What can he possibly want with these people?
“This is our house, Parker,” Tear replied. “The woman belongs to us. Jonathan, take her in the back and have a good time. Afterward, we might pass her around.” He sat back down at the table and gestured Parker into the other chair. “Let’s finish up.”
Jonathan grabbed Lily’s arm roughly and began dragging her toward a door at the far end of the room.
“Fight me,” he muttered. “Put on a show.”
This was actually a godsend. Lily’s nerves, frayed almost bare, suddenly sprang to life, and she hauled back and punched Jonathan in the face. He took a fistful of her hair and dragged her toward the door. Lily pawed ineffectually at his shoulder, and then they were through the door and Jonathan slammed it shut, then stood her up in front of him.
“Scream. As loud as you can.”
Lily drew a deep breath and screamed. Jonathan let her go on for perhaps two seconds and then clamped a hand over her mouth, muffling the scream into a grunt. He released her, and Lily moved over to perch on the arm of a puffy, misshapen chair that sat against the wall.
“Sorry about that, Mrs. M. It’s all these people understand.”
Jonathan hurried over to a door that stood open on the far side of the room. He shut the door, but not before Lily glimpsed something enormous in the warehouse space beyond: long bars of wood crisscrossed with horizontal beams that extended out of her range of vision. Lily had the impression of a massive skeleton, wooden goliath, half finished.
The skeleton of a ship.
She stared at Jonathan for several long minutes, her thoughts jumbling together around this new puzzle piece. Horses and medical equipment stolen. Transcontinental jets destroyed. Satellites brought down from the sky. A wooden ship being built by hand. The river-covered land that Lily had only glimpsed in her mind, a land where there was no Security, no surveillance, nothing.
And then she understood.
“You’re leaving. All of you are leaving.”
“I can’t talk about it, Mrs. M.”
The door slammed behind them and Tear stalked into the room. “It’s set. September first.”
“Parker gone?”
“No. He thinks he’ll get a crack at Mrs. Mayhew here. Animals, the lot.”
“What’s the word on the DOD feed?”
“Those three destroyers are still sitting a few miles outside the harbor. They’re not moving, just waiting.”
Lily’s mouth dropped open, and she stared at them, staggered. How could Tear have gotten into the Department of Defense?
The same way they can bring the satellites down from the sky and put out the power, her mind whispered. Technology is only as good as the people who supervise it.
“There’s radio silence all around the edge of the terminal,” Jonathan continued.
Tear nodded. “Hard to say when they’ll come, but I’m betting soon.”
Lily groaned, the truth tumbling into her stomach like a pile of rocks. “You already knew.”
“Yes.”
She sat down in the chair, covering her face with her hands. All of this … the entire journey, Greg … she had done it for nothing. She looked up at Jonathan, her cheeks blooming with furious color.
“I tried to save you the trip, Mrs. M.”
Another whoop came from the room outside, and Tear rolled his eyes. “That’s long enough, I suppose. Go and tell some heroic rape stories. Get them all ready to move as soon as Dori comes back. We’ll send Parker and his bunch out by the surface tunnels.”
Jonathan left, and Tear collapsed into an armchair near the door, perching his arms on his knees. The silver eyes gleamed at Lily, even from across the room. “I’m sorry for all of this. I’d like to shoot them as dogs, but I need them.”
“Why?”
“Because my people are valuable, Mrs. Mayhew. They’re intelligent and well trained. Brute force would be a waste of their talents.”
“What happens on September first?”
“Nothing you want to know about. How did you get here?”
“I drove.”
“Husband let you out in the middle of the night for a romp, did he?”
“I think I killed him.”
Tear looked up sharply.
“I bashed him on the head and left him there.” Lily didn’t want to keep talking, but it was like that night in the nursery; the words tumbled out. “He wanted to me to have a baby. He wanted to take me to an in vitro doctor. It didn’t matter what I wanted.”
Tear nodded. “It’s a problem. Women are selling their eggs for the price of a small bag of meth, but the rewards on the other end are enormous.”
Lily considered for a moment. “I wanted to kill him.”
“Well, you’ll be facing a world of hurt when you get home, one way or another.”
Lily nodded.
“Leave your car here. Security’s ringed the port; there’s no way you got in without their notice. They’ve seen your car and marked it as belonging to my people. Leave it here and Jonathan will take you home. You can claim you were carjacked and called him to come get you.”
“My tag will show I’ve been here.”
“That’s true,” he replied, and Lily saw that he’d only been trying to make her feel better.
Three quick knocks and Jonathan came back in. “Dori’s back, sir. Nothing new out there. I told Parker we’re leaving soon.”
“Is the gear all packed?”
“Five minutes.”
Tear gestured toward the closed door on the far side of the room. “Pity we didn’t have more notice. I hate to leave her here.”
“When?” Lily blurted out. “When are you leaving?”
“What makes you think we’re leaving?”
“You are,” Lily muttered, her throat hoarse with tears. “On a ship.”
“And where do you think we’re going?”
“To the better world.”
Tear leaned forward. Lily was struck again by his silver eyes, which seemed to reflect even the dim glow provided by the fluorescents. “Why did you come here, Mrs. Mayhew? This has nothing to do with you, and you took an enormous risk. Why?”
Lily couldn’t answer. As a child, she used to pick a single item and stare at it for as long as possible, until her eyes had dried out and her gaze had lost all focus. She remembered taking a vast pleasure in having her gaze so captured, in being transfixed, and now she could not take her eyes from William Tear. She followed each of his movements, even the small ones: the rapid flicker of his eyes across her face, the tap of his fingers on one knee, the clench of his jaw. All things seemed to center on Tear, to hinge on him.
I believe it.
In that moment, Lily believed it all. There was a better world out there, somehow, and it was close … almost within their reach. The wheat, the bright blue river, the endless trees. If Tear asked her to die for the better world, she would do it. She wouldn’t even need to think. And if he asked Lily to die for him, she would do that too. She had never felt anything so deeply in her life.
Her eyes had watered again; Lily tore her blurry gaze from Tear and wiped her arm across her face. When she looked up, she found Jonathan watching her, a small smile on his face. He reached out a hand and Lily clasped it in both of hers, gripping tightly. She didn’t want to let go; she thought she might drown.
“The better world,” she gasped. “I see it. All the time.”
“We all see it, Mrs. M.”
Tear reached beneath her chin and tipped her face up with one finger. His eyes were so brilliant now that they seemed to glow in the dim light. “What do you see, Lily?”