Kristen Simmons - Article 5

I shook my head to clear it. I was the one who held things together, not the person who stirred up trouble. Joining a resistance was crazy. Irresponsible. And it didn’t even matter—not when I had to find my mother.

“…execution-style killing in Harrisonburg, Virginia. The deceased is an unidentified Caucasian male in his mid-forties.” A pause and the shuffle of paper. “We’re now receiving word that the Federal Bureau of Reformation has linked this death to the Virginia Sniper. Again, this constitutes the third serial murder in a chain throughout the state of Virginia. As always, citizens are strongly encouraged to stay out of evacuated areas and observe the Moral Statutes.”

I gripped my hands together so that they didn’t shake.

The MM was blaming their own kill on the resistance—on this sniper, whoever he was.

Mary Jane was babbling about how dangerous the country was becoming and how thankful she was for the FBR. I wanted to scream the truth at her but knew I couldn’t. I froze completely when the radio snagged my attention again.

“…Jennings, who defected from the FBR earlier this week, should be approached with caution as he may be armed and dangerous. Any information on the whereabouts of this criminal can be called in on the crisis line. That concludes the nightly news. This is Felicity Bridewell.”

I’d missed the story! What had been said? Mary Jane had talked over most of the report!

I couldn’t look at her; she’d see the truth right on my face. And if we ran now, the Loftons would know we were guilty. So I fixed my eyes on the window, staring at the tear tracks down the glass left by the earlier rain, and I nearly screamed when Chase’s hand came to rest on the small of my back.

“Dinner was great, wasn’t it Elizabeth?” he said with a hollow smile, interrupting my panic. I knew it was for show, but the touch comforted me enough to maintain my role.

“Delicious,” I said. The muscles in my legs were already working.

The next minutes seemed to pass in a fog. The next thing I knew, Chase and I were standing in a guest bedroom across the hall from Ronnie’s room. An Amish quilt covered one wall; the intricate pattern of colored squares made my eyes cross.

Chase shoved open the window, but it was reinforced by steel bars. Keeping out thieves. Keeping in criminals.

I swallowed a deep breath.

“I don’t think they know,” I said unsteadily. Chase shook his head, grave now that his acting stint was finished. “Maybe Patrick didn’t hear me say your name outside.”

“He was a little preoccupied.” Chase closed the window delicately, a line furrowed between his brows. He transferred his weight from foot to foot.

“What do we do?” I asked. “I don’t want to wait until the morning.”

“They’ve got a van in the front of the house, and there’s the bike, but we can’t risk the roads after curfew.” His tone was heavy. “We’ll hike out after they go to sleep.”

Which meant we were prisoners until the family went to bed.

WHILEChase washed up, I tiptoed through the hallway, curious when I didn’t hear Mary Jane or Ronnie. Bedtime reading, I guessed. That seemed like a normal thing to do. In fact Patrick, who was still in the living room, was doing the same. His feet were up, and he was wearing glasses now. I swallowed some resentment, remembering home, and how my mother and I used to read on the couch after curfew.

My heart rate slowed. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary. Not that I could tell.

When I slipped back into the guest room I found Chase sitting on the edge of the bed, elbows on his knees, face in his hands. He was so still, I thought he might be asleep.

I watched him just for a moment, unable to draw my eyes away.

He seemed to have become distracted in the midst of changing. He still wore his jeans and his boots, but his clean shirt lay untouched beside him on the bed. The lights worked on account of the generator, but he’d lit a candle to combat the shadows instead, and the hard lines of his jaw and neck were accentuated in the flickering flame. From this angle, I now noticed several raised scars on his back that I hadn’t seen in the house on Rudy Lane. They angered me, those scars, cut at a diagonal like the swipe of a claw. I wanted to know who had hurt him like that. I wanted to protect him. If such a thing was even possible. I felt sort of powerful thinking it might be.

Still, his scars, combined with the serpentine wound now visible without the bandage covering his shoulder, made him all the more dangerous.

He was, to me, terrifyingly beautiful.

All the nerves that had been crackling inside of me seemed to transform and redirect toward Chase. My body trembled with anticipation. What energy remained sparked in the air between us like electricity.

I wanted to move to him, but my feet were nailed to the ground. I opened my mouth to speak, but there were no words. I thought of the letters that he’d kept, of what they could mean if he let me in, and was confused again.

He remained as still as I was, then sighed softly, and my heart clenched. Something was wrong. That had been a noise of pain, not of exhaustion.

“Does your arm hurt a lot?” I asked. He jumped up, not having heard me approach. I’d forgotten that I’d been tiptoeing so as not to disturb Patrick.

He shoved on his shirt, a little too forcefully, I thought. I eased the door shut behind me.

“It’s just… that kid. He’s just a child. He could have been shot.” The shame was so thick in his tone that it nearly choked him, and I sagged back against the wall, staggered by how much it affected me. “I didn’t even think about him. He’s what, six? Seven? I almost walked away and let him die.”

I could feel my brows draw together. A shiver went down my spine when I thought of Chase walking out into that field.

“But you didn’t.”

“Because of you.” He looked up then, eyes black and filled with pain. “That guy was swinging a pistol toward a kid, and all I could think of was you. That he was going to hurt you. That I couldn’t let him. Those guys, those stupid guys in Hagerstown. And that highway patrol… I could have… What’s wrong with me?”

I swallowed, but it was hard because my throat was so tight. His stare returned to his hands. They didn’t look like a fighter’s hands now. They looked big and callused and empty.

That same knot twisted inside of me. If I had told him to forget the MM, to stay with me when he’d been drafted, he would not be broken now.

“You look out for people, you always have—” I began, but he shook his head, dismissing my modesty.

“You’re the only thing that’s tying me down.”

“Well, I’m sorry I’m ruining all your fun,” I said, appalled.

“Fun?” he said weakly. “You think… Ember, you’re the only piece of me I have left. Everything else—my family, my home, my soul —they’re all gone. I don’t know who the hell I am anymore. If it weren’t for you… I don’t know.”

His voice went thick again and he stared at the floor, bewildered and ashamed. Though my mouth was open, I had no idea what to say. I wished that I could reassure him that he was still Chase, and reassure myself, too, but what if he was right?

“Come here.” It was my voice. My request. But it surprised us both.

Nothing happened for several long seconds, but then some magnetic force took over, drawing us slowly to each other. His face was speculative, confused. I could tell he did not want to come closer, that he couldn’t understand why he was already so near.

He tore away from my eyes and, to my shock, tentatively nuzzled his face into my hair. I could feel his breath warm my shoulder. He smelled of the woods and faintly of soap. My whole body tingled.