“That’s what I’m counting on,” said Rick. There was an odd note to his voice. “Why don’t you unload all that meat there and be on your way.”
“Where’s my ammunition?”
Rick sighed. “That’s your problem, Ida. You’re always too eager, and you make these massive buys.” He laughed. “That’s dangerous.”
“I do business with you because you’re an honest man.” Her voice was strong, but I could detect anger beneath the surface.
Rick rocked back on his heels, smiling like a crazy man and looking around. “I used to think so. But times are hard, Ida. I can’t let you just walk away with three hundred rounds. It’s all I got. I have my family to think about.”
“So you were planning on robbing us blind?”
“That’s the general idea.”
“After all the years we’ve known each other.”
“Well, I —”
Rick stopped abruptly, cut off by the wail of sirens in the distance. We all looked down the gravel drive, panicked, and he was the first to refocus.
“Unload that meat. Now!” he yelled.
I shook my head, but Ida was still looking around for the direction of the sirens. We stood there with Rick’s gun trained on me, and I slowly got down from the truck and motioned as if I was going to unload the venison.
But just then, there was a flash of blue light through the trees, and I saw the white PMC cruiser rumbling down the road on the other side of the church. Rick wiped the sweat from his brow and then started backing away toward a pickup truck parked several yards behind us. He fumbled with his keys and started the engine. He peeled out of the gravel on the side of the road and spun around to face the other direction. With a rumble and a spray of gravel, he was gone.
“Get in the truck,” said Ida.
“The other people,” I muttered. “The ammo!”
“It’s not worth it.”
But I was already running toward the church. I burst in the back door and ran down the aisle. “The PMC is here!” I yelled.
The vendors’ eyes widened. It was mass chaos. People grabbed whatever they could carry and ran, shoving each other aside and crowding through the back door. Rick’s guns were still laid out across the pew, and there was a crate full of ammunition lying on the ground. I grabbed it and sprinted back the way I had come just as the front doors of the church burst open.
“Freeze!” yelled the officers. They fired, and I heard the groans of several vendors being shot as they scrambled to pack up their wares.
I didn’t turn around. I didn’t stop. I flew through the snow and jumped into the passenger side of the truck. Ida peeled out of the gravel drive, and we rumbled down the road. She didn’t say anything, but I could feel the anger coming off her.
The sound of more sirens pierced my eardrums. I looked around desperately but didn’t see any other cruisers. Then I looked in the mirror.
Trailing behind us through the snow was a white SUV, its bright blue lights unmistakable.
We pulled onto the highway, and I felt the truck shudder slightly as Ida accelerated. There was a shadow of panic in her eyes. I followed her gaze to the dashboard, where the needle on the fuel gauge was hovered over E. We hadn’t refilled yet, and we wouldn’t have enough gas to make it back to camp.
Our only chance was to lose the cruiser, but it was right on our tail.
“I could shoot out their tires,” I said.
Ida shook her head once. “Their tires are reinforced. Even if you made the shot, it would only waste ammunition.”
Seeing the huge crate filled with boxes of rounds out of the corner of my eye, I understood her true meaning: It would only waste energy. And as soon as we started shooting, they would open fire as well.
Then I felt it: the lurch of the truck as the engine gobbled up the last fumes of gas. The truck slowed abruptly, forcing the cruiser to swerve around us to avoid collision. The SUV spun out, coming to a halt in front of us as we stopped. Two officers in full riot gear jumped out, pointing their guns in our direction.
“Drop your weapons!” yelled the officer. “Drop your weapons, and exit the vehicle slowly.”
My gun was cocked on my lap. Without thinking, I threw open the passenger door and fired.
Miraculously, one of the officers staggered, and I ducked behind the door just as the other returned fire.
“Get down!” I yelled to Ida, and I heard the officer I’d shot collapse onto the pavement.
I crawled back into the truck under the dashboard with Ida, waiting and breathing heavily. My heart was pounding so loudly I couldn’t think.
Another shot punctuated the heavy quiet.
My mind was racing. Now that I had shot an officer, we wouldn’t be taken prisoner. We would be killed on the spot.
Just as I was weighing the risk of shooting again, another shot made contact with the truck — closer this time.
“You hear that?” Ida whispered.
“Yeah.”
“No. All three shots came from the same gun. It’s just one officer shooting.”
The collapsed officer wasn’t returning fire. Maybe I had killed him.
“If we both jump out,” breathed Ida, “he can’t shoot us both without getting shot himself. One of us can get away.”
I nodded. “Okay.”
“One. Two. Three.”
Ida and I jumped out of the truck simultaneously, and I whipped my gun around to point it at the lone PMC officer standing in front of the truck. The other officer lay on the ground completely still, blood seeping from a wound in his chest.
The officer already had his gun pointed at Ida. If I missed, Ida would be killed.
“Drop your weapons,” yelled the officer. The voice was muffled by the heavy helmet, but it was definitely a female’s. I immediately thought of Logan.
It’s not her, I told myself. I tried to clear my head, unsure what to do. I could shoot and kill the officer, and Ida would live, or I could miss the officer, and Ida could die. Or I could surrender, and we would both be killed.
There was only one option I could live with. I took aim and fired.
It all happened so quickly that I had no time to change the plan. In the second it took me to decide, the officer had turned her gun on me and pivoted her body. My shot grazed her hand and ricocheted off the rifle. She cried out, dropping her gun.
I flew forward, tackling her to the ground and kicking her weapon back toward our truck. Her head hit the pavement, knocking her helmet askew.
I recovered first, straddling her body and pointing my gun at her head.
Then two catlike hazel eyes looked up at me with loathing.
I leaned away from her, feeling sick.
No. My eyes had to be playing tricks on me.
But then she spoke, and her horrible voice was one I instantly recognized.
“Didn’t think you had it in you,” Mariah snarled.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
I stared down at Mariah, utterly transfixed. It was definitely her, but she didn’t look the same.
The last time I saw her, she was frighteningly thin with pale, sallow skin and a sickly look about her. Her cat eyes had been feverish and hungry with the look of early-stage infection.
Since then, her stringy bleached-blond hair had faded to a more natural brown, and her sharp features were no longer pinched with sickness. Her face was fuller, healthier, and her eyes were hateful and alert.
“What happened to you?” I asked.
She smirked. “Surprised to see me?”
“Mariah?” Ida came up from behind me. “Is that you?”
My heart sank. Ida didn’t know what had happened in Sector X. She only knew that the rebels had thrown Mariah out during the riots — not that I’d exposed her as a carrier. Until now, I hadn’t known if Mariah had been captured as a carrier, killed as a rebel, or if she simply froze to death in the snow.
“Funny,” Mariah sneered. “You don’t seem quite as surprised.”
I glared down at her. “How are you alive . . . and still human?”
“Wouldn’t you like to know?”
I wanted to shoot her right then. All the hate and loathing I felt for Mariah before came flooding back, but she knew something we didn’t. She should be worse by now — nearly a fully fledged carrier — but instead she looked better.
I glanced back at Ida, whose gun was still trained on Mariah. Mariah’s rifle was far out of reach, but I bent down and grabbed the handcuffs strapped to her white PMC utility belt for good measure.
“Hands,” I demanded.
She held out her wrists, glaring up at me, and I snapped on the handcuffs.
“Haven,” Ida murmured. “What are you planning to do with her? We can’t take a PMC officer back to camp with us.”
I knew she was right, but I couldn’t kill Mariah until I had the answers I needed. If she could survive, maybe Logan could survive, too.
“We have to.”
Mariah smirked, as if she could read my mind. She was smart. She knew that information was her ticket to staying alive.
“I won’t do it, Haven. Taking her puts us all in jeopardy.”
“Please,” I said, lowering my voice to a whisper. “You know why we have to.”
She stared at me for a long moment. “This isn’t us, Haven. We don’t take hostages.”
I locked eyes with Ida, not wanting to plead with her in front of Mariah. If Mariah knew why we needed the information, she would never give it willingly.
Finally I said, “Think of what this could mean . . . for everyone.”
Ida gave me a look of unwilling agreement. “We have to be smart about it.”
“Why would I help you?” spat Mariah. “You’re just going to kill me once you get what you need.”
“Maybe we will . . . maybe we won’t,” I muttered, clambering off Mariah and training my gun on her. “Right now, cooperating seems like your best option.”
I turned to Ida. “We have to get out of here. The other officers won’t be far behind.”
Ida nodded and began fueling the truck with the gasoline we had traded for. It wasn’t very much, but it was enough to get us back to camp.
“Get up.”
With a hateful glare, Mariah struggled to her feet. I removed her utility belt, searching the leather pouch for the handcuff keys. I pocketed them and pushed Mariah toward our truck, bending to grab the dead officer’s rifle.
I tried not to look at the man’s face. I couldn’t think about him now.
We squeezed back into the truck with Mariah in the front seat between us, and I blindfolded her with one of Ida’s kerchiefs. Ida was quiet, but I could feel her anxiety.
“What are you planning to do with her, Haven?” she asked finally. “We could be leading the PMC right back to camp. They’ll be sending out satellite rovers to look for her soon.” Ida nodded at Mariah’s arm.
I yanked up her sleeve, but I couldn’t see the telltale scar where her CID would be.
“Where’s your CID?”
“It’s in there.”
“But you trained with the PMC before you joined the rebellion. You had a CID the whole time?”
“I was deactivated. My scar was so faint no one ever questioned that I was undocumented.”
My head was spinning.
How had I not put it together before? Logan had told me Mariah was PMC, yet I hadn’t thought about what that meant. If she had been a PMC officer before the rebellion, she’d been vaccinated. I should have known the vaccine didn’t always work.
I knew I had to keep Mariah alive to learn how to save Logan, but there was something else — rotten guilt eating away at my insides. With Jared waiting for us back at camp, I couldn’t kill Mariah. I would never be able to look him in the eye again now that I knew she was alive. The first time I had sentenced her to death, it had happened so quickly I could tell myself it was unavoidable. But now I was the judge, the jury, and the executioner.
“Leave us in the woods,” I said to Ida. “Park a few miles from camp at least and then send Amory out to us. He can cut out her CID.”
“Like hell!” snapped Mariah. “I’m not letting that kid do some hack surgery on me!”
“Shut up!” I yelled. “You’ll let us do what we have to do if you ever want to see your brother again.”
“What the hell have you done with my brother?”
“Nothing. He’s fine. He’s at our camp.” I considered for a moment and then came to a decision. “If you cooperate — let us remove your CID and tell us what we need to know — we’ll let you live.”
“I’m not going back to those people who would have let me die in Sector X.”
“We’re not with them anymore.”
“Jared left Rulon?”
I nodded.
She let out a burst of air. “That kid was the only reason we were with him in the first place. Rulon was an idiot and a tyrant.”
Thinking back to what I had seen Mariah and Rulon doing in that house on the road, it struck me as an odd thing to say.
At the time, I’d thought Mariah was manipulating Rulon, but maybe she was just looking out for her and her brother’s interests. Maybe she was just trying to survive. Knowing she had someone else she was protecting gave me new appreciation for Mariah’s cunning and deceit. I knew better than anyone how your loved ones could make you do crazy things. After all, I had just shot a man. I was in no position to be pointing fingers.
Ida pulled down a road I didn’t recognize. She was leading us toward camp from another way. Crunching through the thick blanket of snow at such a slow pace, my mind slowed too, and I was forced to come to terms with what I was about to do.
I was asking Amory to remove Mariah’s CID against her will out in the middle of the woods. It was a risky undertaking even with ideal conditions, but I realized I didn’t care. I could live with killing Mariah; I couldn’t be the one to put Logan down thinking there was something I might have done to save her.
Pulling off the road into the thick tangle of trees, I had the fleeting worry that the truck would get stuck. This path wasn’t well worn like the other trail through the woods, and thick branches kept snapping off in the undercarriage.
Finally we came to a stop.
Ida reached behind the back seat and fished out a bulky men’s coat with a furry collar.
“Put this on her,” she said. “It’s freezing out there, and that uniform doesn’t look very warm.”
I could vouch for that. I draped the coat over Mariah, buttoned it over her crossed, handcuffed arms, and tried to ignore her murderous glare as I pulled off the blindfold.
“Do we have any rope?” I asked.
“You’re going to tie her up?” There was something about Ida’s motherly tone that made me feel terrible about it.
“Just while I build a fire. I’m not about to let her run off.”
Ida sighed and got out to look in the back of the truck. She emerged with a small duffle of supplies and turned to me.
“I’ll send Amory, but if you three aren’t back at camp in four hours, I’m sending out a search party. You don’t want to be out here on your own come nightfall.”
I nodded.
Ida shot me one more disapproving look and climbed back into the truck.
Mariah slid out and staggered off through the snow. We entered a small clearing sheltered by three large pines, and she sat down against a tree. I moved in to tie her up.
“You come any closer, and I’ll claw your eyes out,” she snarled.
“Either you can let me tie you up, or we can sit here in the cold without a fire. Your choice.”
She glared at me, and I took that as assent. I tied her more tightly than I had originally intended; something about being alone in the woods with Mariah — a trained PMC officer like Logan — made me very nervous. I had the feeling she was only cooperating to lull me into a false sense of security, waiting for the opportune moment to attack. Logan would have never let
herself be taken so easily.
I didn’t wander far looking for dry wood to build a fire, and I ended up with a pile much smaller than I would have liked. As I started it, I kept myself facing Mariah, watching her out of the corner of my eye. Even handcuffed and tied to a tree, I didn’t trust her for a second.
Once the fire was crackling, I busied myself with inventorying the supplies Ida had given us: a few bottles of water, a small first aid kit, some deer jerky, and four hard bricks of what looked like homemade granola bars. My stomach growled, and I hoped Amory would hurry. I wasn’t sure how far we were from camp, but that wasn’t what worried me. Being alone with Mariah meant no talking, and in the silence, I was forced to sit with my guilt.
“So which one of your little friends is infected?” she asked finally.
I didn’t say anything. I didn’t want to give her any information she could use to manipulate me.
“Is it your boyfriend Amory?”
I didn’t say anything.
“It’s not your friend from prison, is it?” Mariah stopped for a moment. “It’s Logan!” She let out a short, cold laugh. “Of course it is. She always thinks she can win a fight. Even in basic, she always took on husky girls twice her size . . . got more banged up than she needed to. But she always won. That made her cocky.”
Mariah stopped and sneered at me. “What makes you think I’m going to tell you anything?”
“I don’t know,” I said. It was the truth.
She laughed. “You really don’t know, do you? You have nothing to bargain with! Once you take me back to your camp —”
“I said I’d let you live if you cooperated. I didn’t say how,” I snapped. Now I knew she was trying to get a rise out of me. “Just know that if she dies, you die.” I shuffled over until I was standing right above her. “If you say nothing and she turns full carrier, I’ll make you wish you were dead.”
Mariah smirked. “You’ve changed.”
“I didn’t have a choice.”
I collapsed on the other side of the fire, keeping my rifle trained in her direction. We sat in silence for a long time, and I began to worry about Amory. What if something happened to him on the way here? What if he got lost or ran into a pack of carriers?
Enemy Inside (Defectors Trilogy) Page 20