The Taking: The Countdown Part 12

Griffin wasn't much better. "Well, standing around here isn't going to help! We've wasted enough time in this s.h.i.+thole." Her voice echoed off the rafters as she walked in nervous circles. "We need to get moving."

Griffin was right. If whoever had done this had a head start, it couldn't be by much. Hours. Maybe less. If they had Kyra with them, was it possible she'd seen our headlights as we pa.s.sed on the road?

Ignoring Simon, I turned to Jett. "What about the reverse star chart thing, the one I drew? I might not sense Kyra now, but maybe we can figure out where that thing was pointing. When I dreamed it, I had the feeling I was supposed to be there, maybe that means something. Maybe there's a clue to finding Kyra there."

Jett stopped what he was doing, a mission he'd been on to liberate some of the hard drives and cables from the kidnappers' equipment. "Maybe," he said, intrigued by the challenge. "It might take me some time to sort it out. But yeah, I could probably do it." He handed an armload of c.r.a.p to Ben who'd been helping him. "Shouldn't take too long."

Just as Jett logged into his laptop, we heard it: a cras.h.i.+ng sound.

It came from beneath us. From the bas.e.m.e.nt.

I glanced to Griffin, who looked at Simon, who took a quick inventory. We all were present and accounted for.

Someone else was down there . . .

What if that someone was Kyra?

CHAPTER SEVEN.

Days Remaining: Twelve "YOU SURE YOU DON'T WANT SOME?" FROM THE driver's seat, Chuck wiggled the bright yellow bag of generic potato chips my way, making the cellophane-y wrapper crinkle.

It was the third time he'd offered, and for the third time I declined with a simple, "I'm good. Thanks anyway."

The cab of his eighteen-wheeler was big, but that didn't stop it from feeling cramped. Claustrophobic. I shrank into the leather bucket seat, trying to disappear.

"She always this quiet?" he asked on a chuckle, like it was just a girl thing, or maybe a teen thing. Like he had a confidant in Thom, who'd been even quieter than I had since the early hours, when Chuck had stopped to pick us up. If Thom hadn't been balancing on the edge of the mattress of the sleeper cab, just behind the seat, Chuck probably would've elbowed him in the guy-talk way that men sometimes do.

Thom didn't really answer, just bobbed his head, a pseudo-agreement.

Chuck nodded back. "Help yourself to another water if you want."

Thom reached into the mini fridge under his feet and untwisted the cap on his fifth water bottle. He downed the whole thing in less than ten seconds.

Chuck watched, but didn't comment. He turned his attention back to me. "West is a long ways away. Skinny gal like you might waste away before we get there."

West. That was as much as I'd told Chuck when he'd asked where Thom and I were headed. He'd done his best to pin us down. To get one of us to be more specific-a city, a state, even a precise region-but he didn't need to know our plan, so I remained adamant, and Thom . . . well, Thom was thirsty, so we'd simply left it at "west."

"Suit yourself," Chuck said, thrusting his hand into the chip bag once more. When he pulled it out again, his fist was overflowing. His grip reminded me of one of those crane machines, the kind they had at pizza parlors or in front of supermarkets. You almost never won at those things, but if you did, and the claw actually dislodged a toy from the rest, its grasp always seemed tenuous, like the slightest hiccup or breeze would knock your prize loose on its way to the chute.

Chips and crumbs spilled from between Chuck's fingers on their way to his mouth. Just like The Claw.

"You're lucky I came along when I did," he announced through his half-chewed food. "That road doesn't get a lot of traffic."

He was right. I'd felt lucky when he'd stopped.

My parents had always made a big deal about not hitchhiking-just like I'm sure all parents did. They'd try to scare me with warnings about Stranger Danger and murder vans by showing me news stories about girls who'd hitched rides only to never be heard from again.

If you're ever stranded, stay where you are, my dad had counseled me. We will find you.

Great advice for a sixteen-year-old who believed that the worst that could happen was missing curfew and losing her cell phone privileges.

That was before I'd been swept away in a flash of light and lost five long years of my life. Before I'd come back and found out I was no longer the same person.

And before I'd been kidnapped and tortured and forced to kill a girl I'd believed was my friend.

Maybe I was braver because I wasn't alone, but to be honest, after everything I'd been through, in the grand scheme of things. .h.i.tchhiking kinda seemed like no big deal.

Plus, other than his poor nutritional choices, Chuck seemed like a decent enough guy. Nothing about him screamed ax murderer, so he had that going for him.

Thom and I had stayed hidden as long as we could, waiting to make sure my head count at the asylum hadn't been off. That there wasn't anyone left to come after us. Even as weak as he was, Thom had put up with my questions, managing to answer mostly in single syllables and groans.

During that time, I'd pieced together why Natty and the others had been torturing him, even while they planned to sell him to the Daylight Division.

Without Thom, Silent Creek had no leader. And after the ma.s.sacre at Blackwater, the Silent Creekers were probably still trying to sort through their contingency plans.

Which meant they were weak.

And locked inside Thom's head was a code word that would win the camp's confidence.

If Natty could wiggle her way back inside now, she and Eddie Ray could hit them while their defenses were down. Hadn't Eddie Ray said that's what this was all about, business?

Through it all, Thom had held out, never giving them that code word despite their liberal use of Lucy on him. He was loyal to his Returned, and I was more sorry than ever that I'd doubted him.

I'd asked him about the watch too.

He'd looked at me, his eyes moving from mine to my wrist as if he'd only just noticed I wasn't still wearing the cheap plastic wrist.w.a.tch he'd given me as a gift-the one I thought he'd used against me.

I winced. "You weren't the one who put the tracking device in it, were you?"

He reached over and squeezed my hand, giving a faint shake of his head. No, he told me silently. Somehow, Natty had done that too.

Probably to make sure she could find me.

The sun had only been up a couple of hours when Chuck had found us, wandering lost and alone on the side of the small road. He hadn't questioned why I was propping Thom up, or why Thom had been so dehydrated when we'd finally gotten him into the cab of the truck. He also hadn't commented on the way Thom had gone from looking like roadkill to your regular, healthy, normal-looking teen (at least if you didn't know any better) so quickly.

Just add water!

At first glance, I didn't have much to say about old Chuck either. There didn't seem to be anything special about him. He was just your average-ordinary-nothing-special kind of truck driver.

But then he'd turned toward me, and I'd seen it . . . the way the left side of his face dimpled. The way it creased and sagged so much more than the right. He didn't say why, but it wasn't hard to guess it was sun damage, caused from years, maybe even decades of being on the road. From one side of his face being more exposed than the other.

It was like Chuck had been time-lapsed-a Before and After of him that had been cut in two and reattached down the middle.

But considering I'd just seen someone's entire face blown off, my att.i.tude was somewhere along the lines of it-could-have-been-worse. I barely blinked at ol' Chuck.

My attention drifted toward the fields that ran along the freeway, punctuated with low mountains covered in soft gra.s.s. They were nothing like the harsh red deserts of Utah or the brown barren ones of eastern Was.h.i.+ngton.

"Where are we?" I asked Chuck absently.

Appraising the stretch of highway, Chuck nodded. "My guess is somewhere outside'a Channing."

"Channing," I echoed, trying to decide if the name rang any bells.

I glanced back to Thom who looked so much more like his old self again. He shrugged.

Turning back to Chuck, I tried again. "So that's the name of the city . . . ," I drawled, and then, because I knew this was going to sound weird, I bit my lip. "Which state?"

Chuck eyeballed me. "You kids pullin' my leg or something?" And when he realized it was no joke, he did a full-on double take. I wouldn't mind playing cards with Chuck sometime-he had the world's worst poker face.

There was no point pretending. "We're just a little lost is all." I sighed. "And if you could help us out, that'd be great." I smiled, hoping I looked sincere, and not like some crackpot who'd literally just shot her way out of an asylum.

My life got stranger and stranger.

It must've been pretty good because Chuck nodded a sort of, Sure, I guess so kind of nod, and answered. "Wyoming. 'Bout an hour south'a Gillette."

Gillette-I had no idea where that was either, but Wyoming gave me a better sense. Geography might not have been my strongest subject, but I knew I was nowhere near Blackwater Ranch, back in Utah, and even farther from home . . . if I even had a home anymore.

"Can I ask you something else, Chuck?" I mean, why not, right? Might as well go for broke.

"Shoot."

I winced at his choice of phrasing. The gun was still pressed against the small of my back, stuffed inside the waistband of a pair of jeans I'd found in a duffel bag. They could have belonged to anyone-the Levi's 501s-but the fit was close enough so I'd taken them, along with a spare s.h.i.+rt. It was better than trying to catch a ride in a blood-splattered hospital gown.

I spit out my next question. "What . . . What day is it?"

Chuck just shook his head. Not in a sad way, or even a shocked way, but more in an I'd-stumped-him way. "When you kids say you're lost . . ." He slid a sympathetic gaze my way and then up at his mirror to look back at Thom. "Man-oh-man, girl. Thursday," he said. "It's Thursday." When I frowned, mentally, trying to get my bearings he took pity on me and added, "The first."

My breath came out in a whoosh. "The what?"

"July first." He sat a little straighter than before, his eyes darting to where my hands were gripping the sides of my seats. My knuckles had gone bone white. "You okay?" He sounded nervous, and maybe he was right to be. The chill in my bones had spread to my skin and I was swallowing back my own stomach acids. I hadn't puked after shooting four people, or even when pieces of Blondie sprayed all over me when Eddie Ray killed her. But the possibility was real now. "You don't look so good. Should I pull over?"

I leaned forward, taking slow and shallow breaths. After a second I released my death grip and held up my hand.

"Kyra?" Thom asked from behind me.

"It's okay. I'll . . . I'll be okay." They were the same words I'd whispered to myself over and over after I'd rescued him at the asylum. After I'd shot Natty.

Five days, I repeated in my head.

How was it possible that I'd been kidnapped almost a week ago? How had I not noticed the pa.s.sing of an entire week? Felt the knifing pain that came each and every daybreak?

But I knew how . . . the IV drip. The drugs.

"One of you got family out west?" Chuck asked, still trying to pry information from us.

The word "family" brought a whole new kind of pain. A week was a long time to lose track of my dad. I had no idea where he'd gone after I'd been taken from that diner.

Hopefully he and Tyler had gotten in touch with Simon and they were all together now, someplace safe.

Where? I had no clue. Blackwater was out of the question-Agent Truman and his Daylight Division had seen to that. And since they didn't know that Thom had never been the traitor we'd all believed he was, there was no way they'd go back to Silent Creek.

That left me with no idea where to start looking.

But Thom and I needed a place we could lay low until we sorted things out, and because our options were limited, we planned to take advantage of the code word-the one Natty hadn't been able to pry from him. Silent Creek might be reeling, and it might even be compromised, but it was the only place Thom felt safe.

He trusted his people and their ability to hide us until we could figure out our next steps. We had to hope the NSA hadn't found them, and that we could get there without being captured.

"Something like that," I told Chuck, not an outright lie. My family was in Was.h.i.+ngton State. They just weren't who we were planning to see.

Swinging his face to me, he grinned. "Can't blame a guy for tryin'." He turned back to the road. "Better get comfortable. Even if we drove straight through, it'd be 'bout another sixteen or so hours 'til we reach Portland, and that's as far west as I go."

I settled back, smiling to myself when I said, "That's close enough, Chuck."

SIMON.

GRIFFIN'S SOLDIERS HAD ALREADY CLEARED THE bas.e.m.e.nt, but five minutes after hearing the sound, Griffin and I were back down there. It was worse in the bas.e.m.e.nt than even upstairs-darker and moldier. Scarier than f.u.c.k, basically.

I wasn't above admitting it wouldn't take much for me to c.r.a.p my pants at that very moment.

But if there was even a chance Kyra was down here, it would all be worthwhile.

Even if Jett hadn't been working to decipher his map-check that, reverse star chart-the delay meant he and Ben had more time to pilfer whatever they could of the high-tech components the group had been using-radio equipment, computer hard drives-anything they could grab and stuff into a duffel.

I couldn't fault him. When we'd fled Blackwater, we'd had to leave behind the entire array of computer and communications equipment Griffin had ama.s.sed over the years. All that remained was the laptop Jett rarely let out of his sight.

I tried to stay focused on the job at hand, finding whatever had made that noise, but my mind kept drifting back to Eddie Ray.

Talk about a ghost from the past. I hadn't given Eddie Ray a second thought in years, not since before Willow and I had snuck out of Blackwater in the middle of the night to save her a.s.s from Franco's wrath.

How the h.e.l.l had Eddie Ray ended up in a place like this? What were he and Natty doing together?

None of it made any sense. This whole thing was one s.h.i.+tstorm after another. "Shh!" I lifted my finger to my lips, signaling Griffin to stop. I c.o.c.ked my head just so, not bothering to ask the question out loud. Griffin knew what I meant: Did you hear that?