The Replaced (15 page)

I had to wonder if he
had
been a little susceptible, even if he wasn’t willing to admit it.

“My grandma had a word for girls like her. She called them wanton.” He grinned then. “It was pretty much the worst insult she could give, and that’s what she would’ve said about Griff. She was one of those fast girls you were supposed to watch out for. The kind we were warned about in church on Sundays. Also, why I kinda hated church. I liked girls who weren’t buttoned-up and afraid to speak their minds.” He looked down at our hands, and his fingers pushed their way between mine, until our fingers wove together. He smiled.

“But I thought Thom and I were . . .” I expected him to say “brothers,” just like Griffin had, but instead he finished with “partners,” which carried way less punch. “I thought he’d have my back when push came to shove. But he didn’t. He backed Griffin, even though we both knew she was lying.”

“So what happened?”

“I figured Griffin didn’t tell you everything.” He shrugged. “Back then I was the council’s favorite to take over as leader if anything happened to Franco. So when Franco called a meeting to deliberate over Willow’s fate, I was there. When the decision was handed down that Willow was set to be excommunicated, mine was the sole vote against it.” In the dark, Simon’s eyes met mine and he let out a slow breath. “It doesn’t sound so bad, except it was practically a death sentence for Willow. We still had a very real information leak in our camp and the Daylighters were sure to find out where Willow was being sent. I couldn’t let Willow be captured by those bastards just because Griffin didn’t like her.” His fingers tightened around mine and my stomach flipped. “So that night, we left. Willow and I snuck out of camp. I didn’t tell anyone what I planned to do, not even Thom.”

I thought Simon’s grandmother was wrong about girls like Griffin—wanton was the wrong word after all. Simon might have been off the mark when he said she wasn’t crazy.

Griffin’s brain was scrambled like those eggs in that don’t-do-drugs commercial:

This is your brain
.

This is your brain after being transported 200 million light-years and having your DNA messed with by aliens
.

I would probably use the words
stone-cold crazy
for someone like her.

“Where’s Franco now?”

His eyebrows bunched together. “That’s the thing. A few
months later, Franco was ambushed during a recruiting mission, same way the other recruiting teams had been. He was never heard from again. About that same time, Eddie Ray just . . .
disappeared
. I mean, if he wasn’t guilty, then where’d he go?” His lips tightened as he shook his head. “Griffin had managed to worm her way into the camp’s council, and it wasn’t long before
she
was voted in as leader of the camp.”

“And Thom? How come he left?”

His gaze clouded over. “I don’t know the whole story. We never talked again after Willow and I took off, at least not until that morning when we showed up at Silent Creek. But most of the camps stay in contact through a convoluted communication system. Gossip manages to get around. Indirectly, I heard he couldn’t stomach the new leadership, and if I had to guess, I’d say he finally figured out Griff had been using him all along.”

“Time’s up.” When Nyla interrupted us again, I peeled my hand away from Simon’s. It was the second time Nyla had caught us like that, and I was sure she was starting to get the wrong impression.

I meant to ask Simon if he’d ever regretted leaving with Willow, or questioned her loyalty. But I already knew his answer, because Willow was as trustworthy as they came.

It was Griffin whose loyalty I suspected now.

Was it possible she’d been the one responsible for betraying the Blackwater recruiters all those years ago as a means to get to the top of the pecking order? Was anyone really
that narcissistic and power-hungry?

Cold dread settled heavily in my stomach at the very thought.

I prayed I was wrong.

IN A PLACE LIKE BLACKWATER, WHERE NO ONE
really slept, there was always activity. So by the time we’d reached the heart of the camp, the darkness that stretched far into the desert had been replaced by strategically placed floodlights that made it almost as bright as daytime.

It was as if night never even existed.

When we reached the cafeteria, Nyla dragged me to a halt. “When Dakota brings your friend out, you’ll join them and she’ll take you back to your tent.” I assumed Dakota was the girl who’d shuttled Natty away after our showers.

“Don’t worry, I’ll work this out.” Simon was quiet when
he spoke. “You won’t have to stay under guard much longer. I promise.”

I was just about to tell him I wasn’t ready for him to go, not quite yet, when Griffin’s voice pierced my newfound calm seeing Simon again had given me. “You shouldn’t make promises you can’t keep.”

“Are you kidding me?” I exhaled dramatically before facing Griffin. I felt like a kid caught with my hand in the cookie jar. I hoped this didn’t mean I’d lose the small freedoms I’d been allowed so far.

Griffin emerged from the tent maze, her attention not directed on me or Simon, but on Nyla. She looked thoroughly hacked. “I knew when I couldn’t find her”—she indicated me when she said that—“that
he’d
be involved.” This time she gave just the slightest nod of her head toward Simon. “But I never suspected you,” she reprimanded Nyla, her eyes narrowing, and she looked dangerous when she said it. The kind of dangerous that made my skin pebble all over with stiff goose bumps.

“Griffin, don’t blame her. This was all my idea.” Simon stepped in front of Nyla to explain, and I was thinking it wouldn’t matter what he said because Nyla had betrayed Griffin—a real betrayal, not the made-up kind she’d accused Willow of, either. There was no way she was letting Nyla off the hook for this.

But then something happened, and suddenly none of those things mattered.

Suddenly everything changed, at least for me they did.

It was the laugh that did it.

I had to reach for Simon in order to stay on my feet, because all at once my legs were unreliable, like I was standing on stilts I had yet to master. The sensation of guilt over getting caught with Nyla and Simon turned to something else entirely as it spread, prickling my skin everywhere and making every tiny hair on my body stand at full alert.

My heart stopped—like
stop-stopped
—and I waited for it to start again, the same way I waited to hear that sound, the laugh, for what seemed like forever and a day. And when I finally did, when I heard it, my heart not only started to beat once more, it pounded.

Thud-thud, thud-thud, thud-thud . . . beating so freaking hard I almost gasped.

Simon looked down at me, and I wasn’t sure if I saw sadness in his copper eyes, or if he was asking for an explanation I couldn’t offer, while inside hope was struggling to the surface.

All around us, people like us, other Returned, were doing the things they did—training for whatever Griffin told them they were training for, running in their symmetrical clusters, talking to one another, eating, and some of them, somewhere, were probably even managing to sleep.

Yet I was here, living in my own world. Trapped in a bubble. Caught between states of disbelief and hope so overpowering they threatened to smother me.

So far, all I had was that laugh, but it wasn’t enough to prove anything.

I took a step forward because I needed to know if it was him or if I’d only imagined it.

I turned toward the sound, but one of the floodlights was shining right in my face, and it was blinding me. All I could make out were several hazy outlines. It was enough to know that there was more than one person, and that they were almost to us now.

But I no longer cared about anyone else, because when the shadowy figures became clear, my grip on Simon’s arm tightened.

I saw him then. Undeniably.

I saw the way his green eyes squinted and his dimple creased his cheek as his eyes fell on Griffin.

“Tyler.” I croaked the word, and it barely made it past my lips, but it was the sweetest, most magnificent word I’d ever uttered, and suddenly the past twenty-three days melted away.

The last time I’d seen him, he’d been covered head-to-toe in pustules that had made it too painful to even touch him. He’d been blind and taking his very last breath.

This Tyler, though, the one standing before me now, was so incredibly-breathtakingly-
irrefutably
beautiful all I could do was stare. I took him in, and I felt myself come alive. It was as if
I
had just been returned all over again, seeing him standing there, alive. Whole.

Safe
.

He stopped where he was, his feet planted on a patch of dry grass. There were so many expressions that passed
over his face in those split seconds that there was no way I could catch them all. I totally understood how he felt. It was exactly what I was feeling too, finding him here of all places—confusion, shock, doubt, curiosity, relief.

“Tyler,” I said again, only this time it was louder as I let go of Simon, and I knew I was for sure going to cry in front of everyone.

“Kyra?” The hairs that had already been standing on end vibrated as his voice, a voice I’d been waiting to hear for three and a half weeks, a voice I’d willed myself to dream about, brushed over them.

I was running then, closing those last steps that separated us. I didn’t stop to ask why he was here, or to worry about whether Griffin or anyone else was watching, or what they thought about me or Tyler or the fact that we knew each other. I launched myself at him, and he caught me, wrapping his arms around me, and it was amazing to feel him.

To smell him. To know his heart was beating just inches beneath my own . . . that it was beating at all after everything he’d been through, after everything
I’d
put him through.

It had been a risk to take him to Devil’s Hole, and it had paid off. Tyler had been Returned.

“Tyler. Oh my god, Tyler . . .” I couldn’t bear to let go.
I might never let go,
I thought as I got lost in his embrace. He felt leaner than I remembered, which wasn’t at all impossible, and possibly more muscular, like maybe he’d been following the same workout regimen as the rest of Griffin’s camp.

But his T-shirt had that same Tyler smell I remembered,
which made me think of home, and the thought came to me that I
was
home as long as I was with Tyler. I wanted to tell him so many things, including that, but for now, this—right here—was more than enough. More than I could have dared to hope for.

“Kyra,” he repeated, and I wondered how many times he’d said my name at the same time I’d said his. “I . . . I can’t believe you’re here.”

“I know,” I said back, while he pulled away and gazed down at me with this wonderstruck look in those incredible-amazing-
brilliant
green eyes of his, and I tried to decide if they were more brilliant than they’d been before or if they’d always been this dazzling. “I was thinking the same thing. How did you get here? How long have you been back?” My face crumpled as the tears finally broke to the surface. “I . . . I wasn’t sure I’d ever see you again.”

Tyler crushed me to him, his chin bumping against the top of my head. It was all so familiar—the hug, and being consoled by Tyler, who was like that,
familiar
—that I almost didn’t hear what he said next. I mean, I heard it, it just didn’t make sense to me. “I was gonna say the same thing to you. I don’t think anyone thought they’d ever see you again.” His arms tightened and his voice rose, an elated kind of sound. “I can’t even imagine what Austin would think if he was here.”

My heart stopped again, but this time in a bad way.

And then he pulled back, and that hopeful look on his face fell away. “We can’t tell him,” he explained, saying it like this was new information to me, his voice dropping
super low as he tried to make me understand. “Austin, your parents, they can’t know you’re back.”

I blinked. What the hell was he even talking about? They couldn’t know what . . . that I was back? I turned to Simon, whose face gave nothing away, and then to Griffin, who had her eyes trained solely on Tyler, and wasn’t paying any attention to me at all.

“You two know each other?” she asked Tyler, and there was something slippery about the way she looked at me, like she totally already
knew
all this. Like I’d been played.

Tyler glanced back at her and put his arm around my shoulder in a very pal-like way.
Pals,
he told her with that gesture, and my stomach sank achingly. “This is the neighbor I was telling you about. Kyra Agnew.” He shrugged, and his pal-hug tightened. “I’ve known her since . . . forever. No one’s seen her in . . .” He did the math and blinked at me, and even before he said how long it’d been, I wanted to vanish again because I knew where he was going with this. “Five years,” he finished, grinning down at me and letting out a low whistle. “Five long years.”

“You’ve known all this time,” I accused Griffin, wishing she hadn’t sent Tyler away, but seriously glad to be alone with her so I could have the chance to give her a piece of my mind. “I heard him—he
told you
my name. He
told you
I’d been taken. All this time we were in the same camp and
you knew
we knew each other.
You knew
he’d want to see me, and you didn’t bother telling either of us. Why would you keep
us apart like that?
What’s wrong with you?
”

But Griffin, or “Griff” as Simon so adorably referred to her, didn’t seem the slightest bit fazed by my allegations, not in the way I wanted her to be. I wanted her to be ashamed the way a normal person would have been.

Instead she stared at me expressionlessly, like the dictator I suspected she was. “I did it for Tyler. He’s only been here a short time, and I wanted to ease him into camp life. Keep his old life separate from his new one. You showing up here, that was . . .
inconvenient
. I would’ve told him eventually.”

“Bull.” My hands were shaking at my sides and blood pounded past my ears as I challenged her.

Griffin just snorted. “Really none of your concern what I do, or do not, tell my people.”

“Tyler’s not one of your people.”

“He is now. Ask him.” She smirked, and I knew she had me. I’d seen him. I’d seen the way he looked to her as his leader. And I’d heard the way he’d described me—like I was his brother’s girl and the two of us were pals, the way we’d been
before
I’d come back.

“How did that even happen?” I asked, trying to stay angry with her but losing steam. “How did you . . .
find him
?” It was supposed to be me, I wanted to shout at her. Or maybe I wanted to shout it at myself for failing yet again.
I
was supposed to find him.

Griffin gave me a tight-lipped look and said, “I have people who give me information.” Then she turned to Simon and explained, “Tyler’s a good kid. He’s fitting in here—”

But I cut her off as I spun on Simon now, unsure who I was more upset with: Griffin for laying one of those Finders-Keepers claims on Tyler—
my
Tyler—or Simon for not helping me get to him first. “Did you know?”

Simon threw his hands up, hostage-style. “Leave me out of this. I had no idea what she was up to.” Simon looked at Griffin instead of me, and I couldn’t help thinking of our conversation about Tyler that day in the library, when Simon told me I couldn’t wait for Tyler forever.

“Okay, yes, Simon told me you were looking for a boy. Someone who was important to you,” she said in a pacifying voice as she tried to smooth things over. “But how was I supposed to know you were the same Kyra Tyler had been talking about?”

“How many
Kyra
s do you know?” I asked, but there was no point arguing. Griffin held all the cards. She was in charge of whether I would see Tyler again, or not. The best thing I could do was keep my mouth shut.

She gave me a condescending smile. “Look. Tyler didn’t know much when he got here. He didn’t remember how he’d been taken, and he certainly didn’t say anything about having a girlfriend back home.” I hated the way she was determined to remind me of that. She seemed to enjoy making it clear that his memories didn’t include me, at least not the important parts.

He didn’t remember the day I’d stumbled into his kitchen and fallen into his arms, mistaking him for Austin. Or the beautiful chalk drawings he’d done for me. Or taking me
to his favorite bookstore and leaving me gifts outside my window and sending me messages at all hours of the night.

He also didn’t remember any of the things that had gone wrong after I’d cut myself on that box knife right in front of him, contaminating him . . . and the way he’d gotten sicker and sicker until I’d been left with no choice but to drag him up to Devil’s Hole to be taken.

As far as he was concerned, I’d vanished five years ago and had never come back.

And now Griffin acted like her claim on Tyler trumped our history together, as if none of those things ever existed at all.

Simon surprised me then, when he said to me, “This must be hard on you,” because it had to be hard on him too. He rubbed his hand across the back of his neck, watching me anxiously. I tried to tell myself he didn’t seem worried that Tyler was here, and that worried wasn’t the same as threatened.

But I knew better. I could see it written all over his face: Simon wanted more, and I couldn’t help wondering if he’d hoped we’d never find Tyler at all.

I couldn’t worry about Simon’s feelings, or the fact that Tyler couldn’t remember me. All that mattered was that we’d found him, and I was determined to make him remember me if it was the last thing I ever did.

“When can I see him again?” I begged Griffin, still frustrated she’d sent Tyler away with Nyla. “Please. I’ll do anything.” I refused to acknowledge that hurt-puppy look in
Simon’s eyes, and ignored his words altogether.

“I’ll have Nyla bring him to us, but first . . . there was a reason I was looking for you,” Griffin said slowly, her voice sticky. “Jett needs to show you something.”