My timing game, learned by Crewe and Cy throughout years of watching me, commences. Only timing has less to do with it now. It’s not the watchful eye of the camera we’re avoiding—it’s that of the black-operations teams. With their heat-seeking technology and superior, sniper weapons, there is no time when it’s safe to be exposed.
We flash shorter distances than what I’m accustomed to, and at a more frantic speed, yet our movements between the immense conifers have a stealthy sleekness.
We’re about a hundred yards away from the pond now. As far as we know, we’ve been undetectable to the naked eye, but we know better than to celebrate that. Although our bodies are hidden behind the larch trees, our heat signatures blaze in contrast with the cool, night forest.
Crewe signals for each of us to take our final position.
My eyes catch the movement on top of the EPA building before Crewe’s do. Simultaneously, as I fall to his flank, I cock the rifle and pull it into position at my shoulder. Crewe frantically reacts to my draw and blindly aims his weapon toward EPA 7-8.
“No, Crewe. It’s her,” I caution him as he zeroes in on the water erupting from the pond. My eyes remain trained on the place where Evvie splashed while the sight of Crewe’s rifle lifts and searches the EPA rooftop and high-standing solar panels on each end.
Evvie’s head undulates smoothly above the surface and back below as she takes a shallow breath in the middle of the pond. This indicates to me that she knows too—she knows they’re watching her.
Contrary to orders, I decide I need to go to Evvie. I have to be there, at the water’s edge, when she next lifts her head. I need to take a bullet for her should someone be hiding in the distance with their weapon engaged and aimed to kill.
My runners grip the moist soil and undergrowth as I push off toward a patch of trees only a few yards away. I hear an explosion of successive rounds and feel their power drive me to the ground as they whiz by. Another inch this way or that, another second faster or slower, and I might have been dead. Through my ringing ears, I hear a bellowing scream approach from my right.
So this is how I cause the death of Crewe Davids, I mourn. I defy his orders and miraculously evade the scrupulous aim of a trained BOT. In desperation to keep one of his subordinates alive, Crewe pushes forward with all of his might to reach me. I close my eyes and listen for the inevitable, for the gunfire to renew. Over the hum in my ears, I hear the distant clanks of a gun as it drops to the ground. So it’s the other Davids brother who dies first. A silencer just killed Cy, positioned farther from harm than Crewe and I were.
Crewe effortlessly drags me off the ground and sits me up behind the nearest tree. He’s bent over and fussing over me, but I can’t make sense of what he’s saying. Thudding footsteps approach from behind him. If this is Galvesten, he’s next. No gunfire sounds, and the boots draw closer.
I grab hold of Crewe’s collar, pull him to his knees, and reach for my weapon. Wide-eyed and terrified, Crewe dives across my lap and knocks the gun from my single-handed grasp. Behind him, a pair of hunting camouflage is revealed.
Just as quickly as I’m relieved that I’m alive this second, I’m terrified to see the expression of sheer terror on Cy’s moonlit face above me.
“Are you hit? Are you hit?” Crewe is yelling and shaking me, but I’m fixed on Cy’s eyes as they spot something ahead. His feet take off running toward, not away from, the threat.
Evvie. I push off Crewe’s shoulder to peek around the clump of trees as I pull myself on my feet. Crewe wrestles me back down and yanks my face toward him. “Sydney,” he says. For a split second, I lock onto his intense, anxious eyes, but as soon as I do, he’s gone. Like the hero he told Cy not to be, he’s after his brother.
I rise to my feet and round the tree cluster, paying no attention to the camera as I burst from the cowardly hideout. Ahead, the hurtling Crewe wraps his gun into position to cover Cy. I expect the seeksmen to be shot dead in their tracks, but no gunfire ensues. They’re running toward the pond. They’re still trying to save my sister.
I try to match the bravery of the Davids brothers. It should be easy; I’m farther back than them and, unlike Cy, I still hold my rifle. What caused Cy to drop his weapon? Has he been shot and is now propelled by a desire to leave life as a hero?
A braided head emerges from the edge of the pond. Cy reaches in and rips her from the water. Evvie manages the beginnings of a scream before Cy stifles it. He passes the flailing Evvie to Crewe, who turns and runs with her behind the tree nearest to the pond, the first tree I use in the timing game.
An instant later, I meet them at the tree. Evvie is kicking and flailing the same way I did in Crewe’s grasp. It takes her a few precious seconds to recognize me and calm down. When she stops lurching about, Crewe hands her over to me. I wrap her firmly in my arms and continue to cover her mouth. She doesn’t seem to fear that I’ve been brainwashed by the strangers who ripped her from the water's edge. She trusts me completely and doesn’t fight me at all.
“Let’s go!” Crewe shouts when the camera passes. My hand remains latched to one of Evvie’s as I pull her from our inadequate cover, forcing her in front of me as I follow Crewe and Cy’s long, risky sprint past Cy’s original station. In dead sprint, Crewe bends to the ground to grab the muzzle of Cy’s rifle and hikes it behind him to his brother’s waiting hands.
Gavesten has already been on the run since hearing Crewe’s order to go. He slows a bit to hoist the two medical bags from where Della abandoned them.
Hiding would be futile and slowing at all would be a costly mistake. Thus, none of us bother with the timing game. We are engaged in an all-out sprint, knowing that our lives depend on our speed. Direction is important too, which is why I worry that Della is our current leader.
Crewe slows, takes my gun from me, and ushers us ahead of him. He had sped to the front to ensure his brother got his weapon, and now that he knows Cy is armed, he drops back to be our shield. Evvie and I must still be within range of our hunters.
“Don’t go to the house,” Crewe shouts from behind us. “Plan B!” he yells ahead to Cy and to Galvesten who has already caught up with Della. I feel more secure knowing that Galvesten now leads us, but I’m not sure he could make out Crewe’s order.
“Where’s plan B?” I yell behind me. I turn and see that Crewe holds the cellular phone to his ear.
“How long?” He must be talking to Merick, who has been on his way north to meet us with backup teams.
“What’s going on?” Evvie pleads.
“Shhh!” I scold. “Trust me.”
“How many are there?” Crewe shouts into the phone as we all frantically run. I pray he’s inquiring about the number of troops on our side and not some resistance they’ve met. “Clear them out,” Crewe says. “We need it.”
“Hey!” Crewe calls. I turn back, recognizing that this time he is talking to me. All Crewe needs to catch up with us is the time we waste to turn around. “Tell her about it.” Crewe taps his wrist. “I’m going to catch the others and prep them. Stay back and watch your words.”
“Okay,” I answer. The others have slowed in their struggle to move Della along. Crewe catches them easily. Gladly, Evvie and I lighten our pace and fall about fifty yards behind the others. Crewe wouldn’t have us fall back if we were still in range. It’s no reason to relax; I expect the BOTs are on the move as well, keeping the danger we face immediate.
I tear the bandage from my wrist and hold my arm out to my sister. “Look.” The fresh scar and stitches are neat, but more sizable then what city doctors and their technology can accomplish. I grasp an imaginary microphone and pretend to speak into in like a master of ceremonies. I point to my wrist to indicate that there was a microphone in my chip. Evvie’s brows furrow in concern, then disgust. I clutch her arm with one hand and turn the fingers of the other into a claw that motions to remove the chip from her wrist.
“I trust you,” Evvie says, beginning to lose her brea
th. She shakes her head to indicate that I don’t need to try to lay out what’s coming for her like I did when we breached. It’s easier for her to trust me than to decipher code as we sprint through the dusky forest. I’m glad my brave sister trusts me so readily.
“Let’s catch up and then we’ll have a break.” I easily quicken my pace again, but Evvie’s exertions don’t make her legs move any faster than they were going. I have to pull her along for us to make gains. It takes us nearly a minute to get only about halfway to the Sheridan clan. I decide that will have to be close enough.
“Cy!” I call ahead. He doesn’t look back. “Cy!” I call again, knowing that he can hear me. It doesn’t look as if Crewe is still prepping them, so why won’t he turn? When he does, I see that devastation has hijacked his spirit. “Hang back with her,” I tell rather than ask him. Evvie looks to me with alarm. I give her hand a squeeze to reassure her.
Cy falls back obediently, but purposely avoids making eye contact with me in passing. What has Crewe been telling them up there? What order has he given that makes Cy unable to face me?
I accelerate to meet the group. I am about to demand to hear the plan when Crewe instinctively begins to outline it.
“Plan B is the station,” he reveals as he runs steadily. “Merick and the others will meet us. Doc and Del will have to take her chip out on the go.”
It’s an unsightly thought for sure, but the ghastliness of Evvie’s surgery isn’t what made Cy estranged from me. Chip removal also isn’t as pressing as the present. “Are they pursuing us?” I ask, wondering what Crewe’s not telling me.
“If they want to, they sure have viable lanes!” Crewe snaps at me. I decide now isn’t the time to bicker with him, so I draw back to my sister again.
I take off the camouflage hunting jacket with which I was outfitted and secure it around my waist. Legs still pumping, I unzip the bulletproof vest and hand it to Evvie, who readily accepts it. She slows up even more as she looks down to fight with the zipper. I wish I could make her faster. I stuff the jacket into her hands too, leaving only the lightweight, running shirt that I wore out here before dawn covering my back. Evvie pulls the jacket on more easily, but she isn’t getting any faster.
Della lags behind too now, but she fights on for her survival. Somehow I don’t think the BOTs are interested in taking her out. They’ll go for Evvie first. I am important, as Crewe put it. She might be too.
Why? Why are they after us? Usually when I’m running out here like this, I’m doing it to clear my head. Tonight, I have to think on the run. I have to reason out why my chip was upgraded almost four years ago to a technology that’s not even known to exist today.
I think about Judge Lera Sutton. There was a kindness that flashed through her every now and again. Surely government agents could have appointed one of their own to preside over and judge our case. They either appointed or threatened the nurse who blocked my view of my wrist while I was in the hospital after getting beaten and poisoned. Looking back, I don’t get the impression that Judge Sutton was one of theirs or was threatened by them. She had decided her verdict solitarily.
That draws in more questions. If the BOTs didn’t interfere with my case, then they really didn’t care where Evvie was to go. If she was delivered to me, I would have been content. I would have had no reason to leave Miles. Maybe if she were dragged back to the orphanage they had a crooked, closed adoption plan ready. They would have successfully kept me tied to the county, searching for my sister for the next four years until she turned eighteen.
Something doesn’t add up. With the microphone installed, I know they were listening to my conversation with Evvie about our mother. I know they were tracing my meanderings online. They watched me search for Tuli and Tigonee Braves, and another Loretta Harter, only to find nothing. They know that the empty results for the girls and articles about my mother that I’ve been able to view in the past would heighten my curiosity and fear.
They must have also been watching the Davids brothers. They’ve allowed them to remove people from the county for years without any resistance. Have they been waiting for this? Have they allowed the seeksmen to carry out their job in hope that one day the Harter girls would be snatched? They didn’t take the seeksmen out this morning when they abducted me. I wonder if they watched approvingly as the car turned around and headed away from Sheridan and back toward Miles.
They waited until I returned on scene, until I returned for my sister, to try to eliminate me. If I were truly the important one—they wouldn’t have shot at me. They have to be after Evvie. What threat could she bring? What could they possible want from my little sister?
Right now they have their choice of using the global positioning engrained in Evvie’s chip, the infrared energy radiating from all of us, or satellite imaging in the moon’s glow to pinpoint us as we run for our lives. I estimate that we’ve made it about a mile from the circumference of the county, so we’re out of sniper range. However, the county could be sending a fighter jet or a chopper, revived from where I suspect they have lied dusty in storage. Ballistics or bombs fired overhead will easily annihilate all of us. A bulletproof vest won’t save anyone from the heavy artillery and explosives that they have at their disposal.
Are they toying with us? Why aren’t they acting? I wish they would get it over with. We are miles from Miles; there will be no mess to cover up so that their citizens don’t learn of the county’s transgression. Perhaps they’re waiting until we reach a hideout and meet the others to maximize the casualties. They could take out all the seeksmen with one blow. They could assist other counties in the region by taking out different clans of seeksmen who have been pilfering their people. It makes sense for Miles’ BOTs to act as soon as we’re unified with the others. I can’t help but reason that we’re sprinting toward our imminent deaths.
Concealed in the Shadows Page 18
