Текст книги "Never Fade "

Автор книги: Alexandra Bracken

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Текущая страница: 21 (всего у книги 26 страниц)

It was almost too much for me to take. “How could you think that?”

“What else am I supposed to think?” he demanded. “I feel like I’ve been…underwater. I can’t get a thought straight, but I remember that. I remember the safe house. We were together; we were going to be okay.”

“You know we weren’t,” I told him. “It was the only thing I could do. It was the only way they’d let you go, and I couldn’t let you stay.”

From almost the beginning, Liam and I had a kind of understanding between us that lived without words, only looks and feelings. I knew, instinctively, why he made the choices he did, and he could trace my lines of thought as easily as one would follow a lit road. I’d never thought this moment would come to pass, but I also never believed he wouldn’t just know why I’d made that decision.

“You’re not even sorry,” he breathed out.

“No,” I managed to say around the stone lodged in my throat. “Because the only thing worse than being without you would have been watching them break you day after day, until you weren’t yourself anymore, until they sent you on an Op that you didn’t come back from.”

“Like they did to you?” said Liam harshly. “And now I just have to accept it? You took away my choice, Ruby—and for what? Because you thought I wasn’t strong enough to survive being with the League?”

“Because I’m not strong enough to survive seeing you with the League!” I said. “Because I wanted you, after everything you went through, to have a chance to find your parents and live your life.”

“Dammit—I wanted you!” Liam seized my arms, his fingers tightening like he could make me understand his pain that way. “More than anything! And you just…crashed through my mind and sealed everything away, like you had the right to, like I didn’t need you. What kills me is that I trusted you—I was so sure you knew that. I would have been okay, because you would have been there with me!”

How many times had I told myself a version of that? Hearing it, though—that was a knife to the throat, a razor’s edge I had no choice but to lean into.

“My head is so damn muddy, nothing is lining up.” He took a step back, letting himself drop down in a crouch. “Chubs was shot, and Zu is still out there, and East River burned, and—everything after that is like a nightmare. And you…you were with those people this whole time. Anything could have happened to you, and I would never have known. Do you know what that feels like?”

I dropped down to my knees in front of him, hitting the ground hard enough to finally jar the tears clinging to my eyelashes. I felt exhausted. Empty.

“I can’t fix this,” I said. “I know I’ve messed everything up, and there’s no way back from this, okay? I do. But your life was worth more than what I wanted, and it was the only way I could think of to make sure you didn’t get it in your head to come find me.”

“Who says I would have?” I knew he meant it cruelly, that it was a weak moment and all he wanted was for me to feel as much pain as he did, but there wasn’t enough venom in his words for them to sting. He just wasn’t capable of it.

“I would have torn this whole damn country apart looking for you,” I said softly. “Maybe you really would have left. Maybe you wouldn’t have come looking for me. Maybe I misread everything. But if you even felt a quarter of what I did…” My words wavered. “I used to wonder, you know, all the time, if it was all because you felt sorry for me. Because you pitied me or were looking for another person to protect.”

“And you could never see another reason?” he whispered in a fierce voice. “It couldn’t have been because I respected how hard you fought to survive? Because I saw how kind your heart was? Or that you were funny, and brave, and strong, and you made me feel like I was all of those things, too, even when I didn’t deserve it?”

“Liam—”

“I don’t know what to say or what to do here,” he said, shaking his head. “It feels like it never ended for me. Do you get that? I can’t forget it ever happened. I can’t hate you—I can’t, not when I want to kiss you so damn badly.” Then, so brokenly, I almost couldn’t understand him, he continued. “Why couldn’t you have taken everything? Not just the memories but the feelings, too?”

I stared at him, my mind blanking in confusion.

“It’s terrifying—terrifying—to meet a stranger and feel something for her so intense it actually stops your heart, and you don’t have any basis for it. No context. The feelings are there, and it’s like they’re clawing at your chest, needing to get out. Even now, even when I just look at you, it feels like they’re crushing me—with how much I want, and need, and love you. But you’re not even sorry; you just expect that I’ll be okay with the fact you threw your life away for mine.”

The world around us had retreated so far back from our pocket of misery, I’d forgotten it even existed. That we were out at the edge of an open highway, exposed to the freezing cold and any passing eyes. Reality came roaring back in the form of a car engine, a blaring horn, and headlights aimed directly at us.

I pulled Liam up onto his feet, reaching for the gun tucked into my coat pocket—but I saw the car now, the familiar dusty tan of Chubs’s SUV. The car skidded to a stop a few feet away, kicking up an explosion of snow.

Chubs jumped out of the driver’s seat, leaving the engine running. “Oh, thank God. I saw you both on the ground and I thought you killed each other.”

I turned my back to them both, wiping my cheeks against my coat sleeves. Behind me, I heard Chubs suck in a sharp breath, but Liam was the one to speak, his voice frighteningly calm.

“Come inside for a sec. There’s some food left we can take.”

I didn’t want to follow them, and I didn’t want to get into the car. I couldn’t move; the fight, if I could even call it that, had drained me to the point that I was seeing two of Jude as he jumped out of the car and came toward me.

“Roo?” He sounded scared.

I physically shook myself to clear my head. “It’s okay.”

“What happened?” he whispered, pressing a comforting hand to my back. “Did you guys fight?”

“No,” I said. “He remembers now.”

We turned, watching as Chubs stumbled over himself, trying to keep up as Liam dragged him over to the gas station. He looked back at me with wide eyes as Liam kicked the door open with his foot. The bang as it slammed against the opposite cinderblock wall was enough to draw Vida out of the car, too.

It took two, maybe three full seconds for the shouting to start. They’d moved far enough into the store that we couldn’t tell exactly what they were saying; particularly hot words jumped out now and again—How could you? and Why? and Her, her, her.

“Holy shit.” Vida turned back toward me, her hands planted firmly on her hips. “I told you to leave the kid alone. What did you do to him?”

My skin felt tight and hot over my face with the effort it took not to burst into tears.

“—a damn idiot!” Liam was shouting. “Because I feel like a goddamn fool!”

“He knows?” Vida asked. “You told him?”

“No…I think he remembers. I think I undid it. Or I never really did it. I don’t know. He won’t talk to me. He’s never going to talk to me ever again.”

“I don’t think that’s true,” Jude offered. “He’s probably just overwhelmed. It seems like…”

“Like what?” Vida asked.

“That some part of him remembered you. He got so upset when we found you, and he thought you were going to die, remember?”

“Why was he acting like such an ass, then?” Vida asked.

“Think about it—he knew that Roo was League, but he treated her differently than he treated us, right? Maybe being around you made him feel confused—his brain was telling him one thing, but his instincts were telling him another?”

That was the way Liam had explained it; Jude had been perceptive enough to pick up on something I never would have imagined possible. With my parents and Sam…they had been cold after I’d erased their memories—sealed their memories, or whatever it was I was actually doing. I had been so young then, I’d just assumed that some part of them recognized what I was, and they hated me for it.

Maybe I wasn’t completely wrong, then. If I had taken their memories of me but none of the feelings they had, was it the same for them as it was for Liam? They were scared and just confused by what they felt? My mom hadn’t exactly been stable then—she had panic attacks if I was even a second late coming home from school. Maybe she saw me that morning, and it was too much for her. And Dad, calm, reliable Dad—he could have been worried about what she would do, and that’s why he didn’t have me come back inside.

Maybe I could fix them, too. The voice was small, but it was there, tugging at my ear.

“It doesn’t change what Lee feels now, though,” I said. Or how my parents would feel to find out what their daughter really was.

I let the others lead me back to the car and slid into the backseat. They had packed up the tent and cleared the campsite before they’d come to get us, not only because they were worried, but because Vida had finally been able to send her message to Cate.

And she’d gotten one in reply.

Instead of taking one of the front seats, Vida slid in next to me. Jude was starting to climb in after her when she pushed him back out with her foot and said, “Will you go get Grannie and tell him to hurry his ass up?”

Jude started to protest, but Vida was already shutting the door.

“What’s wrong?” I asked, feeling much more alert seeing the Chatter in her hand. “What did she say?”

“I don’t know… Something feels off,” Vida said. “Read it yourself.”

The Chatter’s blue-white light flooded the backseat as I scrolled up through the latest conversation.

GLAD YOU ARE SAFE // WE NEED TO SET MEETING ASAP // CURRENT LOCATION?

Vida had written back:

CURRENT LOCATION OK // CAN BE IN CA TMRW

The response was instant:

WILL MEET AND ESCORT YOU // PUEBLO, CO // DITCH TARGET

I knew you lost a person’s voice through short, abrupt messages. And that was the whole point of the Chatter: to relay information or media as quickly as possible. “Ditch Target” seemed especially terse, though. Not only that, but why would Cate—or Cole—risk leaving HQ and drawing attention to their plan?

DO NOT TELL TARGET OF MEET LOCATION

Below that was a street address.

“Do you think something happened?” Vida pressed. “Why the hell would she risk leaving HQ when it could blow the whole Op?”

“Maybe she thinks we won’t be able to cross the California border without her help?” It was a weak explanation but a plausible one. “Vida, did she give the Chatter to you directly? Like, physically handed it to you?”

“Yeah,” Vida said. “Nico set up the link between them himself.” I watched her dark eyes go wide as she finally came upon the same horrible possibility I had. “You think someone took the Chatter from her? That something happened to her? Or Cole has it?”

“I think it’s possible someone broke into our link between our Chatters,” I said, my voice sounding much calmer than I felt. “And they’ve been intercepting all of our messages back and forth.”

“No way,” Vida said. “The whole point is that you can’t hack the line. Is there any way to test?”

Maybe—one. I clenched my jaw, typing out each word carefully, deliberately.

WILL CONTACT ON ARRIVAL // LATER GATOR

The seconds dragged on and the screen dimmed from inactivity, but I didn’t shut it off and Vida didn’t pull away until it flashed back to full glow. The vibration seemed to race up the length of my bone, sending a wave of goose bumps after it.

GOOD // AFTER A WHILE CROCODILE

It was another ten minutes before the boys appeared at the entrance of the convenience store, each with something different in his arms. Chubs was all but nuzzling a package of toilet paper, Jude was balancing five different jumbo bags of chips, and Liam was struggling not to drop his ten soda bottles.

“Breathe, boo,” Vida said, “play it cool. We just gotta get to Colorado.”

And lie the whole way there, I thought, leaning my forehead against the door. It hadn’t been much of a decision at all. If it wasn’t Cate or Cole waiting for us, it meant something had happened to them—either their plan with the flash drive had been discovered, or someone found out they knew exactly where we were, and they were doing nothing to bring us back in. So many possible suspects flashed through my mind: Alban, his advisers, Jarvin, all of his friends. I couldn’t shake the feeling that it all came down to the flash drive, couldn’t shake the thoughts of how someone like Jarvin would use the intel for his own agenda, rather than to help us. And the worst of it was, we wouldn’t know if it was safe to bring ourselves and the flash drive back to HQ unless we confirmed it first with whoever was waiting in Colorado.

And if it was really Cate, then fine. Pueblo, Colorado, was as good a place as any to go our separate ways from the boys. It was like Vida had said—no use clinging to them when I’d have to snip the cord eventually.

A blast of cold air hit us as they opened the trunk and dumped the supplies there. Jude crawled in beside Vida, trying to rub some feeling back into his hands. Cold air escaped from the folds of his jacket as he leaned toward the vents and pointed them all in his direction.

Chubs reclaimed the driver’s seat, glancing back like he was surprised to find it still vacant. I met Liam’s eyes just before he opened the passenger door and hauled himself in.

I had no idea what Chubs was waiting for, but we must have sat in silence for a good five minutes before Liam finally said, “Can we pretend for a few minutes that this isn’t soul-crushingly awkward, and can someone please explain to me what’s really going on?”

Chubs finally released the parking brake. “Later. I can’t safely and successfully navigate the roads if I don’t have quiet.”

“Grannie,” Vida said, “that’s pathetic, even for you. You want one of the big kids to drive?”

“I’ll do it!” Jude offered, snapping the cover of his compass shut and sitting straight up. “I had a few lessons at HQ.”

“You had one lesson,” I said, “and it ended when you side-swiped three other cars while trying to park.”

“You killed that beautiful Mercedes,” Vida said. “That beautiful, beautiful car.”

“That wasn’t my fault!”

Chubs ignored us, and we made our way back onto the highway as he proceeded at his usual careful speed. I settled in to tell the story again, the best I could, about what Cole had planned to do with the flash drive once he had it. Everything came tumbling out, from the moment they had brought Blake’s body in, the escape in Boston, meeting with Chubs, and finding him in Nashville. Liam had questions—good ones—about how Cole and Cate were going to try to use the research as leverage for turning the League onto the right course.

“Okay,” Liam muttered when I was finished, more to himself than me. “Okay… It’s just, I have one more question. If you were going to risk your neck escaping that Op and trying to find me, what was in it for you?”

Wasn’t it obvious?

“I told you. Cole said if I brought back the flash drive, Alban would give him anything he wanted. Including working on freeing the camps,” I said. “And, in the meantime, I’d be able to make sure you were safe and that Alban would have no reason to come after you and bring you back into the fold.”

When Liam finally did speak again, his voice was almost hoarse. “Not…that they would let you out of your deal? Let you go?”

He took my silence as the no it was.

“Did you even think to ask?” he whispered, the first traces of anger slipping back in. “You’re going back, just like that—like those agents aren’t dead set on killing other kids?”

“I have to finish this,” I said.

“Yeah, and who’s going to protect you?” he shot back. “You’re just going to give them the intel and hope for the best, hope that they won’t go back on their promises or kill you because they feel like it? I just want to know why. Why give it to them when there’s a chance we can use the intel to help ourselves? If what Cole says is true and they did find a cause, then don’t we deserve to have it? Make decisions about what to do with it?”

Liam was so earnest, so passionate when he said that, it was like he was blooming back into his old self. Even the color was returning to his face.

“It’s not up for discussion,” I said. “I’m sorry, but we have to be realistic. Before…before we thought we could make it on our own, that we didn’t need any help—and look how that turned out. We need help. We can still get our way, but we can’t do it by ourselves.”

“And the help you pick is the League?” he demanded.

I pressed on, ignoring that and the indignant noise Vida made. “All the tribes are scattered, and we have no way to bring them together in any kind of force that would matter—and even if we did, it’d just be bait for the PSFs to come round us up. I know, I know that you hate this, that this isn’t what you would choose, but what do you honestly expect we’d be able to do with the research? Broadcast it out all over the world? Do you have the tech for that? The resources? I’m trying to think about what’s best for the kids in those camps—”

“No,” he said coldly, “no, you’re not thinking at all.”

“It’s done, Liam,” I said. “Maybe they’ll go back on their word, but I’m not willing to go back on mine. Not when the stakes are so high. If…I won’t like it, but I’ll understand if you want to split now, instead of in Colorado. This shouldn’t be your problem at all.”

“Colorado?” Chubs and Liam said together.

“We finally got a message from Cate,” I said, holding up the Chatter. “She wants to meet in Pueblo, Colorado.”

“She does?” Jude started. “But why—”

“When were you going to tell the rest of us?” Chubs cut in.

And as angry as he might have been at his friend, Liam was all too happy to back him on this. “You just expect us to dump you off there? What happened to us staying together until we get to California?”

“If she’s coming to get us, it’s probably because she thinks there isn’t a way for us to safely cross the border into California,” I lied, and hated myself for it. “She probably wants to fly in. I’m sure she’ll let you hitch a ride—”

“Don’t even bother finishing that sentence,” Liam said.

“Okay, okay, okay!” Chubs shouted over us, making a hard turn to the right. “Please, for the love of God, can we just be quiet and okay for five freaking minutes and remember that we are actually friends who care about one another and don’t want to wrap our hands around one another’s necks? Because that sounds really nice right about now!”

“Somehow,” Vida said after a long, uncomfortable, silent five minutes had passed, “this is worse.”

Liam must have agreed, because he reached over and knuckled the radio on, humming something under his breath as he scanned through the static, the Spanish chatter, the commercials, until he finally landed on a woman’s deep, even voice.

“—Children’s League issued this statement about the Christmas Summit—”

“Oh no you don’t,” Chubs said, reaching over to turn it off. “We’re not getting into this again.”

“No!” all three of us protested from the backseat. Jude practically mashed his face against the metal grate between him and the radio dial, and the instant Alban’s voice came pouring out of the speakers, Vida was right there with him.

“That’s—” Jude began in an excited voice.

“We do not believe that the peace Gray is trying to prescribe is in anyone’s interest but his own. If this false meeting of the minds is to take place, it will ruin the good work that common American citizens have done to rebuild the lives he shattered. We will not sit idly by while the truth is buried under heaps of his lies. The time to act is now, and we will.”

That was a nice little speech. Courtesy, I’m sure, of Frog Lips. The man wrote almost every single word that Alban forced out between his smiling teeth. I didn’t even need to close my eyes to see the old man’s bald head bent over his handwritten cue cards, the lights from the cameras giving his tissue-thin skin a blue glow.

“—when asked for a comment, the press secretary replied, ‘Every word out of a terrorist’s mouth is designed to sharpen the fear and uncertainty that still exists today. John Alban is speaking out now because he’s afraid Americans will no longer tolerate his violent acts and unpatriotic behavior when peace and order are restored.’”

“He’s not scared,” Vida hissed. “They’re the ones who should be terrified.”

Jude shushed her, waving his hands. “Can you turn it up?”

“I have Bob Newport, senior political adviser to Senator Joanne Freedmont of Oregon, on the line to discuss how the Federal Coalition will be approaching the Unity Summit—Bob, are you there?”

The line crackled with static, and for several seconds, only the low hum of the SUV’s wheels against the highway filled my ears.

“Hi, yes—Mary? Sorry about that. Our signal strength in California hasn’t—” His voice cut off, only to switch back in, sounding louder than before. “For the last few months.”

“The cell towers and satellites in California haven’t been all that reliable lately,” I explained to the boys in the front seat. “Alban thinks Gray is tampering with them.”

“Bob, before we lose you, can you tell us about the FC’s plans to approach this meeting? Can you give us a preview of the talking points Senator Freedmont and the others are hoping to bring to the table?”

“Sure. I can’t go into great detail”—the line wavered again but then bounced back—“definitely will be discussing the recognition of the Federal Coalition as a national party, and of course, we’ll be pushing for a series of elections next spring.”

Mary the newscaster let out a light laugh. “And how do you think the president will respond to your requests he cut his third term short?”

Bob had a fake laugh of his own. “We’ll have to see. The draft, of course, will also be a major discussion. We’d like to hear if the president has any plans in place to phase it out, specifically the Psi Special Forces program, which, I know, has been a major point of contention across the country—”

At that, all five of us shifted toward the glowing green radio display. Jude clutched at my arm. “Do you think…?” he whispered.

“Will you also be discussing the rehabilitation programs?” Mary smelled the slightest hint of blood, and now she had her nose to the ground, looking to follow the trail. “Recently there’s been a lack of information released about the status of the programs and the children who were entered into them. For instance, the government is no longer issuing letters updating registered parents on their child’s progress. Do you think this is a sign the program is about to undergo some kind of transformation?”

“They actually sent letters?” I asked. This was the first I’d heard of it.

“At the very beginning—just a short, your kid is making good progress, not causing problems printout,” Liam said. “Everyone got the same one.”

“Right now our focus is on discussing what plans we’d like to see President Gray enact to stimulate the economy and reopen talks with our former international partners.”

“But back to the issue of the Psi—” Mary’s voice was starting to waver now, crackling with an unnatural metallic whine.

“Pull over,” Vida said, “otherwise we’ll lose the signal!”

“—will you ask him to come clean about what research programs are in place and whether or not they’ve made any progress analyzing the source of IAAN? I know, as a mother of an infant, I’m particularly interested in finding out whether or not my son, who already goes in for weekly tests and monitoring sessions, will have to be taken in to a specialized program per the IAAN Registry’s instructions. Surely enough politicians on both sides are in a similar enough position to sympathize with the thousands of parents who have been left without answers—sometimes for years. I think I speak for everyone when I say that this is unacceptable.”

“That’s right,” Jude said, “you get him, Mary. Don’t let him change the subject!”

“I believe the FC would like to modify…the program—” Static again. It couldn’t begin to disguise how uncomfortable Bob sounded on this subject. “We would like to continue to have five-year-olds monitored for a year’s time in one of the facilities, but if they show no…dangerous side effects of IAAN, we would like to see them sent home, rather than automatically graduated to one of these rehabilitation camps—”

The line went silent with a harsh click. The newscaster was repeating his name, “Bob? Bob? Bob?” over and over again, like she could somehow draw his voice back through the dead air.

TWENTY-SIX

THE SIGNS HAD BEEN PAINFULLY HONEST in calling that part of the country NO MAN’S LAND. It would have felt like a bigger relief when we finally passed out of Oklahoma’s panhandle and into Kansas if we could actually tell the two apart. For hours, it was nothing but once-green tall grass beaten down by ice and snow. Small towns that had had the life and people slowly strangled from them. Rusting cars and bikes left along the highway. Open, empty sky.

I had seen desert in Southern California, but this…this stretch seemed endless and achingly open; even the sky seemed to bow lower to meet the highway. We stopped only twice, both times to search the abandoned cars lining the road for gas. There were functioning stations along the way, but at nearly twenty dollars for a gallon, it somehow didn’t seem all that pressing for us to fill our tank the legal way.

For the most part, traffic came in slow drizzles. The lone highway patrol car blew past us, in an awful hurry to get wherever it was going. Still, Chubs drove the entire first five hours with his hands clenched on the wheel. The next time we stopped for a bathroom break, Vida stole the driver’s seat and locked the door, forcing him into the front passenger seat and Liam into the back, next to me.

We left the flat plains, heading toward mountains blanketed by darkness. That was the only warning we had that we were coming up on Colorado. It would be hours more before we actually hit Pueblo, but the knots in my stomach didn’t seem to care. Ahead, lines of lights gave shape to distant cities that only grew larger and brighter as we descended into the valley. I was too anxious to sleep like Jude and Vida. I kept one hand clenched around the Chatter and flash drive in my coat pocket, trying to keep my thoughts focused on what was ahead, visualizing all of the different scenarios and how we would play them through.

Vida and I would scope out the location; if it was one person, Jarvin or one of the other agents, we could take him easily. She would attack him in her way, and I would overwhelm him in mine. If a group of armed agents was there waiting for us, we’d make a clean getaway without being detected. This would work. This will work, I told myself. The only real question was, what would we do if it were no longer safe to bring the flash drive back to HQ? If Cole or Cate were gone. Dead.

Liam’s eyes were closed, and his breathing was easier than it had been in days. Now and then, a lone passing truck’s headlights would fill the window he leaned against, lighting his golden blond hair. And in those few precious seconds, I couldn’t see the cuts or bruises on his face. Not even the dark circles under his eyes.

The Beatles song drifting from the radio gave way to a softly strumming Fleetwood Mac, which faded, finally, into the cheerful opening riffs of the Beach Boys’s “Wouldn’t It Be Nice.”

I don’t know that, until that moment, I really understood that this was the end. That in a matter of miles, hours, I would leave that car and shut the door behind me one last time. It had been hard enough to let go before, and now…this. Maybe that was my real punishment for the things I’d done—being trapped in a world where I had to leave them again and again and again until there wasn’t enough left of my heart for it to break.

I wasn’t embarrassed or ashamed to cry then. Better to get it out while the others were asleep and Vida was concentrating on the dark road. I let myself, just this once, sink deeper into the pain. I let myself wonder why this had happened to me—to all of us—until I was sure the shape of the flash drive would be cut into my palm.

At least now, hopefully, we’d know who…what…was responsible. I’d have something to blame for the mess that was my life, other than myself.

And that song, it wasn’t ending. It kept on playing, that stupid, upbeat swing of voices and plucked strings, the promise of a future that would never be mine.

The touch was so hesitant at first, I thought for sure that he was still asleep, shifting in dreams. Liam’s hand came down next to mine on the seat, his fingers inching over one at a time, hooking over mine in a way that was as tender as it was shy. I bit my lip, letting his warm, rough skin engulf mine.

His eyes were still shut and stayed that way, even as I saw him struggle to swallow. There was nothing to say now. Our linked hands rose as he guided them to rest against his chest, and they stayed there, through the song, the mountains, the cities. Until the end.

Pueblo—HOME OF HEROES! or STEEL CITY OF THE WEST, depending on which sign you believed—was close to abandoned, but not quite empty enough to ease my mind as we drove past a line of flickering streetlights and empty car dealerships. It looked like much of what we’d seen so far, with mountains circling from all sides, rising up from otherwise flat, dry landscape. I had always pictured the state to be one giant mountain, I guess, covered in a thick skin of snow-dusted evergreens and ski slopes. There was snow, all right, capping the distant Rockies, but here in the daylight, there were no trees to provide cover, no blooming flowers to lend some beauty. Life in a place like this felt unnatural.

Vida parked the SUV across the street from the address “Cate” had sent us, letting the car roll to an anticlimactic stop.

“Are you sure this is right?” Chubs asked, glancing down at the tablet again. He had a point. Meeting at a deserted Dairy Queen did seem strange—it seemed in line with what I had seen of Cole’s sense of humor, I guess, but the randomness of it all made me doubt myself.