“You’ve been gone all day,” he said. “I was starting to get worried.”
“It took a while to find someone I could use,” I said. “I wasn’t just out there running around being reckless.”
“I didn’t say you were,” Liam said. “I just wish you had told me you were heading out.”
“I didn’t think I had to.”
“You don’t have to. I’m not your keeper. I was scared, okay?”
I said nothing. This was how it was between us now. Together, but not in the way that was important—the way we were only months ago. After I’d betrayed his trust so badly, I wasn’t sure it could be like that again. And it didn’t help that I could feel myself falling back on the only way I knew how to cope—wrestling with the thoughts inside of my head, trapping them there so they wouldn’t infect anyone else. I’d carefully constructed this invisible wall between us, brick by brick, even as I hugged him, gripped his hand in mine, kissed him.
It was so selfish, I knew it was, to take even that much when I wasn’t giving everything back to him...but I needed him here. I needed the presence of him at my back, at my side. I needed to see his face and hear his voice and know that he was safe and I could protect him. That was the only way to get through each day.
But it was impossible to clamp down or compartmentalize things around Liam. He was a talker. He felt things more deeply than anyone I’d ever met. He’d been trying to start these conversations with me for days. You aren’t responsible for what happened to Jude. About what happened in the safe house...
“Ruby, seriously, what happened?” he asked, his hands loose around my wrists.
“Sorry,” I whispered, because what else could I say? “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to be so...I didn’t mean to bite your head off. Nothing’s going on. I should have told you, but I had to leave in a hurry.” And I knew you’d try to tell me it was too dangerous and I didn’t want to argue. “But I got what we needed. I know how to get us out of here.”
His lips compressed into a tight line as he studied me. Liam didn’t seem satisfied in the least with that answer, but he was all too willing to drop the topic in favor of another one. “Does that mean we can finally talk about what comes next?”
“Cole isn’t going to let us go.” Especially not you.
“We could look for my parents—”
“Isn’t it just as dangerous to drive around aimlessly, looking for your mom and Harry, as it is to stay with the others?” I asked. “This is our fight...what we wanted all along, remember? Cole made a deal with me that we’d actually focus on helping kids now—freeing the camps.”
At least, it was what we had wanted while we were at East River. Liam had been the one behind the wheel then, steering us all in the direction of getting the kids out of the rehabilitation programs. Maybe it was foolish of me to hope that what had happened there wouldn’t affect his dream. But sure enough, his eyes drifted over to the door down the hall that only Cole and I were allowed to enter, to the monster waiting inside.
“Cole says that now, and the agents might be playing nice for once,” Liam said. “But how long before they’re back to their own agendas?”
I tried not to wince. Sooner than you think. “This isn’t the League anymore.”
“Exactly. It could be worse.”
“Not if we’re here to keep it from becoming that,” I said. “Can we at least give it a little while? See what happens? If things head south we can get out, I promise. If nothing else...I have to see if Cate and the others made it. If they did, they’ll be waiting for us. She has the flash drive of Leda Corp’s research on the cause of IAAN. If we can put that information together with the cure—we won’t just be helping ourselves, we’ll be helping every kid that comes after us.”
He shook his head. “I don’t want to make you feel like it was all for nothing, but what if there isn’t anything useful in the pages you fished out of the fire? For all the sense we can make of them, we could shred them tonight and it still wouldn’t make a difference to our lives. I don’t want us to just...attach ourselves to the idea of them in the hope that one day down the road it’ll make sense.”
Objectively, I knew that what he was saying was true—but the words sparked such a fierce denial and fury in me, I almost pushed him away. I didn’t need reality right now. I needed hope that I’d be able to look at the singed pages and see beyond the familiar words: Project Snowfall. IAAN. The Professor.
Giving up that last bit of hope would mean the fleeting moment of besting Clancy hadn’t been a small moment of victory at all. It would mean, in the end, he had still won. He’d survived HQ’s destruction, and the information he’d fought so hard to bury from us would be useless.
We needed this. I needed this. My family’s faces bloomed in my mind, the sun at their backs. Just as quickly, the image was gone, replaced by another: Sam, the shadows of Cabin 27 hollowing her cheeks as she faded like a ghost. It became an endless parade of all of their faces—the ones I’d left behind the electric fence at Thurmond.
My fingers dug into the top of my thighs, twisting the fabric there until I was sure it would rip. The awful truth was, no matter how much I denied it to myself, there was crucial information missing. And the only person in possession of it was the one person Clancy had ensured we’d never find: his mother, Lillian Gray.
“I’m not giving up,” Liam said, a fierceness in his voice. “If this doesn’t work out, we’ll find something that does.”
I reached up to brush my fingers along his cheek, stroking the rough stubble growing in. He sighed but didn’t argue.
“I don’t want to fight,” I said quietly. “I never want to fight with you.”
“Then don’t. It’s that simple, darlin’.” He leaned his forehead against mine. “But we have to decide these things together. The important stuff. Promise me.”
“Promise,” I whispered. “But we’re going to the Ranch. We have to.”
Before HQ was constructed, the League had operated out of Northern California, at a base that had been affectionately codenamed the Ranch. The location itself was fiercely guarded now—appropriate, given its status as a “last resort” base to fall back to in the event of an emergency. Only the senior agents—Cole included—had been around during that time, and actually knew how to find it.
If Cate had made it out, she’d be waiting there. I could see her in my mind, pacing along an empty hallway, as if expecting us to walk through the door at any moment. She wouldn’t go against protocol. By now, she’d be out of her head with worry.
One thought slipped in, chasing out every hopeful one. I’ll have to tell her.
Oh, God, why hadn’t I thought about that? She wouldn’t know—couldn’t. She trusted me. She told me to take care of him. She had no idea that Jude...
I closed my eyes, focusing on the way Liam’s hand was softly stroking up and down my spine.
“—the hell is this?” Sen’s voice whipped out of the room, down the hall, slapping against our private bubble. “Stewart, you’ve done a lot of stupid shit—and I mean a lot—but this is—this is—”
“A stroke of genius?” Cole said, and I could practically hear the grin in his voice. “You’re welcome.”
I was on my feet before Liam could shoot me an exasperated look.
“Come on,” I said, “something’s going on.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Liam said, putting a hand against my lower back and steering me toward the room. “When is there not something going on with him?”
The agents had circled around the window so tightly, all I could see was Cole’s black knit cap behind their heads. I glanced over to the kids, most of whom were standing, trying to see what was happening.
“Roo?”
My back straightened, and something gripped low in my stomach at the name. I turned toward the direction of Nico’s voice.
“Yeah?”
“Is everything...” he looked at the agents. “Is everything okay?”