“Yes, and you can leave kibbles out for a stray cat,” she said, with that same neutral tone, “but that doesn’t mean you won’t skin it for stew the minute it gets close.”

“But all I did was show up at that bookmobile. I never knew you guys were there until you left that first little girl for me to find.” This was only a small lie. He’d made it his business to visit Oren after Jess pointed him that way. Why she never said she’d broken from the Amish herself or mentioned boo about Isaac was something only Jess could answer.

“Actually, no. That was another group’s decision. I had no part in that, and I wouldn’t have agreed if I’d been asked.”

“That’s pretty harsh.”

“Is that a question or an observation?”

“Both. Don’t you guys have rules or something? Doesn’t Isaac tell you what to do?”

“Of course not. He’s an . . . adviser.”

“So you guys run things yourself ?”

“More or less. We’re free to disagree, but there’s a certain consensus from group to group.”

Yeah, like the one about putting down kids you don’t think will make it. Yet even that must not be an absolute. He’d rescued several, very sick kids, some of whom had died once back in Rule. “Isaac’s the only adult?”

“The only one left. He keeps tabs on us, moves from group to group.”

“How many groups are there?”

“Is that important?”

Okay, so they weren’t going there. “Fine, you’re right. Not important.” Not entirely; Peter had talked about carrying capacities, how alarmingly fast Rule had grown beyond its resources. “So, what about my original question? You guys made the first move, not me.”

Which was not entirely true. After Jess mentioned there might be kids around the old Amish settlement, he made it his mission to rescue as many as possible. He’d visited, frequently, aware of the eyes on his back, careful to always leave some token supplies—batteries, food—at the old bookmobile where he’d found that first Spared, a very sick girl, just inside the front door. She was also the only child he hadn’t had to jump through hoops to find.

“Discovering that girl wasn’t a fluke,” he said. “Those kids made sure I found her. After her, they left a note to clue me in on the hex signs. They obviously didn’t think I was a threat.”

“And as I said, it wasn’t my call. Look, we could go round and round about this for days, so let me ask you something, Chris.” She leaned forward. “If there had been other children who weren’t sick . . . say, you stumbled on us . . . would you have taken us back to Rule? By force?”

“Probably.” He could feel the heat splash his cheeks. “Yes.”

“Then that makes you no better than the people who stole Ellie.”

“It’s not so black-and-white.”

“Yes, it is. I never stole a child. I’ve never allowed anyone to use a child as a way to buy sanctuary.”

“As you might say . . . that wasn’t my call.”

“But you enforced it.”

“We’ve all had to make choices. All I ever wanted was to help. I did what I thought was right at the time.” Coming out of his mouth, they sounded like the platitudes they were.

“And you’d still do it, all over again.”

“You mean, like you deciding to kill me?” he shot back. “Yeah, I guess I would. So we’re even. I’d try to find ways to keep kids alive, and you’d trick people into taking poison.”

He could hear the echo of his shout in the sudden silence. She was rigid, the skin around her mouth tight, her cheeks high with wild color. Idiot. He had to stay calm, be reasonable. Push people too far and they exploded. Sorry, Dad, sorry, it’s my fault; I won’t do it again.

“I never . . .” She cleared her throat. “It’s never a trick. When someone is beyond help, when there is no hope, it’s a choice. When we know for certain, when the dogs warn us that a child is”—her gray eyes shuttled away—“turning, it’s still a choice.”

“A choice between what and what?”

“What do you think, Chris? If you were turning, if you knew that you’d try to kill your friends, people you loved . . . are you telling me that you’d choose to become one of them?”

“Between what and what?” he asked again. At that moment, he understood, completely, why Peter set up the Zone. Despite the secrets and lies, he knew Peter still loved him, would die for him. If Peter had confided in him, would he have helped?

Maybe I would. Because if Alex Changed . . . if Peter did . . . I could never pull the trigger. He bet Peter would’ve felt no differently. Watching his friends and people he loved Change in front of his eyes, Peter would’ve tried to find a way. Where there was life, there was hope. They might Change back, get better. The trick was keeping them alive long enough to give them that chance.

Yes, but how long would you run the experiment? Months? Years? Does hope have a termination date?

“Don’t tell me you let any kid you think is Changing wander around. So what’s the choice?” He realized that he really was spoiling for a fight, some way of hitting back. “What do you do, lock them up and starve them to death, or only shoot them when they go rabid?”

“Don’t you judge us.” Her gray eyes went flinty. “Don’t you dare. I don’t owe you answers, Chris. You think you’re so superior, so right? You know nothing about us.”

“You don’t know me either. You’re not even interested in my point of view. You’ve already judged me.” His voice was shaky. The low simmer in his gut was near a boil. “So, fine. Let’s do a little math, Hannah, because math is clean, it’s pristine, it’s so scientific that Jayden would approve. You can’t massage numbers. There’s no arguing with two plus two.”

“This is pointless—”

He rode over her. “Not counting me and Nathan, there are eleven bodies in that death house. Assuming your group started with twenty people, give or take, that means you’ve lost seventy percent of your original population in five months.”

“Some of those people were old.”

“But the majority weren’t, isn’t that right? Some kids Changed after and either you killed them before they could Change all the way or once they had. But there were others, Hannah—others who were sick and you couldn’t help. So they died.”

“You can’t always cheat death, Chris.”

Yeah, but there’s a time for everything, even death. Then he thought, Get out of my head, Jess. Aloud, he said, “Let’s exclude the kids who Changed, okay? What about the others, the ones who were just plain sick? Why not accept help? Hannah, do the math. At this rate, by the end of the year, there won’t be any of you left.”

“Is that why you came, Chris?” Her voice was cold. “To convince us to go back with you?”

“Maybe. In the beginning.”

“What about now?”

“Beats me.” He threw up his hands. “I don’t know. I think there’s a better way than simply giving up and accepting, all right?”

“You want to fight.”

“Of course I want to fight. Life may not be great, but it beats dying. I just don’t know how to change things in Rule, or if I even can.”

“Is that where you want to go? Back to Rule?”

“I don’t know.” If his grandfather had anything to say about it, he’d be dead or in the prison house before he had a chance to do anything. “This whole thing about Isaac? It was a setup. I was supposed to find out about Jess and Simon and Yeager. I was supposed to figure out about the Zone.” And Peter. “I see it’s wrong. But I also understand.”

“You understand?”

“Yes, I really do see both sides,” he said, and thought, Chris on the right, Chris on the left. Eeny-meeny . . . “Not everything about Rule is bad. Like, take Ellie: You seriously believe an eight-year-old girl isn’t better off someplace where she can be protected? Or that she even has the ability to make that choice? What if she was seven? Or four? How young is too young to know better?”

“You’ve got a point?”

“Yes. You have a cutoff where it’s no longer a kid’s choice. But how did you get there, Hannah? What makes you think you’re right?”

Hannah threw up her hands. “Fine. We’ll never agree. You are so like Peter, wanting to reduce all of life and death to cutoffs and percentages, when to step in, when not to.”

Of all the things she could’ve said, this wasn’t it. “Wait a minute,” he said as she stood. “What do you mean? How well did you know Peter?”

“Well enough.” She was already turning away. “I really don’t want to talk about this right now, Chris.”

“But what if I do? What if I need to? Hannah.” He had to snatch back the impulse to grab her wrist. “Please. Please don’t go. Please . . . what are you talking about?”

He saw the warring emotions chase over her face, and the moment she made her decision. “I’m talking about the accident,” she said.

“Accident?” he said. “What accident?”

“You’re not going to like it, Chris. You think you’ve found out all there is to discover about Peter? About Simon?” She showed a brittle smile. “Believe me, those waters run deep.”

“What accident?” he said again.

“The accident two years ago,” she said. “When Penny killed a girl.”

59

“Wait. Just . . . just hold on.” Gulping air, Alex eyed a splashy tangle of guts and one tiny paw with its broken nib of bone. Squashed bunny didn’t bother her. What ticked her off was that in the last two days since arriving at the lake house, this was the only rabbit she’d snared.