The Replaced Read online

  We hadn’t passed through any gates or enclosures of any kind, nothing to indicate that we’d entered their camp at all. As far as I was concerned, we were still in the middle of the desert.

  “Busy,” a boy I couldn’t see answered, and a round of laughter rumbled through the group. I wasn’t sure why, but for whatever reason, we were the butt of some joke, like our very presence was somehow amusing.

  “Not too busy for us,” Simon said. “Make sure Griffin gets word that Simon and Thom are here.”

  The girl pushing Simon along gave our two camp leaders the once-over. I couldn’t tell if she was trying to be one of the boys with her hair cropped close like that, or if she just liked the way it looked. Her scalp was visible, but even that wasn’t enough to make her pass as a guy, not with such delicate features and thick, black lashes. Somehow, she managed to make a shaved head look good. “I knew I recognized you,” she spat, playing up her whole macho routine. “How you even gonna show your face here?” She looked around at the others—her cohorts. “Dude used to be one of us. But he couldn’t cut it here, so he had to start his own camp,” she explained before turning back to Simon. “These your pussy soldiers, leader boy? You thought you could take us in our own house?” She snorted, and so did the rest of them, laughing at us again. “Joke’s on you, isn’t it?”

  “You come up with that theory all on your own?” Simon popped off. “You really think we came here to attack you?” He turned to Thom. “Nah. That can’t be right. Griffin wouldn’t let ’em think on their own.” His skeptical gaze turned back to the girl. “That’d be dangerous. You don’t wanna hurt that pretty little head of yours, do you, darlin’?” He winked at her then, which was definitely a mistake.

  Her dark blue eyes flashed and she came at him. “I’m not your darlin’, you piece of . . . ,” she grunted as she rammed the butt of her rifle into his face.

  Simon didn’t even try to defend himself. I flinched as I heard that sound—which wasn’t so much the sound of bone crunching as it was the surreal sound of Simon’s nose as it dislocated when the base of her weapon smashed into it from the side.

  He crumpled to the ground in front of her, falling on his hands and knees, while she stood poised above him, panting and looking satisfied with herself. Blood pooled into the sand beneath him.

  I couldn’t tear my eyes away as I waited for one of them to move first. Either for Simon to retaliate, or for her to decide she hadn’t satisfied her bloodlust just yet.

  But they both stayed where they were. Eventually, Simon spat a mouthful of his own blood into the dirt. “The thing you haven’t figured out yet is, Griffin’s truth is twisted. The Returned should be working together, not turning on one another.” His words came out mumbled, but we could understand him all the same.

  Except no one cared what Simon had to say, and he was hauled to his feet once more, his face a bloodied and mangled mess.

  “Move it!” the boy next to me said, pushing me in case I got the wrong idea and thought I had something to say too.

  “What is this place?” I pressed my hand against the dirt-smeared window and looked outside.

  This camp was nothing at all like sleepy Silent Creek. This was more like boot camp, with tents everywhere. Only these weren’t the fun camping kind you slept in during summer excursions with your family. These were the heavy canvas tents of war. The ones with beat-up Humvees, or maybe even tanks, parked out front.

  There were obstacle courses, too. Tall rope walls, and orange cones set up at regular intervals, and rows of tackle dummies—similar to the ones the football players used at my high school during practice. And even at this hour, several people were running in formation, their paces perfectly timed, military-style.

  We were so not in Kansas anymore.

  Thom’s voice came from behind me as I stared out to the field beyond, watching the predawn drills. “To the outside world, it’s one of those camps for troubled teens. The kind of place parents spend a small fortune on when they think their kids are doing drugs or being delinquents. Utah has a ton of those places since the laws are more lenient here for that kind of thing.”

  I moved out of Jett’s way when he nudged me aside so he could pry yet another faceplate off one of the outlets, this time the one beneath the window where I’d been standing. He was on a mission to find some way to tap into their communications system. So far he’d pulled apart every outlet, wall plate, and even the overhead lights, trying to find the right combination of wires he might use to get a message out to the Silent Creekers so we could let them know we might be in over our heads here.

  “It makes it easy to hide a bunch of teens in the desert,” Thom went on. “Plus, no one ever questions why a group of minors always has cash for supplies when they do have to go into town.”

  “What about the guns?” I asked. “No one questions that either?”

  Simon stopped pacing the creaky floorboards long enough to answer. “The kind of people they buy weapons from don’t care where they get their money.”

  Good point.

  “How much longer do you think they’ll hold us here?” All of us except Willow had been confined to a room with two army-style cots, a sink, and a toilet that sat smack between the two cots with absolutely nothing to shield it from view. As in, zero privacy.

  It was suspiciously like being in jail, minus the bars and the supersweet orange jumpsuits. No one would tell us where Willow had been taken, and we were in no position to lodge a complaint.

  “Not long,” Thom said. “Griffin’ll want to know exactly why we’re here and what our end game is.”

  Natty looked up from the cot she was sitting on. “End game? Why does there have to be an end game?”

  Simon and Thom shared a look. “There always is with Griffin.”

  “What aren’t you telling us?” I asked, frustrated by this constant looking thing they were doing between the two of them. “What’s the big mystery? You clearly have issues with this Griffin guy. And what was with that overblown welcome party? Who does that?”

  Simon’s grin was arrogant, and I braced myself for what was about to come. “It’s safe here, Kyra. You don’t need to be afraid. I’ll take care of you.”

  I scowled back at him. “I don’t need you to take care of me, and I didn’t say I was afraid.” Even if I had been, there was no way I’d ever admit it to Simon. Especially not after he’d just landed us in Returned jail.

  He crossed the crude planked floor and planted himself directly in front of me. I suddenly felt weird all over again, the same way I had right after I’d kissed him in front of the library. Like if I let my guard down, or gave him the right opportunity, he might take advantage and try to re-create that moment again.

  Like he had feelings for me there was no way I could ever return.

  Even though there was still blood crusted around his nose, from this close I could tell his injury was fully healed now. Still, I had to stop myself from reaching out to touch it . . . from asking if it still hurt. But I couldn’t give him the wrong idea.

  He reached for my hand and I started, not meaning to, but doing it all the same and then feeling like a jerk for making it seem like I was repulsed by him.

  I wasn’t. I just didn’t want him touching me.

  He didn’t feel the same way, and he took my hands and drew me aside, looking at me so hard, so intently, my pulse throbbed. He lowered his voice. “Look, I know you think I’m joking, but I’m not.” He glanced toward the others, and I did too.

  Thom was still staring out the window. Natty stood quietly beside him now, but she was watching us. When she caught us looking, she ducked her head and turned away quickly, making me feel like we’d been caught doing something wrong.

  My stomach twisted. Simon didn’t seem to notice Natty’s scrutiny, but then I felt his thumb stroke the back of my hand, and the twist turned to a full-blown tangle. I tried to pull my hand away, but his grip tightened.

  My eyes widened and shot to hi
s, but he just grinned in response. He moved closer until there was almost no space between us. His lips were right at my cheek, tickling my neck. His voice, though, was serious, and deadly quiet—the complete opposite of his playful veneer. “I need you to promise that whatever happens, you won’t tell anyone what you can do. The moving things. You need to swear to me that you’ll keep that a secret.”

  I closed my eyes against the feel of his breath on my skin. “What about . . . ?” It was an effort to reopen them, but when I did, I looked past him, past his shoulder, to where Natty was held rapt by Thom now. I could hear the low timbre of his voice, but not his words, as he stared down at her.

  Just a few feet from them, Jett fumbled inside the wall, pulling away pieces of drywall in an effort to get at the cluster of wires.

  Simon just shook his head, and his nose brushed against my hair. “We have to hope she doesn’t say anything. Griffin can’t find out.” His fingers closed around mine, strong and firm. He was begging me to promise.

  But I wanted something else. “Why did you and Thom bring us here?” I whispered back.

  “We had to go someplace. We had to get you guys off the road, and out of harm’s way.” His brows squeezed together, his copper eyes searching my face. “Griffin’s unconventional, but we have allies here. I swear it.”

  His palm slipped up and cupped my cheek.

  I bit back a gasp. “Simon.” It was as close as I could manage to a rebuke.

  I couldn’t let him do these things . . . touch me this way. It was hard to even say that one word, though, and I was worried that if he pushed the issue, I might not have the strength to elaborate. To tell him I needed him to stay away from me. Or that I would never, ever like him the way I thought he wanted me to.

  My heart was crashing so hard, and so forcefully, that I almost didn’t hear the door when it was flung open . . . not until it collided against the inside wall.

  The blue-eyed girl with the shaved head—Simon’s new BFF—stood in the doorway, glaring at us . . . at Simon most of all. I moved my face away, so he was no longer touching me, and pulled my hand from his.

  But I was too late—she’d noticed. Her condemning glare moved from my hands to Simon. “Come on,” she dictated to him.

  “Wait!” I said in a rush. “What about the rest of us? You’re not leaving us here, are you?”

  Jett jumped up, doing his best to block the gaping hole he’d made in the wall. “Where are you taking him?”

  “None’a your business,” she shot back.

  “Don’t worry. I got this.” Simon gave me an overconfident nod, and then turned his less-than-convincing charms back on the girl. “So, that’s it? No ‘Nice to see you’ or ‘I’ve missed you’ or ‘Where have you been all my life?’ Just ‘Come on’?” he taunted her, and I wanted to tell him to just, for once, shut his mouth and do as he was told. But it was useless. He was Simon—it wasn’t in him to leave well enough alone.

  “And you,” Buzz Cut told Jett before closing the door behind them. “Stop messing with the wiring. If you start a fire, no one’s comin’ in here to save your asses.”

  When the lock snapped into place, Jett’s gaze shot around the room, moving from one place to the next as he searched for something. “Dammit,” he cursed when he finally found what he’d been looking for.

  He approached the metal paper towel dispenser mounted to the wall right beside the dingy porcelain sink. I didn’t get it; it looked like an ordinary dispenser to me, the same kind you saw in crappy restaurants and schools and rest stops all around the country.

  Jett hooked both hands inside the lower lip, where the next paper towel was poking through waiting to be pulled free. He yanked the painted metal as hard as he could and the top burst open with a screech, sending a stack of brown paper towels tumbling free.

  Inside, Jett retrieved a small, round lens that was obviously some sort of surveillance device.

  “Should’a seen this,” he grumbled, pocketing the gadget. “They were watching us this whole time.” He ran his fingers around the metal cover one more time before letting it slam shut once more. “Too bad it’s wireless, I might’ve been able to use the hardware.”

  Thom scanned the room, and then his fingers laced through Natty’s.

  Natty shot me a timid glance, her cheeks flushing.

  “We should assume they’re listening too,” Thom said as he dragged Natty against him, and that was that—the mystery of Thom and Natty was solved. “Don’t say anything you don’t want them hearing.”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  BY THE TIME IT WAS MY TURN, BUZZ CUT HAD already come back for everyone else, and I was the last one left. Five hours and thirteen minutes had passed since she’d first come to take Simon away.

  Now it was well past eleven in the morning, which meant it was already hot in the Utah desert, and even hotter inside the sweltering closed-up space where we’d been confined. The sun beat down against the one-and-only bolted-closed window, and no matter how much dirt was caked over the outside of it, there wasn’t enough to filter out the escalating heat.

  Sometime after nine, when Natty was still with me, we’d tried to block the window using one of the thin blankets in the cell. But there’d been nothing to secure it with, and eventually we’d given up.

  It was a relief when it was finally my turn, and suddenly the unknown was better than sweating it out—literally—in what had turned from jail cell to sweat lodge. So I was surprised when, instead of being led to some other stuffy room, like some sort of interrogation cell with two-way mirrors, I was led to an enormous shower area.

  “Clean up,” Buzz Cut ordered, shoving a towel and stack of borrowed clothes at me.

  Despite the layers of grime and the rust-colored sand that clung to me, I bristled at the command, and thought about telling her where she could shove it. I do not want that shower, I lied to myself.

  But she cleared up any misgivings about whether it was an option or not when she said, “Do it or I’ll throw you back in the holding cell and you can sweat it out there the rest of the week.”

  Problem solved. I was definitely showering.

  And it was totally worth it. After the morning I’d had, the campground-style, communal showers were like stepping into a luxury spa—a serious indulgence.

  I stayed beneath the stream of hot water for a lifetime, which was more than enough time to scrub away not only the dirt, but the residual blood that was dried along my hairline. I rolled my neck and stretched my shoulders, and when my fingers started to prune, I finally turned off the nozzle and toweled off.

  Using my fingers, I combed out the tangles from my hair and slipped into the clean clothes she’d loaned me: a loose-fitting pair of sweatpants and a T-shirt that was so threadbare it felt like air against my newly clean skin. I knotted the end of the shirt to keep from being swallowed up by it.

  I spent way too long in front of the mirror, looking at the stranger with the russet-colored hair who could no longer pass as Bridget Hollingsworth—the girl on the fake ID Simon had given me. Bridget had looked too much like the old me.

  I wondered what kind of name this stranger might have. She could be a different Bridget, I supposed, but she could just as easily be a Maddy or a Mikayla, or maybe even a Kaci with an i.

  I pressed my hand to the mirror, wondering, too, where Simon and the others were right now. And if they’d been here, in this exact place, before me. Had we really come all this way only to be taken captive?

  I jumped, hastily lowering my hand, when the door opened behind me. I expected to see Buzz Cut come marching in. Only this time, there was another girl coming inside, carrying a plate covered with a red-and-white-checked napkin. Buzz Cut was still there, standing vigilantly on the other side of the door, but she stayed where she was. The new girl gave a single nod to Buzz Cut, then pushed the door closed with her hip.

  I watched expectantly. This new girl wasn’t like Buzz Cut, who looked like she wanted to be one of the boys. He
r long hair was dark and shiny, and was pulled away from her bronzed skin, and her brown eyes held me captive as she watched me back. Her skintight jeans showed off her lean legs, and even with her combat boots, she managed to look as if she’d been peeled straight from the pages of Vogue.

  She kept a considerate distance, as if to say I was calling the shots, rather than the other way around. When she pulled back the corner of the napkin, revealing a plate of neatly arranged apple slices, clusters of green and purple grapes, and wedges of yellow cheeses, she said, “You might not be hungry—we almost never are—but you should still eat.” Her smile was almost sad, and suddenly I felt like I wasn’t alone in the whole missing-food thing.

  I couldn’t help questioning the offer of food . . . or the melancholy smile. If the gesture was calculated, it was a pretty good show—I had to give her that much. But it wasn’t like I was going anywhere, and she was right, it wouldn’t do me any good not to eat.

  I eased down on the nearest wooden bench. There were rows of them, all with peeling paint, and all bolted to the tile floor. She set the plate down in front of me.

  “Where are Simon and the others?” I asked when she straddled the bench, opposite the plate.

  She just watched me for several long seconds.

  Despite the circumstances, I couldn’t help but be fascinated by her. She was more than just pretty. There was something mesmerizing about her, about the purse of her lips and the way her dark eyes felt like they understood you—like she knew you—that made you want to just . . . look at her. I found myself searching for the right thing to say, and had to remind myself she wasn’t my friend.

  “It’s safe here,” she said instead of answering my question. She glanced around the locker room, but I knew that wasn’t what she meant.

  She was talking about this place, this camp, and I immediately thought of the way Simon had said that very same thing to me, right before he’d been taken away. That I was safe, and that he’d protect me, and that I had nothing to be afraid of.

  So why wasn’t I convinced?