She’d forgiven Chase for the overhaul. Thank God you’re here, she’d said to him in the cell. She’d forgiven Roy for hurting her. Me for making him leave. She would blame the MM for Tucker’s corruption.
She would be ashamed of me if I killed him. Because of that single fact, I knew I could not take his life.
But I wanted to.
Chase was still watching me. His eyes were filled with understanding. I knew he would have supported me, regardless of my decision.
“Get the gun from her, man,” said Tucker to Chase. He was trying to revive their old friendship. His words jolted me back.
“If I do, I’m shooting you myself,” Chase responded darkly. I knew that if I asked him to, Chase would kill Tucker. Part of me wanted him to, needed him to. But I focused on my mother’s face. She had loved Chase, too. She wouldn’t want his soul any more compromised than it had already been.
Tucker shifted. “Think about what this will mean for you. You’ll never be able to stop running.” Fear laced through his voice.
“I’ve thought about it.” Last chance, I told myself. But my mind was made up. “We’re leaving, Tucker. Walk away. Or I will shoot you.”
I ignored the hammering of my pulse against my temple. I felt no fear, no anger. The grief, too, was gone. My whole body focused on the completion of this single task: securing our safety.
How like Chase I had become.
“What am I supposed to tell my command?” Tucker’s voice cracked.
“You tell them that Chase is dead. He didn’t make it to his trial. His chart is ‘completed.’ You tell them that he was taken to the crematorium. You tell them that I stole the key from Delilah by force, and when she confessed, you had me ‘completed’ too.”
Yesterday, I’d thought it pitiful that Tucker had threatened Delilah into silence. Now I was banking on it. I hoped this would save the sad old woman from the same fate as my mother.
“And if I say no?”
“You can always tell them that two criminals escaped on your shift, right in front of you. Though I doubt that would bode well for that career plan of yours.”
Several long beats of silence.
Tucker swore.
“All right. All right!”
Something cracked inside of me. I knew I was on the verge of breaking now.
Hold it together!
“Give me my gun back. I’ll be busted down for that.” Tucker held his hand out.
“I’m not that stupid. You walk back down to the check station. Once I see you there, I’m going to throw it down the hill into those bushes. I hope you can find it.”
“And what’s to stop me from shooting you when I do?”
“There won’t be any bullets. You can ask the guards at the post, but that will mean a whole messy explanation. I recommend you come back later for it.”
He kicked the ground and finally nodded. “Get out of here.”
I swallowed a deep breath.
“Don’t shoot me in the back,” he added with repugnance.
“I’m not making any promises.”
Tucker turned and strode down the hill.
The gun grew heavier in my hands, as if I were holding a bucket filling with water. By the time Tucker had disappeared around the curve of the hill, I could barely lift my arms.
Chase gently placed his hand on my shoulder, sliding it down my bicep to my wrist. He pried the gun from my grasp. My ears were ringing.
I watched as he removed the magazine from the handle and stuffed it in his pocket. Then he tossed the handgun into a neat hedge wall, close enough so that Tucker would have to climb back up the hill to find it. If indeed he could find it at all.
“We need to go,” Chase said.
I led him back behind the crematorium, to where the asphalt met the woods. The brush thickened immediately, grabbing onto the fabric of my skirt and ripping little holes in it. Some of the branches nicked at my legs, too. I noticed this objectively, as though I were an outsider watching my body from above.
My mind was still reeling with the events of the last five minutes. I could think of nothing but my mother’s killer.
Should I have killed Tucker? Should Chase have? Tucker could hurt so many others now. There was no right answer.
The trail declined, leading us into the subdivision. We would have to be careful going between the houses; it was important to stay out of view from the hilltop behind the base.
We rested in a tight alleyway. Chase was struggling to breathe and squeezing his head between the heels of his hands. I wished I could take his pain away.
I searched for soldiers but found no evidence we were being followed.
“We need to keep moving.” I slid under his arm for support. He didn’t object, which worried me. The concussion seemed severe. We needed to find a doctor.
It was midmorning when we reached our destination. The parking lot was empty but for a thin, ex-reform-school guard roaming around near the Dumpster.
Sean stared at us, mouth open.
“You actually pulled it off,” he said in awe.
Chase squeezed my hand. “She pulled it off. I did nothing—”
“—but get your butt kicked,” Sean finished.
To my surprise, Chase smirked.
It appeared they were friends now. I thought maybe Sean and I could be friends one day, too. I didn’t blame him anymore for not telling me about my mother; people would do almost anything to protect someone they loved. If anyone knew that, it was us.
I walked straight up to Sean and gave him a hug.
“Thanks for waiting,” I told him.
“I’ve gotta say, Miller, I didn’t think I’d see you again.” His shocked expression morphed into one of concern.
“They moved Rebecca,” I said, before he could ask.
His eyes widened. “Where?”
“A rehabilitation center in Chicago.”
“A … what? How do you—”
“Doesn’t matter. That’s where she is,” I said. Chase glanced over at me but didn’t ask any questions.
Later, when we were safe, I would tell him what had happened with Tucker in his office, and how, now that I knew what Tucker had done, my actions revolted me even more. There would be time to talk about how I’d orchestrated our escape, and what I had seen in the MM base. But for now, we had to hide.
“Make the call,” Chase told Sean. I glanced at him, confused.
Sean took a step back. After a moment, he shook his head, focusing on the present, and removed a radio from his belt. It was like the one Chase had in the MM but smaller, and it clicked rapidly when he turned it on.
“Package ready for pickup,” Sean said. He had to clear his throat. An array of emotions was flying across his face.
Nearly a minute passed with no response from the radio.
While we waited, I caught Chase watching me. His gaze held no more secrets but was clear and honest and deep as a lake. I traced my fingertips over his high cheekbones and saw how the lines between his brows melted as the pounding in his head subsided. Finally finding peace, he closed his eyes.
“One hour,” came the response, making me jump. I recognized the voice. It belonged to a wiry man with greasy, peppered hair and a mustache.
Chase nodded his approval. He’d asked Wallace to help us. We were going back to the Wayland Inn.
We were going back to the resistance.
CHAPTER
17
IT was nearly dawn when I finished with Wallace. A deep exhaustion filled me, one that soaked into my bones until they were soft and pliable and barely able to sustain my weight. In this condition I dragged myself up the stairs of the Wayland Inn, out the exit onto the roof, and into the cool, dark air.
Wallace himself had attended to Chase’s injuries when we’d returned. Once a medic in the FBR, the resistance leader taught me how to check Chase’s pupils for dilation and how to manage the other symptoms of concussion. I’d led Chase to an empty room, to a be
d with a moth-eaten comforter, and waited only minutes for him to fall asleep. Sean told me later that this was the first time Chase had rested since I’d been found missing.
Then Wallace and I had talked. I’d told him everything I remembered from the base: the layout, the personnel, and the horrors within. It was terrifying to relive, but ultimately purging. After hours of his soft but persistent interrogation, I felt empty.
Later we would talk strategy. The time to fight was coming, but until then we’d been granted a moment of peace; a deep breath before the plunge.
There was one thing I had to do before I slept. I had to see the sky.
I sat on an old wooden bench, positioned around the corner of the exit door. My body bowed into the weathered planks, rejoicing in the freedom coating my limbs. I tilted my head back and closed my eyes and felt the last bit of claustrophobia from the holding cells slip away.
My mother was gone, and with her, the child I had been. She’d been taken with violence, as had my youth, and in their place a new me had awakened, a girl I didn’t yet know. I felt achingly unfamiliar.
The sky had turned peach and raspberry when the rooftop door burst open with enough force to kick my heart straight into my windpipe. In an instant I was on my feet.
Chase’s hair was messy, his eyes wide and wild and tinged with pain. My heart throbbed as it did for him alone, with equal parts love and fear. Only when the sun brightened the bruises on his jaw did I remember to breathe.
“Is everything all right?” I asked.
He took a tentative step forward. Several beats passed. His gaze roamed over my face in a tender, familiar way, and for a moment I forgot that I felt lost and empty. I was the same girl I’d always been. The girl he loved.
“Everything’s fine. Sorry,” he apologized. “I just couldn’t find you and…” he shrugged forcefully, looking unbearably vulnerable for such a big person.
He’d thought I’d run away again. I let my hair fall forward, hoping it would hide the guilt heating my cheeks.
I sat again and he sat beside me. We didn’t touch, and I felt a severing as he turned to watch the sun stream over the horizon.
You know what I remember after the police came? he said in my mind. You sitting on the couch with me. You didn’t say anything. You just sat with me. His tone had been softer, less serious than it was now. It struck me how much the years had changed us, and yet here we were, sitting together in silence, watching the same sun rise.
For a long time we were very still, until I noticed Chase’s hand resting, palm unfurled, on his thigh.
I wondered how long he had been sitting like that. Unassuming. Possibly not meaning anything by it. I took a deep breath, feeling the nerves tingle down my spine, and placed my hand in his. With our wrists in alignment, my fingers only reached to the first joint of his knuckles.
I studied the blunt, raised scars on his hands from too many fights. His fingers traced the white latticed pattern from a whip on mine. Soft skin trailed over calloused patches and the cool metal of a stolen gold ring. His thumb teased slowly down the side of my first finger, and my whole arm prickled with heat. Then our fingers intertwined. He squeezed and I squeezed back.
I leaned my head on his shoulder, feeling a sudden wave of fatigue. The fear and anger had been left to simmer until a later time when they might actually make sense, and though I knew it was temporary, I was relieved. We were safe and together, and that was all that mattered now.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Growing a book is no solitary venture. It is a process touched by many, and I will never be able to truly convey how grateful I am to the following people for changing the trajectory of my life.
First to my agent, Joanna MacKenzie, who took a huge chance but never made me feel like a risk, who donated so many hours not just to the manuscript but to my therapy, and who is both the best champion and best cheerleader in the entire world. There would be no Article 5 if not for Joanna. Additionally, without Danielle Egan-Miller’s and Lauren Olson’s thoughtful comments, guidance, and advocating for Article 5 on all fronts, I would be lost.
A huge high-five to Melissa Frain, my fabulous editor. I hope everyone has a chance to know someone like Mel — she is funny and kind, and her positivity is simply infectious. She even makes statements like “we need to cut these fifty pages” seem not so nauseating. Also, a big thanks to Tor Teen’s publisher, Kathleen Doherty; my publicist, Alexis Saarela; and Article 5’s art director, Seth Lerner. I am so grateful for all their hard work.
None of this would have been possible without my family. My husband, Jason, who has been my best friend since a lucky assigned seating chart stuck us together in biology when I was fourteen. My mom, who taught me the joy of reading, and my dad, who doesn’t just say I can be anything I want, but believes it, too. My deepest thanks to the whole Simmons family, who made me their own without a second thought. To Dee, Craig, and the boys for bacon nights, handyman work, and answering ridiculous questions on everything from motorcycles to (gulp) firearms—yes, you are with family for a reason. And to Rudy, my precious greyhound, who provided much inspiration and yet did not demand coauthorship.
I am privileged to have some of the best friends in the world. Thank you to the girls from home, the friends who shake it with me at Jazzercise, and the therapists who make me a better therapist and a better person.
And finally, thank you to the people who, in the face of hardship, fight. Who turn surviving into thriving. Because of you I now live stronger and wiser, with the knowledge that hope is working through us all, even in our darkest moments.
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
ARTICLE 5
Copyright © 2012 by Kristen Simmons
All rights reserved.
A Tor® Teen eBook
Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC
175 Fifth Avenue
New York, NY 10010
www.tor-forge.com
Tor® is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, LLC.
ISBN 978-0-7653-2958-5
First Edition: February 2012
eISBN 978-1-4299-8773-8
Kristen Simmons, Article 5
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