He handed out the names of our “assignments,” letting his fingers brush mine as he passed me my slip of paper. I braced myself to read the name of the boy I was supposed to kill. Toby Engel. I didn’t recognize the name.
“Remember,” Alcántara said, concluding his lecture. “This is an exercise in discretion. A lesson in secrecy and choice.”
It was about choice. And I chose to fight.
CHAPTER EIGHT
The first thing I did was find out who Toby Engel was (using, of course, a good dose of that discretion Alcántara was so fond of). My “target” wasn’t exactly Mr. Sociability, and I had to ask around a bit before I found someone who knew who he was.
Now that I did know, it was hard to notice anybody else. The guy was huge. Strapping. A great, big, freckly corn-fed boy with a whiff of the American farmland to him. Burly shoulders suggested a youth spent tossing hay bales and plowing things. I sat in the dining hall, pretending not to watch him.
God help the guy, he was dumb as a post. Even if I hadn’t eavesdropped on snippets of his conversation, I could’ve seen it in the watery blankness of his blue eyes. Seriously, there were boxes of hammers sharper than this kid.
I tried not to panic. Because how was I supposed to kill him?
It wasn’t his obvious strength that put me off. Brute strength didn’t scare me—I was bright; I could outwit him blindfolded and on no sleep. It was that he struck me as a total innocent. He was like a character in a Steinbeck novel, a Lennie, some dumb and tragic brute whose greatest crime might’ve been accidentally petting someone’s puppy to death.
This was Alcántara testing me. He wanted to challenge what little was left of my moral compass. He’d know I couldn’t kill a Lennie.
A distinctly male body slid into the chair next to mine. My skin prickled, on instant alert. This body smelled of fresh air and salt water, his dinner tray held by hands I’d recognize anywhere.
Ronan. I didn’t need to look to know it was him. He kicked back, munching on an apple.
I stiffened. He was acting casual. He never acted casual. “What are you doing?”
He took a big bite and made me wait while he chewed. “Sitting down.”
“I can see that. I mean”—I flicked a glance right and left—“why?” There were Acari and Trainees all around. There were a couple Tracers, plus some Proctors and a handful of Watchers. Shouldn’t he be socializing with one of them instead? He only came to me when there was bad news, stuff involving wetsuits and trials in deep water.
“I’m here to eat a meal. You were alone. So I sat down.” He hooked his thumb along the edge of his tray, tugging it toward him like he might grab it and go. “Would you rather I left?”
“No. Of course not.” That was Ronan—putting a fine point on the matter. He had a way of defusing me, making my drama seem silly. I felt a burst of vulnerability…. How I missed a rowdy table full of friends. “It’s good to see you.” And it was.
“Are you well? You look…”
The statement hung, so I finished it for him. “I look like I lost my best friend?”
“Aye,” he said, instantly understanding. “So you do, and so you have.”
Again with Ronan and his not-beating-around-the-bush thing. I felt his eyes heavy on me, searching for something. I ripped my dinner roll in half, trying to play it cool. “So,” I asked stiffly, “are you here to drill me on what we learned in that wilderness workshop of yours?” I was in his Tuesday/Thursday elective, and he’d promised a semester of learning to live off the land, build fires, those sorts of things.
Emma things.
I had to sip water to wash down my bread.
“It’s called a Primitive Skills Intensive,” he said, but his voice had been taut. Too taut.
I let my gaze rise, finally daring to meet his, uncertain what I’d find. Would there be amusement? A scold? But what I saw instead surprised me. There was unmistakable tenderness in those forest-green eyes.
Scorn, discipline, mockery…those I could deal with. But tenderness? I was so not equipped to deal with tenderness right now. I had a plan. That plan didn’t involve friends or kindness or vulnerability of any sort. I had to stay focused. Resistance and revenge.
I turned my full attention to my dinner, using my fork to push around a pile of cold, limp green beans, desperately racking my brain to come up with some random topic to chat about.
Emma wasn’t the only thing bothering me. My eyes wandered back to Toby Engel. He sat at a table full of Trainees but was in his own world, busily shoveling food down his gullet like he might win a prize for it.
What was his story? Did he have a family who loved him? A mom who’d baked pies and cooked him breakfasts of eggs and bacon and biscuits and a dad who greeted every dawn from the back of an old tractor? Had they posted Missing signs? Was Toby’s face at some post office, pinned up with thumbtacks, or on utility poles, shining from beneath layers of clear packing tape?
Then I realized the person to ask was sitting right next to me. Ronan would know Toby’s story—hell, Ronan might even have been the Tracer who’d brought him in. “Is that Toby?” I asked, hoping against hope he’d divulge that the kid was actually a closet serial killer.