“It’s hard to say. Her voice is different, but she sounds a lot like you. She says she thinks like you. She predicted you’d come here. To see me.”
I frown at him, considering. He’s blushing faintly.
“How often do you talk to her?” I ask.
“We’ve talked twice. Last time, a few days ago. Tuesday, I guess. She was in Texas. She has family there.”
“Texas.” I nod, like this makes sense. This makes no sense. Neither does Linus’s blush. “I wonder if Berg knows about her,” I say.
“I don’t know if he does,” Linus says.
“But you know something else,” I say.
He glances uneasily at me and then sits up straighter on the bed. “I’m not sure how much this matters, but Berg asked to meet up with me once in St. Louis. He knows the producers of Found Missing, and he offered to drop by the studio and take me out to lunch. I didn’t want to, but I thought I might learn something from him about where you were, so I went.” He runs a hand back through his hair. “He spent the whole lunch reminiscing about your time as a student at Forge, Rosie. You were all he could talk about. It was bizarre.”
“He had me asleep in the Onar Clinic all that time, but he wanted to talk to you about me?”
Linus nods. “I think he’s obsessed with you. And that’s not all. He wanted to hook me up and track my reactions to some footage of you. He offered to pay me a lot. I said no, of course.”
“That is way too creepy,” I say. “Why would he want to do that?”
“I don’t know.” He wedges a hand under of one of his feet. “I know you blame me for not doing more to shut Berg down, but I’ve still never had any good evidence for what he’s done. The police have been all over him, and they’ve never found anything. He’s incredibly sneaky and careful. What do you think he’s up to?”
Berg is playing a deeper, bigger game than I’ve ever imagined. I recall the way Ian talked about another lab in California. I wonder if Althea has any information about that. Someone has to stop Berg. Soon.
Linus reaches for my dirty bowl, and as I shift my legs, the plastic spoon with the red yarn falls on the quilt. He picks it up and puts it in a drawer.
“You keep spoons?” I ask.
He looks at me sideways and smiles faintly. “You ate ice cream with that one,” he says. “I didn’t have anything else of yours, so I saved it.”
“Seriously?” I think back. “Was it that afternoon in the quad? With the chocolate chunk coffee cinnamon swirl ice cream?”
“Your favorite. Yes. So?”
I smile at him, then laugh. “That’s pretty pathetic.”
“Thank you. I’m well aware.”
I chuckle again, and then I stifle a yawn.
“When’s the last time you had a proper night’s sleep?” he asks.
The last two nights were on the road. Before that, nightmares at Burnham’s. I guess my first night in Atlanta wasn’t too bad. “Four nights ago?”
He shifts on the bed. “Time to fix that. Pass me a pillow.”
“Are you going to sleep with me here?” I ask.
“No, I’m going to eat the pillow. Shift over.”
I crowd toward the side with my back to the window, and though I tell myself that sharing a bed with Linus doesn’t mean anything, my heart won’t listen. He tugs the quilt a little, and I move so he can pull it free from underneath me. Then he settles onto the bed beside me, lying on his back, and he gently pulls the quilt over us both. It smells of cotton. He turns out the light and switches off the music. A faint hum of wind becomes audible outside the window.
“Is this okay?” he asks. “Warm enough?”
I nod.
“I’ve missed you,” he says.
I don’t move. I can hardly breathe. My eyes are adjusting, and he’s just inches from me. His eyebrows are very black, and when he turns his face in my direction, the depths of his eyes are dimly visible. I didn’t brush my teeth, and I hope my breath isn’t too spicy. His isn’t. He still smells clean from his shower.
“What are you looking at?” I whisper.
“Nothing,” he says.
Inside my clothes, my skin turns on and my sleepiness vanishes. I wrap my arms around myself and shove my hands up my opposite sleeves.
“This is a good bed,” I say.
“I know,” he says softly.
He still hasn’t touched me, not once. We used to kiss and make out on The Forge Show with a thousand cameras around us all the time. Now we’re alone. The house is very still. I didn’t hear Parker or Otis come up, but I can’t hear the TV from downstairs, either.
“Let me have your hand,” he says.
I rustle it out of my sleeve and feel him wrap my fingers in both of his warm hands.
“So little,” he says.
It’s a sweet thing to say, and I don’t want to argue with him, but my hand is not small. It’s just smaller than his.
“What’s the matter?” he asks.
“What if I have to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night?” I ask.
“Wake me up. I’ll make sure the coast is clear.”
“Do Otis and Parker ever check on you?” I ask.
“Sometimes. Not often. I locked the door.”
“Okay,” I say.
“Anything else?”
I shake my head. But I keep watching him.
“What are you afraid of?” he whispers.
Nightmares. Ian. Berg. Linus himself. Myself with Linus. It’s not a short list.
“What if I wake up back in the vault?” I ask.
“You won’t,” he says. “You’ll be here.”
But logic doesn’t work. It feels like I could go back in the vault, like I’m teetering on the same vulnerability and helplessness. I’ll never really feel safe. That’s the problem. My breath catches, but I don’t want to cry. This is so much harder than being close to Burnham, and he had no shirt on. Why is everything so mixed up?
“Rosie, shh,” he says quietly. “It’s okay.”
I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I gulp in a breath. “Can you just hold me?”
“Of course,” he says.
He knocks an arm awkwardly around my neck and then pulls me closer against his shirt. I readjust a couple of times until I land in a better place, with my cheek on his shoulder and my eyebrows near his jaw. He adjusts the quilt around us more carefully, and I curl my hand on his chest, right below my chin.
“Better?” he whispers.
“Yes. Thanks.”
“Anytime.”
As if I’ll be here regularly. I could laugh, except it hurts. His chest rises and falls in a steady rhythm beneath my hand. The wind blows again outside. Linus is holding me closely, easily, with no pressure. But even still, I can’t let down my guard. I feel like someone’s been watching me even at the most intimate, personal moment of my life so far.
What did Berg say once? They’re always watching.
He was wrong, though. It’s worse than that. I’ve internalized the cameras. I’ll never feel private again.
25
THEA
THE MIDWAY MOTEL
WE LEFT DOLI and drove far into the night.
“I overheard back there,” Tom said quietly.
I tried to draw my feet up on the seat with me and curl into a ball so I could disappear, but my stupid belly got in the way. Of course it did. I wrenched the lever to make my seat tilt back again.
“It’s going to be okay,” he added.
“Can we just not talk right now?” I said.