Mary moves her sparkler back and forth, painting the night sky with glittering yellow and orange light. “How’s this?”
“Perfect!” Peter hops up and down. “Now you, now you,” he says to me, the shyness from earlier disappearing.
I wave my hand too, and the flames follow, sparks that die out so fast they are just fleeting bursts of color. I draw a heart in the air, watching as it slowly fades away.
Wes jogs back over to us, his long body framed by the lingering smoke. He is smiling, his hair flopping as he moves, and that’s when I notice that I haven’t seen him shake at all today. He has lost those razor sharp edges, lost that careful watchfulness, that feeling that he is both the hunter and the prey.
Just like the Bentleys, he is working on putting himself back together. Even though I pushed him away, even though the Project tried to break us both, he kept fighting. And now he is almost healed.
I’m the last piece, the only thing keeping him from being completely whole again.
When he is close enough, he circles and stands at my back. He laughs at something Peter says, but I can feel the way he resists coming any closer to me. I take a deep breath and then lean back, knowing he will be there to stop my fall.
He freezes when our bodies touch, and then his hands slide around my middle. The sparkler fizzles out in my hand, but that is when Dr. Bentley lights the end of a Roman candle, holding it at an angle, the end pointed above the treetops. Sparks fly out. I hear Peter squeal. There is a low booming sound and the firework shoots out of the stick and up in the air, a ball of light that arches over the sky, suspended for a moment like any other star, falling just as the next one moves to take its place.
Chapter 21
Wes holds the door open for me and I step into the shack. A sliver of moonlight falls in through the window, but it is not enough to light the dark space and I bump against the kitchen counter when I take a step forward.
“Hang on,” Wes says.
I hear him step in behind me, then watch the outline of his body as he moves around the room by instinct. He strikes a match, the sulfur hitting me even before he can light the few candles that rest on the table.
A faint glow spreads across the room, and I see his face now, half in shadow as he stands next to the bed.
It isn’t late, but I’m exhausted, the past week finally catching up to me. Time has been changing so rapidly. First it is evening, then afternoon, in the blink of an eye, and I am disoriented from traveling through time.
I glance down at the bed, which suddenly looks even narrower than it did this afternoon. Wes and I last slept near each other on a bed of moss, a clearing four times this size. I am suddenly awkward, gripping the fabric of my skirt in my hands, avoiding his gaze to stare at the splintered wooden floor.
“Lydia.”
At his serious tone, I turn to face him.
“We need to talk about this.” He reaches around and pulls out the folder that he tucked up under the back of his shirt, refusing to leave it in his house where someone could find it. He sets it on the table. I sink down into a wooden chair and rest my hand on the thick paper.
“You won’t run away with me, will you?” he asks.
I look up, willing him to understand. “There was a time I would have, but that was before I made the decision to end the Project. If we run, we’ll always be running. And I don’t think that’s what you want either, Wes. I saw how you were today, with the Bentleys. You’ve found something you’ve always been looking for.”
He watches me for a moment, then sighs and pulls out a chair, the wood scraping loudly against the floor. “Where do we start?”
I sit up straighter. “You’ll help me?”
“You’re right, Lydia.” He rests his hands on the table near mine. “I don’t want a life where I’m on the run forever, always wondering if they’re right behind me. And I won’t make you do this by yourself.”
I reach out and touch his palm. It’s just the slight pressure of my finger on his skin, but we both go still, staring down at our hands. “Thank you,” I whisper. “I didn’t want to do it alone.”
Wes clears his throat and sits back, breaking the contact. “LJ was right that the easiest solution is to get rid of Faust and the documents.”
I take his cue and carefully open the folder. “Which we can do by sending him back through time, and burning his files.”
He nods. “But now we have the TM to deal with. We’ll have to destroy that, too.”
“One of LJ’s suggestions is to blow it up, and I think that’s the best idea. If there’s even a trace of it left, then they might be able to rebuild it.”
Wes looks up at me. “Bombs are messy, Lydia.”
“But what else could work?”
He stares down at the pages, spreading them out until they fan across the table. After a minute he shakes his head. “You’re right. A bomb is the only way.”
“We could steal them from the Facility. They have a weapons room.”
“Or we could make our own. All we’d need are gunpowder, potassium nitrate, and charcoal. I’d rather have our own weapons than rely on theirs.”
I frown. “Could we even get those things in this era?”
“It’s easier now than it would have been in yours. We’ll have to
