“I’m seventeen.” He sounds amused. “For you, it’s the year twenty twelve. For me, it’s earlier. I would need to go back to nineteen ninety to be a part of the normal time line again.”
“So because we’re younger, we can travel without a problem.” I press my hand to my forehead. “But if Dean goes in …”
He watches me silently.
“… he won’t make it. Don’t you see why I have to help him then?” My voice sounds unnaturally high.
Wes’s shoulders tense.
“He’s going to get sucked up by the Montauk Project just like you are.”
“Then he’s already dead, Lydia.” The words sound as if they’re ripped from his throat. “Anyone who knows about the Project dies the moment they’re not useful anymore. Sometimes before.”
I look at him in shock. “How are you useful for the Project?” I breathe.
He tears his gaze away from me, staring down at the sand under his feet. “I’m a recruit. We travel to different periods to find information or to subtly change a moment in history.”
“But you were so angry with me because of the butterfly effect!”
“Subtle changes in history, Lydia. The scientists calculate the odds of unintended changes and the recruits perform the missions.”
I try not to think of what it was like in the TM. “You’re constantly traveling in that machine. How have you been doing that for six years?”
He runs his hand over his jaw, a gesture I’m starting to recognize. “You get used to it.”
He rests his hand on the door of the jeep. It’s almost as bright as day out here with the moon reflecting on the water.
“How many times have you seen the world change?” I ask quietly. “How many different versions of time have you lived through?”
His eyes go black. “Too many.” He turns away from me until he’s facing the ocean. His profile looks cut from stone.
“Why do you stay, Wes? If it were me, I would run.”
“No, you wouldn’t. They’d find you. They always find you.” He refuses to raise his eyes; his fists are tight against his sides. I reach out to him, then drop my hand, not sure how he’ll respond to my touch.
“It doesn’t matter anyway.” His voice is blank, emotionless. “Pretty soon I’ll be too old to travel, and then I’ll be useless.”
I breathe in sharply. “Are you saying they’ll kill you?”
He doesn’t answer.
“You can’t just give up. You can’t.” I lean forward. “Giving up is the same as dying, isn’t it?”
He finally lifts his gaze to mine. “There’s not a lot of hope in my world, Lydia. That’s why I need to keep you away from it.”
“Wes,” I whisper.
He slowly bends down until our faces are only inches apart. I feel my cheeks burn as I stare at the full curve of his bottom lip. “I don’t want you to give up,” I whisper, realizing, as I say them, that the words are true.
His eyes flicker to my mouth. I press my hands onto my knees. His lips are almost on mine—
We’re interrupted by a shout: “Who’s there?”
We pull apart. There’s a shadowy figure standing on a dune not far from the truck.
“Move back,” Wes says softly. I swing my legs into the cab and he shuts the passenger door. A man is coming down the sand toward us. As he gets closer, I see that he’s wearing rough fisherman clothing, with a blue Coast Guard cap on his head—he’s a civilian volunteer, a member of the home guard.
“It’s all right, I’m a soldier at the base,” Wes says.
“What’s your division?” The man approaches the truck. He shines the flashlight into my face, and I shrink away from the light.
“Hmm.” He gives Wes a different kind of look.
“We would appreciate if you didn’t say anything,” Wes replies. “Her parents …”
The man cocks his head at us. I hold my breath. Finally he laughs. “I remember what it was like to be young. You kids better get on out of here now.”
Wes nods. “Appreciate it.” He gets into the truck and starts the engine. We drive through the sand until we reach the old highway.
We don’t speak again until Wes parks on the Bentleys’ road, a few feet from their driveway. He sits back against his seat and looks at me. I stare straight ahead, trying to organize my thoughts.
I almost kissed Wes. I wanted to kiss Wes. But there’s no future for us. His life is chaos and torture and time travel. Once I leave here, I’ll probably never see him again.
“You’re a recruit.” I break the silence, trying to sound businesslike and brisk. “Which means you should have tried to kill me when I stumbled into the time machine. Why didn’t you?”
“I—” His fingers tighten on the steering wheel. “You went back in time by mistake. Once I knew you were in nineteen forty-four, I had to get you out. Like I said, you being here could change things.”
I bite my lip. There must be something he’s not telling me.
“So I’m just a job to you. Another mission?” He doesn’t answer. “Is the Montauk Project expecting you to bring me back to twenty twelve?” A dark thought flashes through my mind and I say it out loud. “Are you going to kill me the minute I get back to the future?”
“No.” Wes sounds offended, and his gaze cuts into mine.
“But if I’m a mission, then they must want you to kill me at some point.” I shrink away from him slightly.
He sees the movement and his eyes narrow. “I’m not going to kill you, Lydia. I snuck you into Camp Hero. If they had found either of us, we’d both be dead.”
I look at him, surprised. “Why would they kill you? I thought I was the only one in danger.”
“I’m not … supposed to be here either.” His voice is flat, and he rubs his jaw again.
“I thought
