behind us. The lines in his face deepened with his frown. “That could have blown the whole camp charade apart.”

Cole rolled his eyes. “And he was going to prove it how? The kid was a ghost. We tried to put feelers out to see if he’d come willingly, but he never bit.”

“Because he doesn’t need you,” Nico said, his voice hoarse. “He doesn’t need any of us. He takes care of himself.”

I opened my mouth to explain my theory, but Liam cut me off.

“Shouldn’t you be helping the others clean the place out?” he asked pointedly. He stared at the place where Cole’s hand was on my shoulder.

It was insane to see them standing side by side like this, wearing almost identical expressions of anger on almost identical faces.

“Feel free to leave any time, Lee,” Cole said, dismissing him with a wave. “No one’s keeping you here. I told you how to find Mom and Harry, so go on. Run back and hide. I wish I could be there when you explain to them how you almost managed to fuck over an entire group of kids because you’re too idiotic to pay attention to what you’re doing and where you’re going. After you tell them about what happened when you tried to break out of your camp, of course.”

I heard Vida swear under her breath, slamming a hand down on Chubs’s arm to keep him from trying to jump in. There was no one there to check me.

“Stop it!” I said. “Listen to yourself—”

“You—” A flush of red swept up Liam’s neck, and he was visibly struggling to keep his face in check. “You have
no
idea…”

“Oh, don’t cry about it,” Cole said, standing. “Haven’t you already embarrassed me enough? Just…go. Jesus, just
go
already if you want out so damn bad. Stop wasting my time!”

“Guys—” Jude’s voice went high, cracking on the word. “Guys!”

“Please,” I tried again. “Just—”

Jude leaned over the table and grabbed my arm, turning me back in the direction of the television. “Shut up and
look
!”

President Gray had exited his car and was looking around at the crowds, lifting his hand in a well-practiced wave. His hair was grayer than I remembered it being even a few months ago. Heavier bags rimmed his dark eyes. But it was still Clancy’s face, a glimpse of what he’d look like in thirty or forty years, and for that alone I wanted to look away.

“What’s—” Vida began, just as the camera panned to a small hooded figure shoving his way past the pretty blond broadcaster, leaping over the police boundaries.

The president was slowly making his way up the pristine white steps of the Capitol, his hand outstretched toward the governor. Behind him, both the American and Texas state flags were swaying with the breeze. He didn’t seem to notice something was wrong until the men in suits beside him pulled their guns, and the governor’s face went white as bone.

The police officers that lined the steps were thrown to each side, shoved through the air with such force that they smashed through the lines of cameramen and photographers. He hadn’t needed to touch them, only slash his arms out in front of him, like he was throwing open a heavy curtain.