Three (Article 5 #3)(87)

“Why didn’t you tell us you were with Three?”

He slowed as he steered around an overturned trash can in the road. “Never came up.”

I shifted to face him fully. “Oh, I can think of a few times you could have said something.”

He chuckled. “You never asked.”

I groaned. “You couldn’t answer a straight question if your life depended on it.”

“My life, neighbor, often depends on not answering straight questions.”

He pointed ahead, to a thick cropping of pine trees, the slender gray trunks of which were skirted by emerald holly shrubs. “We’ll turn off the road past the bridge and park back a ways. The outer fence of the printing plant backs up against those woods.”

Though I didn’t say so, I was secretly glad he’d come. Last time we’d come here, I’d arrived in the back of a delivery truck. Sneaking in the back was a whole different game.

I kicked at the floor mat, and glanced back automatically to assure we weren’t being followed. It was clear I’d have to try a different tactic. “The Lost Boys call you the hunter, you know.”

He squinted, watching the road.

“How many have you brought to Endurance besides Will?”

“Not as many as I should have. I thought…” He sighed. “I thought that guy in the trailer was looking out for them. I should have paid more attention.”

Jesse scratched at the stubble on his chin, silent for some time.

“I wasn’t meant to be a dad,” he said finally. “What happened with my nephew—with Chase.” He hesitated. “It wasn’t supposed to happen. I never wanted him.”

I didn’t know how to respond; the raw confession had surprised me.

“Maybe before,” he said quietly, almost as if he wasn’t talking to me at all. “I was a soldier once—not in the Bureau. Before the War. Before the insurgents. U.S. Army, Sergeant Major Waite.” He sat a little straighter in his seat. “We fought enemies from the outside, not the inside. But no one noticed. They just went on like life was normal, like men and women weren’t dying so they could watch TV and go to bed without a gun under their pillow. No one here even knew there was a threat—not until the insurgents brought the fight home, and Reinhardt and his tool Scarboro made their move.”

The president’s platform—one whole country, one whole family—had been just what the country was looking for after the chaos began. It didn’t matter that the government they proposed would sink its teeth into our everyday freedoms, just as long as the bombs stopped falling.

Again, I considered what it might be like if the old president resumed his post. If the people had a vote again. But a system backed by Three, who was preparing to bomb the bases—kill their own just to take out more soldiers—seemed just as corrupt as a system backed by Restart.

“Some of us saw what they were doing,” continued Jesse. “Me and Frank and Aiden—he was an army doc back then.”

Doctor Aiden DeWitt. I felt myself leaning toward him, drawn in by the story. Fat droplets of rain began to splatter against the windshield.

“Frank?” I asked, and then shook my head, piecing together what Jesse had said in Greeneville to Billy. “Frank Wallace. From Knoxville.”

Jesse nodded. “Frank and Aiden took the high road—tried to fight from within the system. I told them that wouldn’t do anything. Frank ended up shooting his partner and Aiden lost his girls.” He shook his head. “When Restart formed the Bureau, I joined the protests. They stripped me of my rank and threw me in jail.”

I’d always assumed Jesse had been in jail for robbery or assault, something bad. Not this. Not the same thing I was doing now with the Statutes.

“They never took their eye off me. The Bureau, they were always watching. I kept quiet after my sister died and I got Chase. I tried to do what Aiden did—play the family man. I did all right for a while. But they kept watching. Once the bombs started falling, Restart needed names—people to blame. Who better than a guy they already had on record?” He laughed bitterly. “I tried to get the kid out once the fighting came to Chicago. I swear. I tried to keep him safe like his mother would have wanted. But they found me. The only way Chase had a chance was on his own.”

“How come you never told him?” I asked. “He thinks you cut him loose because you couldn’t take care of him.”

Jesse started, as though he hadn’t expected me to be listening.

“I couldn’t,” he said. “That’s the truth.”

“It’s part of the truth,” I stressed, unsure what to think of this man now that I’d heard his story.

“I didn’t want this life for him. I wanted him out of the way.”

“So you found him in Chicago and told him about the safe house.”

“I thought I was too late,” he said, regret hanging heavy over his shoulders. “The Bureau had already gotten him.”

“You weren’t too late,” I said. “You helped save him. Just like you helped save those Lost Boys.” I wondered if they were penance for the nephew Jesse had left behind.

Jesse slammed on the brakes then, and I braced against the dash a moment before I hit it. We’d reached the bridge. I hadn’t noticed we’d gotten so close. Twenty feet below rushed the muddy water of an overflowed creek.