The Taking (The Taking 1)

He leveraged his branch, which was far flimsier looking than the trunk he was determined to move, and when he put his weight on it—all the weight he could manage in the water—it moved all right. It shifted.

But in the wrong direction.

The weight of the trunk rolled even farther onto my ankle, shattering the bones with a crunch that may or may not have been audible beneath the water. All I knew was pain like no other.

I opened my mouth to scream, fire bursting in my foot and spreading everywhere. Bubbles and muted sounds rushed from my throat as the last of my air reserve burst out of me. It took everything I had not to inhale then. Not to gasp in huge lungfuls of the frigid river water in my next breath.

Black crept in around the edges of my vision.

Tyler’s face registered his mistake for only a second before he threw himself on top of his makeshift lever once more. Adrenaline and pure determination were propelling him now, and somehow, someway, that combination was enough, because that one last effort did the trick. The trunk rolled away from me.

Barely, but enough.

My foot, the bones crushed and still throbbing, slipped free from its trap.

Lying on the shore, Tyler and I stretched out on our backs and stared up at the sliver of a moon making its appearance between clouds that moved like tiny, silver-tinged vines, creeping in and over and across the sky.

Tyler was panting and breathless, while I shivered, my teeth chattering in an endless rhythm, waiting for the tingling in my ankle to subside.

It was the strangest sensation, the awareness of my own bone re-forming beneath my skin. I could feel the broken pieces moving and shifting, remodeling themselves. It pricked and itched and tickled and stung. I didn’t move. I just let it happen while I lay there, wondering at it all because it was too new and strange and unusual to do anything else.

I thought about Agent Truman and his shattered fingers, and guessed at how long it would take them to heal.

When the process was complete, when the last fragment of bone had knit itself back into place, I could roll my ankle without so much as wincing.

After what felt like an eternity, and when I was sure we were both still alive and relatively unscathed, I held up the fanny pack, still dripping with river water, and announced, “Got it.”

Tyler rolled onto his side and glared down at me. “You scared the shit out of me. You were down there way too long.” He cupped my chattering jaw. “How did you do that, Kyra? Could you . . . breathe under there?”

My eyebrows lowered. “Breathe? No!” But I thought about it. Tyler had gone back up for air three times while I’d been forced to hold my breath the entire time. “Of course not,” I maintained.

“Do you have any idea how long you were down there?”

I shook my head. I didn’t. I’d lost all sense of time.

“It had to have been ten, maybe even fifteen minutes.”

I let my head fall back until I was staring at the sky again, watching the viney clouds part and shift and reveal pieces of the moon. Behind us the river, the place that should’ve been my tomb, continued to gush and flow.

Fifteen minutes was forever. In fifteen minutes I should’ve been dead.

But here I was.

Tyler appeared above me then, his eyes glittering mischievously. “I’m glad you didn’t.”

“Didn’t what?” I asked, nearly forgetting to breathe again.

“Die,” he clarified. “I’m really glad you didn’t die on me.” His fingertips brushed my lips, and my pulse quickened.

I laughed, wishing I had half the control over my reactions to being near him as I did when I threw a ball. “Thanks. Me too.” And then I shot upright, my brow wrinkling. “Tyler? Your nose. It’s bleeding again.”

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

MY ANKLE WAS GOOD AS NEW. ESPECIALLY FOR having been crushed beneath a giant tree. Unfortunately, the phone hadn’t fared as well.

We’d learned that fanny packs were not, in fact, waterproof. After having been submerged in river water for nearly fifteen minutes, its contents had gotten soaked. Enough to short-circuit the phone, which made it impossible to call Simon and let him know where we were.

In my estimation, that meant we were screwed. It was unlikely that Simon and the others from his camp were tracking us at that moment.

Tyler and I were on our own.

Fortunately for us, though, cash was waterproof, and so was the fake ID, both of which came in handy when we finally staggered out of the woods and found ourselves standing on a nothing of a road in the middle of Nowheresville, USA. But it was a nothing of a road that had a crappy little motel, and that crappy little motel had a VACANCY sign that blinked more brilliantly than any fireworks I’d ever laid eyes on.

Halle-freaking-lujah!

The girl behind the counter was considerably too young to hold a job, maybe too young to make it into a PG-13 movie, which meant she was probably the owner’s kid or grandkid. It also meant she didn’t raise an eyebrow over the fact that I was walking—rather than driving—and she barely seemed to notice that I was dripping wet from our river adventure.

I counted out my damp bills, which she also didn’t question, and signed the registration book. It was strange signing Bridget Hollingsworth’s name, and I wondered if I could just as easily slip into this other girl’s life.

As easily as waking up behind the Gas ’n’ Sip.

Tyler was waiting for me outside the motel’s office, and I handed him the key that was suspended on a red plastic chip that read #110.