Breaking Point (Article 5 #2)(91)

His smile was so unguarded, so true. The tears clouded my vision, and my chest hurt, and I didn’t know how it was possible to feel so happy and so terrified at the same time.

“What happens now?” My hands flattened over his chest.

“Now I go find Tucker,” he said reluctantly.

Of all the things I’d hoped he’d say, this was not one of them.

“Why?”

He kissed my temple, letting his lips linger there while he continued. “Because tomorrow, I need him to do what I can’t.”

*

CHASE came back an hour later looking edgy. I didn’t know what he’d said to Tucker, and he didn’t offer it. Instead we sat beside each other, watching the rehab center, and talked, really talked. About everything else.

We talked about Cara, about Wallace and Billy, about Sean and Tucker and Rebecca. About the guys from Chicago, and how I’d found Jack, in shock, on the tunnel floor, and seen my mother in some concussion-induced vision. We talked about Beth and the place we’d once called home, knowing that history carried itself in the body and soul, not a physical location, not in letters burned in a fire or a magazine trapped beneath the rubble, and that now we had each other when we needed to remember. And we kissed. Sometimes gently, sometimes with the same frenzied passion as before. Sometimes in the middle of our sentences, when we’d simply forget what we were talking about. In those short hours we purged our secrets and held each other and prayed that time would both slow and hasten because just like the night before he was drafted, we knew tomorrow would leave us forever changed.

Eventually, I fell asleep on the floor with my head on his thigh. The last thing I remembered was the feel of his fingers combing through my hair.

*

BEFORE dawn he snuck across the street to the hospital parking garage with the spare key given to us by Chicago. I bit my nails to nubs until light, when he pulled out onto the street like any other driver, and appeared around the backside of the abandoned building in an FBR van. Tucker sat in the front, and Sean and I slipped silently into the middle row of seats, where I rubbed the St. Michael pendant around my neck and hoped that I hadn’t used up all its luck.

“I wouldn’t blame you if you backed out.” It took me a moment to realize Sean was talking to me, not Tucker.

Was he crazy? Our plan was contingent on my presence. “I’m not going to back out.”

He nodded out the window, as if expecting this answer.

“What if I said I didn’t want you to come?”

“I’d say good luck getting Rebecca without me.”

He shrugged. “I’d figure something out.”

“Well you don’t have to,” I said. “I’m coming.”

He was quiet for a several seconds. “Don’t do anything stupid, okay? I’m not losing you, too.”

“Sean.” I forced a smile, but it might have looked a little scary. “When have I ever done anything stupid?”

“Perfect,” he muttered.

It took less than five minutes to reach an intersection with Reformation Parkway. My pulse thrummed with the engine motor as we weaved through other FBR vehicles onto the main street. Chase slowly veered across the lane to park in front of Horizons Physical Rehabilitation.

The sidewalk was crowded with people. Most of them wore navy FBR uniforms. I spotted a couple other Sisters, hustling to their destinations with their heads down. They didn’t exude the same confidence in this setting that the men did.

The sideling patches of grass were all manicured. There were trees planted, too, surrounded by little wrought-iron fences and landscaped flowers. The stone face of the building was graffiti-free, with high glass windows and a trash can to the right that wasn’t overflowing with garbage. I felt like we’d driven into the past. It looked like someplace from before the War.

We’re coming, Rebecca.

Anticipation dripped through me. Here, at last, was my chance to make things right. To fix what I’d broken when I’d blackmailed her and Sean into helping me escape. Here was my chance for redemption.

“Hopefully this won’t take long,” said Tucker.

Sean was out of the car first. Tucker followed, and then Chase and I were alone. He stayed in the front seat and kept his head down, so as not to attract the attention of the passersby. We hadn’t said good-bye and we wouldn’t now.

I pulled off the gold band he’d stolen from the Loftons’ and reached for his hand, pushing it onto his pinky finger. His fist began to shake as soon as I let it go.

“Thirty minutes,” he said. “And then I’m coming in.”

I nodded and stepped outside, knowing I would rather die than have Chase follow me into that building.





CHAPTER


19





I WENT over the plan in my head as we walked up to the entrance. Most of it relied on Tucker. It still seemed beyond surreal that I was putting my life in the hands of my mother’s murderer. I reminded myself that he’d helped us out of the fire at the Wayland Inn. That he’d stayed to evacuate the tunnels, and seemed almost human when he’d told me about his family.

He hasn’t killed me so far, I told myself. But it was small consolation.

There was a glass-covered posting of the Statutes near the entrance, but I couldn’t see the five most wanted in conjunction with the sniper shootings. Maybe the FBR still thought that Ember Miller had died two days ago in Greeneville. Still, I kept my head bowed, just in case.