with the other books, wondering if all of the pages are still flagged the way I liked. And on top of them all sits a stack of spiral-bound notebooks, just where Sam said they’d be. I’m too scared to touch them, to prove that I’m not imagining them there. Is it really possible no one has come back to this place in all the years since we left it? Since Sam, its last guardian, was taken away?
There’s a sound, a whistle that comes from below. I lean over the tree house’s entrance, and spot the intruder right away.
“This is some set-up you guys had.” Liam’s hands are stuffed into the pockets of his leather jacket. Some of my irritation disappears when I realize he’s not poking fun at me for coming here—he’s serious. There’s real admiration in his voice.
“My dad built it,” I tell him proudly. It took him months, and he almost broke his leg when he fell out of it.
“I always wanted something like this,” he says, doing a lap around the trunk. “We didn’t have any trees big enough to support the big, strapping Stewart boys, though.”
I roll my eyes. “Uh-huh.”
“Can I come up? Take some notes on how he put it together?”
I hesitate, catching the instinctive No! You don’t have a key! before it can pass my lips. “Why? Thinking about building your house in a tree somewhere?”
He shrugs. “I was just thinking I might build one for my kids one day.”
That…is not what I expected him to say. I lean back, which he takes as permission to climb up. I’m too surprised by how far his vision of the future extends, and too curious about why.
“Whoa,” he says as his blond head pops up and gets a glimpse of our old set-up. His blue eyes go wide. “Cool!”
“Didn’t all those scientists decide the freak mutation would pass itself on?” I blurt out, watching as he runs his hands over the supports holding up the roof and along the walls. He’s serious—he really wants to understand how this thing is standing.
“That’s what everyone says,” he replies. “But with a few notable exceptions, I like us freaks just fine. They won’t have to go through half of what we did, and at least they won’t have to figure out how to control their abilities alone like we did.”
“Unless everyone is forced to get those implants—the procedure,” I point out.
“We’ll see about that,” is his only answer.
After he’s had his fill of exploring the tiny space and peering out our window, he sits down across from me, crossing his legs. “I’m thinking we maybe got off on the wrong foot….I had a real knot in my tail this morning, and I’m sorry.”
It’s not okay, so I don’t let him off the hook by telling him it is. But I do believe him. The guilt is plain on his face, like it’s been gnawing on him.
“Lucas is okay now,” he promises. “Ruby got him calmed down again.”
I nod, throat thick.
“I think you and Sam are incredible for making it through and protecting him. Keeping each other safe.”
I don’t know about incredible, but I would definitely classify us as strong-willed—recalcitrant. “Thanks, but I know why you were upset and I get it. I do.”
His brows lift at that. “You do?”
“I like Ruby, and it’s dangerous for her to be out in the world right now. But we really would have been screwed if you hadn’t come and risked it.” Lucas especially. He would have been lost to us forever. I am grateful, and I understand better why he wanted her back in Zone 1 as soon as possible. If the snatchers have some kind of “in” with soldiers to cut these deals, the way they did with Lucas, there should be a small army around Ruby at all times to protect her, to keep someone else from stealing her away from the life she deserves.
He scratches at the stubble on his jaw. “It’s…Christ, it’s so bad. The threats are one thing, but the asking price for her on the black market isn’t just a million dollars, it’s hundreds of millions of dollars. She is…one of a kind. In every way. And I’m the one that let the world know about it. This is all my fault.”
Wow. I didn’t realize anyone still had that kind of money. But—not the point, Mia. The point is that I can hear the pain vibrating in his voice, no matter how he tries to brighten