The blood and guts being cleaned up on the floor were all he needed to see. Well, that and the mangy dog chewing on a spiral of intestines, working a gory hunk of Slayer through its teeth and down its gullet.
“Team One, left flank. Two, you got right. Three, cover our six. Four, you’re with me,” Horton said in a whisper a few minutes later, after they had cleared the accessible parts of the liquor store. He waited for the members of his team to respond with a head nod, then advance outside.
They moved in concert and with purpose, turning a corner onto the next street with rifles, packs, climbing gear, and attitudes in tow. Just ahead was the old LaDean Cannery—the last place they’d found signs of the girl.
Even though Horton knew Summer had a head start, the cannery needed to be searched from top to bottom. All he needed to find was a footprint or a blood trail. Something to indicate which way she went.
Then they’d have her, assuming she was injured like the evidence had suggested on their previous mission.
CHAPTER 14
“Almost there,” Summer told herself in a grunt, feeling the sting in her hands from the paracord. Her arms felt like limp noodles, almost ready to quit. But her heart wouldn’t let them, convincing them to press on.
Two more yanks and a final leg push brought her to the opening in the bottom of the production floor. She took a deep breath, then grabbed hold of a bent angle bracket hanging from a floor-mounted support strut.
She assumed it used to secure some kind of equipment—equipment that was now buried in the mound of wreckage below. The bracket was the closest item within reach, allowing her to pull herself up and scoot out of the hole on her backside.
Summer pushed to her feet, then brought her eyes around and followed the paracord in search of the caster wheel. When she found it, she took a step back in a gasp, realizing it had caught itself on the very edge of a red-colored push knob on the front of a control station, somehow remaining there under the weight of her climb.
It only took a slight amount of sideways force to release the wheel, verifying that she’d gotten beyond lucky with the way that thing had held on.
A part of her half-expected to find the wheel wrapped around a sturdy machine and tied in a wrap-around knot—a parting gift from the Nomad. Since the wheel wasn’t hanging on by much, that obviously wasn’t the case.
Summer shook her head, realizing she just escaped certain death—again. Had she known how weakly the wheel was attached, she might have chickened out with the climb.
“Ignorance is the fuel for cowards,” she said, channeling something that Security Chief Krista had once said. Summer didn’t understand what that phrase meant until now. You’ll never chicken out if you think you’re safe.
Summer brushed off her clothes—not because she was covered in dirt or snow. It was more out of habit, allowing her mind to formulate the next step in her plan as she arched her back, taking a few moments to peer up through the open ceiling in the cannery.
The moonlight showering the room gave her a sense of awe as it washed over her face and caressed her body. Maybe it was because she was still alive, despite all that had happened today. Most who ventured into the Frozen World alone and encountered deadly scenarios failed to return. Yet here she was, still alive and breathing.
Technically, she didn’t believe in the almighty. However, if she did, she would have been certain at that moment that he was there, watching over her. Just as the Nomad had done.
“Time to rock and roll, Summer,” she muttered, pulling her focus from the night sky.
First up, stow the grappling hook she’d made, then figure out where to head to next.
She wound the cord around her arm, wrapping the entire length in a tight circle until the caster wheel landed in her palm.
Then she brought her pack around and fished out her Seeker Map before stuffing the wheel and cord inside.
Twenty steps later, she was on the far side of the room, standing in front of a stainless steel table at one end of the conveyor system. It was in front of a massive piece of equipment with a control arm and some kind of spring apparatus attached to a belt-driven pulley.
The flat surface may have been an infeed table. Or a sorting table. There was no way to know for sure. Not that it mattered. It looked to be large enough to hold her grid map, so she unfolded the paper and spread it out for a quick survey.
It took a minute to find the bridge she’d used to cross the No-Go Zone on her way to the bookstore. She figured she’d run about a mile into the territory owned by Simon Frost.
Granted, she was in a panic at the time, but she was certain it wasn’t any farther than that. She’d passed a string of warehouses and an old skateboard park, which the map indicated was near a street named Valencia.
Summer figured Krista had probably sent out a search team by now, deploying them to her assigned grid, not far from the No-Go Zone. It was standard operating procedure when a Seeker was late for debriefing after a mission.
And she was late—very late. There’d be hell to pay when she got back, especially if the search team spotted her in or leaving Frost’s territory. It was one thing to get lost on Edison’s side of the No-Go Zone, but it was an entirely different problem to trespass into Frost’s section of town.
Summer needed to take a wide route across the No-Go Zone, just in case one of Krista’s search teams was nearby. If she kept to the shadows where the moonlight couldn’t reach, she’d see them before they saw her. At least, that was the theory.
If she was able to make it back to the silo before the others, she could sneak into the complex using the emergency air shaft, then hide in her bed in the storage closet. Nobody ever went in there, knowing it was her space and off limits to everyone but her.
All she’d have to do is claim that she’d gotten back hours earlier and gone to sleep, forgetting to check in upon her return. It wouldn’t be the first time she’d used that excuse, nor the last. Besides, admitting to a small goof is better than getting caught making a large one. Small mistakes never got anyone tossed out of Nirvana, not with Edison’s tendency to forgive most errors.
“Should work,” she decided after running her little white lie through her head again. Her plan was sound, assuming she was careful on her way back to the silo.
Summer reached inside her sweatshirt to pull out the Infinity Chain and kiss it for luck, but her hand came up empty. Nothing but air inside.
“No! No! No!” she cried out as her hand went back in and swept left to right in a fury, searching the skin around her neck without success.
The chain wasn’t there. She’d lost it. Somewhere.
A heavy pressure slammed into her chest. Edison would be pissed. He’d never forgive her. The breath in her lungs evaporated as she spun on her heels and scanned the area beneath her feet. No sign of the trinket.
Her mind flashed a series of events, each one a possible location where the chain had fallen off.
First, the trip over the pallets and painful face-plant that tore a hole into her cheek. Then the sudden fall through the floor when the roof collapsed, leaving her buried under the snow. The vision finished with her crawl under the debris and her dig out through the snow.
The keepsake could be anywhere.
She turned and stared at the hole in the cannery’s floor, debating if she should retrace her steps to find it, starting with her crawl out from under the ice.
“Hold it right there!” a man’s voice yelled from her left.
Summer flinched after turning a step.