Unforsaken

ear.

“They’re watching your mom,” I whispered. “I’m so sorry.”

“Yes, but they didn’t follow us here,” he said slowly. “And they don’t know where we’re going.”

Where were we going? I thought of the money in my purse. A few twenties-how far would that take us? And then I thought of Prairie and was hit with a wave of guilt-not because she’d given me the money; I knew she wouldn’t care about that. But because she was a prisoner now, unable to do anything but worry.

I could picture her thinking, chewing her lower lip, a habit we shared. I had put her in an impossible position. She was supposed to be taking care of me. She felt responsible.

But it was different for me. I was a kid. I wasn’t responsible for anyone. And neither was Kaz.

That made it possible for us to risk everything to rescue her and Chub.

Kaz handed my phone back, but before I put it in my purse, I had a thought. Prairie had programmed all the emergency numbers. I wrote a quick text message to her, knowing that Prentiss would have had her searched, that her purse and the emergency phone had probably been taken from her first thing.

I LOVE YOU, I wrote. DON’T WORRY ABOUT US.

Then I hit Send, not caring who saw my message. Prentiss’s men could intercept it; they could throw Prairie’s phone away; they could lie to her. But they could never extinguish the feelings that had taken root in my cold, lonely heart.

11

I LOVE YOU.

I had said those words to only one other person: Chub. When he came to live with us, he became my problem, as Gram couldn’t be bothered to feed or change or bathe him. It took only a couple of days for me to know that he and I were linked forever, to learn the curve of his chubby cheeks and the way his little hands felt holding mine.

I didn’t look at Kaz as I slipped the phone back into my pocket. He’d probably said it a hundred times. To his mother. Perhaps even his father, whom he’d known only a few short years.

And… I imagined him saying it to me. Could feel the words on my lips, could easily say it to him. But we had been strangers not long ago. And besides, we had a job to do.

“What now?” I asked.

“What do you think?”

I focused on his question. It was a welcome reprieve from my thoughts. “You could offer to trade me. We could set up a meeting place and-”

“No. Too dangerous. By the time we set up the exchange, it’d be too late. They’ve got all the advantages, Hailey. Technology, weapons, everything. They wouldn’t give up anything and then they’d have you too.”

“They don’t have everything,” I said softly. “They don’t have you. They don’t have Seers.”

“We just need to think about what we’re up against. Prentiss said he’s got more people in charge now, Hailey. Not just one like before, when Bryce ran everything. I bet there’s a lot more people than that at the new lab. More security, for one. And more staff, if they’re trying to rebuild the research in the shortest possible time.”

“I still think Prentiss must be ex-military,” I said. It was the way he talked, as though he was used to being in command. “If he hires people like him, they wouldn’t care where they work; they’d just move to the new facility, wherever Prentiss told them to go.”

“Yeah,” Kaz agreed grimly. “Prentiss probably has contacts everywhere. Contractors who work for governments all over the world, not just ours. Old buddies still on the inside, who are happy to take his calls, listen to his ideas, maybe have an inside track to approving projects or getting funding.”

“And the Seers,” I said. “If they could train people like you, who could see what the enemy was doing, their movements, their strategies…”

“The visions don’t work like that. I’m a strong Seer, a pureblood, and even I can’t predict when they come or what they’ll reveal.”

“But Bryce was trying to develop ways around that, training Seers to control their visions.”

What if Prentiss found a way to control someone as powerful as Kaz? It was terrifying to imagine Kaz’s gift being manipulated by someone like Prentiss. I prayed that they hadn’t figured out yet that Chub was a Seer. If they knew what Chub could do, they would never let him go.

“So,” Kaz said, “us against the ex-military machine. They’ve got money, weapons, connections. We’ve got, uh…” He shrugged. “Well, we’ve got each other. No problem-ought to be a piece of cake.”

He was trying to joke, but his voice was hollow. The park had emptied as the sky had grown dark. It was just us and the few homeless people who were making their home here for the night.

I shivered, partly from the chill of nightfall and partly from the fear in his voice. I touched Kaz’s face, just a hesitant brush of my fingers against his cheek. I wanted to comfort him, and I moved without thinking.

But Kaz reacted by covering my hand with his and pressing it to his face. He took a shuddering breath and said my name, hardly more than a whisper.

“Hailey… I can’t do this without you.”

He couldn’t do it without me. Kaz was strong and brave, and I was shocked by his admission. He circled his arms around me and I leaned against him and held on, and I could feel his heart beating through his shirt and his warm breath on my neck as he bent toward me, and his eyelashes brushed my forehead.

And then he kissed me and it was like the first time, the day we’d left Chicago, when we’d stolen a private moment in the shadow of his mother’s garage.

It was like the first time but it was also different. That time had been about the newness of our relationship, innocent and tentative. That day had been a sweet little break from what had come before and what would come after, and it was almost like an illusion-we both knew it couldn’t last but we were willing to pretend.

This kiss was something else. It started gently enough, like the first one had; Kaz brushed my lips with his. But then it changed.

The first time we’d kissed, Kaz’s tongue had lightly caressed my lips and I had been surprised to discover I liked it. I’d thought about it a thousand times since. I’d wished I had been brave enough to take it further. I wanted a do-over; I wanted to kiss him forever.

And now it felt like that was what I was doing. From the second our lips met, it was like I was tasting him, only the more I tasted, the more I wanted, and things moved so fast and were so hot I couldn’t keep track and I didn’t want to. I didn’t even know who started it-only that neither one of us was resisting. There was fear and danger in it-and also longing and need.

This is passion, was what I was thinking when we finally stopped. We opened our eyes, and I was embarrassed and about to look away when I saw the intensity in Kaz’s expression. We were locked in a moment when time seemed to stop. We stayed that way for a long time-or maybe it only felt like a long time, maybe it was a half a second-and then we did it all again.

When Kaz finally pulled me against him with a low groan, I realized that it was night. I glanced down the path and saw a pair of middle-aged women watching us, their expressions amused, and I blushed. We were in public, in the middle of the city, and I had forgotten that, had forgotten everything, including-if only for a moment-Chub and Prairie.

I had practically forgotten my own name.

“Hailey,” Kaz whispered, almost like he was reading my mind. “I’m glad you’re here.”

I nodded, not trusting myself to speak.

“It’s cold,” he said after a while, and gently pulled away from me. “Do you want my sweatshirt?”

I hadn’t even noticed the cold until that moment, but it was true; my arms were covered with goose bumps. I started to say no, that I was fine, but Kaz unzipped his sweatshirt and held it for me while I put my arms into the