Breaking Point (Article 5 #2)(35)

“I should go,” said Tucker. “I’ll go … I don’t know. I’ll go somewhere.”

“You’re staying,” Wallace told him.

I felt my knees shake for the first time.

Wallace had chosen. For the resistance, I told myself, nothing personal. But it felt personal. He’d hooked me with that family talk, and like a sucker, I’d bought it. As though it could fill the void within me. I had to tell myself three times to move before I finally did.

“Can I get our things, please?”

Wallace’s face twisted. “Someone get their bag. Just what they came in with.” He turned back in to the supply room.

A minute later Billy appeared, our backpack in hand. He didn’t look up at me. Better that way. I hated losing friends.

Sean swore a lot, but couldn’t leave while information about Rebecca was on the line. Riggins tried to reason with Wallace. In the end it was Lincoln and Houston that escorted us downstairs, past the smoke-filled lobby. Past John the landlord, who unknowingly reminded us to bring back a pack of smokes. And then we were outside on the street in the unfriendly morning light, exposed to whomever challenged us, barred from the only place that had felt like home in a long time.





CHAPTER


8





CHASE and I made it to the Red Cross Camp just before noon. We didn’t have any other options. The safest place was a crowd. The biggest crowd was the Square, and we weren’t about to risk that place again.

We crossed Cumberland outside the tall wrought-iron entranceway to World’s Fair Park, the location of the camp. Suspended above the white circus tent patched with blue tarps was an enormous copper globe—the sunsphere, a structure that Billy had told me was built for the World’s Fair in the early 1980s. Now, half the panels were missing, and it served as a marker that temporary relief—not the actual Red Cross, they’d gone under during the War, but the Sisters of Salvation—waited below.

Chase motioned me through a long line and I followed him in shock, reeling from my latest encounter with my mother’s killer. From letting him go again.

What lies was Sean being fed? All Tucker had told Sean was that Rebecca had been in the holding cells a very short time before being transferred to Chicago. But what if he’d seen her? What would he have done to her?

And how could Wallace be so stupid? He’d always put his home, his family, first … yet here he was, letting the most dangerous person I’d ever met sneak past his defenses.

I told myself not to think about it. He’d kicked us out and that was that. Adapt. Move on. Get over it. It wasn’t like we were going to stay there forever anyway. We’d have to find a way to meet Sean and figure out what evil scheme Tucker was devising.

Chase stopped suddenly and snagged my elbow. He jerked me away into a crowd of people waiting for the medical clinic to open.

“What is it?” I asked.

“Soldiers.” My mind immediately shot to Tucker, but no, Tucker wasn’t here. Tucker was with the resistance.

Chase carved an exit, not forcefully enough to cause a fight, but definitely with purpose. I kept my eyes on his heels, half skipping so I didn’t step on them. When I ventured a glance over my shoulder, I saw that there were soldiers swarming the entire compound.

Across the street, where we’d been standing five minutes earlier, another patrol team started picking through the huddled groups of vagrants. One officer had a clipboard and was showing photos to a feeble old man who leaned against a half-collapsed bus shelter. Above, on every rooftop roamed a soldier with a shotgun.

We would have been safer hiding out in some dark alley.

“Come on,” Chase said. “We’ve got to keep moving. Let’s go inside; people are thinning out here.”

The Red Cross Camp was comprised of over a hundred cots, shoved into even rows and covered by drooping canvas tents. There were no walls, no privacy, no heat in the winter or fans in the summer. It was fenced off by removable chain-link partitions, which boasted cracks large enough for any thief to sneak through. The sign-in station at the front was manned by a Sister of Salvation, and behind her, attached to a metal pole was a sign: 4 HOURS ONLY.

Below it, on a large plywood board, were five photographs. The five suspects wanted in conjunction with the sniper murders.

“Chase,” I whispered. He squinted across the distance.

Despite this, he made his way toward the entrance, where a line of twenty or so people waited to get a four-hour bunk. A warning within me screamed that this was wrong. We couldn’t go inside and pin ourselves down; I would be recognized.

“Stay in line,” he said, and headed toward the sign-in station. I saw him glance quickly at the board. His back straightened, and that was enough to say he’d seen my photo. He leaned forward to talk to a Sister at the desk who was wearing a white paper surgical mask.

The line moved forward. My gaze was drawn to a woman who’d moved in front of the board. Her green collared shirt made her skin appear ashen, and the long denim skirt was black where the seams dragged through the dirt. Though probably only in her early thirties, her hair had gone almost completely gray. Two soldiers, both younger than she, flanked her on either side.

“Listen up!” one of them shouted. I bumped into someone as I stepped back. For the moment I still blended with the crowd, but it wouldn’t stay that way for long. I stared at Chase’s back, willing him to return.