Nine

by Rachelle Dekker

  “Hurry,” Summer called.

  Zoe turned and saw that Summer had moved a tall stack of shelving, exposing a hidden door. Lucy moved first, armed and ready, Zoe rushing after.

  “Out this way, across the south side, toward the east corner. There’s a place in the fence that’s vulnerable,” Summer said. She handed Zoe a pair of wire cutters and the package she was still holding. “Don’t stop until you reach the coast.”

  “You aren’t coming with us?” Zoe asked.

  “Captain always goes down with the ship. I’ll distract them here as long as I can.”

  This was insane.

  Summer turned to Lucy. “Burn it down.”

  Lucy nodded, and then they were moving. In a blur they were through the back door and out into the cover of night, the cold air nipping at their exposed skin. Zoe heard Summer shut and barricade the door as Lucy followed her instructions and started south.

  Gunfire popped inside. They’d penetrated the building. Lucy didn’t hesitate, raising the rifle, using its scope as she moved on steady, easy, unfaltering feet. Zoe struggled to follow as she stumbled through her fear. Around and through heaps of scrap, she squinted to see in the pitch-black, Lucy always moving before Zoe could even register whether the pathway was clear. Around another corner.

  Pop, pop.

  Two shots from Lucy’s weapon sent an agent face-first to the ground. Zoe let out a cry and jumped back. She hadn’t even seen the agent coming. Lucy continued, the slain man on the ground behind her. Zoe blocked it all out then and just committed to following.

  Another agent approached, and again Lucy put him down without hesitation or remorse. Silent and precise, bullets left her gun and killed the enemy. He fell like a hunk of meat. Two more came from the right. The girls were drawing attention.

  Lucy fired half a dozen shots. Pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop. Followed by clunk, clunk as bodies fell. She tossed the current magazine and reloaded another, never stopping.

  “They’re all headed this way,” Lucy said. “Stay close.”

  They reached the back fence and moved quickly toward the east corner. Zoe ignored the strong pull to hide under a pile of trash until the terror was over and focused on keeping up with Lucy, who moved like water. Fast and certain.

  The corner came into view, lit by a streetlamp across the road. Zoe exhaled and grabbed the wire cutters from her back pocket. Her hands were trembling, but she managed to snap the fence while Lucy stood guard behind her. Then they were through.

  “This way,” Lucy said, heading right.

  “Where are they?” Zoe asked. She knew Lucy could hear them.

  “They went radio silent.”

  They knew she could hear them.

  “Two ahead, another to the right,” Lucy said as she made a sharp turn left.

  Could she sense them? Zoe wondered. Could she hear their heart rates?

  Another sharp turn, then across a narrow and dark street. They moved quickly and tried to stay covered, Lucy’s weapon at the ready. She started across a wild grassy plot of land and pulled up to alter her steps. Her shoulders tensed.

  “Lucy,” a man called out.

  Zoe looked around but saw nothing.

  “I know you can hear me, Lucy,” the voice came again from wherever it was hidden. “I’m laying down my weapon and coming out unarmed. Don’t shoot.”

  Zoe looked to Lucy, who was listening for what he’d promised. They shouldn’t stand here, she thought. More would come. He could be leading them into a trap.

  A tall and broad man dressed in black stepped out from behind a detached garage. Lucy turned, gun pointed directly at his chest.

  “Wait, please, Lucy,” he cried. “Let me help you.”

  Zoe waited for Lucy, finger on the trigger, to put the agent down like all the others. But she was hesitating.

  “I know you don’t remember,” the man said. “But I’m a good guy. I’m trying to help you.”

  Lucy didn’t move. Shoot him, Zoe thought. She glanced behind them. They didn’t have time for this.

  “Ollie sent you to find the robin,” the man said, and Zoe felt Lucy’s entire body change. He braved a step toward them. “She sent me to find you in case things went south. I’m your backup.”

  “You’re lying,” Lucy said.

  “I’m not. You have to remember. I can help you remember.”

  Lucy didn’t move or speak, but Zoe could tell that something was different about this man.

  “I can help get you somewhere safe, somewhere they won’t find you,” he said.

  “We’re already going somewhere safe,” Lucy said.

  “They know that Summer worked for Port Authority. There’s another team waiting at the coast. You’ll never make it in without being detected. I’m going to reach into my back pocket for a piece of paper, okay?”

  They watched him closely as he slowly moved his hand to the back and pulled out a folded white item. He then inched toward the ground and laid the paper on the pavement. “These are coordinates to a safe house in Arkansas. Two days’ travel from here. Meet me there and I’ll explain everything. Or go to the coast. Your choice.”

  Lucy craned her ear to the side. “More are coming. Should I shoot him?”

  Zoe looked at Lucy, surprised. She was asking for guidance? She’d taken down all the others without help, but now she wanted to know what she should do?

  Zoe looked back at the agent. If she said yes, would Lucy pull the trigger? The weight of it hit Zoe like a train, and she placed her hand on Lucy’s arm. She wasn’t sure why. Maybe it was because of the way Lucy had reacted to him. Maybe it was because the idea of his death on her hands was more than she was ready to swallow. But she did it, and Lucy’s hardened stance eased slightly.

  “We need to get out of here,” Zoe said.

  “I’ll pull them west, radio that I’m in pursuit of you,” the man said. “You head east. Go to the safe house. Without you, we lose everything.”

  He started west without another word and disappeared into the dark tangle of streets. Lucy kept the weapon trained on him until he was out of sight, then listened.

  “Did he radio?” Zoe asked.

  Lucy nodded and stepped forward to retrieve the paper he left. “They are all moving that way. Come on.” She tucked the paper in her back pocket and started in the opposite direction.

  They ran for several minutes, maybe more. It was hard to know anymore.

  Finally, Lucy slowed down, and Zoe forced herself not to collapse into a puddle of exhaustion. She thought she might barf, and she took deep breaths to steady the racing of her heart and the trembling of her limbs.

  “Why did you ask me?”

  Lucy looked at her.

  “If you should shoot him. You took down every other agent without blinking, but with him you hesitated.”

  Lucy remained quiet for a breath, the hard warrior melting from her expression and the terrified innocence returning. “I didn’t know what to do,” she said. “I’m used to having orders.”

  “You remember that?”

  As if suddenly the gate she had been trained to close was opened, emotions gripped her body and tears filled her eyes.

  “Yes, and I remembered him.”

  FOURTEEN

  SEELEY LOOKED AROUND the carnage Lucy had left across Summer’s junkyard. Eight men dead. Summer Wallace with them. In less than five minutes. Dr. Loveless had been correct. Lucy’s memory loss clearly had no effect on her training.

  “Did she take the bait?” McCoy asked, stepping into Seeley’s line of sight.

  “We’ll find out soon,” Seeley said. “Finding the robin gave her pause. Your hunch about it was spot-on. Good instincts.”

  “I remember Olivia saying it was a silly code she used to use. It was a wild stab, really.”

  “I didn’t realize you and Olivia were so close,” Seeley said.

  “Yeah,” McCoy said, dropping his eyes. “I guess we were.”

  Seeley could see t
he hint of pain in the agent’s face. “Any evidence to suggest Summer was the source Olivia had set up to release the information if Lucy doesn’t recover it?”

  “Not that we found,” McCoy said, drawing his eyes back up. “And I’m not sure who she would tell now if she were, you know, because . . .”

  “Because she’s dead,” Seeley said matter-of-factly.

  McCoy cleared his throat and nodded uncomfortably. Great, Seeley thought, the kid was uncomfortable with death. That wouldn’t serve him here.

  “And there’s no new leads on our time frame?” Seeley asked.

  “No, sir,” McCoy answered.

  So they were still flying blind. Seeley stepped past the kid toward the team cleaning up the bodies, hunting for clues, documenting everything a dozen yards in each direction.

  His interactions with Lucy and Zoe replayed in his head. It had gone as he had imagined, until Lucy looked to Zoe for direction. That had caught him off guard. Lucy, as powerful as she was, had been trained to follow, and without Olivia or the Grantham Project she’d found another leader.

  That made Zoe Johnson—Evelyn Pierce—much more valuable than they’d first believed. But her story was laced with unspeakable tragedy. Tragedy he could use and manipulate.

  Time to head for Arkansas.

  ZOE AND LUCY stepped off another bus, the third one they’d been on in the last two days. At first they’d headed for the coast to see if the agent had been correct about a team waiting. Zoe had thought it was the most logical move, and Lucy followed her without question. It wasn’t lost on Zoe, the way Lucy kept looking to her. The responsibility was heavy but also gave her a sense of purpose. Something she hadn’t experienced in a long time.

  The last time she’d felt this sensation, she’d failed. She was all Stephen had, and instead of fighting for him like she should have, she listened to the advice of a twisted psychologist. Dr. Holbert led her to abandon her little brother, maybe when he needed her most. Because of that, she ruined his life.

  The guilt had been chasing her ever since. Now she had a chance to do things differently. Though the fear of failing again was hard to overcome. She swallowed it, and it spread across her skin in the form of a rash, itchy and painful red spots that ran along her arms. Something she’d dealt with since she was a little girl.

  There had been a time when Zoe thought she’d been rid of it completely. That she’d beaten fear. But fear wasn’t something a girl got rid of. She just created rules to keep herself safe from it.

  But she was breaking all the rules now. For Lucy.

  The agent had been right about the tactical team waiting at the coast. Lucy had spotted at least a dozen, and the girls knew there was no way through. Without another plan, they’d considered the agent’s coordinates.

  Zoe knew the evidence might support the notion that he was trustworthy, but still, the entire idea made her sick to her stomach. It wasn’t just because this man was a total stranger and obviously had a force pursuing them. Or that in her experience, people weren’t always who they said they were. Not even Lucy’s memory of him and the way he’d helped them escape could erase that fact. There was a feeling she got whenever she thought about him. Like a sixth sense, it just felt like following his direction was a bad idea. Like it would end in disaster. And from her experience, usually if it felt like a bad idea, it was.

  But what else were they supposed to do? They had nowhere else to go.

  Lucy crossed the parking lot, looking for a map. Zoe followed, moving through the busy station to the far side, where a large city map was plastered across the wall. “Welcome to Camden, Arkansas” was written across the top, the city laid out in beautiful colors below. The map was marked with tourist destinations for Civil War buffs and hikers. Camden sat at the base of the Ouachita River and near the large Ouachita Mountain range where they were headed.

  Lucy located the coordinates on the map and traced a path with her finger across the surface from where they were to where they needed to go. Zoe pulled the backpack off her shoulder and took stock of what they had inside. The package from Summer held a couple thousand dollars in cash, instructions and passes for getting out of the country through Port Authority, new passports for Olivia and Lucy with their names changed, new identities attached, and contact information that Zoe was pretty sure was written in French.

  She glanced out the station window. A Dollar General sat across the street. If they were going to trek into the wilderness, they were going to need water and food.

  “Let’s go,” Lucy said.

  “Are you sure you want to do this?” Zoe asked.

  “I recognized him. He knew about Robin, about Olivia. He said he could help me remember.”

  “That doesn’t make him trustworthy,” Zoe said.

  “What else are we going to do?”

  It was the same conversation, round and round. And still here they were, standing in Arkansas.

  “We need help, Zoe. I have to know what is going on, and good guy or bad guy, he has answers,” Lucy said. “I have to know.”

  They stood there for a second, then Lucy dropped her eyes to her feet and shrugged. “You don’t have to come if you don’t want.”

  Zoe shook her head and stepped forward, grabbing Lucy’s hand and interlacing her fingers with the girl’s. “Together, remember?”

  Lucy brought her eyes back up and grinned. She squeezed Zoe’s hand. There was no way Zoe was leaving her now.

  “Together,” Lucy said.

  THEY’D STARTED THEIR trek while the sun was still high in the sky, and now as they closed in on their destination, the sun would soon be gone for the day. Lucy was leading them from the map she’d drawn in her mind. The hike was hard, filled with uncleared pathways, rocky terrain, thick brush, and sharp cliff edges. Deeper and deeper they pushed into the Ouachita Mountains.

  They were out of water, their snacks depleted. Zoe was sore, every muscle aching. She was out of breath, her lungs desperate for a break. Her body felt broken and sleep deprived.

  Lucy was a machine, never ceasing, calmly scaling every obstacle with ease. Zoe had long ago abandoned the idea that Lucy was a normal girl, and this physical feat was just another link in the chain of evidence.

  She was about to call out and tell Lucy she needed to take a moment when Lucy pulled up to a stop, lifted a hand, and went still. Zoe’s lungs heaved, and she tried to quiet her breathing, which made her chest ache more.

  “Stay here,” Lucy said, and before Zoe could argue the girl was off. They had reached the top of a steep mountainside, and Lucy disappeared into the valley on the other side. Zoe carefully sat herself down on a large boulder to her right, her muscles aching with every new movement. Her heart rate started to come back to a normal rhythm, and it allowed her to breathe easier.

  She closed her eyes and hung her head, letting oxygen fill her lungs and then escape. The calm around her was peaceful, the moment of silence welcome after all she’d been through the past few days. She sat like that for several minutes, letting the cool evening air sweep past her shoulders.

  Something snapped behind her, yanking her from her momentary calm, and she spun around. He stood there, a yard off, the man who had asked them to come.

  Zoe yanked her backpack open and pulled out the pistol. She lifted it to eye level and aimed it at the man’s face. “Don’t come any closer,” she shouted.

  He raised his hands in surrender. “It’s okay. I didn’t mean to sneak up on you.”

  “I don’t believe anything you say,” Zoe said.

  “Okay, the feeling is mutual then.”

  Before Zoe even noticed him moving, he was reaching around to his back and yanking out a pistol of his own. Aimed at her face. Zoe moved from her place on the rock and placed her other hand on the gun, trying to hold it steady.

  “Who are you?” he asked. “What do you want with Lucy?” He didn’t pause for her to answer, he just snapped off more questions. “How did you end up with her? What’s yo
ur endgame?”

  Zoe was shocked, nearly dumbfounded. He was questioning her motives? He thought she might have ill intent. Her mind was too tired to quickly formulate a response.

  “Tell me who you are!” he barked again.

  “Who am I? Who are you?” she barked back.

  “Tom Seeley, special agent, FBI. And you?”

  “Zoe Johnson,” she said. “Waitress.”

  He looked taken aback, and she thought he might have smiled.

  “You’re a waitress?” he asked.

  “Yes, what’s that supposed to mean?”

  “What are you doing with Lucy?”

  “Trying to help her avoid getting killed by you.”

  That did make him smile, and he lowered his weapon. His smile was handsome, full lips and good teeth. Actually, his whole face was handsome. Good strong jaw, with even stubble and clean-cut dark hair. His chocolate eyes had a hint of caramel undertones and paired well with his warm olive skin tone.

  Zoe kept her weapon poised, even though he’d begun to put his away.

  “Sorry,” he said. “You just never know who’s a threat.”

  Zoe wasn’t sure whether to be thankful that he wasn’t pointing his gun at her face any longer or offended because he didn’t think she was threatening. “Well, I’m still not sure you aren’t,” she said.

  “I’m not,” Agent Seeley replied.

  “Oh, well, now that you say so,” Zoe mocked.

  “I’m the good guy here.”

  “And I’ve never encountered a guy who claimed to be good and wasn’t.”

  Again he smiled, and Zoe wished it didn’t make her insides tingle.

  “I like your spunk,” he said.

  Zoe was trying to think of something to say, gun still raised, when Agent Seeley started toward her. He didn’t seem concerned at all.