Still, the whole thing was pretty far-fetched. And it wouldn’t explain why Gemma’s father was so afraid. If he really had refused to participate, if he’d left his own company just to avoid the association with Haven, he would be praised as a hero.
“Where do they get the volunteers?” she asked. Her coffee was cold by now, but it was comforting to hold the mug between her palms.
Jake bit his lip, looking at her sideways. “That’s the point,” he says. “I don’t think they’re volunteers.”
Gemma stared at him. “What do you mean?”
“They’re not getting volunteers—not for these experiments. They’re forcing people to participate.”
“But . . . how?” Gemma asked. The french toast she’d eaten seemed to be sticking in her throat. “They can’t just—I don’t know—kidnap people.”
“Why not?” Jake leaned forward. “Look, Gemma. This was my dad’s work. This was his life. However nuts it sounds, I think he was onto something. Fine and Ives has military contracts, money coming directly from the top. Half of Fine and Ives’s budget comes from military contracts. This is the government we’re taking about.”
Gemma thought of her father and his old company, and her stomach squirmed. She remembered Christmas parties as a kid at the Carolina Inn, the ceiling draped in tinsel and plastic snowflakes, and everyone standing to applaud her father as he entered, clutching Gemma’s hand. She remembered visiting the White House with her dad on a trip to DC, and how he shook the president’s hand, and Gemma and her mother got to go downstairs to play ninepins in the White House bowling alley. And men suited up in crisp uniforms pinned with shiny medals going in and out of her father’s office, smiling at her, hefting her into the air, tossing and catching her with big muscled arms.
Jake leaned forward, lowering his voice. “You’ve heard of Dr. Saperstein?” Gemma nodded. She remembered reading that Dr. Saperstein had taken control of Haven after Richard Haven had died in a car accident—the very same year she was born. The coincidence now seemed ominous. “About fifteen years ago, Saperstein weaseled his way onto the board of a nonprofit called the Home Foundation up in Philadelphia. It still exists today,” he added when Gemma shook her head to show she hadn’t heard of it. “He spent a few years growing its operations, expanding the volunteer forces, crowing about it in the media. Anyway, my dad dug up all the details. The Home Foundation places kids in foster care. These are the worst cases, children who’ve bounced around for years, or got dumped in front of the fire station or the hospital. It was the perfect setup. Kids get shuffled and reshuffled, moved around, drop out of the system, run away, disappear. Nobody’s going to look too hard for them, right?”
Gemma felt now as if her thoughts were all gummed up and sticky. Maple Syrup Brain. “I don’t get it,” she said. “What are you saying? You can’t mean—” She took a deep breath. “They’re not doing experiments on kids?”
“They’re only doing experiments on kids,” Jake said gently—almost apologetically, Gemma thought. “I think Saperstein stole them. He stole them and brought them to Haven. That’s why all the security. It’s not just to keep us out, you know. Not by a long shot. It’s to keep them in.”
Gemma felt dizzy, even though she hadn’t moved. It was too terrible. She didn’t want to believe it. She wouldn’t believe it. “There’s no proof,” she said. Her voice sounded tinny and far away, as if she was hearing it through a pipe.
Jake turned to look out the window. The smoke was still smudging the horizon, turning the setting sun to a smoldering orange. He said something so quietly Gemma nearly missed it.
Nearly.
Suddenly her heart was beating so hard, it felt as if it might burst through her chest.
“What?” she said. “What did you just say?”
He sighed. This time when he looked at her, she was afraid.
“I saw them,” he repeated.
“How?” Gemma felt like she was choking.
“Remember that boy I told you about, the one who made it onto Haven through the fence?” Jake half smiled. “I was the boy.”
Turn the page to continue reading Gemma’s story. Click here to read Chapter 7 of Lyra’s story.
EIGHT
THE TWO BASS MOTEL WAS just outside of town—a long, low, shingle-sided building with only a single car in the parking lot. When Gemma requested a room, the ancient owner knocked over her tea in surprise, as if she’d never before heard the words. But the room was clean, although slightly musty-smelling, and decorated, predictably, with lots of fish: an itchy coverlet woven with images of leaping salmon, a framed picture of fly-fishing hooks above the TV, a plastic bass mounted on the wall in the bathroom. Gemma hoped it wasn’t the singing kind.
They had agreed that Jake would come back for her at eleven o’clock, and Gemma wasn’t sure what was making her so nervous—the idea of trying to sneak into Haven, as Jake had done only once before, or the idea of being alone with him in the dark.
Alone with those perfect hands and eyes and lashes and fingernail beds. She’d never even noticed fingernail beds before. But she’d noticed his.
She powered on her phone. There was a sudden frenzied beeping as a dozen texts and voice mails loaded, and she was surprised to see among all the messages from her mom that Pete had already texted her.
You didn’t get eaten by an alligator, did you?