by Kyla Stone
But today, she was focused on another project. In painstaking detail, she’d drawn the hand figures for the alphabet in American Sign Language.
She wanted to share it with Dakota at their next supervised visit. Her sister didn’t seem too interested in taking the class Mrs. Simpson had suggested, but maybe the visual pictures could help her get it.
Eden was a visual learner. Maybe Dakota was, too. Though at their last scheduled visit, Dakota told Eden she didn’t need to learn sign language.
“We know how to communicate just fine,” Dakota had huffed. “You can hear me, and I know exactly what you’re thinking just by looking at you. And if I don’t, that’s what your pad is for. It’s worked just fine so far.”
Dakota could be stubborn sometimes.
Eden sighed, finished sketching the spread pinkie and thumb of “Y”, and gave the fingernails a sparkly plum-purple flourish.
The grandfather clock in the den dinged. The stainless-steel refrigerator whirred quietly. The walls creaked as the foundation settled. The big house made too many noises when she was alone.
Eden could hear just fine. It was speech that eluded her—that had eluded her since that day almost three years ago, her words stolen from her with the stab of a knife as swiftly and silently as her freedom, her choices, her family.
Instinctively, Eden touched the thick, ridged scar arcing across her throat. She didn’t like thinking about that.
She glanced at the clock. It was just after 12:30 p.m. Her foster mother, Gabriella Ross, would be home from her tennis lessons in an hour; her foster father, Jorge, by six.
Eden went to summer classes in the mornings. She wasn’t stupid, but school had never been much of a focus in her life before Ezra or the Rosses. This was just her way to catch up for high school, Mrs. Simpson had explained.
Either way, she’d rather draw.
She glanced at the Miami Herald newspaper clipping attached to the stainless-steel fridge with magnets. The article featured her first-place award in the Pérez Art Museum’s annual youth art competition.
In the picture, she was hamming it for the camera, proudly holding up the framed drawing of an alligator lunging toward a wood stork escaping in mid-flight, wings thrashing as the gator’s jaws closed over its pink feet.
Every time she looked at it, she swelled with happiness. She couldn’t wait to tell Dakota. Dakota didn’t like having their pictures taken, but surely she’d understand this time.
Her stomach growled, but she ignored it. She liked waiting for Gabrielle and sharing a late lunch. They always had family dinner together, too.
Her phone dinged. Not the iPhone her foster parents had bought for her fifteenth birthday a month ago, but her secret phone, the one she kept in the hidden compartment inside her backpack. The one only Dakota used.
Eden twisted around and fished it out of the backpack slung over the chair. She read the text, eyes widening in disbelief, then read it again.
Ezra right. Bombs. Find Shelter. I’m coming for you.
Eden had always thought Ezra was a little crazy in the head, with his paranoia and extreme safety precautions and prepping for years. But he’d saved them.
Was he right, after all?
Was the world really ending in fire and fury?
She didn’t want to believe it. She wanted to finish her sign language project. She wanted to work on her math homework.
She wanted to listen contentedly while Gabriella turned up Spanish pop radio, dancing around the pristine kitchen while she unloaded take-out boxes onto fancy china plates—steaming General Tsao’s chicken, vegetable lo mein and piles of white rice, and Eden’s favorite honey chicken and broccoli.
She wanted to sit around the farm table and laugh and eat and sign the newest joke she’d learned at summer school.
Most of all, she longed to keep pretending she was a part of this family, where no one ever yelled or hurt her.
But she knew better than to dream when she needed to act.
She texted back: Okay. At home.
Her heart thumping against her ribs, she jumped off her seat, grabbed her notepad, a handful of pencils, and her phone, and looked around wildly.
The Rosses owned a sprawling five-thousand-square-foot, two-story stucco home. Like most Florida houses, it didn’t have a basement.
Dakota hadn’t said how much time she had. Eden had to assume immediate action. Better safe than sorry; that’s what Ezra always said.
She closed her eyes. Think. Think! Where had Ezra said was the safest place?
She couldn’t go to a basement. She had no time to find a big concrete office or apartment building. No underground bunkers to seek shelter inside.
Get to the middle. The center of a building is always safer than the exterior.
There was only one room in the house that didn’t share an exterior wall or contain a window: the guest bathroom next to the guest bedroom on the first floor.
Eden sprinted out of the kitchen, through the formal living room, the expansive family room, and sunken den.
She lifted a cushion from the white leather sofa and lugged it down the long hallway lined with family photos—several with herself included—and into the bathroom.
She dropped the cushion on the ivory bathroom rug and faced the hallway for a second, her hand on the oiled bronze bathroom door handle.
This was crazy.
In less than an hour, Gabriella would come waltzing into the house with her warm, bustling energy, and everything would be normal and wonderful again.
If she found Eden cowering in the tub, her foster mom would think she really was crazy.
Maybe she’d think something was wrong with her, something worse than her mangled throat.
Maybe the Rosses would want to send her back to the Florida Department of Children and Families, back into the system.
She shuddered. What was she thinking? She didn’t want to risk the good thing she had going. She was just starting to feel comfortable here.
Like she belonged.
Like maybe she had a family again.
Dakota was paranoid. Dakota always assumed the worst.
But no. Dakota was her sister. She was smart; she was prepared. She would never warn Eden of something so serious unless it was true.
Unless—
A brilliant white light flared down the hallway.
Eden couldn’t see any windows from her vantage point, but it was like a giant spotlight beaming through every window of the house.
The light bouncing off the hallway walls was still harsh enough to make spots flare in front of her eyes.
Heart sputtering inside her chest, she slammed the bathroom door shut, whirled, and dove for the bathtub, seizing the large cushion as she went.
The bathroom was small. In two steps, she was in the tub, lying flat on her back, the cushion pulled over her head and torso—Dakota’s flip phone gripped in one hand, her notepad pressed to her chest in the other.
By the time she realized she’d forgotten to count, a deafening thunder was already roaring over her, trembling the whole house in its primal fury.
5
Maddox
Zero Hour minus five minutes…
“I found them,” Maddox Cage said into his phone.
“Both of them?” asked the deep baritone voice on the other end.
“As good as. Where Eden is, the other will be close.” He didn’t say her name. After what she’d done, the man on the other end of the line hated to hear her name.
“Have you laid eyes on her?”
“I visited her summer school this morning and waited until I saw her walk into the building with her foster mother.”
“Tell me immediately when you have them.” His voice went hard. “Both of them.”
“I understand.”
“And Maddox—don’t delay. Get them now and get out of the city. Do you understand?”
A strange shiver went down his spine. “Yes, sir. Is there something—”
The line went dead.
Maddox ended the call and leaned forward in the back seat of the taxi to peer out the window. Traffic had stopped for a stoplight, a tourist bus blocking his view directly ahead.
Large several-story buildings of glass and concrete rose on either side of him. Palm trees flanked the wide boulevard. On his left, giant cranes clung to the half-constructed framework of a sleek, high-rise condo like mechanical spiders.
Pedestrians strolled past, some in business suits, many in Hawaiian shirts and Bermuda shorts, girls in crop tops and tiny shorts swaying their hips, all of them sweating in the early afternoon heat.
He turned his gaze away in disgust.
One of the many reasons why he despised the city. That and the singed stench of car exhaust, the constant stimulation of honking horns and roaring engines, chaotic crowds, and the bright lights and steel everywhere he looked.
He much preferred the peace of the natural world, the stillness and order in the vast rivers of grass he called home.
The traffic light seemed to go on forever. “How much longer?” he asked, restraining his anxiousness.
“A couple miles,” said the taxi driver, a Haitian man with a full, bristling beard and konpa music playing low on his smartphone. “Fifteen minutes maybe in this mess.”
Maddox Cage was close enough to smell victory. He could feel it like a buzzing beneath his skin.
They were both here.
He’d been hunting the girls off and on for almost three years now, his father growing more infuriated and impatient with every passing month.
He’d almost caught them in Everglades City two years ago, but they’d managed to elude him.
Dakota must have changed their names. Somehow, they’d simply disappeared.
But yesterday, his father, Solomon Cage, honorable brother of the Prophet, leader of the Shepherds of Mercy, had handed Maddox a folded slip of paper with a single address on it.
They never communicated via email or phone, unless it was a disposable burner cell. For the most part, they stayed off the internet, too. It was safer that way.
Paper could be disposed of. It didn’t leave an electronic trail.
He did use the internet to search for his quarry, though. Constantly trolling through records both public and private, checking newspapers, hospitals, DMV databases, and arrest warrants.
Not a single hit in two years. Maddox had failed to find them…until two days ago. Scrolling quickly through the Miami Herald, like he did for dozens of regional papers, his eye snagged on a picture of a familiar beaming face.
He’d managed to discover them hiding in a city of half a million people.
He had found them—when they could’ve fled to Naples, Fort Myers, Marco Island, south to the Keys, or north to any of the hundreds of towns and cities in central and northern Florida.
He knew he had them both. Wherever Eden was, Dakota was certainly nearby.
He gave the name of the girl—Eden Sloane—and of the foster parents to his father. Within a day, he had the address in hand.
Maddox finally had a lead. He wasn’t about to fail. Not this time.
Eden would return to her rightful place. And Dakota…Dakota would be brought back to face the consequences of her crimes.
Maddox Cage believed in justice. In judgment.
Now, finally, justice would be served. And he would be the one to serve it.
But first, he had a quick errand. His cousin, Rueben, had asked him to pick up a package from the South Florida Container Terminal at the Port of Miami.
He didn’t know what it was. He didn’t need to know.
His father and cousin served the Prophet; so did he.
He sucked in his breath as the taxi entered the Port of Miami tunnel.
He clenched his hands on his lap until his nails dug into his calloused palms. His stomach roiled, the black bean tacos he’d grabbed at a cafe in Overtown settling uneasily.
He hated heights, but he despised this trapped, underwater feeling even more.
He was one hundred and twenty feet below the surface. He felt every foot of it like a ton of bricks collapsing against his chest, an immense pressure cutting off his breath, sending his heartbeat into a hammering cacophony in his ears.
His burner phone beeped. He pulled it out of his pocket. It was from an unidentified number, but Maddox knew who the sender was: his cousin, Reuben.
A text: Plans changed. Forget the package. Get out now. It’s coming.
He squinted down at the phone, perplexed. Could Reuben mean what Maddox thought he did? Could it possibly be? The hairs on the back of his neck prickled.
What? he texted back.
He never got the chance to hit send.
A dazzling light blasted down the tunnel from behind him. It lit up the interior of the vehicle, blighting everything in his vision with a scorching brilliance.
“What the hell!” the taxi driver cried.
Maddox instinctively leaned over, his seat-belt digging into his stomach. He covered his head with his hands and squeezed his eyes shut against the brutal, blinding light.
It felt like staring straight at the sun.
“What was that?” shouted the driver. “What’s happening—”
An earsplitting boom thundered through the tunnel, vibrating the air with its monstrous roar. Thousands of tons of concrete shuddered and heaved overhead.
He felt the taxi being lifted and flung through the air.
His seat-belt jerked against his lap and seared his neck as the vehicle slammed against the concrete wall of the tunnel.
Everything went black.
6
Logan
Zero Hour
"Don't look!" the waitress screamed. "Get down!"
Fear tore through him. Logan didn’t think. He only reacted.
He squeezed his eyes shut and hurled himself away from the windows toward the booths. He lunged behind the closest one—thankfully empty—and squeezed his large frame beneath the table against the wall.
A tremendous heat blasted him, like an enormous oven opened inches from his entire body. Cowering, he flung his hands over his closed eyes.
A million blaring, high-voltage lights bored into his eyeballs like a drill, stunning and painful and endless.
Though it lasted only a second, it felt like an eternity—if it went on even an instant longer, his eyeballs would burst inside their sockets.
“One, two, three,” the waitress chanted.
She scrambled in beside him. He heard and felt her, his eyes still shut, bright white light pulsing against his closed eyelids. He made room for her, pushing back as far against the wall as he could.
Screams and shrieks echoed all around them.
“I’m blind!”
“I can’t see!”
“Help me!”
“Five, six, seven—” the waitress said.
Before he could ask what she was doing, a thunderous crack exploded with a great boom like the very sky was splitting open above them. An unearthly roar, mighty and shaking, tore through the Beer Shack.
Almost instantly, every glass pane exploded inward. A tremendous, howling wind with the force of a hurricane blasted them, jarring the concrete walls and ceiling. The floor heaved like a ship beneath him. The table shook and quivered, the booth at his back shuddering.
The flat-screen behind the bar fractured and clattered to the floor. Glass shattered and liquid splattered to the floor as shelves lined with alcohol bottles collapsed.
Great shudders thudded through the floor and walls, large objects toppling as if a giant’s fists were smashing through buildings, breaking concrete and metal and steel.
A scream strained behind his clenched teeth. The entire building groaned, shivering violently, the walls snapping and popping.
A sharp crack sounded above him. Chunks of drywall and dust rained down on the table top above his head as if the roof itself was collapsing in on them.
Finally, the
shaking stopped.
From out on the street came the horrific sounds of tires screeching, horns blasting, metal smashing against metal as cars slammed helplessly into each other, their drivers blinded.
Screams rent the air—hundreds, thousands of people screaming and shouting. Cries of pain and panic, of shock and terror.
The sounds seemed to come from far away. His ears were ringing.
Logan tried to open his aching eyes. There were only streaks of white. He blinked. Still just a fuzzy, painful whiteness.
He couldn’t see.
“I’m blind,” he mumbled, his mind frantically trying to comprehend what had just happened. He felt like his brain had just been shaken right out of his skull.
“Flash blindness,” the waitress said.
He almost flinched at the nearness of her voice. He’d forgotten she was even there. He shied away, his hand instinctively going for his weapon. Without sight, he was vulnerable, completely helpless. “What?”
“You’re not blind. It’ll go away in a few minutes.”
He felt her move away, heard her scrambling out from beneath the booth. “Be careful. There’s glass everywhere.”
He tried to wrap his mind around it. His heart jack-hammered against his ribs, but his thoughts came slow and sluggish.
Another nuclear bomb. It had to be. Nothing else made any sense.
A nuclear bomb had just detonated in downtown Miami.
He blinked and rubbed his eyes. Blinked again. White spots swirled and flickered across his eyelids. He could just make out the shadowy shape of the girl rising to her feet and brushing glass from her clothes.
Wetness leaked down his right cheek and neck. Blood dripped from several cuts. Several shards of glass were embedded in his skin. He felt for them gingerly and plucked them out one by one, ignoring the stings of pain. His hands trembled.
He shook his head, trying to clear the cobwebs.
One thing at a time. Focus. Think clearly.
But he couldn’t seem to do that. His brain kept screaming nuclear bomb! again and again and again.