Thornhill

threatening to punch a hole through my chest.

Kneeling on the platform were Kyle and Dex. Thick manacles encircled their wrists and were connected by chains that were bolted to the stage. Kyle’s eyes were locked on Sinclair, but Dex stared at the floor in front of the dais as though he didn’t have the strength to raise his head. Someone had clubbed Dex’s temple at some point; blood had run down his face and etched each of his scars in red.

Kyle’s face was unmarked, but his shirt clung to him, the fabric darkened by stains. I tried to convince myself the stains were sweat—and some probably were—but most of the patches were too dark and had left the fabric too stiff to be anything other than blood.

How many hours? My stomach flipped and tears filled my eyes. Kyle and Dex were werewolves: as long as their captors paused to let them heal, their bodies would always be able to take more. Jason and I had been gone for nearly an entire day. Sinclair or Langley or the guards could have tortured them the entire time.

“Kyle . . .” The whisper was so low that it was barely more than my lips forming the shape of his name, but his body still tensed.

His dark eyes swept the crowd and then filled with shock and fear as they found mine. My pulse had been racing from the moment the guards had spotted Jason and me; now it climbed so high I felt like I was having a heart attack. For a moment, I worried surprise and confusion would make Kyle say or do something to give us away, but he buried his emotions as his gaze slid to Jason. The heavy chain tethering him to the dais had a slight amount of give and he wrapped the excess around his hand—almost like a makeshift knuckle ring.

Jason was still gripping my shoulder. He glanced from Kyle to me and then back. When he was certain that I wasn’t going to do anything crazy, he dropped his hand and pulled slightly away.

“What are we going to do?”

He didn’t answer.

Think. I had to think. But before I could come up with the slightest idea, Sinclair strode back across the stage.

Even at a distance, her blue eyes were too bright and the wrinkles in her suit seemed permanent. She looked like someone who had substituted Red Bull for sleep. But her voice, when she spoke, didn’t sound tired. It was sharp and focused and filled with threats.

“I’ll give you one more chance. Last night, three wolves were spotted outside after curfew. They led dozens of guards on an extensive chase and wasted hours of resources. Two of those wolves are behind me. I want to know where to find the third. Eve. Dorm Seven. ID one-three-four-eight. She wasn’t in her bed this morning. She didn’t report for class or her work detail. She is somewhere in this camp, and someone in this room had to have seen something.”

I glanced at Jason and saw the same confusion on his face that must have shown on mine. This was all about Eve? The wolves weren’t being held as some sort of bargaining chip against Hank and the pack?

That’s why the guards are facing the building, I realized. If Sinclair knew an attack was coming—if she knew the camp had been infiltrated—the guards would be facing out, not in.

But why Eve? Why would the warden drag every wolf here over one girl?

Sinclair waited.

No one moved. No one spoke.

“Do you honestly expect me to believe none of you saw a thing? No one so much as noticed her slip out after curfew?”

Again, silence.

Sinclair’s gaze swept over us—blue fire hot enough to scorch. I slouched down, praying to go unnoticed. After a moment, when no one came forward, she slipped an HFD from her pocket and pressed the trigger. Most of the wolves collapsed, including Kyle.

Jason and I quickly slumped to the ground as two of the guards broke away from the back of the room and began walking the edge of the crowd.

Aside from Dex, only one girl was unaffected. I couldn’t see her, but I could hear her. Mystified and frightened, she didn’t have the sense to play dead.

There were confused murmurs from most of the guards as they realized neither the girl nor Dex had gone down, but the two men sweeping the room didn’t seem surprised at all. I listened, helpless to intervene, as they tased the girl, then dumped her with the guards outside.

The woman with the glasses crossed the stage to speak to Sinclair. “This is completely unnecessary. A total overreaction.”

“Don’t tell me you’ve started to feel sorry for them.” I watched from under my lashes as a look of disgust crossed Sinclair’s face. “I’ve seen how much you enjoy your work.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.” The woman pulled off her glasses and wiped them on the corner of her sweater. “They’re just too valuable to play with—especially in this manner. If my superiors knew . . .”

Sinclair shook her head and slammed a door on the discussion. “I don’t answer to your superiors, and I am not playing games.” She stared levelly at the woman until she retreated to the side of the stage.

A few feet away, a boy turned his head slightly, trying to track the woman’s movement. Jason and I weren’t the only ones faking.

The warden slid her thumb off the trigger of the HFD.

Gradually, the other wolves came to. I sat up and watched Kyle shake his head and raise himself back to his knees. He wrapped the slack of the chain around his hand again. This time, there seemed to be more of it. I squinted at the dais as he leaned to the side in what looked like an innocent stretch. The bolt holding the chain to the stage seemed to lift slightly. He was breaking free in small increments that would go unnoticed until it was too late.

Frightened whispers filled the air, growing in intensity and pitch as the wolves realized one of their own— the girl—had just gone missing.

Sinclair held up the remote. “Until someone comes forward with information, this HFD will go off every five minutes.”

It was complete overkill. I could understand why she had sent men after Jason and me, but she had no reason to think Eve had made it out of the camp; she had no reason to think Eve was in any kind of position to hurt her.

“Thornhill is a choice.” A tired, frustrated note crept into the warden’s voice. “If any of you would prefer to be elsewhere, I will happily put you on a truck to Van Horne and you can find out firsthand just how horrible a camp can be.”

Find out.

It suddenly clicked. Eve hadn’t been caught with us, but that didn’t guarantee that she hadn’t seen or heard something about Serena or the detention block.

Thornhill worked because the things that didn’t make sense or were too frightening to think about stayed under the surface. People whispered about the disappearances, but no one talked about them openly. If the inmates started questioning too much, cracks would form.

Sinclair would do anything to stop that from happening. She would do anything to protect her work. And right now, anything meant finding Eve before she could spill any of the camp’s secrets —even if that entailed punishing an entire auditorium full of teens.

The brightness in the warden’s eyes wasn’t exhaustion: it was fanaticism. She was absolutely convinced that what she was doing at Thornhill was noble and right and worthy of protection.

Hank believed they were just looking for a way to make wolves easier to manage and control, that none of what was happening here was about finding a true cure. Looking at the way Sinclair’s blue eyes gleamed, I wasn’t so sure he was right. My gaze fell on the garnet ring she wore and I thought of the sister she had told me about. Everything Sinclair had done was horrible and twisted, but what if it hadn’t started out that way?

I swallowed and leaned into Jason. “How long until Hank hits the gates?”

Surreptitiously, he pulled back the cuff of his sleeve and checked his watch. “Twenty minutes. At most.”

Twenty minutes.