The home had been locked, and though Margo knew she was supposed to be exceedingly cautious about everything she did, she was feeling a streak of defiance wider than the Red River her plane had just flown over. She went around the rooms and opened all the windows, leaving the screens to filter the fresh Texas summer’s night air. It smelled sweet with the scent of freshly grown wild grass and rich soil.
After a half hour of working to set the ranch home right for her family, she felt the pain in her legs and back too much to do anything but transfer carefully onto the sofa. In one hand, she had a glass of ice water. In the other, she held her newly recharged cell phone. She’d waited as long as she could stand it. Now it was time to call her family and check on everyone.
She decided it best to call Theo, but when she did, Alik answered on the first ring.
“Mom, are you okay?”
“Yes, I’m fine. I just got back to the ranch a few minutes ago. Is Theo okay? Why do you have his phone?”
“Yeah, I can’t find my phone but Theo’s fine. He’s in the other room.”
“Okay. How’s Evan?”
“He’s still sick, Mom, but I think it’s pretty clear he’s going through his evolution now. I’m really worried about him though. His fever is much higher than it was with Meg or me and he’s suffered a lot of burns.”
“The fever may be normal for him. As for the burns, they’re going to take time. Before you get back on the road tomorrow, you need to give him another cool water bath,” Margo advised.
“Yes ma’am.”
“I was worried the police would come and talk to you back at the hospital. Maybe keep you from leaving.”
“Arkdone’s too smart for that. He’s playing the media card. How would it look if he detained a distinguished military veteran—a female in a wheelchair no less? No, he wasn’t going to come after me. He wants Meg and he learned from Williams’ mistakes.”
“What do you mean?”
“He knows not to anger her. If he comes after me, she’ll go on a rampage. He wants her to come to him willingly. He’s playing mind games, Alik. It’s his MO.”
Alik moved the curtain to try to see more clearly down the path his sister took, then leaned his head against the cool glass, holding the phone tightly to his ear, but unable to say anything more.
He offered the kind of silence in which a mother could sense a loud cry for help.
“What is it, Ali?”
“Well, it’s Meg. She’s just gotten so powerful, Mom.” Alik spoke in hushed tones. Though he was supposed to be watching over Evan, he’d been holding Theo’s cell, willing it to ring for the past hour. He knew his mother would have landed and was desperate to talk to her about his worries for Meg.
He just couldn’t stop replaying the scene they showed on the news. Even though he was there, he couldn’t decide which was scarier: watching it on TV from an outsider’s perspective or having watched her do it in person.
“I’ve seen the footage.” Margo reached into her bag hanging on the back of her wheelchair and pulled out her tablet. “It’s all over world news.” A push of a button and she was waiting for it to boot up, biting her already gnawed on nails impatiently.
Within seconds, she was watching the clips of the battle right in the middle of downtown Flagstaff. From some angles shown, she could even make out the hospital in which she had been waiting patiently for her family. She remembered hearing the sirens, but assumed it was an accident with victims coming to the hospital. After all her years around hospitals, the sound of sirens was barely noticeable to her now.
“Did she really ‘will’ them all to drop their weapons?”
“Yes. All of them. At least a dozen of Arkdone’s soldiers obeyed her orders, simultaneously.”
“She used to have to be touching someone to make the connection, and they had to be weak-minded or under duress…and, it was only one person at a time.”
“I know Mom.”
“She didn’t do what that Senator said, right? I mean, Meggie didn’t cause all those soldiers to have heart attacks, right?”
“She swears she didn’t. Cole says they even talked about that right after it happened while the rest of us were lying in the bed of a truck Meg was driving, so I didn’t hear the conversation myself. But she said she had thought about doing something fatal to them, and could have done it, but resisted the urge.”
“Oh, Ali.” Margo felt a wave of terror for her oldest child. “She always struggled to follow the rules if they went against her gut. That’s even how we got Maze, remember?”
“I remember, Mom.” Alik was peering out the motel window watching for Meg’s return. She’d been running for at least ten minutes now and Alik had no idea how long she’d be. He didn’t want to be caught talking about her to their mother. Meg might not take that well.
“What should I do, Mom?”
Margo was quiet for a moment. Her warm brown eyes glistened with unshed, worry-filled tears.