Girl One(104)

“What do you want me to do to them? This is your plan.”

“I want to deal with him.”

I knew which one she meant. Isabelle turned toward Orange Shirt. His sunglasses were crooked, his whole face out of alignment. He looked so young. I wrapped myself around his brain, held him still for her. “Stay,” I said.

Rising onto tiptoes, Isabelle pressed her mouth to his. The kiss seemed to last too long—it wasn’t seductive or kind or intimate. I thought of Delilah, her body turned into a means to an end. Proof to these men that their genes would thrive, predictable and safe—and then they’d killed her and the unborn baby anyway. I watched Isabelle as she reached inside Orange Shirt and untied the thin threads holding him together. Let them go.

I watched the life drain out of Orange Shirt almost immediately. He dropped to his knees and his mouth drooped open, the blood glossy on his teeth. He fell forward into the grass and was still, his unseeing gaze fixed on me.

Cate came to us. Isabelle and Cate and I joined hands, interlocking our fingers. The insects and the sunlight and the murmur of the river, the silent trees, the skeletal birds. Everything felt especially real. Full and vivid around us.

“What do we do with these two?” Cate asked.

I considered the two remaining men, who watched me back, darting eyes letting me know they still were trapped in there. I could kill them off. Have them shoot each other. Tell them to walk one by one into the river and stay there until the water filled their lungs. Isabelle had called them here because she knew they would just keep on hunting us down, stalking us, killing us off. Using the proof of Fiona’s abilities to rip away our last shreds of privacy and thrust us into the spotlight. Killing them now would end that, at least.

But I exhaled. “Take their weapons.”

The three of us let go of each other’s hands. Brisk and quick, not speaking, we patted the men down, disarming them. They’d brought rope, duct tape. Guns. A knife that glinted with cruel jagged teeth, in the evening sun. A book of matches—I remembered that scorched clearing, all the life bleached out of it.

I found the cartridge. A square not much longer than a deck of playing cards. So small to hold so much history inside it. I’d once thought this was the only remaining proof of who Fiona was, but now I thought of her—out there, somewhere—still growing, still changing, very much alive.

When we were done, I pulled back. “Turn yourselves in.” I raised my voice. “Confess. Tell the world what you did to Delilah, and to Vera, and to Patricia.”

The two surviving men hovered there for a second, as if letting the instructions penetrate the surfaces of their brains. Then they began moving out of the clearing, quiet and obedient. The only sound was the light crunch of their footsteps. I watched their forms retreat into the distance until I couldn’t see them anymore. The three of us stood alone. Orange Shirt’s head was haloed by a creeping pool of blood.

“God, Morrow, I can’t believe you did that,” said Cate.

“I can’t believe it either.” My voice betrayed the slightest tremor.

“Where do we even go from here?” Cate asked.

“We’re going to rescue my mother,” I said. “We’re going to find Bellanger.”





46

We’d been driving endlessly. The sun through the windshield was so hot and unrelenting that it nearly blurred away my vision, a wash of surreal white. Outside, the landscape was as jagged and unforgiving as an alien planet. All rust-colored rock, serrated cliff edges, ground that was heat-cracked into wide-ranging geometric patterns.

“This should be it,” I said.

I slowed. The three of us gazed around, feeling our optimism evaporate in the endless, noiseless glare of the heat. The air-conditioning rattled ineffectually, puffing out a lukewarm breath. I knew I should be sweating, but my skin was sticky rather than damp, the sweat evaporating too quickly. We had our plastic thermos of drinking water, stale and hot, nearly empty. My tongue was heavy in my mouth. I glanced at the Volvo’s fuel gauge, the arrow hovering right above E. We were miles from any gas station, and if this wasn’t the right spot, we’d need to retreat back to the closest semblance of civilization. Try again tomorrow. Or the next day.

“There’s nothing here,” Isabelle said softly.

Not quite nothing. Strange rock formations, bubbled archways and sharp wedges, rose from the ground in the distance. It’d been a long time since we’d encountered any paved roads. I double-checked the road map where I’d carefully marked the coordinates Junior had given me over the phone. “This should be the edge of Bellanger’s land,” I said. “We’re going to have to search.”

But I didn’t move, not wanting to waste a drop of precious fuel. The desert was so empty: a broad scoop of a sky, cloudless. High above us, a bird suspended inside a current, a dark blot. I was surprised to see any sign of life. It seemed like we three were the only ones reckless and desperate enough to be out here, cut loose from the world’s natural laws.

“Are you sure we can trust Junior?” Cate said beside me, fanning herself with the notebook.

“He did get the Grassis’ address right. Just seventeen years too late.”

Cate shook her head. “I mean, can we trust him?”

“I don’t think he’d lie about this.” But a spike of uncertainty ran along my spine. After all this, I’d ended up in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by blanched sky, looking for a dead man who refused to appear—