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  Dr. Lila is the reason that woman is carrying that sign. She leaked that intel just for this moment—so that when she threatened me, I’d know she meant it.

  Anger makes my words sharp and hard. “Are you saying you’ll dox me if I don’t cooperate?”

  That smile, that awful tiny sympathetic half-smile, is back. “It’s my job to protect you, Camryn. For as long as you choose to be involved in my investigation.”

  The space between us goes blank and fuzzy, like static on a TV screen. Or maybe it’s just me—because her words from earlier are finally penetrating. I was so shocked by what she’d said about me that I hadn’t fully understood what she was saying about my mother.

  She thinks the explosion wasn’t an accident. She thinks my mother was involved. She wants me to rat on her, in exchange for protection from the seething mob outside, in exchange for not throwing me in prison.

  Quint is still watching me, gaze intent and waiting, but I don’t look at him. The rage is too bright, too hot, like a flash fire that goes on and on. I look Dr. Lila in the eye. Then, because there’s no way in hell my mother is a murderer and because it feels so good to be anything other than sad and scared and tired, I lean in close and give her a confidential smile and whisper like I’m telling her a secret: “Screw you too, ma’am.”

  She could dox me. She could bring the mob down on me. She could tell the cops I stole classified intel and have me thrown in jail. But the thing is, when you threaten somebody that much in that short a span of time, it means you’re desperate. It means she needs me and if she does any of those things then she’d lose her leverage, and without leverage she’ll have lost her chance at getting whatever it is she needs so badly from me.

  Her blackmail is a lie that tells the truth. It’s the lie that wakes me up. Entirely by accident, she’s revealed that she has everything to lose, and I have nothing.

  It’s a stalemate.

  Someone bangs on the door behind us. Without taking her eyes off me, she calls, “What?”

  “Sorry to interrupt, but the girl’s father is in the waiting room demanding to be let in.”

  Dr. Lila’s cool expression shifts into something more dangerous. She says to me, “You know what, I think I’ll have a word with him before you’re released.” She slips out of the room as silent as a ghost.

  As soon as she’s gone, Quint says, “Her password is AR8H673R9.”

  I go still. Then, slowly, I turn. He’s sitting on the bed next to me now, hands clasped loosely between his knees, giving me a look that blazes with challenge. Go ahead and keep ignoring me, it says. I dare you.

  It takes a second for my brain to shift gears before I understand what’s happening. He’s talking about the tablet. The one that’s still in the briefcase on the floor. He saw the password. When he was standing next to Dr. Lila and I couldn’t even see the screen, he watched what she entered and remembered it, which means he can see things I can’t. Which means … what?

  My gaze falls to the tablet. It’s sticking out of her bag, powered down and a hundred times more dangerous than stealing a flimsy medical record—but it could give me a hundred times more answers, too. And if Dr. Lila has enough influence to set a mob against me, do I really have any option other than to find out those answers before she makes her next move?

  A little thought slips through the back of my mind, quiet as a whisper: I could find out what she knows. I could find out what happened to my mother.

  I could find out if she’s innocent.

  I crack down hard on the if, drop it into the still-burning fury and watch it wither. My mother is innocent. I will prove it, to the agency and to myself.

  Quint waits. I slide to the floor but keep my eyes on him as I pull out the tablet. When I slip it into my backpack, he smiles.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  I HOLD MY BREATH WHEN Dr. Lila takes me to meet Dad. Her briefcase dangles off her frame, heavy with the weight of the laminated hospital menu I replaced her tablet with. She’ll know exactly who stole it the second she spots that, but she would’ve figured it out quick enough anyway. The best I can hope for is that she won’t look in her bag again till tomorrow morning, which would give me the whole night to sift through whatever information the agency is trying to hide from me.

  If the password Quint gave me works.

  Oh my God, what am I doing? Trusting the word of a hallucination, that’s what. My steps falter, but I grit my teeth and shove the anxiety down. I have no idea if I’ll succeed and I’m terrified of what Dr. Lila might do to me after this, but she was already blackmailing me with a felony charge and mob violence. At least this way I might have some leverage of my own, and a shot at proving she’s lying about Mom. Right?

  Dad is waiting at the front desk. The sight breaks me out of my thoughts and I stop for a second and watch him, because even though I’ve seen him nearly every waking moment of the last week, I’m realizing now that I haven’t truly looked at him once in all that time. His dark hair is sticking up in tufts and there are purple half-circles under his eyes. He’s wearing his paramedic gear. One sleeve is splattered with what I’m willing to bet is double strength espresso, which means he was probably pulled off an on-call shift to pick me up. He always hits the hard stuff when he’s stressed. And how could he not be?

  A wave of guilt floods me. He needs me as much as I’ve needed him, and I haven’t even taken the time to ask how he’s doing.

  He spots me. Relief washes over his features and he pulls me into a hug that smells like shaving cream and antiseptic. I breathe it in, relaxing in the safety and familiarity until my backpack drags at my shoulder, heavy with the weight of the government property I’ve just stolen. Stricken with guilt yet again, I step out of the hug a second before I really want to.

  He holds me at arm’s length. “So. That’s what you wear to commit grand larceny? Allegedly,” he adds with a frown aimed at Dr. Lila.

  I freeze up, the backpack’s strap burning on my shoulder—and then realize that Dr. Lila must’ve told him about last week’s attempt at medical record thievery. Although apparently the news didn’t quite have the effect she intended.

  Her smile tightens a few degrees. On anyone else, it would look pained. On her, it looks … dangerous.

  I glance down at my fluffy hospital bathrobe, which I’ve been wearing in several variations for the last eight days. At least this one doesn’t have the rotten apple stain. “You know what they say. A comfy larcenist is … something.”

  “Unsuccessful?” Dad supplies.

  “Touché.”

  “Thank God,” he mutters, then hands me a bag full of fresh clothes to change into. He nods over my head at Dr. Lila. “Goodbye, ma’am. I hope to continue our discussion on interrogating minors without notifying their parents at a later date.”

  “I can hardly wait,” she replies, managing to make it sound both cordial and threatening. Her gaze lingers on me a few seconds too long, and her smile—I hate that smile, because I understand it now. It says she feels sorry for me, but she’ll do what she’s gotta do anyway, and screw me if I get in the way.

  When Dad turns his back, I flip her off. It doesn’t make me feel any better.

  Dad pulls me away. “Come on, larcenist,” he says to me. “Go get changed. And then you’re grounded.”

  My doctors give me warnings, instructions, and a massive sheaf of discharge paperwork. I’m to get plenty of rest, light exercise is okay, and also the new implants in my leg and shoulder might set off metal detectors. That last bit is news to me, but when the nurse asks if I have any questions, I shake my head. I just want out of this place as quickly as possible.

  A posse of agents herds us out a secret side door to avoid the protestors. Dad and Quint and I get in the car—a new Honda, not the Toyota that must be a heap of charred metal in some city junkyard by now—and huddle back into our separate islands of silence. When we turn out of the parking structure, I get a glimpse of the mob. They have more signs but I turn away wit
hout reading them, the fury still boiling low in my belly. I don’t want to think about it. I don’t want to think about them.

  We drive. We park. We walk.

  Our apartment is full of three-week-old dirty dishes and scattered heaps of laundry. Judging by the nest of blankets and sci-fi novels on the couch, Dad’s been sleeping there on the nights he hasn’t spent at the hospital. He has managed to clear off the table, though, and apparently empty the trash.

  He’s also taken down all the pictures of Mom.

  I stand in the entryway and stare at the spot on the wall where last year’s family photo used to hang. The square that’s left behind seems to glow in comparison to the darker beige wall around it, like a shadow in reverse. Like an afterimage: the ghost of light that’s left behind when you’ve been staring at something too bright for too long. I try to decide whether this makes the emptiness in my chest more or less painful.

  Dad closes the door behind us. “It wasn’t your fault,” he says, quietly enough that I can pretend not to have heard him. He rubs a tired hand across his eyes and sets the pharmacy bag he’s been carrying down on the hallway table. It’s full of the meds the hospital sent me home with, mostly refills for the anti-anxiety pills that sometimes help lessen the frequency and intensity of my panic attacks, though unfortunately they can’t make me forget my fears or the fact that I’m responsible for my mother’s death.

  But I don’t say anything about that to Dad, because I know what he’d tell me. It’s the same thing everyone’s been telling me. Mom’s death was a direct consequence of whatever agency equipment malfunctioned three weeks ago and destroyed the entire southern half of the base, and I couldn’t have predicted the future, and she wouldn’t have wanted me to blame myself. None of that matters, though. If I had been able to act in spite of my anxiety, I’d have picked her up on time, and if I’d picked her up on time she’d still be alive, and this is the only thing that can be true, because according to Dr. Lila, the only other possibility is that my mother somehow meant for the explosion to happen.

  Either it’s my fault she’s dead, or it’s her fault she’s dead. There is only one of those options that I can live with.

  Quint is watching me like he can read my thoughts from the way I’m gritting my teeth—and maybe he can, I caved a few days ago and told my visiting psychiatrist and, incidentally, the ever-present Quint, that Mom’s death was my fault—and I make an effort to smooth out my features before Dad reads them too and figures out something’s wrong. I clear my throat and reach for the pharmacy bag. But when I scoop it off the table, something glimmering and metallic slides out from beneath it and falls to the floor with a musical tinkle.

  A bracelet. Slender white-gold chain. A delicate feather etched on the centerpiece. The memory reaches out and swallows me up before I can stop it.

  I’m handcuffed to a desk when Mom shows up.

  Her lips thin out as she spots my arm, twisted awkwardly too far beneath me so the store manager could lock the other cuff securely around the leg of his fancy cherrywood executive desk. I give Mom a weak smile and try to pretend I wasn’t crying three minutes ago, but her laser vision picks up the quiver in my expression and the tear tracks I tried to scrub away before she got here.

  She turns her gaze on the manager. Her pretty pearl earrings—a gift from Dad this morning for their day-long anniversary date, which my arrest has interrupted—sway.

  The manager crosses his arms. “I caught her shoplifting,” he says, belligerent.

  “And you had to cuff her to your desk? She’s only thirteen.” Mom’s tone is cordial, but around her purse straps her fingers twitch like she’s remembering her Army training and how she knows at least a couple dozen ways to kill a man.

  “And this is worth a hundred dollars.” The store manager stabs a finger at the bracelet on his desk. It’s white gold, beautiful and delicate, everything I’m not but wish I was. What made me want it most of all was the feather engraved on its little metal plate. Mom and I used to go bird-watching together before she got deployed to this new and much bigger city. I miss watching the birds together, like I miss everything about our old home. I lingered over the feather bracelet for a few minutes longer than I should’ve when the saleslady got it out of the case for me to try on. It shouldn’t have mattered, this little scrap of jewelry, but somehow all at once it had symbolized everything about my old life that I’d loved and lost. If I could just have this, maybe I’d feel okay again. But then I saw the way-too-expensive price tag and everything in the whole world was miserable and off, and I knew I would never be anything but the perpetually homesick new girl, and I had to get out of the store before I broke down and cried in front of the new friends I’d gone shopping with.

  By then the saleslady had gotten distracted by a girl asking to look at a necklace, so I’d walked off, focusing so much energy on not crying that I hadn’t even realized I was still wearing the bracelet.

  “Uncuff her, please,” Mom says. Her tone is still respectful and the manager puffs up a little. I might know Mom’s a soldier, but all he sees is a soft-voiced woman with messy chestnut hair and her favorite pair of comfy mom jeans, which I told her last week she needed to donate to a charity.

  This was supposed to be her day off. And instead of relaxing with Dad for their anniversary, she had to come pick up a kid who is now a criminal.

  She reads my thoughts, reaches out and brushes her fingers across my cheek. When the manager’s not looking, she winks at me.

  I blink, not sure what she’s doing, but give her another shaky smile anyway.

  “I’m gonna need to fill out a police report first,” the manager says, arms still crossed, a smug look on his face like handcuffing a terrified thirteen-year-old was the highlight of his year. “I’m sick of these spoiled kids getting away with all this crap. No way is she getting off with just a slap on the wrist if I have anything to say about it.”

  Mom’s expression goes frosty. She leans over the desk, her movements precise and controlled, and her Army tattoo peeks out from under the neck of her shirt. The manager’s eyes cross as he spots it and his smug look evaporates. He tries to replace it with one of disgust, hiding his new uncertainty. “Fine,” he says, tossing the cuff’s key on the desk. “Get her out of my sight. And maybe learn some better parenting skills so your kid doesn’t shoplift next time she spots something shiny.” He busies himself digging in his desk drawers, probably so he doesn’t have to look Mom in the eye again.

  Mom uncuffs me without a word, steers me out to the car, and pulls out of the parking lot.

  “I’m sorry,” I tell her when we turn onto the highway. “I swear I didn’t try to steal it.”

  She grins suddenly, reaches into her jacket pocket, and tosses the bracelet into the cup holder between us. “Ain’t no thing, kid.”

  I gape at her. “But … you …”

  She flips on the blinker and then levels a finger at me. “Stealing is wrong,” she says sternly. “Do as I say, not as I do.” Then her grin reappears and she turns on the radio and whistles along, oblivious, and like the sun flashing out from behind a cloud for just a second, I see her: a fierce, beautiful, and completely foreign badass who is somehow wearing my mother’s old mom jeans.

  I shake myself out of the memory. Dad is staring at me, concerned, and I fake a smile that nobody believes as I sweep the bracelet up and drop it into my pocket. The memory leaves an aftertaste—the foreignness of my mother in that moment, the way she’d transformed into a stranger right in front of me. At the time it had been amazing, but now it turns my stomach.

  Maybe I really didn’t know her all that well.

  I hitch my backpack higher, feeling the weight within, and that sick uncertainty hardens and flashes back to anger. It’s Dr. Lila who’s done this to me, Dr. Lila who planted this awful doubt in my head, Dr. Lila who’s tried to steal all I have left of my mother. And now I can prove it. As soon as I can get Dad to leave me alone with the tablet.

&nbs
p; I fake a yawn. “I think I’m gonna go to bed, if that’s okay.”

  Dad blinks and nods, trying not to look disappointed. He probably wanted to hang out with me now that I’m finally home. Mentally, I kick myself—I am seriously the worst daughter ever, especially after he stood up for me at the hospital. It can’t be helped, though. I’ll hang out with him when I get this mess straightened out.

  Dad walks me to my room. He stops at the threshold and holds up his fingers. “Three things,” he tells me. “One: I love you. Two: please try to cooperate with the agency, at least for now. I’m hiring a lawyer to get access to your medical records, but we need to do things the legal way and not the way that’s going to get you tossed in jail for the rest of your natural life. Three: I’m going to bed. If you plan to commit any more crimes, I implore you to wait at least eight hours.”

  I manage to scrape up a smile. “I love you too. And no promises.”

  He ruffles my chopped-off hair and then trudges toward the couch.

  I close the door. I sit gently on the bed. I pull out the tablet.

  I hit the button and it powers up to a bloodred background. PASSCODE, prompts the screen.

  I bite my lip. Quint is standing on the other side of the room, pretending to study the Doctor Strange poster above my dresser, but I can feel the weight of his attention. As much as this moment belongs to me and my mom, it belongs to him too. Either this’ll validate him as being—well, something—if he really did read the password when I couldn’t even see the screen, or we’re both screwed.

  I enter the password. It works.

  I swallow and cast a sideways glance at Quint. He lets out a breath, dropping his faux interest in the poster, and slides onto the bed. He scoots closer to read over my shoulder. If he were real, I’d be able to feel his warmth. I bite back the instinct to lean toward him, unsettled by the reaction.