“That I’d get you out if I had a chance. So many strange things were happening at the camp that he worried Sinclair wouldn’t let you go—even if she found out you were a reg.”
“You’re lying. He would have told me.” But even as the words left my mouth, I knew they weren’t true. Kyle had kept things from me before—like his infection and leaving Hemlock. All of the fight drained out of me and I sagged against the seat.
Slowly, cautiously, Jason let go of my wrists and eased his body off mine.
Kyle must have heard Tanner tell Sinclair the Trackers were nearing the camp. He must have known they were coming for Jason and me. That was why he had told me not to resist.
The tears I had barely managed to keep in check finally spilled over. It felt as though something had punched through my breastbone and was prying my ribs apart.
Jason reached for me—comfort, not restraint—but I edged away. “I told you not to touch me.” The words were raw with the strain of not sobbing.
I wiped my eyes with the edge of my sleeve and turned to stare out the back window.
Thornhill was already gone. The only thing behind us was empty road.
Sinclair had broken Serena and she would break Kyle and Dex. For all I knew, Eve hadn’t made it out and was either dead or in her grasp as well.
The warden held all of the cards. Everything that mattered. I didn’t have so much as a shred of proof about what was really going on beneath the sanatorium. Beneath Willowgrove.
Fresh tears blurred my vision.
Whatever game we had fallen into, Sinclair had won.
AFTER AMY DIED, I HAD SPENT SLEEPLESS NIGHTS WONDERING what falling into a black hole would feel like. Everything that made you up—every atom, every thought—would be pulled apart in a moment where time had no meaning.
I don’t know how or why that specific thought had started. Maybe it was because Amy was our center; without her, everything seemed to collapse.
Sitting in the Town Car as we got farther and farther from Thornhill, I didn’t have to wonder what being torn apart would feel like: I knew.
Slowly, every muscle aching, I turned my back on the empty road.
I reached out and ran a finger over the tinted glass separating us from the Trackers. “Can they hear us?” I tried to look at Jason. It took me two attempts to manage it.
“No.” He nodded as he said the word.
“I called them.” Jason swallowed and my eyes were drawn to the ring of bruises around his neck.
It struck me, suddenly, how lucky he was. How lucky we both were. A werewolf should have been able to snap his neck like a twig, and there was no way I should have just walked away after one shoved me into a wall. Not any time soon. Either some part of Serena was still capable of holding back, or whatever they had done to her had left her with little more strength than a reg.
Ben had been able to control his own version of bloodlust—not much, but a little. Enough that he had tried to fight the urge to kill me.
I pushed the thought away. I didn’t want to believe Serena had bloodlust or anything like it. “How did you call them?” I asked, forcing myself to focus back on Jason. “You told me cells were jammed inside the camp.”
“They are.” He gave me a long, searching stare. “Mac, I . . .” He glanced at the smoky glass and cut himself off from whatever it was he wanted to say. “The doctor stepped out of the infirmary to talk to the guys who brought me upstairs. I used the phone on his desk to call my contact in Denver. With all the extra guards on patrol, I figured there might not be anyone monitoring the outgoing calls. I was right.”
He ran a hand through his hair, leaving it sticking up in an unruly halo. “I told the Trackers that Sinclair was hiding wolves from the LSRB and putting their welfare above the safety of the regs on staff. I didn’t have time to tell them much, but it was enough for them to want a full report. Enough for them to get me out.”
I stared at him skeptically. “And, what? They asked nicely and she just let us go?”
“They threatened to tell the LSRB about the discrepancy in her registration records. You know how much government agencies like audits. They’d send agents to Thornhill before Sinclair could say ‘investigation.’”
And if she was working on some crazy cure in secret, an investigation was the last thing she’d want.
I sank back against the seat and pressed the heels of my palms to my eyes until starbursts fired behind my closed lids. “She’ll take it out on Kyle and Dex,” I said, slowly lowering my hands. I wanted to throw up. “She’ll make the two of them pay for the fact that we got out—that’s if she doesn’t just make them crazy like Serena.”
“I didn’t have a choice, Mac.”
I didn’t say anything. There was nothing I could say without completely losing it and saying too much. What had given them—both him and Kyle—the right to go behind my back and make secret plans to get me out whether I wanted them to or not?
A small voice in the back of my head pointed out that I wouldn’t have survived one day of Sinclair’s torture.
As hard as I tried, I couldn’t completely tune out the voice.
I let out a shaky breath. Being angry at Jason might be temporarily satisfying, but it wouldn’t help anything in the long run. “I get why the Trackers would come to your rescue, but why am I here? Why would they bother with me?”
He shrugged. “I told them you were an undercover reporter who had seen a lot more of the camp than I had.”
It beat telling them who I really was. If the Trackers found out they had the reg daughter of a pack leader . . .
The thought hit me a nanosecond before the car swerved.
I was thrown against Jason so violently that I ended up half in his lap.
“What the hell are they doing?” The words had barely left Jason’s lips when the car put on a sudden burst of speed.
I pushed away and then froze. A sliver of white and chrome was visible through Jason’s window for a split second before it fell back.
My pulse jumped as I strained to catch a glimpse of the other car. There were white jeeps at Thornhill—a whole row of them next to the admission building. Had Sinclair changed her mind about letting us go?
Jason tried to lower the partition separating us from the Trackers. It wouldn’t go down. “Hey!” He hit it with his fist, splitting his knuckles and leaving a dark smear against the glass.
The car swerved again, this time throwing both of us to my side of the seat as gunfire erupted behind us.
“Down!” I yelled, grabbing Jason’s arm and rolling us both to the floor.
His breath came out in a whoosh as I landed on top of him, but his arms strained around me, holding me tightly as another round of gunfire split the air.
There was a bone-jarring impact from behind. The Town Car put on a second burst of speed, but it wasn’t enough. A scream ripped from my throat as the car was hit again. The sound of groaning metal filled the air, and with a third hit, they managed to run us off the road.
The car bounced over uneven ground and then pitched sharply to the left. We tilted onto two wheels. For a horrible moment, I thought we were going to flip, but then the other wheels crashed back to the ground and we came to a shuddering stop.
