Take Me Tomorrow (15 page)

An Explosion

“Your breakfast is delightful,” Noah complemented Lyn, and Lyn blushed for the hundredth time.

“Thank you,” Lyn responded graciously as she fed Falo with a plastic spoon. Since he had already tossed it a dozen times, she was forcing him to be spoon-fed. Even though he was old enough to feed himself, the boy didn’t seem to mind.

“And your ink is fascinating
,” Noah continued light-heartedly as blood began to boil through my veins. “Everyone from the Albany Region should show off such beautiful pieces of art.”

“Stop try
ing to flatter me, Mr. Tomery.” She rolled down her sleeves and turned her complete attention to feeding her son. “Just eat.”

Noah
laughed for no reason at all before he ate more. Broden sat on the opposite side of the table, diving into the breakfast as if all was forgiven. His stomach had obviously taken over his priorities. Miles ate too, silently, but Lily leaned back, her eyes locked on Noah as if she could shoot him with her irises.

“Don’t you have anything to say to my brother
, Noah?” Lily spoke up, and Miles’ shoulders lifted to his ears.

Noah glanced up from his eggs
. Right when I thought he would speak, he picked up his coffee and sipped it. He looked over at a bruised Miles, a boy who wouldn’t even glance at him. “Morning.”

“Morning,” Miles mumbled back.

Lily slammed her silverware down on the table, standing. “What kind of sociopath are you?” Her tan skin flushed. “Coming in here all doped up on drugs, putting our lives in danger like we mean nothing. Nothing.” Her brown eyes darkened against her spray of white hair. “I don’t care if they are scared of you, Noah. I’m not. I won’t let you treat us like this. You need to leave Topeka.” She pointed toward the front door. “Now.”

Noah
tilted his head, and his blond hair shifted. Falo hiccupped. Noah glanced at the toddler before he looked back at Lily with the same look on his face. “Thank you, Lilianne.”

I flinched at the fact
that he had used her full name. First, it was Lils. Now, it was Lilianne. He could never call people by what they wanted to be acknowledged by.

“For what?” she asked, infuriated.

“For that entertaining monologue you performed,” Noah clarified, pointing his fork at her plate full of pancakes and eggs. “Your breakfast is getting cold.”

Lily shook with frustration and cursed at him before she grabbed her plate
and left the room, apparently eating elsewhere. Noah lifted his coffee, but not fast enough. Everyone saw his smirk. “At least her appetite isn’t ruined,” he said before taking a sip.

“
You could try to be nicer, you know,” Miles said, suddenly relaxed now that his sister was gone. “She has a temper.”

Noah
chuckled. “I remember.”

My stomach bubbled with a feeling I didn’t recognize. I wanted to punch him and understand him at the same time.

Noah knew everyone from childhood but me. Even though he was in my house, Noah hadn’t entered my world. I had entered his. In reality, I was the intruder, and I was an intruder in my own home.

The sound
of scraping silverware echoed through the house. Then, Falo squeaked as Lyn played with him, and Lily slammed the front door as she left the house, probably to get air. She wouldn’t walk home with the distance between our houses, let alone with all the officers on the streets now. The last thing any of us wanted was to get questioned about our whereabouts. We had a better chance at answering questions if they showed up here. We could hide Noah and pretend we were having brunch.

“I hope there are no hard feelings b
etween us, Miles,” Noah spoke up, but his eyes were sharp as they darted across the table to focus on the curly-headed boy. “It was strictly business.”

“Business,” Miles repeated
.

Noah nodded. “And I need your help more than ever before
.”

Miles’ jaw pried open
, and he laid his forehead on his fingertips, “You’re seriously going to ask for my help after what happened?”

Noah shrugged.
“I need it,” he said, reaching into his pocket. He pulled out a black-faced watch with a silver band on the table. “I kept your watch.”

Miles gaped at the jew
elry. “I can’t help you. I won’t. I’m done.”

“Do you want to survive this war or not?”
Noah’s jawline hardened.

Miles’ brown eyes widened, his shoulders tensing. Obviously, Miles believed him about the drug war. There was no questioning it. Miles
reached out, but he hesitated. His fingertips twitched right before he snatched up the jewelry from the table.

Noah’s upper lip stretched into a miniscule smile
, “You’ll help me get my sister, then?”

Miles’ eyebrows squeezed together. “Why is your sister so important?”

“Family,” Noah emphasized, “is important.”

“But—”

“The rest will come later,” Noah quickly explained. “Until then, you all need to trust me.”

He said the word
“trust” so many times that it had begun to lose meaning.

“S
top leaving us in the dark, then,” Broden said what everyone else was thinking.

Noah ran a hand through his hair, “I can’t tell you everything—”

“Why not?”

“
Because I don’t know everything,” Noah snapped at the two, and his green eyes lit up as if he had taken tomo all over again. But he hadn’t. The lightning sparked from inside of him.

The boys sat in silence, and then
, they argued, and then, returned silence.

I backed my chair away from the table and took my plate to the sink to clean it. My heart was pounding. The fear, the memories, Phelps. Everything was flashing before my eyes as if I was experiencing it all over again, and I felt the panic in my chest I had as Noah collapsed on the floor, vomiting.
He had screamed so loudly.

I turned the water off and gripped the counter, “What did you see last night, Noah?”

The boys stopped, and I turned my torso to study the green-eyed boy who stared back. His face was flushed, and his eyes were wide, like an animal caught in headlights. He never looked calm when he looked at me. I hated it.

“What did you see?” I demanded an answer.

“I—I—” Noah stuttered, placing his mug on the table. “What do you mean, Sophie?”

“On tomo,” I clarified.
“You were screaming,” I informed him. “I know you saw something.”

Noah’s
upper lip twitched. He couldn’t even fake a smile for me. “I didn’t see anything,” he said.

“You were hurt,” I accused, trying to jog his memory.

Noah shrugged as if pain meant nothing to him, as if the concept didn’t register with his body, as if he were inhuman and completely immune.

I gripped the nearest knife to me and held it in the air. “Do you know what I can do with this?” I threatened, adrenaline coursing through my veins. Broden straightened up while Miles
jumped to their feet. Lyn didn’t move. Noah laughed.

“Always with the knives,” he joked, continuing to sip his coffee. Little sips. Like he was controlling his breathing.

I curled my fist around the grip and positioned my hips to the side. It was the only way I could let him know just how serious I was – or how serious I wanted him to believe I was.

“I’ll be the cause of that pain if you don’t tell me wh
at happened,” I threatened.

Noah took one more drink before he placed it down. “Excuse me for a moment,” he spoke to Lyn, but the boys relaxed. Miles even sat down as Noah stood.

The blonde crossed the kitchen in mere seconds. “Sophie,” he spoke softly and looked at me as if I were holding flowers instead of a blade. The closer he was, the less confident I was. He stood next to me and looked down from his height. For a single moment, his green eyes softened like they had when he begged me to stay with him after he overdosed. Those eyes. This boy. I couldn’t hold my ground.

Noah leaned down
and whispered into my ear so the other boys couldn’t hear, “Why does it concern you?”

“Why doesn’t it?” I breathed back, unable to move.

Miles coughed, and Noah straightened up, stepping away. Shivers ran over me, and I crossed my arms, only to see that Broden had done the same. He was glaring at the two of us. My eyes fell to the floor as I laid the knife on the countertop.

“I have to tell you guys about my plan,” Noah announced, turning to Miles specifical
ly, “You still work for the Traveler’s Bureau, right?”

“They didn’t fire me,” he informed us, “as surprising as that was.”

But it shouldn’t have been a surprise. My dad committed crimes and that was how he got his job. If anything, Miles just secured his job for the rest of his life for the very reason that Noah was about to say.

“
I need you to slip up,” he said. “They probably want you to anyway.”

Miles paled. “What does that mean?”

“It means you’re going to get us into the Traveler’s Bureau,” Noah said.

“No.”

“Listen,” Noah coaxed, sitting next to him. “Dwayne knew this plan.” Even my father knew more than me. “But he isn’t here right now, and you are.”

Miles’ eyes flickered away, but Noah laid a hand on Miles’ face and forced him to only look at Noah.

“Dwayne would do this, and you need to, too,” he said, “and then, your sister and you can do whatever you want.”

Miles cracked. “Why?”

Noah smirked. “There’s going to be an explosion.”

I’ll Kill You

Lyn’s dark eyes fixated on Lily and me in the rearview mirror. “You girls are not going,” she lectured
.

She wore a low-cut blouse that exposed an extravagant bridge tattooed
on her chest. Between the art and her focused glare, I shifted uncomfortably in the backseat. Miles was in the passenger seat, but Lily and Broden were in the backseat with me. As usual, we were silent.

Noah, unlike us,
spoke, “I told you it would be fine, Lyn.” He was lying down in her Jeep’s trunk.

“And I told you to be quiet,” she responded to Noah’s chipper tone.
“I shouldn’t even be driving you kids—”

“But you are,” Lily retorted, surprisingly encouraging the trouble. “If my brother can go, then I should be able to go
, too.”

Lyn
’s frown bent her lips in half. “Dwayne would send me straight back to Albany if he found out I was helping you troublemakers out this much.”

“But this was his plan,” Miles repeated the information, but no one responded.

The only person who knew it was my father’s plan was Noah, and we knew enough about Noah to know he could’ve been lying. Still – we helped him because he was against Phelps, and our hatred for Phelps was our unification. As much as I didn’t want to recognize it, we had grown into one another somewhere along the way. We were officially a team.

Broden glared out the window, tightening his fingers as if he were preparing himself for a fight, and Miles looked directly at his wristwatch.
We were minutes away from the mission and feet away from the record’s building. It was attached to the Traveler’s Bureau, which was why Noah needed Miles, but the only access was locked a long time ago.

The plan had been in place since the night Noah overdosed on tomo. Apparently, whomever he got the dr
ugs from was an amateur chemist, and she was essential to our plan. Her name was Gigi, and she worked in the Traveler’s Bureau as a surveillance specialist. Miles had her supplies in a backpack. Noah had stolen them the night before, which was why Broden and the other boys had an alibi. The crime wasn’t on the news.

Our first step was all about Miles. He would enter
the Traveler’s Bureau with his access code. From there, he would enter the security office where Gigi was and hand off the backpack. She would leave, and he would unlock the entrance to the record’s building by the time Gigi met up with Noah and Broden. From there, they would get Rinley Tomery’s record, and Gigi would set up the explosion. They wanted the records to be a distraction, but they also wanted to destroy as much as they possibly could. The boys would get out before the arson would take place. Hopefully, they’d all get out alive. By the way Noah had screamed, I doubted it, and it took every part of me not to argue.

Lyn would be waiting in the getaw
ay vehicle – her government issued Jeep − and we would all return to my house before Noah would flee. He was leaving the Topeka Region as soon as he found out his sister’s location. We would have to cover his tracks before covering our own.

I wasn’t sure how I felt about that.

Lyn maneuvered the Jeep through traffic without so much as glancing around for officers. She was blending in, and she knew how to. I held my breath and forced myself to look as normal as possible in case someone did see us. It was the afternoon.  Even with the tinted windows, I somehow felt exposed, and my mind raced with the possibility of getting caught − or killed.

L
ily must have sensed my anxiety because she leaned on me, grabbed my hand, and squeezed it. I winced, wondering if she was comforting herself or me. Either way, I was about to vomit, and I closed my eyes as we drove the last mile to the Traveler’s Bureau. We had already discussed the risks − the cameras, the daylight, the exposure, the timing. The boys had to get in and out quickly or we would all get caught. There would be nothing we could do about it. We would be dead. Why Lyn insisted on bringing Lily and I at all was beyond me.

We drove over a hill and rested at a stoplight.
“Where should I park?” Lyn asked.

The Traveler’s Bureau was locate
d right in front of us. Hovering over the street, the tall, cylindrical office seemed impossible to break into. With thick steel doors and darkly tinted windows, I didn’t know the first thing about getting inside the office full of records, even though my father had worked there for a number of years.

I gulped.

“Park at the gas station,” Miles answered mechanically.

Lyn eyed him in disbelief.

“Trust me,” he promised. “The more people around, the less suspicious we’ll look. If we’re at the rest stop, it’ll look like we’re stretching our legs.”

The rest stop was one of two in Topeka. Traveling wasn’t illegal, but it was rare. Even then, the rest stop was full of people – the perfect illusion for everyone else. It seemed that traveling was an average-day thing, something that anyone could
do, but it was costly. If someone thought about it, the large crowd at the rest stop was very small compared to the general population. It only seemed big. It was built to look big.

Lyn sighed
, but ultimately nodded. In moments, she parked at the rest top, and her government vehicle matched the other ones around us. When she unlocked the doors, she turned the knob on the dash so that the tint darkened more. Miles was right. We appeared to be resting for a moment before traveling again − probably to the other side of town. We were in a government vehicle, after all. No one dared to question a government vehicle. Except us.

Almost every vehicle around us was government issued, and the ones that weren’t seemed to be parked close to one – as if they were traveling together. Where they had come from was a mystery. We had six regions – Albany, Phoenix, Boise, Topeka,
Raleigh, and Madison – all of which were connected with the State in the Topeka Region. They could’ve come from anywhere, but it was safe to guess they hadn’t come from Madison. According to rumor, it was an abandoned wasteland.

“Yo
u boys have thirty minutes,” Lyn said.

M
y heart lodged itself in my throat.

Noah pee
ked up from the trunk, glanced at his watch, and nodded. “We will be done before then.”

Broden patted me on the shoulder.
“See you soon, kid,” he said nonchalantly.

With that, they opened the doors, and Miles and Broden were out. Noah climbed over the chair, fell against my side, and left without looking back. The boys didn’t look around. They
reached their arms over their heads, pretending to stretch their legs, and began to walk. They even laughed as they chatted. In their plain, tan uniforms they seemed like average interns, leaving the vehicle as if to take a small hike. We were the only ones who saw them enter the Traveler’s Bureau, but – even if there had been a witness − it would’ve looked like three interns reporting in for duty.

The plan had started.

Lily’s hand was sweating against mine, and her grip tightened. Lyn tapped the front of her steering wheel. Falo, for once in his life, had a babysitter – Miles’ mother – and we hoped she would lie for us to protect her kids if we had to tell her. We hoped it wouldn’t come down to that.

“You think t
hey’ll be okay?” I asked.

Lyn
applied Chapstick to her bitten lips. When she finished, her coated lips were purple. “Not without help,” she answered.

Lily sat up
. “What do you mean?”

“I mean,” Lyn paused, running her fingers over her tattooed arms. “Go help them.”

“But,” I gaped at Lily as if Lyn had completely lost her mind. “You said we couldn’t be a part of it—”

“Only so the boys would believe me,” she laughed lowly. “They don’t want you girls hurt any more than I do, but those guys can’t do this on their own. It’s too much space to search in such a little amount of time.”

Lily gripped the door handle, ready to run. “What do we do, Lyn?” she asked, panicking.

“You girls know the plan,” Lyn said, turning her torso to direct us. “Get in there and help them.”

…

I fell four feet into a storm drain and slammed my hands on the wall. The fall was exactly like the night I had followed Broden into the lumberyard to meet Noah. My feet tensed on the wet gravel below my feet, and I was relieved that I had worn my tennis shoes. We had to run. Once we got in, we
would only have a little while before Noah’s chemist set off a homemade bomb.

“Come on,
” Lily hissed, waving me toward her.

W
e ducked into the shrubbery and crawled against the ground until we reached the end. In front of us was an open doorway for delivery trucks. Before I could fathom how well it was hidden, Lily leapt out and sprinted. I ran after her.

As soon as we reached the first closed door, Lily had it open. We burst inside, and
Lily had us through another doorway, a hallway, and a room. “There are cameras in the meeting rooms, but Miles should have had them all shut off by now,” she stated over her shoulder. “They were going to go in through the break room.”

“How many ways can you get
into this place?” I asked.

Lily smirked. “Too many if you know the right people.”

The twins never ceased shocking me with their secret antics. They were beyond intelligent, but I had never seen them use their skills for anything illegal. Two months ago, I felt as if they would’ve died from shame before breaking and entering, but Lily was the one leading me now, whispering orders like a seasoned criminal. Then again, knowing her past with Noah, she could actually be a criminal, and I would’ve never known.

I shuddered.

“I don’t like this,” Lily said, laying her back against the wall. When she caught her breath, her chest moved up. “There should’ve been a worker around here.”

She voiced my thoughts. It was too easy. No one was here except us. We were probably already caught, but I had accepted it days ago. When Noah was on tomo, he was screaming, he was in pain, he was hurt. This wasn’t going to be as successful as we needed it to be. We only needed to survive it.

“Let’s keep going,” I said, pulling Lily off of the wall. If we could succeed at anything, we could get Rinley’s records.

“We
should have twenty minutes left − easily,” she said. “We need to get to the third floor. The workers will know something’s up soon.” If they didn’t already – which they probably did.

I
stared at the walls as we passed them, knowing how destroyed the building would be in an hour. Miles would return to the Jeep after he disabled security, but the small explosion was supposed to cause a rapid electronic fire, burning most of the building down. Not as violent as Noah wanted it to be, but equally as destructive.

Lily opened a door and peeked out.
“Follow me,” she said, leaping into the long hallway. She walked quickly with her head held high, but I lunged to stay next to her.

I didn’t have a knife on me. I didn’t feel right. This whole thing didn’t feel right.

Lily’s nimble hands opened the silver door at the end of the hallway, and we bounded up a stairway. “The south stairwell doesn’t go to the third floor,” Lily explained. “We have to take this one.”

I didn’t even know what direction we were facing.

In fact, I kept my eyes locked on Lily’s white ponytail as we ran up, our feet slamming against the stairs and echoing floors down. The banging got louder and louder, and hundreds of them seemed to be circling around us − coming from more than the two of us.

I came to a halt, but I tried
to grab Lily. I was too late. As she bounded up the last step, she slammed into a broad man.

His hands grasped her, and she screeched, rearing back to kick him. “Let me go,
” she shouted, smacking him with her tiny fists as I ran up behind her, prepared to fight whatever guard had her.

“Quit it,
” Broden growled as he blocked himself from her punches. “It’s me. It’s me!”

“Broden?” Lily froze,
but her dark eyes blinked rapidly. “I—I didn’t know.”

He glared at her. “Me neither,” he said,
only to look at me and curse. “What are you two
thinking?”

“We’re helping,” I spoke up, walking past them
. I grabbed the door and tugged, but it didn’t budge. It was locked.

Broden grasped his watch,
“I’m here, Noah,” he spoke into the glass as if it were a walkie-talkie. “And so are the girls.”

The
door clicked before it swung open. Noah stood in front of us, but his slanted eyes were focused on me. “What are you doing here, Sophie?”

I pushed past him.
“Helping,” I repeated, entering the record’s room.

T
en humungous racks stretched from one room to the other, and they were full of files. Desks were littered everywhere. Organization was nonexistent, and I sucked in breath.