Page 53 of Unnatural
“There was something in my chart. It’s about me, not you, but it’s something I want to look into.”
“Now’s not the time to—”
“I know, Bill,” Autumn said, laying her hand on his arm. “I will lie low for a while, I promise. There’s not much I can do out here anyway. At least until Sam gets well and we’re certain no one’s looking for either of us. I told the clinic your great-aunt Hortense had a medical emergency and I’m caring for her.”
“Hortense? Who would ever care for that hateful old witch?”
“Iwould,” Autumn said. “Apparently.” Autumn looked at Sam. “Will you be okay in here for a few minutes while I talk to Bill outside?”
Sam nodded. He was feeling sore anyway and needed to lie down and rest. Autumn and Bill headed outside, and as Sam reclined on the bed, he could hear their voices floatingto him through the glass. They were speaking low, and he could only make out snippets of what they were saying. He thought Autumn was giving Bill instructions on…visiting people? Her patients?
“She’ll tell you to go, but be persistent. She doesn’t mean it,” he thought he heard her say. And “…encourage him, but if he resists you, lay off or he’ll get annoyed and go out of his way to…”
He had no idea what any of that meant except that whatever it was she was instructing Bill to do, it was because she couldn’t do it herself. Because of Sam. He also thought Autumn and Bill might be arguing a little, and it made him feel bad that he was causing trouble for her. It was the last thing he wanted.
Sam dozed off for a while, and he woke to the sound of the door closing and Autumn’s footsteps as she came inside. “Is everything okay?”
She nodded, looking slightly troubled. “It’s a relief to hear that the authorities don’t have a description of us,” she said, though that worried look remained. “But…the program covered for the shooter, didn’t they?”
“Yes,” Sam said.
Her shoulders dropped. “They’re very powerful,” she murmured, obviously considering what a cover-up of that magnitude would take.
“What about Dr. Heathrow, Sam? I keep thinking about him. You sounded…grateful to him for healing you, but he’s part of this too. The program. The treatments. He knew about what was happening to us in the woods. He stayed silent about that at the very least.”
Sam stared at the wall. Yes, Sam knew that the doctor was caught up in the web of lies and cover-ups too, justlike Sam himself was. He knew Dr. Heathrow had done wrong and looked away when he shouldn’t have. But he’d also healed Sam and so many others. He’dfatheredhim in the only sense of the word Sam understood. Loyalty rose up in Sam for the only person who’d known who he was and been on his side. Before now anyway. “He was used for his skills by the program too,” Sam said woodenly.
She looked away worriedly and chewed on her lip for a moment before her gaze came to rest on him again. “I’ve decided something, Sam.”
“What?”
She raised her chin. “You keep saying you’re going to leave when you get better, but I’m not going to let you.”
He felt a tug at his mouth. “You’re not going to let me?” How would she stop him? Maybe in his current condition, she’d have a slim chance. But once his strength was back, she’d have no way to stop him from leaving. Or doing whatever he wanted to do for that matter.
“No. I’m not going to let you.” She sat on the side of the bed and took his hand in both of hers. “We need to team up. You and me. Once it’s safe to leave, we need to find answers. I’m asking you. Please stay with me, Sam.”
Oh.So that was how she was going to stop him. She was going to look at him with her beautiful dark eyes and ask.
And Sam was completely helpless to deny her request. Completely helpless to deny her anything she wanted. Anything at all.
Autumn didn’t belong to him, but Sam belonged to her. He had for a long, long time.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Morana watched the screen and then glanced at the one next to it, numbers and letters scrolling by that indicated theback-and-forth chatter about Sam. It was somewhat incomplete, but Morana knew the language enough to understand the gist: the program was hunting Sam.
Had Sam not realized that he wore a tracking device under his skin? Perhaps most of them didn’t consider it; after all, they’d been trained to be obedient. What reason would they need to be tracked? They posed little to no risk of disappearing, and if captured, they understood well they wouldn’t be rescued lest it put the program in jeopardy. Maybe they believed their phones and other devices provided any tracking they might require as it related to communication.
But Morana knew. And she also knew that though they’d known Sam hadn’t completed his final mission, they’d allowed him to bide his time on an apple farm, postponing the inevitable. They’d have stepped in and taken over where Sam had failed when they deemed his time was up. It was difficult for them, she figured, destroying that which they’d spent so much time and money on. In many ways—thoughobviously not all—Sam was the living embodiment of their vast intelligence and tremendous superiority. Their egos had gotten in the way of their best interests, however, because the pause had given Sam time to commit the cardinal sin of interrupting a mission and potentially exposing the program. To Morana’s knowledge, nothing like it had ever happened before.
Not only had Sam interrupted a mission, but he had also gone and gotten himself shot to pieces, apparently damaging his tracking device so that it was ineffective. Lucky, Sam. Only for those of them in the program, luck could only hold out so long.
Her cell phone dinged with a message, and Morana knew what it would say even before she opened it. They wanted her help locating Sam. She typed a quick response and then turned back to the computer. Yes, Sam’s luck wouldn’t last. It might take her a while, but in this day and age of computers and cameras and backdoor entries into every digital system under the sun, no one could stay hidden for long.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Autumn kicked the cottage door closed behind her, her arms full of the chopped logs she’d gathered from the pilenear the shed outside. She halted, spotting Sam standing near the table, his hands behind his back. There were two bowls of what appeared to be mac and cheese on the table, steam rising in the air. Autumn smiled, turning to the fireplace and squatting as she set the logs down on the hearth. “You made dinner?” She’d stayed outside longer than it took to collect the firewood, just gazing out at the lake and thinking about their complicated predicament, thoughts that had turned to hopeful daydreams of how this all might turn out well. The first star had appeared in the sky, and she’d closed her eyes and turned her dream into a wish. “Thank you, Sam.”
