Deadfall (4 page)

AFTER TEN BLOCKS,
the man is still keeping pace. Broadway is busy with people carrying shopping bags, others lingering in front of store windows, staring up at mannequins in designer clothes. But there’s not enough of a crowd for you to stay hidden.

Racing around the next corner leads you to a residential street with narrow brownstones. You notice an elderly man half a block up, with white hair and stooped shoulders. He has his key in the front door of his building. “He’s our chance.”

Rafe sees him, too, and slows to a walk. You’re suddenly aware of what you must look like, out of breath, Rafe in a baggy sweatshirt and ripped, dirty jeans. You grab his hand and smile. You hope you seem like any other teenagers would, walking hand in hand, oblivious to everyone else.

The man disappears inside and you lunge, catching the door just before it clicks shut. You hold the knob just a few inches from the frame as the man takes the last few steps to the first landing.

When he’s gone you slip inside, Rafe right behind you. You lean back against the wall, relaxing when the lock clicks in place. “Did you see him?” you ask. “How close was he?”

“He hadn’t turned the corner yet.”

You scan the lobby. There’s a narrow marble staircase, the edges of the steps worn. Two apartment doors open onto the ground floor. There’s no back exit. You peer out the glass door, looking down at the street below, waiting for the man to walk past.

“He shouldn’t be able to find us here,” you say. “Let’s go to the roof.”

When you get to the top of the stairs you push outside. Staring down at the quiet street below, you take a deep breath. Streetlights flicker on. You drop your knapsack on the ground.

“Did he recognize you?” Rafe asks.

“He must have; he was definitely following us. But I didn’t see a gun.”

“It might’ve been behind his back. He was just waiting for an opportunity.”

“How could they find us already?”

“I don’t know.” Rafe sits down beside the door, puts his
head in his hands. When he speaks, his voice is broken. “I hate this. It brings it all back.”

He doesn’t need to say what. You can tell by the way his face has changed, the way he yanks off his cap, fingers kneading his scalp. He’s remembering what happened on the island.

You sit down beside him, pulling one of his hands to you. “We’re okay, though. We’re safe.”

“We’re not. We’ll never be. And that’s the most messed-up thing about it.” He keeps his head down. His knee shakes, sending tremors through his entire body.

You turn his hand over, studying his palm. A scar cuts across it. You want to say something to make it better, but all you can manage is, “Why don’t you rest. I’ll keep watch.”

It’s colder here, with the autumn wind cutting through the gaps in the buildings, ripping right through your thin sweatshirt. The night is coming on fast. You pull the thin metallic blanket from your pack and pass it to him. You step out toward the ledge of the roof. There’s no sign of the man on the street below.

“This is what you used to do,” he says eventually. When you turn back he’s looking at you. His features seem softer, the deep lines around his forehead gone.

“What do you mean?”

“You could never rest. It didn’t matter how tired we got. You were always the one who stayed up. Even when I was
keeping watch . . . you were really keeping watch.” His lips twist into a smile. He looks down, smoothing his hair with his hand. “Like, I’d pass out for an hour and you’d have made some bamboo thing that we could collect rain with. Or you decided we needed to take some path along the beach to avoid the hunters. I would sleep and you would make plans.”

It’s surprising how good it feels to hear someone tell you something intimate about yourself. “What else?” you say.

Rafe smiles. “I didn’t go anywhere without you. You really were the one who kept me alive.”

You go to him, sit down by his feet, trying to remember what he remembers. Trying to understand why he smiles now, why this is the only thing that has pulled him away from that darker place. “You didn’t have to do what you did, on the island.”

“Do what?”

“Stay with me, after I’d been shot. You could’ve run, tried to save yourself.”

Rafe leans forward, resting his hands on your knees. “I didn’t leave you then, and I wouldn’t leave you now. Like I said, you would do the same for me.”

“You don’t know. Maybe I’m different now, Rafe.”

“I don’t think people change, really. Not like that. You are who you are.”

“That’s kind of deep,” you say with a smile.

“Shut up.” Rafe laughs. Then he pushes your knees away from him, grinning. “I’m serious.”

“Maybe, I don’t know. I hope you’re right.” You cross your arms over your chest, hugging your shirt to you as the wind rushes over the roof.

Rafe holds up the blanket. “This is stupid,” he says. “You take it. I’m not going to let you freeze.”

“I’m fine.”

Then he smiles a wicked smile. “We could share . . . like we did on the island. Maybe it’ll help you remember. . . .”

You laugh. “Just looking out for my memory, huh?”

“Yeah, you know,” he says. “I’ll help however I can.”

He holds the blanket up, motioning for you to get underneath it. You move beside him. He shifts, spreading out behind you, letting the front of the blanket fall over your shoulder. “I’d put my arm underneath you,” he says, his voice softer now. “Like this . . .”

He rests one hand on the inside of your hip, in the tiny space between your waist and the ground. His fingers are outside of your clothes, but you feel the warmth of his skin.

You close your eyes.

You listen to his breaths. “On the island, I used to say ‘If we get out of here—’”

“When,” you say. “
When
we get out of here.”

You hear the smile in his voice. “Yeah,” he says. “That’s what you’d say back. You’d say
when
.”

YOU WAKE UP
alone under the blanket. The sky is the color of bruises. When you sit up, Rafe is kneeling by the ledge, a plastic bottle in his hands. He pours some water into his palms, rinsing his face. He has stripped off his sweatshirt and you stare at his bare back, at the tattooed wings that spread across his shoulder blades.

He swipes his hand over the side of his face, then rises, looking down at the street below. It’s such a simple movement but with it you feel the familiar, dizzying pull of a memory coming on. In an instant you are back on the island.

He’s kneeling out on a cliff with his toes gripping the edge, and looking at something down below. Beyond him is the ocean.

When he stands he swipes his hand over the side of his face. You notice the muscles in his chest, the subtle V just above the belt of his
shorts. The gash beneath his shoulder looks better. The salt water has helped it heal.

“We might be able to swim part of it. If we can climb down . . . That way we don’t have to go back through the woods.”

You go to him, standing at the ledge. The drop is fifty feet, maybe more. You reach down, feeling the cliff face, the uneven grooves where you’d put your hands. Rocks jut up from the shallows. A fall would kill you.

“We have to jump,” you say. “They’re going to be waiting for us on that path.”

Rafe turns back to the supplies, all tucked inside the cloth bag you share. He ties it to one of his belt loops and you’re reminded of how little you have—two papayas and avocados, a few bamboo tools.

There’s a snap, a crack. You both hear it at the same time and turn, looking into the trees above. The hunter is crouched in the leaves. The top of his head just visible.

You don’t look at Rafe. “Now,” you say.

You jump from the ledge, hurtling yourself forward with all your force. Rafe leaps a moment later. You’re falling . . . falling.

“You remembered something,” he says, studying your face. “What was it?”

He comes toward you, pulling his shirt back on. He offers you the last of the water.

“How’d you know?”

“You looked scared,” he says.

“It was a flash of the island,” you say. “We were on a cliff and we were about to climb down.”

“But then we saw him. He was hiding in the trees above us,” he finishes for you.

You want to say yes, yes, that’s exactly what happened in the memory, but you can’t even manage that. There’s a hard knot in the back of your throat.

“That was the day you messed up your foot,” Rafe tells you. He reaches down, pulling your left sneaker between his knees, and eases off your shoe. When your bare foot is exposed you see the mark you’ve seen so many times before. It’s just below your last two toes. The skin is raised and pink, in a teardrop shape.

“We were okay when we hit the water,” he says. “We both went in feetfirst and we were far enough out that we made it past the rocks. But when we got to the shore he shot at us. You were running and your foot must’ve caught something. There was so much blood.”

His fingers graze the scar, tracing the edges of it. Then they move to your ankle, circling the bone. He lets his hand linger there.

“What happened . . . ?” you ask, but you already know.

“I carried you up the beach.”

“What else?” you ask.

“I don’t want to keep telling you stuff just so things can go back to normal.” He sets your leg down.

“That’s not what you’d be doing. I just want to know about us.”

“Us.”
He repeats it, smiles.

You stare down at your hands, working at a piece of skin around your thumb. “The other memories I had. We were together. We were somewhere in the forest and we were . . .”

Rafe doesn’t look at you. This is the closest thing you’ve seen to him being embarrassed, the subtle flush in his cheeks. “What do you want me to say?”

“I just . . . I don’t know if I’m supposed to feel guilty about things, if I, like, did something wrong.”

“What do you mean?”

You think of Ben, of everything that happened between you: the night on the beach, his lips cold when he pressed them against yours. Lying beside him on the couch in his living room. The feel of his hands slipping beneath your shirt, moving across the bare skin of your stomach.

It’s hard to think of it now, knowing what you know about him. He was working for AAE. He betrayed you.

How much does Rafe need to hear?

“My Watcher in LA,” you begin, “Ben. He was our age, a little older. I thought we’d met by chance. He was . . . helping me. But he was reporting back to AAE.”

Rafe keeps his eyes on the ground. “And so what . . . you were in love with him or something?”

“No,” you say. “I just . . . I didn’t even know if you were
real. I didn’t know what was going on; my head was all messed up.”

“You don’t need to explain it,” he says, cutting you off. He digs through his pack and hands you a granola bar. He takes one for himself and starts unwrapping it.

Rafe lets out a breath, settling back on the roof beside you. “It’s fine.”

“I’m sorry.”

Then this smirk comes across his face. “It’s just . . . the guy I’d bet was
my
Watcher? He was, like, this sixty-year-old meth head who slept by the LA River. He’d talk to me about stealing shit. Wasn’t exactly the sexiest situation.”

You let out a small laugh. “Doesn’t sound like it.”

One of his hands hangs over his knee. You take it, letting your thumb run along the inside of his palm, squeezing. He turns, looking into your face. You’re the one who leans in first. You’re the one who first closes your eyes, pressing your mouth to his.

His hands come up to your jaw, his lips pressing against yours. Moments come back as you kiss. Images, one after the next, like you’re flipping through a photo album. Rafe kneeling at the edge of the ocean, where the waves hit the shore. Rafe tying a ripped T-shirt around your left hand. Rafe sharpening the end of a branch with his knife, the wood shavings falling around his feet in tiny, delicate curls.

Rafe, Rafe, Rafe . . .

When he pulls away he runs his finger over your eyebrow.

“It’s coming back. A little bit more is coming back.”

Then he pulls you to him, arms wrapped tight around your shoulders. “Good,” he says, “because I’ve missed you.”

YOU DON’T HEAR
Rafe until he’s at the top of the fire escape, climbing back over the brick ledge. He went out this morning to get you a new phone while you stayed behind on the roof, mapping the route to the other spot Connor told Rafe about.

“I got it,” he says, putting the disposable cell in your hand. “But if we’re together now, it affects me, too. I need to know who you’re calling.”

You pull your knife from your pack and cut the phone out of the plastic. “When I was in LA, I told a woman, a police officer, about the hunters. How they set me up, how they were trying to kill me. She was the only one who believed what I was saying,” you tell him.

“Whoa.” Rafe laughs. “You’re kidding. What made you think you could trust some cop?”

“Everything,” you say. “Everything she did made me think I could trust her. She’s looking into AAE, gathering evidence for me.”

Rafe leans back against the low wall. “Why do you have to call her now?”

“I want to.” There are still questions. Izzy. Goss. The envelope you left at the hospital for her. “It’ll only take a minute.”

“Don’t mention me.” His face has changed, to a look of . . . what? Fear? Vulnerability?

“I won’t. Promise.”

You walk to the edge of the roof, pacing. You’re just out of earshot as you turn on the phone and dial Celia’s number. As it rings and rings, you can almost see her looking at her screen, the blocked number, wondering if it’s you.

“Hello?”

“Celia?” You recognize her voice, but you ask anyway.

“Sunny,” she says, sounding relieved. It’s strange to hear her call you that—the name you used for the past couple weeks, before you knew your real one.

There’s the sound of a phone ringing in the background, a voice yelling down the hall. She must be at the police station. “I was wondering when I’d hear from you. You’re okay?”

“I’m okay, yeah. How is Izzy? What happened?”

Celia takes a breath. “Izzy is . . . She’s alive. She’s
recovering. It’s not the easiest thing to explain to someone, but she knows I’m working on the case. Goss was taken into custody Sunday afternoon. She ID’d him as the person who shot her.”

You let out a long, slow breath. Your shoulders relax. “Thank god,” you manage. “It’s almost over.”

The other end of the line is silent. You have to look at the screen to make sure you didn’t lose her.

“What?” you ask. “What’s wrong?”

“We don’t have enough of a case yet. Right now his lawyers are saying Izzy was breaking into his house. That he shot her in self-defense. The back door was broken and the scene—well, the scene indicates that. It’s going to be hard to keep him in custody. I don’t have enough on him.”

You stop pacing. “What? I don’t understand. . . .”

“We don’t have a case,” Celia says. “We can’t prove anything. Even the notes you sent me, it’s not enough. He’s got the best lawyers money can buy; he’ll be able to get out of it.”

“But his house. Didn’t they go to his house? Didn’t they find anything?”

“Nothing.” She sighs. “I searched for the papers, but he must have cleaned up before I got there. But I’m still working on this, working every angle. I have another lead in Seattle—a body of a girl was found there with a tattoo just like yours. I’m trying to get something together to prove this
is bigger than just Goss. . . . Look, Sunny, where are you? Can you meet me sometime today?”

“I’m not in LA anymore,” you say, wondering now if it was a mistake to travel so far away. Celia can’t help you if you’re across the country.

“Where are you, then?” she says. “We’re only on the surface of this. They’re still looking for you, especially now. They must know you were involved with bringing Goss in.”

“I know. I’m in New York. I’m working on getting more information on AAE. I’ll have more for you soon.”

She pauses, taking this in. “What kind of information?”

“Other targets,” you say. “There are more of us out there—alive. I already have a lead on one of them.”

“What else? Anything concrete?”

“Look up Lena Marcus. A girl who went missing outside Cabazon. You’ll recognize her.”

“That’s your real name? How’d you find that out?”

You look out toward the other side of the roof, where Rafe is kneeling, rearranging the items in his pack. You can’t tell her about him. You promised.

“I met someone who knew me. I can’t say more than that. I’ll call you soon—as soon as I can. Hopefully I’ll have more.”

“Be safe,” she says, then waits for you to hang up. You separate the battery from the phone, slipping them in your
pocket. When you walk back, Rafe is changing into a fresh T-shirt, his smooth, bare chest exposed for a moment.

“What’s the plan?” he asks.

They’re still looking for you, especially now.

“We need to find Connor as soon as we can. Come on, I’ll lead the way.”