“You had her in your grasp and she got away. Slipped out a bathroom window? Isn’t that the oldest trick in the book?”

I didn’t make a sound.

The car was moving, but not speeding. If Sam and the others had come after us, Chloe had lost them.

“Yeah. Yeah. I know. My absolute, perpetual freedom for theirs. I got it. I’m on my way.”

Chloe hung up the phone and cursed. I moved just enough to glance over at Elizabeth. Still out.

How long had I been unconscious?

Did I still have my gun?

I slowly reached behind me. Nothing there.

I’d apparently been out long enough for Chloe to escape Sam and the others, and for her to stop to retrieve my weapons.

The car lurched as the tires left pavement and hit gravel.

Stalks of corn turned into a blur outside the window as Chloe pressed into the gas pedal.

We were on our way to the barn lab.

Shit.

I looked on the floorboards for something I could use as a weapon. Empty coffee cups. A tube of lip gloss. A notebook.

Nothing that would hurt.

What was the surest way to take her out?

Gun.

I didn’t have a gun.

Knock her out.

I could punch her, but from this angle, it’d be iffy.

Choke her. I could put her in a choke hold, but if she had a gun close by, she could shoot me in the goddamn face.

Seat belt.

And Chloe wasn’t wearing hers.

I charged upright, grabbed the belt, and gave it a yank so I had as much slack as I needed.

Chloe saw me in the rearview mirror and reached for her gun. I wrapped the belt around her neck, pushed my foot against the seat for added strength, and crouched.

My weight was too much for her to fight. The air left her lungs in one ragged gasp. She came up off the seat, lost her footing on the pedal, and the car slowed.

Chloe let go of the wheel. The front end swerved.

I tugged harder on the belt and felt my stitches pop. I bit down a cry of pain.

Chloe reached up and cut the belt with one swipe of a knife. I dropped to the floorboard. She slammed on the brakes, and I rammed against the seat.

With the car in park, she got out, came to the back door, and just as she opened it, I slammed a foot into it. She staggered back from the hit.

I hurried from the vehicle, feeling the hot welling of blood in my wounds.

Chloe had a gun trained on me.

The barn rose out of the cornfields in the distance.

“I’m out on the road,” she said, and it took me a minute to realize she was on her phone. “Nick tried to get away.” She narrowed her eyes at me but smiled. It was a real smile, too, as if she was amused at my daring play for escape. As if she was impressed.

“Get out here now before I shoot him.”

I put my hands up as she ended the call.

“Why are you doing this?” I asked.

If I couldn’t fight my way out of this, maybe I could talk my way out. Doubtful. I sucked at talking.

“You don’t remember, do you?” She sniffed. “The Branch and their memory wipes.”

“Remember what?”

I took a step toward her. She lowered the gun and shot me in the leg.

I went down. Dirt gritted between my teeth. A sharp pain raced up my leg.

“Son of a bitch. What was that for?”

“For being an idiot.”

Chloe walked over, the gravel crunching beneath her flip-flops. She was in a dress. Flowers all over it. Her blond hair hung forward in a loose braid. Her lips were pink and glossy.

She looked like any other teenage girl dropped into the middle of an Illinois summer.

But she wasn’t.

Obviously.

She was obviously someone else entirely.

“Six years ago,” she said, staring down at me as I blinked up at her, “you didn’t come here to kill Elizabeth. You came here to kill me.”

34

NICK

MY FREEDOM FOR THEIRS.

That’s what she’d said on the phone.

She was using Elizabeth and me to bargain for her own freedom.

Chloe sat beside me in the dirt, propped herself up on an outstretched arm, and used her knee as a rest to keep the gun pointed at my face.

She stared down the road, squinting into the sunlight.

Chloe was involved with the Branch? Chloe was a part of my old mission here?

“You knew exactly who I was when we met up at Arrow, didn’t you?” I said.

Chloe nodded, but didn’t look at me. “Imagine my surprise. I had to know what you were doing here again.”

“So you got me drunk.”

“Is there any other way to get information out of a guy like you?”

I didn’t answer her. She was right.

“You shot me that night you saved Elizabeth,” she said. “When I first came over to you at Arrow, I thought for sure you’d recognize me. Then when you didn’t, I realized you must have had your memory altered. So then I started wondering why.”

“Would you have hooked up if I hadn’t had that flashback?”

She finally turned to me, her eyes running up and down my body. “Maybe.”

We sat in silence for a beat.

“Why was I sent here to kill you?”

“Do you remember what Riley’s instructions were? From that night?”

That night was still vague in my head. I was fuzzy on the details. There were a few that stood out. Elizabeth staring up at me from the forest floor. Me with a gun in my hand. Elizabeth crying.

I had known Riley was there, but I couldn’t remember what he’d said.