The Aberration of Eden Pruitt, page 14
Across the room, the woman closed her book with a huff. She scooted her chair back, left the book on the table, threw her plate into the garbage, and exited the large room.
“We close in fifteen,” the lady behind the counter called.
Cass got to work on his sandwich.
Eden ate as much of hers as she could stomach, flipping through the pages of America Underground—amazed at the quality—peeking at Cassian between articles. “So … Hudson,” she finally said.
Cass scowled.
“You two were buddies once upon a time?”
“I don’t remember him.”
“He called you Cass ‘The Wolf’ Gray.”
His scowl deepened.
“Is that a nickname?”
“Not one I chose.”
Eden nodded and forced herself to bite her tongue. Unlike Hudson, she could read body language. Cassian clearly didn’t want to talk about the nickname, despite the nickname piquing her curiosity.
She pictured the tattoo wrapped around Cassian’s shoulder—a wolf woven with Celtic knots currently hidden beneath his jacket. He’d shown it to her in the middle of the night while they ate cereal in Beverly Randall-Ransom’s kitchen.
According to Cassian, his mother loved wolves. She loved the sound of their haunting calls. She read him When Pup Howled at the Moon so many times, the binding had come loose. She thought it unfair that wolves were made into villains in fables and stories. Eden knew he didn’t get the tattoo because of the nickname. He’d been given the nickname because of the tattoo. If his mother loved wolves—if she thought them misunderstood—Eden could only imagine how much he loathed that nickname. Cass ‘The Wolf” Gray, a ruthless fighter who killed his last opponent in the ring, exacerbating the animal’s villainous reputation.
Eden smashed a few stale bread crumbs with the tip of her finger, wondering about his former career. Where did this fighting take place? Was there just one venue or several? Before she could speculate much further, Cassian’s phone lit with Cleo’s name.
He snatched it off the table and answered.
There was no need for him to put the call on speaker. Eden could hear Cleo just fine, even when he got up from their table to borrow a pen from the irritated lady behind the counter, who handed him a writing utensil with an annoyed, “Ten minutes.”
“There were only two Francesca Burnolis that I could find,” Cleo said. “One is a thirty-six-year-old mother of three selling beauty products online. The other is a dead 89-year-old who spent the final years of her life battling dementia. Neither are our girl.”
Cass sat down.
“But the Brysons, I think I found. Gage and Isabella.”
His attention lifted to Eden’s. “You sure it’s them?”
She understood the question. Bryson was a common surname.
“They have a sixteen-year-old son named Clay,” Cleo said. “Adopted out of foster care.”
Eden set her forearms on the table and leaned closer.
“They live in Glencoe, a suburb on the north shore. Gage is a guidance counselor at New Tier Township, but their son, Clay, goes to Glencoe Montessori. Isabella spends her time volunteering at a pregnancy crisis center in Des Plaines. She also leads a support group.”
“For?” Cass said, scribbling notes in shorthand on the margins of America Underground.
“Family Estrangement.”
“Who’s she estranged from?”
“I’m not sure,” Cleo said. “I found Isabella’s maiden name on an old engagement announcement. Her parents were listed as Mr. and Mrs. Jeffrey Coolridge of New York City, New York. They died in The Attack. Their obituaries said they were survived by their two daughters, Lillian Kashif and Isabella Bryson.“
“So, she could be estranged from her sister.”
“I doubt it.”
“Why?”
“Her sister’s dead. I found her obituary, too. She died four years after The Attack. On the exact same day, actually.”
“That’s weird.”
“My thoughts exactly.”
“Does it say how she died?”
“Apparently, childbirth.”
Childbirth.
Eden tried to imagine it. Losing both parents only to lose your sister four years later. On a day that was supposed to be a celebration of new life—the redemption of a day that had encompassed so much death. Instead, it claimed more.
“What happened to the baby?” Cass asked.
“Passed away with the mom.”
“Does Isabella have any other family?”
“A nephew named Amir Kashif, Lillian’s son. He was seventeen when his mother died.”
Cass tapped the pen against the table. “Do you know where the support group meets?”
“At the Wilmette Public Library. First Sunday of every month.”
“That’s tomorrow.”
“Yep.”
“Are they still meeting?”
“It says nothing about being cancelled.”
When Cass hung up, Eden looked down at the notes he’d jotted in small neat script.
Gage and Isabella Bryson were a married couple with an adopted son living in Glencoe, Illinois. Gage was a guidance counselor at a high school. Isabella volunteered at a crisis pregnancy center and led a local support group.
“It doesn’t exactly scream terrorism,” Eden mumbled.
“No, it doesn’t,” Cass agreed.
“Do you think one of them could really be The Monarch?”
Cass clicked the pen against the last line of his notes.
Fam Est SG - Wilmette.
“Maybe we can find out at tomorrow’s support group.”
22
Eden lay on the top bunk of a bed with no concept of time.
Cassian slept below her, breathing deeply in and out.
There were no digital clocks in this underground maze. No electrical outlets in which to plug them. Just a retinue of sound unfolding in the dark as Eden passed in and out of a restless sleep plagued with nightmares. Strangling Cassian while Cleo screamed at her to stop. Pointing the 9mm Hellcat at the malnourished boy who’d taken them to Mona as the country’s Board of Directors commanded her to pull the trigger.
At the sound of the deafening gunshot, her eyes had flown open. She fought sleep after that, listening as a young girl awoke with a start and whimpered about having an accident. Eden could smell the urine as the girl’s mother turned on a flashlight. She stuffed the soiled blanket into a bag while her daughter shivered beside her, holding on to a book she’d pulled from beneath her pillow. Mother and daughter climbed back into bed, this time with only one blanket between them, and the woman whisper-read a familiar story while the girl yawned and turned the cardboard pages.
Goodnight stars.
Goodnight air.
Goodnight noises everywhere.
But the noises did not go goodnight. This place was far from quiet, with the low humming of generators and a sump pump interrupted by the occasional call of a train horn overhead as they rumbled through a nearby train yard. And other noises much closer. Coughs. Sniffles. Snores. A boy muttering in his sleep.
Eden thought of Cassian and the tattered book on his apartment floor. Had his mother read it to him here when he was cold and afraid? At what age had he gotten the tattoo and how much more violently did he fight when the crowd started chanting that nickname? Her thoughts turned to her own mother, reading stories about a girl in a yellow hat who went to a Parisian boarding school. Back then, it had sounded like a grand adventure. Going off to Paris. Being away from her parents, free from Christopher’s death and the grief he left behind.
At some point, she must have nodded off to sleep because the sound of stirring awoke her. She blinked into the dark as Cassian crept from the room. On the other side of the makeshift door, light flickered and glowed through the thin sheet. Then faded away. Along with Cassian’s footsteps.
Eden swung off the bed and silently landed on the floor. She peeked out from the sheet as the faint light of the lamp disappeared around a corner. Eden followed as Cassian made his way above ground, where fog hovered over the river and cold nipped at the air and the first vestiges of sunlight shone in the east.
Cass moved like he knew where he was going.
Along a rickety boardwalk above the canal, the silos covered in vibrant graffiti, early birds chirping in the trees, until he reached a rope dangling from a metal staircase bolted to the concrete. Cassian pulled himself up easily. Then he climbed the rusted stairs, his footsteps a gentle clanging echo above her.
Eden waited until he was out of sight.
Then she climbed up after him—a treacherous ascent to the very top, where a chilly wind blew as the days crept deeper into autumn and Chicago’s skyline loomed across the river, a stunning sight with a gaping hole where The Sapphire used to be.
Cassian leaned against a half wall with his hands shoved into the pockets of his leather jacket, his breath escaping in puffs of white, his gaze set on the skyscrapers outlined by the first rays of the rising sun.
“Can’t sleep?” she said, pulling the sleeves of her sweatshirt over her hands.
He glanced at her, then turned back to the sunrise—his strong profile illuminated by a pinkish gold. “No.”
She sat on the wall beside him, then tentatively reached out to touch his hand. It was warm despite the chill. She skimmed her finger over a small scab on his knuckle, a nick from the rooftop when he tackled her mother, saving her from the bullet Eden had fired. If not for him, she would have become a murderer. Her mother would be dead. She turned his palm up. Traced the lines. Then slid her hand into his.
His fingers stretched, then curled protectively around hers.
“This is where you and your mom used to live,” she said.
He let the statement hang in the air. And then, “We hated it here.” His thumb mindlessly stroked the side of her index finger, sending a ripple of warmth up her arms, down her spine. “We stayed for two years before we could move into an apartment. It was small. Rundown. But it was ours.” For a moment, his expression softened. “After my father found us, I had to come back.”
His words punched her in the gut.
She imagined his father—a monster who killed his wife and left his son for dead. Her heart broke for the twelve-year-old, sleeping on a bunk bed in a dank basement without his mom. Without anyone.
“I hated it even more the second time. I spent as much time away from this place as possible, getting into scraps on the street for food. Vick saw one. Mona told me I couldn’t stay if I decided to fight, like that might get me to think twice. I haven’t been back since.”
She didn’t blame him.
Eden wouldn’t have wanted to stay either.
Vick had given him a way out and Cassian took it.
“What did your mom do?” she asked.
He looked up from their hands, as though confused by the question.
“How was she able to afford an apartment?”
“Oh. Mona got her a job cleaning houses. Big ones like Beverly’s.”
“Did she take you with her?”
“There was an older gentleman across the hall who kept an eye on me. He was nice and he didn’t ask questions, like why I wasn’t in school. I didn’t realize until later that he lived off the grid, too.”
“And how did he make ends meet?” She was suddenly very interested in this off-the-grid world of mothers and children and nice elderly men.
“He was an investigator.”
“What did he investigate?”
“Missing people, like Violet. Sometimes, he’d let me help.”
Years later, he would use those skills to find her.
Cassian frowned. Perhaps he was thinking along the same lines. “She wore a lot of hats, my mom. Cleaner of houses. Teacher of me. Writer for America Underground.”
Eden gaped.
“It didn’t pay as much as the cleaning, but she loved doing it.” Cassian looked at her as though amused by her shocked reaction. “She used to be a reporter.”
“For Concordia?”
He shook his head. “Before The Attack. Before I came into the picture. She covered the conflict in southern France for six months. Became fluent in the language.”
“Really?”
“Voila. Tout au mieux.” The words rolled off his tongue in a rich, alluring timbre. Had Eden not already loved the language, she would have fallen hard on the other side of hearing him speak it. “It was one of her favorite things to say.”
Eden leaned closer, captivated. She wanted to hear more about her—this woman who brought Cassian into the world. Who spent six months in France. Who died in such a tragic, unjust manner.
Cass tugged on her hand like a confident leader in a dance, guiding her to her feet with a subtle pull until she was no longer beside him, but in front of him, standing between his splayed legs, her eyes level with his. “Do you remember saying that to me?”
“Saying what?”
“Voila. Tout a mieux.”
Eden tilted her head. She had. After accidentally hitting him with a door in the basement of Cleo’s residence hall. Her eyes moved to the place where she’d applied the bandage—right above his eyebrow.
“It was the first time I heard those words since she spoke them.”
She recalled the look he’d given her. Like she’d said something wrong. Only she had said nothing wrong; she’d said something familiar. Something that reminded him of his mother. Her heart squeezed with warmth and sadness. “What else did she like to say?”
He looked up at the morning sky, as though considering, the ghost of a smile back in place, his lips so enticing, the warm feeling in her heart turned into a heat that stirred deep down in her abdomen. “Petit a petit, l’oiseau fait son nid.”
Little by little, the bird makes its nest.
“Not when I fell or scraped a knee, but when we lived here, and she was saving up for us to move.”
Eden touched the small, white scar on the cleft of his chin. “I wish I could have met her.”
“She would have liked you,” he said, his hands sliding to her waist. “She would have liked your choice of company, too.”
“Her son?”
With a smile, Cassian shook his head. “Erik.”
Eden quirked her eyebrow.
“She would have said the friendship meant something.”
“Like what?”
“You don’t care what other people think. You make your own choices. Form your own opinions.” His thumb slipped beneath her sweatshirt and grazed the ridge of her hipbone.
Eden swallowed, the heat in her abdomen growing. She wanted him to kiss her. She physically ached for him to kiss her.
But before he could, a sharp pain sliced through her temple.
With a wince, her hand clapped over the spot.
Cassian stood—no longer relaxed, but alarmed. Vigilant. “What’s wrong?”
Eden blinked several times in rapid succession, unsure what had just happened. Disturbed by how similar it was to the pain she’d felt on the rooftop. When Mordecai was controlling her. “I-I don’t know.”
The sound of squealing brakes interrupted her confusion.
Cassian turned.
Eden brought her hand away from her temple and exhaled shakily.
Far below, a large truck had pulled up to the fence. A man stepped out from the idling vehicle and slammed the door.
“What’s that?” Eden asked.
“A delivery.”
The man down below opened the back doors of the truck and started unloading large sacks of rice and stacking them against the fence.
Cassian sighed. “The reason Mona was so willing to let us stay.”
Extra hands for tomorrow’s load.
23
Eden quickly understood the need for extra hands.
Getting the food through the fence and into the basement of the silos required a lot of strength and maneuvering. She received several strange looks after her first load when she carried two sacks of rice instead of one. She dialed back after that, taking better care to blend in.
When the work was done, Eden and Cassian used the final square on their ration cards for a bowl of bland oatmeal, then spent the rest of the day planning.
Eden was going to attend the support group. They both agreed she had a better chance of getting information from Isabella Bryson than Cassian did. They weren’t, however, comfortable with her retinas being scanned upon entrance. While Eden clung to her assumption that the Monarch didn’t know about her, she didn’t want to leave a trail should her existence be discovered. Nor did she want her parents driving to Wilmette if Jack pinpointed their whereabouts via retinal scan.
The plan was to sneak in.
Until they arrived in Wilmette at half past four and discovered the library—a large building made of gray brick—had surveillance cameras everywhere. There wasn’t a single window or back door exit they could sneak into without being surveilled.
Which meant retinal scans it would have to be. They needed to follow this lead, and it was the best way they knew how. The one with the highest probability of getting the most information. Hopefully, Jack wasn’t watching for her. Hopefully, nobody was.
“I can go in alone,” she said.
Cass shook his head. Apparently, he didn’t like the idea of sending her into the library by herself with a woman who may or may not be The Monarch. And since Eden’s retinas were going to be scanned, there was no added risk in his being scanned, too. His identity would register in the same way it had at the Prosperity Ball—Cassian Ransom, an upstanding citizen without a record.
Eden pulled a baseball cap over her hair and matched Cassian’s stride as they walked toward the front entrance.
“Remember the signal,” Cass said.
Eden nodded.
Five clicks of the tongue with a quick break after the first two—an audible warning to get out of there in case something went sideways. An audible warning that would go unnoticed by library patrons. But not her. If she wanted to, she could hear it from across a football stadium. Her superhuman hearing, she was learning, worked similarly to a zoom lens on a camera.
