It clicked. My heart jumped up into my throat, my fingers curling against the desk.
My mother’s voice.
Hello, you’ve reached the residence of Jacob, Susan, and Ruby Daly…
I don’t know why I started to cry then. Maybe I was exhausted. Maybe I was tired of how hard everything had become. I was happy that the three of them were together, that Mom and Dad had fixed their family and replaced one Ruby with another. The thing I’d realized most over the past few days was how important it was for us to take care of one another and stick together. And they were taking care of each other. Good.
Good.
But it didn’t mean that I wasn’t going to close my eyes and pretend, if only for a few minutes, that I was the Ruby who still lived on Millwood Drive.
THIRTY
HOURS LATER, when it was just the three of us back on the road, we finally had a chance to tell Liam exactly what had happened to us the night before.
“Thank God Chubs found you,” Liam said, shaking his head. “You knew him better than any of us, and you still went.”
“I really thought I could control him,” I said, leaning my forehead against the cool window. “I’m an idiot.”
“Yes, you are,” Chubs agreed. “But you’re our idiot, so be more careful next time.”
“Cosigned,” Liam said, hooking his fingers over mine on top of the armrest.
We’d found the car abandoned along a side road a few miles west of East River, and picked it only because it still had a quarter tank of gas. Driving in this car was nothing like driving in Betty. Chubs’s long legs dug into the back of my seat, and the car smelled like old Chinese food. Still, it was running. After a while, it would become ours.
“There’s another one,” Chubs said, tapping on his window.
I opened my eyes and craned my neck back, catching a quick look at the white pole. On top of it was a white box, and on top of that was a small antenna. Cameras, everywhere.
“Maybe we should get off the highway,” Liam suggested.
“No!” Chubs said. “We’ve seen two whole cars since we got on the sixty-four, and it’ll take us twice as long to get to Annandale if we get off again. They’ll be watching for Betty, anyway, not this car.”
Liam and I shared a look. “Tell me again what your mom’s message said?”
“She said to make a reservation at my aunt’s restaurant and wait for them in the kitchen,” Chubs said. “I did that from East River, so we should be set to meet them there tonight. My aunt will probably even feed us.”
“Let’s drop you off first, then,” Liam said.
“No,” Chubs said. “I want to deliver Jack’s letter.”
“Chubs…”
“Don’t Chubs me,” he snapped. “I owe Jack a lot. I want to do this.”
The address for Jack’s father was a Days Inn motel, far away from Annandale’s neighborhoods of sprawling homes. Liam seemed to think that the motel had been converted to a temporary housing complex for the workers rebuilding D.C., but there was no way to prove his theory until a rickety old bus pulled up alongside our car in the parking lot and unloaded a dozen dust-covered men, clutching neon vests and hard hats.
“Room 103,” Liam said, leaning over the steering wheel. He squinted with his good eye. “The guy in the red shirt. Yeah, that’s him—Jack looked a lot like him.”
The man was short and square, with a graying moustache and a wide nose.
Chubs reached between us and plucked the wrinkled letter out of my hand.
“Slow down, Turbo,” Liam said, clicking the car locks on. “We haven’t even checked to make sure he’s not being watched.”
“We’ve been out here for almost an hour—do you see anyone? The only other cars in the parking lot are empty. We lay low, like you wanted, and it worked.” He reached over and pulled the lock up manually. Liam stared at him for a moment, before relenting.
“All right; just be careful, will you?”
We watched him scurry across the parking lot, glancing around. Making sure there really was no one out watching room 103. He tossed a told you so look over his shoulder.
“Nice,” Liam said. “Real nice.”
I reached over and rubbed his shoulder. “You know you’ll miss him.”
“It’s insane, isn’t it?” he said, with a light laugh. “What am I going to do without him telling me how dangerous it is to open canned food the wrong way?”
Liam waited until Chubs had raised his hand and knocked before unbuckling his seat belt to lean over and give me a light kiss.
“What was that for?” I said, laughing.
“To get your mind on the right track,” he said. “After we take him home, we have to figure out how to find Zu and the others before the PSFs do.”
“What if—”
The door to room 103 cracked open, and the face of Mr. Fields appeared, tired and suspicious. Chubs lifted the wrinkled letter and extended it out to him. I wished Chubs had turned at an angle so we could have made out what he was saying. The man’s face flushed crimson, so dark that it matched his work shirt. He yelled something, loud enough that his next-door neighbors opened their curtains to see what was happening.
“This is bad,” Liam said, unlocking his door. “I knew I should have had him practice with me first.”
The door shut in Chubs’s face, only to open again all the way. I saw a flash of silver, saw Chubs raise his hands and take a step back.
The gunshot tore through the sunset, and by the time I screamed, Chubs was already on the ground.
We ran toward the room, screaming for him. All the complex’s residents were standing outside now, mostly men, some women. Their faces were monstrous blurs.
Jack’s father raised his shaking gun toward us, but Liam threw him back into his room and pulled the door shut with a sweep of his hand. My knees slid across the loose asphalt as I dropped down beside Chubs.
His eyes were open, staring at me, blinking. Alive.
He tried to tell me something, but I couldn’t hear over the screaming from inside 103. “Fucking freaks! Get out of here you goddamn freaks!”
Bright red blood bubbled up from just below Chubs’s right shoulder, spreading out over his shirt with hundreds of gliding fingers. I couldn’t do anything at first. It didn’t look real. Liam diving for the man’s gun, pointing it at 104 and 105, not real.