Escape from Eden (25 page)

Sick of tossing and turning, I flipped off the covers, dragged on Ibbie’s jeans, and shoved my feet into borrowed sneakers. Stripping the blanket off the bed, I wrapped it around me and made my way outside.

Stepping out of the sunroom’s back door, the grass beneath my shoes crunched, and I looked down. In the light thrown from the eaves of the house, the grass glistened. Frost. I didn’t remember ever seeing frost except in the freezer in the Edenton kitchen. I plucked a blade of grass and placed it in my mouth, the little crystals of ice melting immediately.

The night air was different up on the mountain. No heaviness, no oppressive humidity leached the energy from my skin. I took in a deep breath and dipped my head back. Above me, the stars glinted in the pitch-black sky with unwavering persistence. Without that darkness, the stars couldn’t shine.

In the valley below, the lights of Edenton blinked through the trees and those of Las Casitas, overly bright, as if spotlights shown on the buildings. I stepped a little closer to the edge to see if I could make out what was happening.

“They’re rebuilding,” came a voice from behind me and I jumped.

Gabriel came up next to me. He wore a large hooded sweatshirt, his hands fisted in the kanga-pocket in the front. “From the fire,” he said. “They’re rebuilding what I burned down.”

“What you burned down?”

“That night at Las Casitas, I started the fires. They didn’t put different shoes on me when they changed our clothes while we were drugged. I had my lighter hidden in the heel of my boot.”

“Why are they rebuilding at night, though?” I asked.

“I would imagine they’re doing it ’round the clock. They have a business to run, money to make, people to sell.”

We stood in silence overlooking the valley below, watching the lights dance in the distance.

“Don’t go,” Gabriel said in a low voice.

I turned to him, but said nothing.

He blinked, and looked down at his shoes. He toed the frost. “We’re free, Mia. This is what you’ve wanted for years. To be out of Edenton. To live your life, not the Reverend’s idea of what your life should be. Now you’re going back with some twisted idea that you can save two hundred people from certain death?”

When he put it that way, the whole idea suddenly seemed absurd. Any confidence I’d bolstered began to deflate.

Gabriel glanced up at the sky. “Our parents put us in that place. It wasn’t our choice. But this is. You get to choose, Mia, how you want your life to be. The power of choice is a basic human right.”

“Not for everyone,” I said.

“No, not for everyone. But make the right choice for the people who don’t have the ability to make their own choices. Choose for them.”

“What about your parents?” I asked.

“What about them?”

“You want to leave them there, in Edenton, wondering where you are? What happened to you?”

He shrugged. “Maybe. And maybe they deserve whatever happens to them.”

“You can’t be serious. Knowing what we know now–you’d really let them die at the hands of the Reverend?”

“They dragged me to Edenton against my will,” he spit out.

“I’ll let them know you’re okay when I see them,” I said.

Gabriel grabbed my arms. “You can’t do this. It’s suicide. Thaddeus saw us running from him. He’ll know something is going on with you. What if he shoots you on sight? And what about Juanita? If she survives, don’t you think she’ll tell everyone that you and I were running away that night?”

“I can only hope she’s still alive,” I said quietly.

“Quit being a goddamn martyr, Mia.” His grip grew tighter. His eyes were fierce. “You go back in there, you’re not coming out. At least not alive.”

“Why do you even care?” I asked him. “You don’t care what happens to your parents. Why would you care about what happens to me?”

He remained silent.

“You’re free too, Gabriel.” I wrenched myself from his grip. “Free to make your own choices, so go and make them.”

He stepped back, his expression cooling, and walked back to the house, leaving me standing in the frost.

The tattered green dress hung on me like seaweed, damp and musty, straggled over the scabs on my knees. Ibbie sat at my feet, legs curled under her, gently peeling the bandages from my legs. We were gathered in the room I’d been sleeping in, standing next to the bed neatly made by Veronica moments before.

“This is going to hurt a little bit,” Ibbie said as she used alcohol to wipe away the remnants of adhesive.

It stung, but the nerves jumbling in my stomach chased away the piercing pain.

“These are microphones,” Edgar said, placing a handful of tiny plastic boxes on the bed. Inside each was a small circular device. “Each has adhesive on one side, a magnet on the other. Make sure you put them in places they cannot be spotted.”

“Right, of course,” I said. “How am I going to smuggle them in?”

“We’ll put them in your bra,” Veronica said. “Turn around, Edgar.”

He faced the wall, hands folded in front of him. I stood like a statue, afraid to move, as Veronica unwrapped the front of my dress and placed the microphones inside the cups of my bra.

“When you get into Edenton, our informant will contact you,” Edgar said.

Ibbie finished with my legs and gingerly placed the flat, tight shoes I’d worn back on my feet. If possible, they seemed even tighter. The leather dug into my heels like the edges of glass.

“Officer Santiago will drop you off on the service road to Las Casitas,” Edgar said. “Wait a little bit before you start down the road and either you’ll make it to Casitas or a worker will pick you up and bring you in.”

“You remember the service road?” Veronica asked. “You said that couple picked you and Gabriel up there.”

“Of course.” The sound of his name was like a punch to my stomach.

After we’d argued outside last night, he left the house for the rest of the night. I suspected he’d snuck back in, sleeping in one of the green lounge chairs in the living room, but left again before dawn.

“Returning to Las Casitas makes the most sense. You’ve never been outside Edenton, correct?” Veronica asked.

“No, I haven’t.” I squirmed as the microphones folded uncomfortably beneath my breasts.

“Good,” she said. “Then you wouldn’t know how to get there if you were lost in the jungle. Close to where they were tracking you makes the most sense.”

With the microphones in place, Veronica patted my breasts. My face felt instantly hot. It was a maternal kind of pat, but my breasts didn’t get a lot of touching, let alone patting. By a woman. A proper English woman. Wearing a rose-print blouse.

“Turn,” she said to Edgar.

“Mia,” Edgar said. “I know this is additional pressure on you, but it’s imperative you tell them you don’t remember anything, understand? You woke up in the jungle, alone, unsure how you got there. No matter what, you must never let them know you remember.”

I nodded. “Understood.”

Veronica enveloped my hands in hers and dragged her watery gaze to mine. “You can’t imagine,” she said, “how much this means. How we’ve struggled for years for this kind of opportunity. We’ve tried to send people into Edenton to become members of the Flock so they could help us, but all were turned away because the Reverend or members of his ministry became suspicious.”

Ibbie, Edgar, and Veronica all stared at me standing there in that dress I’d once imagined as beautiful. My tongue felt thick in my mouth. I wasn’t sure what they wanted me to say.

“You’re their Obi-Wan,” a familiar voice said from the doorway.

We all turned. It was Gabriel, looking like he’d been trudging through the wilderness. Mud splattered his legs. His—Edgar’s—shorts were torn at the hem. His hair was mussed and his green-blue eyes were half-opened and lined in red. He raked them over me in a way that sent shivers over my skin.

“What do you mean Obi-Wan?” I asked.

“You, Mia Ricci, are their only hope.”

* * *

Gravel crunched under my feet. The midday sun seemed to pierce my exposed skin, like it never had before in Edenton. This sunlight was different, harsher. It stirred the fear and nerves, and my skin burned with anxiety. I didn’t care about the Reverend and his lackeys, but the people of Edenton were the ones who’d be sacrificed if I failed. If the Reverend was to mete out revenge for this betrayal, I hoped it wouldn’t be on them. But neither did I want to be a martyr as Gabriel had said.

I’d been walking for about an hour before I heard the rumble of a truck behind me. I turned. A large truck carrying lumber approached, and I flagged it down. The truck rolled to a stop. An older man in a worn straw hat sat behind the wheel. He gazed down at me with a confused expression on his face, lines sketched deeply in his sun-browned skin.

“Can you help me?” I asked in Spanish. “I’m lost.”

“Lost?” the man asked. “All the way out here? Where are you from?”

“Edenton,” I said.

He removed his hat. Sweat trickled down his brow and he mopped it with a folded red kerchief. “You live in Edenton?”

“Yes,” I said and went on to explain how I’d awakened in the jungle, in strange clothes, unsure of where I was. I kept talking, adding in details I might or might not remember later. I finally told myself to shut up.

“I can take you to Edenton,” he said, not without trepidation. “But I don’t want to be involved. I’ll take you as far as the gates.”

The last time I’d seen the gates of Edenton from the outside, I was awed by the intricacies of the grillwork. It swirled and curlicued like leaves of the Tree of Knowledge, bearing perfectly formed fruit. Then, it had been beautiful and glimmering in the golden afternoon sun. Now, I wondered why they needed to have such an ostentatious gate, a magnificent corral to confine us? Was it to seduce us into thinking we were safe and loved?

I climbed out of the truck and thanked the man. Just outside the gates, a guard stood in the small surveillance house. It was Freddie.

“Mia!” he said, coming toward me. “What happened to you?”

“I—I don’t know. Can you please open the gates and let me back in?”

I wished the tears that formed in my eyes weren’t genuine. I wished they were part of the act I’d been asked to play. But fear, and misplaced relief, caused a tear to track down my cheek.

“One minute.”

Instead of opening the gates, he went back to the surveillance house and called in on his radio. I couldn’t hear what he was saying, his words were muffled by the harsh caws of the birds sweeping above.

I wrapped my arms around my waist, trying to calm the churning in my stomach. Freddie kept glancing back at me as he spoke into the radio. There was no one else in sight. The Edenton entry gate was at the end of a driveway that wound through the trees, away from the encampment itself, so there was no one passing by who could see me standing there ragged and misplaced. No witnesses to see that I’d made it back alive.

Freddie walked back to me, hitching up the gun holster over his shoulder. “You need to wait here, Mia. I can’t let you back in.”

For a moment I froze in fear, eyes locked on his. Finally, I said, “Freddie, this is my home. I need to be inside. I … I want to see my mom.”

“Thaddeus said to wait here. I’m sorry, Mia. I really am.” He glanced at my shredded clothes, the healing cuts on my legs. “Come inside and sit.”

Slowly, I walked on unstable legs over to the little guardhouse by the gate. I tripped, and Freddie took me by the arm.

“You okay?”

“Just need to eat,” I lied, fear coursing through me in such a rush I could barely stand. Why wouldn’t he let me into Edenton?

Inside the guardhouse he motioned to a stool and I sat, eyeing the intricate radio on the desk before me.

“Lots of buttons,” I said to fill the silence.

Freddie nodded. “Took a while to figure out how to use it. Just a glorified phone.”

Outside, I heard the sound of tires skidding to a stop. We left the booth to see Thaddeus hopping from the driver’s seat of a Jeep, moving with the predatory grace of a wolf.

“That was fast,” Freddie said.

Thaddeus stormed to me. “Not a word about her being here to anyone,” he said to Freddie, pointing his long finger. “Understand me?”

“Yes sir,” Freddie said.

“You,” he said to me. “Keep your mouth shut and get in the car.”

I did as he said. Anxiety and terror blurred my vision as we took a dirt road I’d never seen before, one that led around to the back of Edenton.

I wanted to hang my head outside the car and vomit. What was he going to do, shoot me?

We stopped at a much humbler gate made of wood and wire. He pressed a button on the dashboard and the gate swung open like a great pair of wings. Thaddeus, angrily brooding during the entire ride, parked the Jeep in a spot next to a small, concrete building. We both got out. A winding path through the trees led to the back entrance of another building, but it wasn’t until I was inside that I realized it was his cottage.

The second I walked in, my skin burned with the cold; the air inside felt weighty and thick.

“Sit down,” he said, gesturing to the chairs in front of his desk.

The chill of the chair seeped through the thin material of my dress, causing me to shiver. I’d thought about how I was going to handle this moment, but my mind went blank with fear. I blindly watched as he lowered himself into the chair behind his desk and clasped his hands in front of him, spindly fingers twining. For long moments, we said nothing, my heart pounding so furiously I was sure he could hear it.

“Well?” he said, the planes of his face stark with anger.

I inhaled, trying to focus. What was I supposed to say?

Act like you don’t remember anything.

“How did I get out there?” I asked him, hearing the words as if from a distance.

The tension in his face visibly drained. “What do you mean, Mia?”

I was so afraid he would see through me, know I was lying, that I began to shake. Slowly, the story I’d rehearsed in my head after Santiago dropped me off came back to me. “How did I get out there?” I said. “In the middle of the jungle, wearing clothes I’d never seen before? What happened after Prayer Circle? You know, don’t you? I was there, in the Reverend’s cottage, then—” I threw up my hands. “I woke up on the side of some road, wearing this—” I tugged at the collar of the dress. “I was so scared, Thaddeus. So scared!” I dropped my face into my hands, so nervous that he’d see through my story, I couldn’t look at him any longer.