Jordyn and Mom looked at each other, not hearing the same sound I did. The sound grew louder as I ran up the beach toward it. Mom, Xander, and Jordyn followed me. “But it can’t be. They can’t be here already. It’s too early,” Jordyn yelled from behind me.
By the time I stopped running, it was too late. A big orange van came to a stop in front of me, and three men jumped out, scraping through the sand. I barely recognized them from the mercenary camp where the three men attacked Jordyn. I slowly stepped backward. The first man towered over me. His pupils took over the whites of his eyes.
Harlow’s face flashed in my head.
His smile was a sparse collection of brown teeth with wide spaces in between. “Well, well! Look here! Do you remember us, little girl?”
Suddenly Mom and Jordyn were next to me. Mom stepped forward. “Get away from her. Who are you?”
The first man feigned a gasp. “You don’t remember us? After we let you in our home? Gave you food?”
The second man cut off the first. “Then your man killed three of ours?”
Suddenly Jordyn shoved Xander next to me and both she and Mom were blocking us from the men. The third man spoke, throwing an accusing finger in Jordyn’s direction. “Over that whore! There she is!”
Xander stepped toward him, but I pulled him back next to me. “Don’t talk to my sister like that!” He tried to sound strong, but his voice came out as a muffled squeak.
Jordyn turned around and hissed at Xander to shut up. “Why are you here?”
The first man laughed. “Payback.”
They swarmed us like wasps. More men got out of the van and charged us, and though Mom and I kicked and screamed, they captured us easily. They tied Xander up and threw him into the back of our car. It took three men to bring down Jordyn, and I feared they’d killed her by the time she hit the ground.
They threw us in a pile on the floor of the shack by the pier as if we were tattered laundry in a basket. Mom and Jordyn landed on top of me, and the sudden weight knocked the breath from my body.
I looked down at my hands and watched as blood seeped out of them in tiny red dots. I must have scraped them on the floor of the shack, and the floor left behind little shards of wood embedded deep in my skin. There was a sharp pain in my shin and I guessed that some of the wooden shrapnel had made it into that part of my body too. I winced as my jeans rubbed against my wounds.
The door of the shack slammed and we heard our captors laughing at us. Mom leaped for the door only to find it locked from the outside. She slammed her fists against it, cursing the mercenaries, flecks of spit flying from her mouth as her words left her.
“Scream all you want. Cain’s not going to find anything left of you anyway.”
Cain’s face popped into my mind and so did his words: Don’t just see with your eyes. I shut them tight and forced myself to stay perfectly still. As I listened to the sound of the mercenaries driving away, a faint odor drifted toward us from the far corner of the shack.
Smoke.
“Mom! It’s burning!”
Mom ran over and grabbed me, pulling me to the opposite corner of the shack from where I had smelled the smoke. Jordyn looked throughout the shack trying to find the source of it. “I don’t see anything. Where is it coming from?”
My stomach dropped to the floor. The mercenaries’ plan started to take shape in my mind and I realized why they didn’t just kill us right away. That was too easy. “It’s outside. They started it outside so we can’t just put it out.”
Mom looked at me and pulled me closer.
Jordyn pushed her ear to the side of the shack where we smelled the smoke. Sure enough, she heard the crackling of a fire and felt the heat sting her face. “We have to get out of here. Now.”
I couldn’t have agreed more.
We each took a part of the shack and looked for anything we could possibly use to break out. The wood of the shack was so rotted, if we could just find a tool to tear through it maybe we could free ourselves. I found an old metal dinghy, fishing hooks, and some rusted cans, but nothing sharp enough to help us escape. Mom went through the shelves and threw everything that wasn’t useful over her shoulder. Cans, bottles, and fishing gear bounced and landed with a thud on the rotten wood floor.
“This place is going to be up in flames in a matter of minutes,” Jordyn said.
Not like I hadn’t figured that out already. I went to a different part of the shack and looked around.
Nothing.
Mom wouldn’t give up. After she threw everything she could find across the room, she tried to tear a hole in the wall with her bare hands, clawing the wood with just her fingernails. But her fingers tore and tore and nothing budged. By the time she stopped, the skin flapped off her fingers in thin sheets. Mom looked at me, and the terror in her eyes made me stumble backward.
I landed on a crate in my part of the shack. The smoke was already starting to thicken the air, and my nose stung with every breath. Sweat dripped into my eyes and my vision blurred. I closed them. What would Cain do in this situation?
I listened.
It was faint but it was there: a slight lapping sound, the sound of the tide coming in and out, gently touching the sand. The kind of sound that I could only have heard over the crackling of the smoke if there was a hole in the floor. I pushed the crate to one side.
The hole was small but it would work. The three of us could squeeze through. “Great job, sweetheart!” Mom squeezed me tight. “Honey, you go first.”
I shook my head. “No, Mom, it’s too far. I’ll fall. You guys go first and catch me.”
“Come on, Claire! Let’s go! We’ll get down and catch her. She’ll be out right after.” Jordyn grabbed my mom and gently pushed her toward the hole.
The smoke gathered inside my lungs in thick clouds now and I coughed uncontrollably. “Hurry!” I told her.
Mom nodded and shimmied herself through the hole and landed hard on the sand below. Jordyn slid through right after her. When they landed in the sand, they looked back up at me. Sand stuck to their jeans where they fell, but they were okay. They waved at me and told me to jump.
A beam that had been innocently hovering over our heads slammed into me, knocking me flat to the ground. I looked down to see it sitting on top of my ankle, and my foot was twisted in a completely unnatural way.
I couldn’t move.
“Mom! Help me, I’m stuck!”
“It’s okay, baby, I’ll climb back up. I’m coming to get you.”
Jordyn gave her a boost and Mom grabbed at the opening in the floor with both hands.
She slipped.
They tried again, and again she fell.
I looked up to see the whole room covered in flames. They climbed the walls like a burning infestation, destroying everything they touched. I could barely see around me. There was no way my mother was going to be able to get in. “Mom, get out of here. You guys need to go or the building’s going to collapse on top of you.”
I closed my eyes, but I could still see my mom in my head. Her eyes were widening and tears streamed down her face. “No, I’m not leaving!”
Jordyn screamed at me too. “Hold on! We’ll get in there! Don’t you dare close your eyes!”
They were so heavy though.
I’d just let myself go to sleep. Then it would be done. Like what they do for sick animals. I’d just go to sleep. Then I wouldn’t feel it when the fire swallowed me and reduced me to a heap of flesh and bones. Just sleep.
A different sadness rushed over me too. I would have to break my promise to Olivia. I wouldn’t be finding her now, not ever. I concentrated hard and hoped that wherever she was, she could hear me say, “I’m sorry.”
A familiar voice brought me back to the world. “Riley! Riley, it’s me! Is there anything that you can cover yourself with? Something hard?”
Cain.
I looked around the room. The dinghy. The body was solid metal and it might provide me some protection…
if I didn’t suffocate under it first.
I started to scoot toward it, but the beam was still pinning me to the floor. “Cain, I’m stuck! There’s a beam on my foot!”
“You need to move it. Now.”
“It hurts! It’s too heavy!”
“Riley, you don’t have a choice. You have to push. Now!”
I pushed.
At first, the beam wouldn’t budge. I thought the pain was going to swallow me whole instead of the fire. My body felt like it was already burning. But I kept pushing. The fire was inching closer, but I kept pushing. The broken bones in my foot cracked as they shifted from being released from the beam. I screamed and gave one last heave.
It moved.
I dragged my leg and the rest of me across the floor to the side of the shack where the dinghy sat. “Okay, Cain, I’m here!” Carefully, I lifted the rim and threw it on top of myself.
Mom’s voice. “Baby, we’re coming, just hold on!”
I waited. I couldn’t breathe under the dinghy. In a minute the air would be gone.
Then I heard the engine.
The shack collapsed in a matter of seconds. The roof smashed against the dinghy, the wood making a pitter patter on the metal like giant hail.
The floor creaked under me. It wasn’t going to hold. There was no way. Only half the shack was suspended over the beach, but the support beams wouldn’t be strong enough. I was going to miss being burned alive only to be crushed to death. Perfect.
Then the dinghy lifted off of me and Cain smiled down at me. The sun seemed to shoot out in rays behind his head like a halo. He was no angel, but I had no interest in angels. I didn’t want perfect. I wanted scars and steel. “Time to go, brave one.” He scooped me up and with the sun shining down on us through the smoky air he carried me out of the rubble.
I looked back at the shack to see how Cain had gotten me out. The car sat with its nose enveloped by one half of the shack. I guess when a door won’t open, destroy it.
As we walked toward the others, a snarl escaped his lips, like it did back in the trailer. “Keegan did this to you, didn’t he? I know it.”
I looked at him, confused. “No, it was the mercenaries. They followed us.” Cain paused, still holding me in his arms. “Why did you think it was Keegan?”
“Because he almost killed me once before.”
I glanced down the beach at the rest of the group, then back at Cain, thinking about the story he had told me a couple days earlier. “But it wasn’t you in the building, it was me.”
He stared at me before he spoke. “He’s not supposed to get to take anyone else away from me…” His eyes pulled away from me as he headed back down the beach. “You’re the only one of us who hasn’t been destroyed by all this. You’re supposed to make it.”
My head felt lighter, and it wasn’t from the smoke inhalation.
As we walked (he did the walking actually), I asked him one more question. “Cain? Why didn’t you just kill the guy? I mean, that’s kind of your thing, right?”
“Someday. The opportunity will present itself. I’ll kill him some day…but not today. Today, I save you.”
I nodded and just enjoyed being there with him for those precious seconds, listening to the sand squish under his feet.
Mom stole me from Cain’s arms and accidentally smashed against my foot in the process. I let out a scream and she quickly apologized, laying me on the ground. She sat down next to me and carefully placed my head in her lap. Jordyn knelt by my foot with first aid supplies and used whatever she could to bandage me up. She yanked my shoe off, which hurt like hell, then attached a makeshift brace to my foot, which also hurt like hell.
“They’ll have better supplies once we get across, I promise. But this will work for the ride over.” She gave me a quick squeeze. “I’m so glad you’re okay.”
I looked up to see Xander and Bo coming over. Bo had gone to untie him after Cain had rescued me. I wasn’t sure why they hadn’t thrown Xander in the shack with us. Maybe it was an eye for an eye thing: Cain killed three of theirs, so they wanted to kill three of ours.
Or maybe they just wanted someone alive to tell Cain who had taken us from him: who had beaten him.
Xander and Bo knelt down and gave me hugs too. I wasn’t sure if I wanted a hug from Bo, but when you almost die, you’ll take all the hugs you can get.
We heard the faint sound of an engine in the distance, and I nearly leaped to my one good foot when I saw a small motorboat coming. It was made of metal and had a canopy over the back end of the boat, also made of metal, like a steel cocoon. The driver of the boat didn’t have metal surrounding him, just glass. Several other faces that looked as tired and tattered as we were stared back at us. They even waved.
We had actually made it.
Mom ran over and hugged Bo, which surprised me. Apparently it surprised him too. “Does that mean you forgive me?”
Mom shook her head. “I’m not hugging the man who lied to me. I’m hugging the man who helped get me and my daughter here safely.”
Bo smiled. “It’s a start.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
The captain of the boat had to stay a bit offshore, since the place where he would have normally docked had a shack with a car driven through it attached to it. That meant we had to wade through the water. Cain carefully picked me up and carried me with him to the boat, legs straining against the resistance of the water. Everyone else went first.
I’d be lying if I said I didn’t have a smile plastered on my face.
The captain held out his hand to all of us, except for me. Cain gently passed me to the captain so he could get on the boat too. Jordyn had gotten on first, and she held me up when the captain placed me on the deck so I could be part of the group. Once we were all there, the captain greeted us. “Hello, all! Cain, who have you got here today?” His face reminded me of Santa Clause, wrinkly and covered in a snowy white beard, with little glasses resting on his turned-up nose.
I leaned on Jordyn and stuck out my hand. “Riley, sir.”
He shook it. “Nice to meet you, dear!” He looked at my foot. “Looks like you’ve had quite an ordeal!” Bo stuck out his hand next and the captain shook it. They smiled at each other. “Name’s Drake. Good to meet you!” Then he got to Mom. She reached out her hand. About halfway to hers, the captain’s hand froze. He pulled it back, like touching Mom’s skin would have burned his own. “Wait a minute. This is…yeah, I know you. Get off my boat. Now.”
I looked around at the other passengers. They were whispering amongst themselves, no doubt deciding whether they wanted to condemn my mother too. Panic swept over me. Jordyn’s hands were the only thing keeping me upright. He started to push my mom toward the edge of the boat. Bo stepped in. “No! Please, sir. She has a daughter. What about Riley?”
“Not my problem.” He continued to push Mom toward the edge. I didn’t think he would have cared if she had fallen overboard backward and hit her head in the water and sand below.
“Don’t you touch her! Leave my mom alone!” I threw myself toward him, forgetting about my broken foot. Jordyn caught me before I hit the ground. She gently sat me on a crate near the captain’s post.
“Sorry, sweetheart, she’s not welcome on this boat. Puts us all in danger. Cain, what were you thinkin’ bringing her here? She could wreck us all! She’s probably workin’ for Gray’s friends right now!”
“Captain Drake, she’s clean, I promise. She just wants to get her daughter out of harm’s way like everybody else.”
Drake shook his head. “Not a chance. You’re growin’ soft on me or something. Soft or stupid. You know damn well she can’t be trusted.” Captain Drake’s voice became more thunderous with each sentence. The face that looked like Santa Clause just moments earlier now reminded me of the old man who lived across the street from our old house: angry, stone cold, and fresh out of sympathy.
Bo pushed Cain out of his way. “It was me. She didn’t do anything wrong. I told her wha
t to say and when to say it. She was just the face of the campaign. Nothing more. We just told people she wrote the bill so Gray could get it passed.” Bo glanced over at my mother. “Looked better coming from a mother with a dead child than a middle-aged single man. I’ll go back to the beach. Just get the rest of them across.”
Mom grabbed Bo’s arm and hissed in his ear. “You can’t do this. You have to stay. If you go, they’ll find you and kill you. Don’t do this, please!”
Bo grabbed Mom’s face and pulled it close to him. He smiled. “I told you I’d keep you safe, right? This is how I do it. I’ll find you, don’t worry. I’ll come back for you always.” He kissed her forehead.
“Please. Don’t leave. Please.” Mom grabbed his hand.
Bo stammered, just for a second. “Take care of Riley.” Then he turned to the captain. “I swear, it was me. Just take her and the girl, I’ll stay.”
Drake looked over at Cain. “This true?”
Cain looked over at Bo and paused for almost too long. Right when I thought he might tell the captain the truth, Cain nodded. “Yes. I’ll even escort him off the boat myself. Come back with the next group.” As he spoke, I noticed the quickest glance to Jordyn. She may have blinked hard and fast, if only for a second, but I couldn’t be sure.
“Okay, she can stay. But you two better get off now. We gotta get movin’.”
Mom still had a hold of Bo’s hand. He gently released himself from her grasp. “I love you, Claire.”
Her chin trembled and tears slid down her cheeks. “I love you too.”
Cain went over and hugged Jordyn. Jordyn’s back was to me, and the hug was a little too long for my liking. I felt the familiar flush in my cheeks as she wrapped her arms loosely around his waist. Seconds seemed like minutes. Finally she released him and the heat in my cheeks cooled.
Cain leaped off the boat. Bo started to follow him but then turned to me, giving me a huge hug. “Take care of your mom, okay?”
Now my eyes dripped too. I tried to remember hating him, but I searched inside myself and I couldn’t find anything but sadness. Whatever anger I had stored up was gone. “I will.”
The Extraction List Page 15
