Three (Article 5) (41 page)

“We can’t stay,” I said. Chase’s hand slid into mine, a move Wallace noticed.

“Yeah,” said Wallace. “Well, if you change your mind, you’ll always be welcome in my camp.”

I almost asked where that would be, but guessed that he probably didn’t even know yet. He was the last remaining leader of Three, a soldier of the cause, something I now realized I might never truly understand. I did know this, though: the blood on his hands—Tucker’s blood, and Billy’s, too—would never wash away. He would carry it the rest of his days, and maybe for that reason alone he could never stop fighting. It was the only thing left that could make his actions make sense.

I stepped toward him and shook his hand. He pulled me into a hug and I patted him awkwardly on the back.

“Take my car,” he said gruffly, placing a tarnished silver key in the palm of my hand. He scratched the back of his neck, refusing to meet my gaze. “There’s two full cans of fuel in the back. Not much food, but enough water to get you through a couple of days at least. And there’s a map in the glove box. The border patrol in South Carolina has all been pulled in to support the existing bases. You should be able to get into the Red Zone without too much trouble, though I’d still stick to low-traffic routes.” He hesitated. “Consider it payback for kicking you out of the Wayland Inn. Not one of my brighter moves, I guess.”

I blinked, unsure how to respond as he reached out his hand to take Chase’s.

“Your uncle was a good man,” he said.

Chase tilted his head. “You knew him?”

“I knew him,” Wallace said with a smile. “I knew him a long time ago, before the War.” He looked like he might say more, but didn’t.

There was still a lot I had to tell Chase about Jesse. We had a long drive ahead of us, miles and miles to talk.

“What was he like back then?” he asked.

“Young and stupid.” Wallace laughed. “The most reckless of the three of us. He’d start a fight, and I’d go in after him, and then Aiden had to bail us all out.”

Chase glanced at me. “Aiden DeWitt?”

I squeezed his hand.

“If Jesse didn’t like something, he’d fix it. Fix the whole world if he could have. In the end, I guess he did. You should be proud of that, son.”

I closed my eyes, thinking of the way he’d risen, broken and bloody, to stab the knife I’d passed him into the heart of the Chief of Reformation.

“I am,” said Chase.

Wallace scuffed his heel on the ground. “You remind me of him. Once you get your mind set on something, you take it to the very end.”

My lips turned up in a smile for the first time in a week.

“Good luck to you both,” said Wallace. “Maybe we’ll see each other again sometime.”

But as he walked away, I knew we wouldn’t.

EPILOGUE

SUMMER
in the south wasn’t as hot as I thought it would be. Each morning, the breeze came in off the ocean, and each afternoon the thunderclouds built overhead and cracked open for a short time before stretching thin and melting into the evening sky. Just before dark, the world seemed to bound back: the air smelled like fresh soil and the birds broke their silence—a last reminder before the dark of the life that surrounded us.

But early morning was my favorite time. The quiet before the day, just after the rise of the sun. In worn-out sneakers, cutoff shorts, and one of Chase’s T-shirts, I walked down the beach, keeping to the crunchy sand left over from the high tide.

The docks would be quiet today. Most people stayed at the compound—an old Air Force base that had steadily grown over the past months. The runways had been bombed during the War, but the rows of housing were still intact, and now served as an evacuation center for those still fleeing from the interior. Sanctuary, it was called. An entirely self-sufficient community, complete with its own hydraulic power station, water desalination plant, and school. More than a few Lost Boys went there.

After the bases had fallen, the MM had destroyed all existing long-distance explosive devices. Uncertain who to trust within their ranks, they erred on the side of safety, assuring that their people, and ours, were no longer at threat of an aerial assault. In the last three months President Scarboro had received countless death threats and more than one attempt on his life. This, along with the death of his Chief of Reformation, had apparently been enough to force a treaty with Matthew Stark’s camp—at least that was what we heard on Faye Brown’s news report broadcasted nightly at Sanctuary.

I would believe it when I saw it.

It wasn’t long before I came to the docks. Along the bank opposite the clear blue water, a grove of Cyprus trees appeared beneath the high overarching palms. I walked beneath the heavy boughs, the sound of the ocean growing faint behind me. The air grew rich with a sweet, heady scent, and the thin branches that had fallen crackled beneath my feet.

I made my way to the center tree, glancing beyond it, just for a minute, to where an old road broke off before bridging across the bay. Turning my attention back to the tree, I slid my hands around the smooth gray bark until I reached the indentations.

LORI WHITMAN,
it said. Already the wood had puckered and accepted its new tattoos. Looking up, I saw a new ribbon had been tied around the lowest branch, a token from the last visitor.

“Hi, Mom,” I said quietly, letting the breeze blow through my hair. I didn’t feel her loss as sharply as I did before. The pain was still there, though more of a dull ache, a sadness.

My fingers traced the letters, then came to rest on the silver ring with the small black stone hanging around my neck. My someday promise. Laying beside it, the Saint Michael’s medallion—for luck.

I traveled to the next tree, tracing another name: Jesse Waite, and below it, three hash marks that Chase had carved there.

I moved from tree to tree. Billy. Marco and Polo, back together on one stout branch. Lincoln and Riggins from Knoxville. A soldier named Harper in Chicago.

Tucker Morris.

I stopped there, as I always did, unsure what to feel. Maybe someday I would come to peace with the role he had played in my life. I might accept what he’d done and his twisted logic behind it. The anger and the pity and the questions would all die down, and I would know him as a boy who’d been hurt by his family, who’d found a new family in the FBR, and who’d done what he thought he had to do in order to survive.

Perhaps he’d been right when he’d said we weren’t that different.

From behind came the low groan of a motor, and with one final good-bye, I turned and made my way toward the water. The sand gave way to a cracked concrete walkway, which rose above the lowering beach and stretched twenty feet out into the waves. In the distance, a boat approached, its silver hull gleaming in the sun. A smile tugged at my lips, and soon I was jogging toward it.

He was standing at the front of the boat, his hair shaggy past his ears, his skin darker than I’d ever seen it. As the boat slowed and drew closer, he moved to the side and grabbed a pile of rope from the deck, flinging it across the divide to where I waited.

“Take your time, why don’t you,” I said. It had only been four days since Chase had left, but might as well have been weeks.

“You miss me?” A grin turned up the right side of his mouth, and as the engine went dead, he tied off his side of the rope using only his right hand.

It had only been three months since the gunshot that had almost taken his life, and though the medic at Sanctuary had given him a clean bill of health, I still worried at the way he favored his left arm.

I finished knotting the first rope to its anchor on the dock the way Sal, the carrier to Mexico, had taught me. From the back of the boat, a short, shirtless man hopped over the siding and finished the task in half the time it had taken us.

“I missed Sal,” I said. The carrier grinned, dimples deep in his cheeks, and whistled my way.

“
Te amo,
” he called, gripping his heart dramatically.

“I see how it is,” said Chase, tying off another rope. My stomach did a small flip as the breeze flattened his damp shirt against his chest, revealing the ripples of muscle beneath.

“How’d it go?” I asked.

After Chase and I had arrived at Sanctuary, we’d volunteered to help the carriers transport refugees over the border. There was a time we’d considered going ourselves, but we’d never made it. Now I ran the check-in station in Tampa, and Chase served as the liaison on the Mexican border.

“Just as planned,” said Chase, swinging his long legs over the side and finally toeing the dock. I reached to help him automatically, habit from the early days after his injury when he needed it.

When his feet were firmly planted, his hands rose, cupping my face. I touched him, too: his rough cheeks, the straight line of his jaw down to his chin. His gaze found mine and held, and I remembered dozens of times I’d felt the world slow, just like it did now.

When I was six years old and he’d walked me home from the haunted house up the street. The first time he kissed me, in the woods after he’d been in Chicago with Jesse. In my bedroom, the night before he was drafted.

A tent in the woods. A truck in the Red Zone. An abandoned building the night before we’d gone for Rebecca.

A barn loft in Endurance.

And now. I would add this to my collection, and carry it with me always, as he had once carried my letters, as I now carried his ring. Our someday was now, not some distant point on the horizon. Almost losing him had taught me that.

He smiled—that small, secret smile he saved just for me.

I wet my lips, preparing for him to move closer, wrap me in his arms, and kiss me, but a second later I was twisting through the air and landed with a heave of breath over his shoulder. Frantically I gripped at his back.

“What are you doing?” I screeched. “Put me down!”

He walked to the edge of the dock. Through my mess of hair I could see the water softly slapping against the algae-stained concrete, ten feet below.

“No, wait,” I said. “Wait, hang on.”

“Didn’t miss me, huh?”

“I missed you!” I giggled, legs bicycling uselessly through the air. “I missed you, all right?”

I hit the water feet first, a half second before he jumped in after me. Sputtering to the surface I found him grinning from ear to ear, and soon we were splashing each other, kicking through the waves toward shallower water. When my feet could touch the ground, I launched across the space between us and tackled him.

He didn’t let me go.

The water was warm as a bath, and as I shoved my hair back he pulled me close. My legs wrapped around his hips and his arms around my waist. The collar of my shirt swelled open in the water, and he kissed the corner of my scar. The mark forever reminding me that I was, under it all, an Article 5.

Somehow, when Chase’s lips pressed against it, I was proud of what it stood for.

His mouth rose up my neck, a path of saltwater kisses that found my lips and left me flying. My blood heated, and I inched closer, tightening my grip around his neck.

“Get a room!” called someone from the shore.

Chase smiled against my temple as we pulled apart. On the beach was a horse with white stockings, and on her saddled back sat Rebecca, her blond hair already growing back to her shoulders. Against her leg leaned Sean, cackling at his interruption.

He cupped his hands over his mouth. “Are we going to get breakfast or what?”

I giggled into Chase’s ear. “If you ignore him, he’ll go away.”

With that, Chase turned back, and kissed me again.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Writing this is harder than I thought. Five years ago I was convinced I would never be published; I’d accepted that this dream of mine was going to forever remain my little secret. And now Chase and Ember’s journey is over (at least my part in it), and I’m thanking the people involved with making this trilogy a reality. It’s a teensy bit emotional.

I am so grateful to the team at Browne & Miller—Joanna and Danielle—for everything they have done for me, but most especially for pulling a poorly written query letter from the slush pile and seeing potential.

I’m enormously lucky to have Melissa Frain on my side—I can say for certain Sean is, too. Without her, I would probably, be drowning, in a river, of commas, and poor Sean would probably be sulky and, well, less cute. She’s a rock star editor—the bee’s knees, the cat’s pajamas (but please don’t tell her I said so, I’d never hear the end of it).

The people at Tor have been ever amazing from the very beginning of this series. Kathleen Doherty, thank you for your kindness and support. Alexis Saarela, you are absolutely the best publicist I could ask for. Seth Lerner, these covers have made the books. Well done and thank you.

I couldn’t have done any of this without my husband. I’m not sure I would have wanted to. There are certain people who just make you want to be your best self, and I will be thankful every day of my life to have found mine. As I write this, my son is attempting to scale the bookshelves—I take this to mean he’ll be a reader. It’s hard to believe it was only eleven months ago I was frantically trying to finish the last scenes between contractions. If anyone thinks the end of
Three
is too scary, blame labor. If you feel hopeful, as I hope you will, blame my son. He’s taught me all about it.

Once upon a time, I met another local author for bagels at a Panera in Louisville. I should have known that first day that she’d end up being my biggest cheerleader. A special thanks to Katie McGarry for holding my hand through this entire journey. We did it, Katie! Can you believe it?

And finally, thank you to the ladies at Jazzercise who sweat extra hard with me when I was in revisions, to the bloggers and authors who have been so supportive and inspiring, and to the people who have written me letters about Chase and Ember, about books, and about your own struggles and triumphs. I am deeply humbled, and grateful for you all.

BOOKS BY KRISTEN SIMMONS

Article 5