The Becoming of Noah Shaw (The Shaw Confessions #1)(51)

She slides a printout of the smoking gun across the table to Sophie. Sophie doesn’t look at it—she looks to Daniel with a nervous smile. “What’s this?”

“How long have you known?” Mara’s voice slices the air.

“Known . . . what?” She still hasn’t looked at the printout. Good show. Perhaps all of us have underestimated Sophie Hall.

“Known that you were Gifted?” Mara asks her, and Daniel turns away to try and hide how fucking miserable he’s been since he found out.

“Well,” Sophie says politely, and turns to me. “I’ve been playing since I was four . . . .”

Mara bends down once again, then slides another sheet of paper toward Sophie. And another. All printouts of pictures of Horizons files with Sophie’s handwritten notes, among others’, all over them.

She finally sheds her smile and looks around at us. “What are these?”

Daniel, sitting next to her, lifts one up. “Your handwriting. On my sister’s file from Horizons.”

But Sophie’s expression is placid, impressively innocent.

Daniel turns to her. “What the fuck?” he says.

Jaws drop. I don’t reckon I’ve ever heard Daniel say the word “fuck” before.

There’s a pause before Sophie folds in on herself, like a limp puppet.

“How long have you known?” He presses, barely containing himself.

When she looks up, there are tears in her eyes, wet streaks running down her face. “I knew when I was sixteen.”

“How?” Daniel asks.

“I have . . . a sense about people. It’s like—it’s like I can see these connections, invisible strings, almost, that aren’t there, with points of light attached to them—and they look—they look like they’re tied to me. I get this weird feeling, almost like butterflies in my fingertips, when I meet someone who’s . . .”

“Gifted,” Jamie intercedes.

She swallows and nods.

Daniel rubs his hands over his mouth. “You knew the first time I introduced you to my sister that she was different.” His voice wavers but it isn’t weak.

Sophie swallows hard now, forcing back tears. “When she came to school. The first day. I felt it.”

“Before we even met,” Daniel says flatly.

A tiny nod.

“Well,” Daniel says, trying for angry but the ache of sadness throbs in his voice. “So that’s why you asked me out.”

This is going rather off course . . . . I try to catch Mara’s gaze, but her eyes cut Sophie to pieces.

Sophie looks genuinely horrified. “No. Daniel, no.”

His breath is rattling in his chest. “You find other Carriers—Leo explained it to us already. That’s what you do. So you found Mara, and then figured out that the best way to get to her was to go through me.”

She shakes her head fiercely. “It wasn’t like that—”

“It was exactly like that!” His face is transparent with betrayal and anger. “You knew about Jude. You knew he was alive and torturing Mara—you could sense him. And you just let me go on thinking she was sick? That she just needed help, when she was actually being tortured.”

“You’re the one who told Leo we were here,” Mara cuts in. “You’re the one who found us. Leo’s been lying for you this whole time.”

“I wanted to tell you before that,” Sophie pleads. “I hated lying.”

“Then why did you?” Daniel looks as though he might be sick. The food sits curdling, puddling on the table. “You’ve been lying to me for as long as I’ve known you.”

“But not as long as you’ve known Leo,” Mara says, her head tilting at an angle. “Right?”

Sophie sniffles, nods. “I met him at a Juilliard audition. He’s a cellist.”

“Nobody cares,” Jamie adds.

“Were you telling him everything that was going on with us?” Daniel says—it’s hard to know whether he means “us” in the couple sense or the group sense. Sophie’s shaking her head vehemently, pleading with him, but if I were him, I don’t know whether I could trust her again. Steady heartbeat notwithstanding.

“We just stayed in touch when he left Florida,” she says, which visibly perks Jamie up. Was he from there? Just visiting? Or recruiting, as it were? “Last year, while we were all at Croyden,” Sophie goes on, visibly trying to compose herself. “He was telling me about stuff that was going on in New York—people he was meeting, wondering if I could sense them from long distances or if it had to be in person. He told me how he and a bunch of others were practicing, trying to exercise our Gifts . . . they’re a muscle, he explained, and training makes them stronger.”

“Did you tell him we were coming?” I ask. “To New York?”

“Yes.” She looks down, her blond lashes grazing her cheeks.

Goose leans in. “What, you sensed us when we landed at JFK?”

“No,” she says, rather impatiently. “Daniel told me you were coming. Or that Mara was coming, anyway. With you.” She turns her aqua blue eyes on me.

Splendid. I’m keen to move on, myself. “You were at the subway with us when the girl died.” I can hear everyone hold a breath. “You knew she was Gifted—Goose was there, he’d have been amplifying your ability. You knew she was going to die.”