I pick the bags up from the floor. “Almost every night, if it’s any of your business.” A stupid thing to say. Of course it’s his business. Everything to do with the Favor is his business.
He looks at me for the longest time. His jaw goes lax. “No. No.” He shakes his head and turns. “Noooo.” He groans. “I can’t believe it.” He spins around to face me. “My God, you’ve fallen for her.”
I nearly drop the bags again. “That’s the jump of an insane man.”
“Look at you. It’s all over your face.”
“So now you read faces?” I turn and walk to the kitchen with the bags. “The only thing on my face is lack of sleep because I’m doing what you told me to do. I can’t just walk into this thing without—”
“Have you kissed her?”
I stop and turn back to face him. “What?” But I can tell I’ve already given it away. All I can do now is damage control. I force my shoulders to relax and I shrug. “So what if I have? It doesn’t mean anything.”
“Nothing? You sure?”
Am I? I haven’t been able to stop thinking about her for days. Not just the kiss, but even before that. Every time I try to focus on other things, I still circle back to her. But how could I fall for Raine when I still love Jenna? I’ve always loved Jenna. Thoughts of her are what got me through centuries of being trapped in a six-inch cube.
Locke, it just isn’t right.… I may look like the Jenna you knew so long ago, but I’m lifetimes from that girl. I’m two hundred and seventy-seven years old now.… You deserve the chance to live a life.…
Xavier waits for a reply. I turn away and unload the groceries on the counter. “There’s someone else in my life,” I answer.
“Good. It wouldn’t be smart for you to get mixed up with Raine that way. She can’t be trusted. She is the Secretary’s daughter.”
I whip around at the remark, ready to defend her. “She’s not like the Secretary. She’s adopted. Did you know that?”
“But he raised her. That’s enough to make her dangerous.”
He doesn’t miss a beat with his reply, which is more than a little odd. He’s not surprised with this new information about her adoption. Maybe because it’s not new to him. Why didn’t he include it in Raine’s files? If telling me that she likes fencing is important, it seems like this little fact might be important too.
“You look like hell,” he says. “You better get some sleep, Romeo. You have the performance of a lifetime tonight, and the Secretary’s going to be a much tougher audience than Raine to fool.”
I note how smoothly he changes the subject. He’s covering, trying to erase the ground he just gave me. I grab an orange from the groceries he brought and score the peel with the blade of my Swiss knife the way my dad used to. I sit at the kitchen table and plop my feet on top of it, lean back in the chair, and pull the neatly scored peel from the orange. Sometimes more can be said with silence than with words. I learned that from Miesha. Raine’s incomplete files weren’t just sloppiness. I wipe the oily orange residue from the blade with my fingers and fold it back into its red hilt, pulling out the scissors next, and then the tweezers.
“Why the sudden interest in the knife?” Xavier asks.
“Just paying attention to details.”
“Did you hear anything I said about getting some sleep?”
I look at his face, staring at every angle, every plane. He knows exactly what I’m doing. He wants to turn away, but he doesn’t. I have to give him that. I see anger. I see fear. But mostly I see a mountain of guilt.
And that’s when I know.
All the clues that didn’t add up before click into place. More than click—they explode. I drop my orange on the kitchen floor and run to the living room, swiping papers and maps aside as I bring up the file I need.
File 52
Raine Branson (pronounced: rayn)
Age: 17
Xavier follows me, talking, shouting, buzzing around me like an angry bee, but I block it all out, flipping through the virtual pages until I find the one I want. The image looms in front me, frozen on the virtual screen. Raine staring at me, her lips parted, the lips that made my hair stand on end. Raine’s features are dark, her hair, her eyes, her thick line of black lashes, all of these new and unfamiliar to me, features that threw me off, but her mouth, the distinct V of her upper lip, the wide pout of h
er lower lip, lips I had seen countless times trying to hold back information from me until they no longer could. Miesha’s lips.
I fall back in my seat, air trapped in my chest. That’s why they didn’t tell me she was adopted. That’s why there were no images of Karden. Dark and dangerous. That’s how Miesha described him, and exactly how you could describe Raine.
I shake my head in disgust. “You’re trying to save Karden, but not her?”