I move toward him because I cannot help it, we are magnetic, and his fingers tangle in the loose strands of my hair. He kisses me, then pulls back. “I love the freckle you have right here.” With his opposite hand he touches my face, just below my eye.
I run my fingers over his shoulders. He has twin bullet holes, one on each arm, and I trace the raised white flesh on his right shoulder. The one on the left side is newer, still an angry pink. “It’s strange to see this healed. For me, it happened three days ago.”
He twists, pulling me down beneath him on the bed. “Wes . . .”
“What?” His voice is muffled against my collarbone.
“We have to concentrate.”
“On what?” His hand cups my cheek, his mouth moving lower.
“The plan.”
He lifts up until he’s staring me in the face. “We’ve been over the plan a hundred times. We’ve made the bombs. We put the letter on Jacob’s desk. All that’s left is to execute it, and we can’t do that for hours.”
“Aren’t you scared?” I ask.
He twists his finger around a lock of my hair. “A little. But we’ve been in the Facility before, and this time there are fewer soldiers and no cameras. We’ll be fine.”
But I can’t relax. Everything is riding on tomorrow.
“We’re trained for this,” Wes says. But then he sees the way I bite my lip and he sighs. “Lydia, don’t worry. We’re ready. And you’re here, in my bed, and I don’t want to think about what could go wrong tomorrow.” He moves his hand from my hair to my cheek, running the backs of his fingers down to my chin. “Let’s think about something else, okay?”
I nod, knowing I need to trust him, to believe that we will succeed. He leans over and kisses me, and then I stop thinking about anything at all.
We get dressed in the early morning, when the sky is just starting to lighten and the moon is low on the horizon. I put on Wes’s old recruit uniform, washed and tucked away in a drawer. It is too big on me, but I roll up the sleeves and the pant legs. Wes is dressed in black too, in a tight T-shirt and rugged work pants.
When we leave the shack, the fog from the ocean hits us, damp and thick, making it hard to see where we’re walking. Wes takes my hand and we stumble over to his truck, our shoes slipping on the wet grass.
Maybe it is the mist, maybe we are both still wrapped up in what it felt like to lie in each other’s arms all night, but neither of us senses her presence until it is too late. Wes reaches for the handle of the passenger’s-side door when he freezes, slowly turning to face the beach. I turn with him, and that’s when I see her, standing on the top of a dune, her black uniform molded to her body, the rolling mass of waves at high tide crashing on the sand behind her. It is Twenty-two. She’s holding a gun, and it’s pointed right at us.
Chapter 23
She steps down off the sand, the high sea grass winding around her legs. Neither Wes nor I moves as she approaches. “You need to come with me,” she says, the sound of the crashing waves nearly drowning out her words. “General Walker sent me to bring you back.”
“You’re alive,” I whisper. “I thought . . .”
“That I was dead? Is that why you left me?” Neither of us answers. “I eventually broke out of a federal prison, and made it to Montauk on my own.”
Wes steps away from the door of the truck so that his body is partially in front of mine. “How did you find us?”
She turns the gun until it’s pointed at him. “One of the scientists here logged that he saw a girl who had a similar appearance to Seventeen exit the TM. The general said that if I found her, Eleven would be there, too.” Her mouth twists slightly.
“We tried to go back for you,” I say. “There were too many bullets. We couldn’t reach you.”
She keeps the gun on Wes, ignoring me. The wind from the ocean whips through her sleek, dark ponytail, sending pieces of hair fanning out over her shoulder. “I’ve been instructed to use force, if necessary. He doesn’t need you both, just Seventeen. Eleven is expendable.”
I jerk forward, but Wes puts his arm out to stop me. “I’m not going.” I spit out the words.
She steps closer, her eyes on Wes’s arm, curled protectively across my body. “I’ll shoot him if you don’t.”
Wes is silent, his muscles tight, his gaze trained on Twenty-two. Her hand trembles. It is just a moment, just a second, but we both see it.
“I have to complete this mission,” she states. “I have to do whatever it takes to bring Seventeen back to General Walker.”
“I know why they want me. But I won’t do it.” I am shouting at her now, and still the words are lost, muted by the constant wind.
“Seventeen is valuable to the Project.” Her eyes flash, though otherwise she keeps her face carefully empty. It is like she is a thin sheet of ice—tranquil on the surface, water raging underneath. “Eleven is too old. He has been traveling too long.”
“He saved you.” I push against Wes’s arm, and he lowers it slowly. “He saved your life and you fell in love with him. I watched how you looked at him in the woods. Do you think I didn’t see it? You can’t shoot him, any more than I could.”
“And I watched you!” Her voice finally cracks, the gun swinging toward me. I stop moving, and Wes’s body becomes even more solid beside mine. “I watched you flirt with Thirty-one. I watched Eleven staring
