In The Afterlight (The Darkest Minds #3)(22)

I switched the truck’s headlights on, letting them flood the clusters of trees on either side of the road. I started to pull the truck over onto the shoulder, wishing I had some other way to talk to Liam and Chubs, but I stopped myself.

These past few days had been hard enough on Liam already. Giving him this thrill only to have it ripped away seemed especially cruel. Chubs could bear the disappointment, but Liam...I didn’t want to see his face fall when it all turned out to be nothing. I’d already let him down so many times, in so many ways. I couldn’t add this to the list.

But there was that small voice rising above the other thoughts, whispering, what if it is her, though?

Kylie, Lucy, Zu, and Hina. KLZH.

This was dangerous—this was letting myself think that sometimes life had the near-magical quality of working out. It could unfold in a way that’s so much better and easier than what you could have imagined.

That paint—it’d been fresh enough to run under the insistent stroke of rain, hadn’t it? They couldn’t have been that far ahead.

Don’t do this to yourself, I thought. We were farther north than where Liam thought her uncle’s home was, and the initials were still missing Talon’s T. Maybe it was exhaustion, or desperation, or some kind of need to prove that life could sometimes be kind. Whatever it was, I couldn’t ignore it.

What was the risk in following this trail through, just to see what was waiting for us at the end? What if this was the one chance we’d ever have of finding her?

Jude would have done it. With him, it wouldn’t have even been a debate.

I still felt crazy taking the next right, and clearly the others felt the same way. Vida tapped the horn, a quiet question. It was a dark access road, not even paved. The truck settled into the mud, rolling through the fresh tracks left by another set of tires. The overgrown trees lining the road were gnarled and twisted into each other; I kept the truck moving fast enough to tear through them, snapping branches and ripping away leaves.

It was that noise, not the earlier, inquiring honk from the other car, that finally shook Cole out of his two-hour nap. I saw him tense, running his hands over his face once, twice, trying to clear up the disorientation brought on by such a deep sleep.

“You should have woken me up!” He squinted at the glowing dashboard console. “Wait...where the hell are we? Why are we going east, not north?”

“I have a hunch,” I said.

“Yeah, and I have a pain in my ass—and surprise, it’s you,” he said, glaring at me over Clancy’s prone form. “What’s this about?’

“I think—” The trees suddenly pulled back, and I saw that the road we’d come in on hadn’t really been a road at all, but a long driveway up to what once must have been a gorgeous mountain home. The thing was massive—two stories, a double-wide garage. The face of the house was stone and wood, as if despite its hulking presence it was still meant to blend in.

“Still waiting on that answer,” Cole said as I threw the car into park.

“I think there may be some kids hiding here,” I said. “I just want to have a quick look around—I swear, I swear I’ll be fast.”

Cole set his jaw, and I wondered what kind of expression I had that ultimately made him nod and say, “Fine, but take Vida with you. You have two minutes.”

The others had opened their doors, but only Liam had stepped out into the rain. “What’s going on?” he called.

“I just need Vida for a second,” I said. “No, just her. Her. It’s a quick...thing.”

Chubs groaned. “What kind of thing? A Ruby-walks-into-mortal-danger thing?”

I shut the door on any further questions, wincing as I saw the hopeful look Vida shot me as she walked over.

“Is this about...is it Cate?”

Her whole face was glowing with hope, almond eyes wide, full lips parted as if she was uncertain if she should smile. God—if Cate hadn’t made it, if she wasn’t there waiting for us, I didn’t think I’d be able to put Vida back together.

“I think there might be kids hiding out here.”

That perked her right up. I saw her hand slide back into the pocket of her sweatshirt, reaching for the gun hidden there.

“All right, cool,” she said. “How do you want to play this?”

The front door and the first-story windows were all boarded over—the back and side entrances were, too. Vida’s initial excitement quickly faded as we trampled through the mud and tall grass in the dark, slipping and sliding our way around the house a second time. There were no ladders that I could see to help someone up to the second floor. No lights on, no sounds coming from inside the house. The odd, shadowy shape on the garage door took form the closer we got, stopped me dead in my tracks. It was a crude crescent moon, cut out of some kind of metal. Someone had hammered it up with a single nail.

Safe place. I took a deep breath and reached for the cold metal of the garage door handle. Vida hung back but brought her gun up, aiming—

At nothing at all.

No cars, no bags, no kids huddled on blankets. Aside from rows of gardening tools and trash cans, there was only trash. The bright wrappers were scattered in heaps around the dark space.

Vida dragged her boots through the trash, scattering it. Now that my eyes were adjusting to the light, I could see other signs that there’d been at least one person here recently. A small pile of blankets and an abandoned duffel bag.