MILA 2.0: Redemption (12 page)

“Did you get the speakers?” I said when we were only ten feet away. Plenty loud for the guard to hear.

Lucas’s forehead furrowed until he picked up my intention. “Not yet—he interrupted me.”

At the end of the aisle, Lucas shoved the gun in his waistband and pulled two speakers off the shelves, handing me one. “These will have to do. They’re the best and we don’t have time for the others now.”

Hoping that red herring would be enough to throw the police off our tracks when they investigated, we hurried out the door, through the office, and into the parking lot. The security guard’s car sat unattended a few feet away. A quick slash of the tires, and then we hustled on foot to where the
Caprice was hidden, speakers still in tow.

We drove through the gate and exited onto the street, careful not to exceed the speed limit. Once outside the complex, the masks and gloves came off. Instead of driving toward our motel, I wove through the streets in the opposite direction. Lucas didn’t question me, just peered blindly into the night with his hands raking through his hair.

“That was a close call,” I said.

Silence.

I glanced over and frowned at the ghostlike pallor of his cheeks. “Lucas? Are you all right?”

“I—I’m not sure,” he said. He closed his eyes and inhaled a sharp breath through clenched teeth. His Adam’s apple bobbed repeatedly. Suddenly, he bolted upright. “Could you pull over? Fast?”

I swerved into an alley located near a liquor store. The moment I put the car in park, his door flew open. He barely had time to lean over before he threw up on the street. My hands clenched the steering wheel and I stared straight ahead, focusing brutally on the acrid taste in my own mouth. Lucas wasn’t used to this kind of danger. Yes, he’d saved my mother and me back at SMART Ops, but putting his life on the line like this was different. I thought of his obvious spike in stress when he’d aimed the gun at the guard, and my gut clenched reflexively. That was when he realized he was putting other people’s lives at risk, along with his own.

He had to be exhausted. For almost three days, we’d been on the move with almost zero rest. While I could keep going at this pace, Lucas couldn’t. Maybe the fact that I could be so open with him had fooled me into thinking that he and I were the same.

Ridiculous, flawed logic on my part. No matter how much he understood me, Lucas was human, through and through. I needed to get him back to the hotel so he could sleep. Everything else would have to wait.

Once he composed himself, Lucas shut the door, using the mask to wipe his mouth.

“Sorry,” he said.

“If it makes you feel any better, I’ve seen worse.”

I’d hoped to make him laugh, but his mouth didn’t even hint at a smile. “I’m sure you have.”

“Thanks for being here,” I said as I studied his rigid jaw. If he only knew how much I admired him. He didn’t have to put himself in harm’s way like that. He didn’t even have to be here at all.

That was when his expression finally altered. He shot me a startled look. “Of course. We’re a team, remember?”

His posture relaxed, and I felt the tension drain from my neck. A knot in my stomach disappeared. For a crazy moment there, I’d thought that he might call it quits.

“Do you think they’ll link the break-in back to Sarah?” I said, trying to steer things back to normal.

“My bet is they’ll be going after petty thieves,” Lucas said. “That was smart thinking back there. About the speakers.”

“Speaking of which.” Up ahead, I saw a row of unlocked Dumpsters. No video cameras around. “Should we ditch them here?”

Lucas nodded and we put our gloves back on, tossing the speakers into the Dumpster after we unloaded them from the car. We off-loaded the ski masks about a mile away, in a different set of Dumpsters. The gloves went into an outdoor trash can about a half mile from the last location.

When we got back to the car, Lucas handed me the gun. “This is what I really want to lose. But I don’t want to risk someone finding it while digging through the trash.” He swallowed, and I thought he might throw up again. “That man, the security guard. He was just doing his job. I’m behind you one hundred percent—more—but we both know I could never shoot.”

I took the gun and shoved it under the seat. “I understand.” And I did. I knew exactly what taking an innocent life felt like, and the permanent scars it left on you. I didn’t want that for Lucas.

Or for me. Not again.

We were quiet on our journey back to the hotel. So much had happened in the last twenty-four hours, I doubted either of us could think straight. I started sifting through the facts in my mind, filing words and images and evidence
into compartments in my internal database, but a tap on my shoulder interrupted me. Lucas held up the burner phone he’d bought at the convenience store.

“We have a voice mail,” he said, with a lilt in his voice.

My throat tightened. For a fleeting, heart-lifting instant, I thought of Hunter. But I knew there was only one person it could be.

Chloe. Sarah’s best friend.

Before we’d visited Sonja, we’d finally gotten in touch with Chloe’s mother, Daphne. She had agreed to give our number to her daughter, but there’d been no guarantees she’d call. Now we had another lead to chase. Maybe the final pieces of the Sarah puzzle would finally fall into place.

“Let’s give it a listen,” I said.

T
he next morning called for coffee and pancakes. At least, that’s what Chloe had in mind. The message she left was friendly, inviting me out to breakfast at her favorite café, located in a strip mall not too far from where she lived.

While Lucas slept last night, I’d listened to her message several times. The familiar cadence and timbre triggered more than just a feeling of pseudonostalgia. When I closed my eyes, I was actually able to relive happy moments from the past she shared with Sarah: flashes of laughter and play and whispers.

A part of me longed to remain in that state forever. But then the sun came up and it was time to see Chloe face-to-face. She knew Sarah better than anybody. Maybe she had
some idea why someone—like Holland—might want to have her killed. But I knew there was a serious danger, that I was preprogrammed to kill Chloe, too. As I approached the café, I swallowed my fear before it consumed me.

A bell chimed as I walked through the door. I froze in the archway, but continued inside when no answering signal stirred the quiet yet deadly device inside me. A bakery display lined the wall on the right, near the cash register. Behind the counter, a machine hissed while a red-shirted worker put the finishing touches on a latte. The aromatic smell of fresh-roasted coffee permeated the entire room. Three college-aged kids sat at a long table in the back, textbooks open next to laptops. Of the ten other tables, only three were taken—the first by a couple, and the second by two women, one with a stroller next to her seat. Normal people on a normal morning. A place I could never fit in.

The third table, squished in a tight corner between the napkin station and the counter, only had space for two chairs. One of them held a young girl. She sat on the edge of the seat and glanced up from her book as soon as I entered.

Her long brown hair was shorter now, cut in a shiny, shoulder-length bob. But her heart-shaped face with the wide-set brown eyes, delicately arched eyebrows, and full lips: that face was the same one from my memory. From Sarah’s memory. Today she wore a V-neck coral sweater with skinny jeans and a pair of fleece boots.

She took a sip from a wide coffee cup, slopping a little over the side. As she grabbed for the napkin in her lap, the restaurant seemed to fade away, replaced with a cozy eat-in kitchen.

“I swear, Chloe, you may as well get a lip piercing, because you have a permanent hole in your lip.” We sat at the white tiled counter in my house. I reached into the cabinet and tossed her a dish towel.

She dabbed at the brown spot on her yellow sweatshirt before rolling up the dish towel and snapping it at me. “Yeah? Well, you trip a lot. Doesn’t mean you need a toe piercing.”

“Ewww.” We looked at each other before dissolving into giggles.

In real time, present-day Chloe blotted at the spot, gave up, and snuck another peek at me. Hopefully she could see the “family resemblance” Lucas had manufactured for me.

I stepped forward and then hesitated, wondering if I’d made a mistake in asking Lucas to let me do this alone. We had become such a good team and he was quick on his feet during these awkward probing conversations. But Chloe was a little shy around boys, from what I—actually, Sarah—remembered of her. I had been worried that his presence might cause her to clam up.

Lucas wasn’t far away if I needed him. But as I drew closer to Chloe, my feelings of doubt and apprehension began to vanish. Instead I was full of longing, like I couldn’t wait to reconnect with a long-lost friend.

A wary smile appeared on Chloe’s face when she realized I was coming toward her table. She rose from her chair, and gave me a polite wave.

“Mara?”

“Yes, hi. You must be Chloe?”

“That’s me,” she said, shaking my hand, yet looking me over with curiosity. “You look a little bit like her. Sarah. I was trying to figure out where . . . it’s the eye and face shape, I think.”

“We always looked a little alike,” I said.

I averted my eyes, not wanting her to notice my discomfort. I glanced down at her napkin and saw a quick pen sketch, in blue. A picture of a shaggy dog.

Ink and paper, bold lines depicting me and Chloe, laughing like banshees.

As we sank into our chairs, I remembered that she was a budding artist, someone who saw beauty in all the details that most people never noticed. All of a sudden, the questions I had for her diminished in importance. Now all I wanted to know was how Chloe was doing. Had she displayed any of her artwork at the local gallery? Was she applying to any fine-art programs, like she’d always wanted to? Gone on that museum expedition to Italy and France? Sarah’s memories built up so quickly, I was at a loss for words.

Thankfully Chloe spoke first. “I was surprised to get your message from my mom. I don’t think Sarah ever mentioned
you. Or maybe I’m just not remembering.”

“My parents were estranged from Sarah’s for quite a while, so it makes sense that you hadn’t heard of me,” I explained.

“Family drama, I get it,” she said. “My parents are separating. Not a friendly breakup either.”

“I’m so sorry,” I said.

“It’s okay,” she said. “It’s one of the reasons I like to get out of the house these days, so thanks for meeting me for breakfast.”

“No problem,” I replied.

Behind me, the door opened and the bell chimed again. I gave the new patron a surreptitious glance and scanned for weapons.

No threat detected.

Pancakes and weapon scans. Quite the combo.

So. What would a normal teenager say right now? “How is school this year?” I started, awkwardly.

Chloe studied me over the top of her coffee mug, as if debating whether I was trustworthy. “Ugh. We have to be at school at seven forty-five. That should be criminal. But my art teacher is great. He takes us to Philly all the time. How about you?”

I thought about Clearwater and my days with Kaylee and her crew. It was hard to believe how simple that time was, even though I’d always known, deep down, that something was off about me. Then Hunter had come along. For
a while I’d thought he was the answer to my problems, someone to hold on to when I couldn’t stop the ground from shifting beneath me.

But that was before I knew what I was. Before he knew what I was.

“I live in the middle of nowhere, so it’s pretty boring compared to the city,” I said. “And some of the kids are kind of hard to connect with, you know? But I really like to read, so that’s a good distraction.”

I wanted to know more about Chloe. “How is your mom?” I asked. “Does she still bake those homemade apple pies?”

Her brow furrowed, like she was confused. “Wait, did Sarah mention those? I thought you didn’t see each other much.”

My pulse quickened when I realized my misstep. “We emailed sometimes. She liked telling me about her friends, especially you,” I lied.

Chloe’s expression cleared. She grinned like she was delighted to hear that she was important to Sarah.

“My mom is good, but these days the pies are few and far between,” she said. “I still miss Nicole and Daniel. When I came over, we used to get in these ridiculous philosophical discussions. They never treated me like a kid. Well, you probably know, even if you didn’t get to see them much.”

“Yeah, I do,” I said, feeling real pain and longing. “Aunt
Nicole could be pretty no-nonsense, but she definitely treated me like an adult.” At the end, she’d had no choice. “I always knew I was in trouble when she’d look at me in that one way, over the top of her glasses.”

“Oh my god, yes! I loved those glasses. Very nerdy-chic. They looked so good on her. Have you seen her and Daniel at all, since . . . ?”

She stared down at her cup while a tiny fragment of sorrow dislodged from my synthetic heart and dug its shrapnel claws into my throat. I was glad I didn’t have to tell her the horrible truth. That Nicole hadn’t lasted much longer than Sarah.

“No, not really,” I said, with a hard swallow. “They’ve been mostly keeping to themselves. Which is understandable, given what happened.”

“I’ve wanted to hide out too,” Chloe murmured. “Losing Sarah like that, it nearly broke me. I’m an only child so she and I were like . . .”

“Sisters?” I finished.

Chloe swirled the contents of her cup and nodded. Then she looked up at me, her eyes glistening. “Anyway. My mom said you’re in town looking at schools and wanted some advice?”

I blew out a breath and braced myself for what I was about to do. I was going to tell Chloe the truth. Sort of. I just hoped that it didn’t scare her off.

“That’s what I told your mom,” I said, hedging a little. “But honestly, that’s not why I’m here. I wanted to talk to you about Sarah. I know this might sound strange, but she sent me a couple of weird messages right before the fire.” I figured this was a safe enough gamble. “It’s always bothered me and I can’t seem to shake the feeling like something was wrong. Was anything going on with her?”

I balled my napkin in my lap, wondering if I’d made a mistake by being so direct. But instead of getting up or walking out, Chloe glanced around the café like someone might be listening. She lowered her voice.

“You too?”

Jackpot.

“Ever since she came back from Montford, she’d been acting kind of off,” she went on.

The name triggered an unexpected reaction. Like a spider had just crawled across my neck.

“Montford, Montford. Remind me why that name sounds familiar?”

“It’s that prep school her parents wanted her to go to, because of that scholarship she got,” Chloe explained. “She didn’t even last two weeks, though.”

“Oh, right. I remember the school, but not the scholarship,” I said. Trying to pry without actually prying.

“It was a full ride, and had some fancy name . . . the Waterman? Waterford? Watkins? Watson? Anyway, she
told her parents she was homesick, but I don’t think that was why she left,” Chloe said. “Sarah wouldn’t tell me much—just that they did weird things there, that made her feel . . . wrong. I never knew if she was talking about a club, or the teachers, or what. That’s what was the strangest thing of all. She wouldn’t give me the whole story. And she told me everything, you know?”

Her gaze wandered toward the open window, and the simple motion triggered yet another of Sarah’s memories. I could visualize Chloe from a few years ago, gazing off into the distance in the same way over the top of a book, tapping a pen against her lip.

What could prompt Sarah to keep the details of her Montford trip a secret from Chloe, when she told her everything else? Why would anyone lie under those circumstances? Just like that, my mind switched to Hunter, and the many secrets I’d had to keep to preserve his safety. That’s when the answer struck me.

Maybe Sarah thought talking would put Chloe in danger.

As I’d learned, sometimes ignorance wasn’t just bliss. Sometimes, it was necessary for survival.

“Did Sarah ever tell anyone else, do you think? About what happened at Montford?”

“I don’t think so,” Chloe said. “I begged her to talk to her parents but she just said it was over. She just wanted to forget about it.”

“Did it seem like she’d been hurt or anything?”

She shrugged. “I couldn’t say. Maybe. I hope not. It’s just—”

“What?”

“Nothing. I guess I wasn’t expecting all these questions,” Chloe said. “I haven’t had to discuss Sarah like this since I spoke with that detective.”

I wanted to ask Chloe more about the detective but I didn’t want to tip her off that I knew anything about the investigation. With true sympathy, I just said, “That must have been hard.”

“It was awful. I was away the weekend of the fire, so I didn’t know anything and I couldn’t help him at all,” she said, her voice breaking. “And I couldn’t help Sarah.” At least the people who’d gone after Edgar wouldn’t be targeting Chloe. She had no idea how lucky she was.

I suggested we order, and she waved a waitress over. While we waited for our food, the conversation shifted into more comfortable territory. As she filled me in on little details of her life, speaking in these long, rushed sentences that I suddenly remembered, I fell in love with Sarah’s best friend all over again. When she asked for the check, I wanted to steal it away from the waitress. Just so Chloe would stay a little longer.

But I knew that wouldn’t happen: not now, not ever. And I had no right to ask.

“Sorry about this, but I have to go,” she said, putting her wallet in her purse. “I have a huge chem test tomorrow and study group is in ten minutes. I need to pull at least a B if I have any hope of improving my average.”

She slid out of her chair and I rose. I reached out to shake her hand one last time, but she ignored it and gave me a warm hug instead.

“It was so nice to meet you. Please keep in touch, okay?” she said as she pulled away.

“I’d like that,” I said.

The words tasted bitter, especially when her expression brightened. As much as I longed to stay in touch, I knew I would never dare contact Chloe again.

Chloe bit her lip as if considering something, then went ahead and blurted it out. “This might sound weird, but . . . you remind me a little of Sarah. Mannerisms, or, I don’t know. Something. When I talked to you, I almost felt like a piece of her was still here.” She shook her head, her laugh rueful. “I told you it would sound crazy.”

“Not at all,” I whispered.

Sarah, me. The same, and yet so utterly different. One alive, one a re-creation. Like Frankenstein’s monster.

Her eyes widened as she stared at me, a strange expression crossing her face. For a moment, I thought she had figured it out. That I was Sarah, or what remained of her. A giddy eagerness made me lean forward. She knew. She
could tell. And if Sarah’s best friend could tell, then maybe that meant—

Chloe smiled briefly, rubbed my arm, and said again, “It was great to meet you.” Then she turned and hustled toward the door without looking back.

I slumped back into my chair. I felt so stupid, thinking that there was some kind of connection between us, that even for a moment I could claim Sarah’s close friend as my own. But my self-pity gave way to determination when my thoughts turned to Montford.