Hunted (Parallel Series, Book 3) (Parallel Trilogy)

by Christine Kersey

  Dani stared at me a moment, then sighed and nodded. “I understand.”

  When she looked at someone else, relief gushed through me. I was off the hook.

  “Why don’t you all relax for a while?” she said to all of us. “I need to talk to Jack about some other issues.”

  She stood and left the room and Jack followed her. I wondered if they were going to go into the front room to talk and I wondered what they were going to talk about. Would it have anything to do with Billy and me?

  “Who wants to play Monopoly?” Nathan asked.

  Brynn groaned. “That game takes too long. How about a nice game of poker?”

  Everyone agreed and we played for a while. I was having a great time with this new group of people who seemed so much more relaxed than the people at Camp Willowmoss or the kids at school had been.

  “I hate to interrupt,” Jack said as he walked into the room, a smile on his face. “But who’s up for a field trip?”

  Chapter Seven

  Everyone seemed eager to go, but Nathan, Kelly, and Mitch seemed especially excited and I wondered how often they left the house.

  “Where are we going to go?” Nathan asked.

  “We’re going to test Morgan and Billy’s new looks,” Jack said.

  I wasn’t sure I liked the sound of that, but I also realized I couldn’t stay in this house for the rest of my life.

  “What do you mean?” Billy asked.

  “Well,” Dani said, “We’ll have each of you go into some public place and see if anyone recognizes you. First we’ll have you each go in alone, then we’ll have you appear together.”

  “That sounds dangerous,” Nathan said.

  I wholeheartedly agreed, but didn’t want to sound afraid, so I stayed quiet.

  “The rest of us will be just outside,” Jack said. “So we can take off quickly, if needed.”

  “What do you think, Morgan?” Billy asked.

  I shrugged, not wanting to express my fear, but not wanting to encourage this exercise either. “What about you?”

  “I guess it’s worth a try.”

  If he felt okay about it, then I would do it too. I’d literally trusted him with my life over the last few days. In fact, he was the only person I trusted. “Okay.”

  “Good,” Dani said, smiling. “This is the only way to see if your new looks will work.”

  I had to agree, though I wished there was another way.

  We all piled into a van. Jack drove and Dani sat in the passenger seat, Billy and I sat in the middle bench next to the door—somehow Brynn had managed to sit on the other side of Billy—and the rest of the group crammed into the back seat. The windows were tinted and I liked the feel of invisibility that gave me, even though I knew it was just a thin sheet of glass separating me from those who would capture me.

  As we backed out of the garage I looked out the window. I’d been asleep when we’d arrived earlier that morning so I had no idea where we were. The neighborhood looked ordinary—nothing to make it stand out at all—and the houses were copycats of each other. I looked at the front of Jack’s house and noticed a neat row of flowers planted on each side of the walkway that led to the front door. I wondered who’d planted them—Jack? Or maybe Tracy? How much time did Tracy spend here anyway?

  We drove for about fifteen minutes before we reached a strip mall and pulled into a parking slot far from the walkway that lined the store fronts.

  Dani turned in the front seat and looked between me and Billy. “Who wants to go first?”

  Sudden fear swept over me and I looked at Billy. He looked right back at me. “I guess I’ll go first,” I heard myself say, and immediately wanted to take it back.

  “Okay,” Billy said, stopping me from saying I changed my mind.

  “Go into that clothing store,” Dani said, pointing to a store whose windows showed the latest fashions.

  “What should I do once I get inside?”

  “Just browse the racks. You know, pretend you’re looking for a new blouse or something.”

  “Okay.” I looked at Brynn, who nodded with encouragement—probably because she was the one who created my new look. Then I looked at the four people jammed into the back seat. Nathan looked worried, reflecting exactly how I felt. Mitch stared out the window, apparently more interested in what was going on outside than what I was about to do. Tracy said, “You’ll do great,” though I wasn’t so sure. And Kelly gave me a half-smile, which I didn’t know how to interpret.

  “Go ahead,” Dani said, which was easy for her, since she wasn’t the one who was being hunted by Enforcers.

  Reluctantly I undid my seatbelt and turned to the sliding door. I hesitated, hoping Billy would say he would go instead, but after a moment it was obvious I would have to follow through. I pulled on the handle and the door slid open easily. I stepped onto the pavement and turned toward Billy. “Here goes nothing,” I said.

  He nodded, but didn’t say anything. As I began sliding the door closed, I saw Brynn tap on Billy’s arm and he turned away from me and toward her. The fact that he would turn away from me at this very moment—the moment I was about to put myself at greatest risk—upset me and I slammed the door without meaning to. My gaze went to the passenger window and my eyes met Dani’s. She had a questioning look on her face. I mouthed the word sorry, then with a feeling of anxiety growing in my gut, I walked toward the clothing store.

  When I reached the door I hesitated a moment, but forced myself to pull the door open. A little bell rang and my eyes widened as the clerk looked up from the book she was reading and regarded me.

  “Hello,” she said.

  “Hi.” My heart pounded as I waited for her to suddenly jump up and scream that she knew who I was and she was going to call the Enforcers that very minute.

  She set her book down. “Is there anything you’re looking for in particular?”

  “No,” I quickly answered. “Just browsing.”

  She smiled and picked up her book. “Okay. Let me know if you need any help.” Then she immediately went back to her book.

  Sighing softly in relief, I went to the farthest rack—there were no other shoppers in the small store—and began looking through the clothes. I hardly noticed what I was looking at as my gaze kept wandering to the clerk, scared she would suddenly realize she’d seen my face before and knew I was the escapee from the F.A.T. center who had a price on her head.

  My mind was so focused on my certainty that she would recognize me, that when I glanced away from the girl and looked to my right, I gasped at the face of the girl looking back at me. For a split second I thought she was staring at me, until I realized it was a mirror and I was looking at my own reflection. I relaxed as I reassured myself that I looked nothing like the Morgan who had escaped from Camp Willowmoss.

  Feeling confident, I began to enjoy the feeling of normalcy that shopping brought, and selected several shirts and a pair of jeans and asked the girl if I could try them on. She set her book down and unlocked a dressing room.

  “Let me know if you need any different sizes or anything,” she said, though I could tell she hoped I wouldn’t interrupt her reading again.

  I tried on all the clothes and actually liked two of the shirts and the jeans. I wondered if Jack or Dani would buy them for me—I didn’t have any clothes of my own, after all—and admired myself in the dressing room mirror as I tried them on again.

  I put on my own clothes and opened the door. Just as I did, a woman and two teenage girls walked into the store. Suddenly I knew that only having one person see me in my new look wasn’t much of a test and a new feeling of anxiety crashed over me as I prepared myself for phase two of this test.

  The sales clerk greeted the new customers, then called out to me, “Did any of those work for you?”

  I was like the proverbial deer in the headlights as I noticed the woman and her daughters looking at me. My gaze went from the sales clerk to the three new customers and back again. “Uh, yeah,” I
managed to say. “Can you hold these for me?” I held up the items I wanted.

  “Sure,” the clerk said. “What’s your name?”

  “Mor…Michelle,” I quickly corrected.

  “Michelle?”

  “Yeah.”

  “We can only hold them for twenty-four hours.”

  “Okay.”

  I glanced back to the woman and the two teenagers and saw they were ignoring me now, which thrilled me. Four people had seen me and exactly zero had recognized me.

  Giddy with relief, I left the store and went back to the van. As I slid the door open, I immediately noticed that Billy was absorbed in a conversation with Brynn.

  “How’d it go?” Dani asked.

  I glanced at her, than back at Billy, who finally turned and looked at me.

  “Hey, Morgan,” he said. “I see you made it back.”

  “It was fine,” I said to Dani. “I hope you don’t mind, but I asked them to hold a couple of things for me.”

  “Oh,” she said. “Okay. Yeah, I guess you need a few things.”

  “Thank you.”

  “I’ll have someone pick them up later.” She paused. “What name did you give them?”

  “Michelle.” My gaze flicked to Billy—he was the one who’d originally given me that name—then back to Dani.

  “Good,” she said. “Okay, Billy. Your turn. Go into that sports store over there.” She pointed to a store several doors down from the store I’d been in.

  “Okay.” He smiled at me and I could tell he felt a little nervous. I knew how he felt, but now that I’d finished my turn, I had confidence that he would do fine.

  He left and I watched through the tinted glass as he walked across the parking lot and into the sporting goods store. I stared out the window as the minutes ticked by. My eyes began to droop as I waited for him to come out.

  “Uh oh,” Brynn said a moment later, a sense of urgency in her voice.

  My eyes snapped open and I saw Billy running towards us, motioning with one arm to go, go, go. I slid open the van’s side door and Billy leapt through. The door slammed shut, Jack pressed the gas, and we lurched forward.

  I looked at Billy, who was laying on the floor, breathing hard from his sprint.

  “What happened?” Dani asked, no hint of concern in her voice.

  “Someone recognized me.”

  Her eyebrows rose a millimeter. “Are you certain?”

  He nodded.

  “Tell me exactly what happened.”

  He got up from the floor and sat in the space between me and Brynn. I glanced at Brynn and noticed her closely watching Billy’s every move. Without thinking, I put my hand on Billy’s back as a gesture of support. Billy smiled at me. Brynn glared at me. I ignored her and focused on Billy.

  “When I got inside the store,” he said, “I just began looking around. You know, checking out the equipment, looking at the shoes. I even asked to try on a pair.” He glanced at me and smiled. “I could use some new shoes.”

  I looked at his feet and noticed that his shoes were pretty beat up. For some reason I hadn’t noticed that before.

  “Go on,” Dani said.

  “So the clerk was getting my size and I was just about to take off my shoes when this kid—couldn’t have been more than nine years old—he said, ‘Hey, aren’t you that guy on TV?’ I told him to beat it, but he wouldn’t leave, so I got up, but then the clerk came back with the shoes. The kid pointed at me and told the clerk I looked like the guy the Enforcers were looking for. I tried to laugh it off, and the clerk didn’t seem to believe him, but the kid wouldn’t shut up and kept getting louder and louder—I guess cause no one would listen to him.”

  Billy became more agitated as he spoke. “I noticed more people watching us and then some old guy said ‘Yeah, you’re right kid.’ That’s when I told the clerk I’d come back another time and then I heard a woman yell for someone to call the Enforcers. I walked toward the door and some man stood in my way.” Billy paused and looked at me. “Can you believe he wasn’t going to let me leave?” Billy looked back at Dani. “So I punched him.”

  I heard Brynn gasp and I wondered what she would think if she could have seen me stabbing Hansen. Maybe she’d think twice before glaring at me, but I doubted it.

  “People yelled at me to stop,” Billy said. “But of course I ignored them, and booked it out here.”

  “I didn’t see anyone follow you out before we left,” Jack said. “So I think we’re in the clear.”

  “I think Billy’s disguise might need a little work,” Tracy added from the back seat.

  I looked at Brynn to see how she was taking this news, but she seemed happy. I guess because that meant she’d get some time alone with Billy.

  “I’m already getting ideas,” she said.

  “Or maybe,” Billy added, “We can leave my hair alone and I’ll just stay out of sight for a while. You know, until the search cools off.”

  “Hmm,” Dani said. “Let Brynn give your look one more try, then we’ll see what we want to do next.”

  When we got back to the house, we gathered in the living room—or what they called the meeting room—to further discuss our next moves. Honestly, all I wanted was to stay out of sight for the next six weeks, then head to Fox Run and the tunnel that would take me home. As much as I hated the way things were done in this world, I wasn’t willing to risk my chance to get back home to help these people.

  This was their world. Not mine. They would have to figure out how to fix it. Without me. But until the six week mark arrived, I would need to play along—or, I was certain, they would be more than happy to kick me out of their little safe house. It seemed pretty clear that if I couldn’t contribute, I wasn’t worth a whole lot to them.

  “That was an interesting exercise,” Dani said. “Somewhat successful.” She turned to me. “Morgan, how many people saw you in that store?”

  “Four. The worker, and a woman and her two teen-age daughters.”

  “Okay.” She looked at Billy. “And how many saw you?”

  “I guess about ten. But the kid who recognized me was the second person to see me close up.”

  “So either he got lucky, or the disguise just didn’t work.”

  Billy shrugged, not seeming too concerned. But then he always seemed cool under pressure.

  Tracy stood. “Kelly, Brynn, and Nathan, you’re on dinner duty tonight.”

  I watched as the four of them left the room.

  “That’s something else we need to talk to you about,” Dani said. “Your assigned duties.”

  Now this place was starting to remind me of Camp Willowmoss.

  “Everyone needs to pitch in to keep things running around here,” Jack said. “What kinds of things can you do?”

  “I can fix stuff,” Billy said.

  I didn’t know he was good at that, but somehow I wasn’t surprised.

  “That kind of skill is always welcome,” Jack said.

  I was going to mention my cleaning skills, but decided I’d rather work in the kitchen. “I can help in the kitchen.”

  “Great,” Dani said, smiling. “We all take turns cooking the meals and cleaning up. We post a schedule in the kitchen. I’ll add you to the rotation.”

  At least I wouldn’t be cleaning the bathroom.

  “Oh,” Dani said. “We also take turns cleaning the bathrooms.”

  I held back a groan. At least it was just a normal bathroom. Not sixteen toilets, showers, and sinks.

  “You’re also responsible for keeping your own space clean in the bedroom,” Dani added.

  I nodded.

  “One last thing,” she said, smiling. “You need to put in time each day on your studies.”

  Wow, I thought. This really is just like Camp Willowmoss. But I knew it really wasn’t.

  After dinner—grilled pork chops, steamed vegetables, and brown rice—Dani had Brynn work some more on Billy’s look. After a while the two of them came out of the bathroom. Th
is time Brynn had put longer extensions in his hair, then pulled his hair into a ponytail with long strips hanging in his face. I didn’t like the look as much as before, but it was a little harder to recognize him.

  Soon after, Dani, Tracy, and Brynn left to go to their homes. That left Jack, Nathan, Mitch, Kelly, and of course Billy and me. Jack went into his room where he had an office set up, and the rest of us went into the family room to watch TV.

  “They seem like pretty nice people,” Billy said to me as we sat on the floor, our backs against the couch.

  “I guess.” I liked them well enough, but I still would have preferred to be with my family.

  “What’s up with Brynn?” Billy said this with a grin that said he knew exactly what was up with her.

  “What do you mean?” No way would I help them with their budding romance.

  He smirked. “Never mind.”

  I turned away from him and looked at the TV, not really paying attention to what was on. Mitch had the remote and evidently he didn’t like what was on because he kept changing the channel. I didn’t really care what we watched, I was just glad we had a safe place to spend the night.

  “Wait,” Billy said. “Go back one.”

  I wondered what he’d seen and waited for Mitch to go to the previous channel. When I saw what had caught Billy’s eye, all my attention became riveted to the television.

  Chapter Eight

  It was my house. The camera panned from one side of our property to the other and I saw a dozen Enforcers surrounding my house. “What is going on?” I murmured. Billy put his hand on my shoulder, but I hardly noticed.

  “There have been a number of tips that have come in,” the reporter said. “And each one is taken seriously. Evidently there have been reports that the fugitives, Morgan Campbell and Billy Foster, have been seen in this neighborhood, perhaps at this very house. As some of our viewers may know by now, this is the Campbell residence. Mr. Campbell has been in a Federally Assisted Thinning center for several weeks now.” The reporter frowned as he shared this bit of news. “And now his daughter, Morgan Campbell, is a wanted fugitive. She, along with Billy Foster, assaulted an Enforcer during their brazen escape from Camp Willowmoss just days ago.”