Finally, we could see down the gravel path curving toward the main road. Two cars were parked on the street, but both were empty. They’d left them there in order to surprise us.
A knife of fear punctured my lungs, and I could barely breathe. Not just cars. FBR cruisers.
Billings was a soldier. The FBR bought the Loftons’ cattle.
The government owned most of the major food-distribution plants now. Horizons had bought out all the big brand names during the War. Of course Patrick would sell beef to them.
Chase grabbed my hand on his chest, squeezed it tightly, and rammed his foot down on the pedal. An explosion of growls filled the air. The sound would definitely be heard within the house.
I gritted my teeth and held on.
We hit the road in a spray of gravel. I don’t know if Patrick and the soldiers came outside. I didn’t look back.
We didn’t stop until we reached the road. It took Chase less than thirty seconds to swing his leg over the front of the bike, jump off, and puncture the tires on both vehicles before we were off again.
* * *
WE rode toward a town called Hinton; I saw the name dimly shimmer on a green metallic road sign and felt the crushing blow of defeat as we passed the exit to Lewisburg. We had to. The Loftons would have told the MM they’d planned on taking us there.
We were going to miss the carrier.
As the adrenaline wore off, I began to tremble, though I didn’t know if it was from the freezing air clawing through my clothing, or from the fear.
We were out on a road after curfew with only the occasional flash of the headlight to guide us. The rumbling of the motor screamed in my ears, calling out our location to anyone nearby. I could feel Chase concentrating hard, trying to maintain a rushed pace, but swerving to avoid the debris from the woods that popped up in our path.
I pinched my eyes closed. The Loftons had reported us. Even after we’d saved their son. Don’t trust anyone, Chase had said. He was right.
How long did we have before the MM pursued? They had certainly already called in for backup. If we were lucky, we’d bought ourselves some decent lead time by slashing the tires. If we were really lucky, whoever came next would follow the lead to Lewisburg. Was it worth the hope?
The darkness unsettled me. I imagined eyes all around, watching us from the roadside. Each time Chase twitched, seeing a new obstacle in the road, I jumped.
We drove for the longest half hour of my life, finally passing a sign indicating that Hinton was only eight miles farther. Chase helped me off into a shadowed ditch on the side of the road and drove the bike straight into the bushes. We buried it silently and efficiently beneath the brush and pine needles and covered our tracks. Then we disappeared once again into the woods. I couldn’t help but feel fortunate we’d survived this long. Then again, there was still time before sunup.
Chase had taken the backpack and was creeping ahead of me, parallel to the road. The sickle moon barely provided enough light to guide our way.
And then I heard the sirens.
CHAPTER
12
MY hand was in Chase’s, and he was pulling, then I was pulling, and we were running, dragging each other farther away from the road, where the woods became so thick that even the moonlight couldn’t reach us. The dry leaves crackled beneath our boots; branches clawed against our clothing and scratched burning lines into our exposed skin. I tripped, but before I had the chance to pick myself up, Chase had already righted me.
They were getting closer.
My heart was pounding, and even in the cold March air, a line of sweat dewed at my hairline. The throbbing whir of the sirens penetrated the barrier of trees and pierced through the breath that crashed in my eardrums. Blue lights flashed in streaks through the tall, black shadows.
Closer.
“Stop!” I yanked Chase down behind an enormous tree trunk, broken by some long-ago storm and now covered with ivy and brambles. He crouched beside me, still and silent, immediately camouflaged by darkness.
They came speeding up the road, silencing the insects and animals with their sirens. I was too petrified to move.
Don’t stop don’t stop don’t stop.
They blared past. One. Two. Three cruisers. Heading toward the Loftons’.
And then we were alone in the woods.
Chase released an unsteady breath, reminding me that I hadn’t done so in some time.
On trembling legs, we hiked again, all the way until we reached the edge of Hinton. It was a slow grind: Neither of us was willing to get any closer to the road, but the path we carved thirty yards inland was pitch black on account of the thick woods. My body became gradually more exhausted—a combination of an adrenaline crash and a sleepless night—but my mind was wound as tightly as a copper coil.
Finally, still well before dawn, we reached the edge of a parking lot, dusted with the trash that overflowed the scattered cans. Across the way I could vaguely make out a stucco strip mall. It was deserted; most of the glass shop fronts were covered with graffiti, but otherwise it seemed safe. No FBR patrol cars. No gangs.
There were four cars in the lot. All of them looked abandoned.
“Can you hotwire any of those?” I asked immediately.
Chase snorted. “We’ll wait until closer to dawn. We can’t drive now, and I don’t want to be pinned out in the open if the MM show up.”
I nodded in grudging agreement. There were still several hours until sunrise.
Far to our left was a great hulking shadow. An old, rusted semitruck bed without the cab. I didn’t like how it blocked the woods behind it. It made me feel too exposed, which reminded me that we shouldn’t have still been out in the open. That we should have been with my mother by now. I twisted my heel into the soil.
“Hey, forget about Lewisburg,” Chase said, not unkindly. “I said I’d get you to the safe house, and I will. I promise.”
Tears I didn’t know had gathered spilled down my cheeks. How? I wanted to scream. How will we get there? How can you promise that? You don’t even know the way! But I knew he didn’t have answers, and asking him would only make us both feel worse. I grabbed for the bag, searching through the darkness for the zipper, and covertly wiped my eyes.
The other clothes we’d stolen from the sporting goods store were near the top. They were still damp from the weather and would be bitingly uncomfortable in the low temperature, but it didn’t matter. We had to change. I handed Chase another flannel, wishing we could ditch our jackets, but it was too cold.
“What happened back at the house?” I asked, after the knot in my throat had gone down. As quickly as I could, I stripped down to my thermal and replaced my sweater with the pink fleece I’d picked up for my mother. The instant the coat was back on, my chin was tucked inside the neck, stifling the cold air that had been needling my face.
“Patrick rode my heels like a lapdog,” answered Chase. “I was trying to pull him away from the back of the house, maybe get him down in the basement with his wife. That’s when the guys he called busted through the front door. Billings, I guess, and three others. I got one good hit in before—”
“You hit a soldier?” I squeaked. This could mean terrible consequences if we were caught.
“Didn’t see too many other options,” he said. I heard him change shirts and grunt as the fabric scraped the wound on his arm. “One of them said, ‘It’s him,’ and reached for his weapon. That bastard and his wife must have known it was us before the news report.”
I nodded but then realized he couldn’t see me. “They thought they’d get a reward,” I said aloud. We got a thousand dollars for the last soldier, Patrick had said. Who knows? Maybe they’ll kick in a bonus for the girl. Knowing our lives had a price tag, one that could keep a family housed and fed, made me nauseous.
Chase swore softly, and I could feel this fact settle on him, sink into his pores. When he continued, his tone was bleak.
“One of them shut the lights off.
It didn’t work out like they hoped. I took off out the back, and that’s when I found you.”
“I shut the lights off,” I confessed.
“You what?”
“I cut the power to the generator.”
“You…” A long beat passed before he slowly approached and placed his hands on my shoulders. The confusion reflecting from his dark eyes made me uncomfortable. Here he was again, touching me while his mind disagreed with his actions.
“You’re shivering,” he said anxiously. I shook out of his grip, but it was too late. All the feelings I’d been trying to stuff away since his good-bye kiss came pouring back. The longing and the hope. The rejection. All magnified by the fact that we were now barred from Lewisburg and, it felt, my mother, too. He seemed to sense something was off and lowered his face to mine.
“Hey, are you —”
I slapped him.
We sat in stunned silence for a full three seconds before he spoke.
“Damn. That was fast.”
“That’s all you’ve got to say for yourself?” I nearly shouted at him. My hand stung just enough to tell me it hadn’t shattered in the cold.
He floundered. “I… I guess. What exactly was that for?”
“You know what it’s for,” I accused furiously. “How dare you do… that… after… you know!”
“I don’t know,” he said bluntly. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“You kissed me!”
He faltered back a step, and I heard the breath whistle through his teeth.
“You didn’t seem to mind so much at the time.”
I growled at him and then grabbed the bag and violently zipped it shut. “I was thinking you were someone else.” The old you.
He snatched the bag out of my hands and shoved it onto his back. Then he shook it off, remembering we weren’t going anywhere, and slammed it down on the ground.
“I told you,” he said in a low voice. “He’s gone. That’s over.”
I fought back the tears and spun away from him. Chase’s acknowledgment of the two separate entities within himself should have made me feel better, but it only made me feel worse. I couldn’t stand being near him any longer. Dawn couldn’t come fast enough.
“Ember, wait,” Chase called. He snagged my arm and held fast. Reluctantly, I turned, but I refused to look up and meet his eyes.
“Look… I know you’re torn up about him. He’s probably fine,” he said, frustrated.
He’s probably fine?
“What do you… who are you talking about?” I thought he’d understood that we were talking about the Chase who cared for me and the Chase who didn’t, but he was referring to someone else entirely. I felt the slow burn of oncoming humiliation.
“The guard from reform school. Isn’t that who you’re talking about?”
“Sean?” I asked, baffled. And then I remembered. Randolph, in the shack, had insinuated that I’d messed around with a guard when Chase had inquired, and then later I’d reinforced that fallacy when I’d asked Chase what would happen to a soldier caught with a resident. With everything that had happened, he remembered that?
I felt only a breath of embarrassment, because immediately after that came my awareness of the insult.
“You think I would have let you kiss me if I was with somebody else?”
“It’s not like you had much of a choice,” he said indignantly.
“I’m not some three-dollar hooker!” I blurted. “I don’t know who you’re used to spending your time with, but—”
“Hold on—”
“You! You kissed me thinking I was with someone else! What kind of person does that make you, huh?”
“Hold on!” he interrupted. I had encroached on his personal space in my anger, and now we were only inches apart. “First, I know you’re not easy; you’re actually the most difficult person I’ve ever met. Second, I never claimed to be a good person. And third, if you weren’t talking about Sean, who the hell were you talking about?”
“That’s…” I stammered. “That’s none of your business,” I said evasively.
“If you’re thinking of another guy while I’m kissing you, I’m pretty sure it is my business,” he said heatedly.
“Not anymore it’s not! Why do you care anyway?”
He straightened, making me look up nearly a foot to see his eyes.
“I don’t.”
“Doesn’t sound like it.”
He kicked the ground. Seconds passed. They felt like hours.
“You’re right. It doesn’t matter,” he said coldly.
My stomach plummeted, but he was right. It was better this way. He was leaving when we got to the safe house, and caring about him only complicated things.
He blew out a long breath, and we both faced the parking lot, stamping our feet impatiently. He attempted to turn on the radio, but it didn’t even hiss; the battery had gotten wet in the rain or had simply died. If he could pick up a local frequency, we might be able to track the MM’s movement. As it was, we were flying blind.
The anxiety settled my temper. The cold numbed my nerves. And when I glanced his way, I was surprised to see that he was already watching me. Just the outline of his face was visible in the moonlight.
“Thanks. For saving my life tonight.”
He didn’t add anything to it, and I didn’t press. Instead I sat, and he sat beside me. I pulled my knees to my chest, tucked the jacket hood over my head, and waited for the dawn.
* * *
CHASE roused me an hour later. He’d placed the sleeping bag around us when I’d drifted off, but he had stayed up to keep watch. I rubbed my eyes, instantly alert.
Though the sun was coming, it was still dark. The crickets had ceased their chirping, giving way to the second shift of outdoor musicians: a woodpecker tapping away and the high train-whistle buzz of some likely enormous insect. When I felt something crawling on my hand, I jumped up in a flurry of unnecessary movement.
There was nothing crawling on my hand. There was, however, a thin gold band around my left ring finger.
“Where did…”
“They were right to think we were thieves,” Chase said, referring to the ranchers.
I thought of how he’d scoped out their house right after we’d arrived, but I didn’t feel even a little bad after what they had done.
“You married me while I was sleeping?” I asked in amazement. The sky was beginning to bruise with the purple haze, and in it, I could see Chase’s face glow a little deeper copper.
“You hit me for kissing you. It seemed in my best interest to marry you while you were passed out.”
A short laugh caught me by surprise. I wondered when I’d last heard Chase make a joke. I supposed that meant we weren’t fighting anymore. I admired the ring. The Loftons had so much, they probably wouldn’t even notice it was gone.
“My mom will be so surprised.”
His head dropped a little.
“It’s just a cover. It’s nothing serious,” he said, with a twinge of annoyance. Apparently the joking was over. I was just about to bite back about him not having to be so rude, when he stiffened and pointed across the lot.
“Look!”
The dawn brought clarity. There, on the semitruck was a tin sign, nailed askew to the metal siding.
ONE WHOLE COUNTRY, ONE WHOLE FAMILY.
“Do you think…” I began, but he knew what I was going to say before I finished. The corners of his mouth had risen deviously.
The carrier had said to look for the sign. I felt certain that this was what he’d meant.
We scanned the parking lot for any signs of danger, and then ran for the semitruck, a hundred yards away. I couldn’t help but think of the last empty parking lot we’d been in, at the sporting goods store, and I felt the hair on the back of my neck rise up. My wary gaze circled our position.
Just as we approached the eighteen-wheeler, a scuffle came from within.
I snapped back against
the metal siding and froze. Though I expected help here, my body was now trained to react. Chase swooped in front of me and removed the baton from his belt. I wished we had the gun and ignored the fleeting awareness that I wouldn’t have thought that two days ago.
It could be an animal. But then we heard the distinct and steady groaning of footfalls on metal.
Chase glanced over his shoulder, making sure I was behind him.
I squatted to look under the truck, past the flattened tires, and saw a person’s legs as they jumped down. Then another, and finally a third, though this one more slowly, waiting for a hand from the other two.
Three of them. Two of us. They must have been sleeping when we arrived. Either that or the truck’s compartment had muted out voices. We wouldn’t be so lucky now. We didn’t know what weapons they had, and it was fifty yards back to the trees. If we made a run for it, they would certainly hear us.
Please let them be friendly.
A moment later, a boy about my age came around the corner—and froze.
He wore an old suit jacket, torn and patched by various fabrics on the stress points, and several layered T-shirts beneath it. His cargo pants were tied on by a length of red twine. He said something we couldn’t hear, and then two girls revealed themselves. One was about his height, wearing a torn long-sleeved thermal. The other was short, with pretty mocha skin and rounded, candy-apple cheeks.
She was at least six months pregnant.
I felt my blood buzzing with the same suspicion these strangers surely felt. They turned their heads to confer with each other quietly. Chase returned the baton to his belt and raised his empty hands in peace. He took a few slow steps forward.
We were twenty feet away, and the trio still had not moved. I saw the male pull back his jacket, revealing a black tire iron tucked into his waistband. My breath caught, but I was somehow relieved that there was neither a gun nor a knife visible. Yet.
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