In their long freeway travels, the Silvers had become quite familiar with the sight of the blue-striped Tug-a-Lug truck. The company had grown so dominant in the do-it-yourself moving business that “tug” was now the casual term for any rented hauler.
At 4 A.M., a trio of sixteen-foot trucks left the field office and split up at the first intersection. The maneuver was a skittish ploy on Melissa’s part, a vehicular shell game to thwart any would-be rescuers. Two of the tugs returned to the building within the hour. The third kept moving east on Highway LXX.
The atmosphere inside the trailer was downright eerie. The battery lamps on the floor created a sinister underlighting for everyone but Amanda. She continued to shine like an angel in the blue-tinted radiance of her solic generators.
She and Theo faced each other from opposite walls, their arms handcuffed behind their folding chairs. Beneath the powerful joy of seeing each other alive and well was the pain of greater separation. Theo wished he could talk to Amanda telepathically, to pick her brain about the status of the others without alerting their captors.
Melissa’s loud yawn bounced off the metal walls. She and Howard sat perpendicular to the captives, like bridge opponents.
“We’ll be in Washington in two hours,” she told them. “Your accommodations there will be far more comfortable.”
Theo couldn’t get over all the chains and safeguards the Deps were using on Amanda, as if this skinny nurse and Christian had become their personal King Kong.
“You going to keep those machines on her for the rest of her life?” he asked Melissa.
“We’re completing construction on a special cell that achieves the same effect. She’ll have more mobility. If we’re fortunate, we’ll find a drug that safely suppresses her access to the tempis.” Melissa looked to Amanda. “I imagine you wouldn’t be too upset about that.”
The widow shook her head. Though she retained a wary fondness for Melissa, she didn’t like the other two agents in the trailer. Howard never took his nervous eyes off her, as if she’d disembowel him the moment the generators flickered. The other one, a strange and bookish little blond named Owen Nettles, seemed to have a creepy fascination with David. He spent the first few miles pestering the prisoners with questions about the boy. After his sixth failed attempt to gain answers, he sulked in a dark corner, resting on a blanket like the family dog.
“How you feeling?” Amanda asked Theo.
“Better. No pain. No visions. Whatever they gave me did the trick.”
Amanda looked to Melissa. “You must have gotten the results of his hospital tests by now.”
“I have them,” Melissa confirmed.
“Don’t you think he has a right to know what you found?”
Melissa fought the urge to withhold the information as leverage, but they had a long struggle ahead of them. She had to start building trust.
“The scanners discovered a foreign object in your thalamus,” she told Theo. “A perfect ring, no larger than a crumb. Any idea how it got there?”
Theo had every idea. His only surprise was that he shared it.
“The Pelletiers. Has to be.”
“Why?” Melissa asked. “What’s the purpose of the object?”
“I have no idea. I can’t imagine it’s there to kill me. There are easier ways.”
“Is there anything you’re willing to tell me about this Azral and Esis?”
“I know you’ll never find them unless they want to be found,” Theo responded. “You’ll never get them in an interrogation room. I just hope for your sake that you never become a problem to them. They slaughtered two dozen of their own employees by remote control. They wouldn’t hesitate to do the same to you.”
Howard’s leg bounced in anxiety, sending soft tapping echoes through the trailer. Melissa stroked her jaw in rumination.
“So what do they want from you? Why did they bring you here?”
Theo shrugged as best he could. “I don’t know. None of us know.”
“I hope we never find out,” Amanda said.
The truck veered to the left, then rolled to a quick halt. Melissa raised her radio.
“Carter, what’s going on? Why are we stopping?”
The receiver hissed loud static. “We got an accident up ahead. Overturned truck across both lanes.”
“Is anyone on scene yet?”
“Yeah. An ambulance and two local poes.”
Melissa muttered a curse. Something didn’t feel right. “Okay. Talk to them and see if you can get an estimate.”
She scrutinized Theo’s face for hints of canny awareness, finding none. Frustrated, she turned to Howard. “Call Michael with our coordinates. I want the rest of the team on standby.”
Amanda and Theo watched her closely as her thoughts once again bounced with mad leaps of logic. When it came to the fugitives, no assumption was too far-fetched. Nothing was out of the question. Melissa was living in their world now. She didn’t like it at all.
—