A Wind of Change (A Shade of Vampire #17)(17)

My stomach clenched as the vehicles began roaring in the opposite direction, back toward the camp, away from my sister.

I could barely see as my eyes blurred again. I wasn’t even aware of my migraine anymore. The agony in my chest had crushed it into insignificance.

“The army?” Fariss said abruptly, pointing toward our right. I wiped my eyes and stared out of the window to see a cluster of tanks.

“Stop the car!” I said instantly.

I recognized those tanks. They looked like the same ones we’d seen the day before near the restaurant.

“Wait here for me,” I said.

“What? River, where—”

I didn’t give Yusuf a chance to finish his question. I slammed the car door shut and began racing full speed toward the tanks.

The harsh grains of sand had now seeped into my shoes and were grating against the soles of my feet, but I barely felt the pain. My eyes were fixed on the dark machines.

As I reached the first one, there was nobody in sight. I banged against one of the walls and shouted.

“Open up! Please! It’s an emergency!”

Silence.

I moved to the next one and banged again.

“Please!” I cried, even as my voice cracked.

My heart lifted as several hatches clicked open at once. Four men raised their heads out and looked down at me.

“Please! I need your help! My sister and a young man just went missing. We are camping some miles away, and someone just came by and took them. Have you seen anything at all?”

A man with short cropped hair and a scar across his right cheek climbed out and dropped down on the ground, the three other men following after him. He approached me, looking down at me seriously.

“Tell me, what exactly did you see?”

I took a deep breath and tried to steady my nerves to best express what had happened.

I repeated the incident and once again felt crazy as I recalled the speed of whomever it was who’d taken them.

They were silent as I finished, but the glances they exchanged with each other made me believe that they knew something.

“So have you seen anything?” I asked, daring to raise my hopes. “Do you have any idea at all what happened?”

There was a long pause. Then the man with the scar cleared his throat and said, “I’m sorry. We can’t help.”

My heart sank into my stomach. From the way he’d listened, and the look in their eyes, I was certain that they knew something.

“Sir, you may not be able to help, but please, tell me what you know. It’s my sister… my little—” My voice broke. “Why are you all here in the first place?” I managed. “What are you waiting for?”

The men began backing away. “I’m sorry,” the man repeated.

I lurched forward and grabbed the man’s arm. “Please!”

He brushed me off and Yusuf—who’d followed after me—grabbed my arm and pulled me back.

“River, these men don’t know anything. The best thing we can do now is return and give a full account to the police.”

I looked back at the men closing their hatches. They knew more than they were letting on. I just knew it.

Still, they were refusing to speak to me anymore and Yusuf was tugging me back toward the car. I had no choice but to retreat, so we sped back across the desert toward the city. We didn’t even stop at camp as we reached it—we passed right by.

About two hours into the journey, we were afraid that we might run out of fuel completely—we’d done a lot of extra driving that had not been planned for. But by some mercy we managed to arrive at the borders of the city and reach a fuel station before the engine became completely empty.

Fariss got out of the car with Yusuf to refuel. When they returned, we headed straight for the nearest police station.

We hurried into the reception area that was filled with a surprisingly large crowd of people.

“I have an emergency!” Yusuf shouted in Arabic, cutting through the noise.

A policewoman approached. “What is it?” she asked.

“A seventeen-year-old boy and a six-year-old girl went missing in the desert late last night. Has a man called Samir Haik arrived here?”

Recognition spread across her face. “Yes, come with me. You are witnesses?”

Yusuf gestured to me. “She is a witness.”

She led me and Yusuf along a winding corridor. We reached an office and stepped inside. There we found my grandfather and Dafne seated in front of a desk. My sister’s eyes were bloodshot, and she looked terrified. My grandfather looked relieved to see us.

The woman took a seat behind the desk next to a policeman who was already sitting there.

“We have a witness,” she said, pointing to me.

“Well? What can you tell us?” the policeman asked.

I could understand Arabic, but I couldn’t speak it as well. I wasn’t about to take chances on his English though, so I recounted the whole incident again in Arabic as well as I could.

“Have search parties been sent out already?” I asked.

The policeman and my grandfather nodded. “But anything more we can add to this case will help, of course,” the policeman replied.

“Have they sent helicopters?” Yusuf asked.

“They’re on their way,” the policewoman replied.