The corner of his mouth quirked. “Nah. We’re friends. That’s what friends are supposed to do.”

Are we, or will we ever be, more than friends? I wanted to ask so badly I could practically taste the words on the tip of my tongue, sweet but with a bite of salt, possibly the best words ever spoken, possibly the worst words ever spoken.

I clamped my mouth shut before the question escaped on its own.

Things were good with Evan. I didn’t want to muddy the waters.

“I better get back to work,” I said, and hurried away, wondering if this would be the beginning of a new life. A better life than my screwed-up one.

13

NICK

I WOKE THE NEXT DAY TO THE SOUND OF my cell going off. I rolled over, eyes still glued shut, and groped around for the phone.

“Hello?” I answered, my voice raw and groggy.

The person on the other end sighed, relieved. “You’re alive,” Sam said.

“I think that’s debatable.”

With a groan, I sat up and scrubbed at my face. Daylight spilled through the cracked curtains. The clock on the nightstand said it was nearly three in the afternoon.

“I’ve been calling you all morning,” Sam said.

“Sorry. I was sleeping off the booze. Those were your instructions, weren’t they?”

Sam sighed again. “If you do something that reckless again, I swear to God, Nick, I’m going to—”

“Yeah, yeah, I know. You’re going to come down here and drag me back.”

“No, I’ll shoot you in the kneecap.”

I blew out a breath. “You’re brutal this morning.”

“This afternoon,” he corrected. “And I’m fucking serious.”

I stumbled to the bathroom. “Yeah, I get it. Hold on, I have to piss.” I set the phone down and did my business. I grabbed the phone again on my way out of the bathroom and dropped into one of the chairs by the front window. “So now that we got the petty shit out of the way, I have to tell you something.”

“What?”

“I had another flashback last night.”

“And?”

“And, I think someone was trying to escape the Branch, but I don’t know if it was Elizabeth.”

“Who’s Elizabeth?”

I poured myself a shot of whiskey and slung it back. “The girl. The whole reason I came here?”

“You got a name. Good. Anna can cross-reference it with what we have in the files. Have you found this girl yet? She still alive?”

“She’s here. Sounds like she’s a fucking basket case. I haven’t found her yet, though.”

“Yeah, well, not everyone is lucky enough to escape the Branch with their sanity.”

I knew that all too well.

“You going to look for her today?” Sam asked.

“Yeah. But first I need—” I cut myself off. I was about to say a proper drink. Instead I said, “I need to eat.”

“Call me later and let me know what you found. I’ll get Anna on the files again.”

I ended the call and looked around my room. I had one more night here before checking out. I had enough cash to pay for another night, but I hated wasting money on a bed. I could sleep in the truck if I had to. Wouldn’t be the first time I’d lived out of a vehicle.

A lot of what I did for the Branch was still buried in a pile of shit in my head, but the memories of my life before the Branch had started to come back a while ago. When I left my dad’s house for the last time, long before the Branch, I’d lived in his car for months. I used to con women for money to get by. Sometimes they made it too easy. Sometimes I felt the old guilt of that life creep back into this one. And then I reminded myself that sometimes you do what you have to do to survive, and the guilt quickly went away.

After a long, hot shower, I left the hotel just after four and headed toward the restaurant-slash-bar I’d seen when I first got into town.

Merv’s Bar & Grill was the type of place that went too far with the whole themed bit, and Irish was apparently Merv’s theme of choice. Everything inside was covered in clovers or painted green. Irish music blasted through the sound system.

I already hated Merv’s, and I hadn’t even sat down.

I picked an empty stool at the end of the bar and pulled out my fake ID.

The bartender, a shorter guy with overgrown blond hair, came over. The pin on his polo shirt said his name was Evan.

“What can I get for you?” he asked.

“Whiskey,” I said, and flicked him the ID. He poured a drink and set it in front of me before hurrying to the other end of the bar.

I sipped the drink as I thought. Elizabeth definitely lived in Trademarr, otherwise the librarian would have mentioned she’d left town. There wouldn’t have been any harm in giving out that information.

Maybe the bartender knew her. Bartenders know everything.

I took another long sip and scanned the mirror over the bar, checking the windows and the exits behind me, when I noticed a row of pictures taped above the register. Some of them were of customers raising their drinks to whoever had snapped the photo. But there were some of the employees, too, and when I saw an image of a girl with dark brown hair and eyes as round as quarters, my mouth went dry.

“Hey,” I called to the bartender, and he gave me a look like, Wait a goddamn second, but I needed to know who that girl was and I needed to know right now.

I tapped the bar top with a finger.