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I broke the numbers into a phone number: 231-555-8582.

“Should we try it?” Trev said.

Nick slid off the counter and landed with barely a sound. He was
wearing another of the found button-down shirts with a pair of jeans. “We should pack everything before we do. Be ready to run.”

It took us all of ten minutes to gather everything that was important enough to take. We regrouped at the table. Everyone tensed with trepidation as Sam punched in the numbers.

The kitchen sink dripped in the open drain.
Plink. Plink.
The generator chugged in the garage. Sam paced. He made it from one end of the room to the other, then froze.

I could faintly hear a voice pick up on the other end. Sam looked right at me, his eyes wide and incredulous. “Yes,” he said. He rubbed his face with his free hand and then rattled off the address of the cabin.

“How long?” he said. Then: “All right.” He hung up.

I pounced. “What did they say?”

“She knew who I was.”

She? Please don’t let it be the girl from the photo.

“Do you know who it was?” I asked.

He picked up his gun from the counter, pulled out the clip, checked the bullets. He’d done that once already, before making the call.

“Sam?”

“I think it’s best if we wait till she gets here, in case….”

I rose steadily, rocking my shoulders back with resolve. “Who was it, Sam?”

He blinked slowly, like he meant to close his eyes and sigh but thought better of it. “Sura. She said her name was Sura.”

My vision dimmed. The air in my chest retreated to a place where I couldn’t seem to find it.

My mother was not dead. And she was on her way here.

24

MY HEAD POUNDED EVEN HARDER. Sura—
my mother
—told Sam she was four hours away. Four hours. In four hours I would see my mother. The butterflies in my stomach wouldn’t quit. Did she know I was with Sam? What did she know about me at all?

I couldn’t understand why she’d left. I couldn’t understand why my dad had lied to me almost my entire life. I couldn’t understand why my mother knew Sam, why she’d left him that first clue in her Pennsylvania house.

That clue should have been mine. If she wanted to lead anyone to her, it should have been me. Only an hour into the wait, the questions fueled the hurt, calcifying it into a lump in my throat. Mothers were not supposed to abandon their daughters. I’d needed her. And I’d
mourned her. And she’d been only hours away, living a secret life as Mrs. Tucker.

The excited butterflies burned and fizzled.

Nick opened the gun bag, the zipper making a sharp-edged sound, followed closely by the
snick
-rack of a gun being loaded. What if this was an elaborate setup? What if Connor had gotten to my mother? There were a million
what if
s, and one wrong decision would cost us so much.

But it was my mother.
My mother.

The boys rotated through a watch of the front and back windows. They each had a gun nearby, if not in their hands.

Four and a half hours into the wait, Cas shifted at the front window and snapped his fingers. It was somewhere close to eleven PM, and we’d been sitting in the dark for a while.

Headlights flooded through the canvas curtains, and Sam leapt off the couch. I ran to the window in the dining room, despite Sam’s earlier instructions to stay put. I had to see. I had to know if it was her.

An old, dented pickup truck parked next to the latest SUV Cas had stolen. The engine cut out, the lights shut off, and the driver’s-side door opened. I could just make out her silhouette and the shape of a thick braid hanging over her shoulder. A dog barreled out of the truck behind her and dashed for the cabin.

The woman came up the steps, still shrouded in darkness; I
couldn’t make out her facial features. A knock sounded on the cabin’s door. I started for the living room, but Sam held me at bay with a wave of his hand. He raised his gun, motioned to Nick. Trev. Cas. They formed a loose circle around the door, guns up.

My knees went cold, numb. Sam twisted the knob. My heart felt like it might leap from my chest.

The door opened.

She stepped in.

“Hands up,” Sam said. Even tone. Cool as ever.

She did as he asked, but the dog—a chocolate lab, from what I could tell—trotted in, uninhibited.

“Are you armed?” Sam asked.

With a nod of her head, she pulled a gun from a shoulder holster tucked beneath her fleece jacket. Then she pulled a knife from her boot. She placed both weapons on the floor, and Nick swept in, kicking them out of range.

“I am a friend, Sam,” she said.

While she didn’t sound old or haggard, I could tell she wasn’t younger than thirty. Her voice had a depth to it, an authoritative edge, like she’d seen a lot and wouldn’t take crap from anyone.

Sam motioned to Cas and Trev. They squeezed past us and left through the back door. Checking the perimeter, as planned.

Turn on the lights
, I thought.
I want to know if it’s really her, see her with my eyes.
But we stayed in the dark as Sam gestured her forward.
“Sit,” he said. She sat. I peeked around the doorway from the kitchen. When she saw me, I swear something flashed in her eyes, but whatever it was, it was gone before I could name it.

The dog came to her side and lay on the floor, tail swishing.

No one said a word.

When the boys returned with the news that the perimeter was clear, Sam finally flicked on the lights. It took me a second to adjust, and I blinked the light burn from my eyes. When my vision cleared, a woman came into view. Black hair. Willowy. Eyes the color of summer grass. Wrinkles at the corners of her mouth like wind cutting through sand.

I sucked in a breath and the air crystallized in my lungs.

“Oh my God,” I breathed.

It was her. My mother. Alive.

The words didn’t seem to want to come together in my head. She’d never been more to me than pages and words in a journal. A woman in a picture. But she was flesh and blood. Real.
Alive.

This woman might have been older than the woman in my photograph. Her hair might have grayed around the temples. Her cheeks might have looked thinner than those of the twentysomething woman at that lake’s edge. But it didn’t matter. I knew it was her.

“Sura?” Sam said. The name sounded foreign spoken aloud there in the cabin’s modest living room.

She nodded. The dog sat up.

A million questions washed through my head and I couldn’t grab
on to one of them long enough to ask. Why hadn’t she ever gotten in touch with me? Did she recognize me?

Sam sat on the couch and dragged me down next to him. He threaded his fingers with mine. His hand was cool and dry and sturdy. Mine trembled, slick with sweat.

“I’ve been waiting for you boys to contact me for days,” she said. “I caught word through the line that you’d escaped. I was going to wait for you in Pennsylvania, but I got spooked and took off.” She shook her head. Her braid shifted. Why wasn’t she looking at me?

“So, tell me, what is going on? I had no idea….” She trailed off, wringing her hands in her lap. “I’m sorry, Samuel. I really am. I tried looking for you for a few years after you disappeared, but I couldn’t find you.”

I fidgeted, and Sam’s hold on me tightened.
Not yet
, was the message, loud and clear.

“One of the clues led to your phone number,” Sam said.

She nodded. “That was the plan, in case they cleaned you out. You gave me a phone and asked me to keep it on, always. I didn’t know about this place.” She gave the room a cursory glance. “But then, you never were forthcoming with details.”

“How do you know me?” Sam asked.

“You and Dani came to me a little over five years ago and asked for my help. I knew Dani through her uncle.” Her eyes lost focus for a second, but she quickly shook it off. “Anyway, you stole something from the Branch that you were going to use to buy your freedom. But
then Dani disappeared. You planted the clues as a backup plan before going after her.” The dog whined. “You never came back.”

“Hold on a minute.” Cas held up his hand. “I’m having trouble keeping up. Who is Dani?”

Sam dug the picture of himself from the back pocket of his pants. It’d been folded in half, and the edges were worn to the white paper beneath the ink.

An odd, nameless emotion stirred in me. What did it mean that he kept the picture folded in his back pocket, like a memento?

He showed Sura the picture. “Is that Dani?”

Sura didn’t need more than a second to decide. “Sure is.”

“I don’t remember her.” Sam took it back, hid it away. “Why was I going after her?”

“Well… you loved her. It’s as simple as that. And Connor took her from you.”

The nameless emotion intensified, brittle and tangy on the tip of my tongue. And suddenly I knew what it was: heartache. If she was the whole reason Sam had planted clues, the whole reason he’d eventually been caught, that meant that if not for her, Sam would never have been locked in the lab. I never would have met him. I both loved and hated this girl.

“I don’t know what happened to her,” Sam said. “But sometimes I have flashes of a girl.”

I looked over at him. He’d never told me that.

“I don’t see a face,” he went on, “but maybe it’s her?”

If he’d done everything in his power to find this girl five years ago—tattooed himself, scarred himself, gone up against the Branch—what would he do now?

He’d made me a promise that he would always have my back, but when it came down to choosing between Dani and me, who would he choose? If it meant sacrificing one of us to protect the group, I wasn’t sure which side he’d pick.

Sura clasped her hands together. “They really cleaned you out, didn’t they? Tell me what you do remember.”

Nick grunted. “Try fucking none of it.”

Her gaze swept to Nick. “Well, Nicholas, I can see not much has changed with you. All brass and balls.”

Cas choked on a laugh, and Nick gave him a hostile look.

“We woke up in a lab five years ago,” Sam explained. “We have only vague memory flashes of our lives before that.”

Sura nodded, like that made sense now that she knew the facts. “All right. So let’s start over. Tell me about your escape. I’m vaguely familiar with him”—she pointed at Trev, then turned her attention on me—“but I don’t know this young lady.”

Sam tensed. I tensed. Everyone tensed. “You don’t recognize her?”

Sura deepened the V of her brow. “Should I?”

Trev fidgeted in the doorway. Nick cracked a knuckle. I wasn’t sure what they’d expected, but sixteen years had passed since my mother last saw me. I’d changed a lot in that time. Couldn’t they give her a second before they jumped to conclusions?

Sura examined me. Dad had told me I had her eyes, but now I wasn’t so sure. Hers were dark green, and mine were hazel. She’d been too far away in the picture I had of her for me to see before that the comparison wasn’t right.

“This is Anna,” Sam said.

“Anna,” she repeated, like she was trying out my name, like it felt familiar, but she wasn’t sure why. “Well, Anna, it’s nice to meet you.”

I stared at her, the greeting saying all there was to say. And the longer I stared at her, the blurrier she became, as my vision clouded with tears.

“Sura, Anna is your daughter,” Sam said. But even he didn’t sound convinced.

A ringing noise filled my head as she looked at me,
really
looked at me, the fine lines around her eyes deepening. “What exactly did they tell you?”

“You don’t recognize her?”

She sighed when she turned back to me. “Honey, I’ve never been pregnant.”

The weight of so many days of fear and uncertainty abruptly overcame me. The ringing grew louder, and a choked sob escaped me. I leapt from the couch. The dog lifted his head, jangling the tags on his collar. I hurried through the kitchen. The dog barked behind me. I burst outside, the wind too cold now as tears streamed down my face.

“Anna!” Sam’s footfalls pounded the ground behind me as I ran,
unsure of where I was going—anywhere was fine, as long as it was far from here. All those years I’d wished I’d known my mother, and now here she was, and I wasn’t her daughter?

“Anna, stop!”

Brittle ferns whipped against my knees. A branch snagged my hair. I lost my momentum and Sam caught up, spinning me around.

“She doesn’t know me!” I screamed, pushing him away, because I didn’t want him to see me fall apart, and because I couldn’t stand still for one second longer.

“We have to find out why,” he said. “Stop!”

I buried my face in the crook of his neck. He smelled like Ivory soap and clean, crisp air. He smelled like home.

I just wanted to go back, even if none of it was real. I missed the predictability of everything. At home I knew what to expect, and Sam would always be there and I would always be Anna with a mother who was dead and a dad who spent every waking minute working.

That was my life. It might not have been much, or even true, but it was mine.

We stood there in the middle of the woods as Sam let me cry. He held me tightly, like he was afraid that, given the opportunity, I’d run again. And maybe I would have. Maybe I would have run as far as my legs would have taken me.

“She’s not my mother,” I said finally, wiping the tears from my cheeks. Speaking the words aloud made them seem truer. Maybe
deep down I’d known this was a possibility—ever since I’d found that sticky note, her handwriting there in the present, matching the handwriting in the journal from the past. Maybe I’d known since then.

My dad might have lied about a lot of things, but lying to me about whether Sura was my mother seemed too devious even for him. So why did he do it? What purpose would it serve?

“If she isn’t my mother, then who is?”

A gust of wind shook the trees. “I don’t know,” Sam said. “But I promise you, we’ll find out.”

25

GROWING UP, I’D DESPERATELY WANTED to know my mother. It was probably why I drew her so often, as if my pencil would somehow fill in the blanks. And now here she was in front of me, and she wasn’t even mine to know. That hurt worse than anything. I thought I’d been given a second chance, only to have it snatched away.