Okay, so not completely true. Our suspects had names and backstories, but those things did us a fuck lot of good if we didn’t know where to find said suspects. They obviously had zero trouble finding us, and they knew exactly how to hurt us. If Teresa was the mothering heart of our group, then Ethan was everyone’s big brother. He had friends here and in Manhattan who were willing to fight for him—few of us could say the same thing.
No one was on the field now, and I had a clear view of the prison and its walls. For a while I’d been angry at Ethan for changing his mind about the Banes. He’d come to Manhattan a month ago to help Simon find a few missing prisoners, and he’d returned home with a new perspective on their situation. I’d lost my only ally in that argument, and I’d resented him for it. Resented everyone, actually, for being so willing to let go of everything the Banes had done. For forgiving them and wanting to work alongside them as fellow Metas.
Shades of gray scared me—black and white, Bane and Ranger, was easier. But how did I start to see those shades of gray, and see the Banes as my fellow Metas, when doing so felt like betraying the very thing that once saved my life?
A long shadow fell on the grass right before I heard fabric rustling. Someone was approaching from a wide angle, taking care to make sure I knew they were coming before they scared the crap out of me. I shifted around, intending to thank that person, until I saw Derek Thatcher walking toward me with a plate in his hand. My heart did a funny little leap that was probably just nerves.
“Mind if I join you?” he asked.
“Would it matter if I did?”
He smiled, and in the odd golden haze of twilight, I realized again he was actually kind of handsome. “Not in the least, since I’m outside and technically in your care.”
“Then join away.”
“Thank you.” He sat on the opposite end of the bench, leaving a comfortable space between us. “Teresa insisted I bring you this.” He held out the plate.
I eyeballed the roast beef sandwich, and my empty stomach clenched with want. I took the plate. “Thanks. I don’t know what Teresa would do with her time if she didn’t have us to mother over.”
“Difficult to guess. Possibly settle down and become a mother to her own children?”
The comment stopped me cold. Teresa had made an offhand comment to me a few weeks ago about wanting a family with Gage one day, when it was safe for us. I’d said that I doubted it would ever be safe for us to be parents, when it wasn’t even safe to be ourselves. She’d bitterly agreed.
“She’d make a great mom,” I said, then stuffed my mouth full of roast beef.
“She does seem to have that instinct, despite her past.”
“What do you know about her past?”
He draped one arm across the back of the bench, angling his body toward me. “A lot of stories have been floating around the Warren these last few months. No one ever told us what happened to you kids after that final day in Central Park, not until January when our powers came back. Even then it’s only come to us in dribs and drabs.”
“So you know that since you and your pals killed all of our parents and mentors, we ended up in foster care?” He flinched, and instead of that giving me a sense of perverse satisfaction, I felt a pang of something else. Something kind of like guilt. But I didn’t let up. “And that some of us, like Ethan, were stuck in horrific situations until they aged out?”
“Yes, I know that.” His gray eyes burned with grief and anger, and I had to look away. “I lost everything in the War, too, you know. My wife and son, my freedom, my identity as a Meta. Gone.”
I put the plate down between us, no longer interested in the half-eaten sandwich. “I know that.”
“I remember you from that day,” he said softly.
“I’m kind of unforgettable.” I put my hand on the bench next to his and really saw my blue for the first time, so glaringly different from his rough, tanned skin. “People generally remember having seen the blue girl.”
“Something tells me no one has ever really seen you, Renee.”
My insides clenched up tight. I tucked my hand back into my lap, but couldn’t muster up any anger over his comment. Hell, he was probably right, and hadn’t I done that to myself? Built up the exterior persona of the confident, curvy dancer with the sharp tongue and high-pitched laugh? I’d had those walls up for years. Without their protection, I’d be defenseless.
“I wasn’t much older than some of you,” Thatcher said when I didn’t respond. “Many of us were barely in our twenties when we were imprisoned. We weren’t fighting for a cause anymore, we were fighting for our lives. Specter could have killed any one of us with a thought, and we knew it. It’s how he controlled us, got us to fight for him.”
“Kill or be killed?”
“Yes. I doubt he was even in New York that last day.”
Following a general who was too chickenshit to make a personal appearance in his own campaign? I was doubly glad to have a leader who charged forward at the head of the line, who would take a metaphorical bullet for any one of us (and had taken a literal bullet for Dahlia).
“Can I ask you something?” I said.
He hesitated, then nodded slowly. “Go ahead.”
“If you hated Specter so much, then why did you keep an innocent locked up in his place? Why pretend for so many years that Specter was in Manhattan with the rest of you?”
“For the same reason: fear.” He scrubbed his hands across his face, then through his hair. “None of us had a clue what happened to our powers, if it was temporary or if they’d come back. We were still afraid of Specter, and we knew that if the authorities believed he was free, he’d be hunted down and tossed in with the rest of us. We were terrified of what he’d do to us if our powers came back. As the years passed, the ruse became part of our daily lives. Even when we gave up hope of ever getting our powers back, we feared reprisal from the warden if he discovered we’d lied about Specter. So we kept the secret.”
I studied Derek Thatcher for a moment, trying to see the younger man he’d once been—the man so afraid of another Meta that he’d done horrific things. He was there, beneath the crow’s-feet and threads of silver in his hair. Beneath the hardness that living in prison for so long had created around him. I knew about hardness and walls and fear, so much more than I could ever tell him.
“Needless to say, the warden was furious when he discovered what we’d done,” Thatcher added. “It’s part of the reason why we stayed away from the Warren for years, until Simon and Ethan made contact. It’s why I’m positive that I’ll never receive my pardon.”
“Helping with this case may sway Warden Hudson’s opinion.”
“Doubtful.” He gave me a sad smile. “Honestly, this case may be my last chance to see the outside world, and I’m okay with that. All I want now is to save my son.”
Something tender squeezed at my heart. I tried to ignore it. I didn’t want to have sympathy for Thatcher, or to experience genuine regret that he’d already given up hope of ever gaining his freedom. Feeling those things were just too dangerous. “I hope we can,” I said. “Save your son, I mean.”
“Thank you. And I hope we find Ethan safe and sound.”
“Me, too.”
“He tried to save us the day of the helicopter crash, and he nearly died for his trouble.”
“Ethan would stand in front of a speeding train to protect someone from danger, even if he didn’t know them. It’s what the Rangers taught us.”
“That it’s somehow noble and heroic to die protecting a stranger?”
Why did it sound stupid when Thatcher said it like that? “Yes. It is.”
“Wouldn’t you rather die knowing you’d saved someone you love, instead of a nameless person who probably won’t remember you when you’re gone?”
“Janie Muldoon.”
Thatcher blinked hard several times. “Who’s she?”
“The Ranger who died saving my life when I was eight years old. I was a stranger to her, a kid she’d never met. She died that day, burned to death.” Tears stung my eyes as old memories clawed at the veil I’d put over them almost twenty years ago. Memories dredged up three months ago when I was burned so badly I wanted to
