by Kathi Daley
I waited and listened, but the room had fallen into silence. The longer I waited to hear something, the more tense I became. I felt like I had ants crawling on my skin. I suspected that the man we’d seen before did have a satellite phone and he had gone to find service to call whoever he was checking in with. After a moment, I heard him speak. “The boss said the chopper will be here tomorrow. Right now we are looking at noon.”
“We need to maintain the status quo,” Adira said.
“I agree,” Isis responded. “I’ll go let the girls know that they can return to their groups after they finish what they are doing. And I’ll check in with the chaperones and let them know that these girls are involved in a special activity. I’ll give them a heads-up that they will be coming back to the cabin to continue with the activity they began today and won’t be taking part in whatever is planned for their groups tomorrow. If they are aware of the plan ahead of time, there shouldn’t be any cause for alarm. The last thing we want to do is arouse suspicion and create a panic before the helicopter gets here.”
I realized that Ellie and I needed to get back to the compound so Isis would find us to tell us about the plan for Alex and Pepper. We’d need to play dumb, and I supposed it would be pushing it to argue. We could always pull Alex aside after curfew, when no one would be looking for us. If she was one of the targets of what sounded to me like a kidnapping scheme, we needed to figure out what to do before tomorrow morning.
As soon as I made it back around to the front of the cabin, I whispered to Ellie that we needed to get back. She looked like she was going to question me, so I explained very briefly that there was a level of urgency about being away from here and where we would be expected to be, in the main part of the compound, and that I would tell her everything later. The screaming in my head that had begun when I realized that the men were trying to take Pepper and my baby away from me refused to be quiet despite the fact that I needed to be able to think clearly. One thing at a time, I reminded myself. Just take one step and then the next and the next until a plan begins to form and you figure a way out of this mess.
“Is everything okay?” Ellie asked as she ran to keep up with me.
“Everything is most definitely not okay. Isis will be looking for us any minute. We need to get back and then I will explain.”
Chapter 11
Ellie and I left the binoculars and walkie-talkies in the cabin and then went to the pool area, where Isis could easily find us. As we knew she would, she informed us that Alex and Pepper had been selected, along with two girls from other schools, to participate in a special program to be conducted personally by Adira. She made it sound like such an honor, and if I didn’t know what I did, I might have taken Alex’s participation as a compliment.
After confirming that the girls would be joining the rest of our group for dinner, Ellie and I thanked Isis and went back to our cabin. I had decided that the best thing to do was find a way to get a message to Alex asking her to meet Ellie and me after lights out. If these four girls had been singled out over all the rest to participate in whatever this was, it stood to reason that Isis would be keeping an eye on them. Given our isolation and helplessness, the last thing I wanted to do was call attention to anyone from Zimmerman Academy.
“Why those four girls?” I asked Ellie as we walked back to our cabin. “There are thirty-two girls here, so why has Adira singled out those four?”
“Alex is really smart. She is probably the smartest girl here.”
I nodded. “True. But Pepper, while awesome, is of average intelligence. I don’t know if you remember, but her father specifically sent her to the Academy when she was a freshman because he had recently married a woman young enough to be Pepper’s sister and wanted her out of the way. Not that Pepper doesn’t have talent, and not that she doesn’t hold her own in her classes, but she isn’t a genius by any means. There must be some other common denominator.”
“Do you know anything about the other two?” Ellie asked.
“Nothing. Alex probably knows who they are and why they might have been singled out. We’ll ask her if we can figure out a way to talk to her in private.”
Back in the cabin, I took a quick shower. If only I had a way to call Zak. Being aware of Adira’s plan for the four girls didn’t do me any good if there was nothing I could do to prevent it. I needed to find a way to get a message out and I had to do it before tomorrow morning. The man had said the helicopter was supposed to be here at noon. One way or another, I had to find a way to stop them from taking Alex or anyone else.
“Are you sure Adira plans to kidnap the girls?” Ellie asked when we’d settled onto the exterior deck.
“That’s what it sounded like to me. They were clearly waiting for someone who had been detained and would not arrive until tomorrow, although they’d been expected today. There was a discussion about whether to keep the four girls at the cabin or allow them to rejoin their groups until tomorrow. They made several references to the need to avoid suspicion. I suppose there could be something else going on, but kidnapping seemed the most likely scenario to me.”
“So what do we do?” Ellie asked. “We don’t have weapons or transportation. We don’t have a way to communicate with the outside world. I’d say we make a run for it and try to work our way down the mountain, but there isn’t any civilization for miles and miles and we don’t have supplies. Besides, we brought eight girls with us for the week. My instinct is to grab Alex and Pepper and take our chances, but leaving the other six girls behind would be a horrible thing to do.”
“Yeah. We can’t do that. And there are the other two girls who were with Alex and Pepper to think about.”
“If it weren’t for the three men hanging out at Adira’s cabin, I’d say we should try to sneak in and send a message, but I don’t know how anyone, even you, could make it past all of them.”
“Maybe when they are sleeping?” I suggested.
“It is still a big risk.”
“Doing nothing is riskier,” I pointed out.
“I guess there is that.” Ellie closed her eyes and groaned. “There has to be another way.”
I sat back and tried to go over all the options in my mind. “We could try to find a weapon of some sort. I do have my knife, but it is small knife, and there are three very large men in Adira’s cabin. Even if I could pilfer a larger knife from the kitchen, I don’t think I’d get very far against them. If there are guns anywhere in the compound, I have a feeling those would be stored close to Adira as well.”
“One of the other events is white-water rafting isn’t it? That means there must be rafts somewhere,” Ellie said. “If we can find them, maybe we can sneak the girls to them and take the river to safety.”
I was kind of surprised Ellie would come up with such a dangerous plan. She must be really desperate. “While rafting to safety isn’t a bad idea, we don’t know where the rafts are stored, nor do we know anything about the river. We’d have to go after dark. It would be beyond dangerous to raft down a river you have never rafted before at night. Especially with a bunch of teenagers. We would have no way of knowing where there might be rocks or other obstacles. We need to find a way to get help without involving the girls.” I paused to think. “That trailer sitting on the edge of the lake below us: Have you seen anyone lurking about it or noticed any lights?”
“No,” Ellie said slowly. “It’s too far away to anyone standing there, even if there was someone, and I wasn’t looking for lights. Why do you ask?”
“If there is someone in the trailer, getting to them might be our best bet.”
“It’s straight down. There is no way you’d make it.”
“I wasn’t thinking of going straight down,” I corrected her. “I was thinking about going around. There are trails through the woods like the one we used to get to the zip line. I’m not sure if there are any leading to the lake, but I’m sure I can make my way through the forest if I have to.”
“But you your
self just said that the distance between this camp and that trailer would be miles on foot, and there is no road.”
I blew out a breath. “I know. But I can’t think of a better plan. We can’t let them take Alex and the other girls. At least if I head down the back side of the mountain and get to the trailer I have a chance of getting a message out. If I just sit here and do nothing and something happens to Alex, I’ll never forgive myself.”
“There has to be another way.”
“There is no other way. I think I can make it down to the trailer and back before anyone has any idea I’m gone. I’ll need to head out under the cover of darkness, so I can’t start out yet, but unless you have a better idea, we have to go with this one.”
“There has to be another way,” Ellie insisted again. “You can’t make a mad dash through thick forest you don’t know in the middle of the night. You won’t be able to see where you are going. You’ll just end up lost. You could get hurt or worse.”
“I’ll have the compass. The walkie-talkies don’t have enough of a range to be of much use, but maybe I’ll pick up a cell signal along the way. I do have my phone.”
“It is unlikely there is cell service anywhere on this mountain.”
“Probably not, but I need to try. I’ll need a flashlight,” I realized. “We’ll look around for one between now and dark. My plan is to leave as soon as I won’t be missed. I figure that no one will be looking for me after dinner.”
Ellie looked terrified.
“Look, if we can get into Adira’s office and send off a message or think of something else before I leave, I am open to ideas. It’s not like I want to head out on a late-night orienteering adventure.”
Ellie puffed out a breath. “I know. And I know that at this point it seems like our only option, but we don’t even know that there is anyone in the trailer.”
I picked up the binoculars. “Let’s see if we can find out.”
The trailer was only visible from the ledge near the seating area that looked straight down the mountain to the lake below. It was hard to make out any details. The trailer seemed ancient, so there was no telling how long it had been there. It was blue and white and looked only large enough to contain a bed and maybe a small kitchen. I doubted it had a bathroom from its size. I supposed there might be an outhouse on the property, but I didn’t see one. It seemed apparent that if someone lived in it, even only during the summer, they were certainly comfortable with roughing it. The trailer was too small to make out any detail with the naked eye, but Ellie and I found a secluded place from which to view the sheltered trailer with the binoculars.
“I don’t see anyone,” Ellie said after a few minutes.
“Yeah,” I breathed. “There is a line that looks to have been hung for laundry, and I can see the tail end of an old truck behind that grove of trees. I don’t know if the truck runs, but it might. If nothing else, maybe I can take it to go for help if I can make it down there.”
“You’ll have to hurry. You have a long way to go and not a lot of time to make it down the mountain and get all the way back before someone misses you.”
I adjusted the focus on the binoculars. “I know.”
“What if you don’t make it back in time? What should I do if they try to take Alex and the others? It’s not like I can stop them.”
“You can’t stop them, so I don’t want you to try. The odds are they will be stealthy about things. They’ll sneak them away and won’t tell anyone what is going on until after they are long gone. If the people behind this are smart, they’ll take off with the girls and just leave you all here to fend for yourselves.”
“Or,” Ellie countered, “they could just kill us all.”
I lowered my binoculars. “They won’t. They don’t need to. You and the others aren’t a threat to them. You have no way of knowing where they are taking the girls. I think you’ll be fine.” God, I hoped that was true.
“Okay, so what should I do if they ask about you in the morning?”
I lifted the binoculars back up to my eyes. “Just tell them I went jogging as I always do and haven’t returned yet. I am planning to be back by breakfast, but if I’m not, that explanation should fly.” I looked at my watch. “Let’s get ready for dinner. I’m hoping that there aren’t any evening activities planned and I can talk to Alex before I leave.”
“How long do you think it will take you to get down to the trailer and then back to the camp?” Ellie asked.
I paused to consider. Based on the distance alone, I could probably make the trip fairly quickly, but running through an unfamiliar forest at night was not going to be at all the same as running on the road. “As long as I don’t run into any barriers like a river or a deep gully, I should be able to get down to the trailer in maybe two or three hours. Even with the lack of a road or trail, I should be able to travel downhill at about three miles an hour. It will take me twice that long to get back up the mountain, but barring barriers, I am going to say I should be able to make it down to the camp, do whatever is necessary, and make it back within ten hours. It should be dark enough for me to leave at ten, so I should be back before you even get out of bed in the morning.”
“And if there are barriers?”
I slowly shook my head. “I’ll just deal with them as I come to them. If I can’t get a message out but I can get the truck running and decide to go for help, I’ll hang something from the tree. I’ll take a piece of fabric or something so that you will know what I’m doing. If you see the fabric, you’ll know I moved on to plan B and you won’t worry about me.”
“And if they come for Alex while you are still gone?”
I blew out a breath. “I’m going to talk to Alex before I go, but my gut is telling me not to resist whatever is going to happen. Alex is smart. She should be able to figure out a way to get a message to Zak if we can’t stop this from happening. In fact…” My eyes grew large.
“In fact?” Ellie asked.
“I just had an idea. I’m going to hide my phone in her clothes. They won’t know she has it. If they plan to take the girls somewhere that has service, she should be able to get a message out.”
“I thought you said you were going to take it with you in case you got a signal,” Ellie pointed out.
“I did say that, but I think I’ll feel better about giving it to Alex.” I grabbed Ellie’s hand. “Not only might she be able to get a message out about where they take her, but the phone has GPS. Once Zak knows Alex is in trouble, he’ll be able to track her.”
“How can you sound so calm?”
I looked at Ellie. “Trust me: I am anything but calm. But we need a plan. A good one. And in order to come up with a good plan and then execute it, we need to keep our emotions out of it.” I put my hands on her shoulders. “I need you to keep it together. The girls are going to need you to be strong if I don’t make it back.”
Ellie looked as if she was going to cry. She nodded her head and took a deep breath through her mouth. “I know. I’ll be okay and I’ll handle things if I have to, but please get back so I don’t have to.”
“I’ll do everything I can to get back before anyone misses me.”
Chapter 12
As it turned out, both Alex and Pepper sought out Ellie and me during dinner to tell us all about their afternoon at Adira’s. They sounded legitimately excited and we made sure to appear genuinely happy for them, so if anyone was watching or listening, we would be covered. I hugged Alex before she went back to her friends, using the opportunity to tell her to come to my cabin as soon as she was able to easily get away. I suggested that shortly after lights out might be best. She hugged me back hard and agreed. I really hated to lay this all on her, but if what I suspected was about to go down really did, I knew it would be better if she knew what was coming.
After we ate, Ellie and I headed back to the cabin. We needed to find a flashlight, and I thought a few tools might come in handy as well, so Ellie waited outside, near the entrance to the
activity rooms, while I went in to look for anything I could find. Everyone else still seemed to be busy in the dining hall, so I was able to get in and out unseen.
I spread my stash out on the table. “Flashlight, extra batteries, the knife I brought and another one I found in one of the classrooms, electrical tape, a roll of twine, a screwdriver, and a roll of copper wire.”
“What on earth are you going to do with all that?” Ellie asked.
“I don’t know. Probably nothing. But I saw it and it occurred to me that these were the sorts of things I might end up wishing I had with me, so I’m bringing them all with me. I need to find matches or a lighter, and of course I’ll need to grab the binoculars, an extra sweatshirt, and an extra pair of socks before I go. I have the compass, a small notepad, and several pens. I’m going to pack everything into my small running pack. I filled my water bottles and sealed them in plastic bags, so I’ll have those as well.”
“You look prepared,” Ellie said with a forced smile.
“I am as prepared as I can be. I’m bringing the walkie-talkie. The range isn’t such that it will work while I’m moving, but it may function if I am standing at the lake and you are standing at the ledge directly above me. I am hoping to be back before you even wake up, but if I don’t make it back by say seven a.m., it might be worth it to head over to the cliff and give it a try.”
“I really, really hate this,” Ellie said.
“I know. Me too.” I looked out the window at the setting sun. “I want to talk to Alex before I go, but just in case I need to leave before she gets here, here is the phone and a note.”
“You think she won’t make it here?”
I shrugged. “I think she’ll try, but she needs to wait until she can slip away unnoticed, and who knows how long that will take? I need to leave as soon as it gets dark. If we miss each other, the note explains everything.”
“Okay.” Ellie slipped the phone and the note in her pocket. “Maybe we should have tried to sneak some fruit or a granola bar out of the kitchen so you had something to snack on.”
