“Does it hurt?” His voice is tight with emotion, but I can’t tell what he’s thinking.
I shake my head—a difficult task with Wes holding on to me—and our skin rubs together. “I feel a little dizzy.”
He lifts my chin and looks into my eyes, and I feel my pulse pick up. “I don’t think you have a concussion. But you’ll probably have a headache tomorrow.”
I scrunch my nose. “Just what I need.”
His lips curve slightly. It makes him look younger. “How old are you?” I ask, curious.
“Seventeen.” He lets go of my face and steps back. The moon is so much brighter out here than it was in the forest, and I watch as he folds up the dirty cloth and tucks it into the pocket of his black pants.
“That’s how old I am. When’s your birthday?”
He raises his eyebrows. “Why do you want to know?”
I open my mouth, surprised when the truth tumbles out. “My best friend has this thing about people’s signs.”
This time his lips curve up even more. I can see the hint of a dimple in his right cheek.
“The beginning of August,” he answers.
“That means you’re a … Leo. Right?”
The softness vanishes from his face, and I wonder what kind of nerve I just struck. “I wouldn’t know.”
“Leos are strong and independent.” My voice is quiet. He stares down at me as he leans against the open door of the jeep. “And loyal and protective.”
“Do you believe in that stuff?”
I shrug and laugh a little. “I make fun of Hannah mercilessly, but sometimes I think there’s a little bit of truth in it.”
“Hannah. She’s your best friend?”
I nod and bite my lip. He follows the movement. “You miss her.”
It’s more of a statement than a question, but I answer him anyway. “Yes, a lot.” Tears start to form behind my eyes and I blink rapidly, feeling like an idiot.
Wes, of course, misses none of this. “If you’re sad, and have people you love at home to go back to, then why do you insist on staying here?” The question isn’t hostile—he genuinely sounds like he doesn’t understand.
But for me it brings back all the unanswered questions and all the secrets. I swing my legs around to face him. “You can’t ask me questions like that. Not when you’ve been keeping so many secrets from me. You say it’s to protect me, so I haven’t pushed you very hard for answers. But I can’t keep being in the dark. You need to tell me what’s going on. Starting with who you are.”
His face goes blank. “You need to tell me why you want to save Dean.”
I lift my hands. “Isn’t it obvious?”
He doesn’t answer.
“He’s my family, Wes. If I can save Dean then I can give my grandfather his life back. I can make sure Mary doesn’t lose her brother, or that the Bentleys don’t lose a son. Can’t you see that?”
The mask covering his features cracks a little, and I see the naked vulnerability in his eyes again. I realize then that he doesn’t see, but that he wants to.
“Wes.” I lean forward. “Please tell me who you are and what your role in the Montauk Project is.”
“I don’t want to put you at risk. If you know too much …”
I reach out, placing my hand on the bare skin of his wrist. He looks down at the soft pressure, then back at me, his jaw clenched. I realize it’s the first time I’ve touched him, at least when we weren’t running for our lives. I’m surprised by how much it seems to affect him.
“Don’t you think I already know too much anyway?” I say it lightly, but he obviously doesn’t take it that way. His hand is rigid under mine.
“Lydia, you don’t understand what they’re capable of. You don’t understand what they would do to you if you got caught in the Facility.”
I think of the screaming noises and of the room full of children.
The room of children. Wes. I sit up straighter and my hand falls away from his. The pieces come together in my head, and I gaze at Wes with a mixture of sympathy and horror.
“Are you …?” I can’t even finish the sentence. “Were you …?”
He turns away from me fully, looking out at the water.
“Wes …”
“I was born in nineteen seventy-three in New York City.” His voice is lower than I’ve ever heard it. “It was nineteen eighty-four when I was … taken. I was eleven or so, running with this gang of kids, living in an abandoned subway station uptown. I was walking down the street one day when someone grabbed me, threw me into a van, and knocked me out. I didn’t see his face. I woke up in Hero. And then the training started. If you can call it that.”
“What happened to you?” I force myself to ask the question, afraid of what he’ll tell me.
“I was reconditioned, or that’s what they called it. Beaten. Brainwashed. They use children because they can travel more easily. After adolescence, usually older than eighteen or nineteen, someone is more prone to going crazy, to getting hurt. Especially if it’s his first trip through time. Children seem mostly unaffected. And children are more easily controlled.”
I close my eyes, picturing everything he’s not telling me. What it was really like for him, the hell of living through the Montauk Project. “God, Wes.”
Then I remember those “after” photos, with the men either lost in time or lost in their own minds. “Is that why the subjects in this time period can’t travel?”
Wes nods. “The TM is still unpredictable in nineteen forty-four, and they can screw with dates and times. But yes, the reason those soldiers are going crazy is because they’re not young enough for their bodies and minds to handle the pressure.”
Something occurs to me and
