Chapter 22

Monday

V clenched his left hand into a fist. I wasn't sure if anyone else noticed, but it was all I could seem to focus on. I could almost feel the hostility in the air. It made it hard to breathe.

"That wasn't part of the deal," V said.

"How are we supposed to uncover the truth if all the details aren't laid out?" Liza asked.

"This has nothing to do with me."

"If that we're true, we wouldn't all be here right now. In your apartment."

"She has a point," Eli said.

V shook his head. "Liza, we already negotiated. I'll add access to my computers and Athena. And I'll stop hacking you. Nothing else."

"But what if..."

"He doesn't have to tell us," I said, cutting her off. "I really appreciate that you're all here to help me. But if this is just going to be us fighting, I don't want any part of it." I wouldn't willingly walk into a situation that made me feel like I was burning. I couldn't think straight like this. It would be better to work on my own.

"Obviously she doesn't care who you are," Liza said. "She was living with the leader of the Helspet Mafia and didn't even realize it. She's clearly mentally unstable."

"Excuse me?" What was her problem? Who came into someone's home and started throwing out insults like this?

"All I'm saying is that he's asking a lot from us when he doesn't even trust us with his identity."

"That's not what you just said. You called me crazy." What a bitch.

"To make a point. Don't be so sensitive."

We all jumped when V slammed his fist against the glass table. I hadn't even seen him walk over there. He folded his arms across his chest. "Liza, we could really use your help. I've already told you that. But if you're not going to let this go, I'm going to have to ask you to leave."

She glanced over at the computers with a dreamy look on her face. "Fine." She shrugged her shoulders. "Consider it dropped."

V nodded. "If everyone would take a seat."

The rest of us joined Liza around the table. I sat down across from Liza and Eli quickly stole the seat beside me, almost running into V. Eli draped his arm on the back of my chair without touching me.

The hostility was back in the air almost immediately as V took the seat across from Eli and glared at him.

This wasn't going well at all. I wanted answers. Not whatever the hell this was.

V cleared his throat. "Liza, what have you found out about Sadie Davis?"

"Not as much as I would have liked. She's ex military. More importantly, she's a highly trained sniper. Hopefully that doesn't come into play."

My stomach seemed to churn at her words. So that was how I was going to die. When I least expected it.

"There is a development on our end," V said. "Sadie ran into her yesterday. She put her hand up," V raised his hand, his five fingers spread apart. "She thought she was telling her to stop. But today when they ran into each other again, she only had four fingers raised."

"Is she counting down to something?" Eli asked.

"It sure seems like it." I shifted slightly in my chair. "We have four days to figure out what."

"Four," Liza said. "Huh."

We all turned toward her.

"What if she was telling you to stop yesterday. But today, she could have been saying something else. I mean, V called this thing the meeting of The Four. What if it's about us?"

A chill ran down my spine. We all looked back and forth between each other.

"We won't be able to figure out what she's saying until we pinpoint what her purpose here is," V said. "I think we should have Sadie walk through her whole story. We must be missing something."

I tucked a loose strand of hair behind my ear. I wasn't used to talking about my past. It was like this small piece of me I kept locked away, close to my heart. I put my hand in the middle of my chest, expecting to feel my pendant, but instead I was reminded of all that I had lost. "When I was eight my parents died in a car crash." I locked my hands together and put them on the table. "I moved in with my grandmother. She died a little less than a year later." I stared down at my hands. "I bounced around in foster care a lot. Until Don." I swallowed hard. "I don't know what you want me to say."

I felt Eli's arms move off the chair behind me and wrap around my shoulders. "We already know all of this. I don't think making her talk about it is helping anything."

Thank you.

"Well, I have plenty of amendments to that detailed story Summer just weaved," Liza said with a laugh and pulled out a notebook from her bag. "Someone created a false report saying that Summer and her grandmother both died of carbon monoxide poisoning. I traced the cyber footprint to sometime earlier this year. Which means whoever did it was trying to make it look like you disappeared and resurfaced with a stolen identity. It looks like you changed the records, falsified reports, and stole someone's identity. It's enough to put you away for a long time. The adoption papers I uncovered, on the other hand, were actually legit. You were legally adopted by Don Roberts when you left foster care."

She held up her hand like she was waiting for me to protest. I hadn't planned on saying anything, though.

"But, now we know that he changed your name and adopted you as Sadie Davis so that everyone else would think Summer Brooks was missing. He was never enrolled as a foster parent. So whoever took you to him wasn't a part of the system either. Do you remember who it was?"

I bit the inside of my lip. "I was just a kid. I don't..." I tried to pull back the memory of when I first met Don. My mind was drawing a blank. All I could remember was that I thought he had a friendly smile. I had thought my luck had finally changed. Just the thought made me want to throw up. I shook my head. "I don't remember."

Liza sighed. "Okay, so we don't have a lead there. All we have about the missing persons case is the claim that Rebecca Young filed. Did you know her, Summer?"

"Yes. She was my neighbor."

"You lived at several addresses with your parents. Which address was she a neighbor at?"

"The last one."

Liza jotted something down in her notebook. "Okay, so Rebecca Young was the only person looking for you. Is that something we should look into? Maybe..."

"No." I was surprised by how authoritative my voice sounded. "Can we please just leave her and her family out of it? I don't want to pull anyone else into this mess."

"I haven't left a cyber footprint since I was five. I think it's worth looking into. But right now, we're talking about what we already know." She pulled out a file from her bag and opened it. "Back to where your story left off. Summer lived with Don Roberts for almost six years. During that time she was physically assaulted on multiple occasions, leaving her with dozens of broken bones, yet only one known trip to the emergency room. She was also sexually assaulted..."

"Liza please stop," I said.

Liza ignored me. "And she suffered irreparable damage to..."

"Liza stop."

"...Her pelvis."

The air seemed to leave my lungs.

Eli's arm fell from around my shoulders. "What does that mean exactly?" He grabbed one of the papers from Liza's file and looked at the report she had written up.

"It means I can't have children," I said. It was probably the first time I had ever spoken those words out loud. Hearing it made it seem so final. I placed my hand on my stomach, remembering everything Don had taken from me. "I'll be right back." My chair squeaked behind me as I abruptly stood up. "I just need to use the restroom." I walked away before anyone said anything to me.

I locked the door behind me, placed both hands on the vanity, and stared at my reflection in the mirror. And for a brief moment I saw it. I saw the look that was in Don's eyes. In the real Sadie Davis' eyes. Death. I lifted my hands and took a step back. I was becoming them. He was turning me into my worst nightmare.

I ran my fingers through my hair and turned away from the mirror. He had killed my hopes and dreams. He had killed my reason to live. Maybe continuing down this path was what he wanted. I suddenly felt exhausted. Like all the fight in me had just seeped out of my bones.

Tonight wasn't going as planned. I didn't expect my most intimate details to be revealed. No one at the table needed to know about my likelihood of reproduction. Or lack thereof. Liza had crossed the line. How could she have not seen that revealing that would hurt me? I took a deep breath to try to calm myself down.

None of that mattered. Especially if we didn't figure out what the real Sadie Davis was going to do in four days. We had more to talk about. Me locking myself in the bathroom wasn't helping anyone. Without taking another glance in the mirror, I walked back out into the hall.

I froze when I saw a picture being projected onto the wall in front of the glass table. I pressed my lips together. It was of Miles' family. And me. His mom and dad were standing with their arms wrapped around each other's backs, huge smiles on their faces. Miles and I were standing in front of his parents and his father's hand was on his son's shoulder. There was an awkward gap between me and Miles. When I was little, I had always wanted that space to disappear. But what I hadn't realized was that the space between us never existed. I thought about Miles' story about meeting me. And how different it was from what I thought had happened. It was clear as day in the picture though. Because Miles wasn't staring at the camera. He was staring at me.

I quickly wiped away a tear that had fallen down my cheek. "I asked you not to look into the Young family."

The three of them turned toward me. I guess they hadn't heard me exit the bathroom.

"When were you going to tell us that your RA was Rebecca Young's son?" Eli asked.

"I..." my voice trailed off. "I didn't think it was important. It was a long time ago. He doesn't know that I'm Summer."

"You don't know that for sure."

"Yes I do. He would never lie to me." I let that thought sink in. All I had been doing to Miles since I was nine years old was lying to him. Telling him I was fine. Telling him I didn't mind foster care. Telling him no one was hurting me.

"People change, Summer."

I knew that better than anyone. Because I wasn't Summer anymore. I looked back up at the picture on the wall. He loved me. And I let him down.

"If she doesn't think her identity has been compromised, then it's not an issue," V said.

"You may have been watching her, but so have I." Eli stood up. "This Miles guy wants her. You should see the way he looks at her, like a fucking piece of meat."

"He doesn't." How dare he talk about him that way? I walked back over to the table. "You don't know him. He's not like that."

"Miles Young has probably slept with half the women on campus," Eli said. "He's a womanizer."

I couldn't exactly argue with him. It was the same thing that Kins had said. Apparently Miles was a total player. But I hadn't seen any of that. It seemed like he only had eyes for me. "He's changed then."

"He's just playing you," Eli said. He directed his attention back to V. "Look, she turns heads. We both know that. Miles has been trying to date her since the semester began. We can't have anyone else knowing about this. All I'm saying is that it's safer for her if everyone thinks she has a boyfriend..."

"We already talked about this," V said.

When had he had secret conversations with Liza and Eli? It was like he had bartered with both of them to be part of this weird group. What had they agreed on?

"I'm the best option," Eli continued. "We need her to be left alone. If she walks around with me that'll happen."

Liza was nodding along with every word that came out of Eli's mouth. "I agree with Eli."

"She can talk to whoever she wants to as long as she keeps her distance," V said.

"Not if it puts her and the rest of us in danger." Eli put his hand down on the table and leaned forward. "We're asking her to end one friendship, it's not a big deal."

"Does anyone care what I think?" I asked.

They all turned toward me.

And I realized I didn't exactly know how to phrase what I wanted to say. I had feelings for Eli. Yes, sleeping with him was an accident, but if anything it made those feelings stronger. V and I had chemistry that I had a hard time ignoring. It was as if our pain drew us together. I didn't want this to end up with both of them hating me. "Miles is the last part of me that makes sense. He was my best friend growing up."

"And now?" V said.

I bit the inside of my lip. I've been in love with him since I was eight years old. "I just don't want him to get hurt."

V turned back toward Eli. "Fine. Pretend to be her boyfriend in public to keep her safe. Let's leave the make-believe at the door, though, shall we?"

For a few minutes, it seemed like V had been on my side. But then like a flip of a switch, he had just written off my relationship with Miles too. Everything they said was right. Being with Miles put him in danger. Maybe just talking to him did. I had to give him up, yet all I wanted to do was watch the meteor shower in his arms.