Replica (Replica #1)(81)

But there was a strange beauty to the marshes, and the tangles of dark weeds that drifted just below the surface of the water and came up on Jake’s paddle, like long, dark fingers drawing him back, and the saw grass painted white with bird guano. The moon was full and bright, even behind a wispy covering of smoke, and so close Gemma could see individual craters, a pattern of trenches and shadow that made a grinning face. Jake picked out constellations to show her, and Gemma thought they all looked like they were winking down at her, letting her in on some secret. Jake obviously loved the marshes, despite what had happened to his dad here, and he told her stories of camping trips and frog-hunting expeditions, how his dad had renamed all the stars he didn’t know and claimed Orion’s Belt had been named for a drunk god who liked to pee in the Wahlee. Jake shook his head. I believed him for so many years. He smiled. Whenever I see Orion’s Belt, I think of him.

It occurred to Gemma that this was the second time in the past twenty-four hours she’d been squeezed next to a cute boy in a strange vehicle. Maybe tomorrow she would meet a tall, dark, handsome stranger who’d want to take her on a motorcycle ride. Maybe she’d end up in Vegas working for the mob as a professional blackjack dealer.

At that moment, anything at all seemed possible.

She lost track of time completely but knew they must be getting closer. Sometimes she thought she heard the echo of overlapping voices, and once Jake froze, sticking the paddle down into the mud and shoving them into the shadow of an overhanging sand oak. But the voices always receded. If there were other people out in the darkness, the marshes were expansive enough to keep them at a distance.

At one point, Jake fished out his phone to check the time and Gemma saw that he looked exhausted. She felt horrible: she hadn’t been helping at all, and he’d been paddling for nearly two hours.

“One a.m.,” he said. He was a little out of breath. “We must be getting close.”

“You need a break,” Gemma said.

“I’m okay,” Jake said, completely unconvincingly.

“You’re a terrible liar,” Gemma said firmly. “You need a break.” She, too, needed to stretch. Her feet had gone numb hours ago.

He didn’t argue again. He angled the kayak up into the shallows and freed himself, so tired he didn’t even complain when he sank a leg shin-deep in the mud. He helped shove the kayak onto sturdier ground so she could disembark. A rush of sudden feeling invaded her legs and she nearly stumbled. Jake caught her and for a second she was close to him, his hands on her elbow, his lips bow-shaped and his jaw just stubbled with hair and his eyes unreadable in the dark. She quickly pulled away.

She helped him haul the kayak farther into the grass so it wouldn’t drift away. The saw grass grew nearly to shoulder height, and Gemma was glad, now, for the Windbreaker: it was sharp, and left sores on her exposed skin. As they hacked through the grass, for the first time in hours she spotted Spruce Island, by this point so close she could make out individual trees, and the spiky points of the guard towers, which looked to be abandoned. They had somehow come around the westernmost tip of the island, which was densely overgrown. She could make out none of the buildings, although some lingering smoke indicated a point in the distance where they must have been.

Gemma was so tired she’d forgotten to be nervous. Now, however, she remembered. “What now?” she whispered. “Do you think we can still get—?” She broke off before she said closer. Jake went very still.

They’d both heard it: a muffled cry.

Jake grabbed her arm and pulled her into a crouch. He brought a finger to his lips, but there was no need. Gemma was so frightened, she couldn’t have made a sound if she wanted to. The silence was anything but reassuring. They’d heard a voice, a human voice, ten, twenty feet away in the marshes. Which meant that whoever had cried out was now deliberately being quiet. Creeping up on them, maybe. Waiting to attack. Gemma pictured herself handcuffed in a military facility, a single lightbulb swinging overhead, an ugly army sergeant with a face like an old baseball mitt leaning forward to spit on her.

She was scared of Chloe DeWitt, ninety-pound blond shrimpoid. She would never make it in prison.

Then again, maybe she’d just get shot in the back, hit by a sniper from a distance of a hundred yards. One breath in and one breath out and then darkness forever.

Then they heard it: a faint rustling of the grass, followed by a sharp silence, as if someone had taken a step and then frozen. Jake was so still she couldn’t even tell if he was breathing. The footstep had come from somewhere behind them. Jake gestured in the opposite direction. Move, he mouthed, and despite the fact that Gem’s legs felt stiff and fatter than usual, she began to inch forward, shuffling crablike as quietly as possible. Her thighs were burning and tears sprang up unexpectedly in her eyes. Pathetic. Out here on the marshes in the middle of the night, crying because no one knew where she was, because she hadn’t told her mom she loved her, because she hadn’t told April, either, because her thighs were really out of shape and she would never wear a bathing suit again. . . . They would kill her, they would shoot first and make it look like an accident. . . .

“Who’s there?”

The voice was harsh, male, and came from no more than ten feet behind her.

Gem forgot to stay down, forgot to stay quiet, forgot to keep hidden. Something screamed through her chest and into her head, an ancient voice shouting go, a force exploding into her muscles and lifting her to her feet. She was running. She was plunging blindly through the saw grass and the salt-eaten shrubs, ignoring the cuts on her shins and forearms. There were shouts, now, from all around her, or so it seemed—she didn’t stop, wasn’t thinking, couldn’t hear anything but that drumbeat of panic.