The Mod Code Read online

  THE MOD CODE

  By Heidi Tankersley

  Copyright © 2015 by HET International, Inc.

  Smashwords Edition

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  Cover Illustration Copyright © 2015 by HET International, Inc.

  Book design and production by BB eBooks, bbebooksthailand.com

  Author photograph by Edwin Flores, webflodesignlab.com

  For Jacob.

  Thank you for always supporting me and my dreams.

  I love you.

  FREE BOOK OFFER!

  Available for download from my website!

  Ever wonder what happened before Sage & Finn arrived on the island?

  Read Jack & Imogen’s Story:

  THE ISLAND: A Mod Code Prequel

  Visit www.HeidiTankersley.com/TheIslandBook for your FREE DOWNLOAD!

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  1: Sage

  2: Beckett

  3: Sage

  4: Jack

  5: Sage

  6: Jack

  7: Beckett

  8: Sage

  9: Sage

  10: Jack

  11: Sage

  12: Beckett

  13: Sage

  14: Jack

  15: Sage

  16: Sage

  17: Jack

  18: Beckett

  19: Jack

  20: Sage

  21: Jack

  22: Sage

  23: Beckett

  24: Jack

  25: Sage

  26: Sage

  27: Jack

  28: Sage

  29: Beckett

  30: Sage

  31: Beckett

  32: Sage

  33: Sage

  34: Sage

  35: Sage

  36: Beckett

  37: Sage

  38: Sage

  39: Jack

  40: Sage

  41: Sage

  42: Jack

  43: Beckett

  44: Beckett

  45: Sage

  46: Sage

  47: Sage

  48: Beckett

  49: Sage

  50: Sage

  51: Sage

  52: Jack

  53: Sage

  54: Sage

  55: Sage

  56: Sage

  57: Sage

  58: Sage

  59: Sage

  60: Jack

  61: Beckett

  62: Sage

  63: Sage

  64: Beckett

  65: Sage

  66: Jack

  67: Sage

  Acknowledgements

  Free Book Offer

  Other Books By Heidi Tankersley

  About the Author

  1

  SAGE

  Millie’s trusting brown eyes peered up at me in expectation, like she didn’t even see the gun barrel pointed directly at her skull. She thought I’d come to the yard to bottle feed her, just like I had for the last two months. She thought I was her mother.

  My hands shook, unsteady with the gun.

  Her small tail swished back and forth, swatting flies from her pale brown coat. Just two months old. Too young to die.

  I lowered the gun.

  “I can’t do it,” I said.

  The Kansas sun beat down on us, no shade in the middle of the side yard. Beckett took the .22 from my hands without saying a word, careful like always not to touch me, no matter how badly I wanted him to. He lifted the gun and took aim. Millie still didn’t move. Instead, she let out a bleat, showing desire for the bottle I had yet to provide. Beckett glanced sidelong at me, asking for my permission.

  “No, do it,” I said.

  I turned away as the shot rang out, and anger flooded through me. If my mother had allowed us to borrow money from Beckett’s family, we could have amputated Millie’s leg, or bought stronger medication for the compound fracture in the first place. The gangrene wouldn’t have come.

  Life was hard enough without a dad. Why couldn’t Mom act like a normal human being?

  A few pieces of hay still stuck to my ponytail and I hit them off as I strode away. I would not cry. It was ridiculous to cry about this. She was a cow. I killed plenty of cows. Despite the direct order to myself, a tear ran down my cheek, and I wiped it away. At our old pickup truck, I rooted around in the toolbox for some gloves so I could load up Millie’s corpse and take her to the cattle graveyard.

  As I grabbed for the gloves, Beckett’s six-foot frame stepped up next to me, materializing out of nowhere. He placed his hand on mine.

  “I’ll get her,” he said softly.

  I froze. We were touching. My eyes stayed glued to our hands. I didn’t want to crack the fragile moment—skin contact was something Beckett only allowed to happen every few weeks, usually in the wheat fields when no one was around.

  His gaze remained on our hands, as if he concentrated all his desire in that one spot. Slowly, his thumb traced across my skin, and a tingling warmth ran up my arm.

  Beckett closed his eyes and slid his hand to the side. “I’ll get her, Sage,” he said again and took the gloves from me.

  Was it possible to experience satisfaction and disappointment at the same time? Because I felt them both, every time these moments ended. Eleven months and two days ago, I’d stopped asking him why we couldn’t date. There was nothing to comment on anymore. Beckett liked me as more than a friend. And yet, we were “just friends.” Our relationship made no sense.

  The door slammed on the side porch of our old farmhouse, and my younger brother, Finn, trotted down the steps. Beckett shifted slightly away from me, reestablishing the space he usually maintained between us. Finn held a shoebox under an arm, car keys in one hand, and his neon green toad, Noxley, in the other. Our family beagle, Ollie, wagged his tail at Finn’s side.

  Finn was fourteen, almost three years younger than me, and somehow—quite inexplicably—he regularly got out of farm work by supplying the excuse of “scientific matters to attend to,” which usually meant random experiments he carried out in the basement.

  “Is it an awesome day or is it an awesome day? I love Saturdays,” Finn said.

  Oh yeah, just awesome, I thought, my eyes unwilling to look toward Millie lying in the grass only twenty yards away.

  “Are you people ready to roll, or what?” Finn’s curly brown hair hung like a mop around his face. He pointed at Beckett. “You’re coming to the science fair, right? Before your baseball game? The awards ceremony starts in thirty minutes.”

  Finn was the smartest kid in all of Canta Junior High. The school only had two hundred students … but still. He’d won the junior high science fair ever since they’d first let him compete in fifth grade.

  “Wouldn’t miss it, buddy,” Beckett said, shutting the toolbox. “How’s Noxley today?”

  “He’s good.” Finn grinned. “Ready for his grand prize ribbon.” My brother’s attention turned to me and he frowned at my dusty jean shorts and t-shirt. “You don’t have time to change. We’re leaving in six minutes.” He tossed me the keys. “I’ve got a water f
or you in the car. Oh, and by the way, I cleared something off the web browser cache today while I was on the kitchen computer. Something about Penn State Astronomy Camp?”

  No. No, no, no. Had I left that up?

  Finn looked smug. “I don’t think Mom saw it, but if she did, someone’s not going to be happy.” He sing-songed the last word.

  “Oh, just go get in the car,” I tossed the keys back at Finn, avoiding Beckett’s gaze as I turned for the barn. I’d have just enough time to toss a bale of hay to the horses before we left. I heard Beckett following me but didn’t feel like talking, so instead of stopping at the horse stalls, I climbed up the wooden ladder into the loft.

  I strode past the walls covered with diagrams of the sky, sections of stars Beckett and I had mapped and counted. Most of the papers had yellowed, their edges curling inward, withering with the humidity of the barn.

  My body found its usual spot on the stool next to the old telescope that Beck had brought back to life for me last summer. I pushed open the barn door to get a view of the sky. It was darkening in the west—maybe we’d get an evening storm.

  I looked up when the floorboards creaked. Beckett ducked under the exposed ceiling beam but then remained close to the ladder, giving me space. He removed his baseball cap, wiping sweat-soaked strands of honey-blond hair from his forehead with his t-shirt sleeve.

  “When you rub sweat off your face like that, it looks like you’re performing for a commercial,” I said, annoyed. But it wasn’t Beck’s fault we had to shoot Millie. It wasn’t his fault I’d left the astronomy camp information up on the computer. And it wasn’t his fault he was irresistibly attractive. So I added, more softly, “Might be okay if I didn’t like you so much.”

  Beckett stared at me for a second, then replaced his baseball cap. “I do it to torment you.” A hint of a grin tugged at his mouth. “As a secondary benefit, it helps keep the sweat out of my eyes.”

  He crossed the loft, pulled out his stool and sat down facing the open door. How many times had we lived out this tension, our two bodies sitting in these two seats, with only the telescope between us?

  I waited for him to ask the question I knew would come. Eventually, he looked over at me. The spring-summer sun always did something fantastic to his complexion, bringing a healthy glow to his skin. Subtly, I breathed in his familiar scent—earth, and sweat, and a smooth, clean-smelling soap—and somehow, it reassured me that everything was going to be okay.

  “Penn State?” he finally said.

  “I signed up for the summer astronomy camp. But it doesn’t matter anyway. They only give out one scholarship, and it’s already been awarded, so I wasn’t planning on going.”

  Beckett’s eyebrows furrowed. “But you were going? If you got the scholarship?”

  My heart dropped. Was it disbelief in Beckett’s eyes? Or disappointment? I didn’t remember my father at all, but, in moments like this, I pictured him—a kind, non-living version of him—looking down from somewhere in the heavens, proud of who I’d become.

  “What’s it matter, now?”

  Beck fiddled with the telescope, seeming to debate whether to speak. “You want out, don’t you?”

  I tried to hide my surprise. We’d never talked about this. Mainly because of the “out” he was referring to—our plan to expand his family’s neighboring farm along with ours. I would manage the accounting and make sure we did it the smart way, while Beckett managed the fields and farmhands. The truth was, I didn’t know what I wanted. How did I say that out loud to someone who was so sure of his future?

  Beckett sighed. “You need to talk with your mom. You’ve got to tell her about the camp.”

  “I’m never going to tell my mom. At least not until enough years have passed that I’m sure she won’t have a panic attack.”

  “You have to tell her.” Beckett clenched his jaw as if he didn’t want to say whatever he was about to say. “Or else I will.”

  I frowned. This was absurd. It was astronomy camp. Besides, Beckett never sided with Mom. He remained solidly neutral when arguments erupted between us.

  Beck ducked his head to get a better look into my eyes. “Did you ever think there might be other reasons your mom wants you to stick around? Besides the money, I mean? And needing your help? Life is hard without your dad. You need to talk with her.”

  “Other reasons?” Despite my annoyance at Beck’s comment, my stomach contracted. Images of my dad as a serial killer spotlighted on the nightly news ran through my mind. “Other reasons like what?”

  Beckett rubbed the nape of his neck and squinted. “Just tell her, okay?”

  “Fine. I’ll tell her.” Someday. Until then, hopefully Beck would forget about it.

  He tried to smile, but his face remained tense, jaw tight with a ripple across the bone.

  “Come on,” he said. “I’ll take care of Millie and you feed the horses real quick. Noxley’s grand prize ribbon is waiting.”

  *

  At the driver’s door of Mom’s car, I watched Beckett pull onto the main gravel road. He honked like always, lifting his hand out the window to wave over the hood of his truck.

  “See you in a few!” he called.

  I waved in return, stifling a sigh, and leaned back against the car to wait for Mom. How could things feel so much the same and yet so different at the same time?

  Finn leaned out the back window. “Sorry about Millie. I should have known the reason for the gunshot. I wasn’t thinking.”

  “Forgiven,” I said, kicking my tennis shoe at the gravel.

  “So … astronomy camp?”

  “Don’t worry, I won’t leave you here alone with Mom. I’m not that cruel.”

  “I know,” Finn said. “You love me too much. But I don’t mind if you pave the way with your requests. Maybe by the time I’m graduating, she’ll have softened up enough to let me go somewhere really cool.”

  “So you would leave me here alone with her?”

  He shrugged. “I guess so, yeah. You could come with?”

  “And leave her to her own devices?”

  Finn paused, as if contemplating this scenario—Mom by herself on the farm. “Yeah, you’re right. Not a good idea. Well, you’re tough, anyway, and at least you have Beckett. It’s not all bad.”

  Minus the one small detail that he refuses to touch me, I thought as I yanked open the door and slid into the driver’s seat. I rested my head back against the seat, but the car felt stifling, so I started the engine and cranked up the air conditioner, even though I knew it would cost extra gas.

  Finn noticed I was upset. “Hey,” he said, “what’s the square root of 538?”

  I smiled. My brother did know how to distract me. “23.195.”

  Finn pulled out his phone and typed in the numbers. When he looked up, he shook his head, still impressed after all this time. “Where are we?” he said, wanting the running tally of times in a row I’d correctly answered his math problems—we’d started when he was six.

  “9,497.”

  “We should throw a party at 10,000. Don’t you think?” Finn said. “If we dedicate a few Saturdays to pure math equations, the timing would match up, and we could celebrate along with your graduation reception next year.”

  In the rearview mirror, Finn’s face looked completely serious about the party, but then he shifted, distracted. “Brace yourself,” he said. “Here comes your chance to find out whether Mom’ll freak out or not. Who knows, Penn State could be in your future.”

  I lifted my head from the seat and my stomach flipped as Mom strode down the steps and across the gravel drive. “Yeah, right,” I said.

  Mom pulled the passenger door open, her wavy brown hair cascading over her shoulders. Mom was beautiful. Everyone in town said so. I looked like her—if it counted that we had the same hair color. But mine hung straight and limp, and my features didn’t sparkle. As one old lady put it while looking down at me in the Canta Grocery Store when I was seven—“She’s just so plain.�
� The truth? It was hard not to be a visual disappointment if someone set eyes on Mom first.

  Mom pulled her car door shut. “Hi, honey. Good day?”

  I flashed an artificial smile and nodded. The conversation had barely started, and yet Mom already held a tinge of tension in her voice, noticeable by the way “good day” raised an octave at the end of her question.

  Mom scanned me, searching for something to be bothered by. “Honey, don’t you think it might be better if you freshened up a bit?”

  I jerked the car into reverse. “Finn said I didn’t have time.”

  “Hmm …”

  Mom’s “hmm” was loaded. Something was eating at her—like most days—and it was only a matter of time before she blew.

  At the main road, I turned south and pressed on the accelerator.

  “Slow down,” Mom said automatically, “and strap in.”

  “I was going to,” I said, clenching my teeth together. I eased up on the pedal and pulled the seat belt across my body. “How was your day, Mom?” Better if I could get to the heart of the matter, maybe she’d be more relaxed by the time we arrived at school.

  “My day was fine.” She flipped down her mirror and applied some lip gloss. “I got a prank call on my cell phone though.” Her purse snapped shut.

  Ahh. There it was. The source of her current state.

  “Someone was breathing into the phone,” Mom continued. “Did either of you put your friends up to that?”

  “Not me,” Finn said.

  “I’m sure it was nothing, Mom,” I said. “Probably just a sales call. Could you hear chatter in the background?”

  Mom rotated in her seat to face Finn. “I know your friends have done this before. And I believe I told you to never let it happen again.”

  I knew the prank call wasn’t Finn’s fault, but it didn’t matter. He was about to get reamed. Grounded for a week, cell phone taken away, something bad. He knew as much too, because he glanced at me through the rearview, with a look in his eyes that cried “help, I’m begging you.” I squeezed the steering wheel. I’d regret it later, but right now I couldn’t ignore that look.

  “Mom,” I blurted, “I applied for summer astronomy camp at Penn State University.”