The Flight of the Silvers (Silvers #1)(157)

“My agents think I’m crazy. Even more so than usual. I’d blame you, Mr. Augur, but really the fault is mine. I’ve let the surrealism infect me to the point where I actually believe that an actress, an artist, and two minors would dare attack this place.”

Theo lay on the folding cot, his arm draped over his eyes. He was coming down off a bevy of neuroleptic drugs, a dilating effect that made the ceiling bulbs burn like desert suns.

In the sober light of reason, he regretted leaving his mumbled clue for David in Marietta. If he’d been wrong, he would have sent his friends on a wild-goose chase. Being right was even worse. He might have lured them into a trap, thanks to Melissa’s adaptive reasoning.

“I still can’t shake the feeling that they’re coming to rescue you,” she said. “Perhaps they’re waiting for some kind of signal.”

“For the hundredth time, I don’t know where they are. I don’t know what they know. If you’d just let me sleep—”

“No, no. If I have to stay up, so do you. I blame you enough for that.”

Theo clenched his jaw. “God, you’re ridiculous. Do you even have a life outside this job?”

“Not much of one. No.”

“Well then maybe you should live it up while you’re still young and hot.”

“Thank you for the compliment, but I don’t do well with flings. We at least have that in common.”

Theo raised his arm to glare at her. “Did you ghost my entire relationship with Hannah?”

“Not the naughty parts,” she assured him. “We have rules about that.”

“Oh good. So you didn’t chuck the entire Fourth Amendment.”

She dangled her shapely legs off the table and swayed them like a bored child. “I know you don’t have ghost drills on your world, but do you even have Domestic Protections?”

Theo rubbed his eyes. There was no point in pretending.

“We call it the FBI. The Federal Bureau of Investigation.”

“Interesting. I like that. And what about the NIC?”

“The what?”

“The National Integrity Commission. I guess you don’t have that either, as such.”

“I guess not, considering I have no idea what that is.”

Melissa sighed a heavy breath. For his sake, she hoped he’d never find out.

Howard poked his head into the room, his eyes dark and bleary with fatigue. Melissa could sense that even he resented her for the overzealous lockdown.

“The tugs are here,” he announced.

“Excellent. If I can have four men help me with the generators, I’ll escort Amanda myself.”

“Okay. I’ll round some up.”

“What’s happening now?” Theo asked.

Melissa hopped off the table and grabbed her gun. “We’re leaving.”

—

In their long freeway travels, the Silvers had become quite familiar with the sight of the blue-striped Tug-a-Lug truck. The company had grown so dominant in the do-it-yourself moving business that “tug” was now the casual term for any rented hauler.

At 4 A.M., a trio of sixteen-foot trucks left the field office and split up at the first intersection. The maneuver was a skittish ploy on Melissa’s part, a vehicular shell game to thwart any would-be rescuers. Two of the tugs returned to the building within the hour. The third kept moving east on Highway LXX.

The atmosphere inside the trailer was downright eerie. The battery lamps on the floor created a sinister underlighting for everyone but Amanda. She continued to shine like an angel in the blue-tinted radiance of her solic generators.

She and Theo faced each other from opposite walls, their arms handcuffed behind their folding chairs. Beneath the powerful joy of seeing each other alive and well was the pain of greater separation. Theo wished he could talk to Amanda telepathically, to pick her brain about the status of the others without alerting their captors.

Melissa’s loud yawn bounced off the metal walls. She and Howard sat perpendicular to the captives, like bridge opponents.

“We’ll be in Washington in two hours,” she told them. “Your accommodations there will be far more comfortable.”

Theo couldn’t get over all the chains and safeguards the Deps were using on Amanda, as if this skinny nurse and Christian had become their personal King Kong.

“You going to keep those machines on her for the rest of her life?” he asked Melissa.

“We’re completing construction on a special cell that achieves the same effect. She’ll have more mobility. If we’re fortunate, we’ll find a drug that safely suppresses her access to the tempis.” Melissa looked to Amanda. “I imagine you wouldn’t be too upset about that.”

The widow shook her head. Though she retained a wary fondness for Melissa, she didn’t like the other two agents in the trailer. Howard never took his nervous eyes off her, as if she’d disembowel him the moment the generators flickered. The other one, a strange and bookish little blond named Owen Nettles, seemed to have a creepy fascination with David. He spent the first few miles pestering the prisoners with questions about the boy. After his sixth failed attempt to gain answers, he sulked in a dark corner, resting on a blanket like the family dog.

“How you feeling?” Amanda asked Theo.