BECKETT
I sat in the desk chair next to a bunk bed, rubbing the skin at my wrists where the handcuffs had been. I glared at my father standing in the doorway, my mind consumed with Finn’s disfigured face and all those other people in those cells that my dad had messed with …
“Dr. Cunningham and his daughter have run out of time,” Dad said, crossing his arms across his lab coat. “If you know anything, now’s your chance to say it.” The two guards behind him in the hall remained silent.
So this was the conversation he planned to have with me. Still holding out that I knew some secret bit of information that would give him the upper hand. I knew it didn’t matter what I told him at this point. I saw them stab Sage with that drug. I saw the gurney. And I’d seen that look in Dad’s eyes back in the lab room.
It didn’t matter now that I knew nothing. Whatever they’d found in Sage’s blood had pushed Dad over the edge. I couldn’t begin to imagine what it was.
If the code was in her, we’d be able to see her heightened skills like Jack’s. Beyond that, the options were endless. Sage’s father was Dr. Cunningham—the world’s foremost expert regarding human genetics. Anything was possible.
“Where did your brother go?” Dad asked when he realized I wasn’t going to say a word.
I shrugged. “I have no idea. You think he’d talk to me? You’ve effectively gotten us to hate each other, Father. Congratulations. That is what you wanted, isn’t it?”
I hoped the lie carried enough truth that he believed me.
He straightened. “If you see him, will you give him a message? Unless he comes back from wherever he disappeared to and turns himself in, the girl will die.”
I shot up, the chair clattered to the floor behind me. “You will not touch her.” One of the guards stepped into the doorway behind my dad.
He waved the guard back. “Just deliver the message.”
“Find him and give him the message yourself.”
My dad’s eyes narrowed. “We’ve always been on the same team, Beckett. Don’t forget that.”
“I’ve never been on your team.”
“I’m sure you’ll come to your senses soon enough. For now, you’ll stay here.” My dad slipped out.
I dove for the door, but it closed on my fingers. I shouted and yanked my hand back. The door clicked shut.
I waited twenty seconds before hissing into the earbud. “Jack!”
When no response came I pulled out the tiny device, inspecting it, trying to find if there was a way to turn it off and on. There was no obvious button, nothing on the irregular shape that looked able to be manipulated, so I shoved it in and tried again.
“Jack! Sage!”
An unknown voice came over the other end of the line. “He’s in the woods already. His ear bud is out of range. Sage is currently unconscious. But I think she does have the ear bud in. I hear her breathing.”
“Who is this?”
“My name is Caesar. I’m a friend of Jack’s.”
“Where is she?”
“They’ve taken her to a lab room. They’re planning an injection to get a response from Dr. Cunningham.”
“An injection like what he did to Finn?”
“Yes.”
“We’ve got to get to her.”
“From what I’ve gathered it doesn’t matter. Your dad is fibbing. Whatever he saw in her blood work will keep him from injecting her. He’s just testing Dr. Cunningham to see his response. That’s what he told Dr. Tappit, anyway. I heard the conversation through Sage’s earbud.”
“Look, I don’t know who you are or what you know, but you don’t know my father. Everything is a game to him. Every life is expendable. We need to get to her now.”
“Dude, you don’t know me, I get it. But trust me when I say, your dad does not want to kill her. Not at the moment, anyway.”
I sunk to the lower mattress on the bunk bed and rubbed my face. “When will Jack be back?”
“I’m not sure. A few hours, maybe? Keep your ear bud in. He’ll check in as soon as he’s in range. We can tell him what’s going on then.”
I leaned back on the mattress. This Caesar guy better know what he’s talking about. If the same thing that happened to Finn happened to Sage … I couldn’t think about it, couldn’t think about what it would do to me to see her like that ….
She hated me right now. I’ll never forget her expression in the lab room when I said her mom was dead. She wouldn’t even look at me. She honestly might never forgive me. And now with Jack ….
The way Jack had been holding her while she cried—it’s the way I’d wanted to hold her.
Jack had gotten to her. I could tell. Everywhere we’d ever gone, Jack always got the girl, even though he never really cared. It’s like girls were blinded. They never saw that Jack was too obsessed with finding the code to notice anything else.
Even when the perfect girl was standing right in front of his face.
My hands squeezed into fists, the mattress sheet twisted up inside them. Sage deserved better than that. I could give her better than that. If we got out of here—no, when—when we got out of here, I would try to show her somehow.
I would get her out. I would patch all this up.
But then I pictured her face again—how she’d looked at me after the news of her mom—and the way she’d gone down that hall to Jack after our fight.
The Sage from the farm felt so very far away that I wondered if it was too late to patch anything up at all.