The Replaced

But it was also the reason he’d taken an interest in me after we’d arrived at Silent Creek, once he’d learned I might be different from the other Returned—that I had night vision, and could go longer without oxygen and could heal faster. The telekinesis just confirmed what he already suspected, that I was a Replaced.

“Thom gave me this.” I unstrapped the watch I’d treasured from the moment he’d given it to me, and threw it at Simon. “Soon after we left Tacoma. He said it was a present. It’s this. This is how he’s tracking us.”

“That son of a bitch,” Simon fumed.

Simon picked it up by the pink band and inspected it, probably thinking the same thing I had: How could something so harmless-looking be so deadly?

He gave it one last hard look before hurtling it into the desert. “We got less than half an hour to get to our rendezvous point,” he said, putting the Jeep in gear and leaving the still-flaming crash, and the tracking device Thom had planted on me, in our wake.

We drove toward a completely unknown future, leaving everything—our friends, allies, pasts, and even our identities—behind to start over again.

We had to hope Thom didn’t have any other tricks up his sleeve.

I had to hope Simon knew what the hell he was doing.

And most of all, I prayed Agent Truman, or Dr. Bennett, or whoever he was now, never, ever found us again.

There was a left-for-dead pickup truck with giant rusted-out patches that was half-in and half-out of a storm ditch when Simon pulled off the road.

“You think we missed ’em?” I asked, looking for signs of another—street-legal—vehicle.

So far, Simon hadn’t given me a single straight answer about who we were meeting. All I’d managed to get out of him was I could trust this person, whoever he was.

I was about to push again when Tyler, who had already hopped out, reached up to help me down. When his green eyes locked on mine, the breath caught in the back of my throat.

I didn’t bother telling him it was only a Jeep, not a tank or anything, and that I doubted I needed his help getting down. Instead I almost died inside when his hands found their way to my hips, and I let him catch me when I leaped the maybe two feet to the ground.

I stood in front of him, wishing this moment, our bodies touching this way, meant half as much to him as it did to me. Eventually, I told myself. Soon.

When I finally ducked my head, too embarrassed to stand there gawking at him a second longer, I eased past him and found myself face-to-face with Simon. He was leaning against the side of the Jeep, watching me—and probably the whole Tyler-helping-me-down thing—with an exasperated look in his eye.

“What?” I complained, wishing he’d quit looking at me like that. And then I stopped dead in my tracks. “Did you hear that?” I lifted my head, desperately trying to see around him. But all I could see was his face—his big, fat smiling face.

“You’re welcome,” he said, his voice all rumbly.

Tears were already welling in my eyes, even before I knew for sure what I was hearing, and then I was shoving past Simon, no longer caring that Tyler was there at all. I heard her before I saw either of them.

When she appeared from behind a rocky outcropping, as enormous and beautiful as I remembered, I nearly stumbled. She continued her incessant wails, loudly letting everyone within earshot know we’d arrived. She would make the world’s worst secret agent.

Thankfully, there were no spy plans in her foreseeable future.

“Nancy!” I shrieked, my feet tearing through the sand as I raced away from the shoulder of the highway where we’d parked.

She jumped up on me, her feet hitting my shoulders, and her disgusting dog breath assaulting my face. It was the best smell ever.

“You’re so filthy!” I accused, but I threw my arms around her mangy fur, refusing to let her go even when she wriggled and whimpered to break free.

“Supernova?” That was the voice that nearly shattered me. The rough edges, like he was reluctant to hope this was real, that he could possibly find me twice, almost doing me in.

I finally released poor Nancy, who let out a relieved yelp as she loped away through the sand to greet her next guests. I stood there for several long seconds, facing the one man we truly could trust. Simon had been right about that much for certain. I could always-constantly-forever count on my dad. I exhaled, letting everything melt away all at once, the fears and worries and reservations. “I thought I’d never see you again.”

Saying good-bye to Simon was weird. Weird and hard.

We didn’t have much in the way of belongings, me and Tyler, but what we had was moved from the Jeep to my dad’s beater pickup, the one I was sure had been abandoned. Nancy was already waiting in the narrow space behind the worn bench seat, and my dad and Tyler were inside, pretending Simon and I were invisible, even though it was only glass that separated us.

We walked back to the Jeep, to do this whole awkward good-bye thing.

“I don’t know why you can’t come with us,” I told him. “I’d feel better if you did.” It was true, but only partly. I’d feel safer, and better knowing he was safe, but having him and Tyler so close together was just plain uncomfortable. And somehow it was worse because Simon and I were the only ones who knew it.

“I have to go back. I have to make sure Willow and Jett, and Griffin,” he added almost as an afterthought, “are all okay. I need to find out what happened back there.”