“None of that funny business, girl,” the guard said, wrapping a chain around her waist that he locked to a thick metal O-ring. “Seth might be old, but Seth ain’t stupid.”
“No, Seth’s just an asshole who can’t speak in the first person,” she said, but there was no fight in it and she’d only groaned when Seth yanked the plasticuffs so tight the zip sounded like a wood saw.
Now, she straightened, gritting her teeth against the bite of plastic in skin. Her wrists were wet. Blood. Just one more thing. She ducked her head, smearing her burning eyes on her shoulder.
“You okay?” Chris asked. He was on her right, his head and chest and shoulders frothy with snow.
“No. I can’t feel my hands. These cuffs are too tight.”
“Yeah, me neither. Shouldn’t be much longer.”
“Do you know where he’s taking us?” She’d realized as soon as they turned out of Jess’s street that they weren’t headed into town but east.
“Torture house,” Kincaid said. When he looked down at her, a mound of snow slid from the brim of his Stetson and plopped into his lap.
“What?”
“Well, they call it the interrogation center, but . . . oh yeah.” Kincaid swayed as the wagon dipped in and out of ruts. “Sometimes the boys get overly enthusiastic. Afterward, they call me and I get to patch up whoever they’re working over so they can start in again.”
“Torture?” Her voice thinned to a squeak. “You mean, they’re going to—” She whipped her head around to Chris. “You know about this?”
The light was bad, but she saw him hesitate. “Well, I—”
“Oh my God, you do.” Her bravado had evaporated, and she wondered again what the hell she’d been thinking. She didn’t even like Alex. And if Chris knew they were torturing people, why didn’t he do something to stop it?
“They’ll just try to scare you,” Chris was saying. “You’ll be fine, I promise.”
“That’s not a promise you can make, Chris. ’Sides, my guess is she does have information.” Kincaid eyed Lena. “Do you?”
“I don’t have anything to say to you,” she said. “You’re one of them.”
“Oh, right. I’m so glad you reminded me I’m one of the bad guys, in case these cuffs weren’t enough.”
“How can you joke around?” She was feeling sick again and badly needed to pee.
“I wasn’t aware I was.” Kincaid paused and then his tone changed. “You’re from up around Oren.”
“So what? It’s not a crime,” she said, and then thought, Shit, I make it sound like it is.
“You don’t owe him any explanations, Lena,” Chris put in.
“I can talk for myself.”
“I’m just saying—”
“Whoa, whoa,” Kincaid said. “If you two can’t do better than that, you’ll be sunk in ten seconds, maybe less. Chris, you of all people ought to know that.”
“Is there a question in there?” Chris asked.
“Should there be?” When Chris said nothing, Kincaid went on: “Chris, it’s what your grandfather asked. How do you know where to look for these kids you keep finding?”
More silence. Lena could feel Chris shutting down, throwing up barriers. A torture house, and Chris knew about it . . .
“You got some kind of system,” Kincaid said. “Has to be it. You got this clockwork-like thing going, if I’m remembering it right. Of course, if you had a little help.” Kincaid’s Stetson moved fractionally, and Lena felt the burn of the old man’s eyes on her face. “Someone kind of local, maybe? Clue you in where to look, or how?”
Chris jumped in before she could reply. “Like you said, you’re here, too, Doc. You want to tell me what happened with Alex?”
“I honestly don’t know, Chris,” Kincaid said. “The last time I saw Alex, she was fine. If it was anything, I think it had something to do with that boy—”
There was a sudden bright flash. On the driver’s box, Seth jerked at the same moment that Chris threw himself against Lena in a chatter of metal chain. She thudded to the wooden bed in a tangled heap, crying out as the chain around her waist bound and dug.
“Chris?” she managed. “What—”
“Someone’s shooting.” His head craned a cautious few inches. The wagon had lurched to a halt. “Seth’s down. Thank God the horses didn’t spook. Kincaid, you all right?”
“Yeah.” Lena heard the drag of metal against wood as the old man shifted. “We’re still in Rule,” Kincaid said. “Who the hell—”
Lena’s ears pricked at the muffled clop of hooves. “Stay down,” Chris murmured. She felt him squirming onto his back. “You, too, Doc.”
There was movement by the driver’s box as a shape—man-sized, snow-shrouded—slid into the ball of lantern light. When the man turned to peer in their direction, Lena almost let out a yelp. The man had no face.
Idiot. Her pulse raced. He’s got on a ski mask, that’s all.
The form slipped away. She sensed him creeping alongside the wagon. There was a dip, and then the wagon jostled as the man hoisted himself up—
Chris lashed out with both feet. There was a grunt as Chris’s boot thudded against the man’s chest, and then the faceless man was swaying, one hand hooked over the lip. Chris’s boot thrashed again, the sole smashing the man’s fingers. The man howled as Chris swarmed up. His bound hands were in front now, and Chris let loose with a double-fisted, backhanded swing—
“No, Chris!” Someone launched himself from Kincaid’s side of the wagon. Surprised, Chris let out a yell as the man wrapped him up. They thudded in a thrashing tangle on top of Lena and Kincaid. Lena’s head banged against the wood; Kincaid was shouting, “Hold on, hold on, hold on!” But Chris was still fighting, and then this second man was screaming, “Stop, Chris, it’s Weller, it’s Weller!”
“Weller?” She heard the surprise in Chris’s voice. “What are you—”
“We got to be fast,” Weller said. A click, and then a spear of yellow light. “Let me get your hands, Chris. Nathan, you okay?”
“Yeah.” The man Chris had kicked peeled off a black balaclava. “But I’m kinda tired of getting beat up,” Nathan said.
“What,” Chris asked, “are you guys doing?”
“What’s it look like?” Weller tossed Chris’s cuffs aside. “Saving your butts.”
19
“Oren?” Chris said. The storm was settling in for a nice hard blow. Snowmelt trickled down Chris’s neck, and he was starting to feel the cold, the sudden gusts driving icy flakes that needled his cheeks. They were still crouched in the wagon, although Weller now occupied the driver’s box. He’d tumbled Seth’s body in an unceremonious tangle to the ground. The body was already mantled with new snow. Besides his own roan and Nathan’s sorrel, both laden with bulging saddlebags, Weller had also brought a lean gray. The horses stomped and blew, intermittently shaking snow from their bodies with a jangle of hardware. “Let me see if I got this straight. You want us to run, now, in this.”
“Yeah,” Weller drawled. Nathan’s lower lip was swollen to the size of a fat bratwurst, so Weller was doing most of the talking. For a guy who’d grown up in Michigan, he seemed to enjoy channeling cowboy-lite. “That’s why I brought the gear. ’Course, I wasn’t expecting you’d have to light out with the girl, but seeing as how she’s lived with them . . .”
“But I wasn’t born Amish,” Lena put in. She huddled to Chris’s left and hugged herself against the cold. Weller had shucked his own woolen watch cap, several sizes too large, which she’d jammed down around her ears. The crumpled peak sagged. She looked like a dispirited elf. “My mom married into it, and she was a complete flake. And it’s not like my stepfather was beloved or anything. I know the settlement but not that well, and I sure never heard of any old guy named Isaac Hunter.”
“Even if he’s a real person, you’ve never met him,” Chris said to Weller.
“Jess says he’s still alive.”
“And how does she know? And who’s Hunter? And let’s say I do find him. How do you or Jess know that these kids hiding out around Oren are with him?”
“He’s right,” Lena said. “The group I was with had ten kids. One of them, Jayden, said there were a lot of groups, but they’re scattered, so people can’t find them. They don’t even know where the others are half the time. Jayden said it was safer that way, but he never mentioned any adult being in charge. We were on our own.”
“Trust me, wherever these kids are, they don’t want to be found. I know. I’ve been looking for months,” Chris said. “And this idea you’ve got that I should convince them to come back to Rule, like some half-assed army, because you think no one here’s going to open fire on Spared, all so I can take over? It’s completely nuts. Even if I agreed—and I’m not—why wouldn’t I go north? It’s a hell of a lot faster than detouring east.”
“Because if you lay me enough of a trail east, everyone’ll look that way and not at Oren,” Weller said. “This blow’s a good thing. The Council might be hot to go after you, but I could make a good case that we shouldn’t budge until the worst of this is over. So you’ll have a decent head start. Say, tack east fifty, sixty miles—”
“Fifty mi—” Chris goggled. “Even with no storm and on horses, the snow’s deep. Do you know how long that’s going to take?”
“Sure. But then you loop back and head northwest.”
“But it takes three or four days to get to Oren in good weather,” Lena protested.
