Unknown (Unknown Series Book 1) (33 page)

Tater hissed, “Yessss,” under his breath when we spotted the cars. Then he froze, scaring the shit out of me. “I don’t have the keys.”

“I’ve got one.” I pulled Mom’s set of keys out of my pocket and twisted Dad’s car key from the chain, handing it to him. “We only have one key, so don’t lose it.”

He saluted me and jumped in Dad’s SUV. To my surprise, Remy flung open the passenger door and jumped in beside him.
Traitor.
I looked at Rylen, who gave an amused shrug as we jogged to Mom’s car and jumped in.

“Wait,” I said. “Where the heck are we going?”

“Southwest to Mojave,” he said simply, as if it were a tiny park and not a desert that spanned three states.

I rolled down my window and Remy did the same. Tater leaned forward to see me through the passenger window.

“We need to stay off the main roads.”

Tater nodded. “I got this. Follow me.”

We made it out of town and onto a back road quickly. The good thing was, a caravan of school busses could not possibly move very fast, so we had a decent chance of spotting them and keeping track. Especially with Tater’s lead foot leading the way. We just had to keep out of their line of vision.

Rylen stared out the passenger window as I drove. Part of me wanted to fill the silence with words, but I let him be. After an hour of driving, my stomach gave an embarrassingly loud gurgle that filled the quiet car. The corner of Rylen’s mouth came up as he turned to me.

“Sorry,” I said, and he shrugged.

“We haven’t eaten in almost a day,” he pointed out.

He was right. I felt my body shaking a little, as it always did when my blood sugar got low. Next would come dizziness.

“Let me see if I can reach anything in the back,” he said. Rylen climbed over the seat as nimbly as an obstacle course, and I forced myself not to check out his ass. He pulled up a lever on the back seat and pulled it down to reveal the contents of the stuffed trunk. “Bingo.”

I heard him riffling around and then the seat clicking back into place. He unscrewed the cap on a bottle of water and handed it to me. I worked really hard not to snatch it away and moan as I drank it. I forced myself to stop halfway through the bottle and save the rest. I could have drunk five of those bottles at that moment.

Next he handed me a bag of turkey jerky and a chocolate chip granola bar.

“Oh, my God, I love you,” I said. The moment the words left my mouth my face flamed and a wave of dizziness hit. I had to grip the wheel harder. Rylen laughed it off and tore open the granola bar, handing it to me before ripping the top off the jerky bag.

I felt him watching as I took an overly large bite and struggled to chew it. Since I couldn’t talk, I pointed to the bag of jerky, then at his mouth.

“I don’t want to eat all of your food,” he said.

I forced myself to swallow so I could say, “Don’t be crazy! You have to eat too. It’s for all of us. You’re part of this family, Ry. You always have been.”

His eyes met mine, and pure emotion seemed to spill straight from his spirit into mine. The gratefulness and love he gave off took my breath away. I had to swallow and peer back at the road. I cleared my throat and swallowed again.

From the corner of my eye, I watched him put one piece in his mouth and start to close the bag, but I gave his hand a slap. “Eat more.”

“Dang, boss lady.” He shoved another piece in his mouth and I took one too.

Once I’d had enough to stop shaking, I asked the question I’d been thinking about all day.

“What do you think is really going on? I mean, safe houses? All I can think of are concentration camps. Am I being paranoid?”

Rylen rubbed a hand over his face. “I don’t know, Pep. I can’t wrap my mind around any of this mess.” He shook his head. “I shouldn’t have let Liv out of my sight. I should have kept her with me instead of sending her to sit with your parents.”

“Ry . . .”

“She’s just as strong as you, but I never give her enough credit. I try to protect her, instead of letting her grow, and now she probably thinks I abandoned her.” He let out a gravely sigh. “I’m just glad she’s with your folks and not alone.”

“You don’t need to feel guilty. I’m sure she knows you’d never purposely abandon her.”

He made a dismissive sound. “Yeah, well.”

“They’ll take care of each other until we get them back.” The words echoed in my mind:
get them back
. But how? What if we couldn’t?

He must have had the same doubts because he went back to staring out his window in silence.

We’d been driving nearly an hour and a half through the middle of nowhere when I saw Tater and Remy leaning together and pointing. I looked over and saw a faint trail of high-blowing dust in the distance.

“Look!” I pointed.

He stared and a triumphant grin grew. “That’s coming from the main road.”

I couldn’t keep the smile from my own face. “It has to be them.” Our road seemed to run parallel, thought it was rutted with potholes and cracks that I constantly swerved to avoid. Remy turned around to smile at me through the back window and I gave her a thumbs-up.

After nearly two more hours of passing bordering small towns and hopping from dirt roads to side roads, we finally saw the bus caravan enter Amargosa Valley.

Rylen leaned forward and squinted. He had much sharper eyesight than me. “It looks like they’ve got the valley gated.”

Tater pulled up at an abandoned gas station and we all jumped out. My legs and arms ached from digging the past two days and then sitting so long. Rylen stretched his arms. Tater opened the back of Dad’s SUV and rooted around until he pulled out binoculars.

“I’m gonna get on the roof,” he said. Rylen nodded. The two of them went around the small, square building until they found an HVAC unit that was strong enough to let them climb, and then Rylen boosted Tater up.

I walked back to the car to talk to Remy.

“I have to pee so freaking bad,” she said, dancing in place.

“Go,” I told her. “I’ll watch for the guys.”

She squatted next to the car while I peered up at my stealthy brother on the roof. When Remy finished, she covered for me.

“Guys have it so easy,” I grumbled when I was finished. I reached into Dad’s glove compartment for wet wipes to sanitize our hands.

“You’re such a germaphobe,” Remy said with a laugh when I handed her a wipe. After a second she got serious. “What do you think they’re doing to them? I mean, I know you think it’s something bad, but what if they really are just trying to keep people safe? What if they’re good, and we’re against them?”

I wondered how Remy’s gut instincts could tell her something so much different than mine. She’d always been trusting where I was cautious, and many times my caution had turned out to be unnecessary. What if she was right and we’d made enemies of the good team?

And then I remembered Grandpa Tate and Julian. I swallowed hard and shook my head. Plenty of times Remy’s trusting instincts were wrong, and she was burned.

“They’re manipulating people and using scare tactics to control them. There’s nothing good about that, Rem.”

“But maybe they
have
to be like that because people are so stubborn and it’s the only way to force us to let them do what’s best for us.”

I stared out at the distance, at the valley pass between two rocky mountains where the busses had disappeared. Before I could answer, I heard the thud of feet hitting the ground and knew the guys were coming back.

Tater nodded at us. “It’s gated. This is where they’re holding them.”

I let out a breath. We knew where they were. This was a great first step, but now would come the hard part. I looked up at the sky which had already started to dim.

“We need to figure out where to stay tonight, somewhere away from here.”

Tater nodded. “I saw signs for Ash Meadows National Wildlife Refuge not far from here.”

“We can stay there tonight,” said Rylen, “and come out early in the morning to scope out the camp.”

I shivered when he called it a camp.

“Let’s go,” Tater said. “I’m starved.”

We came to the state park down the road. The gates were unmanned, of course, so we moved the barrier aside and drove in, careful to move the barriers back into place so nobody would know someone was there.

When we came to the open landscape, Rylen whistled. “Damn, that’s pretty.”

Ash Meadows was stunning with its hills and mountains with both desert beauty and greenery in its shrubs and ash trees. We followed the road as far as it could take us toward the mountain and then parked beneath a copse of trees near a hiking trail into the mountains. The entrance of the trail said “Point of Rocks” and had a board with information, a map, and brochures. I took a brochure and shoved it in my back pocket.

“Do we need two tents?” Tater asked. “This one fits six.”

“Just one,” Remy said. “Less work.”

I looked at the darkening sky. “We need to hurry. It’ll be night soon.”

We grabbed as much as we could carry and ascended the trail until we came to a semi-flat area surrounded by ash and pine trees. We got the tent up quickly and broke out the gas stove to heat baked beans and Vienna sausages in their cans. We could have eaten them cold, but Tater was feeling fancy.

On our way up we’d passed signs that mentioned a desert oasis, and looking down at the view, I could see why. Amid the mountains and desert plains, scattered with dry shrubs and ash trees, was a spring. In the setting sun it glittered an icy blue. Movement by the spring made my heart nearly stop until I realized it was a four-legged animal with huge horns.

“Look!” I whispered.

We all peered down.

“Bighorn sheep,” Rylen breathed.

“They’re drinking the water,” I said, worried.

“Doesn’t look like it’s hurting them,” Remy remarked. “Yet.”

Tater nodded. “Not sure they’d bother poisoning these springs when people don’t live out here.”

I pulled the brochure from my back pocket and read through it.

“That’s King Spring. It says the water from these streams come from an underground aquifer. Fossil water that takes thousands of years to move through the ground.” I looked out at the springs. “Do you think it’s safe? Could we actually bathe in it?”

“Oh my gosh,” Remy said longingly. “That would be so awesome. We got those vaccinations, so we should be safe, right?”

“There are different strands,” I said. “Bacterial, viral, we’re not protected against everything.”

We watched the sheep roam freely, and I envied their lack of care.

“I’ll jump in that shit,” Tater said.

I rolled my eyes at him. “Not it on taking care of you when you break out in hives.”

Rylen chuckled.

If I weren’t so exhausted, and feeling so worried about my family, I might have gone to explore.

Right now, all I wanted to do was sleep. I was the first to climb into the tent and bury myself inside a sleeping bag. I don’t even remember closing my eyes, but my brain shut off hard, and I was thankful for it.

During the night I felt Remy press her body flush behind me, but she felt bigger than normal. And then her unusually heavy arm slung over my waist. If it wasn’t pitch-black in the tent, I would have figured it out sooner. It was the scent of him that made me realize. ‘Wide awake me’ might have discretely removed his hand and put some space between us. ‘Exhausted me’ scooted closer, garnering his heat through the thin sleeping bag separating us. I fell back asleep with the feel of his breath on my neck.

It was still dark when a barely audible low groan from the back of Rylen’s throat made my eyes flutter. My sleeping bag had slipped down, and we were both covered by Ry’s blanket. In a moment of shock, his strong hand grasped my hip, and he pressed the hardened length of himself against my ass. His mouth came down on my neck and I felt his lips, soft in contrast to the light scratchiness of his facial hair. The heat of his tongue flicked against the skin of my neck just as his hips grinded against me and he held me hard. I gasped as the heat of arousal shot through me so powerful it was almost painful. The sound of my shocked breath froze him. For one split second we were still touching, and I felt him everywhere: his lips, his hand, his really hard—

Rylen sat up in a rush and whispered hoarsely, “
Fuck
.”

A solid beat passed before he unzipped the tent and pushed out, zipping it back. His footsteps sounded like he was going toward the path, walking fast. My heartbeat was pounding in my ears and throat, and every sensitive place on my body. Oh, my God.

Tater sat up, but Remy kept sleeping.

“What’s wrong?” he asked.

It took me a second to find my voice. “He’s probably going to the bathroom.”

Tater sighed and fell back. In seconds he was lightly snoring again.

I tried to relax, but it was impossible. I lay there with my eyes wide open, more turned on than I’d ever been and wishing the sensation would go away. Rylen had been asleep. He probably thought I was Livia. That heated moment had not been meant for me.

But OH MY GOD. Now I knew exactly what I was missing out on, and I would never forget. But it sucked to know he was out there right now, probably feeling embarrassed and ashamed. Should I go to him? Tell him it was no big deal? No. Because it kind of was a big deal. And I hadn’t tried to stop the moment from happening. At all. So I lay there feeling all the things for what seemed like forever.

When I finally heard Rylen coming back, I yanked my sleeping bag all the way back up. I flipped to my side and lay still, pretending to sleep. He unzipped the tent and whispered in a deep voice, “
Tater
.” I heard him shaking Tater’s foot, and my brother groaned.

“Come on, bro,” Ry whispered. “It’s four. Let’s scout.”

Remy stirred and said, “What’s going on?”

“You can keep sleeping,” Tater told her. “We’re going to do some recon and be back to plan together.”

“I wanna recon,” she slurred.

“We’re just getting a lay of the land,” Tater whispered.

He closed the tent flap, and I listened as they gathered their things and crunched their way down the path. A minute later the car started and drove away. Once Rylen was far away, I managed to fall back asleep.