“Bullshit, they pointed a gun at you.”
Her eyes narrowed briefly. “I’m fine.” She didn’t react well to guns, not since she was shot back in June. And she was getting really good at hiding her emotions from the rest of us. She didn’t want us to see her upset.
“You’re not fine.”
“I’m fine for now, okay? I have to deal with the Jersey police before I can deal with myself.”
“Have they already called?” Thatcher asked.
“Several times.” Teresa pinched the bridge of her nose. “Explaining this without throwing Landon and Bethany under the bus won’t be easy, but we’ll manage. I don’t want to turn those other kids against us any more than they already are.”
“Angry teenagers with grudges are scary,” I said.
Hey, it sounded profound in my head.
“And they’re unpredictable,” Teresa said. “If Uncle hadn’t called the police in and forced a fight, we might have been able to reason with them, maybe even bring them in with us.” Some of her veneer cracked, and her genuine anguish at failing to get those kids on our side flashed through.
“What can I do, T?” I asked automatically.
She smoothed my hair back from my forehead in a motherly gesture. “Go upstairs and rest. Please?”
“Okay.”
“Make sure she does?” she said to Thatcher.
He nodded. “Certainly.”
Teresa left the cubicle. Thatcher cleared my leaving with Dr. Kinsey, then led me out of the infirmary. The world wasn’t quite solid or on an even keel, so I ended up leaning pretty heavily on Thatcher as we went upstairs.
It didn’t really occur to me that he was in my room until he was helping me unzip my bloody uniform. The gentle attention felt nice. He got the sleeve off my right arm, then slipped out of the room with a promise to be right back. I yanked the skintight material off and left it in a heap on the floor. The tank top and shorts I usually slept in did shit to hide the worst of my scars, but I didn’t care. My arm was throbbing by the time I sat back down on the bed.
Thatcher returned with two damp washcloths, which he used to wipe my face and neck free of dirt and blood. I let him, unable to fight or protest that I could do it myself, because I couldn’t. I didn’t mind letting him help me. I watched his eyes as he cleaned me up, curious. Not once did I see shock or disgust—only concern. And something else, something I couldn’t define.
Something that, if I did define it, would scare the shit out of me.
He tucked me into bed. It felt amazing to lie down and relax, even though my arm was alive with a heavy, persistent throb. Thatcher knelt by the bed, his head so close to mine I could smell his soap.
“Thank you,” I said.
“You’re very welcome. Get some rest, Renee.”
“M’kay.”
I closed my eyes and let the drugs carry me off. But I didn’t go far enough to miss the light brush of lips against my forehead, or the softly whispered, “I don’t want to hurt you.”
Sixteen
Quite a lot happened while I was sleeping off the heavy dose of painkillers, and I got the rundown later that night at dinner. My arm still ached like someone had clamped it into a vise that kept getting tighter and tighter, but I’d spent way too much time wounded on the sidelines lately. A bullet hole was nowhere near as debilitating as those burns had been, so after a long (slightly awkward) shower, I threw on some sweats and wobbled downstairs to the cafeteria.
The usual suspects were gathered at one of the long tables: Teresa and Gage, Ethan and Aaron, Marco, plus Lacey and Bethany. I helped myself to a bowl of what looked like chicken noodle soup—didn’t want to tempt vomiting with anything heavier—and plopped down next to Marco.
“So what did I miss?” I asked.
“How’s your arm?” Ethan asked back.
“Still attached. Hurts like hell. What did I miss?”
Teresa shoved food around on her plate, her exhaustion plain to see in her pale face and the dark smudges under her eyes. Next to her, Gage became her mouthpiece. “Mostly we’ve bought some time to keep figuring things out,” he said.
The short version: New Jersey police had a fit about our fight at the high school and the two dead bodies left behind. Teresa hadn’t corrected the detective when he suggested the two dead kids were the same wanted in Pennsylvania for a string of burglaries, which was a temporary positive for Landon and Bethany. She also spoke with Warden Hudson about keeping Thatcher out of Manhattan for another week to help us find other Meta kids, to which Hudson agreed. The job will probably take longer than a week, but Teresa won’t push her luck too hard. Extensions are easier to ask for than an unlimited release.
Teresa seriously had Hudson wrapped around her little finger. I needed to learn how she did that.
“So what’s the plan with Thatcher?” I asked. Knowing he was here for another week caused a small flare of happiness, tempered only by it driving home the point that his stay was temporary. A conditional release. Period.
“Sooner or later, Warden Hudson will feel compelled to tell the authorities what he knows about Landon and the robberies,” Gage replied. “Once the Jersey police run DNA tests on Louis Becker, they’ll figure out the body they have is not Thatcher’s son.”
“Unless . . .” Teresa trailed off. The sour looks that passed between them flashed
“Wait,” I said, “you want to mess with DNA tests? Make the authorities believe Bethany and Landon are dead?”
“It would keep them safe,” Teresa said. “This Overseer will know the truth, but at least the human authorities won’t be after them anymore.”
“What about Louis and Summer? Their families deserve to know they’re dead, don’t they?”
Her purple eyes sparked with anger. “Of course they do, Renee. We’ll keep looking for their surviving family. That’s not in question.”
“What’s in question is the ethics of using their deaths to our advantage,” Gage said.
I glanced around the table, a little lost and hoping to gauge the opinions of the others. Mostly they were eating, eyeballs on their plates. Only Bethany was paying close attention, and when she met my gaze, I swear she looked ready to burst into tears.
“What do you think of all this?” I asked her, baffled why I even bothered.
“Those guys are dead because of me and Landon,” Bethany said, her standard bravado completely gone. “The others? They’re all alone now. They hate us. We don’t deserve your help. You should have let those clones kill us on the side of the turnpike.”
She ducked her head, hiding her face behind a fall of hair. She was on Gage’s left, between him and Lacey. Lacey gave the teenager’s shoulder a squeeze.
“Letting the clones kill you was never an option,” Teresa said. “Sometimes good guys and bad guys are a matter of perspective, but not in this case. You and Landon were used, manipulated, and lied to for a long time. What’s happening now isn’t your fault, okay?”
Maybe it was a little their fault, but I wasn’t about to say that and interrupt T’s moment with the mouthy brat.
Bethany sighed, then reached into her pocket for something. She tossed it across the table, and it clanked next to Ethan’s plate. “That’s the key to your collar,” she said.
