Three (Article 5 #3)(31)

“You asked how I knew your name,” said DeWitt. “Chase Jennings and Ember Miller, sighted in Chicago, at the Rehabilitation Center right there on Reformation Parkway. Bold, I think, to go back to the place where it all began for you, Jennings.”

In a sudden burst of fury, Chase ripped the picture from the wall, balled it in his fist, and chucked it against the door. His shoulders were heaving, his face red. He strode out of the room into the hall, leaving me alone to face Three’s leader.

DeWitt crossed his arms over his chest. After a moment he exhaled through his nostrils.

“It comes as a surprise the Bureau is looking for you?”

I shook my head, breathless. Tucker could have given me the head’s up on one of his calls, but even if he knew what was he going to say? Hey Ember, I saw your picture up on the side of a building again! It was better he hadn’t mentioned it.

A chair was nearby, and I gripped the back, watching my knuckles turn white. Believing that Harper would remain our secret had been wishful thinking. Of course the MM knew. Apparently everyone knew.

“It isn’t what it looks like,” I whispered, nodding to the picture slowly uncurling on the floor.

He placed a cautious hand on my shoulder.

“Believe me,” he said. “That is something you do not have to explain here.”

I nodded, thinking of the soldiers he’d killed in Virginia. Wondering what had actually transpired that day.

“I was surprised to see you with those from the safe house,” he continued. “Last I heard you’d been captured in Greeneville.”

“No,” I said. “I was only captured once. Knoxville.”

A muscle in DeWitt’s neck jumped. “Interesting.”

“There was another girl,” I said, closing my eyes tightly. “She was with us. The MM shot her when we were in Greeneville. I heard they thought it was me.”

I burned, hot and bright, just at the thought of the girl I’d met in Knoxville—the person I was sure was the sniper—and how the MM had framed me for her crimes, but the fire was extinguished as quickly as it had come. Cara had paid for her actions. She’d been killed by soldiers while out with Tucker. At least, that’s what Tucker had said. It would never be easy taking his word for anything.

“What do you want from us?” I asked, looking around the roomful of equipment.

DeWitt turned to the pins pressed into the map.

“I want you to help me figure out who is giving away our locations to the FBR.”

I unfolded my fingers slowly, forcing my damp palms to lay flat at my sides. “What makes you think we know anything about that?”

I followed DeWitt’s gaze as it wandered across the wall. Runaways, mug shots, and even sketches were pinned up, a mosaic of faces, stats, and handwritten notes. It occurred to me that DeWitt suspected these people of ratting out the resistance.

That he suspected us of ratting out the resistance.

The room seemed to grow smaller.

“I’d like to trust you, Ember,” he said.

I wasn’t sure what to say; it wasn’t like I trusted him. We’d only just met, and so far he seemed to know a lot more about me than I knew about him.

“Endurance is deep in the Red Zone. We don’t have access to the mainframe here, so you’ll have to forgive me if some of my information is outdated. We rely on the intelligence delivered from our informants in the interior, not all of which is delivered in a timely manner.”

The carriers, I realized, who brought their messages to the safe house for Three.

“You escaped reform school and a base,” DeWitt said. It may have been a simple statement of fact, but it felt like an accusation.

There was a photo high above the rest, a girl with dirty blond hair who couldn’t have been more than twelve. It was only her profile, but you could tell she was laughing. He removed the picture and folded it carefully into his hip pocket before I could get a closer look.

“I had help,” I said.

“You know what they say, good help is hard to find.”

I checked the exit; Endurance didn’t feel so safe anymore. The urge to run was rearing up inside of me.

“You were in Chicago and Knoxville. Both of those places were destroyed by the Bureau.”

“They were,” I said.

“Destroyed,” he repeated. “Like another of our long-standing resistance posts, as your friend just reported.”

I jerked at the word friend. Tucker wasn’t a friend. “I guess. That was the first I’d heard of Virginia.”

Coming here had been stupid. I didn’t know these people, and they didn’t seem in any hurry to help us. I decided to cut to the point.

“You think I’m telling the FBR where to attack,” I said.

DeWitt studied me for a long moment. “I think someone is.”

I looked away, disgusted and disappointed.

“They killed my mother,” I said. “They killed my friends in Knoxville, and all those people in the tunnels in Chicago and at the safe house. I would never tell them anything.”

He considered this. “And the people that helped you, would they talk?”

Chase’s face flashed to the forefront of my mind. Never. Never would he do such a thing. But there were others that had been with us, too. Sean. Billy. Tucker. Suspicion jabbed at me like needles in tender flesh.