by Tarah Benner
The vehicle rolled forward, stopping several times on the way out of the facility. Strange noises reverberated in the tunnel around them, and soon Lark felt sunshine beating through the window. They had exited the facility.
The agents drove for nearly an hour before they allowed Lark to remove her blindfold. When she did, she saw that the sun was beginning to creep up over the horizon, casting a misty silver glow over the empty highway. They were headed south.
Lark’s big toe was still throbbing in her boot. Her nail had been replaced with the microchip disguised as a toenail, but she worried that the swelling underneath might tip off whoever processed her back at San Judas.
Rosenberg had shown her how to activate the homing beacon. It seemed simple enough, but Lark desperately hoped that they’d tested it first. It was her lifeline, and she needed it to work.
With the secret laser hidden in one shoe, the homing beacon in the other, and her new bionic body part, Lark felt like a suicide bomber trying to sneak through airport security with explosives strapped to her chest. It couldn’t possibly work, and yet the Department of Homeland Security seemed confident that it would.
Of course, they weren’t the ones who’d be forced to spend an eternity behind bars if they were caught, but Lark had to believe them. She didn’t have any other choice.
They drove for hours in the big brown van. Lark kept looking for road signs to gauge where they were, but her mental map had a big blank spot where the secret government bunker had been.
They passed a sign that said “Leaving Colorful Colorado,” and her heart leapt into her throat. They’d been keeping her somewhere in Colorado — that she knew for sure.
She racked her brain to think where the bunker might have been, but there were a million possible locations: Peterson Air Force Base, Fort Carson, Schriever Air Force Base . . . The list went on and on.
After three or four hours, Agent Reuben took the exit for Costilla, New Mexico, and pulled off the highway. Costilla was a border town that Lark had driven through once or twice in her life, but she couldn’t recall anything memorable about it.
No more than a few hundred people lived there, and the town looked even more desolate than she remembered. The street was lined with run-down single-story homes that looked as though they’d sat abandoned for months. Lark could see mountains in the distance.
Reuben turned onto a bumpy dirt road hemmed in by cattle fencing, and they drove up to a small adobe building with a U.S. Postal Service sign hanging in the window. An SUV was parked along the side of the road — a shiny black Tahoe that looked extremely out of place in the rusty, dusty town.
Lark’s stomach churned. The windows were tinted, preventing her from seeing inside, but she knew that there had to be at least two guards from San Judas waiting for them to arrive.
“All right,” said Reuben. “It’s showtime.”
Lark swallowed. This was it — her last chance to back out and return to the bunker. No matter how many times she went through the plan in her head, she couldn’t deny that there was at least a moderate chance that she’d get caught and be forced to spend her life behind bars.
If she tipped off the people at San Judas, they would never let her out of their sight. She’d never have a chance to complete the mission, and she’d never see Soren or Axel again. But if she succeeded, they could all walk away.
Before she could second-guess herself, Lark straightened up and allowed Agent Cole to drag her out of the vehicle. The chains shackling her hands to her feet made the simple motion of standing and walking nearly impossible, and she half fell into Cole’s waiting arms.
He righted her with an awkward grunt, but she caught a flicker of encouragement in his gaze. He wouldn’t have set her up. It was in his best interest that she succeed. They needed those crops. The evidence against GreenSeed was just icing on the cake.
“You guys misplace something?” Reuben called in a gloating voice.
Lark looked around. Two men in ugly tan polos and bulletproof vests were getting out of the SUV. They were wearing identical pairs of black wraparound sunglasses, and each was toting a gun at his hip.
“Is that Lark Roland?” asked the taller, buffer guard.
“Sure is,” said Reuben, still talking in that smug, annoying voice as Cole bent down to unshackle Lark’s ankles.
“We collared her down near Roswell,” boasted Reuben. “She and her friends were sleeping in some fuckin’ trailer on the side of the road. We brought a team out to do the extraction, but they got spooked and opened fire. My guys had to put them down. Park nearly got away, but we put a bullet through his brain.”
“Hensley and Kapoor?”
“Yep. No need to thank us . . . I saved you all a lot of paperwork.”
Lark knew Reuben was putting on an act to sell her story, but her blood began to boil as Agent Cole fitted zip ties onto her wrists in place of the Homeland Security shackles.
“You destroyed three valuable assets,” said the shorter guard. He sounded genuinely pissed off.
Lark clenched and unclenched her fists. After everything she’d been through, she wasn’t sure that she could take this. Every fiber of her being was screaming to deck the guy and make a run for it, but her wrists were still bound, and she was up against four officers.
“Maybe if you all kept better track of your ‘assets,’ this wouldn’t have happened.”
“That’s not your concern, now is it?” said the taller guard.
“Bullshit,” said Reuben. “You made it our concern when you allowed six dangerous felons to escape your custody. What kind of fuckin’ Mickey Mouse prison are you running?”
“We experienced a prolonged power outage that compromised our equipment,” said the shorter guard. “Hensley found a way to exploit that kink in our system and led the rest of them out of there.”
“That’s not what I heard,” said Reuben with a smirk. “I heard that after that little security snafu, two more prisoners escaped from your infirmary. Is that true?”
Neither guard said a word. Lark knew they were probably still chafed that Bernie and Portia had escaped from right under their noses.
“You’re welcome,” called Reuben, turning on his heel and climbing back into the van.
Cole gave Lark’s wrist a quick squeeze as he steered her toward the guards. The taller one scoffed but moved to grab Lark by the arm. He dug his fingers into her skin and tugged, nearly wrenching Lark’s shoulder out of joint.
“Easy,” said Cole, stepping up and meeting the guard’s gaze dead-on.
Now that Lark was right in front of him, she saw that his name was K. Lloyd. K. Lloyd’s scowl deepened, but he was slightly less rough with Lark as he steered her toward the Tahoe.
“Any word on Mitchell and Wong?” Cole asked the shorter guard as they loaded Lark into the SUV. Lark had the feeling that he was sticking around to make sure they didn’t manhandle her too much.
“Come on, Cole,” Reuben called. “We can’t do their jobs for them all the time.” He let out a cocky chuckle and checked his reflection in the rearview mirror. “Don’t you worry, now . . . I’m sure those girls’ll turn up.”
Reuben was still laughing to himself as Cole turned and walked around to the passenger side.
Lark tried not to stare. She just set her jaw and allowed K. Lloyd’s hands to glide over her hips as he buckled her behind the cage that separated the back seat from the front. He tugged on her zip ties to make sure they were secure, slammed the door, and walked around to the driver’s side.
As they pulled away, Lark watched the brown van disappear from view, hoping that she wasn’t making the biggest mistake of her life. Had she been foolish to put her trust in Agent Cole? It certainly seemed that way. She was out of their hands, and her ability to secure what the department needed was the only thing standing between her and a lifetime behind bars.
K. Lloyd and his sidekick didn’t say a word to her as they drove south toward Arroyo Verde. The two of them fe
ll into a stilted conversation of low grunts and grumbles, and Lark quickly lost interest.
As they drew closer to the mountains, the rugged desert transformed into a lush woodsy landscape. They had to drive through Carson National Forest to reach Arroyo Verde — a route Lark already knew was spectacular. Trees sprung up along the side of the highway, and her heart beat a little faster.
Under normal circumstances, she’d be thrilled to be traveling this way. She loved the high desert, but she loved the mountains more. This was where she belonged — not in San Judas.
They cut around Taos with its cerulean skies and wide-open spaces before approaching the beautiful rugged hills of Pilar. To Lark’s delight, one of the guards rolled down a window, and she caught a whiff of fresh mountain sage blowing in the wind. She closed her eyes and breathed deeply, trying to imagine that she was there without the surly guards.
But then the agent rolled up the window, and all of Lark’s happy thoughts evaporated at once. She caught a glimpse of a sign sticking up along the side of the road warning drivers not to stop for hitchhikers. They had to be getting close.
Fifteen minutes later, the adobe wall around San Judas came into view. It was tall and imposing and seemed to slice the landscape in half. It loomed in her periphery as they sped down the road, and the first signs for San Judas Correctional Community appeared.
An unnaturally green square of grass loomed up ahead amidst a sea of brown, and the administrative campus came into view. The SUV cruised past a large sandstone building, and Lark focused on memorizing every detail she could: exit doors, gates, security cameras, and the vehicles parked outside.
They crawled around the circle drive and turned down a narrow one-way leading to the smaller intake building. K. Lloyd stopped the vehicle, killed the engine, and strode around to pull Lark out of the back.
She recognized the long concrete sidewalk leading up to the building. It was the same path she had walked up to intake five years before.
The shorter guard joined K. Lloyd on Lark’s other side, and together they marched her toward the door. The guard swiped his key card to let them inside, and Lark focused on the thin blue line trailing down the hallway.
They ushered her through another set of doors and led her to a small room that was empty except for a flimsy folding table. A female guard was standing inside, wearing latex gloves and a look that could kill. The woman cut the zip ties binding Lark’s wrists, and Lark rubbed the tender skin that had been rubbed raw by the plastic.
At first Lark thought she was being strip-searched, but instead the woman told Lark to hold out her arms and ran a handheld metal detector along each of her limbs. Lark held her breath as the wand drew close to her foot, but nothing beeped or flashed at all.
The woman proceeded to pat Lark down, taking extra time around the side of her boobs and the inside of her thighs. She told Lark to open her mouth and stick out her tongue, checking for razorblades and other contraband. She felt Lark’s scalp and shook out her hair before declaring that she was clean.
After Lark’s screening, the guards led her out of the room and back down the hallway toward the door they had come from. They marched her back to the SUV but didn’t answer Lark when she asked where they were going.
They drove her around to the main administrative building, which was wildly different from the dingy, bleach-doused intake building she’d just visited. Large modern-art pieces made out of scrap metal hung on the walls, and futuristic chairs were situated around the lobby beside sweeping ceiling-to-floor windows.
The guards led Lark off to the right and down a long hallway flanked with shiny birch doors. These rooms all seemed to be offices, and Lark recognized her surroundings from the time they’d broken into the building to steal the keys to their getaway vehicle.
They wound around the polished hallway for what felt like forever. When they finally came to a halt, they were standing outside a room with a plaque labeled “A. Stein.” K. Lloyd knocked twice, and a cool female voice answered.
The guard pushed the door wide open, and Lark found herself standing in a clean, modern office with windows that reached the ceiling. An enormous desk was situated at the far end of the room, and behind it stood a woman dressed in a crisp white blouse and a knee-length skirt.
She was standing with her back to them looking out the window, but Lark could see that her dark waves were lopped off in a stylish bob.
At the sound of the door, she turned to face them, and her eyes narrowed when they latched on to Lark.
“Lark Roland,” she said in a soft, creamy voice. “So nice to finally meet you.”
thirteen
Lark
Lark stared at the woman. “Who are you?”
“My name is Annalisa Stein, chief operating officer at GreenSeed International.” She gestured to a chair in front of her enormous desk. “Please, sit.”
Lark didn’t sit. She didn’t trust Annalisa Stein. A dozen questions had just fired off in her mind. What did the COO of GreenSeed want with her? What was some fancy executive doing in the same room as a convicted felon — and a murderer at that? K. Lloyd and the shorter guard were still standing awkwardly behind her, but it seemed unorthodox to say the least.
“I’m sure you’re wondering why you are here,” said Annalisa, walking around her desk to get a closer look at Lark.
“Not really.”
“No?”
In truth, Lark was dying to know, but she refused to play along.
“Hmm. That doesn’t fit with your profile,” said Annalisa. “You’re a questioner by nature, aren’t you? Open to possibilities?”
Her tone was soft and friendly, bordering on flirtatious. Was this how Annalisa got things done? By wooing her opponent into submission? Somehow Lark didn’t think so. Underneath that soft feminine exterior, Annalisa’s eyes were dark and predatory. She was a shark in disguise.
“After slipping through our security system and being out in the world for days, you’re not wondering why you haven’t been transferred to max?” asked Annalisa, crossing her arms over her chest and taking a few steps toward Lark.
“Probably because most of the prisons have closed,” said Lark quietly. “You know, since the country has collapsed and all.”
Annalisa’s eyes narrowed. “You’re a sharp one.”
There was a long moment of silence, and each of them had a chance to study the other up close. Lark couldn’t help noticing that Annalisa was very pretty. She had light mocha skin and features that hinted at Middle-Eastern descent. Her almond-shaped eyes were stunningly large — almost like a doll’s — while the rest of her features were small and delicate.
“You really should sit,” said Annalisa, pulling out her white leather executive’s chair and situating herself delicately on the edge.
“I’m fine,” said Lark. She didn’t like the idea of sitting down while the guards behind her were on their feet.
But Annalisa continued to stare at her, so Lark sat. Annalisa rolled her chair closer to the desk, rested an elbow on the surface, and propped her chin on her knuckles. “So . . . what happened?”
“We left,” said Lark.
“Yes, I know. I had my staff reconstruct your escape step by step. We already know how you did it. We just want to know what happened afterward.”
Lark studied the desk, her mind spinning. Something about Annalisa’s soft, pseudo-friendly tone was disconcerting. She wasn’t like the brusque Homeland Security agents who’d blundered around with their threats and machismo. It had been much easier to freeze them out. Annalisa was as sharp as a tack, and she made Lark feel strangely off-balance.
“We drove for a few hours,” said Lark. “Soren was in charge . . . He wouldn’t even tell me where we were going.” Lark’s throat stuck a little at the mention of Soren, but she continued. “I think Axel was in on his plan, but Simjay wasn’t.”
“Why not?”
Lark shrugged, working to keep her voice soft and meek. “I think Sore
n just wanted to stay in control.”
“Did you know Soren before you came to San Judas?”
“No. We met on the inside.”
“How?”
Lark hesitated. She and the Homeland Security agents hadn’t rehearsed this part. She supposed it was reasonable for Annalisa to wonder how she and Soren had become coconspirators, but she hadn’t expected Annalisa’s line of questioning to delve into the personal.
“One day I was down by the river,” said Lark slowly. “I noticed someone watching me.”
“And that was Soren?”
Lark nodded. “He said he’d been watching me for a while.”
“And why was that?”
Lark’s insides constricted. She didn’t feel like telling Annalisa the truth. Those early moments with Soren were special to her, and sharing the details with an enemy made her feel sick.
“He said he liked the way I looked,” she lied, painfully aware of the guards listening behind her. “He said he was lonely . . . that it had been years since he’d seen a woman.”
“He made you feel special,” said Annalisa.
Lark shrugged. “I guess.” Her skin was crawling. She was making Soren out to be a controlling womanizer and painting herself as the sad, naïve girl desperate for attention. But Lark knew that she couldn’t make Soren look too great because of what she had to tell Annalisa next.
“Did you and Soren ever have . . . relations while you were imprisoned?”
One of the guards behind her made a noise that sounded like a snicker, but Annalisa silenced him with a glare.
Lark shook her head. “He said we would be together soon. But he needed something first . . .”
“The pitchfork?”
Lark froze, her heart pounding hard in her chest. “How did you know about that?”