Finally, Cole announced his arrival with three bangs against the tunnel door. I came barreling out of Alban’s old office, abandoning the ancient Op files I’d been looking through, and unlocked it. He gave a guarded, uncertain smile as he came up the stairs.
“The others are back, too,” he said. “I told them to bring everything around to the garage’s loading dock. Can you gather up the kids to help haul the stuff in? I’ll go ahead and cut the chain so we can get the damn door open—”
“Cole,” I said sharply as he started to walk away.
He shuffled to a stop, turning his head slightly. “I’m sorry, Gem. They’re looking for the agents, but they don’t know either. Liam must have contacted Harry behind my back, because he got in touch with me this morning to say he’d ask around. He’s ex-Special Forces and still has a number of buddies in different branches of the military and government.”
The mention of his stepfather brought a flash of the memory I’d seen in Cole’s mind, and pain stirred in me. The man from his memory, his biological father, smiling down at their mother that way...
“Okay,” I said quietly. “Thanks for trying.”
He let out a shuddering breath and forced himself to shrug. “You...okay?”
“Yeah,” I said. “Let me go get the others. I’ll meet you down there.”
Cold night air filled the warehouse with a crisp, clean scent that reached us in the tunnel. The door at the other end was already open, waiting for us. But the moment I stepped through, I stopped dead in my tracks.
The whole place looked as though they’d power-washed it for hours on end. They hadn’t been able to actually remove the junk from the building—it might have attracted too much unwanted attention—but they’d somehow fit everything together, using the four walls as the frame of a puzzle. They’d lined up all of the shelving units, made some new shelves out of the broken bunks, and created a workstation with the tools they’d found. The car lift and frame were still at the center of the expansive space, but it looked like they were piecing even that back together. Someone had outfitted it with wheels, at least.
Two large SUVs and one white van had come up the loading ramp and were parked inside. I jogged over to Liam and Vida as they used their abilities to lift boxes out of the trunks and set them aside.
Liam looked up as I came over, a familiar smile on his face. He waved the group coming in behind me over. “We’re organizing by type. Set computers and electronics over there—”
There was an actual, blissful sigh from one of the Greens, which made him chuckle.
“Food and water goes here. There should be a few bags of clothes, bedding—no, no, leave the stuff in the white van,” he said, jogging over to shut the door. “It’s—Cole’s going to take care of that stuff.”
Meaning, I’d guess, weapons for our locker.
Vida was...blank. Her expression didn’t so much as flicker with annoyance as Chubs pelted her with a series of endless questions. I wasn’t sure she was even aware of what she was doing, there was that much of a visible, numb disconnect.
Zu came to stand beside me, her dark gaze meeting mine in question. I wanted to tell her not to worry about this, that I was coming to see the heavier your heart got, the stronger you had to be to keep carrying it around. But the truth was, all I wanted to do was risk a punch in the face and hug Vida. So, I tried.
And she let me.
Her arms stayed down around her sides, pinned there by my tight grip. Slowly, her hands rose and pressed against my back. I smelled dust and the salt of ocean water on her skin, mingling with the exhaust from the cars, and I wished like hell I had thought to volunteer to go instead, so she could have had the day to recover.
“We are going to fucking get her back,” Vida said fiercely. “I will burn Gray’s house down over his head. If she’s not all right, I’m going to rip out his heart and eat it.”
I nodded.
“You really shouldn’t eat raw meat,” Chubs said somewhere beside us. “It can carry pathogens—”
We both turned to him slowly. He lowered the computer box he’d been holding down to the ground and backed away.
“The Canadians came through, didn’t they?” Senator Cruz looked around at the haul, strolling between the piles.
“What are they going to want for this stuff?” one of the kids asked.
“Don’t worry about it,” Senator Cruz said. “The reparations are still quite a ways off yet. This is what we’d call a favor. Oh—did they not provide gas?”
“They sent a fuel tank,” Liam said. “We hid it behind the bar, since it wouldn’t fit through this loading dock. I also did not, um, feel super comfortable having a ton of explosive material in here.”
“Fair point,” Senator Cruz said with a faint laugh.
“They seem really invested in this. We established a drop site so they can bring things down when they find openings. They gave me this—” He pulled a sleek silver phone out of his pocket. “To make contact when the supplies are ready.”
“Spray paint?” Chubs asked. “Did you remember to grab that?”
“What for?” I asked.
“When we send the cars out to pick up the tribes,” Liam explained, using his hands to add emphasis, “they’re going to mark the safe routes they take with the road code. That way, we can get back in one piece and there’s a chance other kids we don’t know about will catch on and follow the route in.”
That smile on his face had always been contagious. I bit the inside of my lip; he was looking at me like I was the best damn thing he’d ever seen.
Ruby can take your memories...
“Great idea,” I said, glancing away.
“Yeah...” His voice faltered. “Thanks?”
The kids were only too happy to cart the load off into the Ranch. Cole stood at the back door of the white van, leaning against it as he watched the progress the kids were making around him.
“Wait—” I said, catching Chubs and Liam by the backs of their shirts before they could follow Zu and Hina to the tunnel. “We need to talk about something.”
Cole and Vida must have picked up on the nerves in my voice because they came around into our huddle.
“I...dealt with Clancy today,” I said. “To find out where his mother is.”
Cole straightened. “And?”
“She’d been working out of some facility in Georgia, protected by the agents from the HQ there. They seem to have gotten her out in time. Her lab burnt down, though.”
“Damn, girl,” Vida said softly. “You’re sure?”
“Positive. And I doubt they would have let her out of their sight.”
“You think they’re hiding her in Kansas,” Cole said.
“It makes sense, doesn’t it? It’s League procedure that when the organization is under attack, remaining forces and resources fall back to a central, safe location. I don’t know that they would risk keeping her in an external location anymore after what happened with Clancy, and I don’t think she’s the kind of prisoner they would have cut loose...”
“Would they trade her?” Vida interrupted. “A prisoner exchange?”
“The First Lady?” Cole said. “Not even for a hundred agents. I just don’t understand why they wouldn’t have used her before now—they aren’t exactly shy about using hostages to make demands.”
“Well...they might not want to put her in front of a camera,” I said.
“Explain.”
“Clancy tampered with her mind. Really tampered with it.”
“Brain voodoo?” Vida clarified. “Awesome. So much for getting any answers.”
“You want to go get her.” Liam’s voice was quiet, and I could hear the hint of unhappiness in it that went unspoken. “You think you can fix whatever he did.”