Stacey Kade - The Hunt

Still, retrieving the bag was taking far longer than I wanted. And if Zane thought he could do it faster, all the better.

“Fine,” I said, wiggling out. “Be my guest.”

I stood up and folded my arms across my chest, watching in the moonlight as Zane stretched his six-foot-four frame out on the concrete and reached under the Dumpster.

It was an ugly but appropriate bit of symmetry that the fate of my future life was tied so closely to an oversize trash can. That’s what the last ten years of my life had been—a big load of garbage. Lies told to keep me quiet and compliant.

“Got it,” Zane said after an annoyingly short amount of time. That eighteen inches of additional height made a difference, I guess. He’d barely had to stick his head beneath.

He dragged a small but full black duffel out from under the Dumpster until it lay next to him. Shiny metallic strips of duct tape, now twisted and tangled from Zane’s efforts, hung off the edges of the bag, like legs of an upside-down spider. From space.

Zane inched out and pushed himself to his feet easily, biceps temporarily straining the sleeves of his green Ashe High lacrosse team T-shirt.

“Thanks,” I said grudgingly.

“I told you. Long arms,” he said with a shrug, and dusted off his hands. “My superpower.” He gave me a tentative smile.

He was…joking. Almost like normal.

I blinked, surprised. Well, it was what had passed for normal between us before everything went to hell and he learned I wasn’t who—or what—he thought I was. A few hours ago, I wouldn’t have thought that anything resembling that state would be possible again.

Relief crashed into me, a heady sensation. “I guess they were out of Sasquatch DNA the day they made me,” I shot back. If he could joke, I could joke, right? Humor was a human coping mechanism. I’d used it before, but never about myself to someone else. It was a strange feeling, like stripping naked and waiting to see if people would notice.

But in this case, laughing was a good thing, and I was rewarded by the bright flash of his grin. “Ouch.” He rocked back on his heels, clutching at his chest, pretending to be wounded.

Then he stopped abruptly, his hands dropping to his sides.

He was remembering what I’d done to Rachel Jacobs, one of his friends, the other night. I could see the images in quick flashes: Rachel coughing and choking at the pool party, grabbing at her chest as her heart fought against my control.

I hadn’t killed her, but I’d come awfully close. And the shock and fear he’d felt at what I’d done was still close to the surface. And tied to his thoughts of me.

I stiffened.

“Sorry,” he murmured, looking away.

I shook my head. “It’s not your fault,” I made myself say over the sudden lump in my throat. And it wasn’t. He hadn’t invented that scenario. I’d done it. For the right reasons, maybe, but it had gotten swiftly out of hand. Never mind that I hadn’t killed her or permanently injured her, even when her own grandfather, Dr. Jacobs, had later pushed me to do so.

I couldn’t—wouldn’t—hold Zane’s reactions against him. How could anyone be expected to respond to this messed-up situation with equanimity?

So, yeah. I guess we had a ways to go yet before “normal.”

I knelt next to the bag and tugged at the zipper with shaking hands. But it was stuck.

Without a word, Zane bent down and held the canvas sides steady. And this time when I tried, the zipper slid along the track smoothly.

Before I could thank him, a tight roll of cash, bound with a rubber band, slipped out of the opening and bounced to a stop near Zane’s shoe.

A quick glimpse in the bag showed there were a half-dozen identical bundles, right at the top.

Whoa.

Zane gave a low whistle. “I’ve got to start checking under more trash bins.” He picked up the bundle that had rolled free, looking at it more closely. “These are hundreds, Ariane. That means—”

“Thousands,” I managed through my shock. When my adoptive father had told me he’d been adding to the emergency cash, I’d never dreamed he’d meant this much. “It’s probably his life savings,” I said, fighting the rise of conflicting emotions: a bitter sadness and fury.

Mark Tucker had raised me as his daughter for the last decade. But he’d been working for GTX, the corporation that had created me, the whole time. I thought I’d escaped years ago. In reality, they’d just given me a bigger cage, so to speak, and put Mark in charge of monitoring my reactions to the world Outside. It had all been part of a larger plan, wrapped up in lies and deceit.

Beneath the cash, a flash of white caught my eye. I shifted the money carefully to one side, revealing a thin, square envelope.

My father’s bold but neat print was on the front: IF I AM NOT WITH YOU.

My stomach gave an uncomfortable lurch as I plucked the envelope out, pinching it between my fingertips. A letter from Mark? I didn’t want to read it. He’d first told me about the emergency bag a few years ago. That meant the contents of this letter would likely be an excruciating rehash of everything I’d learned in the last twenty-four hours, a detailed play-by-play of the worst betrayal I could have possibly imagined. No, thank you.

“Hey, Ariane? There are U.S. and Canadian passports in here. And one of those reloadable credit cards.” Zane held them up and squinted. “For a Talia Torv.”

He flipped to the photo page in the U.S. passport. “She looks an awful lot like you,” he said, holding it up so I could see.

It was, in fact, a picture of me. Last year’s school photo.

“Except,” he said, frowning, “Talia’s eighteen, almost nineteen.”

Of course she was. I laughed in a moment of near giddiness.

“No one will believe that,” Zane said, his handsome face troubled. “You barely look your age.”

He was right. My less-than-average height and preternatural thinness made me look younger than sixteen. My A-cup chest wasn’t doing me any favors either.

I shook my head. “It won’t matter. If the documents are good”—and knowing my father’s relentless attention to detail, they were—“no one will question them.” Which meant, I could live on my own. Eighteen was the magic number. And with all that cash…

For the first time, I felt a rush of hope, lifting the weight of despair and panic I’d been carrying around. Maybe, just maybe, this would work. Maybe I could leave Wingate and start a life, a real life somewhere.

I glanced at Zane on the other side of the bag, where he was busily cataloging the rest of its contents. And maybe I wouldn’t have to be alone. We were supposed to be heading to his mother’s house in the Chicago suburbs, assuming we could get out of town. I couldn’t stay there with him, obviously; it would be the first place GTX would look. But maybe I wouldn’t have to go too far. The idea brought an unfamiliar fluttering warmth to my chest. I could make a home for myself, a life. And he could perhaps be a part of it. After all, he was still with me, a miracle if I’d ever seen one. He’d come for me at GTX and stuck by my side, even after everything I’d done.

“There are, uh, clothes in here,” Zane said, restacking the items with a haste that suggested he’d discovered something personal.

Great. My face heated. Bra? Underwear? New ones or, oh God, tattered ones I hadn’t even noticed were missing from the laundry? I didn’t even want to think about it. It was silly to be embarrassed about something like that, I guess, considering. But I was still human. At least partially.

Zane cleared his throat. “And keys. This one looks like an old car key.” He held it up, a bright orange plastic tag attached.