The Countdown (The Taking #3)(37)

“It’s okay. I’ll . . . I’ll be okay.” They were the same words I’d whispered to myself over and over after I’d rescued him at the asylum. After I’d shot Natty.

Five days, I repeated in my head.

How was it possible that I’d been kidnapped almost a week ago? How had I not noticed the passing of an entire week? Felt the knifing pain that came each and every daybreak?

But I knew how . . . the IV drip. The drugs.

“One of you got family out west?” Chuck asked, still trying to pry information from us.

The word “family” brought a whole new kind of pain. A week was a long time to lose track of my dad. I had no idea where he’d gone after I’d been taken from that diner.

Hopefully he and Tyler had gotten in touch with Simon and they were all together now, someplace safe.

Where? I had no clue. Blackwater was out of the question—Agent Truman and his Daylight Division had seen to that. And since they didn’t know that Thom had never been the traitor we’d all believed he was, there was no way they’d go back to Silent Creek.

That left me with no idea where to start looking.

But Thom and I needed a place we could lay low until we sorted things out, and because our options were limited, we planned to take advantage of the code word—the one Natty hadn’t been able to pry from him. Silent Creek might be reeling, and it might even be compromised, but it was the only place Thom felt safe.

He trusted his people and their ability to hide us until we could figure out our next steps. We had to hope the NSA hadn’t found them, and that we could get there without being captured.

“Something like that,” I told Chuck, not an outright lie. My family was in Washington State. They just weren’t who we were planning to see.

Swinging his face to me, he grinned. “Can’t blame a guy for tryin’.” He turned back to the road. “Better get comfortable. Even if we drove straight through, it’d be ’bout another sixteen or so hours ’til we reach Portland, and that’s as far west as I go.”

I settled back, smiling to myself when I said, “That’s close enough, Chuck.”





SIMON


GRIFFIN’S SOLDIERS HAD ALREADY CLEARED THE basement, but five minutes after hearing the sound, Griffin and I were back down there. It was worse in the basement than even upstairs—darker and moldier. Scarier than f*ck, basically.

I wasn’t above admitting it wouldn’t take much for me to crap my pants at that very moment.

But if there was even a chance Kyra was down here, it would all be worthwhile.

Even if Jett hadn’t been working to decipher his map—check that, reverse star chart—the delay meant he and Ben had more time to pilfer whatever they could of the high-tech components the group had been using—radio equipment, computer hard drives—anything they could grab and stuff into a duffel.

I couldn’t fault him. When we’d fled Blackwater, we’d had to leave behind the entire array of computer and communications equipment Griffin had amassed over the years. All that remained was the laptop Jett rarely let out of his sight.

I tried to stay focused on the job at hand, finding whatever had made that noise, but my mind kept drifting back to Eddie Ray.

Talk about a ghost from the past. I hadn’t given Eddie Ray a second thought in years, not since before Willow and I had snuck out of Blackwater in the middle of the night to save her ass from Franco’s wrath.

How the hell had Eddie Ray ended up in a place like this? What were he and Natty doing together?

None of it made any sense. This whole thing was one shitstorm after another. “Shh!” I lifted my finger to my lips, signaling Griffin to stop. I cocked my head just so, not bothering to ask the question out loud. Griffin knew what I meant: Did you hear that?

She listened too, and then frowned an It’s nothing frown back at me.

She was wrong. It definitely wasn’t nothing. I hauled ass toward the not-a-noise, warning myself not to get my hopes up.

“Simon . . .” There was a waver in Griffin’s voice, something I’d rarely ever heard. It was dark as hell, but Griffin wasn’t the scaredy-cat type. Even spooked, I knew she’d never stand for being left behind.

I heard her boots crunching along the passageway and the flashlight she held swept across the trash all around us. I barely noticed; my concentration was zeroing in on something else.

A mewling . . . a low, almost imperceptible yowl.

Whatever it was—a cat . . . a dog maybe—it didn’t sound at all like Kyra. Had some animal gone and gotten itself trapped below these ruins?

It sure as hell wasn’t Ben’s dog, that much I knew. He’d left Nancy back in his truck. He hadn’t wanted to, but no way was I letting that spastic mutt anywhere near this place; she would have given us away in a second, with all her jumping and running around. We might as well have let her come though; her constant howling had been a dead giveaway, even from behind the truck’s closed windows.

That’s what this sound reminded me of, a muffled howl.

Not willing to take the chance of running into some feral animal, I held my gun at the ready. I wouldn’t be proud of myself if I was forced to shoot an innocent creature, but if it came down to it or me, I chose me.

“There,” I whispered insistently to Griffin. “That! Did you hear it that time?”