CHAPTER TWENTY.

My shoulder crashes into the chain-link fence at the bottom of the hill. A split second later, Daniel collides with me, and I'm shoved into the fence a second time.

The path downhill was rock and brambles, some of which we carried with us. One long vine of briars is wrapped around my shoe.

Deo comes scrambling down the steep incline after us.

"I'm sorry!" Deo says. "Oh my God, I'm so sorry, man. I thought . . ."

That's when I notice the blood. Daniel is clutching his chest a few inches below his neck.

He reaches out his free hand and grabs Deo's arm. "Thought I was Cregg. I know. Where's the gun?"

"I . . ." Deo looks back uphill. "I dropped it. I didn't want to touch the damn thing after . . ."

"Get it . . ." Daniel's eyes close and his head collapses back against my shoulder.

"Go!" I tell Deo. "Hurry!"

Now that my pulse isn't pounding in my ears quite as loudly anymore, I can pick up the faint bwee-om, bwee-om in the distance.

Daniel's shirt is turning red alarmingly fast. I yank off my sweater, which I notice is now ripped down the back from the briars or maybe the rocks, and press it against the wound.

A familiar flash of purple catches my eye. It's the car whose brakes I heard squealing a few moments ago.

A Jeep, actually.

Two doors slam, almost in unison.

"Anna!"

"Aaron! Call 911!"

"The ambulance is . . . coming. Oh, God. No." Aaron curls his fingers through the fence, and shakes his head, unbelieving. "I knew . . . someone. I just didn't . . . Daniel? What the hell is he . . . ?" He stares up at me, his fingers brushing the side of my face. "Are you okay? Where's Deo?"

Taylor shoves something at Aaron. It looks like . . . bolt cutters? Then she drops to her knees on the grass and reaches through the fence toward Daniel.

"What happened?" Her eyes are frantic. "Why is he even here?"

Daniel's eyes flutter, and he pulls one hand up to hers. "M'okay, Taylor. I'll be fine."

Sounds like me talking to Deo. Making promises that may be beyond his power to keep.

"Hold still." The bolt cutters make quick work of the fence. Aaron stops about halfway up and then starts cutting parallel to the line of barbed wire strung across the top. By the time Deo comes down the hill, Aaron has nearly cut away a section large enough to get Daniel through.

I reach up and take the gun from Deo, who's holding it away from his body like it could go off at any second.

"I'm so sorry. I thought . . . I thought it was Cregg. I couldn't let him . . . not again."

"It was an accident, D. They've already called the ambulance. And it was my fault. I'm the one who said I thought it was Cregg."

Even when I knew it wasn't.

Why couldn't I have told Deo that before, when we were trying to get out of the building?

Stop kickin' yourself. Like I told you, nothin' changes. Nothin'. If you'd tried to tell him earlier, you couldn't have. I couldn't stop my cousin from getting killed in a car wreck. Knew he was gonna die when he was getting into the car, but my stupid mouth just keeps sayin' I'll see him on Friday.

I know Jaden is right. I felt it happen. But it doesn't stop me from wanting to change it.

Daniel opens his eyes for a moment. "Wipe the gun clean. Throw it back. Don't want the kid caught up in this."

Deo stands there shivering in the cold, the round bandage pale against his tanned arms. How much of his jumpiness is the aftereffects of whatever they shot into him? Of course, it could also be the aftereffects of being kidnapped, having someone rake through your brain, watching three people get killed, and having a crazy man take over your body and make you point a gun at your head. I'm pretty sure Deo is completely caught up in this no matter what we do, but yeah, he doesn't need legal trouble on top of everything else.

I start to wipe the gun off with my camisole, but Taylor takes it from me.

"I've got it." She flips a switch on the side-the safety, I guess-then starts wiping it down with her sweatshirt.

"Deo, Anna, help me get him into the car." Aaron bends back the section of the fence he snipped. "The ambulance will come up Route 222-it's the only main road through here. We need to intercept it."

I press my sweater against the wound as we carry Daniel toward the Jeep. "Where are we?"

"That's the Tome School. It was part of a naval training center back in the forties, but it's been abandoned for decades. The quarry Taylor drew is across the river and down three, maybe four, miles."

"Okay. I ditched the gun." Taylor crawls into the Jeep and shoves aside two backpacks, which I recognize as the bags I left at the beach house. Then we slide Daniel, who has now passed out, into the cargo area. A towel replaces my nearly soaked sweater, which wasn't very absorbent in the first place.

"You and Deo will have to double up in the passenger seat," Aaron says as he heads for the driver's side.

"No problem. Come on, D."

Deo is staring mutely into the back of the Jeep, misery scrawled in giant letters across his face.

"Not your fault. You know that. I'm the one who said it was Cregg."

He doesn't answer, just climbs in next to me.

"Damn it," Aaron says as he slides behind the wheel. "No built-in phone. Why does Mom keep this hunk of junk?" He pulls out his cell and tosses it onto the console. "Call Sam."

Aaron does a quick three-point turn in the middle of the road.

"Got them both," he says, when Sam answers. "They're okay, but Daniel's been shot."

"What? How the hell?"

"I don't know, Sam."

"How bad is it?"

"Looks bad. I already phoned it in, maybe five minutes ago, as soon as I knew something was going down. Can you call Mom? Then contact emergency services and tell them we'll intercept in the Jeep."

When Sam hangs up, Aaron says, "I hope the ambulance gets through, before . . ." He nods toward the school. "Things are about to get crazy around here. Soon, I think. Had a fire started when you left?"

"Yes. Cregg was on fire."

Aaron's eyes shift to meet mine briefly. "Guessing you guys didn't stop to put him out?"

"We did not."

He takes my hand and runs his thumb gently across my palm. My pulse races. I feel a tiny rush of a very different sort of fire as his thumb moves back and forth, and it isn't entirely doused by the flush of guilt that follows for feeling this way under the current circumstances.

"But . . . that fire was contained to a lab," I tell him. "I don't think it could have spread. And they could call for help, even though the fire extinguisher had been put to a very different use thanks to Deo's quick thinking."

Deo huffs. He's not taking compliments right now. His forehead is pressed against the window as he stares at the trees rushing past.

"The fire spread," Aaron says. "Or, more likely, another one was set. What I felt . . . it was definitely intentional. I'm just not positive about the timing. Did you see that copter? Big one."

"Yeah." I comb through my Abner memories. He's standing on an aircraft carrier looking up as a gray-green chopper approaches. Dozens of troops come pouring out when it lands. That sound is similar to the one I heard. Although I don't really know how different one copter sounds from the next. "Pretty sure it's a military transport. A . . . Chinook, maybe. Sounded like it was landing. Did you see where?"

"I didn't get a good look. But if I had to guess, it's headed for a flat paved spot we saw on the maps." He nods ahead as we take a sharp curve. "This whole area-over a thousand acres-was built up during World War II. It's been lying here undeveloped since they closed it down in the 1990s . . . First there was some sort of environmental cleanup, and then it's been tied up in court or something. And now I've got a pretty good idea why. What in God's name was Daniel doing there?"

"Undercover. There are . . ." I stop and ask Jaden.

How many people do you think? Total?

Now? Maybe sixty. Ninety, if you're countin' Fudds. Usually a new kid every few weeks.

"There are around ninety people in there," I say. "At least half kids, some of them really young. All of them . . . gifted . . . in some fashion."

Aaron is watching my face from the corner of his eye. "I thought Molly was gone?"

"She is. But I picked up new hitchers."

He's silent for a moment, and then his grip on my hand tightens. "Hitchers? Plural? You're sure you're okay?"

"I'm fine. All but one are gone now. And you need both hands."

I put Aaron's hand back on the steering wheel and place my hand next to his leg on the car seat. He's driving much too fast for the narrow road, but he doesn't have much choice given Daniel's condition.

"Aaron's been on a hair trigger every time we got close to this place." Taylor is holding Daniel's head in her lap, one hand pressing the towel and the other against the pulse point on his neck. "We've been here for the past day on and off. Looking for a way to get in or something we could use to get the authorities involved. But then tonight, he started getting a flash on something big. Bigger than just a few people. The place is underground, right?"

I nod.

"That's why it was muted. That's why I kept seeing paths that weren't there. Why I kept seeing you in places you couldn't be . . . in the middle of that open area. They found it, by the way."

I give her a blank look.

"Molly's purse. Sam was there when they dug up the swimming pool this morning. They've put out a warrant for Lucas."

"He was in the lab with Cregg tonight. So was Dacia. She wasn't hurt, but . . . Lucas might be dead. I don't know."

I spend the next few minutes giving them a very abbreviated version of the past few days. Deo's shoulders tighten next to me a few times, but he doesn't add anything to what I say. I don't mention that they injected him. I don't want to bring that up right now, not when he's already so stressed.

But I do reach into my bra and retrieve the vial I snagged from the fridge. "We need to find someone to analyze this. It may turn out to be nothing, but-"

I stop as we round a curve and I see red lights in the distance. "Is that the ambulance?"

Aaron starts flashing his headlights and pulls the Jeep onto a gravel parking lot.

Then we stand out of the way, helpless, as the paramedics move Daniel into the ambulance.

"Are you okay to follow in the Jeep?" Aaron asks. "I really hate to ask, given the hell you must have been through, but . . . Taylor. I don't want her to be alone . . . just in case Daniel . . ."

"I'll be fine," I tell him, even though I'm far from certain on that point. "Go. Be with Taylor."

"Okay." He glances over at Deo, who's leaning against the Jeep, trying not to look at the ambulance, and says in a lower voice, "I think maybe Deo needs some time with you anyway."

Aaron's hand lingers on mine when I take the keys, and he reaches up to touch my face. "Don't run off with my mom's Jeep, okay? I wouldn't miss the Jeep, but I'd have to come looking for you again. And I would come looking."

He starts toward the ambulance. I can see the paramedics inside hooking Daniel up to a machine of some type. "UM Harford. And be careful!"

We get into the Jeep and wait for the ambulance to pull out.

"Deo, you can't blame yourself for this. I'm the one who said it was-"

"Anna, stop. I can't talk right now, okay?" He bites his lip and looks out the window again. His dark eyes are glassy and I know how very much he hates to cry.

"Sure." I bite back the urge to tell him I love him, because even that might push him over and maybe now isn't the best time. I toss him my phone. "Can you navigate to UM Harford? In case I can't keep up with the ambulance."

And I can't keep up. I'm not willing to put my secondhand driving skills to the test at eighty miles an hour. It doesn't matter anyway. My phone rings a few minutes later and Aaron tells us there's been a change of plans. They've decided to transport Daniel to the shock-and-trauma center in Baltimore via air ambulance.

Deo enters the new address into the GPS and we turn around to catch the interstate on-ramp.

After a few miles, I push play and the audiobook starts. It might be nice to ride through the night, believing in magic for a while, magic of either the Hogwarts variety or the Muggle sort that will keep Daniel alive.

But Aaron and Taylor must have been in the car a lot over the last few days, because they're way past the point where we left off. And I'd forgotten how dark this one is at the end. They're past the Ministry of Magic and back at Hogwarts now, where Dumbledore and Harry are arguing about Voldemort. About Voldemort crawling inside Harry's head and trying to control him.

Way too close to what happened in the lab for comfort.

Deo and I both reach to turn it off at the same time.

We pull over at a rest stop north of Baltimore to change into clothes that aren't soaked with blood. Even at three a.m. there are people around. I pull a clean sweatshirt over my camisole, which is more red than white now, grab the backpack with my clothes, and keep my head low.

There's no shower, no paper towels. Just the sink, cold water, and hand soap.

Girl, you look like a poster for that Carrie movie.

He has a point. There's blood on my arms and neck, even in my hair. Nothing to do but start scrubbing, hopefully before someone walks in with sleepy kids in need of a bathroom break. I'd probably give them nightmares for a week.