CHAPTER Six
THE WAREHOUSE IS QUIET WHEN WE ENTER. EVERY
movement I make sounds too loud—every step. Every breath.
Lacey’s door is shut, and the lights buzz as we make our way down the hall. We’re barely inside the bedroom door when James’s hand grazes my hip, moving me aside, but I grab him by the shirt and pull him to me.
As if we’re starving for each other, his mouth is on mine and he backs me against the door, closing it. We’ve slept together only once—that I can remember—and I’m feverish for him now. My hands slip under his shirt before yanking it over his head, and I hear my T-shirt rip more as he pulls away the fabric in his fist. When it doesn’t come off entirely, he growls, and then we’re moving toward the bed. I push him down and then climb on top of him, forgetting everything outside of us. Our layers of clothes begin to evaporate, and his skin is hot against mine. I whisper his name, and then he rolls me over, his weight heavy but perfect. He’s reaching for his pants that lie in a heap next to the bed, when I feel something under my back. I shift, thinking it’s a tag from the sheets, but when I reach to pull it from behind me; I see it’s a folded piece of paper.
James takes a condom from his wallet and then notices I’m holding something. He pauses. “What’s that?” he asks, his voice hoarse.
“I don’t know,” I say. Panic begins to bubble up as James moves off me to get a better look at the paper. I start to unfold it, seeing through the sheet that there’s something written in ink—it’s a note. In Lacey’s perfect print, there is a single word that means nothing to me, and yet I hitch in a ragged breath.
Miller
“Sloane?” James’s voice is a million miles away as I drop the paper, my chest heavy with a grief I can’t understand. James grabs the note from my lap and reads it. He tosses it aside before taking my shoulders. “Who’s this from?” he asks.
My panicked eyes find his as I begin to shake all over.
“Lacey.” In my head I can think only Miller. My Miller. But I don’t know what it means.
“Goddamn it,” James says, jumping to grab his pants from the floor and pulling them on. He tosses his shirt in my direc-62
tion and then he’s out the door, running barefoot down the hallway. I slip on his shirt and chase after him.
Why would Lacey write that note? Why would she put it on my bed? Oh, God. I start running faster. Where’s Lacey?
I catch up with James just as he stops in front of Lacey’s door, not knocking before bursting though. The room is dark, and as I look in, he’s in the middle, swiping his hand through the air looking for the chain for the light.
“What’s happening?”
I turn and see Cas stalking toward us, pulling out his switchblade. His face is swollen with sleep, his clothes wrinkled, but he’s as alert as if he’d been waiting for handlers all night. Just then light floods the room, and my heart leaps with hope. The room is stark and the bed is empty. Lacey is gone.
Cas pushes past me into the room, pulling back the covers as if Lacey is somehow hiding. He spins to face James. “Where is she?” he demands accusingly.
James looks devastated, shocked. “I don’t know.” Cas yanks open the dresser drawers, cursing when he finds them empty. I’m still in the doorway and any trace of the drink at the Suicide Club is gone, replaced instead with disbelief and panic. Cas pulls his phone out of his pocket and begins to pace as he dials. James still stands under the swinging, naked bulb, his head lowered, his chest heaving.
“James?” I say weakly. He looks over, and I’m struck with an image so familiar, I’m not sure how to process it. James’s eyes are red, his skin blotchy, like he’s about to cry. I think Lacey is gone, and then mingling with that is the thought that “Miller” is gone too. James’s expression fits the thought somehow, like he’s replaying a memory from my head.
James coughs out the start of a cry but then crosses the room and gathers me into a hug. His lips press a hard kiss against my forehead, his muscles rigid as I grip his arm.
“Dallas,” Cas says into the phone. “You need to come back.” James and I both look at Cas as he continues to pace.
“I don’t give a shit,” he snaps into the receiver. “Lacey’s gone.
We’re compromised.” James and I exchange a glance, fear spik-ing within me. “I’m on my way,” Cas tells Dallas, and then hangs up.
“What’s going on?” James asks.
“Get your things,” Cas says, storming past us. “We’re leaving.” He pauses in the doorway and turns to look back at me. “I’m sorry about your friend,” he says. “I really am. But a returner is always a threat, and Lacey is gone. It’ll be only a matter of time before The Program comes for the rest of us.”
“Do you think they have Lacey?” I ask, frantic.
“Yes,” Cas says in a quiet voice. “I think Lacey is with The Program. Now get your things and meet me at the van.” Cas leaves, and I turn to James, waiting for him to tell me Cas is wrong. But James just stares after him. “I tried,” he whispers, mostly to himself. Then he lowers his eyes to meet mine.
“I tried to help Lacey, but it wasn’t enough.”
“We have to get her back,” I say, nodding to get James to understand. “We have to find her and get her back.”
James can only mumble his agreement, but he’s not here with me. His eyes look unfocused and he starts out of the room.
I follow, the floor cold on my feet, while I search my mind for other places Lacey could be. Maybe she decided to go to the Suicide Club after all. Maybe . . . anything. This can’t be the end.
Guilt attacks my conscious when I think about how Lacey acted just before we left for the Suicide Club. I should have done more, but I thought I’d see her tomorrow. I thought there was more time. I was so stupid. She recalled a memory she wasn’t supposed to—and I just left her.
James is already in the room when I walk in, stuffing clothes into the duffel bag. I grab a pair of jeans and pull them on before crossing to the dresser. I take out the pill, and at that moment James looks over. “If we find Lacey,” I say, my body trembling, “we could give her the pill. Maybe it could help.
Maybe it could cure here.”
James lowers his eyes. “It was her memories that hurt her, Sloane. I’m not sure giving her more of them is a good idea.” I look down at the pill, ready to debate the point, but Cas is yelling from the other room for us to hurry. I shove the pill into my pocket and finish packing up our stuff. Before I worry about what to do with the pill, we have to find Lacey.
Once packed, we head toward the door. James staggers to a stop and picks up the note from the floor to examine it one last time. “What does this mean?” he asks. “Who’s Miller?”
“I don’t know,” I say, moving beside him to read the word again. “But it hurts.”
“I know,” James says, crushing the paper in his fist. “It’s like grief, a pain right here”—he taps his heart—“for someone I don’t know.”
But I can tell what he’s thinking—we must have known Miller.
It’s twenty minutes later when James is driving the Escalade we’d left Oregon with, Cas following in the white van. We’re picking up Dallas and the others at the Suicide Club, but as we drive, I watch the streets, hoping to catch sight of Lacey wandering or lost. I don’t want to believe she’s gone.
Lacey—snow-blond hair she dyes red just because. Lacey who ate cupcakes for lunch and questioned everything. I could have done more to help her. I could have stayed behind tonight.
But she ran away, took her stuff—where would she go? What did she remember that was so awful? I touch my chest as the hurt starts again, the name Miller haunting my thoughts.
As we pull up to the Suicide Club, the bouncer straightens, looking alarmed. He immediately takes out his phone and presses it to his ear. Cas parks and jogs over to him as James and I wait in the SUV. We’re silent. Anxiety and worry twist in my gut, and I don’t know what to do. I almost want another Bloodshot from the club.
“I’m sick of losing,” James says in a low voice. “And I’m sick of running.” He turns to me, and the fire is back in his eyes, the sadness replaced with anger. “We’re going to take down The Program, Sloane. And we’ll get Lacey back.”
“Promise?” I ask, wanting to believe his words, even though I know James doesn’t have the power to make them come true.
But I’ll believe them if he tells me. I have no other choice.
“Yeah,” he says, looking past me toward the club. “I promise.” I blink back the tears that are starting and then follow his gaze to the Suicide Club. Dallas and Cas rush out, the others, including the guy with the purple hair, close behind them. The bouncer nods as they leave, but I’m surprised to see another person, lingering near the door as he smokes a cigarette. It’s Adam—watching with careful regard. It strikes me then that he’s not like the other people from the club. And as Dallas climbs into the van, telling us to “Go, Go!” I watch as Adam turns toward me.
He smiles, and it’s not sinister, it’s not threatening. It’s almost apologetic. He lifts his hand in a wave as James peels out of the parking lot, and I know The Program can’t be far behind.