Twenty-One
The CIA agent had been gone for one hour. Mom had wanted to talk, but I shook my head, nodded at the camera. Even though, statistically speaking, our chances of escape continued to plummet with every minute ticking by, even a slim chance was worth keeping silent.
We’d had no bathroom breaks, no offers of food or water. Artificial thirst stirred in my throat. I was fine, but I calculated that Mom had to be uncomfortable by now. Undoubtedly intentional on the part of our captors.
My thoughts drifted to Hunter, and the excitement in his voice when we’d talked on the phone. He had felt the same as me, but ultimately it didn’t matter.
“Promise you’ll call when you get to wherever you’re going.”
My breath hitched. Call him . . . if only that were a possibility. Where we were going, I was pretty sure I’d need all the reminders of my human side that I could get.
An echo of footsteps drew my eyes to the door. The precision, the uniformity.
“They’re coming,” I said.
The footsteps pounded out an ever-closer rhythm. Five feet away. Then one.
The door burst open, followed by six swiftly moving men in military camo fatigues, their guns drawn.
Frank was absent. In his place was a tall, narrow-faced man with copious acne scars. His voice was deep and clipped. A voice accustomed to giving orders and having them obeyed. “Resistance will not be tolerated,” he said, drilling me with his unwavering gray stare. “Davis, Rogers!”
The commander nodded at the two impassive-looking young men up front. As a unit, they surged forward, one clasping my arm, the other Mom’s, their hands cold and dry. The leader jerked his head toward the door.
And despite how much the waiting had worn on me, despite how much I hated the tiny, empty room, suddenly I wanted to stay put. At least this room was a known entity. Whereas wherever they were leading us . . . the compound . . . based on Mom’s aversion, I could only imagine the worst. A place where terrible things happened.
A place where they tortured “girls” like me.
I shuddered just as the soldiers jerked us roughly to a stand. And then we were moving.
The cuffs, the men with guns, the narrow hallway—it all combined to crush me with that trapped feeling from Clearwater High, except one hundred times worse. Only Mom’s presence kept my feet moving. As long as we were together, I could handle this. As long as they didn’t take her away. Over and over again, I craned my head just to double check that she was still back there.
Moving swiftly, we headed the opposite way down the hall than we had come, through a labyrinth of uninhabited, narrow corridors, our footsteps echoing around us.
GPS.
The green map in my head pointed out which direction we switched to every time—east, south, east, north—but that was relatively useless information in the scheme of things.
We arrived at a heavy, white metal door and burst into the brisk outside air, the roar of an airplane in early takeoff vibrating just ahead. The thick odor of burned gas drifted our way.
Four more soldiers stood at attention, forming two lines of two on either side of the door. Just beyond them three plain white vans awaited, engines whirring as they idled.
I wondered briefly what lies the military had concocted to explain us and their presence. I’d probably never know.
With a roar of its powerful V-8, our van took off the second we were shoved inside, and it headed onto a narrow, empty strip of a road that led away from the main terminal. Five minutes later, we’d reached a guarded gate, which opened and admitted us to a separate runway, where a few long, squat buildings sprawled on the left side. A private terminal, surrounded by open stretches of asphalt and grass.
Nowhere to run, even if I could possibly escape without endangering Mom. I stared out the window, took one last long look at Canada. My halfhearted wish from the border crossing came back to haunt me, and even though I knew it was illogical, I couldn’t quell the feeling that I’d brought this upon us.
That somehow my qualms about leaving the United States and Hunter had backfired and landed us in this horrible mess.
