“Just one second. Waxing my upper lip,” Roxy called out, opening the bathroom door.
Sighing, Lynn snatched the sign from the window and walked out.
After the food was delivered and the door to the hallway once again locked, she and Roxy sat at the table and softly spoke.
“Those swarming cicadas. If someone was taken out there, it means you were right,” Roxy said, toying with a tough piece of overcooked chicken.
“It’s happening at all the places where people have vanished. I developed contacts all over the world at the different abduction sites. When I saw the swarming happening above our woods, I reached out to them, asking them to take video or photographs, to see if they saw it as well. Even in Argentum, where one of the families of the missing took video above the town. It took me considerable time, but I found the shape there in the falling snow, clustering as it drifted.”
“I hate to even suggest it… but have you thought about sharing what you’ve uncovered with the government? To warn them?”
“I am afraid it would mean they would kill us all. Starting with William.”
“God, Lynn. There has to be another way.”
“I just need to think.”
“We have plenty of time for that.”
Having lost all trace of an appetite, Roxy grabbed two books from the shelf and attempted to read. Two hours later, she exclaimed she was so bored that her only option was to go to bed early.
It was only beginning to darken when Lynn herself started to doze in a chair. With Roxy softly snoring, Lynn closed her eyes.
Don’t go to sleep. Think. Think how to get out. Get to Stella. Get to Kate. Get to William. He has to know. Above anyone else, he has to know—
The gunshots in the distance prompted her to sit up.
“What the hell is that?” Roxy said, still deep in sleep.
“Rifles,” Lynn said, sitting up. The sounds resounded again, closer to the house. They both hurried to the curtains, parting them.
The only true light came from the sole outdoor lamp above the front door to the house, and it barely penetrated the night’s gloom. But it was enough to see the shapes of two guards rushing quickly past, heading in the direction of another gunshot.
“What’s going on?” Roxy asked.
“I don’t know—”
A loud rapping sound came from the bathroom. With Roxy clutching Lynn’s arm, they walked through the dark to the bathroom. The sound repeated.
As they peered around, a flashlight illuminated a face outside the window. The light revealed a young man’s face underneath the bill of a hat.
Waving at Roxy to stay back, Lynn didn’t dare to turn on the light. She felt for the book page and the pen still sitting on the sink, unlatching the bolt on the window and lifting the pane.
“Are you the lady out in the yard?” the man whispered. “Are you OK?”
“Thank you, thank you for coming,” Lynn said. “Thank God you saw me.”
“My brother actually did. Said he didn’t like how that guy was yanking you around.”
At this proximity, Lynn realized this was no man. He had to be barely on the edge of sixteen, and reeked of alcohol.
“We don’t have much time. I’m writing down a phone number. It’s my daughter. Please, please call her and tell her where we are.”
When he responded, the beer on his breath almost made Lynn flinch. “My grandpa would kill us if he knew we were up here. He’s chapped our butts before for snooping around the old Scotter place. We always wonder what’s going on over here, with all the men in suits and stuff. My brother didn’t believe me that that the cicadas were acting weird again, so I brought him out to show him. We didn’t think we’d see you too.”
“Please, just take this number and run. And thank your brother.”
“He’s hiding under a deer tarp right now. We figured we needed a distraction to get to where you stuck that sign. What kind of trouble are you in—oh shit!”
He turned off the flashlight, snatched the book page, and took off running, quickly vanishing into the night. Lynn held her breath, peering forward.
The crickets and cicadas outside were so loud it was almost piercing. She nearly didn’t hear the sounds of footsteps that arrived at the edge of the house, just beyond the window. Quietly, she slid the window shut, backing away.
For a brief moment, she saw the outline of the two guards pass the window, walking from the house towards the trees where the boy had run.
ELEVEN
She knew the sound of her heels were as rattling to the male power grid in Washington as a reporter who’d uncovered pork projects hidden in a transportation bill. Here she comes, they thought, her Jimmy Choos making more noise than their Allen Edmonds. It always happened as she strode into a meeting, the eyes of the mostly male faces either going straight to her chest, or disapprovingly to her blond hair. It’s all real, fellas, she often wanted to declare, plopping down her briefcase.
Kate was so used to the constant evaluation, she could smell it on men like a bad cologne. It was strong in the ones around her as they moved down the hallway and into the elevator. Her white suit stood out sharply against their black pants and coats. Her frequent companions in these last, horrible days. Her own funeral procession.
As the elevator descended, she waited for a quick stop. After all, there shouldn’t be many floors beneath a warehouse. Yet they continued to an uncomfortable depth.
“We’re almost there, Senator.”
“It’s fine,” she lied.
It wasn’t fine, none of it was fine. The fact that she was even back here, sinking beneath the SSA’s headquarters, was troubling enough. But it had been her own doing; she’d insisted on knowing more, especially given that her mother and nephew’s files were missing information. There were references to absent personal letters, something about notations from her great-grandmother Freda. But she had seen little else other than the video of the questioning of her mother as a little girl when she’d been found in Mexico.
Mexico. My God.
William’s file was picked over, obviously missing other documentation. “I don’t want some of it,” she’d demanded. “I want it all. On all of them.”
As she’d awaited what was promised to be the entirety of the SSA’s files into her mother and William, she’d been emailed several documents on a boy named Ryan Hardwood. On the flight back from Memphis, she’d read them in their entirety. Upon landing, she summoned her driver and dialed the number for director Mark Wolve.
“Where is this boy?” she’d said before he could even say hello.
The SSA director was somewhere down south, leading the search for her nephew and the girl. But he’d said he’d have someone escort her when she arrived.
She began to tap her foot, wondering if it sent waves of irritation through the agents. I hope it does. Because I shouldn’t be here. I should be on my way to my mother and Roxy, trying not to trip on the tail between my legs. I should be with Director Wolve, scouring every bit of information trickling in that might lead us to William. I should be with my sister’s family in Nashville, trying to convince them that I am doing everything I can to find William. I should be in my office doing the job Tennesseans voted me in to do.
She was literally going deeper down the rabbit hole that she’d denied existed all her adult life; the reason why she kept her distance from her mother and her entire family. At her father’s funeral, she could sense her mother wanted make amends. Instead, she’d left the church and taken the next flight home to Washington, repeating to herself that it made no sense to return to the past she wanted desperately to avoid.