The Evolution of Mara Dyer (Mara Dyer #2)(110)

I thought it was all for revenge. For Claire. To punish me for what I’d done to her and to him. And no doubt that was part of it. But in his mind, it was also a means to an end.

An end I couldn’t possibly deliver.

I had to be motivated, he said. If I was afraid enough I’d do it, he thought.

But I was afraid. I was terrified. And Claire was still never going to come back.

I didn’t know how to pretend otherwise anymore. “Jude,” I said. “I swear, I would do it if I could. I’m sorry.”

He cocked his head at me. Studied me. “You’re not sorry,” he said plainly. “But you will be.”

Then, in a movement so sudden I almost couldn’t make sense of it, he grabbed a fistful of Stella’s thick curls, lifting her up and bending her back at once.

Megan screamed. Jamie looked away. Adam made a surprised noise.

Noah was on edge again, I could feel it. But he didn’t move from my side.

I was seething. “You think if you torture her, I’ll bring Claire back?” I asked, my voice rising in fury. “If I could do it I’d have done it already—”

Jude let Stella fall back to her knees. He looked down at her.

“Oh, God,” she whispered.

A smile crept across Jude’s mouth.

The way she sounded, the way he smiled, set my nerves on fire. “What?”

Jude looked up at me, and his grin grew wider. “Tell them,” he said to Stella. When she didn’t speak, he tugged on her hair. “Tell them.”

“She—” Stella screwed up her face, and her eyes flicked to Jude as he crouched beside her. “She knew,” Stella whispered, looking straight at him. “Jude’s part of it. She knew—oh my God, she knew, about all of us, the whole time—he’s part of it, she promised him you’d bring Claire back if he brought you here, she told him how to make you do it, and she left the rest of us here to see what you would do, oh God—”

“She?” Jamie whispered.

“Kells,” Noah said.

“Jude’s part of it?” I asked, my voice brittle and breaking. “He’s part of what?”

What was he? What were we?

“I can’t hear,” Stella wailed, “there are too many voices!” Then Stella whispered and mumbled; I could only catch one word. It sounded like “insurance.”

“How do we get out?” I asked quickly. That was what I needed to know, before Stella lost it. How to get out.

“You can’t,” Stella moaned.

“I was let in,” Jude said calmly.

I felt like I’d been kicked in the chest.

Dr. Kells had let Jude in. The adults were all gone. There was no one to help us, no one who would come.

“He killed Phoebe,” Stella said, her shoulders shaking. “But it looks like you did it, Mara—that’s what they’re going to say. They need you—”

Jude slapped her cheek. Stella sucked her full lips into her mouth and looked down at the sand. She wasn’t going to say anything else.

I couldn’t make sense of most of what she had said, but one thing I caught was this: Dr. Kells promised Jude I would bring Claire back if he brought me here tonight. And she was lying.

She wanted me here for some other reason and I couldn’t begin to fathom what it was. I couldn’t play along with Jude’s delusion, but maybe if I could show him that he was just a piece, a pawn in whatever twisted thing was happening here, there might be a chance, however small, that he would let us go.

I didn’t see another way. So I said, “Dr. Kells is lying to you.”

“No,” Jude said to me, “you are.”

Then he grabbed Stella’s wrist and broke it. We all heard it snap.

Megan screamed like an animal. Jamie swore. Adam smirked. I churned with rage.

But Noah. Noah didn’t make a sound. He didn’t step forward. He didn’t even tense. After a minute, he said, “You might want to let her go,” as if he were pointing Jude in the direction of the nearest gas station.

The muscles in Jude’s face twitched. He didn’t understand why Noah wasn’t reacting, why he didn’t seem to care, and until that second, neither did I.

Jude wanted us off balance. He wanted us afraid. He needed those things from me most of all, and I thought he was hurting Stella to try and scare me even more.

But it wasn’t working. I wasn’t scared. I was angry, and Jude saw it. Which is why he wasn’t trying to use Stella to provoke me—he was using her to try and provoke Noah. Thinking he couldn’t resist a damsel in distress.

He wanted Noah to take her place.

But it wasn’t working. Noah didn’t move.

Jude dropped Stella’s wrist, then. She fell back against the bloody sand and I felt a split second of relief—

Until Jude pinched the back of Jamie’s neck.

Everything changed. My stomach curdled with fear.

“I’ll let this one go,” Jude said with a wholesome smile, “if Mara takes his place.”

I let out the breath I didn’t realize I’d been holding. Jude had me before, at the marina, and didn’t kill me then. He came into my room and ruined my life but I was still here. I was still alive.

Jude couldn’t kill me, Stella had said—he thought he needed me to get his sister back. If I took Jamie’s place it wouldn’t matter that it wasn’t possible; Jude would be busy with me, giving the rest of them a chance to get all of us out.