They stopped for lunch immediately north of Denver. It wasn’t ideal, but they wouldn’t be clear of the stink for hours anyway. The sooner they served, cleaned, and packed back up, the sooner they could leave again. Once Domenico took Three’s luncheon out to the main cars, Lena leaned out to peer away from the caravan.
To the east, broken, black ground stretched as far as the eye could see. In a few places, steam still rose from the cracks, curling and toxic. The damage extended through what had been Kansas and Oklahoma and down into central and east Texas—the no man’s lands which had borne the brunt of the immediate, fiery death that erupted over two hundred years before.
Sobered, she climbed back up into the car and began the clean-up. She tried to push away the imagined horror of the deaths of those trapped by the fumes but not incinerated by the flames. And then, of course, millions died afterward, of poisoning, of thirst, of starvation or disease once everything had collapsed. She couldn’t shake the feeling of darkness and despair that seemed to creep in with the bad air.
What would she have done, if she’d been alive then? Would she have tried to flee?
I’d do whatever it took to find Alex.
It wasn’t because the Alex she imagined from that time would be able to save them. At the root of the longing was the simple acknowledgment that she’d want to see him again, to hold him before death claimed them.
She pressed a hand to her chest, where an ache grew at the thought. She had always been about the physical. If she didn’t care, it couldn’t hurt. Where had this maudlin woman come from? Yes, they’d been through so much together, come so far since the day he’d walked into her home in the desert and changed everything. But this? She didn’t love him, did she? No. They were friends, partners in revolution.
She swallowed back the ache in her throat and chest.
When the Dust had that happened?
A motion out the window to her right caught her eye. She moved closer and peered through the curtains. Alex stalked toward her car, his face set in grim lines. A huge, bald man with a bushy blond mustache paced him. Behind them, she could make out the legs of a smaller, slighter man, but the rest of him remained hidden.
Her glance strafed the area around her, recognizing movement everywhere as people were moved away. Agents, some of whom she recognized as Alex’s who’d slipped in to leave reports at the safe house for Jackson to pick up, slipped into positions around the car. Around her.
Around her? But it was too early. The attack hadn’t started. They weren’t in position. She caught another glimpse of his face as he moved in. It was dark, set, and not with anger alone. She recognized the expression. He had closed off, exactly as he had the day he’d stepped up and looked down at her strapped to the table in the Council building.
Her heart caught, twisted, and then began again, the slow, loud thumping a contrast to the panicked skittering of her thoughts. She stood, clearly visible through the window, as still as a rabbit that hoped it wasn’t the prey being sought.
Alex moved around the front of the truck, out of view for a moment. When he appeared again, he roughly shoved the third man to the side, out of her view. Alex and the bald man moved into position on either side of the door.
He reached and slid it open. Alex called out as he met her frightened stare, “Magdalena Gracey?”
It isn’t time. This isn’t the plan.
Lena swallowed. “No. No. There must be a mistake. My name is Mina Gardin. I have papers.”
He nodded at her, a small, comforting movement. It was a move designed to placate and disarm a suspect.
What was going on?
“Miss,” he told her firmly, as if they hadn’t spent as many stolen moments together over the past few days as they could manage, as if the whispered endearments that had made her feel like glowing Dust filled her chest hadn’t come from his lips. His eyes were blank, like he’d never seen her before in his life. “If you could please step out of the car now, I’m sure we can clear this up.”
It wasn’t time yet, but he played his role so well.
It’s a role. It’s just a role….
She looked again out the window to peer through the gap in the curtains. Nothing moved. The agents had disappeared, and the caravaners were hiding. Was Jackson out there, too?
His words from her first night in the caravan came back to her. He would do whatever he had to do to ensure the plan went forward. He had made it clear that so should she.
She stepped one foot forward and reached up to pull the damp dishtowel from around her lower face. It fell to the floor beside her. Alex reached in, extending a helping hand.
She should go with him, shouldn’t she? If this was all a part of the plan, or a contingency? Her heart thudded in her ears. She trusted him. It must be a change in plans.
She remembered his arm reaching out to her before—to shoot her with the electric barbs of a Taser. In the end, he’d made it right. He’d made his decision, but he’d done whatever it took to get her free.