I pull out my phone. It’s another fictional reminder for Daniel Martin, this time for a school book fair that’s happening next weekend.
“It’s just my phone,” I say.
“Off,” Francisco says.
I look to Lee. “But you said I could call my dad.”
“Later,” Lee says. “If your phone is on, you can be tracked. We can be tracked.”
He motions to all of us in the van.
“So what?” I say.
“You don’t want to be tracked right now. Believe me,” he says.
He watches as I turn the phone off. I glance up to see Francisco also looking at me in the rearview.
“It’s off,” I announce to the van.
Francisco nods and steers the van down a busy stretch of road. We pass store parking lots filled with cars.
“What would they think if they knew we were out here now, driving among them?” Lee says.
“Who?” I say.
“The people. The nice, law-abiding people.”
“If they’re law-abiding, then what are we?”
“Save it,” Francisco says from the front seat.
Lee grits his teeth. I’m noticing he doesn’t have much of a poker face.
He leans toward me and whispers: “You’ll see what I mean.”
Miranda flips down the mirror in the front seat. Ostensibly she’s fixing her hair, but when I glance at her, she’s looking at me from the corner of the mirror, her eyes large.
She doesn’t say anything, so I don’t, either.
I try to piece it together. What are they planning?
We make one stop at a gas station, and I notice Francisco pulls a baseball cap low over his forehead before he gets out to pump gas. When he gets back in the car, he has a bag full of energy bars, beef jerky, and trail mix. He tosses it back to me.
“What’s this?”
“Lunch for everyone,” he says. “It’s the best we can do.”
“Anything is better than nothing,” I say.
I haven’t eaten in over a day, and I missed breakfast because I was talking to Moore, so I dig into some trail mix, eating slowly to replenish my energy without shocking my system.
“Okay, time to do some reconnaissance,” Francisco says.
We head out of Manchester, driving east for several miles until we pass signs for Lake Massabesic, just east of Manchester.
“It’s up ahead,” Lee says.
“I can read the signs,” Francisco says.
“You’re not from around here, so I’m just making sure.”
“Thanks for your concern,” Francisco says.
“Enough,” Miranda says. “All this dick swinging is boring the crap out of me.”
The road is mostly empty, but Francisco drives cautiously, obviously unfamiliar with the territory.
“Where are you from, Francisco?” I say.
“Lots of places,” he says.
“He was a stray,” Lee says, “until my father took him in.”
“That’s not nice,” Miranda says, putting her hair into a bun and tucking it under a nondescript baseball cap. “We’re all in this together.”
She passes a similar cap back to me, motioning me to put it on.
“It’s not nice, but it’s true,” Lee says.
Francisco keeps his cool in the front seat. Instead of responding to Lee, he says simply, “It’s time to focus on the task at hand.”
Lee slips on a baseball cap as Francisco takes the turn off for Lake Shore Road. We drive for a few miles, hints of the lake popping up through brief clearings in the forest.
“We’re going to drive around twice, nice and easy,” Francisco says. “Keep your eyes open.”
We do two laps around the lake, and then Francisco slows, searching for something on a nearby road. A moment later he finds it, a wooded cul-de-sac hidden from the main road. He pulls in and turns off the engine.
Miranda reclines her seat back. Lee rests his head on the side of the van and pulls his cap over his eyes like he’s going to sleep.
“What’s happening now?” I say.
“Now we wait,” Francisco says.
“For what?” I say.
“For nightfall.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
THEY NAP THROUGH THE AFTERNOON, BUT I DO NOT.
I use the time to sort through my mission timeline, attempting to look at it both from The Program’s perspective and my own.
Twenty-four hours since I began the mission at the community center, and Moore is still alive. From my perspective, the mission has been delayed, but not abandoned. If anything, I’m getting closer to the inner circle, more comfortable there, integrated and accepted.
But what is The Program’s perspective?
I haven’t talked with them or received any communication since I stepped out of Father’s car.
It seems like they have disappeared, but if something has gone wrong with my iPhone or the comms link, perhaps I’m the one who seems to have disappeared. The thought is troubling to me, but there’s nothing I can do about it now.
I hear a crinkle of paper, something being unwrapped. I look over at Lee. He’s awake, surreptitiously peeling and eating a chocolate bar, gobbling it down a square at a time.
He notices me watching him.
“What?” he says, his mouth full. “It’s an energy boost.”
“Where did you get it?” There were no chocolate in the bag Francisco brought us.
“I smuggled it from camp,” he says.
He reaches into his pocket and pulls out another one.
“You want?” he says. “Our secret.”
“I’ll pass,” I say.
An alarm goes off from some kind of timer in the front seat. Miranda reaches for it and turns it off. Then she stretches and yawns loudly.
“Who would have thought that changing the world would be so boring?” she says.
“Did you guys get some rest?” Francisco says.
Lee and Miranda answer in the affirmative. I join them, even though it’s not true for me.
“Let’s get started,” Francisco says. “Everybody ready?”
Lee finishes off the chocolate bar in one big bite then wipes his mouth with the back of his hand.
“I’m ready,” he says.
“What about you?” Francisco says as he turns toward Miranda.
She nods.
“I need a verbal confirmation,” he says. “You know the protocol.”
“Ready and willing,” she says unenthusiastically.
“And you, Daniel? Are you ready?”
“Don’t I have to know what we’re doing before I know if I’m ready?”
“Are you ready to trust us?” Francisco says. “That’s all we need for now.”
“Sure,” I say.
“Then let’s go,” Francisco says.
He hops out and opens up the back of the van. He pulls out a single duffel bag that he slings over his shoulder.
“Do you have your comms?” he asks Lee.
“I’ve got them, and I’ve checked them,” Lee says.
“Check again,” Francisco says.
“I checked already.”
“We can’t afford any errors,” Francisco says.
“There won’t be any errors,” Lee says, and I see his hand balling into a fist. He grudgingly pulls a cell phone from his pocket, checks for signal, then types a text into the phone.
A second later, a text comes back with a faint ping.
“You see? It’s working,” he says, and stuffs the phone back into his pocket. “The only time we get cell phones, and I can’t even download any apps.”
Francisco sighs. He turns to Miranda. “What’s our timeline?”
Miranda presses a button on her digital timer.
“Thirty minutes,” she says.
“What’s the timeline about?” I say.
“That’s how long we have to get in place and accomplish the mission,” she says.
“Mission?”
“The Hunt,” she says.