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The Replaced Ki 15840K 2023-09-01

"And you," Buzz Cut told Jett before closing the door behind the If you start a fire, no one’s comin’ in here to save your asses"

When the lock snapped into place, Jett’s gaze shot around the roo fro "Da for

He approached the ht beside the dingy porcelain sink I didn’t get it; it looked like an ordinary dispenser to me, the same kind you saw in crappy restaurants and schools and rest stops all around the country

Jett hooked both hands inside the lower lip, where the next paper toas poking through waiting to be pulled free He yanked the painted metal as hard as he could and the top burst open with a screech, sending a stack of brown paper towels tu free

Inside, Jett retrieved a small, round lens that was obviously soru us this whole tiers around theit slaht’ve been able to use the hardware"

Thoh Natty’s

Natty shot

"We should assuainst him, and that was that--theyou don’t want the"

CHAPTER TWELVE

BY THE TIME IT WAS MY TURN, BUZZ CUT HAD already come back for everyone else, and I was the last one left Five hours and thirteen minutes had passed since she’d first come to take Si, which meant it was already hot in the Utah desert, and even hotter inside the sweltering closed-up space where we’d been confined The sun beat down against the one-and-only bolted-closed , and no matter how h to filter out the escalating heat

Sometime after nine, when Natty was still withone of the thin blankets in the cell But there’d been nothing to secure it with, and eventually we’d given up

It was a relief when it was finallyit out--literally--in what had turned froe So I was surprised when, instead of being led to soation cell with tay mirrors, I was led to an enor a towel and stack of borrowed clothes at ri toher where she could shove it I do not want that shower, I lied to s about whether it was an option or not when she said, "Do it or I’ll throw you back in the holding cell and you can sweat it out there the rest of the week"

Proble

And it was totally worth it After the round-style, co into a luxury spa--a serious indulgence

I stayed beneath the streah time to scrub away not only the dirt, but the residual blood that was dried along my hairline I rolled ers started to prune, I finally turned off the nozzle and toweled off

Using les from my hair and slipped into the clean clothes she’d loanedpair of sweatpants and a T-shirt that was so threadbare it felt like air against my newly clean skin I knotted the end of the shirt to keep fro in front of the er with the russet-colored hair who could no longer pass as Bridget Hollingsworth--the girl on the fake ID Siet had looked too much like the old ht have She could be a different Bridget, I supposed, but she could just as easily be a Maddy or a Mikayla, or maybe even a Kaci with an i

I pressed , too, where Siht now And if they’d been here, in this exact place, before me Had we really come all this way only to be taken captive?

I ju my hand, when the door opened behindin Only this ti a plate covered with a red-and-white-checked napkin Buzz Cut was still there, standing vigilantly on the other side of the door, but she stayed where she was The new girl gave a single nod to Buzz Cut, then pushed the door closed with her hip

I watched expectantly This new girl wasn’t like Buzz Cut, who looked like she wanted to be one of the boys Her long hair was dark and shiny, and was pulled away from her bronzed skin, and her brown eyes held ht jeans showed off her lean legs, and even with her coht froue

She kept a considerate distance, as if to say I was calling the shots, rather than the other way around When she pulled back the corner of the napkin, revealing a plate of neatly arranged apple slices, clusters of green and purple grapes, and wedges of yellow cheeses, she said, "You ry--we almost never are--but you should still eat" Her smile was almost sad, and suddenly I felt like I wasn’t alone in the whole