He thought our Walker marks were tattoos, but he hadn’t assumed I was in a gang. I had wondered why he hadn’t mentioned them earlier. Must be common here to have face ink. I knew humans had gone through an obsessive inking-their-skin stage in the twenty-first century.
Lucy tilted her head to the side, looking way too pixie-like to ever be thought of as human. Even with her wings hidden away. “So you’re saying that society runs completely normally here. You have schools, malls – like with shoe stores and everything?”
Shoe stores. Of course that would be her first thought. Even though she flew most places now and rarely wore shoes. There was no changing the fundamentals of Lucy. And Lucy was a shoe whore.
We were confusing the man. His poor brain was getting taxed from all the strange facts we were forcing on him.
“Yes, of course we have shoe stores. Where else would we buy our … shoes?”
I wanted to laugh, he was so blustery. At least all evidence still pointed to the safety of this side of the barrier. Leaving the girls here would be okay.
“It’s not on here!” Chrissie’s exclamation drew our attention. “New York isn’t on your map. It should be right there.” She jabbed her finger into the blank spot which was depicted on this map as ocean.
The male sighed, before leaning back into the large-backed chair and lacing both hands together, resting them over his pronounced gut. “I’ve heard many stories in this room, but manufacturing an entire American state. Well … that’s a bit stupid. Why go with something that’s so easily confirmed?”
I was about to slap the asshole grin off his face when the door behind us smashed open. I expected it to be one of the other men off the coastguard boat, but instead it was a lady.
Older. Late forties at least. She had her hair pulled up into a severe ponytail. Just the slightest hint of gray peeking through the blond highlights. Her expression was a mixture of freaked out and over-excited. Hints of red graced the tips of her high cheekbones.
“Geoff!” Her exclamation had our interrogator jumping to his feet. And the way he smoothed his wisps of hair down, he was more than a little interested in what she had to say. “You’ve got to see this.”
Just like that we were forgotten as he lumbered out of the room after the older woman.
Brace and I exchanged a single glance.
He nodded.
Yep, we were so totally finding out what had happened.
Something told me that whatever was coming was going to rock Geoff’s comfortable little town to its core.
Chapter 10
By the time we made it out of the interrogation room the building was empty. It seemed that everyone, including our smuggled girls, had taken off to see this sight. We pretty much sprinted back out onto the wooden docks. In the distance, toward our right side, a large group of people had gathered.
Brace’s long legs carved through the distance in less than a minute. I hauled butt to keep pace with him, the others bringing up the rear. Lucy had to be half-carried by Colton. Her tiny legs just couldn’t keep up. Eva and Chrissie were last and they lagged further back. Still, all of us had a pretty decent view of what had expelled all the humans from the building and out onto this long dock which jutted into the ocean.
Holy crapola.
The barrier had been down for about an hour, and already things were happening. Out on the horizon, coming straight for Atlantic City, were about twenty boats. Voices were loud as we closed in on the mass of confused people. Coastguard uniforms were dotted throughout and I could see many of them were on their two-way-style communication devices which were attached to their shoulders. Alerting various government departments, most probably.
The vessels were a mixture of old and new. Mostly white and varying in size, a lot of them did not look sea-worthy. I hoped that just regular humans were on board, people who had finally been able to escape from New York. They’d probably be from the rebels’ quadrant, or teenagers from the compounds.
But if they were gangers.
Well, the ones standing here would be in a world of trouble. Luckily, though, I wasn’t about to bail on them just yet. We could surely spare another few minutes to make sure war wasn’t arriving via a bunch of leaky boats. A part of me had to know that we hadn’t just destroyed the barrier and let the evil out to infect the rest of the world. The power grid would still be there in an hour – I hoped.
Heavy breathing started right beside my ear. Eva. She sounded like she was about to hyperventilate or something.
“We can’t leave until we know that the females are okay,” she said.
It wasn’t exactly an order, but I knew she’d be difficult if I decided it was time to go before she was ready.
I tilted my head to the left so I could meet her eyes. “I’m not a complete ass. I want to make sure that everyone is safe and that this fallout from New York doesn’t erupt into a war. But I only have so much time. When I say it’s time to go, we have no other choice.”