Reborn (Altered) (6 page)

Evan kissed me once more before scooting off the rock and heading back up the hill. I watched him wander away, holding his phone in the air. Within seconds, he was gone, swallowed up by the forest.

I folded my arms around myself and stared out at the lake. The water was black, the other side invisible in the dark. Something cracked behind me. I whirled around. “Evan?” I called.

Nothing.

I slid off the rock and went up on tiptoes to see to the top of the hill. “Evan?”

A shuffle.

My heart sped up.

A twig snapped.

Goose bumps rose on my arms. I hurried up the hill and scanned the forest. I couldn’t see Evan, or the glow of his cell phone. Something rattled the bushes to my left and I ran.

My heart beat at the back of my throat. My breath came quickly. My feet couldn’t seem to move fast enough.

The forest teetered, my vision still unsteady. I caught my foot
on something and went down hard, palms slamming into the rocky dirt. All the air left my lungs, and when I sucked in the next breath, I caught the overwhelming scent of pine.

Pine trees. Gabriel. Gabriel’s scent.

I squeezed my eyes shut, that old feeling of panic and despair blowing up inside me, eating away at what was real and rational.

The old bullet wound in my chest burned, and I saw the flicker of a gun pointed at me in the darkness behind my closed eyelids.

The last night of the six months I’d been kidnapped had ended in a forest just like this.

A choked sound escaped my closing throat. Tears blurred my vision.

The scar running along my left side pulsed, and I acutely remembered the pain that had taken hold when the knife had cut my flesh.

Terror squeezed my windpipe.

I couldn’t catch my breath.

What if they were here again? What if they were here to finish the job?

Hands reached for me, fingers digging into my shoulders, and I screamed.

I screamed and screamed and screamed.

“Lissy!”

I was sobbing now, sobbing and shaking, and every part of my body ached.

I wanted to go home. I wanted my mom.

“Elizabeth!” Chloe shook me.

On an inhale, I looked up. Everyone from the bonfire had gathered around. Evan was crouched in front of me, his hands gripping my wrists. Chloe was to my left.

“What happened?” Evan asked.

I tried so hard to stop the tears running down my face, but couldn’t.

“Take me home,” I said, my voice racked with sobs. “Please.”

He nodded and helped me to my feet. As he led me away, I felt their eyes on me, watching. When I was gone, they’d whisper, and theorize, and joke about the crazy girl.

Because I was the crazy girl.

9

ELIZABETH

I CALLED IN SICK THE NEXT DAY. Merv sounded so unsurprised, so quiet and sympathetic, that I wondered if Evan or Chloe had told him what happened. Merv even told me to take the next day off, and the next if I needed it.

Retreating to my bedroom, the place that had become my safe spot since moving in with Aggie, sounded like the best idea ever. But hiding wouldn’t change anything, and my therapist had told me the more I was alone with my thoughts, the worse they’d become.

So I assured Merv I’d return the next day, and hoped no one even mentioned what had happened. Most of all Evan.

A knock sounded on my bedroom door. I called out, “Come in,” but didn’t bother moving from the spot I’d been glued to since waking.

There was probably a permanent indentation where I’d been lying in my bed, staring at the cobalt bottles lined up on my shelf, wanting Gabriel’s bottle so badly it hurt. It wasn’t that I found comfort in him. Rather, that night in the woods had haunted me so much in the past twenty-four hours that I wanted to relive it, acutely, so I could get it all over at once. Experience the flashback and be done with it.

Aggie pushed my door open and shuffled in, a tray in her hands. “Hey, sweetie,” she said. She came over to the bed and eased down onto the edge. “I brought you some nourishment.”

I propped myself on an elbow and surveyed the tray. Steam rose from a bowl of potato soup. Crackers lay in a ramekin next to it. There was also a package of chocolates and a bottle of water.

“Did you just make the soup?” I asked. As far as I knew, we were out of frozen portions of her homemade soup. She made the best potato soup I’d ever tasted, and she always made it for me when I was sick or feeling low.

“I had a bag of potatoes I was saving for pot roast,” she explained, “but I figured they were better used for today.” She smiled, and the deep wrinkles around her eyes grew deeper still.

I sat upright and Aggie set the tray over my lap. “Thanks for this.”

She patted my leg. “Don’t mention it. How are you feeling?”

I’d told her briefly what had happened last night, since I’d come home earlier than she’d expected, and not only that, but I’d arrived shaken and pale. She knew right away something had gone wrong.

“I’m… embarrassed.”

“If they are your real friends, they’ll understand.”

“Not everyone wants to deal with a crazy person.”

She tilted her head to give me a look over the frames of her glasses. “You’re not crazy, dear.”

Though I hadn’t felt much like eating at all today, now that the soup was in front of me, my stomach growled. I dug right in.

“I’ll let you enjoy that in peace,” Aggie said as she slowly rose from the bed, her knees cracking when she finally made it upright. “Let me know if you need anything else, hmm?”

“I will.”

She nodded and ambled off, closing the door behind her.

I ate the soup in record time and got out of bed only to set the tray aside. I stared at the bottles again, the glass glowing in the sunlight that poured through my parted curtains.

GABRIEL
.

I read his label over and over until his name was nothing but a string of consonants and vowels, until it didn’t even sound like a name anymore.

He hadn’t looked like a Gabriel. In fact, when I’d asked him what his name was, when he was rushing me to the ER, he’d paused before answering, as if he wasn’t sure. Or maybe he didn’t want to tell me.

GABRIEL
.

I hadn’t seen him at all while I was held captive. The first time I saw
him was the day I escaped, the day some girl opened my cell door and ushered me out, her face hidden in the shadows cast by a black hood.

“Go,” the girl had said, so I went. Though I’d been released from my room countless times before then, I knew instantly that this time was different. Usually I was flanked by two men. Usually I was led, stumbling, to a lab. Usually the place where I was held was silent save for the distant humming and thrumming of machines and vents.

That night, the place had been in complete chaos. I could still recall the distant thumping of feet, the shouting of voices, and the constant wailing of an alarm.

There was a heady feeling of escape in the air, and for the first time in a long time, I’d felt like maybe the captivity was finally over.

And then a man rounded into the hallway and shot me.

The bullet had hit me in the chest. My rescuer hollered and shot back. The man dropped where he stood as I slid to the floor, all the air leaving my lungs.

My chest felt like it was on fire. Like someone had built a pyre in my lungs and set a match to it. When I’d looked down at my white T-shirt, it was painted black with my own blood. And I realized that my hand was stamped over the wound, my fingers shaking.

“Can you walk?” my rescuer asked.

I’d nodded, because while I couldn’t feel the beating of my heart, I could feel the curling of my toes.

“Am I dying?” I’d asked her as she hauled me to my feet. “Am I finally dying?”

“No.” She examined me with a quick brush of her fingers. “It hit high in the chest. Missed the vital organs.”

I’d nodded again, like,
Okay that’s good
, but really I couldn’t think of anything else but the pain in my chest, the pulling of inflamed muscle, and the pulsating beat of singed nerves.

I’d been injured so many times before, but I’d never been shot. I didn’t know if it was an injury I’d survive, and I worried, like I had so many times before, that I’d die in that place and no one would ever know what had happened to me.

We’d threaded through the main area of the building, a maze of gray office partition walls. My rescuer seemed to know where we were going, but I couldn’t tell the difference between one hallway and the next.

We pressed ourselves against a wall when a line of black-clad guards thundered past, but we failed to watch our backside and a man grabbed me by the wrist, yanking me back.

I caught sight of a knife at the man’s waist and pulled it from its sheath. I wasn’t a fighter, but I would fight now, because there was no way I’d be shoved back in that cell.

In the struggle, I was cut, from breast to hip bone, and it took me nearly five seconds to realize I didn’t feel anything at all.

My rescuer stole the knife from the man’s hand and shoved it in his gut. Two people dead in less than ten minutes. I’d never seen anyone killed before, and I was numb from the sight.

We made it out of the maze to the other side of the building,
and my rescuer led me to a supply closet. She nodded at a vent in the ceiling. “Climb up. Go straight, then right, then left, then up the ladder.”

She turned to go. “Wait!” I’d called. “My mother is here somewhere.”

“I’ll get her,” she’d said, her voice low and indistinct.

More shouting sounded from the recesses of the building, and the girl slipped out the door.

I’d crawled through the vent and up the ladder and came out in a forest. But I never did see my mother again.

Whoever had held me captive had used her twice to get me to cooperate. They’d threatened her life, and I’d done whatever they’d asked of me after that, but I worried now, like I always did, that they’d killed her as a punishment for my escape.

I pushed aside several glass bottles to get to the one labeled
MOM
. Her scent had been a difficult one for me to mix. It still wasn’t quite right. I pulled out the cork and breathed in deeply. Roses, for the rose water she used to dab behind her ears. The scent of clean linen, for the hospital scrubs she wore to work, and a hint of lemon, because her breath always smelled like it, like lemon and tea.

My therapist said that hope was a powerful thing, and I’d been clinging to the hope that my mother was alive ever since I’d escaped. But the more years that stretched between now and then, the more the hope dwindled.

If she hadn’t returned yet, then she wasn’t going to return.

I set her bottle back on the shelf and buried it behind the others.

I reached out for Gabriel’s bottle next but pulled back at the last second. I’d already relived enough of that night. I wasn’t sure if I could relive much more.

I turned away and curled back into bed again. I fell asleep quickly.

10

NICK

THE DRIVE TO TRADEMARR, ILLINOIS, took me less than six hours. I arrived before the sun. The GPS system in the truck brought me to the center of town, so I parked behind a row of shops and got out to walk.

The streets were dead and dark, save for spots of light from the lampposts. Even though it was the middle of August, the air was cold, so I threw on a flannel. It made it easier to hide the gun tucked against my back.

I shoved my hands in my pockets and tried to look disinterested in case a cop drove by. But really, I was scanning the surroundings, not only for signs of the Branch, but for things that looked familiar.

When Anna had found the name of this town in my file, I’d
thought arriving here would dislodge whatever memories the Branch had buried. It didn’t.

Nothing looked familiar.

It’d been over six years since I’d been here, but I should have recognized something.

I walked to the main street and cut left, crossing at an intersection marked Washington and Ash. The shops were pretty standard. A New Agey store. A bookstore. A coffee shop. A bakery. A bar. Another bar. Good to know. Just in case I needed a drink.

I always did.

Everything was closed at this time of night, which made it easier to examine and mark what was here.

I crossed the next street, the streetlights flashing yellow in the gloom. A neon sign hanging in a window cast harsh shadows over the sidewalk.

MERV’S BAR & GRILL
, the sign read. I peeked in the windows as I passed. The restaurant was separated into two rooms. One side held the bar and booths. The other side had some booths, tables, and a pool-table area. Maybe I’d go there first. Less likely to get into trouble in a family restaurant. Anna would be proud.

I kept walking until the shops thinned out and residential houses picked up. Nothing looked run-down here. The lawns were cut. The hedges were trimmed. The windows and shutters of the houses were clean and freshly painted.

It was exactly the kind of place where I felt like I didn’t fit in.

A lot of my life before the Branch was still a muddy mess, but I acutely remembered the house my dad and I had lived in. Run-down piece of shit in the middle of a bunch of pine trees. Our driveway was dust and dirt, with patches of grass on the perimeter. Nothing that ever needed to be mowed. And even if it had, my dad wouldn’t have bothered.

We’d moved there after my mom left us because my dad didn’t like living in the middle of town. Probably because his neighbors hated him.

At the end of Washington Street, I found a park. A fountain stood in the center. A huge playground took up the back corner. A fenced dog park spanned the opposite corner. A garden took up the front, with benches stuck in between the flower beds.

I picked a bench in the back of the garden, hidden in the shadows cast by an oak tree, and sat. I looked out on Trademarr and took a deep breath, the cool air filling my lungs.

I thought of the girl and wondered if she lived in one of those perfect houses with the cut lawns and red shutters and trimmed hedges.