The 5th Wave (38 page)

And she’s in some of the pictures, too. Lauren. Tall. Athletic. Oh, and blond. Of
course, she would have to be. They make a very attractive couple. And in more than
half the pictures, she isn’t looking at the camera; she’s looking at him. Not the
way I would look at Ben Parish, all squishy around the eyes. She looks at Evan fiercely,
like,
This here? It’s mine.

I put the albums away. My paranoia is fading.
So he has soft hands, so what? Soft hands are a nice thing.
I build a roaring fire to heat up the room and push back the shadows that crowd in
on me.
So his fingers smell like gunpowder after visiting her grave, so what? There are wild
animals running around everywhere. And it wasn’t the kind of moment where you go,
Yeah, I went to her
grave. Had to shoot a rabid dog coming back, by the way.
Ever since he found you, he’s taken care of you, kept you safe, been there for you.

But no matter how much I lecture myself, I can’t calm down. I’m missing something.
Something important. I pace back and forth in front of the fireplace, shivering despite
the roaring flames. It’s like having an itch you can’t scratch. But what could it
be? I know in my gut I’m not going to find anything incriminating, even if I tear
through every inch of the house.

But you haven’t searched everywhere, Cassie. You haven’t looked in the one place he
wouldn’t expect you to look.

I limp into the kitchen. Not much time now. Grab a heavy jacket from the hook by the
door and a flashlight from the cupboard, tuck the Luger into my waistband, and step
outside into the bitter cold. Clear sky, the yard bathed in starlight. I try not to
think about the mothership a few hundred miles over my head as I shuffle toward the
barn. I don’t click on the light until I step inside.

The smell of old manure and mildewed hay. The scampering of rats’ feet on the rotting
boards over my head. I swing the light around, over the empty stalls and across the
dirt floor, into the hayloft. I don’t know exactly what I’m looking for, but I keep
looking. In every creepy movie ever made, the barn is the prime nesting ground for
the things you don’t know you’re looking for and always regret finding.

I find what I’m not looking for under a pile of ratty blankets heaped against the
back wall. Something long and dark glinting in the circle of light. I don’t touch
it. I reveal it, tossing aside three blankets to reach its resting place.

It’s my M16.

I know it’s mine. I can see my initials in the stock:
C.S.
, scratched
there one afternoon while I hid in the little tent in the woods.
C.S.
for
Completely Stupid
.

I’d lost it on the median when the Silencer struck from the woods. Left it there in
my panic. Decided I couldn’t go back for it. Now here it is, in Evan Walker’s barn.
My bestie had found its way back to me.

Do you know how to tell who the enemy is in wartime, Cassie?

I back away from it. Back away from the message it sends. Back all the way to the
door while I keep the light shining on its glossy black barrel.

Then I turn and run smack into his rock-hard chest.

55

“CASSIE?” HE SAYS, grabbing my arms to keep me from falling straight back onto my
butt. “What are you doing out here?” He glances over my shoulder into the barn.

“I thought I heard a noise.” Dumb! Now he might decide to investigate. But it’s the
first thing that pops into my head. Blurting out first thoughts is something I really
should work on—if I live past the next five minutes. My heart is pounding so hard,
I can feel my ears ringing.

“You thought you…? Cassie, you shouldn’t come out here at night.”

I nod and force myself to look into his eyes. Evan Walker is a noticer. “I know, it
was stupid. But you’d been gone a long time.”

“I was stalking some deer.” He’s a big, Evan-shaped shadow
in front of me, a shadow with a high-powered rifle against the backdrop of a million
suns.

I bet you were.
“Let’s go inside, okay? I’m freezing to death.”

He doesn’t move. He’s looking into the barn.

“I checked it out,” I say, trying to keep my voice steady. “Rats.”

“Rats?”

“Yeah. Rats.”

“You heard rats? In the barn? From inside the house?”

“No. How could I hear rats from there?” An exasperated roll of the eyes would be good
right about now. Not the nervous laugh that escapes instead. “I came out on the porch
for some fresh air.”

“And you heard them from the porch?”

“They were very big rats.”
Flirty smile!
I whip out what I hope passes for one of those, then I hook my arm through his and
pull him toward the house. It’s like trying to move a concrete pole. If he goes inside
the barn and sees the exposed rifle, it’s over. Why the hell didn’t I cover up the
rifle?

“Evan, it’s nothing. I got spooked, that’s all.”

“Okay.”

He shoves the barn door closed, and we head back to the farmhouse, his arm draped
protectively over my shoulders. He lets the arm fall when we reach the door.

Now, Cassie. Quick side step to the right, Luger from your waistband, proper two-handed
grip, knees slightly bent, squeeze, don’t pull. Now.

We step inside the warm kitchen. The opportunity passes.

“So I take it you didn’t bag any deer,” I say casually.

“No.” He leans the rifle against the wall, shrugs out of his coat. His cheeks are
bright red from the cold.

“Maybe you shot at something else,” I say. “Maybe that’s what I heard.”

He shakes his head. “I didn’t shoot at anything.” He blows on his hands. I follow
him into the great room, where he bends in front of the fireplace to warm his hands.
I’m standing behind the sofa a few feet away.

My second chance to take him down. Hitting him from this close would not be a challenge.
Or it wouldn’t be if his head resembled an empty can of creamed corn, the only kind
of target I was used to.

I pull the gun from my waistband.

Finding my rifle in his barn didn’t leave me with many options. It was like being
under that car on the highway: hide or face. Doing nothing about it, pretending everything
was fine between us, accomplished nothing. Shooting him in the back of the head would
accomplish something—it would kill him—but after the Crucifix Soldier, it had become
one of my priorities never to kill another innocent person. Better to show my hand
now while that hand holds a gun.

“There’s something I should tell you,” I say. My voice is shaking. “I lied about the
rats.”

“You found the rifle.” Not a question.

He turns. With his back to the fire, his face is in shadow; I can’t read his expression,
but his tone is casual. “I found it a couple of days ago off the highway—remembered
you said you dropped one when you ran—then I saw those initials and I figured it had
to be yours.”

For a minute I don’t say anything. His explanation makes perfect sense. I just didn’t
expect him to jump right into it like that.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” I finally ask.

He shrugs. “I was going to. Guess I forgot. What are you doing with that gun, Cassie?”

Oh, I was thinking about blowing your head off, that’s all. Thought you might be a
Silencer or maybe a traitor to your species or something along those lines. Ha-ha!

I follow his eyes to the weapon in my hand, and suddenly I feel like bursting into
tears.

“We have to trust each other,” I whisper. “Don’t we?”

“Yes,” he says, moving toward me now. “We do.”

“But how…how do you make yourself trust someone?” I say. He’s beside me now. He doesn’t
reach for the gun. He’s reaching for me with his eyes. And I want him to catch me
before I fall too far away from the Evan-I-thought-I-knew, who saved me to save himself
from falling. He’s all I’ve got now. He’s my itty-bitty bush growing out of the cliff
that I cling to.
Help me, Evan. Don’t let me fall. Don’t let me lose the part of me that makes me human.

“You can’t make yourself believe anything,” he answers softly. “But you can let yourself
believe. You can allow yourself to trust.”

I nod, looking up into his eyes. So chocolaty warm. So melty and sad. Damn it, why
does he have to be so damn beautiful? And why do I have to be so damn aware of it?
And how is my trusting him any different from Sammy’s taking the soldier’s hand before
climbing onto that bus? The weird thing is his eyes remind me of Sammy’s—filled with
a longing to know if everything will be all right. The Others answered that question
with an unequivocal no. So what does that make me if I give Evan the same answer?
“I want to. Really, really bad.”

I don’t know how it happened, but my gun is now in his hand. He takes my hand and
leads me around to the sofa. Sets the gun
on top of
Love’s Desperate Desire
, sits close to me, but not too close, and rests his elbows on his knees. He rubs
his large hands together as if they’re still cold. They’re not; I had just held one.

“I don’t want to leave here,” he confesses. “For a lot of reasons that seemed very
good until I found you.” He claps his hands together softly in frustration; it isn’t
coming out right. “I know you didn’t ask to be my reason for going on with…with everything.
But from the moment I found you…” He turns and grabs my hands in his, and suddenly
I’m a little scared. His grip is hard, his eyes swim with tears. It’s like I’m holding
him back from tumbling over the edge of a cliff.

“I had it all wrong,” he says. “Before I found you, I thought the only way to hold
on was to find something to live for. It isn’t. To hold on, you have to find something
you’re willing to die for.”

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