But when I rounded the front of the van, he was there, and to my surprise he took my hand, his fingers slipping in against my palm.
He kept his gaze fixed firmly ahead, and I knew better than to react to it, even though my heart was dancing an overjoyed and relieved jig.
I clenched my teeth. If this woman hurt him again, I would have a hard time not hurting her back. I didn’t care how bad her marriage was, how much of a jerk Zane’s dad had been (and I could believe he’d reached epic jerk proportions), there was no excuse for what she’d done. Leaving? Okay. Completely abandoning her son? No way.
Never knowing either of my biological parents—genetic material donors, really, one human, one alien—was difficult enough, at times. I couldn’t imagine what it would feel like to have them reject me.
Next to me, Zane took a deep breath. “We’ll just ring the doorbell and see if she answers. If she does…” His grip tightened on my hand.
I hated seeing Zane, normally so confident, knocked back on his heels like this. “You’ll say hello,” I said firmly. “Then she’ll take it from there, I’m sure.”
And she’d better freaking smile and welcome him with open arms.
At the base of the concrete steps leading to her door, Zane hesitated.
I pulled free of his hand and gave him gentle push. “Go. I’ll wait here.” The porch wasn’t really big enough for both of us to stand side by side, and besides, I didn’t want anything—like, who is this strange girl you’ve brought with you?—to interrupt the potential reunion.
He went up the steps, rang the doorbell, and stuffed his hands in pockets to wait, rocking back on his heels. I could feel the nervousness flowing through him.
“No one’s home,” he said over his shoulder. “We should go.”
I rolled my eyes. “Just give it a second.” I paused, then added, “Chicken.”
He glared at me, but he stayed on the porch, just as I’d figured he would. He was stubborn if pushed on something that mattered to him, a quality I was incredibly grateful for.
The sounds of locks disengaging on the other side snapped his attention away from me and to the door.
Please be happy to see him, please, please, please. I tensed, ready to…I don’t know, pull Zane back, to protect him from his mother’s indifference, if necessary.
“Zane?” Her voice, thick with sleep, held uncertainty and surprise.
“Hi,” he said, the word escaping in a quick rush of air, as if he’d planned more but that was all that came out.
She gave an inarticulate cry of joy. “What are you doing here?” Her hands appeared on his shoulders, pulling him closer.
That was a good sign. I tried to relax but found myself fighting against a small and surprising surge of envy. I was alone, but Zane wasn’t. He had someone to welcome him, to know and love him unconditionally, as family was supposed to. It only amplified the feeling of being alone in a much larger world than I’d ever anticipated.
This is a good thing, I told myself. He needed this after everything that had gone down with his dad. And it might mean that I had an ally in convincing Zane that his life was better spent not on the run with me, no matter how much I wanted him to come with me.
But then Zane bent down to hug his mom, and I saw her face over his shoulder, her eyes squeezed shut.
I’d half expected to recognize her in a vague way, a face glimpsed at a distance in the hallways at school or behind the wheel of a passing car on the street. Even though I hadn’t been allowed out often, Wingate was a relatively small town, and Zane and I were in the same grade.
But it was more than that, so much more. I knew her.
My breath caught in my throat. It had been ten years since I’d last seen this woman, and she had gray in her hair now and deep wrinkles, near her eyes and on either side of her mouth. But it was clearly, unmistakably her. It was almost as if thinking about this woman had summoned her into reality. Mara. Lab tech. GTX employee. Most definitely not dead.
I must have made some choked noise, because Mara’s eyes snapped open suddenly and focused on me.
The color drained from her face. She released Zane from the hug only to yank him toward the door to the duplex, putting herself between us as if she thought I might charge forward. “You’re supposed to stay away,” she hissed at me. “I’ve done everything he asked me to.”
Behind her, Zane frowned, confused. “Mom?”
I retreated automatically, my hands up in defense. I had no idea what she was talking about. He who? Dr. Jacobs? She was afraid and angry, both of which were pulsing so loudly through her mind I couldn’t track her thoughts.
“You have no right to be here, threatening my son!” she shouted at me.
I cringed, all too aware of the scene we were making—well, she was making it and I was in the middle of it. Did she think I was here to hurt her? Had Dr. Jacobs threatened to send me after her at some point?
I backed up, off the sidewalk, checking all sides, expecting the flash of black retrieval team uniforms across the sun-baked yard. But there was nothing. The street remained empty. No one sprang out from behind the desiccated bushes.
“Mom, what are you talking about?” Zane asked from behind her, his voice strained with worry. “No one’s threatening anybody.” He tried to push past her, but she was determined, throwing an arm across the doorway to bar him.
“Where are the others, Ford?” she demanded, her gaze searching the yard and street behind me.
I gaped at her. The others? Which others? Her fellow GTX employees? And who or what was Ford?
I looked to Zane, but he seemed as baffled as I was. And a lot more freaked out. Of course he was; it was his mother who was behaving so strangely.
“Nixon, Carter, I know you’re out there somewhere,” Mara snarled. “Stay the hell away.”
And with that nonsensical statement, she pushed Zane into the house with enough force to send him stumbling and slammed the door after herself.
I stood there, the crash echoing in my head, and blinked in the sunshine as it crested over the roofs, and birds in the surrounding trees resettled themselves and began a frenzied fit of chirping. Otherwise, nothing moved, and it was quiet, except for the hum of traffic in the distance.
If this was an attempt to recapture me, it was possibly the weirdest, least-effective snare ever.
Ford, Nixon, and Carter. They were all former presidents. What that had to do with anything, I had no idea.
Was Mara crazy? Had she become mentally unstable in the years since I’d seen her? Her thoughts had been so corrupted with the bright clanging of fear, it was hard to tell. But that might explain her behavior today as well as her decision to abandon Zane without further contact.
But what about—
Ariane! A sudden spike of panic broke through the silence and into my head. Zane. Something inside the house had him freaking out.
I abandoned any further examination of the situation and raced up the sidewalk to the door.
6
Zane
“THIS WON’T STOP THEM, BUT it’ll slow them down some,” my mom assured me, locking the door. It was far from a simple process. Seven locks decorated the wood: three dead bolts—two of which were so new they were shiny—three security chains, and the little tab lock on the doorknob itself.
I watched in stunned silence, not sure what the hell was going on. “Are you okay?” I asked cautiously. Her hands were shaking as she set the last chain; it took her two tries to get the little hook into the slider bar.
“Don’t worry about me. Did they hurt you?” she asked breathlessly, turning to scan me for obvious injury.
“Who are they?” I asked. You could hear the emphasis when she said it, communicating a single malicious entity made up of multiple parts. But it had been just Ariane and me out there.