Hemlock 03: Willowgrove Read Free Page A

my chest. I started to panic but then the roof of the tent came into focus and I became aware of Kyle—the scent of his skin and the steady sound of his breathing—beside me.
    He had thrown an arm over me in his sleep. For a moment, I just closed my eyes and enjoyed being near him, grateful to no longer be trapped in the dream. Being in the detention block once—seeing the videos of what had been done to Serena—had been horrible enough. Having to revisit that place—those images—night after night in my dreams was exhausting.
    Everyone always sees more than they remember . A chill swept down my spine as I thought about Amy’s words.
    As quietly as I could, I unzipped my sleeping bag and carefully wormed out from Kyle’s embrace. He rolled onto his back, but didn’t wake.
    I rummaged in the bottom of my knapsack until my fingers closed around a pen. Digging through my jacket pockets turned up a receipt for the soda and chips I hadbought when we stopped for gas, and using my phone as a flashlight, I sketched out what little I had seen of the symbol from my dream.
    The result was a thick squiggle that looked like a half-melted version of the Nike swoosh.
    I frowned down at the piece of paper, turning it this way and that. Something about the curve of the lines seemed familiar, but I couldn’t place it. It definitely wasn’t the twisted vines of the Thornhill crest, but it did look like it could almost be part of a logo.
    Maybe it was nothing, but there really had been a spreadsheet on the monitor the night we had broken into the detention block. At the time, I had been too distracted to do anything more than note its existence. I had been too focused on the realization that Serena had been tortured and the possibility that we’d all be caught at any moment.
    What if I had missed something? Something important. What if that was why I kept seeing the detention block in my dreams night after night?
    I snapped a photo of the sketch.
    The flash was blinding in the tent. I held my breath until I was certain I hadn’t woken Kyle, and then I typed what I could remember of the dream into my memo app. It was one more fragment to add to my growing collection of memories and questions—what Jason and Kyle had dubbed my “Thornhill Files.”
    They thought I was obsessed.
    Maybe I was.
    Aside from Sinclair and a handful of her former staff, wewere the only ones who knew what had really happened at Thornhill. The employees in the detention block had been so determined to keep their secrets that they had set fire to the camp’s main building once they realized the breakout couldn’t be stopped.
    Every scrap of proof had burned in the blaze.
    Everyone else wanted to let go of the camp. They wanted to believe it was over and that we were safe—or as safe as we could be. Thornhill was gone and Sinclair couldn’t hurt anyone else. We’d never be able to prove what had happened inside the fences; the only thing we could do was try to put it behind us, try to put ourselves back together. All we could do was try to move on.
    And I wanted to move on.
    It was just . . .
    Warden Sinclair had kept her search for an end to lupine syndrome secret from the LSRB. She had falsified admission records, kept most of her staff in the dark, and paid Trackers to bring in wolves under the table—all to keep the bureau from finding out that she was torturing and killing inmates in pursuit of a cure.
    A cure she couldn’t possibly have been working toward on her own.
    The drugs, the detention block, the research—all of it would have taken money and resources. Way more money and resources than a civil servant could pull together. Someone had to have been helping her—if not the LSRB then someone else—and whoever that someone was, they were still out there, free to start again. Free to hurt people likeSinclair had hurt Serena. They wouldn’t even need another camp. Not really. They could just grab infected people off the street.
    Knowing