The Countdown (The Taking #3)(18)

“They . . . ? But how can we get her back if they’ve taken her again?” Tyler started, and I couldn’t help thinking he was a few bricks shy of a load.

“Jesus, Griff!” I exploded, pissed we were talking about alien abductions when we knew damned well this was foul play of the human variety. “Show them the freaking picture.”

Griffin’s eyes turned to accusatory slits, and I wondered when she’d planned to share. Without explanation, she pulled out her phone and passed them the image of Kyra’s limp body being hauled through the parking lot. “Do any of these guys look familiar?” she asked.

I knew the moment Ben recognized his daughter in the crappy photo, because his shoulders stiffened. “Kyr,” he breathed, and the way he said it redeemed him for the moment. That kind of anguish can’t be faked. But he shook his head. “I don’t know these guys.”

“Me neither,” Tyler added, his voice hollow. Then he leaned closer. “Wait a sec.” He squinted, his finger lifting to the phone and tapping it. He pointed to a fuzzy image of a girl with pale blond hair who was off to the side. “Her. She was there. She went in the bathroom right after Kyra did.”

Hope swelled inside me. A lead. Flimsy, but a lead all the same. “Jett’s gotten nowhere trying to ID the two guys. Maybe he’ll have more luck with the girl. It’s worth a shot.” I hoped to God Jett could work his magic.

“Look, right before she . . . well, whatever happened to her.” Tyler hesitated, took a deep breath, then continued. “Kyra and I were talking. I was telling her about something . . . a dream I’d had about her.”

I scowled at him. This wasn’t the time and I really didn’t want to hear about them . . . not about them talking and especially not about dreams he’d had about her. Frankly, if Kyra wasn’t in trouble, I wouldn’t be sitting here listening to him at all. Ever.

When I glanced Griffin’s way, I saw the same thing in her expression. While I had a knot in my stomach, hers was smack in the middle of her forehead, in the pinched crease between her eyebrows.

Oblivious, because he was Tyler and “oblivious” should have been his middle name if you asked me, the kid kept going. “I told her I think there’s someplace we’re supposed to be . . . maybe go. I keep dreaming about these . . . maps.” He made a face, like this was supposed to be tough on him too—a stupid dream. “But the thing was, she already knew about it.”

Griffin leaned forward, more interested than I could pretend to be. “Maps?” she asked, her eyebrows screwed up in a different way now—less worried and more curious. “What kinds of maps?”

“That’s what was weird about it. Not ordinary maps, of roads or anything. Just a bunch of”—he shrugged—“I don’t know . . . scribbles mostly.”

Scribbles? Kyra was out there, and he was blathering on about scribbles?

“Can you show them to us?” Griffin asked.

Tyler looked uncertainly from me to Ben and then to Griffin. “I can try.”

He reached down in front of him and used his hand to clear a spot in the ground, brushing the dirt so it was smooth and flat. Then he picked up a stick and began to scratch out shapes. There were lines, both straight and curved. Loops that intersected other loops. Complete spheres, partial crescents, and sharp points with acute and obtuse angles.

Scribbles. The whole thing looked like complete garbage. A total waste of time.

I stood up, tired of doing nothing. I’d find Jett and together we’d figure out a way to get a lead on the blond girl in the image. We’d find Kyra with or without these useless lumps.

I was about to say as much when I glanced one more time at the second-rate sand sketches Tyler had drawn.

“Holy . . . ,” I started. “That’s no map. I mean it is, but it isn’t, not really.”

“What is it then?” Tyler asked.

Griffin figured it out too, as she got to her feet and stood beside me. She turned her head to the side, giving me a look that asked what it meant, and then looked back at the ground, a smile tugging at her lips. “He’s right. It’s a star chart.”

Tyler’s shoulders fell as his voice became distant. “A star chart? No. That doesn’t make sense. How can that help us find Kyra? What does it mean?”

Ben chimed in for the first time in what seemed like too long considering this was his daughter we were talking about. “I’m not sure what it means, but I think I’ve seen something like this before. It’s not just a star chart, it’s a reverse star chart.”

Griffin snapped a picture of the map using the disposable phone.

“There’s something else,” Tyler added, meeting my eyes, and I braced myself. “Kyra told me she heard me say something. In my sleep.”

“What was that?”

Tyler swallowed, his expression guilty. “The Returned must die.”





CHAPTER FOUR


ALERTNESS HIT ME LIKE A DOUBLE WHAMMY.

An intense, white-hot pain—a pickax trying to gore my insides apart.

Followed by the sudden-searing-terrifying awareness I had absolutely no clue where I was or how I’d gotten here.

I wasn’t sure which was worse, but at that moment my stomach convulsed in a way that forced me to swallow back a scream ripping at my throat. With stark clarity, it hit me: