Breaking Point (22 page)

My mind wasn’t helping. The thoughts slapped one atop the next. Flashes of my mom, her hair in clips, wearing clothes from my closet. The similarities in our faces. What did she look like now? Only a couple months had passed, but I knew I looked different. Hardened. Wary. Was she the same? If she’d survived the gunshot, how badly was she injured? Was she getting enough medical treatment? Or was she being forced, like the woman with her son in the square, to scare others into compliance?

Stop,
I thought.
Stop
. She’s dead. Stop fantasizing she’s not. Stop hoping.

My heels hammered the vacuumed rubber floor mats. Cara’s wool skirt made my legs itch.

I turned back to check on Sean. We’d opened the vent in the partition between the seats, but couldn’t hear each other without yelling. He looked out the window, content in the silence. It had been a long time since I’d seen that small, peaceful smile. That was Becca’s smile.

“Talk about something,” Chase said, startling me. His eyes stayed glued to the road.

“What about?” I asked.

“Anything. Your voice … helps.” His thumbs drummed on the steering wheel.

“Do you think we’ll ever see him again?” I asked. “Billy, I mean.” Not Tucker.

“If Tucker doesn’t get to him first.” The way he said that name—it was like he was tearing something with his teeth.

I rubbed my temples. “I keep thinking it’s my fault,” I said quickly. “That I could have stopped all of it—whatever he’s doing—that day at the base. If I’d have shot him he never would have shown up at the Wayland Inn, he wouldn’t have come with us to the checkpoint, he wouldn’t know anything about the safe house. But I couldn’t, you know? I messed up. I was a coward, and now … now something even worse is going to happen, I can feel it.”

It had burst out in one breath—things I’d been hiding from him because I’d hated to admit they were true, even to myself.

“Wait,” he said. “
Not
killing someone makes you a coward?”

I shrugged. I didn’t like him turning this around on me. He rubbed the back of his neck.

“Em, what you did that day, it makes you better,” he said. “If you’d given me the gun that day, I would have done it. I almost did at the Wayland Inn. And killing someone—even if it’s
him
—that changes everything. It makes all the good things wrong and all the wrong things seem okay. And it gets easier. To do again, I mean. I’ve seen it.” He took a slow breath. “Look at Wallace. He’s got nothing but Billy and the cause, and when it came down to it, he could only hold on to one.”

In the silence I remembered the Wayland Inn, purged by fire. Remembered how Wallace had forgotten what was most important.

“Be glad you didn’t kill him,” Chase said gently. “Holding back, that was brave.”

I shifted, because
brave
didn’t fit right against my skin. When it came to Tucker and what I hadn’t done,
coward
felt right, and
failure
felt right. At least they had. Now, I wasn’t so sure.

“I wish I knew what he and Cara were doing in Greeneville,” I said.

“You didn’t buy the cousin story either, huh?”

I glanced behind me, but Sean was still blissfully ignorant to our conversation. It wasn’t that I didn’t want his opinion, I just felt more comfortable discussing some things with Chase alone.

“All I know is that she’s hiding something,” I said, picking at my fingernails, frustrated that I didn’t have the answers. Thinking of Cara suddenly reminded me of the copper cartridge I’d shown her in Greeneville. I’d been so distracted by the things she’d said about Sarah and the scars on her chest, I’d forgotten she’d been the last to hold it. Now who knew where it was.

I needed to change the subject.

“It’s strange going home after everything, isn’t it?” In my mind it was preserved, just as it had been when I left, but maybe it was different. I knew
I
was different. “I doubt anyone would even recognize me.”

“I would,” he said.

I laughed and combed my fingers through my short, dyed hair, catching a new waft of smoke. “Right. I look just like I did when I left.”

“You look beautiful,” he said. “And anyway, I’m not planning on running into anyone we used to know.” He cleared his throat, fixing his eyes on the road. “Why are you looking at me like that?”

All the hard edges within me had shimmered and gone soft.

“You said I was beautiful.”

He smirked and settled back in his seat. “I guess I did.”

I hid the smile in my shoulder.

*   *   *

CHASE
drove fast, simply because he could. We passed no one on the highway. Not a soul. It was desolate, a half-pipe with trash and forest debris and the occasional stiffened roadkill arcing up against the side partitions. We were mostly silent, each lost in our own thoughts. My guarded hope, and his fearful dread.

Three hours in, just after we’d passed the turnoff for Frankfort on I-64, we pulled off for gas. It was dark, and the cold scent of rotten leaves filled my nostrils. Chase removed one of the canisters from the trunk and tipped the yellow nozzle into the fuel tank while Sean and I stretched our legs.

“So this is home,” he said, rolling his shoulders.

“It’s close.” I hesitated. “It’s weird coming back. Not knowing who is going to be there.”

“Yeah,” he said with a strange, strangled sigh. “Sometimes it’s better not to know.”

I frowned. Sean shook his head. “It’s good to check, though,” he added as an afterthought.

My thoughts returned to Tent City, to Sean’s confession that he had lived in such a place, and I wondered if he had family somewhere. He never talked about them. He didn’t look like he wanted to start now.

“What did you find out about Chicago?” I asked. His head bobbed gratefully.

“Marco told me we rendezvous with the resistance at an old airfield in the Wreckage.”

I shivered. During the War, the first places the Insurgents attacked were the airports. I’d seen what remained of them on the news: demolished buildings, concrete dust storms, but never a plane. Not since air travel had been banned at the beginning of the War. Chase shifted nearby. These weren’t just television scenes to him. He’d been there.

“He says it’s a rough bunch up North,” continued Sean when neither Chase nor I commented. “Says they’re crazy. Too much time in the field or something.”

“Will they help?” I asked speculatively.

“Sure. We just shouldn’t expect any hospitality.”

I frowned, wondering what this meant, but imagined that little in our line of work rivaled Marco and Polo’s generosity. They had let us steal their car, after all.

When the tank was full again we moved out.

*   *   *

THE
lights from the old basketball arena, which had been converted to a Horizons manufacturing plant after the War, were the first signs of home. Cold and yellow, they lit the night like a warning rather than a welcome. The rest of the city was black, but for the gleam in the distance from the hospital—the first place I’d been taken during the overhaul. I returned to the edge of my seat, absently tugging at the knot in the uniform handkerchief around my neck.

The roads had been completely empty, but as we approached the Kennedy Bridge another cruiser came careening from the south, going fast enough to jump the Ohio River.

My heart clutched in my chest.

“No,” I whispered.
“Don’t stop don’t stop don’t stop.”

I sank in the seat. Sean remained motionless behind us, sleeping.

It sped by without a hint at braking. Chase exhaled loudly and continued on.

“So, I guess we know what the MM does after curfew,” I said shakily. I wondered if the soldiers inside just liked to drive fast, or if they were drunk on whiskey like the kind in the back of the Horizons truck. Or if actually, there were two people inside just like us.

It helped to think that.

The clock on the dashboard flashed 2:27
A.M.
as we crossed the dark waters of the Ohio on the high metal bridge. There were only four hours until curfew was up, until any nosy civilian could recognize our faces and make a report. The pressure made my muscles tense. We hadn’t said it out loud, but it would be better all around if we were out of here before dawn.

The cruiser rolled over the cracked pavement, headlights shining on landmarks like we were historians excavating some ancient tomb. There was the stop sign halfway between Beth’s house and mine. We used to meet there before we walked to school. Back when I used to go to school. Trees I recognized, dogwoods, already turning pink with blossoms. Tall, overgrown grass and weeds in front of every home. I remembered before the War when people had used lawnmowers. What a waste those things were. That much gas could power a generator for hours.

I’d tripped there and skinned my knee on the sidewalk. On that corner, a girl once set up a lemonade stand for a quarter a glass. And right beneath that tall brick wall was where I’d been standing when I’d fallen in love with Chase. I was nine, and he’d just won a race against Matt Epstein. He was the fastest boy in the whole world.

So many Statute circulars glued to so many doors. How many people had been taken since my overhaul?

We reached Ewing Avenue—my street—and a small whimper came from my throat.

I looked up a steep embankment on the right, but the old, abandoned house where I’d met Chase for the first time was now hidden by shadow. Hidden, like the children we used to be.

My house had come into view. Small and boxy, white. A sister to its next-door neighbor, the Jennings’s home.

“No fast moves,” Chase hissed. Two headlights came over the swell at the top of the street and caused my heart to stutter. The FBR cruiser eased by Mrs. Crowley’s house, right across the way from mine.

“They’re already here!” Bands of tension ratcheted around my lungs. I bit my lip so I wouldn’t scream, so hard it bled.

“It’s just a curfew patrol,” he muttered as we rolled past. “Just like us.”

The tinted windows were too dark to see inside. As Sean continued to snore, the patrol car continued to the intersection and disappeared around the block.

We approached my house. The familiar L-shaped walkway led to the front door where a Statute circular, the same that had been placed there during my arrest, still hung. A single tear slid down my cheek and I hurriedly wiped it away.

“Look.” I pointed. Below the living room window someone had tagged my house with black spray paint. One Whole Country, One Whole Family.

Someone was here after all. Someone fighting back. My pulse ran a mile a minute.

Chase buttoned the top of his collar, which he’d left slack in the car, with one hand. “We’ll park off the street and go through my backyard. Check your house from mine.”

I had to get in there as soon as possible, but was petrified of what we’d find.

We parked two streets down, in a cul-de-sac overrun by trash the city workers had missed and storm debris from the surrounding trees. I recognized this place, though barely. Chase and I had played here as children. Hide-and-seek. It was close enough we could still hear our parents calling us home to dinner.

It was disheartening how much the place had changed. Now it was dark and silent. Those who hadn’t moved away were hidden inside for curfew. Those who caught a glimpse through their closed curtains of our stolen FBR cruiser were afraid.

Chase killed the engine. Behind us, Sean woke and took in our surroundings.

Time to go,
I told myself. But my legs wouldn’t move.

Sean got out. Chase followed, and I heard them conversing in low voices. Sean took off around the block, moving stealthily through the shadows. He was going to keep watch from up the street.

Get up.
Still nothing.

Chase returned to the car. He rubbed his forehead with the heel of his hand and we sat in the dark. One minute. Two. We didn’t have time to waste; sunrise was coming, we had to move on to Chicago, but even though I told myself this, I could not summon the courage to open that door.

Slowly, he leaned over the center console and unbuckled my seat belt. I still felt where his hand had touched my stomach even after it drew away.

I could tell there were things he wanted to say. Chase things. Things like,
we don’t have to do this
, or
why don’t I look and you can stay here
. He didn’t say any of them though. Maybe he knew what my response would be. Likely he knew just as deeply as I did that this was something we
had
to do. This mystery, left unsolved, would haunt us the rest of our likely short lives.

He stayed close, and the warmth from his body flowed across the inches between us. I could hear him breathing. His uniform jacket shifted, and in the moonlight I saw the raised half circle of skin where the cords of his neck met the muscles of his shoulder. Teeth marks, from where I’d bitten him when I’d been so furious at Tucker. Shame heated my cheeks. Chase hadn’t been the intended target for my rage, but all the same, he always seemed to get the brunt of it.

Tentatively, I closed the space between us and kissed that spot. I could fix it, I thought. I could reverse all the harsh words if he gave me the chance.

His skin was soft, but the muscles just beneath were taut and strong. My lips stayed against his neck as his breath quickened in my hair. I closed my eyes.

“It’s time,” he said, voice heavy. “Let’s go, Em.”

We stepped outside the stolen FBR cruiser, knowing we left all uncertainty, and the safety that came with our once-believed truths, behind. There was no going back now. Hope, and all her terrible consequences, had struck. In minutes we would learn the truth.

Either my mother was alive, or someone was playing a very dangerous game.

CHAPTER

13

WE
snuck between two weathered garage units and through the yard behind Chase’s house. The dose of adrenaline coursing through my veins gave me the resolve to scramble up and over the privacy fence, but left me twitchy.