With the Enemy (4 page)

“Yeah,” Alonso agrees, setting down a bucket they’d managed to find somewhere that is full of delicious-looking berries. “We would have shopped for something special.” They’re being casual but they’ve also just assumed fighting stances.

“This is Helen and her brother, Troy,” I tell them so they know we’re okay.

Helen gives Alonso a nice smile. “And don’t worry about dinner; we were just going. We don’t have time to waste.”

I start to ask if they’re sure — I mean, they still might share something that could help us — but Rosie’s look of relief stops me. I say, “Good luck,” instead.

“Thanks.” Helen stands up. “And good luck to you finding your friend. Marley.”

“Maddie,” Louisa corrects her.

“Right.”

Troy gets up, too, and starts to turn toward the door. His sister gives him a look that is apparently an instruction to stay put. He stands there, hands dangling at his sides.

Helen comes over and hugs me and hugs Louisa. Then she offers her hand to Rosie. “No hard feelings.”

“Just hard knocks,” Rosie says, which must be some kind of warrior slogan because Helen smiles. The moment Helen has Rosie’s hand in hers, she turns and yells, “Now!” at Troy.

Troy rushes Alonso, pushes him aside, grabs the full bucket of berries, and takes off. Helen moves backward toward the door holding a knife in front of her, clearly willing to use it if she has to.

She dips down to grab the Alliance uniform jacket and stops at the door. Light flashes off the edge of the blade. “If you know what’s good for you, you’ll forget you ever laid eyes on us, and you’ll hope we do the same.” She steps backward over the empty doorframe, turns to the right, and is swallowed up into the night.

Along with all our food.

I
’m going after her,” Rosie says, starting for the door.

Ryan steps in front of the door to stop her from leaving. “It’s not worth it.”

“She stole our dinner.”

“Not really,” he says. “Although you’d think they would have said something about hating to eat and run.”

“Only it would have had to be run and eat,” Drew points out from the stool he’s been sitting on.

“He’s
baaaaaaaaaaaack!
” Alonso announces, heading toward Drew and giving him a one-armed hug. “How are you feeling, old man?”

Drew winces a little but he looks a lot better. “Like a black military vehicle slammed into my shoulder but then I had an expert doctor look after it.”

Rosie turns around, hands curled into fists on her hips, looking fierce. “How can you joke about this? We should be out there, after her.”

Drew pushes himself off the stool. “It’s pitch-dark out there; there’s no way anyone could find her,” he says. “Even you.”

Rosie’s scowl goes from Roiling Boil to Simmer, and her fists uncurl.

“What did you mean about her not really stealing our dinner?” Louisa asks.

Ryan bends to set down his pack and opens it. “The berries they took were the ones we were keeping separate because we weren’t sure if they were poisonous or not.” He pulls out a bag, unties the top, and pours at least three pounds of deep blue berries onto the counter. “We still have these.”

“Feel free to tell us how quietly brilliant we are,” Alonso suggests.

“Not me,” Ryan says. “My brilliance isn’t quiet at all.”

The mood in the snack bar lifts, and lifts more when Alonso produces five handfuls of fuzzy green lumps
from his pack. “And nuts. We think they’re some kind of almonds but we’re not sure. Ryan ate one and he’s fine.”

Ryan blows on his fingernails and pretends to polish them on his shoulder. “You got that right,” he says. “That’s Mr. Fine to you.”

Boys are really strange.

We divide up the food evenly and start eating. I put a berry in my mouth and bite down and it explodes with a burst of tart juice on my tongue. I eat another as I peel off the green skin of one of the nuts and edge the tip of my CMS-issued knife in the crack to pry it open. It takes work but the nut inside is crunchy with a taste somewhere between an almond and a peanut.

Maybe it’s because I’m starving, but I think these are probably the best nuts and berries I have ever eaten in my life, possibly the best ones in the world. For five minutes the only noise in the snack bar is the sound of shells cracking open.

Until Louisa says, “I wish they’d taken me, too.” She puts down her knife and pushes away the rest of her nuts.

I’m sitting next to her, so I can hear the trembling in her voice.

“Who?” I ask, setting down my knife and turning toward her.

“The people in the — what did Helen and Troy call it? — Rover. The people who took Maddie.” She looks around at all of us and there are tears in the corners of her eyes. I slide off my stool and give her a hug.

“I hate thinking of her there alone,” she says into my shoulder. “Why did they take only
her
?”

My throat feels like it’s closing up.

Louisa pulls away from me but keeps hold of my wrist as she repeats, “Why?”

I can’t move. I can’t breathe. I can’t tell them.

“Maybe because she’s the smallest,” Ryan says after a moment.

“That would make her the easiest to control,” Alonso confirms. “That makes sense.”

“And to feed,” Rosie points out. She brushes the shells from her hands and touches Louisa lightly on the arm.

“Seriously, what if they’d taken Ryan?” Alonso puts
in then. “They’d waste all their ransom money on food.” I don’t know what Louisa meant before about how he looks at me, but the way he’s looking at her now, like it matters to him that she feels better, is really nice.

And it’s successful. She relaxes the hold on my wrist and gives a little smile and says, “I guess.”

Drew sits up straighter. “The truth is, we might not know why. But at least now we have some idea of who took her, and where. Right, Evelyn?”

I discover I’ve been holding my breath. “Right,” I say. “We have something to go on.”

Disaster is averted. Eating recommences. Boys are strange but at this moment I am really glad they’re here.

We are filling Alonso and Ryan in on what Helen and Troy told us when there’s a tapping on the boards over one of the windows.

Followed by a low moaning.

Instinctively, we all turn off our flashlights. What you can’t see, you can’t shoot.

“That’s just wind,” Rosie says, but next to me I feel her tense. My palms get clammy.

Something thuds on the roof of the building, and there’s a sound like feet skittering over it.

“What’s that?” I whisper to Rosie in the dark, my heart racing.

“Tree branches?” she whispers back, not sounding completely sure.

That’s when a voice outside demands, “Who?”

I jump to my feet, panting. “That is not the wind; that is someone —”

“
Who who,
” the voice calls again. An owl. It’s an owl.

Everyone else starts to laugh. But it takes some time for the “All clear, just nature” message to get from my brain to my heart, which continues running a race in my chest. Our flashlights click back on.

Drew pulls himself to his feet. “Look, I’m feeling much better. This place is creepy and I think we should keep moving.”

“Yeah, I wouldn’t mind putting some distance between us and our lovely visitors,” Alonso says.

The speed with which everyone else leaps up and starts shoving things in their packs shows how much they agree.

We skirt the edge of the pavement toward a driveway Ryan and Alonso saw before, which we’re pretty sure must lead to the highway. It’s long past seven thirty, which means long past curfew, but since it’s night we decide to risk walking on the road where we’ll make better time. The chances of there being anyone driving, with the current price of gas, is remote. And even if there is someone, we’ll hear their engine or see their lights before they can see us in the dark.

Drew and his personal physician lead the way, with Ryan and Alonso behind them. Rosie hangs back to walk next to me.

“Do you really think Maddie is in that place that Helen and Troy came from?” she asks.

“It sounds like she was picked up by the same people, and the tire tracks headed to Chicago,” I say. Our breaths are making little clouds in the cool air. “It’s a good place to start. Why?”

“I don’t know.” Rosie kicks a stone from the road. “I thought Helen was mostly talking to stall until Alonso
and Ryan came back with the food once you pointed out we didn’t have any.”

My fingers tighten around the straps of my backpack. “I shouldn’t have done that. I was just worried they were going to hurt you.”

Rosie pats me on the arm. “Believe me, I’m not complaining. You handled that great.”

“Really?” I say. I instantly feel a thousand times better.

“Yeah.” She purses her lips. “Although I do think it’s a bit funny that you can talk down two crazy hostage takers and save my life, but you’re afraid of an owl.”

“I didn’t know it was an owl!” I object. “Besides, you were scared, too.”

“Nuh-uh,” Rosie says.

“Uh-huh,” I reply.

“I’ll accept ‘startled’ over ‘scared,’ “ Rosie says, like she’s bargaining.

“Done,” I tell her.

We both laugh and I have to admit, despite everything that is going on, it feels really nice. For a moment I have
this powerful sense that even though I’m not sure how or where or when, working together we
will
find Maddie.

“Assuming the school is real,” Rosie goes on, “how do we find it?”

“Even though Helen was lying, I have the impression that they told us more than they meant to.” I try to explain what I mean. “When Troy talked about the Phoenix, and the smells and sound, that all seemed completely real.”

“Helen said he made it all up,” Rosie points out.

“Which practically guarantees that it’s true,” I say. I am starting to get excited. “And it happened again when I asked Troy how they escaped and he said, ‘Shoot.’ She tried to cover it up. Why would she have done that if it wasn’t true?”

“But if they have a gun, why didn’t they use it on us?” Rosie asks.

She’s right. “I don’t know.” And yet I can’t help thinking there’s something there. “Do you know that feeling when you’re close to uncovering an answer or solving a problem, but you can’t quite touch it?”

Rosie nods slowly. “I do. Remember when we were in that prison camp?”

I give her a look. “No, I’m afraid I have totally forgotten about the time when we broke into a prison camp. What was it, thirty-six hours ago?”

She makes a face at me. “I’m serious. When we were there, I — I felt like I was close to finding my sister, Wren. Like maybe if I stayed, I could figure out what happened to her after Ivan betrayed her, where she ended up. Is that the same?”

“No,” I say. “That’s much worse.” And then it hits me just how bad. I turn toward her. “You gave up that chance to save the rest of us.”

She shrugs, not meeting my eyes. “What choice did I have? You would never have gotten anywhere without me.” Her tone is light but I can tell it hurts. “Of course, maybe you would have been better off. Maybe then Maddie would still be here.”

I stop walking and she stops, too, and turns to face me. “You have to cut that out.” I tell her. “There was nothing you could have done to keep Maddie from being
kidnapped. Whoever took her knew who she was and knew what they were doing. The only thing that could have gone differently was that you could have gotten hurt as well as Drew. Is that what you want?”

She stares at me wide-eyed and I realize everyone else has stopped in the middle of the road and is staring at me, too. Silence falls hard and heavy.

“She’s right,” Louisa says, coming to stand next to Rosie. “There was nothing you could do.”

“Maddie wouldn’t want you to beat yourself up,” I point out.

Rosie flips her hand in the air, brushing this aside. “People always say that.”

That makes me angry — I am not
people
— and maybe that’s why I say, “In this case it happens to be true. Maddie wouldn’t want you to be throwing a pity party for yourself because you lost her the same way you lost Wren.” I hear Rosie’s sharp intake of breath but I don’t stop. “She would want you to focus on what needs to happen next, not what happened before. She’d
want you, the strongest leader in our group, to help find her. And if we can find Maddie, we can find your sister.”

Rosie’s jaw is tight and she takes three breaths before she says, “Do you really think so? Do you really think that’s true?”

“I do,” I say. If I’m not going to mention that I think Maddie might be (as good as) dead, there’s no reason to mention I have no idea how to find Wren.

A jagged bolt of lightning splits the sky. Oh great. At least now I know what the heavens think of my new lying habit.

“That’s quite an omen,” Alonso says.

“Yeah, an omen that we should find shelter,” Rosie answers, sounding like her old self, and I get a warm feeling in my chest. “It’s about to pour.”

The sky opens up when we’re near an abandoned strip mall by the side of the road. It’s raining so hard that we’re all soaked by the time we’re beneath the overhang. Water is sluicing down my back in rivers.

The doors and windows of the stores have been boarded over. On the third door we try, a piece of plywood gives with a little pulling. Our entrance stirs up dust and our flashlight beams crisscross as we step inside.

It takes a moment to understand that we’re surrounded.

“Leprechauns?” Louisa says. She bends close to one of the cardboard cutouts of a smiling man in a matching green top hat and suit.

Ryan shines his light on the ground. “And four-leaf clovers. Must be our lucky day.”

Rosie crouches to pick up a rectangle of paper.” ‘Frankly Parties,’ “ she reads from the card. “‘Making life more fun for Greater Chicago for fifty years.’” She lets the card flutter back to the floor. “I guess the market for fun isn’t what it once was.”

“I’m not sure I would ever have thought this was fun.” Drew holds up an object that appears to be a moldy hamster in a Santa outfit.

I’d love to take off my sodden boots but the floor is thick with the leftovers of “fun.” There’s a torn H
APPY
3
RD BIRTH
— banner and another banner that proclaims,
VELCOME TO SPOOKSYLVANIA.
A pirate glares out from a tattered paper plate and part of a shiny blue balloon offers me —
GRATULATIONS ON YOUR NEW BA
—. There are two rows of what had been shelves running the length of the store, but they’ve been dismantled. One wall has a peeling paint mural of Santa in his sleigh flying over a landscape across which the Easter Bunny is making tracks with a basket of brightly colored eggs pursued by a ghost, a witch, and a mummy.

My foot brushes something and there’s a weird bleating noise that I think is supposed to be music and a voice saying, “Show me the money, show me the money.” I bend down and see that the noise is coming from inside a card that reads
For my beloved Grampa
on the front.

“A classic,” Alonso says, squelching up beside me. “Bet it works every time.”

“Check it out,” Ryan calls from the far corner of the store. Five flashlight beams converge on him. He’s standing under a thatched roof with the sign
TIKI TIME!
dangling from it. The remnants of a poster showing a
turquoise ocean lapping at white sand under a cloudless sky are still plastered to the wall, flanked by two dust-covered plastic palm trees.

“Welcome to my surf shack,” Ryan says. “I invite you all to camp out with me on the beach.”

“I call ocean view,” Alonso says and plops his stuff down opposite the poster.

We all pull off our packs. Fortunately, even though we’re soaked, we discover that our sleeping bags managed to stay relatively dry. Of course, since we’re sleeping in wet clothes, that matters less, but hopefully our body heat will dry them by the morning.