The Taking (17 page)

I glanced at the digital numbers on my nightstand while my phone—set to vibrate—buzzed once more. It was 7:26.

Outside my room it was quiet, but I knew she was still there. I could hear “my brother’s” unmistakable footsteps—his short, staccato stride and the way he ran, rather than walked, everywhere he went. He whimpered briefly, and I could picture him straining with his chubby arms raised high above his head, begging to be picked up. Then there was a brief shuffling, and my mother murmured something soft and reassuring, followed by her quieter, and more measured, footsteps leading toward the kitchen.

I shouldn’t feel bad for not wanting to spend time with them, I told myself. This wasn’t my fault. None of it. I hadn’t asked for a new family.

When my fingers closed around Agent Truman’s business card—the second one he’d left me—I inhaled. I’d chucked it in my drawer when I thought I’d never need it again.

I picked up my phone and cross-checked the number on the card with the one that had just called me.

The two were a match.

The hairs on the back of my neck stood on end. How had Agent Truman gotten my cell phone number?

Just as I pressed the button on my phone to check the time, a message popped up on the screen.

A text.

From Agent Truman’s number.

I want to show you something.

For a long time that was it. I waited for more. For another message, something along the lines of
Call me back
or
Let’s schedule an appointment
or
Meet me at . . .

I wasn’t sure how that last one was supposed to end since I didn’t think there was a local NSA office in a town the size of Burlington, but it didn’t matter. If Agent Truman was trying to freak me out with his ominous message, he was doing a bang-up job. I was freaked, all right.

And if he thought I would message him back, he was out of his ever-loving mind. I had nothing to say to him. I’d already told him everything I knew: that my dad had nothing to do with my disappearance that night. I wasn’t sure what more I could say to convince him.

And then a second text popped up. A picture, followed by a single question:

Do you recognize this man?

I covered my mouth because I did recognize him, but I had no idea why Agent Truman was asking me, or why it even mattered.

Giving in to the urge to defend myself, even if my response was a total lie, I typed in two letters:
No,
and threw my phone on the bed.

I got up and paced my room, suddenly edgy and itchy and more than a little agitated. My eyes fell on the ball Cat had left me. The one from our championship game. The ball I’d hurled from the pitcher’s mound, striking out batter after batter.

The ball responsible for making the other team cry.

I picked it up and ran my thumb over the stitching as I looked at all the names scrawled on it in various shades of blue, black, purple, and red pen. My teammates who’d signed their names in hopes I’d be home soon and they could give me the ball as a gift. Tears gathered in the corners of my eyes. I wondered where they all were now. I wondered if they knew I was back.

I tossed the ball up in the air and caught it. I did it again, and again, and again.

And then I grabbed my hoodie and my phone, closing out of the picture of the lab tech who’d been found dead the night before in his apartment, and texted my mom, who was just down the hall, in the kitchen with her replacement family.

I’m going out. Back soon.

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

..................................................................

I
’
D ONLY WALKED BETWEEN MY HOUSE AND THE
high school a handful of times, and only when it had been a last-resort situation. Like the time I’d overslept when Austin had been at an out-of-town swim meet and I’d missed the bus. Or when Cat and I had gotten into a yelling match in the middle of practice over whether the pitch I’d thrown had hit her on purpose or not. The argument had gotten heated—to the point that the coach had had to intervene—and I’d insisted on walking home, refusing to speak to Cat for two days afterward.

That had been one of the downsides of having an August birthday. I was always younger than everyone else in my class, which meant that, during our sophomore year, while everyone around me had been turning sixteen and getting their driver’s licenses, I’d been relegated to hitching rides and counting down the days till my Sweet Sixteen.

It wasn’t
that
big a deal since Austin’s birthday was in October and Cat’s was in February, and I could go everywhere they went. What
was
a big deal was that when August finally rolled around, I chickened out.

Maybe too much time had passed and I’d built up the whole driver’s-license thing too much in my head.

Or maybe,
just maybe
, I’d failed the driving test twice already—a secret I swore I’d take to my grave.

I’d been too embarrassed to try a third time, so instead I made up some lame excuse about not wanting my license anyway, which was total bull because every kid in the universe wanted one. Your license meant freedom and independence. It meant joining an elite club where people could drive cars and wave at one another on their way to car washes and drive-through espresso stands and parking lots, where they would hang out and compare shitty DMV photos.

And here I was, all these years later, still walking.

And still sixteen . . . or so I’d been told.

By the time I reached the field, I was sweating and I’d stripped out off my jacket and tied the sleeves around my waist. I was still clutching the ball, and it felt good. Right.

Being at the field again was a whole other story. It skeeved me out that they’d named it after me. I didn’t see a sign or anything, which would have felt like a gravestone of sorts, but it was still strange knowing what I knew.

I was relieved that the fields were deserted, since it was still softball and baseball season and there could have been a game or late practice. I stepped out onto the empty field, walking straight to the pitching mound, facing my ghosts head-on.

It was unsettling to stand there again. It was the same place I’d stood dozens, hundreds, thousands of times before. I pressed my fingers alongside the stitching on the ball and closed my eyes, letting memory and reality collide.

When I reopened them, I zeroed in on home plate and envisioned the ball’s trajectory, the point at which I wanted it to leave my hand, the way it should arc—just so—and where it would cross the plate. I rolled my neck and my shoulders, loosening my muscles. And then, taking a breath, I drove off the mound, swinging my arm and rotating my shoulder, all the way around, and released my pitch.

It was so natural, the rhythm so familiar, that it was utterly impossible to believe that five years had passed since the last time I’d thrown a ball. And when I saw it—that very same championship ball—hurtling across its mark, faster maybe than I thought it should have gone, I knew . . . I believed at last what Dr. Dunn had told my parents: I was still sixteen years old. Because there was no way, no possible way on earth I was any older than I had been just six days ago. My body, my muscle memory, hadn’t changed a single iota. My body remembered the same way I did.

“Holy shit.” The voice behind me whispered in awe. “I knew you could play, I mean, I’d heard stories, but
damn
, that was impressive.”

I whirled around to find Tyler standing right there, and I wondered how he’d managed to sneak up on me. I grinned in response because I knew what I’d just done
was
impressive, more so even than using words like
metropolis
or having a killer dimple. “You ever play?” I inquired over my shoulder as I left him standing there while I went to retrieve my ball.

I knew he was trailing after me when he spoke, his voice low and playful. “Softball? Nah. I tried out once, but they said the other girls felt uncomfortable with me in the locker room, so I didn’t make the cut.”

Bending at the waist, I reached for the ball where it had landed near the backstop. Gingerly, I brushed away the dirt as I stood again. “I meant baseball, or just sports in general, smart-ass. Aren’t you ever serious?”

His hand shot out, covering the ball as if he meant to take it from me, but he didn’t, and his hand curled over mine. I inhaled sharply. “I’m serious about plenty of things,” he told me solemnly, his gaze intense. He took a step closer, and without thinking or meaning to, and because I suddenly couldn’t breathe with him standing in my space like that, I took one tiny step back. I let go of the ball, and it dropped back to the ground with a solid thud. It was so much quieter than the pounding of my heart. He took another step. I tried to hold my ground, but my throat grew thick, and my body temperature had risen at least twenty degrees. “There are more important things in life than games, Kyra.” His eyebrow lifted, and his mischievous gaze raked over me.

I couldn’t tell if he was mocking me, or toying with me, or whatever this was that he was doing. I hated even more that it was his fault I couldn’t catch my breath, and I felt suddenly unsteady.

I shoved his chest, trying to give myself some space. “Yeah, well, I’m sure you and your
books
will be very happy together.” It didn’t escape my notice, the way his muscles felt beneath my fingers, and the solidness of him made me out-and-out feverish.

He caught my hand again, but this time I wasn’t holding the ball, so I couldn’t kid myself that he had some other motivation for his actions. When his thumb moved over my palm, heat burst in the pit of my belly and spread outward, curling the tips of my toes. “I’m serious about other things too.”

I wanted to swallow, but my tongue felt like baked asphalt. “Stop,” I insisted.

“Stop what?”

“Saying things like that.”

His half smile made him look all wolfish, and completely daring. “Like what? That I’m serious? That I like you?” He moved a quarter of an inch closer, and involuntarily my lips parted.

“Yes,” I confirmed, scowling because it was easier, and far less obvious than gaping at him. “That’s exactly what I mean.”

His thumb skated up to my wrist. I was sure he had to know how he affected me, that the thrumming of my pulse would totally give me away. “Then
you
stop.”

I blinked once and then again. “
Me?
What did I do?”

He let go of my wrist and lifted his hand to my face. When his thumb feathered over my lower lip, so lightly it could have easily been a figment of my imagination, I shivered.

I saw a show on Animal Planet once about these fainting goats whose muscles froze up when they were startled, and they passed out. Like, they literally fell over if you scared them.

That was me, right now.

I was terrified and exhilarated and frozen all at once.

If I passed out, too, I would surely die of embarrassment.

We stood like that for fifty-five straight heartbeats. Our eyes remained locked in a game of chicken. His palm cupped my chin, and his thumb stayed right on my lip while I tried to find my next breath.

And for fifty-five heartbeats everything inside of me begged him to kiss me.

“Being stubborn,” he said at last, and I had no idea what he was talking about, or when he’d even been talking at all. He shook his head, breaking the spell, or whatever it was I was under—we were both under. “You’re so damned stubborn. If you’d just admit how you feel, then we could stop pretending there’s nothing between us.”

I jerked back, away from his thumb on my lip, and my head collided with the fence behind me, which I hadn’t even realized I’d backed myself up against. “I’m not being stubborn,” I stated firmly, while he smirked as if I’d just made his point for him. I wilted against the chain-link, my fingers weaving through it for support. “I never said there was nothing between us.” It was hard for me to admit the truth, and it came out all shaky and timid sounding. I wasn’t timid, though, at least I never had been before.

“I wouldn’t believe you if you had,” he told me, and this time there was nothing playful or taunting in his voice. Nothing to make me weak-kneed and girlie. But that didn’t stop my lip from tingling where he’d touched it. He picked up the ball, and I led the way back to his car, following the chalk path that led to first base.

“You ever start that book I lent you?” The sudden change in subject was as jarring as it was welcome.

I shrugged, spinning to face him and catching the ball when he tossed it to me. “I finished it, actually.”

“What?”
he drawled, flashing me a dubious look. “You’re lying! And here I thought you were all dumb jock and zero substance.”

Even though I knew he was teasing, I glowered at him and chucked the ball back in his direction.

Except that what I’d meant as a playful gesture ended up virtually lethal in execution. The ball didn’t just lob from my hand in a good-natured, we’re-just-messing-around kind of throw. It flew toward him at Mach speed, as if I’d just launched a missile at his head. He was quick enough, or lucky enough, to get out of the way in time.

When it hit the backstop, splinters sprayed outward in an explosion that made even me flinch from where I was standing.

If Tyler hadn’t ducked in time . . .

I covered my mouth. “Oh my god,” I breathed incredulously.

He stared at me and then whipped around to inspect the damage—the crater I’d left in the wooden backstop behind him.

“I—oh my god,” I repeated. “I’m so sorry.” And I
so
was. I had no idea what had gotten into me or where the hell that throw had even come from. He had every right to be pissed at me; I’d nearly decapitated him with my runaway pitch.

“Jesus Christ, Kyra,” he breathed as his fingertips traced around the fragmented wooden edges. “Have you ever done that before?”

I’d seen plenty of scuffs and dents in the backstop, mostly from foul balls or from the bats themselves, but never anything like what he was looking at.

I shook my head even though he wasn’t looking my way.