So Close to You (So Close to You - Trilogy) (33 page)

“Wes, wait.” I practically have to shout over the noise of the machine. It sounds like an industrial fan. “When will I see you again?” I grab his arm.

He frowns. Colored lights from the machine flit across his face in strange patterns. “Lydia, you need to go.”

“No. Please.” My voice is breaking, cracking. “I don’t want to leave you.”

“Lydia—” There’s an even louder noise and I stop, confused. Wes lifts his hand to his shoulder. It comes away red with blood. I turn to see General Lewis sitting up and holding a gun.

Wes is shot
.

I hear Wes shouting as I launch my body at the general. I catch him by surprise, sending us both flying to the floor. I roll over and punch him hard in the face. It hurts my knuckles, but I don’t notice. I hit him again and blood starts to trickle from his nose. He grunts and puts up his hands.

I’m pulled off of him. Wes drops me on my feet, leans down, and smashes his gun onto General Lewis’s temple. The older man slumps back to the ground.

I scramble to my feet and help Wes peel his black jacket away. I push his undershirt to the side and examine the wound. The bullet passed cleanly through his shoulder, and a small stream of blood flows down his chest. I press the material of his shirt into the hole as I try to stop the bleeding.

“I’ll be okay,” he whispers. “You need to go now.”

“How?” I’m crying, and the tears falling from my eyes make it difficult to see.
“I can’t leave you like this!”

He winces. “You have to. It’s the only way you’ll be safe.”

“What about you?” I grab his waist with both hands. “Tell me you’ll come with me. Please. We could go to nineteen twenty. We’d be stuck there, but at least we’ll be together. They could never find you.
Please
, Wes!”

“Lydia.” His voice is soft. “I won’t do that. Think of your family. Think of your life.”

I open my mouth, but he shakes his head before I speak. “I could never do that to you.”

The bloodstain blossoms on his shoulder.

“So that’s it? We never see each other again?”

His eyes are black as he smiles at me. “There’s no way it can work, Lydia. Maybe someday …” He reaches out and tucks a piece of hair behind my ear. “We’ll just have to leave it up to chance.”

I choke, trying not to sob. “I thought you said you don’t believe in fate.”

He looks at me through half-closed eyes. “Maybe I’ll start.”

He leans down until our foreheads are pressed together. I close my eyes, breathing him in.

“Go,” he says softly. I feel him press something into my stomach. I glance down, surprised. It’s his gold pocket watch. I didn’t even notice him take it off.

“Take it. I want to know that my two moments of defiance are out there somewhere together.”

I pry my fingers from his side and close my hand over the metal, still warm from his body. Then I step away, backing up until I reach the machine. I slip inside and turn to face him as I pull the watch over my head. It swings across my chest. I rest my hand against it, pressing it into my heart. “We’re fate, Wes. I know we are.”

He smiles, deep enough that I can see the dimple in his right cheek. Our eyes meet and hold. We don’t break eye contact. Not even as he backs away, not even as he pushes the button.

The door slides shut, and the machine closes around me.

W
hen
I can think again, I’m huddled on the floor, panting and clutching my sides. I slowly rise to my feet. I have only four minutes to get out of here.

The door automatically slides open, and I stumble out of Tesla’s Machine and into chaos. Red, blinking, throbbing light. A screaming alarm. It’s all strangely familiar, as though the last six days never happened, as though I’m still curiously, naively, wandering down into the depths of Camp Hero.

I cross the empty room and enter the hallway. It’s deserted, the guards off to address the security meltdown. I run quietly down the hall, following Wes’s directions: right, left, door, right, door. Finally I’m back in the dirty hallway with the dark staircase that leads to the camp outside.

I hear a noise above me and I sink into the shadows behind the stairs. Someone is walking down slowly. I watch as the figure emerges, dark red hair blending into the shadows behind her, a black-and-white shirt tucked into jeans, and my mouth falls open. It’s
me
. I’m walking into the Facility for the first time, running my fingers along the sticky wall, smelling that odd mixture of bleach and battery acid, and wondering what I’ll find at the bottom of these black stairs.

I can stop her
. I lean forward as she passes me. As
I
pass me. I’m ready to call out, to warn her. But I pause. This week I was almost killed. I failed to save Dean. I couldn’t recover my grandfather’s lost childhood. But I also met my great-great-grandparents. I found a sister in Mary. I uncovered the truth of what was really behind my great-grandfather’s disappearance.

And I fell in love.

I want to be a journalist because it forces you to face the truth, even if it might not always be easy. I have to believe that the same is true in my life—that the truth is worth knowing no matter what. I can’t hide from what happened in the past. Dean is gone. But I refuse to let what I had with Wes disappear—I don’t ever want to forget what it feels like to fall in love, even if that love is an impossible one.

So I’m silent, watching as this inquisitive girl, face curious and open and nervous for what she might find, glides past me. She steps through the door at the end of the hallway, and then she’s gone.

I emerge from behind the stairs and begin to climb out of the darkness and into the light of the open bunker. I hurry through the split in the concrete. It’s raining outside, just as I remember, misty and damp. My sweater is where I left it, a soggy, wet ball on the ground. This day hasn’t changed at all, but I know I have.

I turn back to the concrete as it starts to groan, creak, and then slide shut.

I wonder where
I
am, if I’m in the time machine room, if I’ve run into Wes, if I’m already in Tesla’s Machine, or in 1944.

I touch the watch hanging at my chest. Wes is down there somewhere. He’ll become a recruit again, a slave, holding on to the memories of the second time he defied the Montauk Project. But I know that it’s not over. That
we’re
not over. I’ll see him again one day.

I walk through the park, down the paved roads, past the buildings that crumble once again. The radar tower is a rusted cage on the skyline. I follow it toward the parking lot near the bluffs.

There’s a tall figure leaning against the old Honda, the ragged cliffs of Montauk Point behind him. I start to walk down the hill and then I’m running, ready to fling myself at my grandfather. But I slow when I realize that it’s not my grandfather. It’s my father.

“Dad.” I lean forward to hug him and he puts his arms around me hesitantly, as if he’s surprised by my actions. I can see the ocean spread out over his shoulders, the waves breaking against the rocks below, forever seeking the shore. I breathe deep, knowing I’m finally home.

“Lydia. Have you had your fill of exploring the camp? Your mother is expecting us for dinner.” He pats me on the back awkwardly before pulling away.

I scan the parking lot. There are a few cars but no other people. “Sure, I’m ready to go. But where’s Grandpa?”

Dad pauses with his hand on the door handle and looks at me. “What are you talking about, Lydia?”

“Grandpa!” I smile. “Where did he go? Is he at home?”

My father gives me a strange look, half confused, half smiling. “Your mother’s father is upstate, where he lives.”

“Dad, stop kidding around.” I laugh nervously. “Where’s Grandpa? You know, your father, who lives with us?”

“Lydia.” I’ve never heard my father’s voice sound so empty. “You know why he’s not here.”

I shake my head. Dread spreads through my body, numbing every part of me.

“Tell me,” I whisper.

“Your grandfather disappeared over twenty years ago.”

T
hank
you to the team at Full Fathom Five, especially James Frey, for believing in me from the beginning, and Jessica Almon, for being a constant source of support. Thanks, too, to Eric Simonoff and Matt Hudson, who represented the series.

Thank you to everyone at HarperCollins, especially my editors Tara Weikum and Sarah Dotts Barley. You both made what could have been a painful process of revisions surprisingly easy and fun, and knowing that you have my back through the next two books is a huge relief.

I couldn’t have written a word without the help of my friends: Christina Rumpf, Asher Ellis, Mike Murphy, Jeramey Kraatz, Starre Vartan, Murwarid Abdiani, Michelle Legro, Jessica Hindman, and Jordan Foster. Thanks for listening to all the rants, taking me where I needed to go (in more ways than one), and generally putting up with me! You’re the best group of writer-friends a girl could have, and I fully expect to be in the acknowledgments of your books as well.

And most importantly, I need to thank my entire large, loud, crazy family for their unending love and support. To my grandmother, Virginia: Thanks for giving me a firsthand account of life in the forties. This book would not be nearly as detailed without your help. And to the core of it all, Mom, Dad, Mary, and Emma: Thanks for the love, the honesty, and the refuge in the woods.

RACHEL CARTER
grew up in the woods of Vermont. She is a graduate of the University of Vermont and Columbia University, where she recently received her MFA in nonfiction writing. Rachel has been a teacher, a nanny, a caterer, and a bellhop. She is currently at work on her next book in Brooklyn, New York.

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So Close to You

Copyright © 2012 by Full Fathom Five, LLC

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.

ISBN 978-0-06-208105-6

EPub Edition © MAY 2012 ISBN 9780062081070

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