Broken Trust

by Jill Williamson

  The trank was kicking in. Gotta hide. I found a cluster of ferns and fell beneath them, turned onto my back, reached up and tried to straighten the ferns I’d broken. I fumbled with my lanyard then, pressed my thumbnail into the crack and held it until the edges glowed with red light.

  I let my head fall against the moss. Come and get me, Mr. S.

  I heard the dogs getting closer. Wondered how they’d gotten over the fence. My vision darkened, but at the sound of voices I strained to hold on.

  “I know I hit him.” The muffled voice was unmistakably Tebow’s.

  “GPS says he’s just ahead.” Blondie. I so hated Blondie and his computer right now.

  “That dose won’t keep him down for long,” Tebow said. “Why didn’t you tell me he was practically an adult? I was expecting a scrawny kid.”

  “You didn’t ask me to profile him,” Nick said.

  Nick. I cursed him well and good just before I blacked out.

  ****

  I woke to dog breath.

  A rough tongue lapped my cheek. I jerked, opened my eyes. One of the wolves was standing over me, panting, its clear blue eyes fixed on me. Sure, it looked cute and innocent now, but I bet this thing could get ten kinds of ugly at the snap of its master’s fingers.

  That made me wonder. Was this a wolf or some kind of dog? It sure looked like a wolf, but I didn’t think wolves could be trained.

  I sat up. I’d been lying on the dirt in front of the plane, back at the lake. My hands were tied in front of me with cotton cord, my ankles tied as well. From the ache in my shoulders and the way my back was stinging, I had a feeling they’d dragged me all the way here.

  I wiggled a little until I felt the chains around my neck slide. They hadn’t taken the lanyard or necklace, which meant Mr. S or Kimbal or Prière should be able to track me down.

  That was something.

  What did these people want with me, anyway? They must work for Anya. Was Nick one of them now? Why?

  I had to get away. Anya had practically killed me last summer with her knife, and I really didn’t want her to know I now sported a cross-shaped scar on my chest. I had a feeling she’d take that as proof that I was the guy she’d been looking for and decide to torture me for information I knew nothing about.

  Hey, God. A little help, yeah? I mean, I’ve been good for a long time now. I don’t deserve these lunatics coming back into my life and causing trouble.

  Footsteps scuffed over the dirt. A shadow fell across my legs. I twisted around and looked for its source.

  Nick. He threw something small at the wolf, who lapped it up off the ground with its tongue, then sat down to gnaw on it.

  “Hey, Bestie,” I said to Nick. “Thanks for turning criminal and working with my enemies and all that. It’s a big help, really.”

  “Shut up,” Nick hissed. “You don’t know anything.” Two steps and he stood over me, glanced off in the distance. “They can’t find the key for the plane.”

  I grinned. “Nice.” Must still be in my pocket. At least something had gone my way.

  “If you activated your lanyard, it won’t work,” Nick said. “I gave mine to Pete. He hacked their frequency and changed it.”

  My jaw dropped. “What if something happens and someone else needs help? Like Sam or El McWilly? You think of that before you went cahoots with these creeps?”

  Nick tossed something on the ground beside me. “You better hurry if you’re going to get away.” Then he walked off toward the woods.

  The wolf followed him.

  I glanced at what he’d dropped. Grace’s knife, still in its sheath, and the tin of matches he’d drawn from Kerri’s basket.

  I didn’t understand, but at the moment, I didn’t care. I scooted over far enough to pick up the knife, finagled it out of the sheath, and sawed at the rope around my ankles until it severed. With my wrists bound, cutting the rope there would take longer, and I needed to get away. I fisted the knife in one hand and grabbed the sheath and matches with the other. Moved to my knees. Stood, wobbled.

  Wow. Dizzy.

  I staggered toward the forest. Movement on my left jolted my heart. Nick, leaning against a tree. He looked at me. Jerked his head toward the forest. “I’ll count to ten, then I’m telling them you got away.”

  What the—? I jogged into the woods thinking that Nick needed to make up his mind. Was he friend or foe?

  I’d made it maybe twenty yards when I heard him yell, “Hey! He’s getting away!”

  Mother pus bucket…

  I took off. Running through a mossy forest with one’s hands bound was a precarious act, one I managed quite well, considering. I fell three times, but the third time was only because Grace jumped out of the woods and scared me half to death.

  “I’m sorry!” She fell to her knees beside me and grabbed my arm.

  “Take the knife,” I said. “Cut my hands free.”

  “You got it back?” She took the knife and sliced the ropes so fast that I raised my eyebrows, impressed.

  “Nick gave it to me.” I stood up and rubbed my wrists. “But then he told them I was getting away, so I’m not ready to join his fan club or anything like that. We should keep moving. I’m sure the wolves and their masters won’t be far behind.”

  We were in a small meadow. Beyond, I could see the distant mountains. I headed toward them. We should come to the river soon. I was sure of it.

  Barking in the distance behind us raised the hair on my neck. “We’ve got to run, Grace. We’ve got to reach the river.”

  “We don’t know where it is.”

  “I told you, it runs diagonally across the compound. If we keep heading north or even northwest, we’ll run into it.”

  So we kept going. It crossed my mind how much we’d be hurting for water tonight, but compared to getting abducted by Anya’s thugs, that mattered little.

  The sound of rushing water almost brought tears to my eyes. We shot out into a rocky clearing. The Echo River looked swift and dangerous here. I glanced over my shoulder and saw the wolves bounding through the ferns behind us. I grabbed Grace’s hand and ran into the water.

  It felt like shards of ice stabbing through my legs, nothing like the warmth of the Asian Pacific, and the fast current took me by surprise. Every time I lifted my foot, the river pulled it downstream. The water only came up to my waist, but I still had to fight to keep my direction steady. Grace lost her balance and fell.

  “Spencer!” She clung to my arm with both hands, her face white.

  “I got you. You’re okay.” I pulled her up with one hand, using my other to keep from falling myself. I kept going, taking tentative steps onto uncertain footing.

  Behind us, the wolves emerged onto the rocky bank.

  “Hurry!” Grace yelled.

  I was trying, but I had a feeling that if I went too fast, I’d fall. If I went down, my weight would knock Grace over, and we’d both be swept away.

  Maybe that would be a good thing, though. I really didn’t know. So I continued to slog my way across the river, dragging Grace along. I’d just started to ascend the bank on the other side when Grace screamed.

  A glance over my shoulder. The men had exited the forest, Tebow aiming his gun our way. Once my feet cleared the water, I sprinted for the tree line, which was closer on the northern shore. I still held Grace’s hand, and she kept pace beside me. From the waist down, my clothes clung to me, which made it feel so much colder than it really was. As we dashed into the forest, Tebow’s trank gun slammed out three more rounds. The trees grew closer, and I had to let go of Grace’s hand to vault myself between two trees that had grown across each other, creating a V.

  “Spencer, wait!”

  I turned back and watched Grace clamber through the V. She looked dead tired. Her foot caught and she tripped. Hit the ground face first and gasped.

  “Grace!” I lunged back to her.

  She’d landed on moss and laid her head on it like a pillow. “I don’t feel good.”
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  My gaze flicked to the yellow dart sticking out of the back of her blue sweatshirt. “Oh, figs.”

  Grace closed her eyes and lay still.

  REPORT NUMBER: 22

  REPORT TITLE: I Have a Slumber Party

  SUBMITTED BY: Agent-in-Training Spencer Garmond

  LOCATION: Mission League training compound, Bear Paw Lake Lodge, Alaska, USA

  DATE AND TIME: Saturday, August 4, midday

  I plucked the dart from Grace’s back and tried to help her stand, but she was out. I peeked through the trees at the river. The wolves were romping in the shallows, barking and going nuts. One came out too far and his head slipped beneath the water. The current dragged him a few yards before he managed to swim back to shore.

  Nick and the two men stood on the rocks, ignoring the animals, talking to one another. Clearly they didn’t intend to give chase. Probably didn’t want to get too far away from the plane. I left them there, happy to have gotten away. For now.

  My multiple layers were suddenly obnoxious as they impeded my movement. I heaved Grace over my shoulder and carried her a few yards deeper into the woods. The phrase “X pounds soaking wet” suddenly took on a new meaning. The water that had drenched Grace’s clothes had made her heavier and was getting my dry half wet. I headed downstream, keeping the river in sight but staying far enough back that I hopefully wouldn’t be seen.

  The trank that hit Grace worried me, but there wasn’t anything I could do about it at the moment. It also bothered me that these guys had given up so easily. Why? Did they think they’d have another chance? When? And how had they been tracking me in the first place? My necklace? Was that why they’d given up? Because Blondie could still track me?

  I walked for what felt like an hour but had probably only been ten minutes. I might be built like Hercules, but carrying a sopping wet person is no easy task. I shifted her into my arms and tried to wake her.

  “Grace? Hey.” I shook her a little.

  Nothing.

  That freaked me out, so I laid her down on some moss and checked her vitals as best I could. She was breathing, but that wasn’t good enough to calm my fears. When Beth Watkins had gotten shot with an overdose of tranquilizer meant for me, she’d ended up in the hospital. But I recalled Tebow saying he’d made the darts for a scrawny kid and hoped the dosage wouldn’t be too much for Grace to handle.

  Since the bad guys weren’t on my tail, I decided to try Alpha’s call again. “Heyyy yo! Yo-yo-yo!”

  I listened—held my breath. Come on Alpha team.

  Not a sound.

  I lifted Grace back over my shoulder and forged on. As I walked, I kept tabs on the sun, trying to guess the time. I figured it had to be about noon. I tried to work out how far I had to go to reach the lodge. The compound was thirty square miles, and I wanted a guess on the kitty-cornered distances. Hypotenuse came to mind. Great. And I thought I’d never need algebra in real life.

  The math gave my brain something to focus on, though, which helped the time go by. I figured we probably had at least five or six miles to go, but I wasn’t sure. I remembered Mr. S saying that the average person walks about three miles an hour, but I wasn’t moving very fast. Maybe a half a mile per hour. At that rate, it would take me until midnight to get back to the lodge, and that was without stopping to rest.

  I hated that Alaska didn’t get dark. A setting sun was just about all I had to look forward to in a situation like this. Then I’d have an obvious reason to stop and make camp. As it was, I felt like I had to get Grace help and soon.

  A moan from her changed all that.

  Please, God, please, oh, please let her be okay.

  I stopped and put her down in the moss, crouched beside her and nudged her a bit. “Grace? Hey, you in there? Tumblelina?”

  She smirked and made this sleeping groaning sound like she might grab her pillow, roll over, and put the thing over her head.

  I was so relieved, I fell onto my rear in the cool moss, then lay down until I was flat on my back. The trees were dark against the pale, cloudy sky. Alaskan spruce trees were kind of ugly. Probably how Picasso might draw a Christmas tree, all skinny and stretched and bare. Dark, Army green. Dripping with witch’s hair. They didn’t have cones like the pine trees in Cali but smaller, orangish-brown ones that hung in clusters from the ends of branches.

  I rolled over onto my side, saw one of them on the ground. Reached for it. It was paper-like, much softer than a pinecone. I reached for another and stopped when I saw red beyond it. I pushed to my hands and knees and crawled a few paces to the low bush.

  Cranberries. Kind of greenish red right now. I picked one, popped it in my mouth, and bit down on a horribly bitter taste. I spat it out. “Wowzer!”

  “No good?”

  I looked back and saw Grace sitting up. I was so glad to see her awake. “Sour,” I said. “You okay?”

  “I think so. Tired.”

  I dug out my Ziploc and offered the rest of the water. “Go ahead and drink it. Now that I know you’re okay, I can try and make a dirt basin and boil some, make a fire to help us dry off. I’ve got Nick’s matches, so it’ll be easy.”

  “How’d you get his matches?”

  “He gave them to me with your knife.”

  “Why? And why would he help those guys?”

  Mention of the bad guys brought a rush of despair over me. I shrugged, trying to look brave. “Your guess is as good as mine, but I fully intend to ask him. Once he’s behind bars for aiding and abetting an attempted kidnapping.”

  “Why do they want to kidnap you?”

  “I don’t know, Grace. They probably work for Anya.”

  “That woman from Japan again?”

  “She wasn’t from Japan, she was in Japan looking for me.”

  “But why?”

  “I don’t know. No one will tell me. All I know is they’ve got me and Grandma in some kind of witness protection program. They wanted to move me after Moscow, but I begged to stay because of basketball, so this is all my fault really. I’m stubborn.”

  “Well, that’s true.”

  “Gee, thanks.” But I wondered if I would have been safe if I’d let Prière move me and Grandma somewhere else after Moscow. No point thinking like that, though.

  “I hear the water,” she said, her brows sinking low over her eyes. “Where are we?”

  “North of the Echo River. Been following it south for a while. I figure we have another five or six miles before we reach the lodge.”

  She twisted her lips like she was fighting a grin. “You carried me?”

  For some reason, this embarrassed me. “Well, I couldn’t just leave you. We can’t win without the whole team.”

  “Oh, right. Go team Alpha.” She yawned, which was kind of adorable. “We should probably get moving. The sooner we get back to Mr. S, the better.”

  Couldn’t argue there. We continued on, going a lot faster now that I didn’t have to carry Grace. The terrain was still a challenge. We weren’t making it back today.

  We walked for several hours. I felt on edge, jumping at every sound that didn’t come from us. Creepy guys were in this forest, hunting me. It was the Slender Man come to life.

  I tried to figure the time from the sun again, and guessed it might be close to dinner time. My clothes hadn’t dried all that much. The sun had been hiding behind clouds all day, but at least it hadn’t rained again.

  “I’m hungry,” Grace said.

  I supposed we’d need to make camp for the night. “We could try to catch a fish, though I’ve never been very good at it.”

  “We can use my scarf.” She unzipped her coat and pulled a thin and crumpled multi-colored length of gauze from around her neck. She shook it out and, like an accordion, it bounced down to the ground, then back up again. It must have been a yard across and two yards long.

  “What is that thing?” I asked.

  “I made it. Ironed it for a really long time to make the creases. It’s cute, huh?”
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  Cute? “I can’t believe Kerri let you keep that. It’s practically a net.”

  “It’s a scarf.” She grinned. “Help me find a place to tie it?”

  “The river is too wide for it to stretch across,” I said. “Let’s tie it to some sticks. And we should probably get a fire going too.”

  “Won’t those guys see the smoke and find us?”

  “I’ll build a Dakota fire pit.” We’d leaned how at the friction fire class. Digging that pit was the one thing I’d managed to do well.

  Grace looked skeptical. “What if they fly over in their plane and see us?”

  I fished the key out of my pocket and held it up. “I took this from their plane, so I don’t think they’ll be flying anywhere.”

  That seemed to pacify her, and we set to work. Grace looked for wood and sticks, while I dug the pit and the air vent. It took some time, but once I got it going pretty good, Grace and I went to work on the net.

  It took longer than it probably should have to find the right two sticks. I wanted them strong enough not to snap under pressure. I ended up cutting the tops off two dead trees that had fallen, then stripping off all the dead branches.

  I was so glad to have the knife.

  Our finished sticks were about four feet long. We stretched out the scarf and used our shoelaces to tie each end around the sticks. I filled a pair of wet socks with rocks and tied them to the bottom of the net as weights.

  Once we’d finished, I stripped off several layers and hung my wet clothes in a tree to dry. We both took off our shoes and socks, then went fishing.

  It took some practice to hold the net just right, keeping it tight and low enough that fish couldn’t slip underneath.

  When we first pulled it onto the bank, I studied the sopping mass of colored string. “Nothing.”

  “No, we got one!” Grace pointed to what I thought was one of my sock weights. Until I saw it hop.

  A very little one. It was gray and had a big fin on the top.

  “That’s an arctic grayling,” Grace said. “There’s a fish poster framed in our cabin.”