Forged(34)

“Just a gut instinct.” May beams, her cheeks swelling up like fresh loaves of bread. “Every minute after I arrived at the bookshop Bree went on and on and it . . . I guess it reminded us of our situation, didn’t it, hon?” She glances up at Carl, who nods. “I once staged quite a production to get Carl out of a bad spot and sometimes it’s worth risks, regardless of the odds. Especially for people you love.”

Bree looks mortified—she might even be blushing—but I’m hung up on May’s words. My mind drifts to a letter I found in a deserted house in Bone Harbor a few months back. A love letter addressed to a man named Carl, begging him to come west, saying her brother Charlie—an Expat—would help stage a boat sinking to cover his trail.

“You two,” I say, still staring between them. “Carl’s from Bone Harbor.”

May touches her chest. “How do you know that?”

“And Charlie, your brother . . . I thought he was a fisherman. That you both were.”

“Our mother passed a few months back and Charlie and I are splitting our time between the sea and the shop now that she’s no longer around.” May asks again how I knew about Carl, and I quickly explain about the letter, how it was one of a few things that led the Rebels to reconsider AmWest’s status in this mess.

It is so odd the way all these lives have overlapped. For some reason, it doesn’t shock me as much as it could. Instead, I just feel incredibly blessed. That Carl cared enough for May to run away with her. That May was moved enough by what Bree kept repeating in Pine Ridge to consider helping with the rescue. That Adam brought us to Badger who worked in Charlie’s shop where it all came together. Such an intricate web of relationships.

“We snuck out before Adam and Badger got up this morning,” Bree explains. “Getting to the docks was easy enough with the boat and uniforms. Clipper set up the explosives—had a wetsuit and everything so he could get around unseen—and then after Sammy and I alerted the Order to the rogue ‘tracking device,’ we went in. Things didn’t get messy until the alarm went off.”

She doesn’t know how much of it I saw in the interrogation room, and plows ahead with the story. I listen to her run through it—the guards, the way Sammy got her out of a bind, finding only Emma in the cells. I barely hear her. I’m caught up in her hand gestures and the way she speaks with such conviction. I want to tell her how it felt to see her on those screens. I want to tell her she is amazing.

“Bree refused to leave without you, so I took Emma to the boat,” Sammy cuts in.

“I still don’t understand why though,” Emma mutters. “I’m a stranger.”

“Um, Gray should probably explain that later,” he says. I don’t blame Sammy for not wanting to break the news to Emma. Who wants to tell someone that their Forgery tried to kill half the people on this boat? She gives me another icy look as he continues. “When I got to the boat, Harvey—who’s supposed to be dead, mind you—was standing there with Clipper in his arms. The boy was hugging him like a teddy bear.”

“I checked his eyes first!” Clipper says. “I knew what he was, but he seemed . . . I don’t know. Something was different about him. And he said he’d been helping Gray.” Clipper spins to face me. “That’s true, right?”

“Yeah, Harvey heard some Mozart while I reminded him of his past life, and it jolted his loyalties. Now he’s like Jackson, a malfunctioning Forgery.”


“You say malfunctioning like it’s a bad thing,” Harvey says, but Bree looks unamused.

“So Blaine,” Emma prompts hesitantly. “He’s really . . . ? I mean I heard it, but I hoped . . .”

My brother . . .

Will they throw his body into the water and let the salt eat away at him? Will he settle somewhere on the Gulf floor like my father?

The room is suddenly suffocating.

Too afraid I’ll spot pity on their faces, I leave without a backward glance.


It’s cold on the deck, and I grip the icy railing just to feel its burn.

If I hadn’t chased after Emma in Pine Ridge . . .

If I hadn’t attacked my Forgery and tried to run . . .

Would Blaine still be alive?

I gaze out at the horizon, now a line of deep violet that blends with the night sky. If he were here, Blaine would tell me to not beat myself up. He’d probably even claim that this outcome was best, that he’d have wanted me to live if it could only be one of us. Because that was Blaine: putting everything in order, weighing lives like they were things you could barter with in a market.

The real irony is that for once I agree with him. I can weigh these two lives—mine and his—and I want it the other way. He has a daughter, a reason to keep going. He is—was—such a good person. To his core. To the very center of his being. It should have been him who lived. I wish I could have taken that bullet for him.

“Hey.”

I flinch at the nearness of Bree’s voice. She’s standing a half dozen steps away, a blanket still over her shoulders, her face somber. It kills me, that look. It’s like she can feel exactly what I’m feeling even though I didn’t ask her to. Even though she shouldn’t. Because I wish this on no one—the grief and guilt and horrible, aching emptiness.

She joins me at the railing and rests her forearms against it.