“Is this all that made it out?” Chase asked bleakly.
Rebecca adjusted her arm in the crutch and tucked the gun back in Junebug’s saddlebag. “We evacuated when we heard the soldiers were coming.”
“So much for being off the MM’s radar,” I mumbled.
She nodded grimly. “That’s when the doctor tore the place down.”
Chase had been counting the others, but at this he promptly turned back around. “DeWitt tore Endurance down?”
“With a tractor,” piped in Will. “Him and the other council members. They wrecked the whole place.”
I remembered seeing the bulldozer in the parking lot by the other cars.
“Why?” I asked.
“So the Bureau wouldn’t find anything worthwhile when they showed up.” Jesse had arrived, his shoulders laced back and a lethal look in his eyes. I found myself taking a step away.
“We were going to take the cars when they showed up,” Rebecca continued. “It was getting dark. Ms. Rita and the other council members took off to lead them off course. I don’t know if they made it. I don’t think they did.” Her voice had lowered to a whisper. “Rocklin and a few more that didn’t go to Charlotte stayed with the doctor. The soldiers came in through the back gates. They took them—all of them, women and some of the kids, too—in a blue bus with the windows blacked out. I didn’t know what else to do. We gathered who we could, snuck out the front, and came here.”
“You did good,” said Chase, his arm still around her waist for support.
“I been looking out for us,” said Will. He was looking at Jesse, who gave him a brief nod.
“The soldiers are gone now,” I said. “We just came from there and didn’t see anyone.”
“Ember,” she said, her voice wavering for the first time. “Sean never came back.”
Beside me, Chase exhaled. “He’s been gone almost two weeks. He could still be waiting for Tucker. With the radio silence…”
“Tucker called on the radio,” she said, leaning in close. “Just before we evacuated we got a message from him. He’d reached the meeting point but no one was there. Not even the people we left with the medic at the mini-mart.”
My pulse began to pick up speed again. “Did DeWitt say anything else? Did he send anyone after him?”
“The soldiers were already closing in,” said Rebecca. “There was no one to send.”
Frantically I tried to piece it all together. DeWitt had been captured, just as Felicity Bridewell had reported. He’d torn apart Endurance himself to hide what we’d done here. Now Tucker had arrived at the safe house wreckage but Sean and Jack were missing. We had to find him, find out what he knew, and somehow find Sean as well.
“What do we do now?” Sarah asked. Her face had rounded since we’d arrived, and apart from a scar through her right eyebrow, barely showed any signs of the beating she’d taken in Knoxville. My gaze automatically fell to her belly. She was getting bigger. I didn’t know how far along she was, but soon she would have to find a stable place to have the baby.
“There’s a place I heard about,” I said. “I’m not positive it’s a sure thing.”
Chase’s hand came to rest on my lower back. I took a deep breath.
“I think there’s a boat from Tampa that goes to Mexico.”
I felt the weight of Jesse’s stare and wished I felt more confident about this option.
“How are we supposed to get there?” There was desperation in her wide brown eyes.
“We can take the cars,” said Chase. “But it’s probably better to lay low for a while. Stay off the roads.”
A day might give us enough time to find Sean, Jack, and Tucker. If Rebecca and the others could hold out a little longer we could be back to take them to Tampa ourselves.
Chase’s thumb rose up my spine, telling me he was thinking the same thing I was.
Sarah’s gaze passed from Chase to Jesse, and her lower lip began to quiver. “Did Billy make it?”
I tried to offer a reassuring smile. “He went to Charlotte to join the others.” I wasn’t sure what else to say.
She lifted her chin and tucked her hair behind her ears. “That’s very brave. I wish I’d gotten to say good-bye. He was…” She smiled. “He was cute, you know?”
I bit my lip. “He thought the same about you.”
She lit up. I hoped someday Billy would get to see that look.
WE agreed to stay the night and leave at dawn for the safe house wreckage. Chase and Jesse did a thorough perimeter sweep, and then returned to Endurance to scavenge for food and supplies. I stayed behind with Rebecca, leaning against the trunk of an orange tree while the children and Sarah laid on the grass at our feet. Both of us kept our guns on the ground beside us, listening to the crickets chirp. After a while it started to get cold, and she scooted closer, until our hips were touching. She linked her arm around mine.
“The first time I kissed Sean was in the shower at the reformatory.” She giggled.
I leaned away to look at her and found her biting her lower lip. Now I laughed. “That’s … bold.”
“Oh, please,” she said. “It wasn’t like that.”
“Then what was it like?”
She snuggled deeper into my side. “He’d been stationed there for a month. He was different than the others. You could tell he was putting on a show—he wasn’t as good at disguising it in the beginning. Once I even caught him laughing at something the headmistress said.”
Sean had always made a point of agreeing with everything the headmistress said. It was how he stayed under the radar and kept his relationship with Rebecca a secret.
“I bet that went over well.”
“He hid it in a coughing fit.” She smiled. “And that’s when I knew I had to talk to him.”
A noise crackled across the way, but it was just Will circling our position in search of trespassers. If anyone had an eye out for the Lost Boys, it would be him.
We settled back against the tree.
“I stuck a note in his pocket at line formation one morning,” she said. “It said, ‘Meet me in the showers at midnight.’”
“That is bold,” I said.
“Okay, maybe.” She snorted. “He read it and threw it away. Right in front of me. So rude. Anyway, I was sure he was going to turn me in, but nothing happened all afternoon. And I mean nothing. He didn’t even look at me.”
Of course he hadn’t. If he’d been caught ogling her he would have been busted.
“So,” I prompted.
“So I waited until midnight and snuck down the hall to the bathrooms. I thought for sure he wasn’t going to show, but there he was, hiding out in one of the stalls. Later he told me he’d been there since right after curfew in case I came early. Apparently he felt like a real creeper.”
“And you walked right in and kissed him,” I said, marveling at her audacity.
“No,” she said, aghast. “I introduced myself first.”
Some of the closest kids stirred as we fell into stifled laughter.
Chase and Jesse returned, but didn’t approach us right away. Chase motioned that they were going to do another walk of the perimeter and I nodded. He left a handful of supplies on the ground a few feet away. Some clothing, it looked like, and some food.
I watched him disappear into the darkness, wondering what I would do if we were separated.
“Sorry they destroyed the barn,” Rebecca said.
“Hmm?” I tore my eyes away from the last place I’d been able to see him.