“It was a mistake,” said Chase flatly.
“A mistake,” Jack repeated. “You choking back there, was that a mistake, too?”
I knew he was talking about the attack—I could still hear his call for Chase to shoot Jesse—but that didn’t explain the venom in his tone. My arms crossed over my chest.
“Something you want to say, Jack?” Chase took a step closer.
Jack’s lips drew back into a thin line. “If you’re not too busy with your family reunion, maybe you could look for our man.”
Chase’s fingers tapped against his thigh, and I reached for his forearm, feeling the muscles flex beneath my hold.
Jack looked to where we touched, and then back at Jesse. His eye twitched. Without a word, he stalked off toward the bridge. I tried to ignore the punch of sympathy when his shoulders sagged; not until that moment did I remember him calling for his ma—Sheri something. It wasn’t the first time I’d wondered why he hadn’t gone with the others from Chicago back to the resistance bases. I figured he’d been burned by the tunnel collapse, scared to go back to the cities, but now I realized he’d hoped someone would be waiting for him out here in the wilderness.
When I turned back, Chase had already torn a strip off his sleeve and tied it around the end of a stout branch to make a torch. He dipped it into the flames, and it crackled as it caught, creating a small glowing ring to light our way.
“Good luck,” said Jesse, hardly moving.
“Thanks,” muttered Chase.
The woods were dark, and even with the torch held high, the shade swallowed most of the light. We tracked north, cutting sideways through the brush, calling for Rat every few minutes. I stayed near Chase as the echoes of our voices distorted in the woods, coming back like the whispers of strangers, but whenever I got too close he pulled out of reach. I thought of Rebecca—the way she’d looked on that wobbly bridge, the straightness of her back as she’d walked away into the unknown, as if she’d never turn around. A chill shivered over my skin.
“Jack was right,” Chase said when we reached the stream. “I choked.”
I stepped closer into the halo of light, hating the doubt I saw in his face.
“It ended up being your uncle. It’s a good thing you didn’t shoot him.” I tried to sound convincing, but my lack of enthusiasm for Jesse was shining through.
“It won’t happen again,” he said. I wasn’t sure who he was trying to convince.
So you’re a man now, Jesse had said.
I stopped and snagged the back of his shirt before he could walk away.
“You didn’t buy all that stuff Jesse was saying, right?” I took a step closer. “I mean, I know he’s your uncle, but he doesn’t really know you.”
Chase shoved his free hand in his pocket. “He knows me better than you think.”
“Because he taught you how to steal? Because, why?” I swallowed the lump in my throat. “He shot someone, too?”
Chase exhaled through his teeth.
“Because he knows what it’s like digging food out of Dumpsters,” he said. “And because he was there when the bombs hit Chicago, and when people went crazy and started looting and fighting and things you don’t even want to know.”
I forced my eyes to stay on his. “How do you know I don’t? You never talk about it.”
“I’m more like him than I’m like you,” he said, faster now. “I was stealing cars when you were sitting in high school, do you know that? You think the FBR was the first beating I ever took? Or ever gave?”
“So you’re big and bad, is that it?” The toes of my boots bumped his as I stepped into his shadow. “You don’t scare me, Chase, so stop trying to.”
He made a sound of disgust and took a step back, staggering and then catching his balance at the last moment. We were standing on an embankment, and when he dropped the torch it extinguished in the water below with a hiss. He stared after it into the darkness.
“I shot Harper,” he said. “He almost came with us and I shot him.”
“I was there.” I saw that hole in the soldier’s chest, saw the blood pooling on the floor. “He never would have come.”
“Is that what you tell yourself?” he asked. “You know what I tell myself? That he fired first. That it was self-defense.” He screwed his thumb into his temple as if to dislodge the memory.
“It was self-defense.”
“I don’t understand you,” he said, suddenly quiet. “Everyone else gets it. Jesse got it. My parents. Even Tucker got it.”
The hurt slashed through me. “Everyone else gets what?”
“That it’s me.” He looked as if he’d finally figured out what everyone else had known all along. “I screw up everything.”
I stood in shocked silence, the air between us thick enough to cut.
“You don’t mean that.”
He didn’t say anything. I would have rather him been angry.
I lifted my hands to hold his face, to make him meet my eyes, but he twisted away. My arms fell slack at my sides.
“I’m not scared of you,” I said. “No matter what you say.”
I turned, the tears blurring my vision. It was too dark anyway without the torch, and not more than three steps later I slipped, and slid down the embankment into the streambed, rolling once I hit the bottom.
Cold water needled my sensitive skin. The rocks scraped my knees but my chest landed on something soft. My fingers fanned over thin, soaked material, and as I pushed myself up my elbow grazed a patch of hair.
All the air in the world seemed to disappear.
“Ember!”
I rolled to the side and grasped Chase’s outstretched hand, jolting out of the water, clawing into the mud and roots below the stream’s high bank. The bile rose, sharp and biting in my throat.
“Hey!” Chase sloshed back into the stream and flipped over the body. He crouched, feeling for a pulse, but there was none. I’d already known there wouldn’t be.
“Who…”
“Rat.” Chase stood, swore. “He must have fallen off the bank. Hit his head.”
Without a light he could have tripped over the tree roots and plunged the three feet straight down into the stream. Now his skin was bloated and blue in the starlight, and his eyes were dull and blank and lifeless.
He’d died alone. And as I looked at Chase, I saw fear come to life. He stared at the body, frozen, dark stains of water climbing up his pant legs as he stayed ankle deep in the stream.
He’d lost everyone and everything. And if I let him, he would push me away just so he wouldn’t have to wait to lose me, too.
“We have to move him,” I said. “I’ll help you.”
CHAPTER
6
I SHIVERED by the fire, knees locked to my chest. The humid air had taken a bitter edge, and my wet clothes clung to my skin. Chase nudged my boots closer to the flames with his toe, watching Jack pace back and forth on the opposite side. Thirty feet behind him, in the woods, they’d buried Rat in a shallow grave.
“Sean said I’d find you over here.” Rebecca eased herself down beside me, falling the last six inches with a huff of breath. She placed her braces between us, a solid silver line.
The damp wood crackled. I stared at it, wishing it would stave off the chill inside me.
“Was it awful?” she whispered after a while. “Being the one to find him?”
I glanced her way, noting how she purposefully avoided my gaze. Another kind of cold wormed its way deep in my stomach.
“It was terrible,” I said. “I wouldn’t wish it on anyone.”
Her small mouth twisted into a frown.
“At least it’s over,” she said quietly.