It was like a train wreck or an automobile accident.She simply could not look away.Down Smyrna, stopping at stop signs and creeping through uncontrolled intersections, passing the laurel hedge blocking the sight of the dilapidated old Taylor house.
She didn’t want to look.Gooseflesh stood out hard and knobbed on her arms.A right on Ninth Street, two blocks… and she brought the car to a halt, heart rising in her throat.
The neat, well-kept two-story house was now a shambles.Rowan made a small, hurt sound in the back of her throat, staring at the broken windows, the lawn rank with weeds.
Had it stood abandoned since that night?Yellow crime-scene tape fluttered on the porch where Rowan had sat so many summer evenings, where her mother had almost fallen off while watering the roses—and oh, the roses themselves were dead or dying, brown-rot on their lovely leaves and stems.Dead leaves clustered under the old oak trees, and a fallen branch lay buried in weeds.The door was broken, barred only by the yellow tape.She wondered if anyone had cleaned out the fridge, if her books were still upstairs swelling with moisture from damp coming in through the front door and broken windows.
And if there were still stains on the kitchen floor.Big, dark, bloody stains.
No cars behind her, but Rowan started violently as if hearing the blast of an impatient horn.She wiped at her eyes with the back of her hand.More tears spilled down her cheeks.
Got to get going.She checked over her shoulder for nonexistent traffic and pulled out, hoping she wasn’t weaving.Her vision ran and blurred with both pain and tears.Navigating through familiar streets, each new change—the Martin’s house was repainted, yards were redone, businesses had gone up and others had faded—slamming into her stomach like a badly taken punch.Each time she lost a little more air.
Oh, Justin,she thought, ignoring the spike of pain his name produced.I’m sorry.
Then she hit the freeway heading south.She would cut east past the state line and feel her way into the land of desert, rattlesnakes, Four Corners, and White Sands.She just had to get close enough to Sig Zero-Fifteen, get herself arrested or caught, and Sigma would take care of the rest.
Then, Rowan could get her revenge.
Four days later in the middle of the night, her breath short and harsh in her chest, the soft maggot-writhing voice whispering, whispering.Sweat tacky-wet on her skin as Rowan sat up, reaching blindly for a light, any light.The lamp on the two-drawer nightstand toppled alarmingly before she could find the button.When it finally clicked, the hotel room resolved itself into horrid pink and beige.
She let out a coughing breath.Justin?Instinctively, she had reached for him again on waking.Why did thinking about him hurt so much?
What in God’s name was wrong with her?
Rowan found herself clutching the phone, her fingers poised above the keypad.She laid it back down, hoping she hadn’t dialed.
There was nobodytocall.
If she tried to make contact with the Society, Henderson would have a fit and probably officially throw her out.And Justin… What did he think?Did he think she had betrayed them?
Never.I never would.
But if Sigma started to torture her or injected her with Zed, how long would she be able to hold out?She had no illusions about her capacity to deal with torture.Someone else might be able to endure the unspeakable, but Rowan knew very wellshecouldn’t.
Though she had, since joining the Society, done some amazing things when forced to.If the other side tortured her before she could get her revenge, she would just have to see how strong she could be.
Rowan examined her hands in the warm, forgiving light.They shook, her fingers almost blurring.“Look at that,” she muttered.“I’m so brave.What am Idoing?”
Revenge,the persistent little voice whispered.Revenge.Revenge.
She settled cross-legged on the creaking mattress, pain cresting inside her fragile, aching head again.Something’s very, very wrong.I’m not thinking clearly.
Just then, the sensitive fringes of her mind registered atouch.Light and fleeting, simply a brush against the very outer borders of her awareness, as if someone had stepped into a room and hastily stepped back.
All uncertainty faded.Rowan reached under her pillow for the knife.She wasn’t close enough to be sure she would be taken to Zero-Fifteen.There was another installation just thirty miles from here.She wasn’t even under dampers, was she?She couldn’t remember turning any on, and the funny, naked feeling she always had under them was gone.
The knifeblade gleamed.She jammed her feet quickly into boots, her jeans rasping against bleached sheets, then ghosted on silent feet to one side of the door, knife held low and reversed along her forearm.
She was sleeping in her clothes, only taking her shoes off and sometimes not even that.She might have to move quickly and couldn’t afford the time to get dressed if attacked.Adrenaline washed the pain from her head, narrowed her concentration.
Now she could hear someone fiddling with the doorknob.Air conditioning washed chill over her skin; the unit in the window made a racket which would cover any slight noise.Rowan slowly sank into a crouch, wishing she hadn’t turned on the light.
A dark room for eyes adapted to the hallway’s lighting would have given her an advantage.
The cheap deadbolt was eased open.Which meant someone was very good with a set of lockpicks; not everyone could tickle a deadbolt.The chain was almost useless, held only by one flimsy screw.She had left it open.
That was a violation of procedure.Even a flimsy deterrent was better than none at all.
