“Emma?” Scout said, interrupting my thoughts. “Do we need any of this?” He held up two metal boxes. One was labeled “Universal Kit,” and the other said “Locksmith Certifications.”
“I don’t think so, but let me see.” I climbed into the van and examined the first box, opening it to see various metal rings holding bulky, odd-looking keys, along with directions for faking being a locksmith. The other box contained a stack of certificates that looked like diplomas. I was glad to see that Janette Henderson was included in the stack, and that she had completed the training and classes necessary to be considered a master locksmith. I felt oddly proud of my alter ego. “Let’s just leave this here for now,” I said, shutting both boxes.
I rifled through another stack of boxes, noting that we were also equipped to impersonate dog groomers and a catering service, neither of which came with a fun prop like the plastic bug belonging to the exterminator business.
“What about this?” Scout asked, holding up a large glass jug with a screw-on top.
I took a look. It was about the size of a gallon of milk, but shaped like a wine jug. The kind that usually held cheap wine, judging from the beverages served at my Uncle Kevin’s family get-togethers. The liquid inside this particular jug was clear. I was pretty sure I knew what it was, but I unscrewed the lid and took a sniff. It was so strong, it burned my nostrils.
“This, my friend, is what you call moonshine. Where did you find it?”
He gestured to a milk crate sitting off to one side. I peered inside to see red plastic cups stacked in the corner of the container. Scout said, “There was a cloth covering it up.”
“I bet there was. They didn’t want anyone to see it.” I grabbed two cups and poured us each a small amount. “This might be our only chance to try moonshine ever.” I handed a cup to him and said, “Cheers.”
Scout put it up to his mouth and stopped, his nose wrinkled in distaste. “I must drink this?”
“You don’t have to drink it,” I said. “But I’m going to try it.” I took a small sip and, immediately, the overpowering taste made me want to spit it out, but I didn’t. Man, it was strong, and not in a good way. The roof of my mouth burned and my eyes went bigger than they ever had before. “Whoa,” I said. “It would take a lot to get used to drinking that.”
Scout put the cup up to his mouth and his expression changed to horror as he took a sip and coughed slightly, putting his fist up to his mouth. “Why would you want to get used to drinking it?”
“People like the feeling they get from the alcohol,” I said. “When you drink enough of it, you get drunk, and it makes the world seem like a better place.” I added. “Most of the time.”
“Why don’t the people just make the world a better place and then they wouldn’t need to get drunk?”
He had a point. “I don’t know,” I admitted.
“Emma? Don’t you think we should be doing something?” He looked out of the open van doors. A slight breeze brought the scent of fir trees. “They could find us here. They want to catch us. And they were thinking terrible things. They want to kill you.”
“What?”
“They want to kill you.” Seeing my shocked expression, he clarified. “To make you dead.”
I sucked in a sharp breath. “I understood what you said, I just don’t get it. Why would they want me dead?” But even as I said the words, it came to me. Scout was the alien, the one they wanted to capture and study. I was the witness, the one who could tell the world what had happened. They wanted me dead because dead girls can’t talk. I held up a hand and said, “Wait. You don’t need to answer that. Just tell me, what exactly were they thinking about killing me?”
“That it would have to look like an accident,” he said miserably. “A car accident that created a fire explosion. They can do that. And then, they would tell Lucas’s parents that he died too, and they would keep me.”
“But they’d have to give his parents a body . . .”
He shook his head. “Not this body. One that is burned so you cannot tell who it is.”
“But how did they know who we were to begin with?”
“The agents called Dr. Kessler today and he has been waiting for us,” he said.
A shiver of fear went up my spine. “Oh.”
I scrambled out of the van as a sudden wave of nausea hit me. I was four steps away when the contents of my stomach heaved out and onto the ground. I hadn’t thrown up since middle school and I’d forgotten how nasty it was: the bile in the back of my throat, the burning in my nose. I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand, thinking I was done, but then another surge hit. This time it wasn’t so bad and when it was done, it felt more final. I felt a little better.
I wiped my lips and turned around, smacking right into Scout, who wrapped his arms around me, holding me in a gentle hug. I leaned against him, burying my face in his chest. He patted my head and made the kind of reassuring, shushing noise Lucas would have made, but it didn’t help. Every second counted, and we should be on the move, but I was paralyzed with fear. I knew that our best bet was to get as far away as possible, but they’d be looking for us on the road and I wasn’t convinced that changing the van’s appearance was enough. If we were stopped, that would be it. No escaping. It would be certain death for me and imprisonment for Scout. But staying here wasn’t the answer either.
We couldn’t stay, but we couldn’t go. I understood now why animals caught in steel traps sometimes chewed off their own legs.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
“I’m sorry,” I said, pulling away from Scout. “I must smell awful.” I smoothed back my hair and leaned over to spit on the ground.
“It is a bad smell,” he said agreeably. “But I do not mind.” He tilted his head to one side and gave me an intense look. “You were thinking we must leave here, but you are afraid to go?”
“That’s exactly right,” I said, walking to the front of the van to get my bottle of water out of the front seat. I handed it to Scout, who took a sip and handed it back. I took a swig, gargled, and spit it out. It was a beautiful, sunny summer day in northern Wisconsin, the kind we wait for all winter long. Most of the residents in the state were enjoying the sunshine while I was thinking I was as good as dead.
Scout had followed me and was watching. “So we should hide.” Like that was an obvious conclusion.
I took another sip of water, swallowing this time. My stomach gratefully received it. I put the cap on the bottle and shook my head. “There’s nowhere to hide. I think our best bet is to wait here until dark and try to leave on the back roads. With the van disguised, there’s a chance we might get away.”
He shook his head. “They will have the expressway roads blocked. They will not let us get away this time.”
“Well then, I’ve got nothing.”
“We should not go back. They will find me at the Walkers’ house and they will go to your house too.”
“Yes, but we’ll be safer with other people around,” I argued, even as I wasn’t entirely sure that was true. “My mom wouldn’t let them take me.” Not if she could help it. That much I knew.
“But if we leave, we will never know how to get the signals to my planet.” His voice was tinged with desperation and I could see the agony in his eyes.
“But staying here isn’t going to help us get signals to your planet either. Obviously, Erickson Ryder isn’t going to help us.” I heard the anguish in his voice and understood. He was a lost boy trying to get home and I should have been comforting him, but all I could think was that getting signals to his planet was now the least of my worries. “I give up then,” I admitted, throwing up my hands. “I don’t have a plan or a phone.”
“It is better to be moving than be found sitting,” he said. “We are going now, Emma. Give me the keys. I will drive.” He held out his hand, palm up.
“You seriously think I’m going to give you the keys? You’ve never driven before.”
“I have watched. It doe
s not appear difficult,” he said, his voice completely confident.
“You don’t have a license,” I said.
He raised one eyebrow, something I’d never seen Lucas do. “The keys, please.”
“Okay, have it your way.” I fished the keys out of my pocket and dropped them into his hand. This was going to be interesting. “Do you have any idea where you’re going?”
“I have an idea,” he said, slamming the back doors.
Once inside the van, I watched as Scout expertly adjusted the mirrors before putting on his seat belt. As it turned out, he had been paying attention. I clicked on my own seat belt and watched as he started up the engine and put the van into reverse, slowly backing out between the rows of fir trees to the wide driveway before going forward. When he approached the road, he looked both ways before turning the wheel hand over hand to the right. “Pretty good, huh?” he said, sneaking a glance in my direction.
“Not bad,” I admitted. “So where are we going?”
“There is a big lake north of here. Some of the houses on the lake will be empty right now. We will go there and hide until we have a better plan.”
“How do you know about the houses on the lake?”
“Eric and I discovered this on the computer. It seems silly, but some people here have two houses and only go to the house on the lake for the weekend.”
I nodded. “Oh yeah. Lake cottages. Sometimes they rent them out too.”
“You know about this?” he asked, surprised. We were the only vehicle on this country highway and he whipped the van around a turn with amazing precision.
Too wild and too fast, I thought. “Hey, take it easy,” I said. But before I could tell him to slow down, a minivan pulled out of a driveway ahead of us and stopped in the middle of the road, blocking our path. “Stop!” I yelled, but Scout had other ideas. He veered wildly into the left lane, almost going into the ditch, before careening back onto the road, accelerating as we went. My heart leapt into my throat and I was glad there was nothing left in my stomach or I probably would have thrown up again. “What do you think you’re doing?”
He didn’t answer, but gripped the steering wheel harder, his eyes darting to the rearview mirror and then back to the road. When I turned, I saw what he’d seen—the minivan was following close behind us, two men in the front seat, one of them holding a gun aimed straight at us. Frantically, I said, “Faster. They’re gaining on us.”
Scout pressed the accelerator down and the engine roared. The trees on either side of the road were a soft blur now and still we weren’t going fast enough. They were getting closer by the second and I found myself slouching down to make myself less of a target. Scout, however, didn’t seem to know enough to duck down. His posture was perfect. I glanced back to see the man on the passenger side had opened his window and had a gun aimed right at us. “He’s got a gun!” I screamed.
“We have one too,” Scout said, shrugging.
I leaned down and found the handgun on the floor. I held it on my lap with a shaking hand. When I’d used it back at Erickson Ryder, it was only because I was trying to break through a locked door. I didn’t want to die today, but I also didn’t know if I could kill a person.
A man’s voice blared through a loudspeaker from behind us. “Pull over. No one will be hurt. Just stop the vehicle. We need to talk to you.”
“What do you think?” I asked.
Scout slowed. “It is a lie,” he said. “They will hurt you if they have a chance.”
“Stop the van and put down any weapons,” the voice blasted over the loudspeaker. “No one will be harmed. We just need to talk to you.”
“That is not true,” Scout said, easing his foot off the gas and braking gently.
“Then why are we stopping?” I asked as the van slowed to a halt. We were at a standstill now, stopped in the middle of the road. I craned my neck to look back, only to see the two men getting out of the minivan, both with guns drawn. From the back of the vehicle, more men poured out, all of them dressed in office attire as if they were going to a convention. I opened my mouth to yell, but Scout had already stepped on the gas and was speeding down the road. Behind us came the loud crack of gunfire. The vehicle lurched like it’d been hit and Scout spun the wheel, zigzagging back and forth. I flinched, expecting the worst.
“Do not worry, Emma,” Scout said. “Roy said the windows have bulletproof glass.”
We barreled down the highway, but I knew they’d catch up and be on our butt in no time at all. I looked back a few seconds later and sure enough, they’d gotten back into the van and were now in hot pursuit behind us. Scout’s trick had gained us some distance, but there was no way this could end well, I thought. The windows might be bulletproof, but it was a safe bet the tires weren’t.
“I have a really bad feeling about this,” I said. “Maybe we should turn ourselves in to the police and take our chances.”
“No,” he said, shaking his head and continuing to drive like a maniac.
Scout ignored the stop sign at an intersection ahead, narrowly missing a silver SUV crossing from the other direction. The van behind us was forced to slow down for the other car, but only for a moment and then they were back on our tail. As we hurtled down the road, I didn’t know where to look, so I wound up craning my head back and forth from the road ahead to the van in back. They had given up on the loudspeaker, but the metallic rain of bullets grazing the van showed they meant business. “If they hit the tires, we’re screwed,” I said.
“They are not aiming for the tires,” he said. “They do not want an accident where I might be killed. They only want you dead.”
“Oh.” My stomach squeezed tight with the realization that today was the day I was going to die. I wished I had left my mom a note explaining everything that had happened and telling her I loved her. But I hadn’t even thought to because I had assumed everything would work out fine. Why had I been so stupid? “Do you think they’re federal agents?”
He shook his head. “They are just from Erickson Ryder. They do not want the federal agents to know what they’ve done.”
“And what have they done?”
“They want to be the first ones to make contact with other planets, so they have broken the rules. If the federal agents find out what they’ve done, they will be shut down and sent to jail.” A grim expression came over Scout’s face as he drove erratically around a bend and past a picture-perfect farmhouse accompanied by a red barn and fields that stretched on forever.
“What’s your plan?” I asked. “You have a plan, right? You know where you’re going?”
“Yes,” he said.
I glanced back again, alarmed at what I saw. “There’s another one!” A second car, a white sedan, was in the left lane, and the two vehicles were driving side by side right behind us. He slowed, which was not the reaction I was going for. “Go faster, they’re gaining on us.”
“Do not worry, Emma,” he said. “I will take care of this.” We rounded a slight curve and, when the road straightened, he reached down to the bottom of the dashboard and pushed a knob I hadn’t noticed before. I heard a gush of liquid pouring out behind us and looked in my side-view mirror to see a trail of something dark spilling out of the back of the van. “It is a kind of oil,” Scout said, answering my question. “Roy said it was only for emergencies.”
The two cars behind us skidded on the oil, the minivan sliding almost gracefully to one side, the sedan careening into it and bouncing off into the ditch. Scout turned another knob on the dashboard and pushed hard. “What’s that?” I asked, my head swiveling to see. Behind us, a wall of thick, black smoke filled the air, making it impossible to see the vehicles. Oh no, what did he do?
I waited for the boom I knew must follow oil and smoke. There had to be a fire somewhere in there, and when it reached the vehicles, they’d explode. I tensed, ready for it, but it never came.
“They will not blow up. It is only smoke to provide a screen,” Scout said, readi
ng my mind again.
“But they’ll still find us,” I said. “They won’t give up.”
“Maybe,” he said. “But we won’t give up either.”
“You seem different,” I said, studying his face. “Just now. What happened?”
“I had to change,” he said with a sigh. “I did not want to be like your people. I did not think I could be. But I want you to live.”
“Oh,” I said, touched by the confession that Scout had gone against his very nature to keep me safe. I knew he wasn’t Lucas, but the love I felt at that moment was every bit as strong. Was it possible to love two guys at once, but in completely different ways?
“You know,” he said. “The outlaw in the movie said that when things get bad and it looks like you’re reaching the end of your rope, then you have to get mean. Really mean. Mean as a rabid dog.” He repositioned his hands on the steering wheel. “I did not think I could get that mean, but it is not as hard as I had thought.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
He had not lied to Emma when he told her Lucas was present deep down underneath, the equivalent of sleeping, but that wasn’t entirely true either, because recently Scout had felt a change. Lucas was stirring, making his wishes known. It happened in bits and pieces. When Emma was paralyzed with fear, Lucas pushed for Scout to console her. It was Lucas who’d had the idea to stop in the road and then take off when the men got out of the minivan. The idea to release the oil? That was Lucas too. He’d apparently heard all of Roy’s instructions, even the ones that had gone over Scout’s head.
Scout was glad to get the help, but he knew the truth. Lucas wasn’t just trying to be helpful. He wanted his life back.
CHAPTER THIRTY
We kept to the back roads and didn’t encounter anything out of the ordinary for the next ten minutes, but every time we passed a house or another car, I was sure that something bad was going to happen. Scout stayed on a northward course, reasoning that we were bound to hit the lake sooner or later. I looked at Scout, driving as confidently as if he’d been doing it for years. Only a few hours before, he’d been waving like a child to other drivers. My baby boy had grown up before my eyes.
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