Never Fade

NINE

THE PROBLEM WAS, ONCE I STARTED, I couldn’t stop. I felt every bit of me sag against him, needing the reassurance that he was solid and that the heart beating next to my ear was his. Chubs patted my back awkwardly as I buried my face in his jacket and went to pieces.

“How?” I choked out. “Why are you here?”

The rustling in the trees behind us barely registered in my mind, but Chubs looked up, calling, “Oh, come on, Lee—I know you want a hug, too—”

It happened too fast for me to warn him—to stop any of it. Chubs released me only to spin me behind him, throwing me more off-kilter than I had been before. I thought, for sure, that my mind was playing tricks on me, because it looked like he had pulled a long hunting knife up out of the waistband of his pants. It looked like Vida was pointing her gun straight at him, switching off the safety.

“It’s—” I began, feeling his arm strain under my grip. “Chubs—”

“Who the hell are you?” he demanded.

“Not the person who brought a knife to a gunfight,” Vida said, waving her weapon for emphasis.

“Wait, wait, wait!” Jude said, popping out from behind the tree to her right. He slid partway down the muddy hill, throwing himself between them. “Not Liam,” he said, pointing at himself, then at Vida. “Not Liam, either.” Jude turned back toward Chubs, his thick eyebrows drawing together as he moved his finger our way. “Also not Liam…?”

At that, Vida turned to stare at him. “In what universe does this tool look anything like Cole Stewart?”

Jude’s voice went high when he got defensive. “I don’t know! Brother from a different mother? There is such a thing as adoption—”

Chubs lowered his knife. I could see his mind working behind his eyes, jumping from one horrible possibility to another as he took account of the strangers, my tears, and the absence of Liam.

“Oh my God,” he said, going gray in the face. He pressed a fist against his stomach, like he was about to be sick. “Oh my God.”

“No, no,” I said quickly. “He’s not dead!”

That you know of, my mind whispered.

“Why aren’t you together?” Now he looked close to tears himself. Chubs’s hair had grown out past its usual neat crop, and the silver-rimmed glasses that actually fit his face made him look so much more mature than I remembered. He didn’t really look like himself, not until I saw the fear come crashing over him—this was the Chubs I remembered, always between one panic and the next. “He never would have left you, never!”

I looked away. Not toward Vida and Jude, who had gone silent watching this, but to soft mud cupping rain puddles at our feet.

“Ruby,” Chubs began, his voice strained. “What happened?”

I shook my head, pressing my freezing hands to my face.

“You left him?” he guessed. “You had a fight? You split up for a few days?”

By whispering it, I was hoping I could take some of the sting out of the truth, but that wasn’t the case at all. Chubs took a stunned step back, his eyes flashing with horror.

“No, you didn’t!” he said, gripping my shoulders. “That was the only reason I thought it would be okay! I thought you two would stay together!”

“What was I supposed to do?” I demanded, not caring that my voice was rising. “You were—you were dead, and they had taken us in, and I made a deal, and I knew, I knew he wouldn’t go otherwise. What the hell was I supposed to do?”

Chubs shook his head. “And these kids, they’re League? You’re with them?”

“They’re—” I started to say.

“—still standing here, waiting for an explanation as to who the hell this is,” Vida cut in, every trace of amusement gone from her face.

My brain was finally starting to reassemble itself into working order, and with it came fresh, sharp fear.

Vida was here. Vida, who had been chasing us down to bring us back in to the League. Vida, who had now seen Chubs and could identify him to the League, if it came to that. Who might even try to bring him in.

I pushed him back, trying to keep him behind me. “He’s no one,” I said. “He’s not any concern of yours.”

“Uh, yeah he freaking is if he’s coming with us to find Stewart,” Vida said.

“What did you say?”

“Plug your empty-ass brain in,” she said. “I’m not here to take you back; I’m here to help you.” She turned on Jude. “Nice of you to repay me by electrocuting me, you little shit.”

“If you weren’t there with Beta Team and Barton to take us in to HQ, then why?”

Vida rolled her eyes but did answer eventually—with the smuggest look possible. “I was looped in on your little romantic quest. The only way to get me out without it looking suspicious was to suggest that I come after you dumb asses, since I supposedly know your crappy personalities so well.”

“What about Beta Team?” Jude asked.

“Recalled to HQ. Orders to bring Rob back in or something—you two lace panties about caused a fucking riot back home with your little stunt.” She tossed her hair back. “Alban gave me two weeks to find you. So let’s get this horror show on the road.”

I stared at her, shaking my head. “You are so full of it. You think we’re just going to skip away with you into the sunset?”

“No,” Vida said, “I expect you to fucking prance, and you’re going to do it with a smile and the least amount of bitching possible, or Cole isn’t going to honor your stupid deal to have the League free the camps.”

It was true, then—she was telling the truth about being here to help us. Cole wouldn’t have looped her in otherwise. The objective was too valuable. It surprised me how much it stung my pride to know he didn’t think I could handle this Op on my own. That I needed backup.

Jude turned to look at me, totally lost.

“Okay, vámonos!” Vida said, clapping her hands. “If you’re going to check out the house, then do it fast.”

“I’m not going anywhere with you,” Chubs cut in. I recognized the expression on his face—how many times had I seen it after the others took me in, before he came to accept the fact I was staying with them? Chubs had never been one to hide his feelings, whether it was anger or fear or suspicion. He and Liam were alike in that way, only it came to Liam by nature and Chubs by choice. I’m not sure he saw a point in pretending to be anything he wasn’t.

“Yes,” I said, taking Chubs’s arm again. I felt the muscle there strain under my fingers. “Come on, we need to talk. I’ll explain everything.”

Chubs cast his unhappy expression down at me. “Just us, then. I don’t—”

All four of us heard it at once. Car doors slamming. One, two, three.

I pulled Chubs back so we were flush against the house, motioning for Jude to come toward us and quickly. Vida circled around the nearby trees, her boots silent in the soft mulch. Her head of bright hair was the last trace of her to vanish into the rain.

I glanced up at the window Chubs had wiggled out of, my hand stretching up to touch the loose screen, then back toward the woods. We could maybe make a run for it, maybe. Try to disappear into the wildlife and lose them that way.

“Is it Barton?” Jude was whispering.

Chubs and I both shushed him. The back of Liam’s house was lined with five white-trimmed windows and one perfectly sweet little screen door, which had been nailed into place with sturdy plywood boards. A square of bricks had been lovingly placed to serve as a patio at the back entrance to the home. Now, green grass, glowing in the misty rain, had crawled up through the cracks.

I dropped to the damp bricks on hands and knees, slowly working my way along the length of the house until the voices became louder. My nails dug into the fabric of my pants, ears straining. Two men. One woman.

When I finally turned back around to tell the boys this, Vida was already there, crouched between Chubs and Jude. When she felt my eyes on her, she glanced up and gave an impatient jerk of her chin.

“There are four altogether,” she whispered. “One woman, three men. They look like they’re PSFs.”

I covered Jude’s mouth with my hand. “Are they armed?”

She nodded. “The usual. What’s with this house? Why is it important enough that they installed motion sensors?”

“Sensors?” Chubs said.

“They stuck them under the roof overhang at all four corners of the house,” she said, clearly annoyed he didn’t immediately take her word for the gospel truth.

I shared a glance with Chubs, letting Jude pry my hand away from his face. Of course they would have installed something to monitor the house. If not for Liam, then for Cole. Interesting that Cole hadn’t bothered to feed her any of his brother’s back story. Maybe there just hadn’t been time.

The voices had quieted down, but I heard their heavy tread through the overgrown garden at the right end of the house. They’d be too close now for us to try to run out into the trees. There was no way they wouldn’t spot us.

With a sigh that shook his entire tall frame, Chubs stood and pushed the dangling flaps of the window screen aside. Resignation made his shoulders slump.

“Do you trust me?” he asked, seeing my expression.

“Of course.”

Jude made a small noise behind me, but I ignored it.

“Then tell your friends to get inside”—he nodded to the now open window—“and stand up. I’m going to have to handcuff you.”

Here was the nice thing about being shocked senseless: I didn’t have to pretend to be terrified. I stood there, feeling the sharp edges of the clear plastic ties cutting off my blood supply at the wrist. I let them disconnect every single thought in my head.

Who is this person? I thought, studying him closer now. He was wearing the hooded camo hunting jacket I had vaguely noticed before, a gray wool turtleneck, and a pair of faded jeans, battered by dust and long wear. Strapped to his hip was what looked like a small cell phone and a leather pouch. When we had traveled together before, he had kept all of his possessions in a battered leather briefcase he had found. That had suited him so much better than this weird…imitation of what he thought a hunter should look like.

It should have been reassuring to see him so prepared and well supplied, but, somehow, it only frightened me more.

Chubs’s hand was steady as he took my chin in his hand, turning it to and fro, inspecting the cuts and bruises from the night before with a disapproving look. The others watched from behind the closed window, Jude’s face so close it was almost pressed up against the glass.

“It might be better if you pretend to pass out,” he said.

The suggestion came just in time. As I hit the ground, I saw the flash of black as the PSFs rounded the corner.

Four. Vida had been right. The brown-haired woman was the tallest of the group, standing several inches above the men. One was an older guy, his hair puffing out in an ashy blond ring around his head. The other two were younger and looked enough alike to be brothers. All armed with standard-issue rifles, handcuffs, the works.

“Can I help you?” Chubs’s face was set in stone.

The soldiers didn’t know what to make of us, but they also didn’t lower their weapons. I was starting to put it together, though, long before Chubs began to speak again.

“What, so you’re here to swipe my score out from under my nose? Trying to weasel out of having to pay me?”

The older soldier cocked a beetled brow. “You’re a skip tracer?”

My thoughts exactly. If that was the ruse we were running with, we were in more trouble than I thought. On a good day, Chubs was about as threatening as a potted cactus.

“Here!” He reached into the leather pouch on his belt and thrust something at the PSF. It looked like a small booklet, about the size of a passport.

The old man stepped forward but turned to look back at the woman. “Take a walk around the perimeter. Make sure she was traveling alone.”

Chubs waved the booklet again as the three others took their walk. The old man sighed, glancing back and forth between Chubs’s face and whatever was written there.

“All right, Mr. Lister,” he said, passing it back to him. “Have you run this one through the database?”

“She’s not in it,” Chubs said. “She’s probably been coasting for quite some time. There aren’t any records of her.”

“Did you test her?” he asked. “If she’s Blue or Yellow, you’ll need—”

“She’s a Green,” Chubs interrupted. “Why? Want a demonstration?”

“We can take her,” the man offered. “Save you the trouble of transporting.”

“I told you, she’s not in the system,” Chubs said, the nasty edge to his voice more pronounced. “I know how this works. You can’t line up my payment if she isn’t registered. I have to go into the nearest station and do the paperwork if I want the bounty.”

The man snorted but didn’t try to deny it. “Was that car on the road yours?”

“No,” Chubs said, rolling his eyes. “I flew in on a cloud and came blitzing down from the Heavens like a bolt of lightning on this kid.”

“Hey, now,” came the PSF’s gruff reply. “I can take her, and there’s not a damn thing you’d be able to do about it. So watch your attitude, boy.”

That attitude was what was throwing me off, too. Chubs wasn’t brave by nature; courage tended to rear up when he felt that his friends were threatened, true, but this wasn’t so much bravery as it was recklessness. And that was the last—the very last—thing I associated with him.

I don’t know how much time passed between then and the moment the PSF’s radio buzzed. A minute. Ten years. Forever. “This is Jacobson, do you read?”

The man unclipped his black walkie-talkie from his belt. “I read. Did you find anything?”

“No, nothing out of the ordinary. It’s hard to tell much with the rain coming down. Any footprints would be washed out, over.”

“She’s alone, I’m sure of it,” Chubs was saying. “I followed her.”

“All right,” the man said. I saw his boots sink that much deeper into the dead, muddy grass as he took two steps toward me. My eyes squeezed shut again, and it was near impossible to force my body to go limp with him so close. I didn’t want him touching me. Panic flared up bright as morning light as his boot nudged my ribs.

The cold, wet leather of his glove closed around my upper arm and he yanked me off the ground. My arm twisted, sending sharp, shooting pains into my shoulder.

“Don’t!” Chubs snarled. “Don’t touch—!”

The PSF’s grip didn’t ease up.

“I mean,” Chubs began again, this time his voice neutral, “they take out the cost of medical care from the reward money if the kids are injured. I can handle it from here…sir.”

“That’s better,” the man said, dropping me facedown into the dirt. “Get her and clear the hell out of here. You’re trespassing, and if I find you back here, I’ll arrest you myself.”

The rainwater was collecting in my ear, running free down the curve of my cheek, and soaking Liam’s old jacket. I waited for it to carry my fear away, too, down into the earth where it couldn’t touch me again. I took in one deep, wet gulp of air and held it.

A car engine started in the distance. I opened my eyes again, watching Chubs come toward me. He knelt, one hand smoothing the tangled cloud of hair off my face. We listened to the wheels churn up the loose gravel of the driveway, both of us still and silent.

“I’m sorry,” Chubs said finally. “Are you okay? Did he dislocate your shoulder, because if he did—”

“I’m all right,” I said, “but—but could you please cut the zip ties off now?” I was horrified by the way my voice shook, but in addition to the discomfort, my brain was starting to spark up old memories that were better left buried deep. The bus ride into Thurmond. The sorting. Sam.

The minute I heard the plastic snap under his knife, I was pushing myself up onto my knees, ignoring the ache in my right shoulder. Chubs began to reach over to check on it, but I leaned back, just out of his reach.

We sat there, staring at each other, letting the space between us fill with rain and silence. Finally, I held out my hand, and without a word, he pressed the black booklet into it.

The cover was a tough faux leather, and I hadn’t necessarily been wrong in thinking that it was a passport. At first glance, it looked exactly the same—from the faint blue paper and the iridescent United States of America seal overlaying it.

FUGITIVE PSI RECOVERY AGENT. God, there was an official title for it?

“Joseph Lister,” I read. “Age twenty-four, six feet, a hundred and seventy pounds, from Penn Hills, Pennsylvania.” I glanced over at him. He was wearing an identical scowl to the one in his official photograph. “You know, it’s funny. The least believable thing about all that is your weight.”

“Oh, hilarious,” he groused, snatching it back from me before I could skim through the other pages. It was so Chubs—so the Chubs I knew—that I smiled. He struggled to keep his lips pressed in a stern line, but I saw the beginnings of a curve.

“I really thought you were dead,” I said quietly. “I shouldn’t have let them take you.”

He brought a hand up to his shoulder, pressing it there, as if his mind was cycling back to that moment, too. “You pushed the panic button, right?”

I nodded.

“I would have done the same thing,” he said. “The exact same thing. Well—” He stopped, actually considering this. “I probably would have been a little steadier in applying pressure to the wound, but other than that, yes. Well…”

“You’ll want to stop now,” I told him dryly. “Before you ruin our touching moment.”

The window above us suddenly opened and Jude’s curling mass of hair appeared there. “Roo—are you okay? Oh my God, Vida wouldn’t let me watch, but I tried to go around front, but the doors are all boarded up and there’s nothing in here so I just—”

Chubs helped me up, giving me a look that clearly asked, What fresh hell is this?

“I’ll tell you everything later, and you’re going to do the exact same. But for now, we have to see if we can find some kind of clue about what direction Lee might have headed—”

Chubs’s brows drew together as he lowered his voice. “Didn’t Lee tell you the procedure he and Harry set up to make contact?”

“I knew he had one, just not what it was,” I said. “But he told you?”

He nodded, shifting so his back was facing the window. And, I realized, the people inside. “We need to go. Now.”

“Wait,” I began, but he already had his arm looped through mine.

“They’re watching the house; we have to go,” he said. “And I’m sorry, I’d much rather not have the League riding with us.”

I detangled my arm from his, taking a step back. “I can’t leave them.”

“You are not League,” he insisted. “You are not one of them. You’re one of us.”

“Don’t think about it as us and them,” I pleaded. “We can all work together on this for now. You don’t have to come back with us to California after we find Liam; you just have to stay with us now.”

Out of the corner of my eye, I caught Vida’s electric blue hair through the window screen. “Back then, you didn’t want me to stay, either, remember?”

“Yeah but that was…different,” he said, his voice low. “And you know it.”

“But at the time, you didn’t know that.”

I had read him right. I saw it in his face, in the rigid lines of his tight shoulders.

“You asked me if I trusted you,” I whispered. “Do you trust me?”

He blew out a long breath, his hands resting on his hips. “God help me,” he said finally, “I do. But I trust you, not them. I don’t even know who they are.”

I only held out my hand and waited for him to take it. I needed his long fingers to close around mine, wanted that final proof that his better sense and reasoning had given way to the belief he used to have in me. I waited for him to come with me, to accept that we were now in this together again, that time and distance and uncertainty hadn’t been enough to shake us.

And he did.