“Awesome, right?” Jasper says, eyes still on the window. But this time it’s his voice, not Cassie’s, that catches.
“First, he pretended that it was all a coincidence that we met. And then later he admitted that he came to find me. Quentin said your dad fired him because they disagreed about keeping my test results from me. Quentin said he wanted your dad to tell me,” she says, and she sounds so broken. “I guess—I don’t know why I believed him. But it did seem like he knew your dad really well. And he said all these things that I wanted to hear, that I was being underestimated and everything. That I had this gift.”
“A gift,” Jasper huffs in disgust, his eyes still on the window.
“You can be mad,” Cassie says. “You both can hate me. You should hate me. Because I am selfish and stupid and I made a terrible mistake. But I swear the whole time he had me texting you—”
“Wait, what?” I ask, my heart picking up speed. No, Cassie. No. “You were helping him? He told you to text us?”
She nods.
How could she? Risk that—risk us, for some guy she didn’t even know?
“Wait, even the ‘these people will kill me’?”
Cassie nods some more.
“My God, Cassie,” I go on, and I am so angry my throat burns. And maybe she’s right, maybe I do even hate her a little bit. “How could you? Some random guy tells you all this insane stuff and you just believe him?”
“Didn’t you?” She stares at me hard for a second. She takes a breath and lowers her head again. “I mean, Quentin is convincing, isn’t he? And he didn’t even start talking about needing your dad until we got here. And he didn’t mention you as a way to get your dad until way after that—and Quentin made it sound the whole time like he was trying to protect your dad.” She’s quiet for a second, like she’s replaying it all in her own head. “He did some little test on me in the car. That’s probably when he figured out that your dad had switched our results. He tried to hide it, but the way he was looking at me after that … Like I disgusted him a little bit.”
“Wait, so you helped him get us here? On purpose?” I say, because I still can’t really believe it. “You texted us that you were scared and needed help because he told you to do that?”
“Yes,” she says, the tears making the horror in her eyes glow. She motions to Jasper, the cabin. “This is all my fault. But I swear, Wylie, I didn’t know that you were the person he really wanted until it was too late. At first, he said you were just a way to get your dad here. But then once you and Jasper were here in the cabin, everything changed. He told me that you were the Outlier. And he said that he would kill you—both you and Jasper—if you wouldn’t help him. He said that I had to convince you.”
“Help him what?” I ask.
“Help him do what you do,” she says.
“But I don’t know how to do anything!”
“I know, I know,” Cassie says, and she looks so worried. “But he thinks he’s an Outlier, too. He’s convinced that he just needs you to ‘unlock his potential.’ I know because he said that to me when he thought I was the Outlier. And not just an Outlier, but I was like the Outlier. Totally off the charts. And the most messed-up part is how flattered I was.” All I feel is heartbreak when she looks at me. “He promised that if you helped him, he would let you go. That he would let us all go. And I thought that was true, or at least I hoped it was. I thought maybe you could do some of his ‘training exercises,’ the ones he tried with me, which were kind of like your dad’s test, and that would be that. But then when I went to borrow some of Fiona’s clothes, I was alone in the other cabin. Instead, I decided to look through Quentin’s stuff and see if I could figure out what he was really up to. And I saw this set of, like, instruments in this bag under his bed. I don’t know for sure what they were for, but as soon as I saw them, I got really scared he wasn’t ever going to let you go. Even if you did everything he wanted. But then I was also scared that if I told you and Quentin found out somehow, he might have Stuart shoot all of us or something.”
“What do you mean instruments?” Jasper asks.
“Like for a surgeon or something,” Cassie says quietly. “Whatever Quentin has in mind, Wylie, it’s not just some kind of question or answer. Or if that’s how it starts, it’s not the way it’s going to end.”
“But how can I teach him how to do something I don’t know how to do?”
“You can’t,” Jasper says. “That’s why we have to get out of here.”
“What about my dad? What’s going to happen when he gets here?” I ask Cassie. “And is North Point even real? Somebody shot Fiona.”