Breaking Point

We reached Ewing Avenue—my street—and a small whimper came from my throat.

I looked up a steep embankment on the right, but the old, abandoned house where I’d met Chase for the first time was now hidden by shadow. Hidden, like the children we used to be.

My house had come into view. Small and boxy, white. A sister to its next-door neighbor, the Jennings’s home.

“No fast moves,” Chase hissed. Two headlights came over the swell at the top of the street and caused my heart to stutter. The FBR cruiser eased by Mrs. Crowley’s house, right across the way from mine.

“They’re already here!” Bands of tension ratcheted around my lungs. I bit my lip so I wouldn’t scream, so hard it bled.

“It’s just a curfew patrol,” he muttered as we rolled past. “Just like us.”

The tinted windows were too dark to see inside. As Sean continued to snore, the patrol car continued to the intersection and disappeared around the block.

We approached my house. The familiar L-shaped walkway led to the front door where a Statute circular, the same that had been placed there during my arrest, still hung. A single tear slid down my cheek and I hurriedly wiped it away.

“Look.” I pointed. Below the living room window someone had tagged my house with black spray paint. One Whole Country, One Whole Family.

Someone was here after all. Someone fighting back. My pulse ran a mile a minute.

Chase buttoned the top of his collar, which he’d left slack in the car, with one hand. “We’ll park off the street and go through my backyard. Check your house from mine.”

I had to get in there as soon as possible, but was petrified of what we’d find.

We parked two streets down, in a cul-de-sac overrun by trash the city workers had missed and storm debris from the surrounding trees. I recognized this place, though barely. Chase and I had played here as children. Hide- and-seek. It was close enough we could still hear our parents calling us home to dinner.

It was disheartening how much the place had changed. Now it was dark and silent. Those who hadn’t moved away were hidden inside for curfew. Those who caught a glimpse through their closed curtains of our stolen FBR cruiser were afraid.

Chase killed the engine. Behind us, Sean woke and took in our surroundings.

Time to go, I told myself. But my legs wouldn’t move.

Sean got out. Chase followed, and I heard them conversing in low voices. Sean took off around the block, moving stealthily through the shadows. He was going to keep watch from up the street.

Get up. Still nothing.

Chase returned to the car. He rubbed his forehead with the heel of his hand and we sat in the dark. One minute. Two. We didn’t have time to waste; sunrise was coming, we had to move on to Chicago, but even though I told myself this, I could not summon the courage to open that door.

Slowly, he leaned over the center console and unbuckled my seat belt. I still felt where his hand had touched my stomach even after it drew away.

I could tell there were things he wanted to say. Chase things. Things like, we don’t have to do this, or why don’t I look and you can stay here. He didn’t say any of them though. Maybe he knew what my response would be. Likely he knew just as deeply as I did that this was something we had to do. This mystery, left unsolved, would haunt us the rest of our likely short lives.

He stayed close, and the warmth from his body flowed across the inches between us. I could hear him breathing. His uniform jacket shifted, and in the moonlight I saw the raised half circle of skin where the cords of his neck met the muscles of his shoulder. Teeth marks, from where I’d bitten him when I’d been so furious at Tucker. Shame heated my cheeks. Chase hadn’t been the intended target for my rage, but all the same, he always seemed to get the brunt of it.

Tentatively, I closed the space between us and kissed that spot. I could fix it, I thought. I could reverse all the harsh words if he gave me the chance.

His skin was soft, but the muscles just beneath were taut and strong. My lips stayed against his neck as his breath quickened in my hair. I closed my eyes.

“It’s time,” he said, voice heavy. “Let’s go, Em.”

We stepped outside the stolen FBR cruiser, knowing we left all uncertainty, and the safety that came with our once-believed truths, behind. There was no going back now. Hope, and all her terrible consequences, had struck. In minutes we would learn the truth.

Either my mother was alive, or someone was playing a very dangerous game.

CHAPTER 13

WE snuck between two weathered garage units and through the yard behind Chase’s house. The dose of adrenaline coursing through my veins gave me the resolve to scramble up and over the privacy fence, but left me twitchy.

I waited in the wild tangle of grass beside the back door while he rummaged quietly through the bushes for a large rock. Beneath it, to my surprise, was a dirty plastic bag holding a key, and though it grabbed as he slid it home, the door opened in virtual silence.

“Stay here,” he whispered as we slipped inside.

I remained low, leaning against the wall just inside his living room, waiting for my eyes to adjust to the dark. He carried a flashlight and a gun, holding them stacked atop each other but aimed low so that the glare wouldn’t reflect off the front windows. I breathed in, thinking the place might smell of comforting memories, but it didn’t. It smelled stale, cold, nothing like the home where I’d spent half of my childhood.

Chase returned after a thorough check of each room. The flashlight was off, tucked into his pocket, and he’d holstered his gun as well, though I noticed he hadn’t snapped the latch closed. There was still the chance a passing patrol could come to check things out.

“It’s empty,” he said with a mixture of relief and regret.

I stood slowly. It was so dark I could only see degrees of shadow, but it was enough to tell that the room had been cleared of furniture. After his parents had died, his uncle had hired someone to sell most of their things at a garage sale. Some pieces remained—those that couldn’t even be given away. A wicker plant stand that leaned to one side. A couple lawn chairs against the dining room wall. I tiptoed around the corner into the kitchen and saw the wire dish rack on the counter; the last remaining evidence of a woman who used to make us cookies after school.

“It’s still weird in here without all your things.” I hugged my elbows to my body. “It’s sad.”

“It’s just a house,” he said, keeping his eyes fixed on the living room window. I recognized that flattened tone. It only came up when he was swallowing down his feelings.

“We can watch your place from my room, but we’re not going over there until we’re sure they haven’t posted anyone inside,” he added.

I didn’t like this; I wanted to see if she was there, and if not, search my house for clues. I wanted to sit on my bed, cuddle in my comforter, touch my books. I wanted to get my clothes, get a bra that actually fit and jeans that were my own. But Chase had a point. None of those things would happen if we walked into an ambush.

I followed him down the empty hallway, and even in the dark I could see the faint glowing outlines on the wall where pictures had once hung. His room was the first on the left, and the second we entered it, my stomach clenched. There were no curtains or blinds to hide my bedroom, ten feet beyond his window.

My house was dark.

Disappointment scored through me. It could have been made a checkpoint and then abandoned when the MM had accused me of supporting the sniper. If that had happened, who knew where the inhabitants were. In another neighborhood. Another city. Arrested. My hands fisted tightly in my skirt.

Chase took a low position beside the sill, angling toward the street where he could see any potential