Brrrriiiinnggggg!
I came out of the trance suddenly, and it took me a moment to pinpoint the sound that had brought me back—the ringing of a phone. I spent one second wondering who could possibly be calling a number I didn’t even know myself, but the answer became readily apparent the second I answered the phone.
“I have an address,” Skylar said. “According to Reid, it’s an old military base that hasn’t belonged to the government since the fifties. It’s supposed to be abandoned—something about radiation—but satellite scans suggest there’s geothermal activity.” She paused. “This is Kali, right?”
I made a face at the phone. “Did you just dial a number at random?”
I could practically hear her smiling. “Maybe?”
I glanced down at my watch. Twelve hours and two minutes.
I wanted to see Zev—see him for real. I wanted to save him, and I didn’t have much time.
“Hey, Skylar?” I said. “Can you send me that address?”
29
If I can’t break out of here, what makes you think that you can break in?
Zev’s question may have been rhetorical, but I did him the favor of answering, anyway.
Easy, I replied, slipping my cell into my pocket. The bad guys want me in.
For the first time since I’d recognized my mother, I smiled without feeling nauseous. I could do this.
I would do this.
I had to.
Shutting my mind against Zev’s voice—velvet and smooth inside my head—I set to work. The moment I turned my mind to what needed to be done, I felt a slight vibration in the air, a song singing me closer, luring me in. The palms of my hands itched as I scanned the house for weapons.
I could do this.
I would do this.
I had to.
I started in my bedroom and worked my way quickly through the rest of the second floor. I didn’t have as many weapons as another person might have had in my position, but I’d been hunting for five years, and during that time, the weapons I did have had been stashed all over the house. A knife here, a dagger there, the occasional sword.
My dad had a gun.
One by one, I tracked each of them down and tucked them into my clothing, heightened awareness of each blade bringing what I was about to do fully into focus. I saved the gun for last and tucked it into the waistband of my jeans, nestled against the small of my back.
Ready.
Armed to the teeth, I slipped out of the house, the way I had a thousand times before. This time, there was a chance my dad might actually miss me before I returned.
If I returned.
The thought gave me pause—but not nearly enough. I took one step away from the house, and then another. A moment later, I was walking, and a second after that, I broke into a run.
The address Skylar had given me was outside of town. Driving would have been easier and faster, but if things went well, I deeply suspected I wouldn’t want to leave even a trace of evidence behind.
Getting Zev out of there wouldn’t be enough. To end this, really end this, we’d have to make sure that there wasn’t anyone left to chase us.
We’d have to crush Chimera—and everyone who worked there—to dust.
Running toward Zev felt better than anything had in a very long time. It felt like I was doing something.
Like I was going home.
I don’t know how long it took me to get there. Time lost all meaning—a dangerous thing for someone like me—but by the time I came to a stop at a dead-end road, more desert than not, the sun was starting to set.
Prime hunting time, I thought, my body relishing the darkness as it slowly kissed the earth.
Go. Hunt. Just do it somewhere else.
The closer I got to Zev, the harder it was to brace myself against the sound of his voice—and the harder his words were to ignore.
Believe me, Kali, I’d rather be trapped here for another year—or two or three or thirty—than risk something happening to you. And if you come here, something will—
He broke off, like he couldn’t bear to finish that sentence.
You can’t ask me to just leave you there, I told him, and then, realizing that he could and had and probably was about to again, I clarified my words. Don’t.
Why does it matter where my body is? Zev asked. It’s just a body, Kali. They can’t touch anything that matters.
All I heard was the word body, and all I could think of were the things they were doing to his. It was like living through an autopsy—over and over and over again.
I don’t want you here, Zev said. I knew, in the pit of my stomach, that he was entirely aware how those words would sound to someone who’d never really felt wanted by anyone, until now.
Just go away.
That was what Zev said, but I was so close now that I could feel him thinking other things. I remembered the feel of my hand on his stomach, the feel of his on mine. Zev could tell me I wasn’t wanted until my ears rang with the words, and it still wouldn’t matter.
People like us were meant to come in pairs.
That thought fresh in my mind, I stopped running. I was close enough now that I could almost smell Zev’s blood, could see the way they’d bled him again and again. The road itself wasn’t abandoned, but the address Skylar had given me didn’t exactly look commercial, either.
The entire complex was surrounded by a barbed-wire fence, rusted and rotting, like it hadn’t been replaced in decades. There was a sign out front that warned would-be trespassers that the land beyond this fence had once been used to test explosives. Like the fence, the sign had seen better days: WARNING, it read, UNDE ONATED INES.
“Undetonated mines,” I said, feeling like I’d solved the puzzle on Wheel of Fortune. “Isn’t that convenient?”
I scanned the perimeter of the fence—there was only one access road. It led up to a single gate, with an abandoned guard post.
The gate was open. I took a step toward it, and Zev’s voice echoed with bone-shaking vehemence through my entire body.
You don’t have to do this.
I looked at the fence, the gate, the building in the distance. “Yeah,” I said softly. “I do.”
“Do what?”
My hand tightened over the handle of one of my knives, but as my eyes adjusted to the newborn darkness, I saw the very last person I’d expected to see gracing a deserted road with her presence.
Bethany Davis.
“This is the place, right?” Bethany said. I looked past her—she’d parked her BMW just on the other side of the gate. “This is the address Skylar gave me.”