He had a peculiar talent for blending into the background until he wanted to be seen. She must have sprinted past him, even though she prided herself on her alertness while running. Her heart had already been racing from the workout—now it sprinted because she was alone again with Ander. Wind rustled the leaves in the trees, sending a spray of raindrops to the ground. It carried the softest whiff of ocean. Ander’s scent.
“Your timing is becoming absurd.” Eureka stepped backward. He was either a psychopath or a savior, and there was no way of getting a straight answer out of him. She remembered the last thing he’d said to her: You have to survive—as if her literal survival were in question.
Her gaze swept the forest, seeking signs of those strange people, signs of that green light or any other danger—or signs of someone who might help her if it turned out Ander was the danger. They were alone.
She reached for her phone, envisioned dialing 911 if anything got weird. Then she thought of Bill and the other cops she knew and realized it was useless. Besides, Ander was just standing there.
The sight of his face made her want to run away and straight to him, to see how intense those blue eyes could get.
“Don’t call your friend at the police station,” Ander said. “I’m just here to talk to you. But, for the record, I don’t have one.”
“One what?”
“Record. Criminal file.”
“Records are meant to be broken.”
Ander stepped closer. Eureka stepped back. Rain studded her sweatshirt, sending a deep chill through her body.
“And before you ask, I wasn’t spying on you when you went to the cops. But those people you saw in the lobby, then later on the road—”
“Who were they?” Eureka asked. “And what was in that silver box?”
Ander pulled a tan rain hat from his pocket. He tugged it low over his eyes, over hair that, Eureka noticed, didn’t seem wet. The hat made him look like a detective from an old film noir. “Those are my problems,” he said, “not yours.”
“That’s not how you made it seem the other night.”
“How about this?” He stepped closer again, until he was only inches away and she could hear him breathing. “I’m on your side.”
“What side am I on?” A surge in the rain made Eureka retreat a step, under the canopy of leaves.
Ander frowned. “You’re so nervous.”
“I am not.”
He pointed at her elbows, jutting from the pockets into which she’d stuffed her fists. She was shaking.
“If I’m nervous, your sudden pop-ups aren’t helping.”
“How can I convince you that I’m not going to hurt you, that I’m trying to help?”
“I never asked for help.”
“If you can’t see that I’m one of the good guys, you’re never going to believe—”
“Believe what?” She crossed her hands tightly over her chest to compress her shaking elbows. Mist hung in the air around them, making everything a little blurry.
Very gently, Ander put his hand on her forearm. His touch was warm. His skin was dry. It made the hairs on her damp skin rise. “The rest of the story.”
The word “story” made Eureka think of The Book of Love. Some ancient tale about Atlantis had nothing to do with what Ander was talking about, but she still heard Madame Blavatsky’s translation run through her head: Everything might change with the last word. “Is there a happy ending?” she asked.
Ander smiled sadly. “You’re good at science, right?”
“No.” To look at Eureka’s last report card, you’d think she wasn’t good at anything. But then she saw Diana’s face in her memory—the way anytime Eureka joined her on one of the location digs, her mother bragged to her friends about embarrassing things like Eureka’s analytical mind and advanced reading level. If Diana were here, she’d speak up about how irrefutably good Eureka was at science. “I guess I’m all right.”
“What if I assigned you an experiment?” Ander said.
Eureka thought about the classes she’d missed today, about the trouble she’d be in. She wasn’t sure she needed to add another assignment.
“What if it was something that sounded impossible to prove?” he added.
“What if you just tell me what this is all about?”
“If you could prove this impossible hypothesis,” he said, “would you trust me then?”
“What’s the hypothesis?”