Nine

by Rachelle Dekker

  “Forecast called for rain,” Zoe said.

  “Did it? I don’t remember seeing that, and I checked. I always check,” she said, folding the wet paper and tossing it in the trash. “You know I cleaned out my car this weekend? Piece of crap, not sure why. It’s a piece of junk, so who cares if it looks and smells like junk? Well, I guess I care since I spent my only day off cleaning it out.”

  Zoe geared up for a Jessie spill, a phrase Pete had coined to describe the rate at which Jessie could talk once she got started.

  “I know I checked because I washed my hair yesterday, and if I had known it was going to rain I would have waited. Rain and Texas hair never mingle well, my mother would say. So, I’m sure I checked.” Jessie tossed her bag and coat under the counter and dipped to use the reflective surface of a napkin box to check her hair. “Anyways, as I was saying, I cleaned out my car this weekend and I had an umbrella in there, and I thought to myself, I haven’t used this in months so it’s just cluttering up my back seat for no good reason. And then two days later it rains like this?”

  She straightened and looked Zoe dead in the eye. “You would think I could catch a break. I mean, don’t I deserve a bit of peace for once? After the radiator troubles with my piece-of-crap car and the water leak in my shower—I swear if that fat, idiotic super of mine blows off my bathroom leak one more time—and you know, I’m pretty sure there are rats in the walls as well. I really have to move. I know I say that all the time, but this time I mean it.”

  Zoe smirked and tuned out the ramblings of the frantic waitress, as she often did. She glanced out the large square windows into the pouring rain. It had been dark for a couple of hours now. It wouldn’t be long before they got some daylight back, as the winter turned to spring and the sun stayed out to warm the cold earth.

  This was her first Texas winter, and the worst part was the way the people complained about the cold, even though it wasn’t that cold to begin with. It had been a relief to escape the horrid heat of summer, and Zoe wasn’t sure she would survive another sweltering heat. But she’d made a commitment to herself that she’d stay put for a while this time. Melting summers and all.

  And Sherman wasn’t so bad. It was quiet, friendly, and relatively private. People didn’t mind leaving you to yourself, which was arguably the only requirement for Zoe when picking a place to stay awhile. That and a Taco Bell. One of the only reliable things in Zoe’s life was the soft taco. It never really changed.

  “I priced out the new complex going in over off Peach Street,” Jessie continued, “but there is no way I can afford that working here. Not unless I got a roommate, and I’d rather sleep outside in this rain.”

  “You could live across the street at the motel,” Pete piped up from the kitchen, “like little Zoe here. Then you could stop complainin’ about your car and your terrible apartment, because you’d be free of both.”

  “I’d rather be homeless,” Jessie said, then shot an apologetic glance at Zoe. “No offense, honey, but that place is just depressing.”

  “No offense taken. It works for me,” Zoe said.

  Jessie nodded, a familiar look flashing behind her eyes. A look Zoe dreaded. Curiosity.

  “Why are you still there? I mean, there’s plenty of places in town. Seems strange to still be squatting at that dingy motel,” Jessie said.

  “Like I said, it works for me,” Zoe replied, “and it doesn’t have rats in the walls.”

  Pete chuckled and Jessie cut her eyes at Zoe’s snark. “Whatever you say, but it isn’t normal for a young, single cutie like yourself to be stowed up alone in a travelers’ motel. Oh, the trouble I got into when I was twenty-four and ten pounds lighter. I mean, how are you going to meet people?”

  “Who says she wants to meet people?” Pete questioned.

  “Everybody wants somebody,” Jessie shot back, then to Zoe: “I mean, right?”

  Zoe didn’t really want to have this conversation anymore. She didn’t like the places this kind of inquiry could take them.

  The bell over the door rang again and two men, both unfamiliar, walked in. Probably semitruck drivers. They saw a handful of those, as the large gas station next door often serviced semis.

  Zoe glanced at Jessie. “Your turn.”

  “And another mindless shift begins,” Jessie scoffed in a whisper. Then to the two drivers she cooed, “Hey there, fellas, sit wherever you’d like, and I’ll be right with you.”

  Zoe rolled her eyes and grinned. The bell rang again. She glanced over her shoulder and saw a girl, couldn’t be older than seventeen, standing in the open doorway, drenched from the rain. She was breathing heavily, her eyes wide with surprise as she took in her surroundings.

  “That one’s all you,” Jessie said under her breath as she approached Zoe from behind.

  Great, Zoe thought. She walked around the end of the bar toward the strange girl. “Booth or barstool?” she asked.

  The girl snapped her eyes toward Zoe and dropped her hand from the diner door. The pneumatic hinge slowly pulled the glass door shut. The expression on the girl’s face was like a startled deer, innocent and terrified.

  As Zoe took a step toward her, the girl’s body tensed. Zoe took a step back herself, suddenly uncertain what the girl might do.

  “You alright?” she asked.

  The girl looked in all directions, then brushed beads of water away from her face. Zoe yanked a handful of napkins out of a holder and extended them to her. The teen glanced down at the offering and slowly accepted. She wiped her face clean and dried her hands.

  “Better?” Zoe asked.

  The girl nodded. “Yes.”

  “You wanna table?”

  She looked at the row of booths to her right and then pointed to the first one. “This one?”

  “Sure,” Zoe replied.

  The girl moved quickly, sliding into the left side of the booth. Her movements were rigid, fast, like all her nerve endings were wired, and she barely sat fully in her seat. Zoe grabbed a menu from the bar and placed it on the table in front of her.

  “What’s this?” the girl asked.

  Zoe just looked at her for a second, waiting for her to say she was kidding. But she didn’t. She just sat there staring up at Zoe, waiting for an answer.

  “The menu,” Zoe said.

  “What do I do with it?”

  Again, Zoe paused for the punch line. Nothing.

  “You order food from it,” she said. “Have you never used a menu before?” She still expected the girl to look up, laugh, and say, “Of course I have. Who hasn’t used a menu?”

  But instead the girl took hold of the single plastic sheet and studied it with fascination. “I can have anything?” she asked with wonder.

  She looked up at Zoe, a childlike sparkle overcoming the fear that had been there earlier. It made Zoe uncomfortable and unsure of how to respond. The girl returned her gaze to the menu. Zoe wasn’t sure what the girl had taken, but it was pretty clear she was on something.

  “Maybe you should just start with some water,” she suggested.

  “Yes,” the girl replied. “That would be good.” She smiled up at her, and Zoe nodded. She turned and walked back behind the counter to get a glass of water.

  Pete leaned his head through the pickup window and shot Zoe a sly grin. “Ask her to share whatever it is she’s taking,” he said.

  Zoe ignored him and returned to the table. She set the glass down. The girl had moved to the dessert menu that advertised the latest options, and she held it out so Zoe could see.

  “Is this good?” the girl said, pointing at the new strawberry swirl milkshake. “Can I have it?”

  “It’s pretty average for a milkshake, if you like strawberry,” Zoe said.

  The girl glanced at the picture again, then beamed at Zoe. “Yes, I would like this.”

  Zoe paused, placed a hand on the booth, and leaned forward. “Can you pay for that?”

  The girl’s eyes shifted curiously, and she looked at
Zoe as if she spoke a foreign language. Zoe tried to control her fading patience and slid into the booth across from the strung-out girl.

  “Listen, no judgment—I don’t care what you do with your time—but you probably shouldn’t be here right now,” Zoe started.

  The girl’s smile washed cold, and she shrank back into the booth. Terror regained control of her body. “Is it not safe here?” she asked, her voice low.

  She locked eyes with Zoe, and Zoe could feel her desperation. Her bright blue eyes begged for help, the kind of help needed by a child seeking refuge. It struck something deep inside Zoe’s stomach that caused her to question the assumptions she had started making.

  “Are you in trouble?” she asked.

  The girl’s eyes flicked back and forth, then back to Zoe. “I have to be careful who I trust.”

  The words resonated with Zoe. She herself lived by them. The girl’s tone was frail and honest. Her eyes weren’t red. Her hands were steady, her skin clear, her voice open. Nothing said “strung out” except for her strange lack of awareness. The kind you would expect from a child. An innocence shone in the corners of her eyes and asked to be sheltered.

  “Can I call someone for you? Family, or a friend?” Zoe asked.

  Hope sparkled in the girl’s eyes. “Yes. Summer Wallace.”

  “Okay, do you know her number?”

  The hope died out. “No.”

  “Do you know her address? We can look her up—”

  “She lives in Corpus Christi.”

  “The city?”

  Again, a wave of joy fell over the girl’s face. “You know it?”

  “I know where it is,” Zoe said.

  “Can you take me?” The girl leaned forward excitedly. “I have to get there as soon as possible.”

  “You can’t go right now. It’s hundreds of miles from here.”

  Like a switch being flipped back and forth, the girl’s expression changed again. From hope to fear. Wonder to despair. “It’s that far?”

  “Do you not know where you are?” Zoe asked, suddenly much more worried than she’d been before. Something was clearly wrong with this girl. Maybe she shouldn’t have intervened. Yet something pulled at the strings of her heart, and she couldn’t make herself stand up and walk away.

  The girl shook her head, her eyes misty and on the verge of tears, and Zoe longed to comfort her. She gave a warm smile, hoping to make the teen feel more secure. “You never told me your name.”

  “Lucy,” the girl answered.

  “Just Lucy?” Zoe asked.

  “Just Lucy.”

  “Cool, like Beyoncé.”

  “What’s a Beyoncé?”

  Zoe gave an awkward laugh, then realized once again she wasn’t kidding. Who was this girl?

  “Hey, are you hungry?” she asked. “Let me get you something to eat. My treat.”

  Lucy gave a sheepish shrug and then a tiny corner smile. “Okay.”

  “Fries and a strawberry swirl milkshake coming up,” Zoe said.

  Lucy’s smile grew, and Zoe felt a warmth that she hadn’t experienced in a long time circle inside her chest. The way Lucy smiled made her think about her little brother, the way he used to glance up at her when she shared her watermelon with him. But that memory was tinged with pain, and the warmth turned cold as she shut the memory back inside the box with the rest of her past.

  “After you eat, we can talk more, and maybe I can help you,” Zoe said. “Would that be okay?”

  Lucy drilled Zoe with an intense stare, and Zoe felt the penetration of it in her gut.

  “Can I trust you?” Lucy asked. Like a child would, wanting to be saved but remembering not to trust strangers.

  The question nearly took Zoe’s breath away. Maybe she should have felt warier of the peculiar teenager, should have been more reserved with her own trust, but all she could see was a fragile girl who needed protection from the cruelty of the world. The way Zoe and her little brother had needed protection. Protection they’d never received. How different her path would have been had someone come along and sheltered her from the diabolical nature of humanity. How could she now deny this girl that same protection?

  She nodded. “Yes, you can trust me.”

  Lucy pondered it a moment, then smiled brightly. “Okay,” was all she said, and Zoe knew Lucy would trust her completely.

  Zoe smiled back, suddenly heavy with the burden of the young girl’s trust. She wanted to recant her statement. She wanted to admit she’d been carried away by her own sentiments, and that Lucy was right not to trust anyone. Even those who seemed honorable were capable of betrayal. Yet she couldn’t bring herself to kill the relief that had settled over the girl.

  She left Lucy sitting in the booth. She would let her have a moment of peace, then she’d help the girl as best she could before sending her back out into the world, where it would do all it could to kill Lucy’s rare innocence. No one got away unscathed.

  But for now, there could be fries and milkshakes.

  THREE

  TOM SEELEY ROLLED the hard peppermint across his molars with his tongue. The sharp flavor filled his mouth and slivered down his throat. The oral fixation was supposed to help him quit smoking, but he could still taste the tobacco at the back of his throat, permanently stained from years of consuming a pack of cigarettes daily. With each passing moment he craved the taste more.

  He was alone, standing in the hallway outside the director’s office. He could overhear a muffled apology through the thick wooden door as Director Robert Hammon explained to the secretary of defense the events that had unfolded in the last dozen hours. Hours that had been tasked to Seeley. Orders directly from the president. Orders he’d failed to execute.

  The voices stopped, and a moment later the door opened.

  Hammon didn’t even bother to stick his head out. “Inside, now,” he barked. Seeley was going to need a lot more peppermint.

  He entered the office and closed the door. The space was simple, undecorated, with large, dark leather furniture, a single mahogany desk, and zero windows. The walls were concrete, like most of the building and the ones that surrounded it. It had been an easy material to haul over the mountainous terrain when they’d built the black site labeled CX4-B.

  The soldiers referred to the place as Xerox because it was a carbon copy of the ground-zero location outside of Washington State. Buried in the Ozark Mountains along the northwest border of Arkansas, Xerox was covered in thick forests that helped keep the site off the map and hidden from hikers.

  It was the birthplace of the Grantham Project, a project Seeley had volunteered for ten years earlier. Being off the grid and buried deep inside the mountains was exactly what he’d been looking for to escape his past. A place where there was nothing but work and stress. Nothing familiar to remind him of what he didn’t have.

  “What happened out there?” Hammon asked as he paced. “The orders were simple: Retrieve. Alive.”

  “She attacked. My men were defending themselves. There was no other course of action,” Seeley said.

  “Retrieve Dr. Rivener and the girl alive was the only course of action!”

  Seeley remained quiet, standing with arms behind his back, shoulders stiff, eyes trained on the concrete wall behind Hammon.

  “And the girl?” Hammon asked, controlling the rage in his voice.

  “Gone. We believe west, but the trail ran cold about a hundred yards from her last known location,” Seeley replied.

  “Any idea where she’s heading?”

  “We’re working around the clock, scouring Olivia’s office and quarters for information. We’ll find something.”

  “Likely not. She was smart.”

  “But she was rushed. There’ll be a thread to pull, and I’ll find it,” Seeley said.

  “How did she know we were coming?”

  Hammon already knew the answer. Seeley said nothing.

  “We’re running security protocol on everyone on campus,” Hammon
said. “We’ll find whoever helped.”

  “This escape was thoroughly thought out.”

  “It was more than an escape. With the information she took, it was an attack.” Hammon stopped pacing and exhaled loudly. He moved to the chair behind his desk and sat. His dark hair was littered with graying stripes, his dark eyes ringed with exhaustion and too many hours of overtime. The navy-blue suit that draped across his large, tall frame was wrinkled. He’d worn it yesterday. Seeley knew the kind of pressure he was getting from the powers that pulled all the strings in Washington, knew how severe the situation had become.

  “What was her endgame here?” Hammon asked. He was talking more to himself than to Seeley, but he was vocalizing all the thoughts that had been running through Seeley’s head over the last forty-eight hours.

  He replayed Olivia’s words in his head for the thousandth time. You can’t kill her. She’s the only one who knows where the information’s hidden.

  They’d discovered the internal scan of all their confidential documentation and traced the upload of that information to a hard drive that was missing. She’d copied their files, everything that would be needed to expose them if it got out. Further exploration of lab notes showed a final physical scan had been run on the girl right before their escape. Against direct orders, Olivia had erased Lucy’s memories. But she’d done more than that. Her final words indicated as much. They just needed to figure out what, and how to reverse it.

  “Mental scans show a full wipe?” Hammon asked.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Before or after Olivia told her where the drive was hidden?”

  “That’s the question of the day, sir. I suggest we find the girl, follow her, see if she leads us to what we need.”

  Hammon shook his head. “You knew Olivia. That seems too easy.”

  It was true that Seeley had underestimated the attachment between Olivia and Lucy. He’d failed to anticipate the danger it would pose at the end. That mistake could cost them everything.

  Hammon swore under his breath. “We needed Olivia alive.”

  Olivia had been Seeley’s colleague; some might even say friend. Yet he’d felt nothing staring down at her lifeless body sprawled across the forest floor. He’d grown numb to death long ago. Sloughed off that part of the human condition that reacted to loss. It was the only way to manage each day without losing his will to exist. They’d zipped Olivia’s corpse into a body bag and placed her in the on-site morgue.