Amy closed the distance between us. Leaning in so close that her breath left a layer of frost on my cheek, she said, “Everyone always sees more than they remember. And sometimes people see things they’re not ready to accept.”
I woke with a start, disorientated and confused. I wasn’t in my bedroom and I wasn’t back in the dormitory at Thornhill. There was a weight across my chest. I started to panic but then the roof of the tent came into focus and I became aware of Kyle—the scent of his skin and the steady sound of his breathing—beside me.
He had thrown an arm over me in his sleep. For a moment, I just closed my eyes and enjoyed being near him, grateful to no longer be trapped in the dream. Being in the detention block once—seeing the videos of what had been done to Serena—had been horrible enough. Having to revisit that place—those images—night after night in my dreams was exhausting.
Everyone always sees more than they remember. A chill swept down my spine as I thought about Amy’s words.
As quietly as I could, I unzipped my sleeping bag and carefully wormed out from Kyle’s embrace. He rolled onto his back, but didn’t wake.
I rummaged in the bottom of my knapsack until my fingers closed around a pen. Digging through my jacket pockets turned up a receipt for the soda and chips I had bought when we stopped for gas, and using my phone as a flashlight, I sketched out what little I had seen of the symbol from my dream.
The result was a thick squiggle that looked like a half-melted version of the Nike swoosh.
I frowned down at the piece of paper, turning it this way and that. Something about the curve of the lines seemed familiar, but I couldn’t place it. It definitely wasn’t the twisted vines of the Thornhill crest, but it did look like it could almost be part of a logo.
Maybe it was nothing, but there really had been a spreadsheet on the monitor the night we had broken into the detention block. At the time, I had been too distracted to do anything more than note its existence. I had been too focused on the realization that Serena had been tortured and the possibility that we’d all be caught at any moment.
What if I had missed something? Something important. What if that was why I kept seeing the detention block in my dreams night after night?
I snapped a photo of the sketch.
The flash was blinding in the tent. I held my breath until I was certain I hadn’t woken Kyle, and then I typed what I could remember of the dream into my memo app. It was one more fragment to add to my growing collection of memories and questions—what Jason and Kyle had dubbed my “Thornhill Files.”
They thought I was obsessed.
Maybe I was.
Aside from Sinclair and a handful of her former staff, we were the only ones who knew what had really happened at Thornhill. The employees in the detention block had been so determined to keep their secrets that they had set fire to the camp’s main building once they realized the breakout couldn’t be stopped.
Every scrap of proof had burned in the blaze.
Everyone else wanted to let go of the camp. They wanted to believe it was over and that we were safe—or as safe as we could be. Thornhill was gone and Sinclair couldn’t hurt anyone else. We’d never be able to prove what had happened inside the fences; the only thing we could do was try to put it behind us, try to put ourselves back together. All we could do was try to move on.
And I wanted to move on.
It was just . . .
Warden Sinclair had kept her search for an end to lupine syndrome secret from the LSRB. She had falsified admission records, kept most of her staff in the dark, and paid Trackers to bring in wolves under the table—all to keep the bureau from finding out that she was torturing and killing inmates in pursuit of a cure.
A cure she couldn’t possibly have been working toward on her own.
The drugs, the detention block, the research—all of it would have taken money and resources. Way more money and resources than a civil servant could pull together. Someone had to have been helping her—if not the LSRB then someone else—and whoever that someone was, they were still out there, free to start again. Free to hurt people like Sinclair had hurt Serena. They wouldn’t even need another camp. Not really. They could just grab infected people off the street.
Knowing what we did . . . it felt like some sort of responsibility—like we had to figure out how Sinclair had gotten away with so much and who had helped her. How could any of us really put Thornhill in the past when there were still so many questions?
I stared down at the small sketch for a moment, and then sent a text to the person who had been standing at my side in front of the monitor that night. Need 2 ask u something.
My phone vibrated a second later. s’up?
I rubbed my eyes. Jason’s response had come too quickly for my message to have woken him. I tried not to think about what sort of trouble he might be getting into at 3:00 a.m. on a Friday night in a town overrun by Trackers.
Both Kyle’s parents and Tess, my cousin and legal guardian, were still having trouble coping with the news that Kyle was a werewolf and that we were both, technically, fugitives. They watched us like they were waiting for the sky to fall. Jason’s parents, on the other hand, were happy just to have him back without a scandal. Once he had assured them that he hadn’t dragged the Sheffield name through the mud or gotten anyone knocked up, it had been business as usual.
I sent him the picture of the sketch. Does this look familiar?
No. Y?
Before I could reply, he sent another text. Gotta go.
That was it. No explanation. No good-bye.
Wherever he was and whatever he was doing, I was certain it couldn’t be good.
Leaving a group like the Trackers wasn’t easy—especially when you had the kind of status and money Jason did. They had gotten their claws into him and they intended to keep things that way. And Jason . . . Jason believed that staying close to them would help keep the rest of us safe—as though he could be a kind of early warning system if someone found out Kyle and Serena were infected or that I was the daughter of a pack leader.
It was the same at school. He continued to play the part of Tracker and alcoholic screwup to draw attention away from the rest of us. He played it so well that there were times when I had to remind myself that he really had changed. He played it so well that sometimes I suspected even he forgot who and what he was.
I stowed my phone and then slid back into my sleeping bag. I rolled over and studied Kyle’s shadowed profile. In the morning, we’d drive back to Hemlock and have to face the real world. Trackers. Jason. The fact that Serena still hadn’t recovered from Sinclair’s “cure” and the knowledge that Kyle would soon have to decide whether or not to return to Colorado.