Reborn (Altered) (11 page)

“There are extra blankets in the closet,” I said, and pointed at the closed door to our right. “I can get you shampoo and stuff if you need it.”

“No,” he answered. “I have everything I need.”

I frowned. He didn’t have anything with him. “Where?”

“In my truck. It’s still in town.”

“Oh. Why didn’t you say something while we were there? We could have grabbed it before coming here.”

He walked farther into the room, keeping his back to me. “I have to go into town anyway. I’ll grab it then.”

“Okay.”

I thought about offering to go with him, but more than anything, I wanted him to want me to come with.

He didn’t ask.

“If you need me, I’ll be in the main house. I’m making dinner tonight.” I fidgeted with the hem of my Merv’s Bar & Grill polo, wanting to say more. Not knowing what to say. Why had I mentioned making dinner? “Is there anything in particular you’d like? I was going to make a casserole but—”

He turned to me. “I can get something in town.”

“Oh. Okay. I guess I’ll see you later, then?”

He nodded, and I started for the door.

“Elizabeth?”

I turned. “Yeah?”

“Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.”

I left him, immediately wishing I could stay.

17

NICK

I WATCHED ELIZABETH RETURN TO THE main house, and as soon as the door shut behind her, I dug out the cell and called home.

Sam answered.

“Where’s the dog?” First thing he said to me.

That was our code for,
Are you okay?
If the dog was in the house, I was good. If the dog was in the shed, the shit had hit the fan. Which meant,
Get the fuck over here
.

“It’s in the house,” I answered.

We all wore GPS tracking devices when we were separated, but I wasn’t good about remembering mine. I’d left it—a necklace—in the truck since last night.

“You’ve been in the same place for over twelve hours,” Sam said. “Or did you forget to put it on again?”

I groaned. “What do you think?”

“Put the damn thing on, Nicholas.” Sam always used my full name when he was pissed.

“Let me talk to Anna.”

A pause. Then, “Hold on.” There was a rustle, a whisper, then Sam again. “Put on the tracking device, Nick.”

Anna came on the phone a second after, as if she’d ripped it away from Sam. “Hey,” she said. “How are you?”

I dropped onto the couch in the back corner of the apartment and all the tension left my body. I wasn’t at home, but in this place I felt as safe as I’d ever felt. I couldn’t explain it. Maybe it was the little old lady who owned it. Maybe it was Elizabeth.

Maybe it was Anna on the other end of the line.

“I’m okay,” I answered.

“So what have you found?”

I went to the kitchen, pulled open the fridge. Nothing inside. Not a goddamn thing. I needed a bottle of something strong.

“Nick?” Anna said.

I returned to the couch. “I found the girl. The one from the flashback.”

“Go on.”

“And I’m staying in the apartment above her garage.”

A long exhale.

My eyes burned as I waited for Anna to say something. She was processing, most likely. I went to the bathroom and stared at myself in the mirror. I looked like hell. I checked the cabinet—actually, the old pie cupboard pretending to be a cabinet—looking for eyedrops. Nothing.

“That was fast,” Anna finally said. “What’s she like? Does she remember you? How did you convince her to trust you? Wait,” she cut in. “I already know the answer to that.”

“I didn’t sleep with her, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

She laughed. “No, that’s not what I was thinking. But really, what’s she like?”

I went to the windows again and glanced at the main house. I scanned the second-story windows, hoping for a glimpse of her.

“She’s… nice.”

“Nice?” Another laugh. “That’s all you can give me?”

“She’s pretty,” I added. “And quiet.” I recalled all the shit the librarian had told me. That Elizabeth had had several public meltdowns since she’d been rescued. I didn’t tell Anna that part. It wasn’t my story to tell. Hell, it wasn’t the librarian’s, either.

“So,” Anna said, “anything else?”

I debated telling her my doubts about Elizabeth, that I’d caught her in a lie about the injuries she’d had the night I’d taken her to the ER, but I knew what those suspicions implied, and I wasn’t ready to put them out there yet.

“That’s all I got,” I said. “Stop pumping me for information.”

Anna laughed again. “Glad to see you’re still yourself.”

“Yeah, me, too.” I turned away from the main house and let the curtains fall back over the windows. “I need to ask you a favor and I need you to swear you won’t tell Sam yet.”

I could hear the shuffling of feet on the other end as Anna walked into another room. “I think that depends on what the favor is.”

“I need to call Trev.”

“What?” she screeched.

“Shh!” I said, knowing that the second she sounded alarmed, Sam would come running.

“Why would you”—she lowered her voice to a whisper—“call Trev? You hate him.”

“He knows things about the Branch that we don’t. And trust me, if I had another option, I’d take it, but he’s the best I’ve got. Just give me his number.”

Anna thought for a second. “Fine. But when Sam finds out about this, I’m going to be in so much trouble. You better back me up.”

I snorted. “Sam’s going to be more pissed at me than at you.
You
better back
me
up.”

She rattled off the number, and I wrote it down on a piece of scrap paper I found shoved in a kitchen drawer.

“Thanks,” I said.

“Yeah. I know. Just be careful, okay?”

“Aren’t I always?”

“No.” She sighed. “Anyway, in the meantime, I’ll keep digging through your files and let you know if I find anything useful.”

We hung up. I considered catching some sleep before going back into town, but I was still feeling restless, and being without the truck made it worse. I needed to have a quick escape, just in case.

When I left the apartment, I felt eyes on me as I walked down the driveway. I looked up at the house and saw a shadow pass across the front window. I thought about asking Elizabeth if she wanted to come with me, but decided maybe it was too soon.

I didn’t want to run into Evan again at Merv’s Bar & Grill, so I kept walking down Washington until I ran into another bar. Inside, the place was still and dark.

As much as I wanted another drink, I hadn’t eaten in a while, and I still had to drive back to Elizabeth’s. I ordered a sandwich along with a beer and picked at the food while I thought.

Anna was right. I hated Trev, but he was the only one of us who still had a line to the Branch. He’d helped us wipe them out, including leveling several of their buildings, but was he still a part of it? Whatever part remained of it, that was.

Maybe he knew about the place nearby that the Branch used to operate out of.

I bristled at the thought of calling him.

Every time I saw the guy, I wanted to punch him.

I drained my beer and ordered another. By the bottom of the second, I was feeling a lot better. And more than that, I was feeling a little looser with the forgiveness.

I pulled the cell from my pocket, punched in Trev’s number, and waited for it to ring.

“Anna?”

That was the first thing Trev said when he picked up.

“Sorry to disappoint you,” I replied.

Trev cursed. “What the hell do you want? Where’s Anna?”

“She’s home.”

“Is she okay?”

“Yes. Is there anything else you want to know about her? You want to know what she was wearing yesterday? You want to know what she had for breakfast? You want to know how often I stumble on her and Sam going at it?”

The last one was a lie, but twisting the knife always felt good. Anna would smack me for it if she ever found out. A little sliver of guilt wedged in my chest.

“I’m hanging up now.”

“Wait,” I said. “I’m sorry. Mostly for Anna’s sake. Not yours.”

“What do you want, Nick?”

“I need your help.”

“And I’m just supposed to jump?”

“There’s a girl,” I started, looking over my shoulder. It was always
good to know who was within earshot. A couple sat at a table a good ten feet away. No one on either side of me at the bar.

“‘There’s a girl,’” Trev echoed. “Oh no! Not a girl.”

“You’re such an asshole,” I said, and started again. “There’s a girl that I was sent here to…
you know
, before the farmhouse lab. And I need to know what the mission was, and why she was part of it.”

“Where’s ‘here’?”

“Trademarr, Illinois.”

Trev cursed.

“What?” I said.

“I can be there in less than an hour.”

That was close. Closer than he should have been.

“Where can I meet you?” he asked.

I told him the name of the bar and where he could find it.

“Stay there. I’ll be in town soon.”

All the warning bells in my head were going off. It was like a fucking holy hour of bells.

Something wasn’t right. Staying put was probably the last thing I should do.

’Course, if anyone was good at doing the exact opposite of what should be done, it was me.

18

ELIZABETH

I PULLED THE GABRIEL BOTTLE FROM the shelf and popped out the cork. I took in a deep breath, and that night came flooding back in disjointed images.

The woods. The moonlight. The branches snapping at my feet and snagging my hair. The log that tripped me. The dry leaves rustling as I rolled over.

And finally Gabriel.

Nick.

“Take care of it,” someone shouted.

The gun was pointed at me.

In the dark woods, the barrel was darker. Black. Empty. Bottomless. It was like staring into an abyss.

Nick whispered, “Say nothing. Do you understa—”

He cut himself off, and I whimpered at his feet. We were in the middle of nowhere. There was no one but Nick and the man in the distance. No one would hear my screams, so there was no point wasting my energy.

Nick shot. I was squeezed so tightly into a ball when the gun went off, I couldn’t breathe. A ragged, choked sound escaped me.

The bullet sailed over me. I wrapped my arms around my head. Every part of my body hurt. Fire in my veins. And fire in my lungs. My side was slick with blood. My chest, too. If Nick didn’t kill me, I’d be dead anyway. I was dead if he left me here.

“Stay here,” he whispered. “I’ll be back.”

His footfalls sounded like thunder in my head.

“Go,” he told the man. “I’ll take care of the body.”

“Decapitation, remember? Carry her back to the warehouse,” the man said. “Wrap her in this, so you don’t leave a trail of blood.”

The ground smelled like coming winter. Like the end of everything. Or maybe that was just me and my dying, bloodless body.

The word
decapitation
kept running through my head like a flashing red marquee.

The man made a call on his cell. “It’s taken care of,” he said, and left, the leaves rustling as he walked away.

Nick reappeared with a roll of plastic. “Wait until he’s farther out,” he told me. “No sound. None at all. Got it?”

I nodded.

I was shaking so bad by that point, I felt like gelatin.

Nick took his coat off and wrapped it around me. Pine and musk and cinnamon and something else woodsy and sweet. I focused on the smell of his coat, dreaming up another life, another scenario, where I wasn’t this girl slowly dying on the forest floor.

We waited so long, I swear I saw the moon tick through the sky. Until it was nothing but a speck of silver far below the tops of the trees.

Without warning, Nick scooped me up, his arm tight around my waist, the other sturdy beneath my knees. I cried out. Tears leaked from my eyes. I wanted to die in that moment.

“It’s going to be all right,” he said. “I promise. I won’t let anything happen to you.”

I capped the glass bottle, and the images flashed away. The pain was a distant memory, but the hopelessness, the need for the whole ordeal to end, was with me still to this day.

In my closet, I ducked down and pulled out an empty bottle from the box Aggie bought me the last time we’d been at the New Age store. I grabbed my treasure trove of oils. Some high-grade essential oils, some cheaper fragrance oils.

The new bottle needed a base of musk. I filled it halfway and added the rest on top of it. A third of the bottle was vanilla. Then bergamot. Pine. And finally, lavender. I stirred it with my glass stick and took in a breath.

Perfect.

Last to go on the bottle was a label. I wrote Nick’s name on it in cursive, then plugged the neck with a cork.

I set it on the shelf behind the
GABRIEL
bottle.

A knock sounded on my door. Aggie ambled in. “Brought you some cookies.” She put a plate with three cookies on my desk.

“Thanks.”

“They turned out better than the last batch. Nice and gooey in the center. Just how I like them.”