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I moved the light back and forth over the tattoo as Sam had instructed. “What exactly am I looking for?”

“Look in the grass.”

I bent down. “I don’t think I see—” Something shone in the hazy light and I sucked in a breath. The writing was tiny and faded, but it glowed like one of those neon necklaces every kid wears at a Fourth of July parade.

“How is that possible?” I said.

“It’s UV ink, tattooed into the skin on top of the visible tattoo. Read it,” Sam said. “Please.”

Over time, the lines had lost their clarity and the letters had blurred together, but I was able to make out the first word. “
Rose
. Rose something.”

I heard the room door open and the others’ voices rumbling outside the bathroom door. “Where is he?” Trev asked.

“Must be in the bathroom with Anna,” Cas answered.

A knock sounded on the door. “Anna? Sam?” Trev said. “You okay?”

“Give us a minute,” Sam replied. To me he said, “What else?”

“There are two more words.” I got in closer, readjusting the halo of light. “How did you even know to look for this?”

“The letter scars made me think of it. I would have known my body was the only thing I could take with me if the Branch wiped my memories. When I took the UV light to my back, I saw something, but couldn’t make it out.”

“Why didn’t you ask Cas to help you?”

He didn’t answer for a long time, and the stillness made me anxious. I felt like the walls were closing in on me. But I was here, with Sam. So close I could feel the heat of his body. As much as I wanted to escape the confined space, I didn’t want it to end, either.

Finally he said, “I’m not in the mood for Cas’s sarcasm right now.” He exhaled loudly. “Besides, I had to send him for the others.”

“I think the last word is
Ohio
,” I said, wishing the tingling crawling up my spine would dissipate. “The middle one…” I tried to
assemble the word letter by letter, hoping to put as much of it together as I could, like a crossword puzzle. “
C. E. M
or
N
, maybe.
A
?
T. E. K
… no,
R. Y
.” I ran the letters over in my head, mouthing them as I scanned the word again.
CEMATERY
.

“The
A
is an
E
,” Sam said.

“
Cemetery
. Rose Cemetery, Ohio.”

Sam snatched up his T-shirt, bumping into me as he did. His eyes met mine in the weak light. “Sorry.”

I pushed the hair from my face. “It’s fine. I’m fine.”

“Thank you. For doing this.” He took the black light from my hands and clicked it off, plunging us back into darkness.

“You can always come to me for help.” As soon as the words left my lips, I grimaced. It sounded so lame and pathetic.
Please need me, Sam.

When he answered, his voice came out husky. “What I said yesterday, outside the drugstore—”

“You don’t have to explain.”

“I know, but I need you—”

“Sam?” Trev cut him off and Sam shifted away. He tore open the door, meeting Trev face-to-face. Someone had turned on the desk lamp and its light spilled into the bathroom, washing away the dark and the intimacy it had created.

“Did you find something?” Trev asked, his eyes locking on mine. A blush spread across my cheeks.

Sam tugged his T-shirt over his head. “Yes. Pack up. We’re leaving.”

“Where the hell are we going now?” Nick snapped. “And why in the middle of the night?”

Sam put the flannel back on and unrolled the sleeves. “I’m not going to sit here until dawn so you can sleep. I’ve been waiting too long for this. Now get your stuff and let’s go.”

Sam met us at the Jeep after checking out. He handed Cas two beat-up flashlights.

Cas pressed the button on one of them and a circle of light shone on the dashboard. “What are these for?”

“We’re going to a cemetery.” Sam pulled out of the parking lot.

“And where is this cemetery?” Cas asked.

“Rose Cemetery in Lancaster, Ohio. I had the hotel clerk look it up.”

For the next three hours we traveled in total silence. I leaned my head against the window, closed my eyes, and fell asleep. When the car stopped again, I grumbled at the soreness in my neck. In addition to the scant two hours of sleep in the hotel, I had been cramped in a vehicle for almost a full day.

“What exactly are we looking for?” Trev asked from behind me.

I looked out the Jeep’s window at the darkened cemetery, muddled silhouettes rising here and there.

“I don’t know.” Sam rested his forearms at the top of the steering wheel. “Let’s start by checking the headstones.”

“Dude,” Cas said, “that’s going to take forever.”

“If we split up, it’ll only take an hour or two.”

The others sounded doubtful, but at that point, we didn’t really have a choice. Years before, when Sam had planted the UV tattoo clue, it would have been something he knew he’d be able to figure out. So if the answer was here, we’d find it.

We climbed from the vehicle, following the gravel road into the cemetery. Though I knew it was only my mind playing tricks on me, the cemetery felt creepier than the world outside it and I couldn’t shake the goose bumps rising along my skin.

“Nick, head to the far back,” Sam said. “Trev opposite him. Cas to the right. I’ll take the left. And Anna…”

“I’ll stick here to the middle, if you want.”

“Cas, give Anna one of the flashlights.”

I gladly took the offering.

The others dispersed and silently I cursed myself for wanting to appear strong and useful. Now I was stuck alone in the middle of a cemetery at four AM.

I went to the end of a row of gravesites. Marble statues rose up from the jagged line of headstones, their pale forms seeming to glow against the darkness. I passed an angel with a cascade of marble hair falling over her shoulders. Her eyes were two blank orbs, but it still felt like she watched me.

A shiver raced down my back and I folded my arms around myself, stifling it. I read the names on the headstones as I passed, and the sentiments printed beneath.

BEVERLY BROKLE. 1934–1994. BELOVED WIFE AND MOTHER.

STUART CHIMMER. 1962–1999. YOU WILL BE MISSED.

Dad had promised for the last few years that we’d visit my mother’s grave in Indiana as soon as he was able to take a break from the lab. I’d never really counted on the vacation; I knew it wouldn’t happen. But now I wondered if the grave even existed.

If my mother was alive, why did she leave me? Did she not want me? I wished I could call my dad and confront him. I wanted answers.

Once I’d reached the end of the first row, I started down the second, running my flashlight over everything, looking for something that didn’t quite fit. I read a few odd engravings. Like Michael Tenner, whose headstone read, I KILLED THE CAT. SORRY, LOVE. And Laura Basker’s headstone, which read, DON’T CRY FOR ME. THERE IS NO LAUNDRY IN HEAVEN!

I didn’t think Sam’s planted clue would be about laundry, but I made a mental note of the odd headstones anyway. By the time I’d reached the back part of my section, I hadn’t found anything that stood out, and I’d counted a total of eight gravesites with the name Samuel on the headstones.

I caught sight of Cas off to the right, his shoulders hunched as he inspected a big monument with a cross rising from the top. I shut off the flashlight and stuck it in my pocket, sauntering over to meet him.

“Did you find anything?”

“Zilch.” He stepped back from the monument and ran his hands through his blond hair, leaving it in unkempt spikes. “This seems pretty useless, doesn’t it? Don’t tell Sammy, but I think this is a dead end. Pun intended.”

I smirked. “Yeah, but it took a while to figure out the UV-light clue. We’ve only been at this for an hour or so.”

Cas raised his eyebrows. “And you want to hang out in a cemetery for eight hours? I don’t. I want a damn pizza.”

“Aren’t you mildly curious to see what this all means?”

He picked up a twig tangled in the weeds and twirled it around. “I don’t know. Who cares who I was before? Maybe I was a country club snob with one of these”—he held up the stick—“shoved up his ass.”

I snorted. “I doubt that. Sam seems to think this is important.”

“Maybe.” Cas looked up as footsteps scuffed through the leaves behind us.

“You find anything?” Nick said.

“I found a twig.”

“No, dumbass, did you find anything
important
?”

A short, shrill whistle sounded through the cemetery.

Trev.

We ran to the back corner. I ducked beneath the arm of a Celtic cross and fell in behind the boys at the gravesite. Overhead, the bare branches of an old tree creaked in the wind. My hair flew in my face and I turned, facing the wind, facing Sam.

“What is it?” he asked, the moonlight catching the beads of sweat on his forehead.

Trev gestured at a small headstone made of granite, the front face smooth and shiny. “There are no dates.”

I read the engraving—SAMUEL CAVAR—and gasped. “Samuel Cavar was an alias you used,” I said to Sam. “I read about it in your file.”

“
Cavar
is Spanish,” he said. “It means ‘to dig.’ ”

Cas pushed up his sleeves. “Well, then,
amigos
, I guess we
cavar
the shit out of this grave.”

12

SAM HAD BROKEN INTO A MAINTENANCE garage toward the back of the cemetery, where he found two shovels. Cas, Trev, and Nick took turns digging alongside Sam. Sam hadn’t rotated out yet. Sweat covered the front of his T-shirt. His pants were caked with dirt. If he’d buried something here years ago, he’d buried it deep. Only his head and shoulders were visible over the mouth of the hole.

“You don’t think you’re digging up a body, do you?” I said, clicking off the flashlight. The sky had brightened to a chill shade of gray and the sun threatened to peek over the horizon.

“I doubt it.” He hefted more dirt onto the pile, then struck down again. A sound rang out as the metal point of the shovel hit something metal in the ground. Cas tossed his shovel aside and got down
on his hands and knees. He and Sam cleared away the wet soil, revealing a box.

I peered inside the hole.

“What is it?” Trev asked, shifting his weight from one foot to the other.

Sam put his hands to the edge of the hole and hoisted himself out, biceps bulging. “Hand it up,” he said to Cas.

Cas lifted the box and passed it off. I crouched next to Sam as, with some effort, he popped open the lid. The hinges were rusty and packed with mud, but once he got them moving, they gave way easily enough. Inside the box lay a key and a tri-folded stack of paper tied tight with twine. Sam slid the twine off and unfurled the document, leaving smudged fingerprints behind.

The paper was old and brittle, but the writing was still legible. I couldn’t help reading over his shoulder, adrenaline spiking like a jolt through my veins. This was it. This was what we’d been searching for since yesterday.

From what I could tell, it was the deed to a house, which would explain the key. I scanned the pertinent information. The address: Whittier, Michigan. The person named as owner was Samuel Marshall. Another alias, most likely. Which made me wonder: What
was
his true name?

“Is any of this familiar?” I asked him.

“No.”

“But it’s something, right? I mean… it’s a step.”

He gave a barely perceptible nod.

Behind us, the boys filled the hole in a fraction of the time it had taken to dig it. Cas and Trev patted down the disturbed earth. Nick sauntered over to Sam’s side. “So, what did you find?”

Sam held up the deed. “It might be a safe house.”

“Yeah, like the last one?”

“No one’s making you stay, Nick. You got somewhere else to be, you can leave whenever you want.”

Nick leaned against the trunk of a nearby tree and crossed his arms over his chest.

As Trev attended to the hole, replacing the scalped sod, Cas said, “I gotta take a piss,” and disappeared. Sam returned the shovels to the maintenance shed, leaving me to awkwardly stand by as Nick sulked.

“I think he’s doing his best.” The statement was punctuated with a white cloud of my breath.

Nick shoved his hands into his pants pockets. He must have been freezing without a jacket. “Self-preservation is more important than figuring out these clues, like it’s some shitty board game.”

“It’s hard to protect yourself when you don’t even know who you are or why you were part of the program to begin with.”

Nick pushed off the tree with one foot and set his steely blue eyes on me. “I might not remember who I was before all this, but I can bet it wasn’t all sunshine and fucking roses.”

The hard edges of his scowl softened, but just barely. Seeing an opening, I said, “Your parents might be out there somewhere, looking for you.”

“Or maybe not. Maybe they never cared to begin with.” He stalked off before the others returned, leaving me to wonder: Was he right? Were the answers to the questions worse than not knowing?

13