The Countdown (The Taking #3)(23)

And I was never wrong. That last campsite, where I’d overheard those creepy hikers by the hot spring, was somewhere in northern Colorado.

Now though . . . now I dreamed of Kyra.

Even with the fog lifting, I was left with an overwhelming awareness of her. Of the drive to find her, and the coordinates that were now ringing . . . echoing inside my head.

As much of a dick as Simon was, he was right about one thing: I should never have left Kyra alone. I should’ve acted like a man and stayed to face what she’d told me, even though it felt like she’d caught me unaware with her admissions about our history. If I had, Kyra might be here right now.

It was my fault she’d been kidnapped.

But it was her fault I was a Replaced. She’d told me as much. It was her fault I’d lost everything—my friends, my family, and not just my parents but my brother too. My entire life, all of it, gone.

So what that she’d done it by accident. So what if she hadn’t realized her blood was poisonous, like she said. Did that really make everything okay? Make it all right that she offered me up to aliens to mess with my DNA and snatch away my humanness?

And what about that other part, where we . . . she and I . . . had been . . . what? A couple? What did that even mean?

She loved me, she’d said. She’d actually said that.

Was that supposed to fix things between us? How could it?

But her getting kidnapped didn’t make us even either, it just made me feel shittier about this whole effed-up situation. And now I was here, with Griffin and the others, and I had to face the fact that so many from my former camp were gone. Unaccounted for. Dead.

Being here among the survivors made me even more restless. Or maybe that was about Kyra again.

Even though I was mad at her, I needed to find her, and until I did, I doubted I’d be able to breathe.

All I could think about was her . . . somewhere out there . . .

And instead I was stuck here with Simon, who didn’t even bother to hide his feelings for Kyra or his suspicions toward me.

If we hadn’t wanted the same thing, I would’ve told him what an * he was. But this wasn’t the time or place. He made it more than clear he was willing to risk his life to save her, so I kept my mouth shut.

Griffin, on the other hand, had her own reasons for helping me. Not so much for Kyra’s sake, but because of the message—the Returned must die.

What if there was something to it? What if the aliens really were trying to communicate with Kyra, and we needed her to figure it all out?

Otherwise, Griffin might never help Kyra at all. Sure she put on a good face, but I got the feeling if Griffin had her way things would go back to how they were before, to a time when she was the only girl in my life. Like we’d been a couple or something.

I always knew that was what she wanted. But even before Kyra had shown up there’d been . . . something stopping me. Something unfinished I couldn’t quite put my finger on.

I guess I knew what that was now—Kyra. Maybe a part of me had known all along, about Kyra and me. Maybe that’s why Griffin had never quite managed to wear me down.

Almost, though.

Griffin had almost gotten through to me, and I’d almost made a move on her. It sounded bad, like I was some prisoner she’d been subjecting to torture—withholding food, waterboarding, putting on the rack, that sort of thing. It wasn’t like that. I liked Griffin well enough. She was tough and practical and loyal.

Like I said, I liked her. Just not the way she wanted me to.

Then Kyra had arrived and everything had changed. That thing, whatever it had been, had clicked into place. It was like Kyra’s presence—just Kyra being Kyra—had been enough, even without knowing our history. Not in the whole “you complete me” way . . . except, yeah, kinda like that.

Being near Kyra had made me feel . . . like me again.

God, I sounded like a Hallmark card. Even now. Even while I was pissed at her.

It hadn’t made sense at the time; as far as I’d known she’d never been mine in the first place.

So, why then, when I’d seen her there, standing in camp, couldn’t I remember a life where I hadn’t wanted her? Where she hadn’t occupied my every thought, even after she’d vanished? Even once Austin and Cat had grown up and moved away? I couldn’t recall a time I didn’t wonder: What happened to Kyra? Where did she go? Will I ever see her again?

So getting a second chance with her the way I had . . . there was no way I could . . . I wouldn’t let it slip through my fingers. Besides, it’s not like I hadn’t felt guilty for pushing Griffin away, because didn’t I owe Griffin?

But that wasn’t how feelings worked. I couldn’t be Griffin’s just because she wanted me, or out of some misplaced sense of loyalty. I decided I needed to find out if Kyra could ever . . . if there might somehow be something between us.

And I guess I got my answer. We could and there had been.

Yet here I was again, with Griffin and without Kyra. How had that happened? How could Kyra be gone all over again?

I closed my eyes against the dull pulse ticking away inside my skull. This guilt was different from the one over cutting Griffin loose. This was a punishing, unbending, grotesque sort of thing that lashed at me. Burning me, scoring me, using me up.

Like Simon, who said it over and over and over again, I wouldn’t rest until we found her. I just didn’t have to say it out loud, to everyone within earshot every freaking five seconds.