Article 5 a5-1 Page 9

  “If she’s free, why didn’t you just tell me?”

  He heard the tremor in my voice and looked over. His eyes held a depth of guarded emotions.

  “That’s a major FBR route we were on, in case you didn’t notice. Any one of those soldiers could have stopped us if they’d been suspicious.”

  I thought of how focused he’d been while driving, watching each MM vehicle that passed, demanding silence. He’d been fearful. If we were caught, his life would be at risk.

  A moment later he reached into his hip pocket and retrieved a large folded knife. I siphoned in a tight breath, and for an instant I forgot that it was Chase. I saw a weapon and a uniform, and before I could process anything else, my bundled fingers were jerking at the door handle. It didn’t open. A small cry let loose from my strangled throat.

  “Hey! Easy. I’m just going to cut the restraints,” he said. “Jesus, who do you think I am?”

  Who did I think he was? Not Randolph, preparing to murder me in the woods. But not my friend. Not my love. Not a soldier, either, apparently.

  “I have no idea,” I answered honestly.

  He scowled but didn’t respond. The knife flipped open, and adeptly he cut the straps off. The second the task was done he jerked his hands away and unlocked my door from his side. I rubbed my wrists, willing my breath to come more steadily.

  An instant later he was out of the van, leaving me in a haze of confusion.

  I tore out of the seat after him, toward the truck. My feet splashed through cold puddles of mud.

  “So where is she?”

  Chase jerked open the rusted door, threw his shoulder into the seat, and popped it forward. A stuffed canvas backpack was revealed, along with a large box of matches, bottled water, a steel pot, and a knitted blanket. He emerged with a screwdriver and returned to the MM transport.

  “Not here.”

  He pushed aside the utility box in the back of the van, ripping away a section of loose carpet covering the floorboards. There waited a slender metal rectangle, which he removed before slamming the trunk closed. A license plate.

  “Did you… steal that truck?” I asked after a moment. My mouth was hanging open.

  “Borrowed it.”

  “Oh my God.” Was he crazy? The MM was probably looking for us right now, and he had stolen a car? I felt a jolt of panic echo through me.

  What else would you have him do? a small voice inside my head asked.

  He began screwing the license plate in place beneath the tailgate of the truck. “Minnesota” was written in blue letters over an image of a fish jumping from the river to snag a fly.

  “Don’t freak out,” he said without looking up. “It was abandoned.” He placed the screwdriver handle between his teeth and rattled the plate with both hands to make sure it was secure.

  Clearly my abduction had not been on impulse; Chase had already packed a getaway car with supplies. I began to feel the urgency ripping through my veins. He had gone AWOL and forged documents to get me out of rehab. It wouldn’t be long before Brock and the MM figured out what he had done.

  “What happened?” I asked.

  I blocked his path back to the van. He shoved past.

  “There’s no time to explain, trust me. We’ve got to move out.”

  “Trust you?” I asked incredulously. “After you arrested me?”

  “I followed orders.”

  I was shocked at how cold he sounded. I had rationalized that maybe there was still some humanity left within him—he had promised my mother he’d get me out—but I realized now that his actions were in no way altruistic. They were full of resentment.

  The shock burned into rage. Before I thought it through, I clenched my fist and punched him.

  He reacted instantly, tilting back so that I missed his jaw and just barely grazed his ear. I lost my balance and pitched forward, but before I fell he grabbed my shoulder hard and jerked me back upright.

  “You’ll have to be faster than—”

  Furiously, I kicked him as hard as I could, stomping my heel into his thigh. The breath whistled out of his clenched teeth as he staggered back a step. One brow quirked, and I felt my heart kick up a notch.

  “Better,” he commented. As if we were playing some kind of game.

  I seethed, hating him in that moment, but when he released my arm I didn’t attack again. It didn’t seem to get the point across the way I had hoped.

  “What is wrong with you?” I shouted.

  A shadow flew across his features. “A lot. Now, if you’re all done, get in the truck.”

  He slid in the driver’s seat and slammed the door in my face. Gritting my teeth, I rounded the front and propped open the passenger door. I wasn’t about to get inside without him telling me what was going on.

  “Where is she?” I demanded.

  “Get in and I’ll tell you.”

  “How about you tell me and I’ll get in.” I crossed my arms over my chest.

  “You’re a pain,” he said bitterly. A hand clawed through his neat soldier haircut. I was learning quickly that this meant he was angry with me.

  I waited.

  “A safe house in South Carolina,” he said. “She knew it was too dangerous to go home.”

  “A safe house?”

  “A place off the FBR’s radar. People go there to hide.”

  My throat constricted. I’d known my mother and I would have to hide. But knowing it and doing it were two different things.

  “So we’re going to meet her in South Carolina?”

  “Sort of. The exact location is a secret. You’ve got to meet someone who’ll bring you in. There’s a man, a ‘carrier,’ at a checkpoint in Virginia who’ll get us there. We’ve got until noon tomorrow to meet him.”

  “Why tomorrow?”

  “He only transports on Thursdays.”

  “Every week?” I asked, thinking of my mother. Maybe she had met him last week. If not, she might be there when we arrived. I might see her tonight!

  “We don’t have another week!” Chase said, misinterpreting my question to hear that I wasn’t in a tremendous hurry. “After a soldier is AWOL forty-eight hours they put him on a list. Each unit gets a copy of it when their tour of duty starts. After noon tomorrow they’re coming after me.”

  I shuddered. “And me.”

  He nodded. “You’ve got a little longer before the overnight pass is invalid. But they’ll link you to me—”

  “I get it,” I interrupted. “How did you find out about this?” If he’d heard about the safe house in the FBR, surely other soldiers had, too. My mother could be walking into a trap.

  “Civilians sometimes talk about safe houses during arrests, but this one…” he sighed heavily. “My uncle. I ran into him on a training exercise in Chicago a few months after I was drafted. He was going to South Carolina. He told me about the carrier in Virginia. Good enough?”

  “That was almost a year ago. How do you know it’s still there?” Chase’s uncle had ditched Chase during the War. I didn’t exactly trust him.

  “The FBR never found out about it. My security clearance gave me access to operations. South Carolina hasn’t had any movement since they evacuated the coast.”

  “And you’re sure my mother found this carrier?” I pressed.

  “No,” he answered bluntly.

  Which meant she could be anywhere. Still, if she’d been attempting to get to South Carolina, we had to as well. In less than twenty-seven hours, the MM would know we were fugitives. We needed to hop aboard this underground railroad as soon as possible.

  For the first time, I truly felt like a criminal. I rolled my still sore shoulders back and, making my decision, scooted into the truck.

  Chase jammed the screwdriver into the steering-wheel column, and it released with a soft pop. Then he fiddled around with something under the console until a few fast clicks sent the engine squealing to life. He sat up, revved the gas. There was no key in the ignition.

  “Le
arn that in the MM?” I asked spitefully.

  “No,” he said. “I learned that during the War.”

  I reminded myself that it shouldn’t matter that the truck was hot-wired. Or that it was stolen. As long as it got to Virginia fast.

  * * *

  I COULDN’T stop looking at him. A month he’d been home from Chicago, and sometimes I still couldn’t believe he was really here.

  “What?” he asked, a smile in his tone. He didn’t have to look over to know I’d been staring. We sat on his back steps, facing the jungle of grass and weeds that had become his back yard.

  “Nothing,” I said. “I’m just glad you’re back. Really glad.”

  “Really, really glad? Wow, Em.” He rocked back, laughing, when I shoved him.

  “Don’t push it.”

  He laughed again, and then became quiet. Pensive. “I’m glad I’m back, too. There was a while I wasn’t sure it would happen.”

  “When Chicago was hit, you mean.” My voice sounded small under the big, open sky.

  “Yeah.” Chase frowned, leaning back against the top step. I didn’t want to pressure him; I knew some people didn’t like to talk about the War. I was just about to change the subject when he continued.

  “You know my chemistry teacher tried to tell us the air sirens were just drills? He was still trying to get us to pass in our lab sheets when the quakes started. By the time we all got outside, the smoke was so thick you couldn’t see the school’s parking lot.” He paused, shook his head. “Anyway, they bussed us all to this old arena on the west side and gave us two minutes each to use the phones and call home, and my uncle told me to meet him at this restaurant in Elgin. So I took off. Hitched there. It was a good thing too: The bombing didn’t stop for three days.”

  “Wait, you hitchhiked there? What were you, fifteen?”

  “Sixteen.” He shrugged as though this detail was unimportant. “When we met in Elgin, we found out Chicago had been attacked on the southeastern side, all the way up I-90 from Gary. What was left of it was just… chaos. We were being displaced to some town in the middle of Indiana, but we only made it as far as South Bend before the busses got called somewhere else. We stayed there for a while; my uncle found some work doing day labor, but they wouldn’t hire me because I was too young.

  “And then he told me he was sorry, but he couldn’t look out for me anymore. He gave me his bike and told me to keep in touch.”

  My eyes were wide.

  “He couldn’t… what? You must hate him!”

  Chase shrugged. “One less person to worry about, one less mouth to feed.” At my horrified expression he sat up. “Look, when Baltimore and DC fell, and all those people started packing inland into Chicago, he knew, just knew it was going to get bad. So he taught me to scrap. He and my mom had grown up poor, and he was, well, resourceful.” A guilty laugh had him turning his head the opposite direction, making me wonder just what that meant.

  “I’d have been scared to death,” I said.

  He took off his hat and tapped it against his knee.

  “Losing your family… it puts fear in a different perspective,” he said. “Besides, I got by all right. I stayed on the fringe around Chicago,hopped around tent cities and Red Cross camps. Worked for some people who didn’t ask questions. Avoided caseworkers and foster care. And thought about you.”

  “Me?” I huffed, completely unsettled. In awe at how vanilla my life seemed. In awe of what he’d endured. He turned then, meeting my eyes for the first time. When he spoke, his voice was gentle, and unashamed.

  “You. The only thing in my life that doesn’t change. When everything went to hell, you were all I had.” It took me a full beat to realize he was serious. When I did, I had to remind myself to keep breathing.

  * * *

  I SHIFTED in my seat. My life did not seem so vanilla anymore. I knew what he meant about losing family now, and in another day, every soldier in the country would have our photos.

  Had we been able to take the highways, we would have crossed the border into Virginia before sunset, when everyone had to be off the roads for curfew. As it was, Chase had stuck to back country roads, which led us east rather than south, cautiously avoiding any potential contact with an MM patrol.

  By late afternoon, the sun was heating up through the windshield. Chase removed the navy MM jacket and slung it over the seatback between us. He wore only a thin T-shirt, and beneath it I could see the sculpted muscles in his arms and shoulders. My gaze lingered a little too long, and I rubbed my stomach unconsciously.

  “We’ll stop soon for supplies,” he said, thinking I was hungry.

  I didn’t like this; we needed to get every mile in that we could before curfew. But as I glanced over Chase’s forearm I saw that the gas gauge was nearly empty. It would take us a lot longer to get to Virginia if we had to walk.

  We passed two closed gas stations before we found one that actually claimed to be in business, at least on weekdays. It was a small place called Swifty’s, with only two pumps and a note taped over the price board that said PAY INSIDE, CASH ONLY. We were the only ones in the parking lot.

  “Wait here,” Chase instructed. I had just been getting out of the truck but paused.

  “I’m sorry, you must have forgotten. I’m not actually your prisoner.”

  His jaw twitched. “You’re right. You’re a wanted runaway. You can be their prisoner.”

  I glowered at him but slammed the door. As much as I hated to admit it, he was right. We shouldn’t both be showing our faces if we didn’t have to.

  Chase removed a worn red flannel shirt from the back of the cab and buttoned it up over his T-shirt. He untucked the bottoms of his pants from his boots, and hid his MM jacket, and it hit me, a furious pang of nostalgia. A vision of him sitting on his front steps, long legs stretched out and crossed casually at the ankles. Eyes, dark and watchful as a wolf’s, still piercing even from a distance. His smooth bronze complexion, a reflection of his mother’s Chickasaw heritage. His hair was short now, cleanly cut like the other soldiers’, but then it had been thick and glossy and black, hanging around his angular face.

  He looked like the old Chase, even if he didn’t act like him. I swallowed hard.

  The change made me suddenly self conscious of my appearance: My gray sweater and pleated navy skirt screamed “reform school.” I scanned the parking lot for any bystanders, worried that I might be recognized.

  Chase disappeared behind the tinted glass of the mini-mart. As the minutes ticked by, my paranoia intensified. I’d believed his story about leaving the MM without question, but I didn’t know what had really happened. He wasn’t telling me anything, not why he’d arrested us, not why he’d come back. For all I knew, he could be contacting the MM right now. My heels drummed a cadence on the rutted rubber floor mats.

  The sun was just above the tree line now. It would be getting dark soon.

  What was taking so long?

  I was just grabbing the door handle, intent to check for myself on Chase’s intentions, when I saw it. A large bulletin board on the far side of the store window. The blood drained from my face. Though I was twenty feet away I knew exactly what it would say.

  MISSING! IF SIGHTED, CONTACT THE FEDERAL BUREAU OF REFORMATION IMMEDIATELY!

  I had seen this board before, of course. At the mini-mart near school.

  My photo from the reformatory would be posted just as soon as Brock figured out I’d escaped. A desperate need arose in me to see if it was there now, but I couldn’t risk being spotted. What if the clerk inside had already caught a glimpse of me when I’d opened the door earlier? How could I have been so careless?

  It’s too soon. You’ve only been gone a few hours, I reminded myself.

  I envisioned Beth and Ryan scanning through the pictures the way we had looked for Katelyn Meadows. Defending me when people whispered about what I’d done to be arrested. They were true friends, not the kind that would turn their backs. It struck me that they did
n’t even know Katelyn was dead. I shivered, frightened by the reality that my friends would never know if I was dead.

  The door lurched open, catching me off guard. I nearly leapt out the window.

  “Here,” Chase said. The change was sliding off the top of a wrapped flat of plastic water bottles he shoved onto the seat, and I grabbed it before it fell to the floor. The total on the receipt was over three hundred dollars. I hastily shoved the assorted bills into my pocket, uncomfortable with any money sitting out in the open. I was shocked by the amount of cash he’d been carrying.

  “I worked for it,” he told me snidely before I could ask. “Soldiers collect pay. It’s a regular job.”

  “It’s hardly a regular job,” I grumbled.

  I placed the supplies on the floor while Chase filled up the truck. Among the groceries—peanut butter, bread, and other staples—was a chocolate bar with almonds. Had he remembered that this was my favorite kind of candy? Probably not. He didn’t do things out of the kindness of his heart anymore. Still, it seemed too frivolous to be anything but a peace offering.

  It only took him a few moments of connecting the exposed wires beneath the wheel before the truck thrummed to life again. As we pulled onto the street, I stared out the back window at the Missing Persons board, in grim awe of how my life had changed. My freedom from the MM’s clutches had come with a stifling loss. I would never be able to walk around in the open again.

  * * *

  CHASE flipped on the MM radio. A man with a cool, flat voice was talking.

  “…another FBR vehicle stolen outside Nashville earlier today from the parking lot of a textile plant. The truck contained uniforms to be shipped to bases throughout Tennessee. No eyewitnesses. Rebel activity suspected. Any suspicions should be reported to command.”

  “Who is he?” I whispered to Chase, as though the speaker might hear me.

  “A reporter for the FBR. He does a newscast for the region every day. They cycle through it at the top of the hour.”