Breaking Point (Article 5 #2)(81)

“Stealing.”

I twitched.

“Relax,” he said. “My arm hurts.”

He rolled up his sleeve and revealed the pink, swollen forearm that until yesterday had been hidden within a cast.

“Looks traumatic,” I said. “Why don’t you go see the medic?”

“I don’t need to see the medic.” He regarded me with too much familiarity, the way a big brother shuns his annoying little sister. He began to sort through a box atop one of the tables. “I get the feeling there’s something you want to say.” He didn’t sound particularly pleased to hear whatever it was.

I gripped the flashlight harder.

“Apparently there’s a little problem with your rehab facility,” I said. “You neglected to mention that it was a physical rehab, not a girls’ reformatory.”

His golden brows arched. “I didn’t know a distinction was needed.”

He was incapable of honesty. Slippery as an eel.

“Is she even there?”

“Yes. Unless she ran away. Which I doubt. Where does one run in a town full of soldiers?” he mused when I narrowed my eyes.

“What really happened with Cara?”

The lines of his mouth drew tight. “I told you what happened.”

“Sorry if I don’t exactly trust you.”

He shook his head and glanced up at the exit sign. I had the fleeting fear that he was planning on bolting. He was going to escape and we would take the heat when he didn’t show up to report to Mags. She’d probably ground us so we couldn’t break Rebecca free.

“Believe it or not, I thought Cara was all right,” he said. That look of regret was back, and it made my spine tingle. I believed Chase could change, I could change, everyone could change, but not Tucker. “She had it bad,” he continued. “She told me she used to host at FBR socials. They didn’t always treat those girls so well.”

Cara? She may have been flirty, but not desperate.

I thought of how harsh she’d been to Sarah when we’d found her in Tent City, and then later, when she’d called her nothing more than a party favor. Then, strangely, I found myself picturing Cara in the pretty dress. Cara chatting with soldiers. Cara doing what she had to in order to stay alive.

“You mean you didn’t treat those girls well,” I countered.

A dark speculation filled me as the pieces slid into place—Chicago was quick to believe that the cartridge came from a sniper’s rifle, and Cara had been a part of the team that had hijacked the Horizons truck, the very place I’d found it to begin with. The other guys at the Wayland Inn had said she’d disappeared more than once; she’d even been in the Square during the last two shootings.

It seemed so clear now, I didn’t know how I’d missed it before.

Unless I hadn’t wanted to believe it.

Wallace had to have known what Cara had been doing. He’d sent me out into the streets knowing I’d been accused of a crime she committed. They’d used me as her cover, so that she could keep killing soldiers.

Thank you for what you’ve done, she’d told me. Thank you for taking the fall is what she should have said.

I felt ill.

I lifted my eyes to Tucker, doubting his story more than ever, suspecting that he knew, as I so certainly did now, that Cara was the sniper. But gone was his arrogance from the base, stripped away like his blue uniform.

“Hey, Sniper!” someone shouted from outside the room. “Come on, the meeting’s getting ready to start!”

“You should go,” he said.

“I’ll be right behind you.”

He moved toward the door, hesitating near the entrance, as though he expected me to join him. When I didn’t, he walked away.

Every muscle within me was shaking. Wallace had lied. Cara had lied. Tucker was lying. Everyone was hiding some truth my life relied upon.

I hated secrets.

I removed the St. Michael medallion from my neck. It couldn’t touch my skin anymore. It was for the sniper. It had been given to me right in front of the sniper. I’d been her cover all this time. Even in death.

It slid from my trembling hand and bounced on the floor with a fragile metal click.

I don’t know why, but amid the pounding revelations my mind found Chase. Clearly I saw him, sitting beside me on the tailgate of Tubman’s truck, telling me about St. Michael, and the spirit world, and his hope that my mother had found peace.

Before another thought entered my head I was on my hands and knees, retrieving the coin from where it had fallen, beneath one of the long tables covered with hodgepodge supplies. I needed it. It had kept me alive. I couldn’t let it go.

That’s when it happened: a deafening, thundering crash. The walls shook. Dust spilled down from the ceiling. It was a short burst of an earthquake, over in seconds that felt like a lifetime.

I was still on the floor, halfway beneath the table with the necklace locked in my fist. Terror had seized my muscles. I couldn’t move. I couldn’t even breathe.

A high screech of twisting, tearing metal filled my ears. The flashlight’s beam vibrated against the wall. The sounds were coming from deeper in the tunnels. Somewhere closer to the remains of downtown. Somewhere near the Loop, where the meeting was to be held.

Where Chase and Sean and Tucker were all headed.