smiled, then turned away.
I couldn’t believe it. And I couldn’t stand here any longer. I pushed open the doors just as the skies ripped open and sleety rain poured. It felt cold enough to snow.
Navigating the rain-slick streets with bald tires proved harder than I remembered, but around forty minutes later, I parked the Jeep in front of the Cromwell mansion.
Soaked to the bone, I went in through the garage and made sure all the cars were gone. Then I shrugged off my wet sweater and hung it on the back of a chair in the kitchen. Even my thin shirt underneath was damp, but I didn’t have time to waste changing.
From there, I half-ran, half-slipped over the hardwood floors. Statues and paintings seemed to watch me as I entered the right wing. I came to a halt outside Cromwell’s study and sucked in air. There was a chance the door would be locked—if so, a waste of a good hair day.
A little nagging voice whispered in my head that what I was about to do was wrong. I’d be prying around in other people’s personal business, but my reasons for doing so were far more important than a silly little thing like privacy. Right?
I reached into my pocket and ran my fingers over the coin. This was supposed to be for good luck.
Well, I needed some luck now. I pushed on the door. It creaked open and a blast of frigid air hit me.
Clamping down on the voice that screamed moral outrage, I headed for the glossy oak desk. Geez, my conscience acted like I planned on doing something terrible. Where was that voice when I cheated on tests and at computer games?
Not the same thing, I guessed.
I yanked open one drawer. No keys. I moved to the second, third, and finally, the middle drawer. The key ring gleamed up at me. I grabbed them and whirled around.
The keys felt strangely heavy in my hand. After several false starts, I found the right one and yanked open the drawer in the credenza. I hesitated a moment; the little voice was back again, whispering I might not like what I found.
I ignored it and grabbed Kurt’s file first, having no idea what to expect.
The first pages consisted of basic information: birthdate, hometown address, and a brief outline of his gifts. From what I read, he had extensive abilities in the mind-wiping field, able to remove certain memories while leaving others intact. Adam had been a perfect example of that. He’d remembered everything—except me. But Hayden had said whoever had done the sweep on Mom hadn’t done it right.
Looking at the file on Kurt, I doubted he’d mess up so badly. I assumed whoever was behind the car crash would’ve also wanted Mom to believe Olivia had died, too.
Pushing the hair out of my face, I flipped to the second page. Bingo.
It wasn’t a criminal record—not a formal one, at least, but Kurt had quite the history in his younger days: B and E, robbery, and assault. All before the age of twenty-one, which I didn’t think was such a big deal—people change. But the psych eval on the third page caught my eye.
Kurt was described as exhibiting malignant narcissistic personality traits paired with antisocial and paranoid tendencies from onset “G.” I assumed that “G” stood for “Gifted.” I didn’t need a degree in psychology to know some of the words didn’t bring the warm and fuzzies, but nothing pointed to him being a full-out psycho- killer.
Disappointed, I shoved his file back in and picked up Parker’s. As I read through his stuff, I began to wonder why Cromwell even had files on them. Why did he keep this information? Cromwell was a mayor, not a psychologist, and stuff like this belonged in a clinical setting.
Parker’s personal information didn’t come as a surprise. Cromwell commented on his inability to block out other’s thoughts, which led to antisocial traits. Phoebe’s had the same stuff about controlling the empath in her, and there was a recent note about her reaction toward me and a treatment guide outlining blocking techniques that Cromwell wanted to work on.
Gabriel’s file didn’t mention much of anything.
Olivia’s included a bio with all the normal stuff: our parents’ names and whatnot, but just one word about her gift: “Miraculous.” I stared at it for a while, and then I shoved it back inside and moved to grab mine.
But I saw another file labeled “T.G.” and nothing else. Curious, I grabbed that one and cracked it open. The first page had been blacked out the same way I imagined they did with classified papers. I flipped to the second page, then the next.
I prepared myself for the worst, figuring I’d see things like “bad-mannered” and “ill-tempered” as character traits. So I was surprised when I found nothing on the first page. Not a damn thing—no bio, no birthdate, just the date Hayden and Kurt had shown up at my house, the day they’d relocated me. Weirded out by that, I turned over the page, already cringing at what I would see. And God, did I want to go find Cromwell, rip off my glove, and choke-slam him.
I didn’t even have a freaking name. The sporadic notes referred to me as “Project E.”
My fingers curled around the paper until I heard the pages crumple. Assimilation? For me? He could assimilate my foot up his ass. And when did he start believing I had a gift? If I remembered correctly, the last thing he’d called it was
I slammed my file back down, and because I couldn’t help myself, and because I was mad and confused, I picked up Hayden’s file. I sat down and cracked it open. Immediately, my eyes scanned down the page. Just like Kurt and the rest, there was a full bio and I knew the good stuff would be on the second and third pages.
But I wanted to do it and I needed something to distract me from my desire to burn down Cromwell’s office. There was a lot about Hayden’s gift that I hadn’t known. Being an enerpath, he could manipulate almost any form of energy: use air to crush a house, create fire out of the electricity in the air, and even move the ground like a mini-earthquake. It was all pretty amazing… and frightening. I flipped the next page over and flinched.
Once, twice, three times—that was how many times I read it before my brain accepted the words written there. “Oh, my God,” I whispered.
Hayden hadn’t been removed from his parents’ home because they’d been afraid of him, but I could understand the lie. The truth would hurt too much—provoke too many questions, too many memories.
He’d just been a kid—God, only five. Way too young.
And he’d killed his entire family.
Chapter 26
An old newspaper clipping, dulled to faint yellow, had been shoved between page two and three, detailing the horrifying events without a trace of the heavy emotion involved.
The house had burned. It’d started in an upstairs bedroom, spreading downstairs and engulfing the entire home. There had been only one survivor—Hayden.
I wiped under my eyes with the back of my hand and started to close the file. But toward the end of the page, I stopped. The times Hayden struggled for control flashed before me. The day Kurt had pushed me, and when I’d found the car in my locker and the trashcan had exploded. The times we’d argued and I smelled the distinct odor of smoke—like the smell of ozone burning—not fire. Had that been one of the reasons he’d backed off from me? Maybe it hadn’t just been my suspicions. Maybe he feared losing control again because of me, like both Parker and Kurt had warned me.
I swallowed past the lump in my throat and closed the file. Sorrow burned through me. I couldn’t even begin to understand what he’d gone through—was still going through. My heart felt like it would rip open.
The guilt I carried with me over Dustin’s death was nothing compared to what he must feel.
After reading about Hayden, I didn’t care what Cromwell thought about me or the Assimilation program. If
