The Countdown (The Taking #3)(29)

Even though I didn’t respond, my elevated heart rate probably said it all.

I’d never see my mom or my dad again. Never get the chance to see my little brother, Logan, or Cat or Austin.

I’d never get the chance to tell Simon how grateful I was that he’d saved my life. How much I appreciated everything he’d done for me, to keep me safe, to reunite me with my dad and Tyler.

But even I knew I was a liar, because my feelings for Simon weren’t all about gratitude. If whoever they were planned to kill me, or let me die, then why shouldn’t I at least be honest with myself?

Simon mattered. More than I meant for him to.

And if I was really playing the truth game, so had that kiss . . . the one he’d given me when he’d said good-bye.

That sweet, demanding, puzzling kiss that reminded me so much . . . too much of Simon himself. Demanding and complicated. And sometimes, when he really wanted to be, sweet even.

I squeezed my eyes shut and my vision blurred. Hot streams poured down my cheeks.

Then there was Tyler. I’d never see Tyler again.

“Don’t you want to ask again? I heard you asked Natty why you. Don’t you want to know the truth?” Blondie tugged the tube that disappeared beneath the sleeve of the hospital gown I was wearing. She didn’t try to be gentle since she must know by now that my skin had definitely healed around it, locking it firmly in place.

“No.”

“Aw, c’mon. It was more fun when you were playing along,” she coaxed.

Any other time I would’ve added a little something to my inflection, but I had nothing left to give. “Screw you,” I said flatly.

She laughed, because that’s what I was, a big, fat joke.

Kneeling down so she was right in front of my face, she whispered, “But here’s the thing—I wanna tell you. No harm in it, I suppose. It’s not like you can tell anyone, right?”

She reached out, her cold, spiderlike fingers stroking my cheek, and even though I felt dead inside, I couldn’t stop from inwardly cringing. “You’re not like us,” she said, like this was some major revelation.

It didn’t matter what she said. If she was right, if they were planning to pass me off to someone else—someone who’d apparently paid a lot of money for me—then I didn’t give a crap what their reasons were. My fate had already been decided.

It didn’t stop her from pretending we were having a conversation. “What?” she chided. “You think I mean that you can do things we can’t?” She spoke quietly, a whispery sort of venom to her tone. “Did someone forget to tell you the part where those things up there might not be as peace-loving as we’ve been led to believe? And . . . whatever you are . . . whatever they made you into . . .” Her fingernails sank sharply into the flesh of my cheek. “Don’t even kid yourself we’re the same because I know what I am. I’m still part human.”

She may as well have jammed Lucy right into my heart. I could no longer ignore her, even though part of me was convinced she was insane—the way she touched and prodded me, her low, boastful voice.

What was she saying—that it really was us versus them? That I was the enemy?

“You’re wrong,” I started, and then changed my tactic. Pissing her off seemed like a seriously bad idea. “You’re confused. I want the same thing you do. We’re on the same side.”

She leaned closer, and the notion she might be crazy amplified. “This is bigger than us. Way, way bigger. You know they’re up there. I know you know it. You feel them, don’t you?” She did that thing my dad had, where she nodded skyward as if to say, Them, the aliens.

This conversation was getting weirder and weirder. “What do you mean?” I asked, wondering where she was going with this.

“I mean,” she insisted, her nostrils flaring angrily, “tell me you don’t you feel them. You don’t sense them getting closer?”

Feel them . . . ?

I blinked, not sure how I was supposed to respond to that. Not sure what she was even saying. How would I know if they were getting closer?

Then I thought about my dad saying he thought they were trying to send me a message—through those hikers.

“We’ve seen you, each time it gets close to sunrise, the way your pulse and your blood pressure skyrocket. How long has that been happening? Days? Weeks?” She grinned, standing upright. “It’s getting stronger, isn’t it? Those people who want to buy you say it’s only a matter of time now. They think it’s not much longer ’til they get here. Is that what it meant, the number I heard you saying?”

Sweat broke out on my upper lip as I thought about the knife-twist that came with each sunrise, and the way it had gotten stronger, more intense each dawn.

With each passing day.

Even for a girl who’d lost five years of her life, whose memories were now thriving inside an entirely different body—an alien body—this was almost too much. What if she was right? What if I could somehow, some way, sense their approach? “So why me? If you’re right, why do I feel them?”

She shrugged. “Because you’re one of them? Because they want something from you?”

“Want what?”

“How’m I supposed to know? My job is to make sure you’re delivered in one piece.”