Never Fade

It was ten more minutes before Chubs and Liam made their way back over to us. Chubs was still shaking his head, clearly frustrated. Liam kept his own face down, avoiding all of us. The biting wind or embarrassment had turned the tips of his ears red. He kept his hands shoved in his pockets as he shuffled forward, past us, toward the tent.

“He agreed to stay for now,” Chubs said. “He does want to go to California to find Zu, but he doesn’t want any of you to be able to tail us—we’ll probably have to split up before we hit state lines.”

“That kid’s a few colors short of a rainbow, isn’t he?” Vida said, rolling her eyes. Jude huddled in close to the two of them, passing the coat over to a grateful, shivering Chubs. “Be sure to send us a postcard when you get your asses caught and hauled back into a camp.”

“I’ll keep working on him,” Chubs promised. “He just needs to cool down.”

“I know,” I said. “Thank you.”

But I knew it wasn’t going to be enough.

TWENTY-THREE

NATURAL FALLS STATE PARK was located in Oklahoma, in what most considered the highlands of the Ozarks—right up in the northeast corner of the state, where it was really freaking cold in December. Chubs gave me a brief tour of the campsite as we made our way back to the others. A few picnic tables here and there, RV parking, a number of hiking trails that looped around one another. The only thing that really mattered was that the campsite was deserted.

“Are you in any pain?” he asked, tossing another branch on the growing fire.

“I’m fine. I just want to know what happened.”

I scooted, giving him half of the stump so he wouldn’t have to sit in the snow, and threw one end of the blanket over his shoulder, drawing him in close. He still smelled faintly of laundry detergent and hand sanitizer, only now I could pick up earthy scents, too—the kind that gave away just how many nights he’d slept on the ground without a shower in between. The poor kid probably felt like he was dying.

“Okay,” he said, taking a deep breath.

They knew, right away, that something was wrong when Olivia’s half of the team came back alone. She and her group of ten had made it back mostly unscathed, with as many supplies as they could carry over the water. Brett didn’t appear for another two hours, struggling through the soaking parking lot with Jude still draped over his shoulder. His team hadn’t fared so well—only five of them had made it back, and I wasn’t included in that total.

“I showed Olivia how to give the kids the medicine the right way, dosed Lee, and then we carried him out to the car. We spent most of the night driving around, trying to pick up an Internet signal to download an update from the skip-tracer network. We all were so sure the PSFs had grabbed you.”

“Almost,” I whispered, but didn’t think he could hear me.

Even before they found a connection to hook into, Cate had sent a message through the Chatter. It turned out that when you got snapped by a profiler, the device the PSF snapped in my face, it not only brought your listing up for the PSF or skip tracer’s viewing pleasure. It also automatically updated that same listing with time and location stamps on both the PSF and skip-tracer networks.

That’s how Rob knew to look in that area, I thought.

“But how did you know to look for Rob in the first place?”

“We didn’t at first. He was under a fake name.” Chubs glanced down at where his fingers were laced together. “He updated the skip-tracer network to say that you were recovered. Once that happened, I could look up his profile—see what car he’d registered and the license plate. We weren’t too far from the area, but I’m still amazed we kept it together long enough to find you. After we found you we came here— we’ve been camped out for almost four days.”

“Thanks,” I said after a small stretch of silence, “for not giving up on me.”

“You seriously thought we would?” he asked. “That we wouldn’t have done everything and anything we could to find you?”

“That’s not what I meant,” I said. “It’s just…” Maybe it would have been better if you had let them take me. The buzz in my ears drowned out the world, and I felt the first touch of panic creep back in. “If he’s this unhappy with us around, it might be for the best to split up.”

“No. It doesn’t make sense,” Chubs said. “I can’t keep up with his moods. He was freaking out when we found you—it was a full-on meltdown. I’ve never seen him like that before. Maybe some part of him figured out you guys were League before you told him…that’s the only thing I can think of that would explain why he’s acting like this. The Liam I knew wouldn’t have wanted to abandon a bunch of kids if he thought we all could get along—I mean, you’re proof of that. But it’s like, ever since he started feeling better, he’s been jumpy. Irritable.”

“He has no reason to trust us,” I said. “I understand why.”

“Look, I’m not going to choose,” Chubs said. “I can’t let him go on his own again, but I’m not going to leave you, either. So you have to find a way to make this work, got it? You have to get him to trust you. Wait—why are you shaking your head?”

“I meant what I told him,” I said. “It wasn’t the full truth, but it’s the best I can do. I’m going to help you guys get wherever it is you decide you want to go, then head back to Cole to finish this.”

Chubs’s grip on me tightened, but it was the shock and hurt and fear he let off that choked me up while I struggled to speak.

“You know…you know how important this is. I feel like if I’m not there to make sure it happens, if I don’t see for myself what caused this”—I motioned between us—“I’ll never forgive myself. If I can’t…if I can’t be around Liam anymore, I can at least do that for him. That was his dream, remember?”

“No,” he whispered, “I can’t do this again—it can’t be the way it was with Zu, the way it was the last six months. I know it’s selfish, but I have to know you’re safe, and you’ll never be safe with them. At least think about that, okay? Give me a chance to change your mind, too.”

No, I thought, giving him a weak, reassuring smile. Even if Liam didn’t look at me with such hate in his eyes, even if he had kissed me down by the falls, none of it would have mattered. I wasn’t the blank slate I’d been when Liam, Chubs, and Zu found me. I had done things I was ashamed of then, sure, but now I’d gone to a place I couldn’t come back from, and there was too much light in them to drag them there with me.

“We’ll see,” I said, squeezing his fingers, “we’ll see.”

Despite the fact he had no maps and no way of downloading any kind of update from the skip-tracer network to navigate us, Chubs still pushed to have us move out of the park as quickly as we could. We’d have one more night to rest, then start driving west again first thing in the morning.

I doubted it was because he was in any hurry to get to California. Chubs had reached his absolute breaking point for being able to handle this kind of cold—both physically and on an emotional level. I wasn’t sure what Vida was going to do if she got one more lecture about hypothermia, but I imagined it probably involved holding Chubs, the fire pit, and one well-aimed push. She hadn’t figured out that it wasn’t himself that he was worried about.

The cold weather was wreaking havoc on Liam’s lungs. He was huffing, and puffing, and hacking, and coughing every time he tried to increase his pace above a hobble. Instead of trying to gather the scattered supplies, he crouched down next to Jude and helped him stoke the fire, debating whether Bruce Springsteen’s Born in the U.S.A. was a better album than Born to Run.

Finished with that, they went to the backseat of the SUV to fish out more layers to pile on. Without a second thought to it, Liam reached down for his old leather jacket and slipped it on over the thinner dark gray one.

“But that’s—” Jude started to protest. I shook my head sharply in his direction and ducked away before Liam could turn and see what caused him to clam up. I made it a point to give him space after that, going right when he’d go left, always keeping the fire between us. By the time Jude started hinting strongly he needed to be fed dinner, Liam seemed to have relaxed. Enough, at least, to crack a smile when Chubs tripped and went down with a squawk, sending the food rations in his arms flying.