The Taking (The Taking 1)

Simon’s eyebrows rose up a notch. “You jumped in a river?”

“To get away. The agents from the NSA were after us, and we didn’t have any other choice.”

Simon frowned and then nodded toward Tyler. “Did you cut yourself? While you were escaping?”

So that was it then. It was all the confirmation I needed. Bile rose in my throat, stinging all the way up. “It was me? I did this to him—my blood?”

“I don’t have time to explain right now. We need to get you both out of here. I can explain on the way.” Simon went to the bed. “Come on. Help me get him to the car.”

As if he’d heard Simon, Tyler moaned.

Ignoring Simon because he didn’t matter for the moment, I went to Tyler and stroked his face. “It’s okay,” I whispered, pulling one of the hijacked packets from my pocket and ripping it open. I eased his head off the pillow. The back of his neck was slick with sweat. “Take these,” I ordered, dropping the Tylenols into his mouth and grabbing the open can of Coke from the nightstand.

I was grateful for the pills he managed to swallow, and I prayed they did the trick.

I was suddenly unsure about what the right thing to do was. I wanted to take Tyler, to keep him with me and try to make him better. But what if being around me only made him worse.

“Maybe we should leave him here,” I told Simon. “Call 9-1-1 or something.”

Simon grabbed my arm, his grip firm. “I won’t stop you if that’s what you decide, but just be clear about what you’re setting him up for. If you do that, he won’t be getting the help you think he is. Those NSA guys, they will find him. And when they do, they’ll figure out why he’s there—what happened to him and why he’s suddenly so sick—and then they’ll cut him open—same way they would you and me.”

I jerked away from his grasp, rubbing my arm. Glaring at Simon, I lowered my voice and asked the question I so didn’t want to ask. “Why? Why would they do that?” I thought of that guy—the agent from the bookstore who’d raised his gun to his own head after being exposed to my blood. Suddenly the gunshot we’d heard made sense. He didn’t want to be a science experiment. “Why wouldn’t they just cure him?” I refused to think of the lab tech from the news.

Simon stared at me for a long, long time. His lips pressed together, and his expression shifted all the way from determination to compassion. It was the compassion that did me in.

I shook my head, denying what I saw in that look. “No,” I insisted. “There has to be something. Some way to fix this . . . to make him better.” I looked back to Tyler, and hated him for abandoning me like this. For being completely-totally-utterly unavailable when I needed him most.

I hated Simon, too, for telling me the last thing in the world I wanted to hear.

But most of all, I hated myself for being a toxic, f**king mess.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Day Seven

I RODE IN THE BACK OF SIMON’S CAR WITH Tyler’s head in my lap.

It had taken nearly twenty minutes after Tyler had swallowed those first two Tylenols for his fever to finally break. When he was alert enough, I was able to persuade him to swallow two more and then managed to sit him upright so we could get him dressed and into the car, where he collapsed again.

We talked for a while—Tyler assuring me still that he was all right and me knowing differently but keeping my mouth shut because inside I was barely holding my shit together.

When he finally admitted that his head was killing him, I didn’t have the heart to tell him it wasn’t his head that was killing him; it was me.

The entire time it was hard for me to maintain eye contact with him, yet I couldn’t stop myself from touching him. My fingers were everywhere, stroking his cheeks and his forehead, his shoulders and his hair. “I’m so, so, so sorry,” I whispered beneath my breath whenever I thought he wasn’t listening. I repeated it inside my head, too, hoping there was some penance in the words. That I could somehow absolve myself for being an accidental murderer.

If Tyler heard me, he never mentioned it. His hand continued to clutch my knee, his fingers occasionally caressing my thigh, as if it made him feel better just holding on to me. Reassuring himself that I wasn’t going anywhere.

And I wasn’t. I swore I would never leave him again.

When he started mumbling, I knew he was dozing, and I turned my attention back to Simon, who kept casting uneasy glances in the rearview mirror, checking on how we were doing back here. “Whose car is this anyway? You know, it scared the hell out of me when I saw it in the parking lot.”

The sun was starting to rise, casting a golden glow over his dark skin in his reflection. “Sorry about that. The car . . . well, let’s call it a loaner.”

I shook my head, sighing. “So it’s stolen. Great, Simon. How long are we supposed to drive around in this thing before someone notices it’s missing and calls the cops? Then what? We can’t let them take Tyler.” When I said his name, Tyler shifted in my lap. I smoothed my fingers over his hair to settle him down again.

Simon dropped his eyes back to the road in front of him. “Don’t worry about it. We’re almost there. Willow is meeting us, and we’ll ditch this car. No one’s gonna catch us.” I didn’t ask who Willow was. I assumed it was another one of Simon’s Returned, from the camp he’d told me about.

I sagged back in my seat, letting my fingers sift through Tyler’s sweat-dampened waves. I couldn’t help being pissed at Simon. I blamed him. He should’ve warned me. I would never have risked cutting myself around Tyler—or anyone else—if I had known my blood was somehow toxic.