She dragged herself down the road. She tried to run, but her legs wobbled underneath her, aching from her interrupted run to Jake’s house, weak from the images still playing in her head. As she got closer to the playground, Jake’s face replaced Anna’s in her memory, until she could almost believe she had seen him die instead of Anna.
Anna. Becca had said one wrong thing, told one lie, and now Anna was dead. Because of her.
Was Jake in one of those rooms right now? Had Becca gotten him killed too?
When she reached the playground, she kept her head down at first, afraid of what she would see when she looked up—or rather, what she wouldn’t see. She made herself raise her head. The weeds swayed in the breeze; the slide and swings sat deserted.
He could still be in the playhouse. Or he could have gone someplace else. Maybe he had thought the playground wasn’t safe enough.
Or maybe Internal already had him.
She approached the playhouse, scrutinizing it for signs of life. Nothing. No noise, no movement. She stopped just outside the door, afraid to look inside, afraid to see it empty.
“Jake?” she called quietly.
She had expected silence; the answering voice made her jump. “Becca?”
He was here. Alive. Safe. Free.
Jake stepped out of the playhouse. He squinted as the light struck his face. “I heard footsteps. I thought you were Internal.”
She kept her eyes fixed on his face as she walked up to him. She tried to let the reality of Jake in front of her—alive, safe, free—drive away the images in her head.
She didn’t know if she kissed him first or if he was the one to reach for her. All she knew was that when his lips met hers, she could finally accept that he was real, that Internal hadn’t taken him. Her visions of death—of Jake, of Anna, lying on the floor of that room as Eli raised his gun—faded into nothing as she pulled him closer. There was no Anna. No Internal. There was only her and Jake and the electric warmth spreading out from her lips through the rest of her body.
He stepped back, looking as dazed as Becca felt. “I need to check on my dad.” He disappeared into the playhouse.
Becca followed him. Jake’s dad was sitting in the corner where Becca had spent all of last night. His eyes were aimed in their direction, but whatever he saw, it wasn’t them. His lips moved constantly, but no sound came out. Becca eyed him warily, remembering their last encounter. If he saw her, though, he didn’t recognize her.
Jake followed Becca’s gaze. “He’s been like that since we left,” he murmured. “I didn’t tell him why we had to come here, but he knows.”
“I was afraid you wouldn’t understand my message.”
“I got it.” He watched his dad for a moment in silence. Little by little, his muscles tightened. “Why are they after us? And how do you know about it?”
The last residual glow of the kiss disappeared as reality crashed back down over her. This was her fault. She had done this to them. Just like she had gotten Anna killed. “Heather overheard us talking last night.”
She waited for Jake’s condemnation. It didn’t come.
He didn’t say anything at all.
She tried to fill the silence. “I called her before I called you, and told her where I was. I know I shouldn’t have done it. It was just… instinct. She was my best friend for so long.” It hurt to say it in the past tense like that.
Still nothing from Jake. Becca couldn’t even hear him breathing.
“She thinks you’re turning me into a dissident. She thought she could save me by reporting you. I tried to talk her out of it, but it didn’t work.”
Still nothing.
“I’m sorry.”
Nothing.
He squatted down next to his backpack, which lay on the floor beside his dad. He rummaged around until he pulled something out. Becca couldn’t tell what he was doing. She wanted to offer more apologies, to say something, anything, that would get him to forgive her. She held herself back. She had already said all she could say.
A minute ago, their kiss had driven away her memories and her fears. Now they started crowding into her mind again, all pressing in on her at once. Too much.
She heard the sound of ripping paper and peered over Jake’s shoulder. He was scribbling something down on a jagged-edged piece of notebook paper. A second later, he stood up.
“I was wrong not to trust you,” he said. “You saved both our lives. If you hadn’t warned me, Internal would have us both by now.” A shudder ran through his body.
“It’s my fault she overheard you in the first place,” Becca protested.
“It doesn’t matter. You saved us, even though you knew what would happen to you if Internal found out. Most people wouldn’t have taken that risk.” He pressed the strip of paper into her hand. “I should have given you this when you asked.”
Becca looked down at the paper. All he had written on it was an unfamiliar phone number—but she knew what it was. The contact information she had asked him for.
She folded the paper and tucked it into her pocket. “Thank you.”
It should have made her happy. But all she could think about was Anna.
The images pressed in closer.
She leaned in toward Jake, and the closer she got, the further away everything else felt. At the last second she hesitated, heart pounding, her lips inches from his. He cupped her cheek in his hand and drew her in the rest of the way. She let their lips meet, let the kiss erase everything in her mind.
She was dimly aware that Jake’s dad was still sitting right next to them, but she didn’t care. She didn’t have to care about anything anymore.
Becca’s phone sat in front of her on her desk, next to her keyboard. She picked it up, stared at it for a moment, put it down again. She ran her fingers along the strip of paper in her hand, now soft and wrinkled from two days of this. She stared at the numbers until her eyes started to cross.
Jake had given her what she wanted. A way out of her helplessness, out of her restlessness. A way to do something. She should have called as soon as she had gotten home from the playground on Friday.
She picked up the phone again. Dialed the first digit.
Surveillance wasn’t listening to her calls. They wouldn’t waste their time listening in on someone who hadn’t done anything suspicious—and anyway, they wouldn’t dare put Raleigh Dalcourt’s daughter under surveillance.
Probably.
She put the phone down.
She needed Jake to be here. She needed to kiss him again, to drive the fears from her mind for a little while. There hadn’t been another kiss since she had watched Anna die two days ago. Whenever she went to check on him, she was careful to keep just the right amount of distance between them. She had to figure this out first. She didn’t know what it would mean if they kissed again, what the kisses the other day had meant. Maybe she was using him to forget everything that had gone wrong in her life. Maybe he was her own personal Prince Charming and they would go riding off into the sunset and live happily ever after, if Internal didn’t take them into that little room and shoot them in the head first.
Maybe she loved him.
She shook her head at the thought, even though there was no one to see her. If she were in love with him, things would be clearer. If she were in love with him, she wouldn’t wonder whether she saw him as a way to escape the memories or as her only remaining friend or as something else, something more. Or all of the above. How was she supposed to tell the difference? She needed Heather to help her talk this through, but that wasn’t exactly an option anymore.
Maybe she should go back to the playground and check on him. That would be easy. Simple. No matter what she felt or didn’t feel, she could go check on him.
Except she couldn’t, because she had already gone this morning, to bring food for him and his dad. He didn’t want her coming too often, or staying too long; he worried that someone would notice what she was doing. She had
