Haunted (State v. Sefore) (25 page)

“But you know I’m right. It’s not fool proof but close enough. We deal with all of the resistance in one day with little or no collateral damage. McCray gets his glory. And the other liquidators risk very little themselves as we’ll be able to confront people as they arrive at the station.”

True. He hated it, but it was true. Noah let his arms fall to his sides. “For a plan I hate, it’s not bad.”

Chapter Thirty-Two

N
oah let his
head fall back against the chair. It had been tough to convince McCray of their plan. He wanted everything to be drastic and public, even suggesting they liquidate anyone over the age of twelve. A glory chaser made the worst kind of superior, but with Daniel’s help, Noah convinced the RL that good favor wouldn’t be won by liquidating children. While their plan might not be flashy, it would ensure the complete eradication of the resistance. That’s what would matter to the Council at the end of the day.

In a heartbeat, McCray changed his tune. He praised Noah and Daniel’s logic and named them liquidators in command for the mission, giving them authority to make whatever arrangements they deemed necessary. They all knew this arrangement handed McCray the soon-to-be-vacant minister of justice title on a silver platter. That was the moment Daniel went off script. He asked McCray if he wouldn’t give Noah’s girlfriend a pass this one time. As a reward to Noah. Since he was doing so much for McCray.

The smile didn’t even drop off the RL’s face at Daniel’s impertinence. Noah took advantage of the man’s good humor and pointed out that Maddison had provided their cause with helpful information, such as the identity of resistance hacker Ritchie Callum.

“Why not?” the RL had responded. “I was pretty hard on you, kid. But you made good on your end of the deal, so I’ll honor my end and let you keep your girl.”

So magnanimous, that Lawson McCray.

But she was safe. Finally. So he wouldn’t complain. He stared at Daniel. “Not that I’m not grateful, but why did you convince McCray to spare Maddison?”

“You didn’t expect that, did you?” Daniel smirked. “I wanted to see if I could get him to say yes.”

What. “You risked bringing her into the conversation because you wanted to see what you could get him to give you?”

“Well, it worked, didn’t it?” Daniel pushed off from the wall he leaned against and walked over to the desk. “I’m hungry. Where’s the room service menu?”

“Get out.” Noah shook his head and pointed at the door. “Just … get out.”

Daniel rolled his eyes but headed to the door. “You’re welcome.” The door clicked shut behind him.

On a whim. Daniel had risked her life on a whim. Noah shook his head. Didn’t matter now. Think about something else. Run through the plan again. The other liquidators would begin arriving tonight from the rest of Coastal South East. They would continue to trickle in over the next four days, giving Noah and Daniel time to stake out the Amtrak station. By Wednesday morning, everyone would be briefed on their responsibilities, That evening a small group would infiltrate the station, securing any arms found and canvassing every inch of its perimeter.

Governing a hundred other liquidators was a weighty responsibility. But the weight crushing his chest had a different origin. He sucked in another deep breath. Tonight, he had condemned hundreds of people to death because they were unhappy with the government. He would sign their death certificates, all because they shared some of the same feelings he had. He grieved the loss of Ben and Ethel, Lynn Walker, even some of the less savory members of the leadership like Billy and John Henderson. They had to be stopped, and he didn’t regret turning them in, but the mindless masses would haunt him. His head dropped into his hands. Even now, their faces passed through his mind’s eye. Only to be replaced by images of their dead bodies. The image he would help create less than a week from today. An injured groan rose up, unable to be silenced.

He collapsed to the floor, his forehead crashing into the carpet. A fleeting prayer for forgiveness escaped his lips. But God wouldn’t hear, let alone forgive, a man who caused more than a thousand deaths.

No amount of good Noah could do in his lifetime outweighed that fact. No great sacrifice existed to undo the blood he had spilled. He was damned.

And he deserved it.

Maddison stood frozen in the doorway, the key Noah’d given her weeks earlier dangling from her hand. Noah’s groan made her want to fly forward and comfort him. He knelt on the floor, his hands clenched on either side of his head. The posture was so private, so exposed, it felt wrong to interrupt. She backed out a step, but he straightened.

He swept a hand over his face and cleared his throat. “Didn’t I ask you to stay home?”

She sat down next to him and put her hand on his knee. He grabbed it and held on.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered. Words wouldn’t help. “It’s done?”

“Everything will be in place by Thursday morning. That’s all you need to know.” He seemed to have aged years in the last three hours. His posture stooped. His voice weathered. “We need to talk about where you’re going.”

She stiffened. “What do you mean?”

“You, Jakob, and Taylor will need to leave Wednesday morning, at the same time you leave the house normally. I’ll supply you with official excuses from school and work and arrange permission for you to travel between MAs. We made sure you’re safe from the Elite, but the Masses know your face, and I don’t want to risk anyone coming after you—to keep you safe or to harm you.”

“I’m not leaving you.”

He faced her, jaw clenched. “This is not open for discussion, Maddison. If they realize who turned them in, they’ll come for you. You, more than anyone else, need to be as far away from here as possible. I’ll be worried about you the entire time otherwise. I don’t trust anyone else to keep you safe, and I can’t stay with you. I have a place in mind, and you can take whoever you want, provided they don’t know why until you leave. Or you can choose somewhere else outside of CSE. But I need you to go.” His hands squeezed her shoulders, his eyes boring into hers. “For my sanity.”

Exactly—for sanity’s sake. The members of the resistance wouldn’t want to hunt down her alone. And he’d be a lot easier to find—and kill. Why hadn’t she thought of that sooner? If she had, she could’ve called Daniel and made him agree to take his brother out of the equation so Noah could go with them and be safe himself.

He wouldn’t have agreed to it. He’d be too worried about the other liquidators’ zeal and the innocent who could get caught in the crossfire. He’d put himself in the center of it all for everyone’s sake but his own.

If anything happened, she needed to be here, not hours away from him. She needed to have Taylor close by. If they holed up somewhere else, would she even be able to make it back in … No, she wouldn’t think that. She couldn’t.

She wanted to argue until he caved, but he looked so defeated already. And if he had to put himself in harm’s way, she needed him to be one hundred percent focused. This situation would be dangerous enough without distractions. If saying yes would lighten the load he carried, if it would make him more focused during the arrests and keep him from making a careless miscalculation, she had to do it.

She squared her shoulders. “Where do you want us to go?”

He pulled her closer. “My parents’ house.”

“MA-16?”

He nodded. “It’s in Daniel’s name. No one will be there. Once you’ve secured it, no one but us could get in to you.”

“And I can take Josh, Liv, and Sophie, too?”

Noah’s shoulders slumped. “I figured you would want them along…. I’ll need to lay some groundwork first.”

She didn’t want to fight with him, not now, but leaving her friends behind wasn’t an option. What if someone came after them because they couldn’t get to her or Noah? The group had proved capable of it, and grief-filled revenge would only up the stakes. She’d never forgive herself if one of them got hurt because of her. Someone needed to look out for them too. “What do you mean by groundwork? What’s the problem?”

He sighed. “Things are going to be very precarious for the next six days. Nothing must seem out of the ordinary. No one should break from our normal routines. No one can breathe a word about what we’ve learned.”

Keeping quiet wouldn’t be a problem for her friends, not if she asked. “They won’t say anything. We can trust them.”

“Removing them from the MA for four days requires telling their parents. That makes the information circle wider than I’d like to consider.”

The answer to their problems stared her in the face. At least she could guarantee someone’s safety. “So they’ll lie to their parents, at least Sophie and Olivia will. Josh’s parents wouldn’t notice if he didn’t come home for a month.”

“Fine.” Noah’s tone made it clear how he felt about lying, but at least they would be alive, right?

She had to confirm. “You’ll make the same arrangements for them?”

“Yes.” He slid his compad over and made several notes on it. “I’d rather they not know the details until you are on the road, just to be safe. You’ll need to stop Josh before he leaves for the agricultural center that morning, and maybe you guys can intercept Sophie and Liv in the school parking lot. I’ll let you invent the story the girls give their parents. Will they trust you enough to get in the car without an explanation?”

“No problem, and yes, questions or not, they’ll go along.”

Noah rubbed one of his temples for a moment before adding to his notations. He fixed his eyes on her. “So you’ll go then?”

Arguing with him anymore couldn’t have been more unfair, but she couldn’t resist pushing back one final time. After all, he would wear the largest target on his back. “I’d rather you go with us.” His eyes narrowed, and she sighed. “We’ll go.”

His whole posture eased, his chest sinking with the deep exhale. He took her face in his hands and leaned close. “Thank you.”

The kiss that followed held pain and relief at the same time. When he pulled away, he repositioned himself on the floor beside her and leaned back against the bed frame. His head dropped onto the mattress. “We’ll break the news to Taylor on Tuesday night.”

His exhaustion awoke her conscience. Noah carried the weight of hundreds of lives in his hands, and instead of supporting him, she demanded he take on three extra lives as well. He deserved better from her. Laying a hand on his cheek, she turned his face toward her and smoothed away the lines etched there. “Whatever you want.”

A hesitant smile stole onto his face though the darkness in his eyes remained.

From here on out, she’d do whatever he wanted, whatever would chase those shadows away
.

*

When Noah arrived on Wednesday morning, he scanned the dim neighborhood. No one else moved around outside. No curtains fluttered in any of the nearby houses’ windows either. He might be able to help Maddison and her family disappear without raising any suspicion.

Taylor exited the house and struggled with a heavy box as she made her way to the back of her Ford SUV. Rushing forward, he took the box from her and wedged it in with the other luggage. The trunk looked like a stockpile for the whole winter.

“That isn’t going to get you out of hot water with me, you know.” There was no real heat behind her words.

When he and Maddison told Taylor everything last night, she’d been disappointed in them but not as upset as he’d expected. Until she told them she understood because she’d been working with an illegal clinic in UNE before Michael and Tamara’s liquidation.

“Well, I’m not about to stand around and watch you wrestle all this by yourself either.” He stuck his hands in the front pockets of his dark green hoodie.

“As long as you’re here, there’s another box in the kitchen.”

He nodded and headed for the house. Jakob lugged a hefty overnight bag down the steps, rolling his eyes. “Girls are ridiculous.”

Noah swallowed a chuckle. “You’ll change your tune one day.”

“You aren’t the one carrying Maddison’s hundred-pound bag. Hey, why aren’t you carrying it?” He dropped it at Noah’s feet with a grin and headed back upstairs.

Noah hefted it onto his shoulder and grabbed the last box from the kitchen before heading back outside to Taylor. He stacked the box on top of the last and shifted the bag, looking for a place to fit it in.

“If that’s Maddison’s, it should go in her trunk. It’s unlocked already.” Taylor pointed to the car in the garage.

He pivoted toward her. “Maddison’s taking her car as well? Who’s riding with her?”

“Sophie and Olivia, I think. She plans to pick them up at school.”

Anxiety crept up his spine. “But you’re following her, right? Leaving at the same time, I mean?”

“Of course. What’s going on?” She took a step closer.

“I didn’t realize you all wouldn’t be in the same car. I don’t want her … I want to make sure she …” He didn’t know how to finish the sentence.

“You wanted to make sure she wouldn’t give me the slip and come right back here against both of our wishes?”

He nodded. “I know how stubborn she is. And I want to make sure everyone gets to MA-16 and stays there. Safe.”

“I’ll be watching her with eagle eyes. We all will. She’ll stay with us.”

“Thank you. And again, I’m sorry for not being honest.” He threw the heavy bag into Maddison’s trunk, closing it behind him. When he turned back around, Taylor still stood in front of him, but her face had softened.

“Noah, I want to make it clear,” she said, and he braced himself. “You know, I’m not happy with the decisions you and Maddison made. She lied to me, and you put her in danger. I can’t overlook those things. There will be consequences when this is finished.” She sighed. “However, my opinion of you hasn’t changed. I still think you’re a good man. I just need you to make better choices for her. Okay?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

She waved him off. “Enough with the ma’am stuff. Go see your girlfriend.”

“Thank you for another chance. I’ll see you on Friday morning.”

She pushed him toward the door. “We’ll expect you then. Now, go get those two out of the house so we can get going.”

He smiled. “Will do.”

Jakob’s bag lay by the door, and a minute later, he came around the corner, massive sandwich in hand. “We ready?”

“Almost. Your aunt wants you and Maddison to get a move on.” Jakob nodded and came to pick up his bag. Noah put a hand on his arm. “Jakob, I need you to do something for me.”