Replica (Replica #1)(73)

Finally the boy had no choice but to pass over his phone. The cop made Jake unlock the screen, and then sorted through the pictures, deleting the ones he deemed inappropriate. Jake stood there, his face hard with anger, which somehow made him even more attractive.

Finally the cop returned the phone and gave Jake a big thump on the back, as if they were best friends at a baseball game. “Good man,” he said. “Now don’t make me ask you again, all right? Clear on out of here. Nothing to see.”

Almost immediately, the cop swaggered away, pushing roughly past Gemma without sparing her a second glance, this time to yell at two teenage girls who were trying to record a video with their phones. Jake aimed a kick at a crushed Coca-Cola can, which skittered across the sand and gravel and landed in a patch of grass. Either he hadn’t noticed Gemma or he was pretending not to have.

So she cleared her throat. “Jake? Jake Witz?”

He looked up finally and her heart stuttered. His eyes were large and dark and mournful, and reminded her of the way Rufus looked when no one was paying him any attention.

“Yeah?” he said. He sounded tired. He looked tired, too, and she wondered how long he’d been out here, watching.

“My name’s Gemma Ives,” she said. She realized she hadn’t exactly planned what she was going to say. She still didn’t know what connection this Jake Witz had to the guy who ran the Haven Files, or whether there was a connection. If he recognized her last name, he gave no indication of it. “I know you. Well, I know of you. You’re from the Haven Files, right?”

He frowned. “The website was my dad’s thing,” he said. “I have nothing to do with it.” He started to turn away.

“You must have something to do with it,” Gemma said. The words leapt out of her mouth before she could stop them. Slowly he turned back to face her.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

Gemma licked her lips. “You’re here, aren’t you?” she said. “We’re about as close as we can get to Haven. You’re taking pictures. You must be interested, at least a little.”

He didn’t agree. But he didn’t deny it, either. He just stood there, watching her. Gemma couldn’t tell whether he found her amusing or irritating. His face was too perfect. It was unreadable. Just being around him made her feel like she was fumbling her way through a restaurant that was far too fancy for her. She found if she avoided looking directly in his eyes, and instead focused her attention on his nose or eyebrows or cheekbones, she could at least think.

“Look,” she said. “I came all the way from North Carolina. My dad was involved with Haven somehow, or at least people think he was involved. He’s not scared of anything, but he’s scared of that. I want to know why. I have to know what they do at Haven. I have to know why it matters to him.” And to me, she added silently.

For a long time, Jake said nothing. Then, just for a second, a smile went fast across his face. “Not by a long shot,” he said, so quietly that Gemma wasn’t sure he meant for her to hear. He started to turn around again, and Gemma’s heart sank.

“What did you say?” She was sure, now, that fate had led her here, to Jake Witz. Sure that no matter what he claimed, he knew the truth about Haven.

“You said we were as close as we could get to Haven. But we’re not. Not even close.” He inclined his head and Gemma recognized the gesture for what it was: an invitation. He wanted her to follow him. This time, his smile was real, and long, and nearly blinded her. “Come on, Gemma Ives. I’ve been in the sun all day. I could do with a waffle.”


Jake explained that there were two ways out to Haven. One was to take a launch from Barrel Key and circle around to the far side of the island, where the coast dissolved into open ocean, staying clear of the marshes. This was the way the passenger boats ferried employees back and forth, and the way that freight was moved. No boat of any size could navigate the marshes.

But there was another way: the Wahlee River, which passed the tiny fishing village of Wahlee and fanned out into the marshes—miles of winding, narrow channels and half-submerged islands that reached nearly all the way to Haven’s northern coast.

“How do you know all this?” Gemma asked. They’d found a diner tucked off the main drag, empty except for a mom and her toddler and two older men in hunting vests huddled over coffee, with faces so chewed up by wind and weather it looked like their skin was in the process of dissolving. Although from here the ocean was invisible, there was still a rubber-stink smell in the air, and they could hear the occasional threshing of helicopters overhead.

Jake lined up four containers of half-and-half and emptied them one by one into his coffee. “I’ve lived in Little Waller my whole life,” he said. “That’s forty miles from here. My dad was big into fishing, camping, that kind of thing. We used to camp on the Wahlee. Spruce Island used to be owned by some timber company but Haven bought them out to build the institute. I remember they were still doing construction on some of the buildings when I was a kid.” He shrugged. “Maybe that’s when his obsession started. I never got the chance to ask.”

Gemma swallowed. “Is he . . . ?”

“Dead,” Jake said matter-of-factly, without looking at her. He stirred his coffee with a spoon but didn’t drink. “Died four years ago, when I was fourteen. Drowned in the marshes. That’s what they said, anyway.”