***
Our drive to Lincoln is done in complete silence since Joel is awake and aware in the backseat. He seems to be lost in his own thoughts while Charlie most likely can feel the tension in the car, which keeps him just as quiet. I wish Joel would go back to sleeping so I can feel alone with Charlie.
We drive until after lunchtime when we enter Nebraska. I begin to feel nervous that Will and Rose won’t be at the university. When we get there, I’m surprised at how big it is. It takes asking three people directions before we reach the student union which is in the south part of the campus. We find the bookstore easily after that and after our third search of every shelf and a few odd looks from the girl working in there, we leave and wait outside the door, leaning on the wall.
“They’re late,” I complain to Charlie.
“They aren’t, we never set a time.”
“Still, I hate waiting. Why couldn’t they have beaten us? What if something is wrong?”
“Zoe, we’ve been here one hour. Let’s give them a while longer before jumping anywhere near those thoughts.” Charlie takes my hand and we wait in silence, ignoring any strange stares we receive from the students here. Even though we thought we would look like we fit in here, Joel’s bruises over his face are making him a star attraction. We got him into new clothes, but it’s obvious he’s been through a beating recently.
It’s four long hours later when the sun is setting that I see Will approaching us. My heart practically jumps out of my chest and I rush to meet him, only barely resisting wrapping my arms around him in a hug. I can easily tell Will isn’t someone who will appreciate a hug.
“Are you okay? Did you get here all right? Where is Rose?” I bombard Will with questions.
“She’s in the library on a computer.” Will looks away, looking as if he’s feeling a bit shy.
“Did you guys have any trouble?”
Will pales and I swear I see him shudder. “No, we lost those guys chasing us in the next town. Rose drives like a crazy person.”
Charlie takes my hand and pats Will lightly on his shoulder in greeting. Joel hangs behind and I once again wish he wasn’t here. What are we supposed to do with him?
“We should keep moving. We’ve already been here a while.” Will turns and begins walking back the way he came.
“You mean you left us waiting on purpose?” I’m annoyed as we catch up to him and move towards one of the many libraries this university has.
“Rose wanted to get right onto contacting whoever it is she knows. I got lost looking for you.”
I watch his face turn red in embarrassment and I glance around at the buildings surrounding us. I can see myself getting lost here a lot.
“Are we even allowed to use computers here? Wouldn’t we have to be a student?”
“Rose can hack anything, right? I’m pretty sure a computer here would be easy,” Charlie comments while squeezing my hand. The air has turned a lot colder now that darkness is setting in.
We find the library right as Rose is walking out of it.
“Hey!” Rose exclaims and she quickly steps forward to give me a hug I hadn’t been expecting. “I’m so glad you’re okay. I was getting worried when Will didn’t come back straight away. We got stuck in South Dakota for ages when our car broke down; thought we would be last here for sure.”
“How did it go?” I nod in the direction of the library and we step aside as a large group of students leave the library. We lower our voices, not wanting to be overheard.
“I have a friend who will help us. He needs at least a day to get this sorted and then he’s going to express mail everything to a PO box he’s going to rent for us. I just need to buy a camera so I can take some decent photos of us to email to him.”
“How much is it going to cost?” Charlie asks her while narrowing his eyes.
“Nothing, he owed me one.”
“So we just wait?”
“Yep. I saw a coffee place a couple blocks from here. I’ll go run and grab a camera and a cheap laptop then we can talk more after.” I nod that I agree with that except Rose comes out and grabs my arm unexpectedly. “Come on, Zoe, you’re with me.”
I don’t get a chance to say anything before she pulls on my arm and my other hand is yanked out of Charlie’s tight grip. I turn back to look at the boys, yet in order not to trip over something, I quickly turn back and step in time with Rose so I can shake my arm free.
“What’s the rush?” I rub my arm, which is sore from being grabbed so harshly.
“I needed a break. Will is the quietest person I know. The only noise I got out of him was when he was throwing up in the backseat while I was trying to shake those two cars chasing us.”
I wince at the mental image that brings up of Will.
“Will isn’t really one to talk,” I point out.
“I know and I respect that. Most people in the world talk too much, but seriously, I need someone to say something to me. So talk.” Rose looks at me expectantly and I shrug. What do I have to say?
“The weather is still pretty cold here considering—”
“The weather? Seriously? Zoe, you cannot want to talk about the weather right now!” Rose throws her hands up in the air.
“Well, what do you want me to talk about?”
“Charlie! Did you guys screw yet? Was it good or bad? Or how about Joel; he killed your best friend, right? You’ve spent nearly two days with the guy. Talk!”
I take in her words, wanting desperately to leave any talk about Joel alone. I barely want to think about it, let alone talk about it.
“Charlie and I haven’t had sex.”
“Really? I guess Joel is probably a mood killer. I honestly can’t believe you didn’t do anything at The Windmill. You guys just seem like a couple who has already done it, you know?”
“Rose, can we not talk about this,” I groan.
“Why, so we can discuss the weather?”
“How did you get away from those guys?” Rose is thankfully distracted by my question.
“With a hell of a lot of crazy driving. Will was chucking in the back and, to be honest, I felt like I wasn’t far behind him. We just kept driving like crazy and we eventually lost sight of them. They tried to ram us, but once I started swerving they stopped.”
“They tried to ram us, too, even shot at us.”
“That’s insane. I can’t believe we did it, though.” Rose smiles happily at me and I allow myself to feel some of her excitement. We really have done it. We’ve escaped The Windmill and Stan. Now, why aren’t I feeling better about this? Why am I feeling like something bad is still coming?
Rose holds open a door for me and I walk in, realizing we have entered an electronics store.
I watch as Rose finds the laptop she wants and then persuades the salesman to give her a much more discounted price than what is on the tag as well as to throw in a digital camera. She seems to only have to smile and she gets what she wants. It reminds me of Dana. She never openly tried to get guys to do anything for her, but at the same time, she never had to. Her beauty and niceness won guys over every time. She just oozed confidence and I think the only guy she ever felt nervous around had been Drew when they first met all those years ago. I, however, was usually awkward with everyone. I simply had a knack of either going blank when a guy spoke to me or saying something so lame that I wanted to curse myself. In fact, Charlie is perhaps the first guy that I’ve felt comfortable around. Of course, that is helped by the fact that my instincts want me to practically throw myself at him.
“Are you ready?” Rose waves her hands in front of my face and I nod that I am.
When we reach the coffee place Rose has been talking about, we discover it’s inundated with students. I assume it must be near exam time because their faces are all full of stress and I feel like they should be pitied.
“Okay, decision time. Do we run and hide or stay and fight?” Rose asks us.
I know the noble thing would be to s
tay and fight. These are bad people doing bad things and no one seems to know or care about it. We should try to expose them and put an end to this.
When no one offers an answer Rose speaks up, “It kills me to say this, I want to go home so badly, but I know if we want to stay away from Stan and P.A.G.E., then I can’t go home. We’re only four, untrained people. I think we should give ourselves a chance at living normal lives. If we fight, then the most likely scenarios are we die trying or get caught with only a tiny sliver of a possibility that we manage to actually bring them down. I want to go home just as much as you all do, but I know we can’t. So I vote we run and hide.”
I hadn’t expected Rose to go that way and I find it easier to voice my own wish to do that afterwards.
“Me, too.”
Will nods that he agrees and Charlie slowly agrees after that. I think maybe he was leaning more towards fighting, but his vote is kind of pointless with three out of the four already on the other side.
“Right, so where do we want to go together?” Rose smiles and I think in her light blue eyes that I see some excitement there. We’re about to choose the place that we’ll probably live for the rest of our lives. She turns on her laptop and, using the free Wi-Fi, loads up a map of America onto it. “I vote somewhere warm.”
“No way, somewhere cold,” I disagree, hating the heat.
“Wait, you’re all going together?” Joel asks us, speaking up for the first time to everyone.
“Why wouldn’t we?” Rose questions curiously.
“I don’t know. Wouldn’t it be better to be split up?”
“Safety in numbers,” Charlie argues.
“Wouldn’t that make it easier for them? Find one of you and find you all.”
“We were split up before and they found us.” I’m taking up the argument now, not wanting us all to split up.
“We weren’t hiding before. Do you think they would expect us to stay together?” Rose asks us all.
“Maybe, who cares, though?”
“I don’t know about you guys, but I want to stay the hell away from those creeps.” Rose shudders.
“We’re not trained to be on the run; together we can make sure we’re all okay. Keep each other in check.” I don’t want to do this alone. I know I can’t do this alone.
“They think they know us, right? We should do the unexpected. They won’t think we’ll split up, so we should,” Rose argues now, latching onto Joel’s idea.
I wait for my instincts to kick in, to start screaming that this is a bad idea. They don’t. My body is completely silent on it except for the sadness I’m feeling when I look at Charlie.
“I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
“Me, neither,” Charlie agrees with me.
“Well, of course you two love birds don’t. They’ve seen how close you’ve become. They’ll completely expect you guys to stay together. In fact, you should do the opposite and part ways, and Zoe should go with Joel.”
“What?” I shriek loudly, causing a few people around us, who are obviously trying to study, to glare.
“I’m not saying this is for forever. I just think if we’re going to throw them off, then it needs to be now.”
“I really don’t think that’s a good idea.” I purposely avoid looking at Joel.
“Didn’t he try to kill her? I mean he killed her best friend!” Charlie voices angrily, getting louder as he speaks and this time he gets a couple “shut ups” as well as a few glares from the locals.
“It was merely an idea. I mean, wasn’t Zoe’s friend Drew the one who thought we all needed to die. That together we would do horrible things.” Rose shrugs.
“Drew? What does—”
“I can’t be anywhere near Joel.” I cut Joel off, not wanting to have to go into details right now about what is happening to us and what Rose means when she speaks of Drew.
“That’s the point. They won’t be expecting it.”
“This is pointless. As of a few minutes ago we were all agreed to stick together, why does that have to change?” Charlie speaks quietly this time.
“In the future, we all went willingly to work for P.A.G.E., right? We did things for them that ended up being really bad. We know that now. We know not to work for them. They can’t change that. Once they realize that, what good are we to them?” Rose explains.
“Your point?”
“My point is that, even though we might not be willing to help them, it doesn’t mean they’ll ask nicely. Stan insinuated that my father wouldn’t be having a lot of time for worrying about me when his company could very easily be going through incredibly tough times. It was a threat, one where he was trying to say he could do whatever he wanted to my family if I didn’t stop causing problems. He could just as easily threaten my family physically; yours, too. Or what if they decide that since we’ve all got these weird abilities that we need to be opened up? That we need our brains examined? I mean, come on, we need to be away from these people. I’m not ready to die and I don’t want my family hurt.”
We all sit in silence, taking in Rose’s words. I may have already lost Dana, but Mom is still home. I couldn’t bear it if something happens to her, too. I notice Joel giving us all strange looks and I realize he doesn’t know anything about our abilities.
“So we just go our separate ways and never see each other again?” Will asks quietly.
“To be safe. Yes. We never have contact with each other again.” The excitement from earlier is gone from Rose’s eyes and instead I see determination and sadness.
“What if one of us is in trouble? We’re just on our own?” I ask, hating the thought of Will being alone. He’s too young.
We all consider it, feeling the fear of being chased and having no one to turn to.
“Okay, how about we all pick a location to stay in and we can each tell one different person. All of us know where one is and if there is a problem, we can all get to one another?”
“I really don’t think that it’s a good idea to split up.” I shake my head, not wanting this to happen. I haven’t known any of these people long, but leaving everyone just doesn’t feel like it should be an option. Well, except leaving Joel. That I can handle.
“Look, there isn’t a big rush to decide now, right? Let’s talk about it later,” Charlie speaks up, most likely knowing there isn’t going to be a solution to this tonight.
“Fine, I need to take some photos.” Rose grabs her camera and turns it on. The laptop she has to plug into the wall because it isn’t charged, but the camera came fully charged. She takes a photo of each of us standing against the plain white walls by our table and while we get a few strange looks, the photos seem to work for Rose. She uploads them and then sends them away to her friend.
“So what type of friend is able to create fake identities? How do you meet someone like that?” Charlie asks suspiciously.
“We’re friends because we know when not to talk.”
Charlie rolls his eyes at her.
“So what now?” I look outside to see it’s completely dark. We need to find a place to sleep for the night.
Rose closes her laptop and unplugs it while Will and Joel stand up.
“Now we call it a day and find somewhere to sleep.”
We all walk outside, coffees mostly untouched on the table. I don’t even know why I ordered one. I don’t drink coffee.
We all stand just outside the door in the cold wind and I wrap my arms across my stomach as a breeze tries to knock me over.
“I should have looked on my laptop where to stay.” Rose hits her forehead and moves to walk back into the coffee shop right as I feel a wave of panic hit me and I know enough now to trust it. I grab ahold of Charlie’s arm and look around, trying to find why I have a sudden urge to run.
“What is it?”
“We need to get out of here.” I squint into the darkness and across the road I see someone approaching us. They travel at a quick speed and, as they move under t
he street lamp, I see Stan’s face.
He’s found us.
Taken By Surprise Page 75