Soulprint (18 page)

He wants me. He wants June. He needs us both.

He's walking closer, but carefully, as if I'm a skittish animal that could bolt at any moment. I stay perfectly still, waiting. Waiting. “Guess you were wrong, huh?” And I don't understand what the hell he's talking about. “Turns out you wouldn't know me anywhere, after all.”

But I'm not sure. Because the first time I saw him, the first time he smiled at me,
I don't know
. I don't know what really happened back then, and I don't know what's happening now. Is it possible? I really don't know.

I think of what Cameron said to me. About that chance.

I would do anything for my sister
.

I hope this is true.

Because I'm not stronger than Dominic. And I'm not stronger than Cameron. But I think I'm stronger than Casey.

I circle to the side, away from Cameron, away from Dominic, so we have to switch places—like I'm scared of him. I mean, I am. I really am. But that's not the only reason I'm moving. I circle slowly, with nervous eyes, taking in everything around me as I move closer to Casey and farther from Dominic and Cameron.

He reaches for me but doesn't come any closer. “Okay, calm down, you're shocked. You're in shock.”

I am not.

“You don't have to be afraid. Don't be afraid.”

But I am.

“Casey,” he says, like a warning. To grab me? What?

I close my eyes and breathe steadily. I'm not sure, to be honest, if I'm stronger than Casey. But I believe I want to escape more than she wants to hold me, and that must count for something. I need the distraction, and I have to trust that Cameron will let me go.

I want it more, I want it more, I want it more
…

She's moving closer, I guess because Dominic told her to, and I count. One step. Two. And then I move.

I lunge behind her, catching her by surprise, and bring an arm around her neck, my other hand gripping the longest shard of glass, pointed at her neck. I feel her heartbeat through her skin. I see the artery in her neck, pulsing, right under the glass. I hear the catch of her breath each time she breathes in, the rest of her body completely rigid.

I stare at Dominic, who looks surprised. I can't look at Cameron. I can't.

“Whoa, whoa,” says Dominic. “No need to get violent.” He steps closer, his hand out, and something in my face must make him stop. “Alina, be real. I'm not going to hurt you. I
need
you.”

“You need June. I'm not her.”

“You're making a mistake,” he says.

“What was your plan, huh? Let's say you got in. What happens to me, then?” I'm backing away, and my hand starts to shake. Casey moans, and Dominic holds his hands up for a moment.

“Whatever you want, Alina. Okay? So what is it that you want right now?” Like he knows, of course, I would only do something for a trade. For a purpose.

I don't want to be part of this. I don't want to become June.

“I want to leave. I want to be done with everything related to her.” I want to stop chasing the last life and live this one instead. “I'm leaving,” I say, and I take a step back. Casey follows my lead. I want to tell her I don't mean it, that I won't hurt her, that I would never, but now is not the time. I will drag her to the tree line, and then I will run. I will find my way out, because I have to. It's the best I can do.

Dominic runs his teeth across his bottom lip, moves his hands to his hips, and says, “No, Alina, you're not.” And before I can register what's happening, his hands have slipped behind him and under his shirt, and he pulls a gun out. He points it at my head. Why the hell does he have a gun?

What good will the glass do if he pulls the trigger? I am outmaneuvered and he knows it.

“Stop,” Cameron says, but I don't know who he's talking to.

Dominic grins, just the slightest bit, and begins to lower the gun. It drifts from my head downward, to Casey's chest, where it remains. Casey shudders, or maybe it's me.

Here I am trying to get redemption from my past life, and I haven't even bothered to realize who I've been harming in this one. Like a vicious cycle, here I am again.

Here I am again, with another person about to die in my place.

I am going to get her killed. I am killing her right now. It's me with the gun. It's my action. Her life on the tightrope. He doesn't care about her. He's going to shoot my leverage.

I listen for June, for a moment, with the insane hope that she will know how to get me out of here. But there is nothing. The only one standing here is me.

And so I throw her. I glance at Cameron for the briefest moment the instant before I do it, and it's like we communicate by instinct. I twist my arms out and to the side so she falls to the ground, out from under my grip, just as Cameron runs at Dominic. Dominic pulls the trigger once, and I feel the hot sting on the side of my waist where Casey was once standing, an instant before I hear the sound of the bullet firing. I turn back around and he moves his gun toward Casey again, but Cameron tackles him to the ground as the shot goes off.

I don't have time to look. I can move, so I must be okay. Casey is moving, so she must be okay.

She scrambles along the ground for her pack of electronics. She's barely got a grip on one of the green arm straps when I pull her to standing, and I drag her. She's screaming. She's screaming for her brother, and he needs our help, but I am not that brave. Not when there's a gun and it was pointed at my head. Not when faced with my suddenly very real mortality. Not anymore. I keep dragging her, as her feet kick up dirt, her heels digging in, until we are at the tree line. I turn, for a heartbeat, and I see Cameron pull himself to standing. The gun is in his hand and he points it at Dominic, who is facedown on the dirt but pushing himself up.

Cameron plants his feet. Holds his arm to steady himself. He waits. I wait. There's a tremor that runs through him. And in the moment when he's paused, a thousand thoughts run through my head:
Do it. Don't do it. Run. Runrunrun
.

He drops his arm and runs toward us.

I pull at Casey's shirt, and she's on her feet again. I start running before he reaches us, because he's faster and I'm hurt. I can feel it now, not as a sharp pain, but as a dull ache, like I am racing myself. How far can I get before it slows me, until I am caught? I feel the stitch in my side, the muscle tensing, and I bend over and run with my hand pressed into my side. It slows me down, but I keep moving.

Cameron catches up, the gun still swinging in his hand as he runs, and he grabs my elbow and pulls me along, following Casey. We run at a full-out sprint, tearing through the brush, until the seconds become minutes, and the minutes become a tangible distance. Eventually I hear a faint rumbling, and at first
I think it's thunder, but then I think my mind is playing tricks on me, because it doesn't stop. Instead, it gets louder. Casey skids to a stop at the edge of something. I fear we're trapped. But then the rumbling in my ears grows even louder, and Casey gestures to what waits before her: a river. It leads somewhere. It has to.

I tell my feet to keep moving, but my breath hitches as I run toward her, and I hate that I need to be dragged again. Cameron lets go of me when we get to the river because the path is too narrow along the edge, but at least it's mostly hidden, mostly protected, our sounds muffled by the moving water.

It occurs to me they could leave me here. I am nothing to them. I held Casey hostage and lost them God knows what, and Cameron has the gun. I am the weak link. I'm slowing them down. Casey nods at us and hits the path, moving fast, and Cameron pushes me in front of him. “Just keep moving,” he says. “Don't think. Move.”

So I stop thinking.

I move.

I keep moving.

Without speaking, we forge a path along this ledge, the three of us, heading downstream with the water.

I don't stop until the river stops, catapulting over the edge of a cliff into a waterfall, a lake stretching endlessly into the distance.

And then I can't start again. My legs are weak and spent and useless. I imagine being thrown off a cliff again, but that doesn't seem to be the plan. Cameron grabs my arm and we
climb down the side, rock by rock, inch by inch, clinging to the slick rocks and the jutting roots and each other, wordlessly. It's slow going. It's even slower because of me.

I am weak, because as I cling to the rocks, or to Casey's arm, or to Cameron's leg, I wish for the island. I wish for my bed and the four walls and the window with the perfect angle to the sky. I wish for safety and routine and predictability. I wish for a shot of pain medicine when I'm hurt and my hot shower and my computer full of information. I wish for cliffs and restricted airspace where no one can reach me. Where no one can hurt me.

I wish all these things until we are at the bottom, at the lake, and I sit with my forehead pressed to the rough bark of a tree, and Casey is pacing with her hands on top of her head, staring out at the water. I wish all these things until Cameron settles in next to me, and one of his arms circles behind my back, and he says, “Hey. You did it.”

And then I am weak because I want him to stay with me, with an arm around me, indefinitely. And I almost ask him not to go when he disentangles from my pathetic grip to go check on his sister. Instead I say, “I think he shot me,” which is true, but it also makes him stay.

“Casey,” he calls, gesturing to the hand I have pressed into my side.

Casey is not entirely gentle when she lifts the bottom of my shirt to check. She pokes at me, runs my shirt across the blood in a harsh swipe, and I bite back the yelp. “Just grazed you,” she says, dropping it back down. “Burns worse than it really is. Nothing that can't wait.”

“Case,” Cameron says.

“What?” She's got her hands on her hips. “What is possibly okay about this situation right now? We are so screwed!”

“He's a freaking psychopath. He had a
gun
,” he says.

“It wasn't safe with him. He was going to shoot you,” I add. “I didn't think he would do that. I just wanted to leave.”

She points at me as she leans toward Cameron. “She backed him into a corner.” And then she subconsciously rubs her hand against her neck, where there's a tiny prick of blood, from me.

“I told her to do it,” he says, which isn't entirely the truth, but it makes me feel like I am suddenly not completely alone for the first time ever.

“You're an idiot,” she says. “Ever think of talking to me about this first? God.” She rubs at her neck again, and he grabs her arm.

“Tell me you didn't know,” he says.

“That he's Liam White? Are you kidding me?” she continues.

“You promised me you checked him out,” Cameron says, but he's not yelling. He's eerily calm. He's doing that thing that I do when I want to hide how I feel. Hiding everything under a sedate indifference.

“I
did
,” she says. “He was exactly who he said he was. A past guard, removed after an incident with the assignment, but somehow still in contact with her. He said she was the only way in. The rest—who he was?—that's privacy law, national security, and you know I can't hack that. It's the whole reason we're here. He didn't tell me. I didn't know. I swear.”

My identity was the only one sought. I am their only mistake.

Something twitches in his jaw, and then his face is calm again. “What's done is done,” he says.

“What now?” she whispers, resting her forehead on his shoulder. I wish I had this type of comfort with anyone. That you can take comfort in a beat from the contact, draw strength from it, even when you're fighting. “What the hell do we do now?”

“Hey,” he says. “I'm sorry. You're okay. We made it.”

She pulls her head up, ruffles Cameron's hair once, even though he's taller than she is, and takes a step back. “Of course we made it.”

There's no sign of Dominic. I think this is good news, but Casey thinks it's bad. Very, very bad.

“He could turn us in,” she says. “He could call that number and there'll be helicopters searching the area in no time.”

“No, he wouldn't do that, right? Not after everything he's done. We'd turn him in too,” I say.

She shakes her head. “I don't know what he wants. Whether it's the information in the database or just the money associated with you …”

“You don't know? Then how did you end up working together?”

“I didn't even know him,” she says adamantly, like a defense. “Not in person, anyway. Just online. He … saw me, I guess you could say. Where I shouldn't be.”

“Hackers,” Cameron whispers. “They were both hackers.”

Casey looks around, searching for something. A solution, possibly. Dominic, maybe. “Anyway, we were both trying—and failing—to get into the database. There are a lot of people who try. But it's safe to say we were the most … determined. He came to me with a deal I couldn't turn down. But I didn't realize …”

“That he was a freaking psychopath?” Cameron cuts in.

She narrows her eyes but doesn't disagree. “Does it really hurt?” she asks, glancing down at my waist.

“Nothing that can't wait,” I respond. She grins an apology.

“Anyway, he had the resources. And all the information on you. He was much,
much
closer than I'd ever get alone. And it was obvious he was extremely dedicated. He was playing the long game. I only met him in person right before I joined the guard.”

“And you still did it?” I say. “You still went along with it, even after you met him?”

“God, Alina, don't you see? The things I was doing … they're not exactly legal. He had evidence I had hacked into the security surrounding
you
. He could've turned me in. He was in the system …” I think of his hands over my keyboard, and wonder what he was up to back then. “He kind of … trapped me there,” she says.