The Darkest Minds (13 page)

“—I swear to God it was her, Liam!” The voice was deep, but it didn’t sound like an adult. “And, look, I told you she’d beat us back. Suzume, did you run into trouble?”

The other car door opened. Someone else—Liam?—let out a relieved sigh.

“Thank God,” he said, with a hint of a Southern drawl. “Come on, come on, come on, get in. I don’t know what’s going on, but I don’t want to stay long enough to find out. The skip tracers were bad enough—”

“Why won’t you admit that it was her?” the other voice snapped.

“—because we ditched her in Ohio, that’s why—”

Above the sound of Liam’s voice and the blood pounding between my ears, I heard another voice.

“Ruby!
Ruby!
”

Cate.

I pressed both hands against my mouth and squeezed my eyes shut.

“What in the world?” the first voice said. “Is that what I think it is?”

The first gunshot popped like a firecracker. It might have been the distance, or the army of trees and undergrowth muffling it, but it seemed harmless. A warning. The next one had much sharper teeth.

“Stop!”
I heard Cate scream. “Don’t shoot—!”

“LEE!”

“I know, I know!” The engine sputtered to life, and the squeal of the tires wasn’t far behind. “Zu, seat belt!”

I tried to brace myself, but the car tossed me back and forth between the seats. At one point, my head cracked back against the plastic side paneling and drink holder, but no one was paying attention to the strange noises in the backseat when someone was firing a gun.

I wondered if Rob had given the other rifle to Martin.

“Zu, did something happen in the gas station?” the voice identified as Liam pressed. There was an edge of urgency to his words, but not panic. We had been driving for over ten minutes and were well away from the guns. His other companion, however, was a completely different story.

“Oh my God, more skip tracers? What, were they having a freaking
convention
? You realize what would have happened if we’d been caught, don’t you?” he railed. “And they were shooting at us!
Shooting!
With a
gun
!”

Somewhere to the right of me, the little girl giggled.

“Well, I’m glad you find it funny!” the other one said. “Do you know what happens when you get shot, Suzume? The bullet rips through—”

“Chubs!” The other boy’s voice was sharp enough to cut off whatever gory tale he was about to share. “Settle down, okay? We’re fine. That was a little bit closer than I would have liked, but still. We’ll just have to try to make better mistakes tomorrow, right, Zu?”

The first voice let out a strangled groan.

“I’m sorry about before,” Liam said. His voice was gentle, which was enough for me to put together he was talking to the girl, not the guy who had moved on to moaning in dismay. “Next time I’ll go with you to get food. You’re not hurt, right?”

The vibrations from the road dulled their voices. A loose penny was clattering around so loudly in the drink holder that I almost reached up from under the sheet to grab it. When the first boy spoke again, I had to strain my ears to hear him. “Did it sound like they were looking for someone to you?”

“No, it sounded like
they were shooting at us
!”

Feeling left my hands, draining from the tips of my fingers.

You’re safe, I told myself. They’re kids, too.

Kids who had unwittingly put themselves in the line of fire for me.

I should have known this would happen.
This
, not my fear of setting off alone into a deserted town, should have been my first concern. But I had panicked, and it was like my brain had melted into a simmering pool of terror.

“—a number of things,” Liam was saying, “but let’s try to focus on finding East River—”

I needed to get out now. Right now. This had been a terrible idea, maybe even my worst. If I left now, they still had a chance of escaping Cate and Rob.
I
would still have a chance of escaping them, too.

I looped the straps of the backpack over my shoulders again and kicked the sheet off. Taking in a deep drag of the musty, cool air-conditioning, I used the rear seat to prop myself up.

Two teenage boys were in the front seat, facing the road. It was raining harder now; the fat drops were falling too fast for the windshield wipers to keep up with them, making it look as though we were headed straight into an Impressionist’s vision of West Virginia. Silver skies were above and a black road was below—and somewhere in between, the luminescent glow of the trees with their new spring coats.

Liam, our driver, was wearing a beat-up leather jacket, darker across the shoulders where the rain had soaked through. His hair was a light, ashy blond that stood on end when he ran a hand through it. Every now and then he would glance to the dark-skinned teen in the passenger seat, but it wasn’t until he cast a quick look into the rearview mirror that I saw his eyes were blue.

“I can’t see out of the back window when you—” His words choked off as he did a double take.

The minivan lurched to the right as he spun around in his seat and turned the wheel with him. The other kid let out a strangled noise as the car jerked to the right, toward the side of the road. The girl glanced back over her shoulder at me, her expression somewhere between surprise and exasperation.

Liam slammed on the brakes. Both of the car’s other passengers gasped as their seat belts locked over their chests, but I had nothing holding me back from flying between the two middle seats. After what felt like a short eternity, but was likely only a hot second, the tires let off a long squeal of pain before the minivan quivered to a dead stop.

Both boys were staring back at me, wearing two completely different expressions. Liam’s tanned face had gone porcelain pale, his mouth hanging open in an almost comical way. The other boy only glared at me through his thin, silver-framed glasses, his lips pursed in disapproval, the same way my mom’s used to when she found out I had stayed up past my bedtime. His ears, which were a touch too big for his head, stuck out from his skull; everything between them, from the wide expanse of his forehead down past the thin bridge of his nose to his full lips, seemed to darken in anger. For a split second I was afraid that he was a Red, because judging by the look in his eyes, he wanted nothing more than to burn me to a crisp.

Boys
. Why did it have to be boys?

I peeled myself up off the carpets and bolted toward the side door. My fingers squeezed the door handle, but no matter how hard I pulled it, it didn’t budge.

“Zu!”
Liam cried, looking back and forth between us. She merely folded her hands in her lap, rubber gloves squeaking, and blinked at him innocently. Like she had no idea how they had come across the stowaway currently sprawled out by her feet.

“We all agreed—
no strays
.” The other boy shook his head. “That’s why we didn’t take the kittens!”

“Oh, for the love of…” Liam slumped down in his seat, pressing his face into his hands. “What were we going to do with a box of abandoned kittens?”

“Maybe if that black heart of yours hadn’t been willing to leave them to
starve
, we could have found them new, loving homes.”

Liam gave the other boy a look of pure amazement. “You’re never going to get over those cats, are you?”

“They were innocent, defenseless kittens and you left them outside someone’s mailbox! A
mailbox
!”

“Chubs,” Liam groaned. “Come
on
.”

Chubs? That had to have been a joke. The kid was as skinny as a stick. Everything about him, from his nose to his fingers, was long and narrow.

He leveled Liam with a withering stare. I don’t know what amazed me more, the fact that they were arguing about kittens, or that they’d managed to forget that I was in the car.

“Excuse me!”
I interrupted, slamming my palm against the window. “Can you please unlock the door?”

That shut them up at least.

When Liam finally turned back toward me, his expression was entirely different than before. He looked serious, but not altogether unhappy or suspicious. Which is a lot more than I could have said for myself if our situations had been reversed.

“Are you the one they were looking for?” he asked. “Ruth?”

“Ruby,”
Chubs corrected.

Liam waved his hand. “Right. Ruby.”

“Just unlock the door, please!” I yanked at the handle again. “I made a mistake. This was a mistake! I was selfish, I know that, so you have to let me go before they catch up.”

“Before who catches up? Skip tracers?” Liam asked. His eyes darted over me, from my haggard face down my forest green uniform to my mud-stained shoes. To the Psi number that had been written on their canvas toes in permanent marker. A look of horror flickered over his face. “Did you just come from a camp?”

I felt Suzume—Zu’s—dark eyes on me, but I held Liam’s gaze and nodded. “The Children’s League broke me out.”

“And you ran away from them?” Liam pressed. He looked back at Zu for confirmation. She nodded.

“What does that have to do with anything?” Chubs interrupted. “You heard her—unlock the stupid door! We already have PSFs and skip tracers after us; we don’t need to add the League to the list! They probably think we took her, and if they put in the call that there are freaks roaming around in a beat-up black minivan…” He couldn’t bring himself to finish.

“Hey,” Liam said, holding up a finger, “don’t talk about Black Betty that way.”

“Oh,
excuse me
for hurting the feelings of a twenty-year-old minivan.”

“He’s right,” I said. “I’m sorry, please—I don’t want any more trouble for you.”

“You want to go back to them?” Liam was facing me again, his mouth set in a grim line. “Listen, it’s none of my business, Green, but you have the right to know that whatever lies they fed you probably aren’t true. They aren’t our angel network. They have their own agenda, and if they plucked you out of camp, it means they have a plan for you.”

I shook my head. “You think I don’t know that?”

“Okay,” he returned in a calm voice. “Then why are you in such a hurry to get back?”

There was nothing judgmental or accusatory about the question, so why did I still feel like an idiot? Something hot and itchy bubbled up in my throat, drifting up until it settled behind my eyes. Oh God, the kid was looking at me with all the sympathy and pity required of someone watching a stray puppy being put down. I didn’t know if the emotion swelling inside me was anger or embarrassment, but I didn’t have time to sort it out.

“No, but I can’t—I didn’t mean to drag you into—I mean, I did mean to, but…”

I saw Zu move out of the corner of my eye, reaching for me. I jerked away, sucking in a harsh breath. A hurt expression crossed her face, staying long enough for me to feel guilty about it. She had been trying to help me—to be kind to me. She didn’t know what kind of monster she had saved.

If she had, she would never have unlocked the door.

“Do you want to go back to them?”

Chubs was looking at Liam, and Liam was looking at me. He had caught me again with his eyes, and I hadn’t even realized it.

“No,” I said, and it was the truth. “I don’t.”

He didn’t say anything, only shifted the minivan out of park. The van rolled forward.

What are you doing, Ruby?
I willed my hand to reach for the door, but it seemed too far and my hand too heavy.
Get out. Get out now.

“Lee, don’t you dare,” Chubs began. “If the League comes after us…”

“It’ll be okay,” Liam said. “We’re just taking her to the nearest bus station.”

I blinked. That was more than even I was expecting. “You don’t have to.”

Liam waved me off. “It’s fine. Sorry we can’t do more. Can’t risk it.”

“Yes, you’re right,” Chubs said. “So explain to me why we aren’t taking her to one of the train stations, which are closer?”

When I looked back up, Liam was studying me, his light eyebrows pulled tight together by some unspoken thought. I tried not to squirm under his gaze. “Remind me again—Ruby, right? I’m sure you’ve caught on by now, but I’m Liam, the lovely lady behind me is Suzume.”

She smiled shyly. I turned and raised a brow in the direction of the other boy. “I’m guessing your name isn’t actually Chubs?”

“No,” he sniffed. “Liam gave me that name at camp.”

“He was a bit of a porker.” Liam had a small smile on his face. “Turns out field labor and a restricted diet are better than fat camp. Zu can back me up on this one.”

But Zu wasn’t paying attention, not to any of us. She had pulled her hoodie up over her ears and twisted around in her seat so that she was staring over the top of it, out the back window. Her lips were parted, but she couldn’t bring the words to them. The color drained from her round face.

“Zu?” Liam said. “What’s wrong?”

She didn’t need to point. Even if we hadn’t seen the tan SUV speeding straight for us, it would have been impossible to miss the bullet that blew through the back window and shattered it.