“Do you know how?”
“He was teaching me for years. I can run that place exactly the way he did.”
“Will you wear a bathrobe and cook me smoked rabbit?”
He chuckled. “I’ll even talk down to you and call you Athena if you want me to.”
“No,” I said, wrapping my arm around him and hugging him tightly. “You’ll call me Joss. Always Joss.”
“Tinkerbell?”
“No.”
“Peter Pan?”
“No!”
“You sure you don’t want me to call you Kitten?”
I pinched his side, making him yelp. “No.”
“All right,” he conceded. His breath brushed hot across my head. His lips landed lightly in my hair. “I love you, Joss,” he whispered.
“I love you, Ryan.”
I will never in my life get tired of saying that.
Now we stand on the deck of the Vashon boat guiding us across Lake Washington toward Mercer Island. Garden Gate is there in the gray morning mist that hovers over the water. It looks like a freak show against its perfect black backdrop. There are no lights anywhere on that island except for this one house—this one weird glass-walled house that’s blazing with unnatural light.
“It’s totally self-sufficient,” Sam tells us as we stare at it in amazement. “It’s built into the side of a hill and uses the earth for a lot of its walls to keep it cool in the summer and warm in the winter. It’s covered in solar panels, it’s using the water in the lake to generate power, there’s a row of wind turbines up on the hill it’s built into. Totally gated in on the back to keep the zombies out, but it sounds like they cleared them off the island same as we did.”
“How do you know all of this?” Ryan asks him.
“Alvarez.”
“How does he know?”
Sam grimaces slightly. “Interrogations.”
“I don’t want to hear about that,” I warn him.
He shrugs. “I don’t want to think about it.”
“An interrogation is a formal line of questioning,” Trent informs us. “It doesn’t necessarily mean violence.”
“Based on what happened to the southern Colony, I’m assuming this interrogation was violent.”
“Safe assumption.”
I shiver against the thought and the cold.
“Is Ali on the boat?” I ask Sam, surprised he’s not with her.
Sam suddenly won’t meet my eyes.
“Yeah,” he says quietly, “she’s here.”
“Are you not guarding her anymore?” Ryan asks.
“No, I am. I’m on a break. She’s with Alvarez.” He shifts on his feet before muttering, “She shouldn’t be here.”
“Why not?”
“Because she’s sick?” I ask, wondering if that’s rude. Ryan doesn’t nudge me so I figure I’m okay.
“Yeah. She’s kind of on the edge right now,” Sam says with irritating vagueness. “She…” He sighs heavily. He looks over his shoulder and stares at the back of the ship where I can see Alvarez and a long mass of dark hair whipping in the wind.
“Sam?”
His eyes snap to mine. He looks worried.
“Docking in five!” someone shouts.
We’re coming up on the shore outside Garden Gate. My heart begins to pound in my chest.
“Just watch out for her, okay?” Sam says urgently.
“Everyone to their stations!”
Ryan nods as he turns to leave, going to our assigned post. “Yeah, we’ll help you keep an eye on her.”
“No, I mean watch out for her,” he says emphatically.
The deck is swarming with people. A line runs between Sam and I, blocking him from sight.
“You mean like ‘watch your back’?” I shout to him.
He doesn’t answer and when the line of people is gone, so is he. Trent and Ryan have already moved on so I get my butt in gear and head to my post, but Sam’s words are still swimming in my head, confusing me. Worrying me.
We break the mist and there it is, clear and glowing against the hillside. Somewhere inside, Westbrook is milling around in his pajamas. He’s probably munching a donut and sipping tea. Maybe listening to music. He might be watching a movie. Or cartoons like a Saturday morning when we were kids and had homes and parents. And Saturdays.
“Hold!” Alvarez cries.
We all wait, dying to jump off this boat and head inside. It’s going to be brutal, and I remind myself to be ready for that. I don’t plan on killing anyone and I haven’t asked, but I doubt Ryan does either. I’m not afraid to break an arm or deal out concussions with my ASP, but I’d rather not have any more living, human blood on my hands than I already do. I wonder for a second if anyone should clarify that to Trent, but before I can there’s an explosion on the shore.
Several go off, dirt flying into the air and then raining down, pelting the side of the house and the water around us. Some lands on the boat but we all hold steady, waiting.
Alvarez’s team launches two more volleys of stones against the shore until he’s convinced every last one of the land mines waiting for us is dead. We learned our lesson back at the southern Colony; no one is falling for that trick again.
I wait anxiously in the silence that follows the last piece of dirt falling to the ground. It’s creepy quiet. No one is moving inside the house and there are no guards or soldiers rushing out to meet us. It’s completely calm and still. Almost like no one is home.
“Now!”
People spill off the boat, our feet pounding down the small ramp and onto the dock. We run in teams, each of us with our own orders of where to go. We’re fanning out over each floor of this place, going into the guest houses, the massive garage.
Everyone’s goal—find Westbrook.
We burst into the house and I do my best to not be distracted by it, but damn. It’s ridiculous. It’s unholy. It’s so freaking normal that it’s stupid.
Nicely upholstered chairs and couches, undented, unscratched tables, glass that hasn’t been shattered, lights that are glowing warm and strong. It’s completely ignorant to the world across the water. It’s everything that annoyed me about the MOHAI and so, so, so much more. It’s not just clean or nice—it’s luxurious.
It makes me sick.
I snap out my ASP. I clench my knife in my left hand. I breathe in steady, I breathe out even, I swallow back the angry bile, and I calm my heart.
“Joss!” Ryan calls over his shoulder.
I nod, quickening my steps to follow him. “I’m right behind you.”
We’re the team searching the lowest level. Trent and Ryan move cautiously through the hallways, trying to find us a door that will take us down. Trent guides us through a huge, gleaming kitchen, past pristine bathrooms, some kind of game room. Finally he comes to a stop in front of a glass enclosure with a sturdy metal frame.
“No way,” I mumble, staring at it like it’s a unicorn in a tuxedo.
Trent pushes a circular button beside it. It lights up, followed by a polite ding!
“Yes way,” he says in equal awe.
The doors to the elevator slide open silently in front of us. Soft classical music pours out into the hallway.
Ryan shocks me when he barks out a short, loud laugh.
“What’s funny?” I ask incredulously.
“I don’t know. When was the last time you rode an elevator?”
I shrug. “Not since I was kid. Are we taking this thing down?”
“Why wouldn’t we?” he asks me like I’m crazy.
“How do we know we can trust it?”
Trent steps inside and jumps up and down fearlessly. When he doesn’t plummet to his death, I sigh with relief.
“What if we get trapped in it?” I ask.
Trent shrugs. “Then we know it doesn’t work.”
Ryan steps inside, offering me his hand. “Are you coming?”
I don’t hesitate to take his hand, but when he pulls me inside I feel like I’m going to hyperventilate. I don’t trust this thing at all, but I trust Ryan and Trent so when the doors close behind me, I do my best not to scream and claw at the walls.
Trent pushes another button, a B this time, and we start to drop down smoothly.
“This is weird,” I whisper.