They seemed to be everywhere, with more arriving by the second. The street, for as far as I could see, was lined with polished black vehicles: cars, vans, SUVs, and something that resembled a small bus or an ambulance with doors in the back that were opened wide. Inside I could make out a stretcher and what appeared to be medical equipment.
Someone was unrolling a giant tarp, and someone else was assembling a metal frame that was surrounded on all sides by similar plastic sheeting. There was a table set up at the far end of the yard, near the road. And even from inside my house, I could make out the faint crackling of radio static and saw several people talking into black handhelds.
Seriously, the only thing missing was a squadron of armed soldiers and a helicopter flying overhead.
Whatever they were collecting must be extremely hazardous.
That was when I saw him coming down the front steps of my house. Agent Truman.
He paused long enough to talk to someone in one of the hazmat suits, and then he pointed at my house and shook his head.
“Jesus,” I whispered, pulling back again. I hadn’t even realizing I’d said it out loud. “What’s he doing here?”
Simon caught my expression, or maybe he’d heard the fear in my voice. “So you two’ve met already?”
Dazedly, I shook my head in disbelief and then nodded in answer to his question. “I . . . yeah . . .”
Shouting drew our attention again, and we both inched out of the shrubs in time to see Tyler running toward my house, calling my name. When he reached the sidewalk on my side of the street, he was stopped by two men who weren’t in hazmat suits. I could hear him arguing with a third man who had come to stand in front of him: Agent Truman.
Instinctively, I lurched toward him, but Simon stopped me. “You can’t. We have to get out of here. He’ll be okay. It’s not him they want.” He nodded at me solemnly, and my stomach dropped. And as much as I wanted to deny what he was telling me with that silent nod, all those people in biohazard gear said otherwise.
According to Simon, it was me they were after.
“Stay close, Kyra, and when I give you the signal . . . run.”
He raised his eyebrows as if to ask Got it?
I glared back at him: I have no idea what you mean.
Turns out Simon’s “signal” involved waving three fingers in front of his face and then pointing toward a car—a red one with tinted windows that stood out like a sore thumb on a street that was now teeming with black government vehicles. It was parked directly across the street from us.
Then he took off running without me. What about the whole no-man-left-behind thing?
Fortunately, years on the field had trained me to think fast.
Thankfully the red car’s doors were unlocked, and when we reached it we climbed inside the vehicle before I could question whether we were making a huge mistake or not.
“They’ll hear us,” I insisted in a shaky breath. “They’ll see us leaving and come after us.”
But Simon gave a brisk shake of his head and then nodded toward my house, which was down from where we were now. Several neighbors who were home during the day had made their way out to the sidewalk, wanting to see what all the fuss was about, and Tyler was still arguing with Agent Truman. “They’re way too occupied to notice us. But we have to go. Now.” And somehow, before I had the chance to second-guess him, the engine rumbled to life.
I stayed low, crouched in the passenger seat, and didn’t dare to peek above the dash to see if anyone had spotted us . . . or was running our way. My head was pounding and my chest ached and my breathing was coming in uneven gasps.
I don’t know how we made it out of there without anyone noticing us, but the next thing I knew we were driving. Above me, through the windows, I saw houses and trees, and eventually signs from businesses zipping past us. When I was sure I wasn’t going to pass out, I sat up and started checking behind us to see if anyone was coming after us.
But there was no one. Somehow, someway, Simon had pulled it off. He’d gotten me out of there.
I didn’t know how Agent Truman and his biohazard team expected to explain what they’d done when my mom and Grant got home to find their front door broken to smithereens, but that wasn’t really my problem.
To calm my beating heart, I dug my phone from my front pocket and checked the time. It was barely three in the afternoon, which meant that the schools were just letting out and most grown-ups were counting down the last hours of their workweek before the weekend.
Me, I was on the run from the NSA.
Simon’s eyes widened as he saw what I was doing. “You brought your phone? Jesus, Kyra? Have you used it? Did you call or text anyone since we left?”
Frowning, I shook my head. “No. I was just seeing what time it was.” But even as I said it, I realized what the problem was. Of course the NSA would be able to track my cell phone, the same way Agent Truman had been able to track down my phone number. Obviously, privacy wasn’t an issue for them. “Can they find us if I didn’t use it?”
Simon ran his hand over the top of his close-cropped hair. “They can do a lot of things.” He jerked the steering wheel hard to the right and slammed on the brakes, and then he held his hand out for it. “We can’t take the chance. We need to ditch it,” he demanded, but I was already ahead of him.
I’d taken a marker from his center console and was copying down on my hand the only two numbers—of the three in my contacts list—I didn’t have memorized. My mom’s number, which was new since I’d returned, and Tyler’s. My dad’s was the same as it had always been.
When I was finished, I handed him the phone. He opened his door and set it on the concrete, and then smashed it beneath the heel of his boot.
Simon pulled back onto the road and concentrated on driving, while I kept glancing behind us.
“Here,” Simon said, pulling down a side road that looked a little like the alley Tyler had taken me down the night we’d gone to the used books store. It was wider and seemed more warehousey, though, which turned out to be the point when Simon hopped out and unlocked a tall metal door like the ones you see on storage lockers, the kind that are hinged and rolled up.
When he got back in, he parked the car inside the garage-like space, flipped a switch that illuminated a single bare bulb overhead, and dragged the metal door closed again. It was all very cloak-and-dagger.
Now I was locked inside a storage facility with the stranger who’d just kidnapped me from the authorities and smashed my cell phone. Awesome.
I stayed in the car with my fists pressed tightly on top of my knees. My teeth were clenched, and my shoulders ached. Simon scraped a lone metal chair across the concrete floor to the passenger side of the car and opened my door, propping the chair in front of me.
He straddled it and leaned forward on his knees. “I guess I have some explaining to do.”
I don’t know why, but when his coppery eyes drilled into me, I felt some of my tension easing. It made no sense, considering the circumstances. Still, I was here now, and after a quick perusal of the space, I realized that I probably wasn’t going anywhere unless he wanted me to, so I figured I might as well listen to what he had to say.
“That’s the understatement of the century,” I told him at last. “So, who the hell are you, and why have you been following me?”
He smiled, revealing a set of straight teeth that flashed against his skin. “You noticed, huh?”