knowing he believed in me.
“Thanks, sweetie,” I said. I reached up and squeezed his shoulder. The muscles under my hand tensed. Relaxed. He patted my hand, then returned both of his to the wheel.
The park was no longer used—like the rest of the town of Elizabeth—and vegetation had begun to retake the grounds. Our headlights bounced off trees and bushes, casting creepy shadows all over the damned place. Marco drove toward a large lake that reflected the moonlight. He stopped when the lights fell on the same rusty oiece-of-shit car from the rest stop. He shifted into park, but left the engine running so the lights stayed on.
Teresa opened her door first. The rest of us followed suit. I almost fell over when I hit the ground. My knees were watery and I wanted to barf up the sandwich Teresa had forced me to eat before we left HQ. I made my feet take forward steps and met my group at the Sport’s fender.
The two front doors of the car popped open. Sasha emerged from the driver’s side, clutching a linen bag in her hand. I expected Rick again, but it was the Incredible Growing Boy, sporting a red-stained bandage on his wrist. The pair of them came toward us.
“You’re the doctor?” Sasha asked, looking right at the man in question.
“Abram Kinsey,” he replied. He lifted the shoulder supporting the strap of his travel medical kit. “May I see Maddie?”
“Barry will take you.”
The Incredible Growing Boy, aka Barry, led Kinsey over to the car. Kinsey opened the back door and leaned inside to do his thing.
“Thank you for trusting us to help her,” Teresa said.
“I don’t have a choice,” Sasha replied. “Maddie and I haven’t know each other very long, but I can’t let her die.”
“You don’t have to know someone well to know you’re connected.”
“True.” She tossed the linen bag at me, and I almost dropped the thing. “Put that on, please.”
My insides clenched up tight when I pulled a collar out of the bag. “This wasn’t part of the deal,” I said.
“Would you rather be tied up?”
“Fuck, no.” I detested the idea of being collared, but I couldn’t handle the alternative. The collar was the same as Ethan’s—slim, black, cool to the touch. I didn’t understand how it worked, only that when Teresa helped secure it around my neck, a gentle buzz of energy crept along my bare skin everywhere it touched me. It was tight without choking, and the scariest damned necklace I’d ever worn.
“Maddie is as stable as she’s going to get,” Dr. Kinsey said from the car. “We need to move her to the Sport.”
“I got it,” Barry said.
Before any of our crew could question him, Barry grew to an eighteen-foot-tall version of himself, creating hands the size of manhole covers. He reached into the car with surprising grace and carefully lifted Maddie out. She was wrapped in blankets, her face ashen, eyes shut. Marco opened the rear compartment of the Sport, and Barry placed her there in a nest of pillows and blankets.
He shrank back down to a more average five-eight or so, and then leaned into the Sport to kiss Maddie’s cheek. The gesture was more brotherly than romantic, and he glared at us when he pulled back. I’d put all my chips on him being the Landon to Maddie’s Bethany. This might have been the first time Barry and Maddie had been separated since they were children.
“Take care of her,” he said to Dr. Kinsey.
“I’ll do my very best, you have my word,” Kinsey replied. He got into the back with Maddie, and Marco closed the hatch.
“Time for you to go,” Sasha said to Teresa.
“Keep that phone handy,” Teresa said. “I’ll call with updates.”
“Good. Thanks.”
“Sit tight, and keep your friends out of sight, okay?”
“Duh.”
I didn’t hug Teresa or Marco good-bye. We’d done all that before leaving HQ, getting and giving last-minute bits of advice so when the time came, they could leave me behind without fanfare, like it was something we did all the time. I stood beside Sasha and Barry and watched two of my best friends drive off without me. A phantom chill settled in the space they had once occupied, and the cold crept into my guts. I didn’t know where I was going, or what would happen when I got there.
Thatcher and I hadn’t really said good-bye. I didn’t know what to say to him after that kiss, and we had no privacy anyway. His final words to me rumbled around in my head like the warning they’d been intended as:
“Let’s go,” Sasha said after we’d waited a few minutes in silence.
They directed me into the backseat, still warm from where Maddie had lain. No blood on the seat, though, which was a good sign. From the front, Barry handed me something. A necktie.
“Blindfold yourself,” he said.
I swallowed a protest. This was their show now. I gave him my very best Is-this-the-best-you’ve-got, kid? look and tied the strip of cloth around my eyes. Maybe the bravado didn’t impress him, but I felt a little bit better.
Even though my arms and legs were free, I was still bound by that fucking collar. I was at their mercy. I hadn’t felt this helpless since Specter drugged and pretzel-tied me to a pommel horse nine months ago.
The car engine rumbled to life, and we were off, destination unknown.
Tracking time in the dark doesn’t get easier, no matter how many chances you get to try it. At some point, after at least one hour but less than five (because the sun wasn’t up yet), the car stopped moving and Barry told me I could take off the blindfold. We were parked in a dirty alley behind a long row of brick residences. Most had broken windows, falling gutters, and fenced-in yards long overrun with weeds and waist-high grass. The skinny three-story row homes suggested we were close to a large city.
The only large cities within reasonable distance of Elizabeth were Philadelphia, Harrisburg, and Scranton in Pennsylvania, or Wilmington down in Delaware. I doubted that Sasha would go much farther than that from Manhattan.
The air was thick with the odors of vegetation rot, wet cement, and pollution fumes—strong enough to make my nose tingle. I followed Sasha and Barry out of the car, down at least eight homes from the car, and through the broken gate of one backyard. They wove a path through the overgrowth, careful not to trample it and make it obvious that someone was living—squatting?—here. Sasha unlocked a rusty, once-white metal door and went inside.
We stepped into a kitchen that hadn’t been new in at least fifty years and had the yellowish stains to prove it. The silence surprised me, and I figured out why—no hum of electricity anywhere in the house. A kerosene lantern on one of the warped countertops was the only light source. More golden lantern glows came from the next room.
The living room was an interesting disaster of single mattresses and sleeping bags jumbled together along the various walls. The windows were papered over and the staircase was blocked by what looked like boxes of groceries. Tate, Rick, Bethany, and Wings (name still unknown) were sitting together on one of the mattresses playing cards. The trio of boys watched as we entered, all eyes on me.
I felt a bit like I’d interrupted the worst sleepover ever.
Barry scuffed over to one of the sleeping bags, dropped down, and curled up around a flat pillow. Worrying, mourning, or sleeping, I didn’t know.
The cell Teresa had given to Sasha chimed with a text. She glanced at the screen. “Maddie is back at the Meta HQ,” she reported. “She’s in surgery to remove the bullet.”
“Good news,” Tate said.
“As long as she survives.”
Sasha said it to Tate, but I couldn’t help but feel that the statement was directed at me.
“Bathroom’s over there,” Sasha said to me, pointing to a closed door beneath the stairs. “The water’s off, but we fixed it to drain right down. If you have to take a shit, go outside into one of the yards.”
