Managing an Epidemic. Our school library had the same book—I had borrowed it after finding out Kyle was infected. I frowned. It wasn’t exactly light reading. I started to slip it back, but a piece of paper sticking out of the middle of the book caught my eye. A slice of a photo was visible on the top of the page. A black-and-white picture of an imposing old building. A building with a peaked roof and ivy-covered walls. I remembered looking at the harsh angles of that building in the early morning light and thinking it was a photographer’s dream.
Willowgrove.
Only half of the picture was visible, but I didn’t need to see the whole image to recognize the old, repurposed sanatorium.
I couldn’t breathe. My lungs, my heart, everything in my chest was turning to ice and the ice was threatening to crack.
I forced myself to look up, to make sure Stephen was still engrossed in his conversation, and then I slipped the piece of paper from the book.
It was a pamphlet for an art exhibit. Some sort of retrospective by a group of Colorado photographers. The Willowgrove in the picture wasn’t exactly the one I had known. The ivy was so overgrown that it threatened to pull the walls down, and the doors and windows were all boarded up. It was the sanatorium—there was no doubt of that—but the photo had been taken sometime during the decades the old hospital had stood empty.
Before Sinclair.
Before Thornhill.
My eyes drifted down to the location of the exhibit.
Flagler Public Library.
The name of the town was a knife in my stomach. Flagler was a forty-minute drive from Thornhill and was so small it barely registered on the map. Most of the camp’s personnel who chose not to stay in the staff dormitories had lived in Flagler and commuted—at least that’s what Jason had once said. Without the nearby camp and the jobs it provided, Flagler would have been a ghost town.
I turned the pamphlet over. A phone number and what looked like a room number had been jotted on the back in Stephen’s looping, off-kilter handwriting. Chicken scratches—that’s what Amy had said any time she had been forced to decipher a note he’d left.
I glanced up. Stephen was walking back to the car, his face set in hard, grim lines.
Hastily, I shoved the book back into the messenger bag and tucked the paper into my jacket pocket.
I pushed open the passenger door and climbed out of the car just as Stephen rounded the hood.
He shot me a piercing look. “What’s wrong?”
I stared at Amy’s brother. Everything about him suddenly seemed different. Suspect.
My hand shook as I shut the car door. A thousand questions flew to my lips, but I choked them back. I wouldn’t be able to trust anything he said. Stephen had been at Flagler. He must have been at Thornhill: the camp was the only reason anyone would go there.
Someone had sent those men after Serena. If CutterBrown had been working with Sinclair, then they had the most to lose if the truth ever came out. It would be a public relations nightmare. Admitting I knew anything about Thornhill could be suicide.
Would be suicide, I amended, thinking about the explosion at the transition house.
“I have to go.” Four words that shook as they left my lips. “I don’t need a ride.”
Before Stephen could respond, I turned and headed for the gates. My legs trembled, but I crossed the distance in record time, walking so fast that I was practically running.
“Mac! Wait!”
Stephen caught up with me as I reached the street. He grabbed my arm and pulled me to a stop.
I stared into his blue eyes—the icy-blue eyes he had inherited from his father.
“Why are you staring at me like that?” His voice was filled with something. Worry or suspicion: I couldn’t tell the difference.
I tugged my arm free and tried to throw up walls to keep my thoughts and emotions from showing on my face. “Like what?”
“Like you’re scared of me. Mackenzie, what the hell just happened?”
“Nothing.” The urge to slip a hand inside my pocket, to make sure the pamphlet was still there, was almost overpowering. “I’d rather just walk home. Walking is good. I’m totally fine.”
“You’re obviously not fine.” Stephen’s voice was slow and careful; it was the kind of tone you’d use with an idiot or someone who was up on a ledge. He started to slip the scarf from his neck and froze when I tensed. His nostrils flared as he inhaled deeply. “You look like you’re going to throw up or pass out. Just let me drive you home—or at least wait while I call your cousin to . . .” His voice trailed off as engines approached on the street behind me.
Great, I thought, turning and glancing in the direction of the interstate, another Tracker caravan.
But instead of an RV, a green transport—the kind soldiers rode in—rumbled past. A dozen more followed in its wake. Like the Trackers and news vans I had seen earlier, they were headed toward the center of town.
A National Guardsman leaned out the back of the last truck.
“Jesus,” muttered Stephen. He walked past me and stepped out onto the street, staring after the trucks as they disappeared around the bend. For a second, he forgot all about me.
I backed away from the street and whirled. Stephen yelled my name as I ran back into the cemetery, but he didn’t follow.
Fern Ridge was surrounded by a brick wall, but there was another gate on the far side, one that was used by the groundskeepers and gravediggers.
Muscles aching and lungs burning, I reached the wall and slumped against the bricks.
I pulled the crumpled paper from my pocket. My hand shook as I tried to smooth out the creases. The date of the exhibit had been July 29—just weeks before Thornhill had opened its doors. I had suspected CutterBrown was involved with the camp, but part of me had desperately been hoping I was wrong.
And never, in a million years, could I have imagined that Stephen would somehow be involved.
“I’m not leaving Hemlock.” My words were a whisper. Serena and the others had to get away—now, with the National Guard in town, more than ever—but I wouldn’t be going with them.
Amy’s family had been involved with Thornhill. I had to find out how deeply.
I squeezed my eyes shut. “What did you know, Amy? Is this the reason you’re still here?”
The wind through the trees was my only answer.
11
I RETURNED TO THE CHURCH TO FIND FOUR ANGRY WEREWOLVES and one seriously pissed-off Tracker.