Raging Sea (Undertow, #2)(28)

“Lyric, stop! You have to listen to me.”

“No, I don’t. Not as long as I have this,” I say, waving the glove at him once more. “Go back to your death camp, and let them know I’m coming. When I get there, I’m going to knock it down!”

“If you don’t give this a chance, I can’t help you later,” he begs.

“If I ever see you again, I will kill you,” I promise.

“Then I’m sorry, Lyric. I didn’t want it to go down like this, but you’re too important,” he says, waving his hands in the air. Before I know it, I’m surrounded by a dozen armed soldiers, all dressed in black and pointing rifles at my head. They look exactly like the soldiers that invaded the theater.

“Get out of my way!” I shout. Reaching down into the bottom of all my pain, I call to the whispers, demanding they be fast and furious and merciless. What comes is the most violent upheaval I have ever created, a shock wave of mud and concrete that cracks pavement. Thirteen spouts erupt beneath the soldiers, and the men flip into the air like rag dolls. Doyle is among them, and as he recovers, I dig into his pockets and find a set of keys. I assume they once belonged to Lucas, and I head toward the truck.

Doyle calls out to me.

“Fathom is there,” he chokes.

I spin around and stare at him. My body feels hot and nauseous. I shake like my blood sugar has bottomed out. “You lie,” I whisper.

“He’s alive, Lyric. He surrendered to the Navy three days ago, just a few miles away from Coney Island. They brought him to us. He’s at Tempest.”

“Fathom would never surrender,” I cry.

Doyle will not manipulate me. His words mean nothing. Fathom may be alive and well, but there’s no way he’s at Tempest. He’s too smart to get caught. Doyle knows I care about him, and he’s playing a game.

I will the water to pool around him and his thugs, then watch as they are swept away like they’ve fallen into a raging river. When they’re gone from my sight, I turn and see our waitress gaping at me through the window.

I hurry to Lucas’s truck and peel out of the parking lot. Once I hit the freeway, the truth slams into me head-on. The reason we were never caught, never arrested, was because Doyle cleared our path. He has always known where we were and has made it simple for us to get here—the road blocks, the border fence, maybe even the stolen cars. It was all part of getting me to this point.



I found a receipt for gas on the floor of Lucas’s truck, so I know Doyle filled the tank in Menard. It will get me pretty far, maybe all the way. It’s a long drive, but that’s fine. It will give me time to become as brave as I sounded in that parking lot. Everything is falling apart, and I don’t know how to stop it. Worse, I’m terrified that my bad luck has yet to run out.

I search the truck’s glove compartment and find a spiral-bound road atlas of Texas highways that allows me to trace a path with my fingers to my very best guess of the camp’s location. I assume it would be in the desert’s remotest area, maybe even on the very border of the U.S. and Mexico. It’s a shot in the dark, but it’s the only one I’ve got. After that, it’s anybody’s guess. The uncertainty sends me into despair. I think about how afraid Bex must be and how little help Arcade will be to her. I think about my parents in that camp with Doyle watching them every single day. I can’t shake my certainty that he’s watching me now, that there are cameras in the truck and my escape was part of the plan.

And then I think about Fathom. Not knowing if Doyle was lying to me or not is excruciating. I whimper for hours as I drive through Eldorado, Iraan, and Fort Stockton, where I take Highway 67 south toward the Texas border.

It’s here in this barren landscape, the rocky climb into copper-stained mountains, that I feel loneliness for the first time. I expect Bex to lean over and change the radio station. She and Arcade are like a couple of phantom limbs. Their absence feels wrong. It needs to be corrected. Arcade wanted me to have a reason to fight, maybe even to kill. Doyle just gave me one.



It’s nighttime when Lucas’s car runs out of gas, half a mile from the nearest town. I let it roll off the freeway and as far into the scrub as it will go. Hopefully no one will spot it.

I find a blanket in the truck bed and a bottle of water under the seat, then spend ten minutes debating whether or not to leave Lucas a note. I doubt he’ll ever see this car again. There’s a good chance that he’s not even alive, but it seems right to say something.



I’m sorry that you got mixed up in my problems. I had no idea the bad guys would go so far. I hope you are alive. You’re good all around, and the world needs more people like you, Lucas.





I place the note on the dash, wrap the blanket around my shoulders, and walk through the chilly night. When I get back to the road, I realize there are no streetlights out here. My only guide is the moon, so I use the light it reflects off the paint on the pavement to steer my course.



Half an hour later I walk into Shafter, Texas. The sign says the population is twenty-seven. I think it’s exaggerating. Shafter is so small, I don’t think it should be allowed to call itself a town. There are a handful of tiny homes surrounding a large white stucco church. It’s imposing in the night, a white behemoth surrounded by black mountains. It’s also quiet and a good place to camp for the night. I circle the outside and find a silver camper in the back. I listen at the door for signs of life, but there’s nothing. I try the door, but it’s locked tight. I consider breaking a window, but I doubt I’d fit through it.