The Outliers (The Outliers, #1)(77)

My head is still ringing as Doug walks me across the grass toward the cabin we started out in. They moved me when I stopped responding. Before the others could come out from the back and see that something was so totally wrong. Before somebody in The Collective could intervene. As if I ever could have staged a coup now. Not when in my brain there is only one thing: Outlier, Outlier, Outlier.

But somehow I do walk through the gray morning, across the damp grass. Because they are taking me to Cassie. Or so they say. And I keep trying to focus on that. Getting to her. Getting away. We’re not far from the cabin we started out in, and Doug still hasn’t said anything about me stabbing him. But with his hand clamped so hard on my arm, he doesn’t need to.

“Hey!” someone calls to us in a loud whisper when we’re halfway across the open lawn.

Doug squeezes my arm harder, hard enough that I wince. But when we turn, it’s just Lexi, making her way across the grass toward us.

“Damn it, Lexi,” Doug snaps at her, looking around. We are exposed there, out in the wide open in broad daylight. “Quentin doesn’t want the rest of them to know we’re moving her.”

“Oh, sorry,” she says to Doug, then notices his hand on me.

She seems uncomfortable. Actually, more than uncomfortable. Do I “feel” that because I have some special extra sense? I don’t think so. I have only ever felt one thing more than other people: anxious.

“I’m so glad you’re okay, Wylie,” Lexi says.

“She stabbed me, remember?” Doug hisses. “You should be worried about me, not her.”

“She only stabbed you because she panicked. Because she probably knew something wasn’t right.” Lexi glances at me for confirmation. She thinks that it was just me being an Outlier that made me plunge that knife into Doug’s hand. He didn’t tell her about his arm on Jasper’s throat.

“You sound just like one of them, Lexi,” Doug says. “Pull it together.”

“They are nice people.” Lexi sounds offended on their behalf. “Besides, Quentin’s not one of them, and he believes in Wylie.”

“Please, he’s even worse than the rest of them,” Doug huffs. “We came here to do a job, Lexi, remember? To cash a check. Don’t get confused by this garbage.”

“They were going to take the house when Doug met Quentin at a bar.” Lexi glances over at me, embarrassed. “Took our life savings for us to realize that people don’t actually want energy bars for their dogs. So stupid. We don’t even have a dog.”

“Do you even have a baby?” I ask.

Lexi wraps her arms around herself and nods. “Delilah. She’s eight months.” She even smiles a little, relieved maybe not to be proven a liar about everything. But she’s scared, too. Afraid she won’t make it back to her baby. Scared of something else, too. That I can feel. It’s coming off her in waves.

“She’s with my parents this weekend. She shouldn’t have to deal with our— This isn’t a place for a baby.”

“She doesn’t actually need to know our life story,” Doug snaps. “Let’s just get this done so we can get out of here with what we’re owed.”

“We knew that you knew about the baby when Jasper called Cassie by another name—Victoria, that was it.” No matter what Doug says, Lexi can’t keep herself from talking to me. From trying to get me to forgive her. She knows that this isn’t right. Wishes that she wasn’t involved. “But we were afraid you’d take off into the woods and get hurt. That was why Doug went to check on you in the bathroom. And then things got so out of hand.”

“Out of hand?” Maybe if I push open the gap between Lexi and Doug, Cassie and I can slip out in between them. “Doug was choking Jasper. That’s why I stabbed him.”

Lexi turns, wide-eyed, to Doug. Almost stops walking. “You told me he attacked you.”

Doug clamps his fingers tighter around my elbow. But there’s only so much manhandling he can do. It will only prove my point.

“Lexi, they were trying to run,” Doug says, annoyed. “We needed to make sure that Wylie got here, right? By the way, you said you could convince Wylie to get into the car without Jasper, remember? That was your job.” Doug’s voice is raised, and Lexi won’t look at him. “Then, guess what? There he was in our car. And one of us had to do something. I was just trying to get Wylie to leave with us alone, taking care of things the way I always do.”

“Right,” Lexi says quietly, staring down at the ground.

They are not a united front. Do I know that because I’m an Outlier? Is it really possible that’s the explanation for my overactive dread machine of a mind? That it’s the roar of other people’s feelings in my head, and not my own monsters?

No.

Yes.

I don’t know.

“Welcome back,” Stuart says when we finally reach the cabin. He makes a big show of taking his rifle in one hand and unlocking the door with the other to wave me inside. “They’ll be glad for the company. Been kind of awkward in there, just the two of them.”

The two of who? And the only person I see is Cassie, leaning up against the wall opposite the door, managing somehow to look pretty in the pale glow from the windows. But her arms are wrapped tight around her frail body like she’s bracing for a blow. I rush at her.