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I scowled at him. Wasn’t he supposed to be on my side? “I’m not trying to make excuses.” He, out of all the boys, knew how badly I wanted my mother in my life. I didn’t want to hope—because it would hurt worse when I found out it wasn’t true. “My mother is dead. That’s a fact, not an excuse.”

The boys stared at me in the murky dark.

I didn’t have the energy or the confidence to argue with them. Doubt filled my head. It
did
look like her writing. And I should know; I’d spent almost every day for the last five years reading her journal cover to cover time and again.

If she was alive…

I struggled to picture that house again. The kitchen. The color of the walls. The smell of the living room. I tried to see the things “Mrs. Tucker” had surrounded herself with, trying to decide if I saw my mother.

But it was no use. I hadn’t paid close enough attention until I found the sticky note, and by then it was too late.

“We should go,” I said. “The cop has probably called for backup by now.” When no one moved, I shouted, “Sam! Go!”

Sam pulled onto the road and pointed us toward the freeway.

10

A FEW MONTHS EARLIER, TREV AND I had had a conversation about mothers, and families in general.

“Families are important,” he’d said. “Families define who we become.”

I’d thought of my dad. If he defined who I became, I’d be a workaholic with no life outside the lab. Sometimes that didn’t seem so bad, though, if Sam and the others were there.

“Do you miss your mother?” Trev had asked.

I leaned a hip against the glass wall. “I miss the idea of her.”

“You and I are the sum of a void left by the absence of someone we love.”

“I don’t even know what that means.”

He smirked. “It means I understand your pain.”

If I’d thought I didn’t have anything in common with the boys, that conversation with Trev had proved otherwise.

“Have you ever thought about what you’d say or do if you finally met your mother?” I’d asked.

Trev had answered without hesitation. “I would memorize everything about her—how she looked, how she smelled—so that if I lost her again, I would always have her.”

There were so many things I didn’t know about my mother. She was as much a mystery to me as Sam was. Even though I had her journal, it wasn’t the same as having her.

I wanted it to be true. I wanted her to be alive. I wanted to have a second chance, to see her for myself. Sketch her in my mind and memorize her.

“We should probably stop for the night, don’t you think?” Trev said as he and Cas divided a leftover Twinkie.

“We need to put more distance between us and the cops,” Sam said. “We’ll get a room soon.”

“Then how about we talk food?” Cas said. “Particularly something that starts with
ice
and ends with
cream
.”

A car passed on the opposite side of the road, its headlights illuminating Sam’s face. An overhead freeway sign said we were on course for Brethington.

I leaned between the seats to look at Cas. “Do you ever stop eating?”

He shrugged. “No. Why?”

“ ‘To keep the body in good health is a duty….’ ” Trev said, pulling out one of his quotes. “ ‘Otherwise we shall not be able to keep our mind strong and clear.’ ”

Cas snorted. “Who said that? The Dalai frickin’ Lama?”

“Buddha.”

“Yeah, well, wasn’t it George Washington who said, ‘Be careful about reading health books. You may die of a misprint’?”

“Oh, good one,” I said.

Trev sighed. “Mark Twain said that.”

“Close enough.” Cas crossed his arms.

I poked him in the knee. “What would we do without you?”

“Die of boredom.”

“Or prosper in the silence,” Trev added as he looked out the window.

After nine, Sam pulled off the freeway and into a small town. We stopped at the first hotel we saw, a basic national chain that stood behind a strip mall. Trev and I did the checking-in part, and lied about our personal information. It seemed to work especially well once we handed the clerk a few extra twenties.

We met the others at the hotel’s side entrance. “Rooms 220 and 222.” Trev held up the cards. “How are we splitting up?”

Sam snatched a key for himself. “Anna and Cas with me.”

Trev met my eyes. “Is that all right with you?”

“Um…”

“Anna is with me,” Sam repeated.

Trev held up his hands. “All right. Calm down.”

The others went inside. I hurried ahead of Sam, stopping him at the door. “What was that for? Trev was just being gracious enough to ask my opinion. Which you seem to have a hard time doing.”

He bent closer and lowered his voice. “I promised your father I would keep you safe. I can’t do that if you’re not even in the same room as me.”

I frowned. “I don’t think that’s what my dad meant.”

“Then what did he mean?”

Had Dad meant for Sam to protect me from
everything
? Even the other boys? “Never mind,” I said. I was too tired to argue what my dad’s intentions were. Besides, I wasn’t sure I’d ever know what he meant to accomplish by sending me away in the first place.

A tiny voice in my head said maybe he’d wanted me to meet my mother. Maybe he knew exactly who he was sending us to, and what it would mean. But why lie all those years? What purpose would keeping her from me serve?

I shook the tangle of questions out of my thoughts and tugged the door open. Maroon carpet quieted our footsteps up the stairs. Nick and Trev were already inside their room by the time Sam and I joined Cas at our door.

Sam let me go in first. I held my journal in one hand and fumbled for the light switch with the other. There were two double beds
directly in front of me. A table and chairs. A TV. The maroon carpet followed us in from the hall, ending at the doorway to the small bathroom, where dingy white tile took over.

Cas moved past me and dropped down on the bed, the frame squeaking in response. “Sweet Jesus, I’m frickin’ exhausted.”

“Actually, I think that’s a sugar crash,” I said.

He fluffed the pillows. “Well, if it is, it was worth it.”

Sam sat at the table in the corner and opened the package containing the UV light. I fell into the chair across from him. “Any ideas on that yet?”

“No.” He flicked on the light and the bulb glowed purple.

Behind us, Cas rifled through the drawer in the end table. “One Bible, two phone books, and a take-out menu. Awesome.” He slammed the drawer shut.

Sam unscrewed the top of the UV light and the plastic cap plinked against the table as he set it down. “Are you ready to talk about what we found at that house?”

I rubbed the corners of my eyes. “There’s nothing to talk about.”

He popped out the light’s batteries. “That’s not true and you know it.”

“Anna takes being naïve to a whole new level,” Cas interjected. “Remember that time we convinced her we’d developed our own language?” He let out a roar of laughter. “
Pavaloo dunkin roop
, which means—”

“ ‘May I have some Amazonian swine,’ ” I recited. “I remember.
But it was mostly you doing the convincing, and I rarely believe a word you say, anyway.”

“A wise choice,” Sam said.

“Hey now.” Cas bounced off the edge of the bed to his feet. “In medieval times I would have been worshipped for my stories. They would have named a castle after me.”

“I doubt that.”

He shook his head as he made his way to the bathroom. “I need some peace and quiet. Maybe I’ll take a long, hot bath. With bubbles.” He shut the door but failed to lock it. Not that he was ever concerned with modesty.

Water rushed through the pipes when Cas turned on the faucet. It was the only sound in the room. I held my mother’s journal closer.

“So?” Sam said.

I slouched. “All right, fine. I admit that the handwriting is similar to my mother’s, but it doesn’t mean—”

“The slant of the
E
s is identical on both samples.” He inspected the bulb of the UV light while he talked. “The
L
s and
D
s are exaggerated. The
S
s curl back and loop. They’re the same.”

He held the bulb overhead, letting the ceiling light shine through the glass.

“My dad would never lie about something as unforgivable as that. Besides, didn’t you say you trusted him?”

“Yes, but that doesn’t mean he’s always been truthful. Like our
memories, or lack of. I don’t buy for one second that it’s a ‘side effect’ of the treatments.”

“Then how—” I stopped myself when I picked up his line of thought. “You think your memories were deliberately tampered with?” I scoffed. “No way. First of all, how is that even possible? And second of all… no. Dad wouldn’t do that.”

Sam set the bulb on the table and met my eyes. I could see the dull green striations in his irises. I’d spent so long looking at him through a wall of glass that it was stunning seeing him with nothing but air between us. I imagined what it would be like to draw him now, in full, vivid color. The lines it would take to create the strong sweep of his jaw, the arrowhead shape of his nose. The bow of his lips.

“Why were we locked away for so long?” he asked, his voice measured, steady. “Did you ever wonder about that?”

I tugged at the sleeves of my henley. “You were being made into soldiers.”

He snapped the bulb into the light’s frame, taking his eyes off me for only a second. “If you’re trying to make the ultimate weapon, you don’t lock it in a basement for five years. You put it on the field and test and alter it until it’s perfect.”

“Maybe that’s what they were doing. You received treatments all the time. And the logs… we were tracking your progress….”

He clicked one final piece into place. “The four of us—our first
memories are exactly the same. If the amnesia was a side effect of the treatments, there’s no way it would have cleaned us of everything up until the exact same moment in time.”

Wiped
. I’d read the term in Sam’s file the previous night. I didn’t want to believe it, but more and more, it made sense.

“What does any of this have to do with me and my mother?”

He flipped the black light on again and it glowed between us. “I don’t know, but if your mother was connected to the Branch, then you are, too, and we need to figure out why.”

I sighed and rubbed at my eyes with the heels of my hands. I couldn’t take any more. I muttered something about being tired and crawled into bed. I just wanted to be alone to sort through my thoughts. Not that it would help. Sam raised a lot of good questions that I was too afraid to face. And it all hinged on the simple fact that the handwriting on the note left for him looked awfully similar to my mother’s. Maybe it really was a coincidence. Maybe we were blowing the connection way out of proportion.

I needed rest. Things would be clearer in the morning.

But I didn’t make it that far. Sam nudged me awake two hours later. “Hey,” he said. “Get up. I found something.”

11

I PROPPED MYSELF UP ON AN ELBOW. “What is it?”

A shred of moonlight shone across the foot of my bed. It was the only light in the room. I could barely make out Sam’s face as he stood over me.

“Come to the bathroom.”

I slid out from beneath the blanket, set my feet on the floor. It was just Sam and me in the room. “Where’s Cas?”

“He’s getting the others.”

I shuffled after Sam, and once we were inside the bathroom, he shut the door. The total darkness disoriented me. I didn’t like dark, small, enclosed spaces, and the bathroom was the size of a closet. I stumbled backward, ramming into the towel rack. “What is going on?”

The black light flicked on, weakly illuminating the strong edges of Sam’s face. “I’m not going to hurt you,” he said, sounding almost offended. He shoved the light into my hand, then tore off his T-shirt and tossed it onto the counter. “Put the light to the small of my back.”

I stood there motionless for far too long, looking from the light in my hand to Sam’s shirtless back, convinced that I was stuck in some sort of dream world.

I’d never been this close to Sam’s tattoo before. From the tops of the trees to the grass at the bottom, the tattoo covered a good portion of his back and arms. Whoever had done the work had shaded everything perfectly, catching the fine details and curling peels of the birch bark. There was only one mistake I could find: The trees’ shadows were all wrong. Their sizes and shapes didn’t match the trees they were attached to, and the two shadows at the left blended together, but the corresponding trees didn’t overlap.