Breaking Point (Article 5 #2)(28)

My stomach dropped. Sarah made a small gasp, and I refocused my attention on her so she wouldn’t feel as afraid as I did.

I told myself Article 9 didn’t matter. They had already posted my name on the five most wanted. It was just another Scarlet Letter. Just like Article 5. But though it shamed me, it helped to think that everyone else in this room would be in just as much trouble as me if we were caught.

“Hurry up, Tubman!” Cara yelled. She kicked the garage again.

Before she’d finished, the door rose, just to hip height, and she disappeared beneath it. Riggins followed, as did Sarah. Chase and I gave each other one last glance before the plunge.

As soon as we were out of the storm, a skinny man with dark brown skin in a Hawaiian shirt slammed the metal door down and chained it to a metal hook in the floor. He had a crooked nose and a jagged taupe scar that ran from the corner of his right eye down to his mouth. When he smiled, crooked white teeth broadening his face and flattening his nose, my shoulders dropped an inch, but I didn’t breathe until he’d set down his pistol on a metal cart of mechanic’s tools.

There were two cars in the garage. To my right was a dark blue FBR delivery truck. I imagined this was what the carrier used to deliver fugitives to the safe zone. Beside it, in the center of the garage, was a Horizons shortbed distribution truck with a perky yellow sunrise emblazed across the metal siding—the same one the team had hijacked two days ago.

“So this is where you stashed it,” Riggins said to Cara, who grinned.

It was hard to believe that I used to worry about the morality of Chase hotwiring cars when here I was standing with a bunch of felons beside two stolen FBR vehicles. I removed the handkerchief on my head and shook the hail out of my hair, knowing I looked much like a dog coming in from a snowstorm. Chase had already removed Sarah’s zip ties.

“Hope you didn’t pull a muscle sprinting to the door,” Cara said, reminding me of the other man’s presence. She punched his arm and he staggered, feigning injury.

“This is Tubman,” Cara said to us. “Carrier extraordinaire.”

He stuck out his hand, and I reached to shake it. A shiver of fear worked through me as his amber eyes lit with recognition.

“Your mug shot doesn’t do you justice,” he said, and raised my knuckles for a lingering kiss.

Chase cleared his throat. The room felt very warm all of the sudden.

“Big guy,” Tubman observed, moving to Chase. “I know you. No, not quite.” He continued to scrutinize Chase’s features. “You got people on the coast?”

“My uncle,” Chase said in awe, and any resentment I harbored for his mom’s brother was overridden by sheer shock that he had survived.

Chase’s uncle had taken him in when his parents and sister had died in a car accident, then abandoned him during the War when he’d no longer been able to provide. They’d reconvened only once since their separation; just after Chase had been drafted. It was during that chance meeting that Chase had learned of the safe house.

“He’s about my size,” Chase continued. “Has a tattoo of a snake on his neck and long hair, at least the last time I saw him. His name—”

“Wouldn’t know it,” Tubman interrupted. “You’re right. I’ve seen him. Can’t forget a brand like that.” He placed a thumb on the left side of his neck thoughtfully.

I felt a staggering clutch in my belly. Chase’s uncle could have been my mother, waiting at the safe house for word from us. Instead we were escorting someone else to the checkpoint, where they would await transport, and we were staying here.

Until we get Rebecca, I told myself. Then we would go, too.

“So he made it,” Chase said with a relieved smile. I hadn’t seen him that happy in some time.

Tubman laughed dryly. “Oh, he made it all right. Not by me though. Another carrier, maybe Baton Rouge or…”

“Or Harrisonburg,” Riggins said in a low voice, causing my stomach to sink.

Riggins knew that Chase and I had been in that checkpoint on Rudy Lane the night the carrier had been murdered by MM soldiers. We’d told Wallace as much when we’d joined, and if any proof was needed, my size seven footprints had been found on the scene.

I wanted to close my eyes, to erase the last few minutes, but I didn’t. I kept them wide open, otherwise I’d be back in that house, I’d see the carrier’s legs spread across the floor, hear his rasping voice as he told us the location of the next checkpoint.

Tubman’s eyes had pinched around the edges. “Yeah. Or that.”

So he’d heard. It wasn’t hard to see how it affected him, and no wonder, given their shared profession.

A crack of thunder hit so hard that I cringed.

“Can you take him a message?” Chase asked.

“Save it,” said Tubman. “I ain’t goin’ back for a while. Hear that, Ladybird?” he called over his shoulder to Cara.

His words tripped the conversation, and everyone paused, waiting for an explanation. My gaze fixed on the scar on his face, and I wondered if it was the Harrisonburg carrier or the posting of Article 9 that had gotten to him. Maybe both.

“What’s that mean?” Cara appeared, scowling, from around the cab of the Horizons truck.

The thunder cracked again; the hail and rain beat so hard against the garage doors that we could barely hear one another. I glanced at Sarah, noting the way she was drawing closer to me, away from the other men. We needed to get her out of here as soon as possible.