She looked at Troop, Jaiden and Finn, trying to gauge how they were handling this rapid turn of events. Troop and Finn seemed shocked; Troop’s jaw was tightly clenched, trying to hold back his fury of Chelsa’s betrayal. Jaiden was deathly still.
Kristi was glad Chelsa had a sudden change of heart and decided not to turn them in to the government. On the other hand, she was shaking with anger; Chelsa had the nerves to fake a friendship with her.
Chelsa started coming back towards them. Kristi had a lot of acrimonious words in store for her.
“How could you?” she asked. “I trusted you.”
Chelsa refused to meet her eyes and looked down at the ground. “I’m sorry. I didn’t want to. Nothing went as planned. I didn’t know this was the way things would turn out.”
“Sorry doesn’t change the fact that you almost killed us,” Jaiden snapped.
Ghost appeared out of the night and looked up at Chelsa.
“You’re right and I’m wrong, Ghost,” she said.
Chelsa reached down to scratch Ghost behind the ears. Ghost closed his eyes and rumbled.
Suddenly Kristi understood why Ghost and Chelsa had been in a fight; Ghost knew Chelsa was planning on betraying them. He had been trying to signal Chelsa not to turn them in.
“Let’s head back,” Finn said. “No point in staying out any longer than we need to.”
“Okay,” Kristi said, and then she faced Chelsa who still wasn’t meeting her eyes. “You have a lot of explaining to do once we get back to Finn’s house.”
“I promise I’ll explain everything.”
“You’re promises aren’t worth a lot to me right now,” Jaiden retorted. He sounded furious and wounded at the same time.
They speed-walked in an uncomfortable silence. The walk back to Finn’s home seemed both quicker and slower than before. Finn unlocked the door to the house and everyone slipped inside silently so as not to wake up the adults.
They headed into the living room and Kristi adjusted the lights to the dimmest setting. Jaiden, Troop and Kristi sat together on a couch while Finn remained standing by the doorway. Chelsa settled on the ottoman; the whole setup reminded Kristi of an interrogation being taken place.
“Start talking,” Jaiden commanded.
“First of all, I feel extremely guilty right now. I know that probably doesn’t mean much to you guys, but I truly apologize to you,” Chelsa said.
“You can save your apologies for later.”
“Just tell us why you pretended to be our friend,” Kristi said.
“It’s a long story.”
“We have all the time we need.”
“Do you remember Alex? Officer Zala contacted me shortly after Alex died. It turns out the government has known that there were four living Accidents for a while; however, the Revealers had done an excellent job of concealing our locations. By pure chance, Officer Zala happened to find me after being assigned to document Alex’s death. She offered me a deaclass="underline" if I could somehow manage to steer the other three Accidents, which are you guys, into one place together where she could seize everyone at once, she would bring Alex back to life.”
Kristi closed her mouth when she realized it had fallen open in disbelief. “That sounds like something from a science-fiction book. No one has ever been brought back from the dead.”
“That’s true,” Chelsa said. “But Officer Zala knows several scientists that have been working on ways to revitalize the deceased; it’s a government funded research department and the scientists think that they will have a method to bring a person back to life using their DNA soon.
“At first, I brushed off her offer for two main reasons: first of all, the whole deal sounded preposterous; second of all, I had absolutely no idea how to find the other Accidents. Heck, I thought I was a one-of-a-kind-freak. But when I accidently met Kristi, I began to reconsider Zala’s offer. I told myself I would just pretend to befriend Kristi and let her lead me to the other Accidents then turn you all in and be done with it.
“I wasn’t expecting to actually befriend you guys. And I most definitely did not foresee myself falling in love with Jaiden.” Chelsa threw him a pleading look, which he returned stonily. She dropped her head to her hands and muttered, “I really screwed up, didn’t I?”
“You really, really screwed up,” Troop affirmed.
Chelsa’s face crumpled. She looked at Kristi, awaiting her verdict.
Kristi found her voice and said, “You hurt me, Chelsa, you’re one of the few people I trusted.”
“I know you probably don’t trust me anymore,” Chelsa said. “But will you at least not hate me?”
Kristi sighed. “I don’t know what to do or feel. I believed you were my friend—I wanted you as my friend. But your actions tonight proved otherwise. Yet, if you hadn’t changed your mind and decided to fork me over to Zala, we wouldn’t even be having this conversation.”
“Does that mean you’ve forgiven me?”
“I suppose. I do have a question though: was the government somehow involved with our lack of bandit encounters on South Lane?”
“Yes. As the Revealers have suspected, the government is working with several bandit groups. The bandits were instructed to leave us alone. It is also why the government didn’t try very hard to capture Kristi and Jaiden; they wanted to wait until Finn, Troop and Kristi were together before swooping in.”
Troop gave Kristi a look that read, “Isn’t that what I said before?”
“I haven’t known you for a long time,” Finn said. “But if Kristi thinks you’ve definitely had a change of heart, then you’re cool by me. But take notice, I’ll be watching your moves closely, so you better not screw up again.” Finn said the words as if simply stating a fact.
Troop didn’t offer his thoughts.
The rest of them waited for Jaiden to speak. He looked squarely into Chelsa’s eyes and said, “It’s over. Whatever we had going on between us is over.”
Then he stood up and strode out of the room.
This living room sure witnessed a lot of dramatic exits today, thought Kristi. First Finn’s mom and now Jaiden.
“Well,” she said, “just when I thought things couldn’t get worse they did.”
“You think?” Troop said sarcastically.
Jaiden didn’t join them for brunch that morning. The grownups seemed to have noticed some of the tension in the air, but to Kristi’s relief, they didn’t ask about it.
“Where’s Dr. Hanson?” she asked Finn’s dad.
Finn’s mom had left for her office shortly after making sure the teens had enough to eat. Kristi was glad she had departed—her interactions with Finn still seemed strained at best.
“He left already. He had some business to attend to and headed out when you were still asleep. He did leave this for you though.”
Finn’s dad handed her a sealed envelope. Troop put down his dirty dishes in the sink and peered over Kristi’s shoulder.
“What is it?” he asked.
“Hold on. Have some patience.”
She carefully slid her finger underneath the flap and pulled out a single piece of paper. In neatly printed letters were the words:
If I recall correctly, your parents believe Stevey holds valuable information in which you may be interested. Stevey’s house: 41° 39’ 58.1008” Burn after reading. Do not share this information. A driver will take you to a twenty-mile radius within Stevey’s house. The driver should arrive a bit after noon, so you will have time to gather your belongings. Your droid-horses will be transported to a stable run by a Revealer member. Good luck.
“As usual, he’s one step ahead of us,” Kristi said to herself, but loud enough for Troop to hear.
She entered the longitude and latitude into her electro-slate, then tossed the paper into the incinerator.