Shadows Have Gone (27 page)

Carly thought about what Justin had said. His instinct was to go in, either singly or with a small group, and “take care of the problem.” Would that have been preferable to Carly’s involvement of her whole community in the battle plans?

“We paid the price together,” she said. “Openly. All of us in agreement that this was what we had to do.”

Lewis nodded. “And that may work for a small group. Democracy can function when you have a small population of like-minded people, carefully selected for their civic spirit. But for a nation of thirty million? All with differing levels of education, religious preference, and political influence? Think of the contention you witnessed with the war in Iraq and the differing opinions on how we should deal with it. Would you have put that to a vote, knowing that the general populace didn’t have access to the intelligence of the government?”

“At what population level do you recommend we start withholding secret intelligence from the populace?” Carly asked with a level gaze.

“That would depend on the situation, wouldn’t it? Carly, I know you’re not naive, but there are still many aspects of governing that you haven’t yet experienced. Sometimes people don’t
want
to know what price is being paid for the safety, security, and luxury of their lives. And as paternalistic as it sounds, part of the government’s job is to make those tough moral choices so that they don’t have to, so they can go on living their happy, ignorant little lives.”

He was right that there were aspects of governance she had not experienced, but she hoped she never acquired his disdain for the people. Carly no longer bothered trying to conceal her responses from him. He was probably good enough to read her tiny emotional tells.

“Your father was a good man. A very good man. I’m very sorry he’s gone.”

Carly’s eyes stung at the mention of her dad, but she tried hard not to display any reaction, staring through the darkening window.

“I’d hoped he would be one of the ones who survived. Did you know your father’s middle name, Carly?”

Before she could stop herself, her head jerked toward him with surprise. She could feel her brow crumple in confusion. What did that matter?

“It was Yates, his mother’s maiden name. The dose of vaccine was sent specifically for Carl Y. Daniels. Not surprising that it was accidentally delivered to Carly Daniels. Unfortunate, but not surprising.”

Carly felt dizzy. She gripped the arms of her chair, as though she needed to hang on. She’d thought it odd when her doctor’s office called and said it was time for her annual checkup and she needed to come in within the next week. She hadn’t requested a flu shot, but she hadn’t objected when the nurse brought it in, either.

He smiled at her, and it seemed a little wistful. “A minor data entry error changing the destiny of many.”

Craig had reappeared to lead Carly down the hall to the office where Sam was being held. He’d bound her hands with a zip tie before opening the door just a few inches. Sam’s amber eyes glittered from inside, and he snarled.

“Tell him to stay back.” Craig pushed her through the opening and slammed the door behind her. She head the click of the lock.

Sam stood on his back legs and propped his forelegs on her shoulders, licking her chin with fervor.

“I’m glad to see you too, boy,” she said and rubbed her cheek against his snout. “Now, we have to get out of here.”

Sam hopped down and went around behind her. He sniffed at her hands, and she felt him nibble at the zip tie.

“No, I don’t want you to hurt your teeth. Hold on.”

Carly nudged the light switch with her shoulder, but it didn’t come on. She glanced around at her options and then nudged the rolling office chair toward the desk. A few hard kicks separated the back from the frame, leaving a broken edge of metal jutting up where the screws had torn loose. She was surprised but pleased when no one came to investigate the noise. Perhaps she could get out of here after all. She turned around and rubbed the zip tie against it, jabbing the metal painfully into her palm, but it finally cut through.

Her wrists sprang free of the zip tie, and she rubbed them where the plastic had cut in, wincing at the scrapes the jagged metal had made. She was bleeding, but it was just a “flesh wound,” as they said. She wished she had some disinfectant, because any wound was dangerous these days if infection set in, but she’d worry about that later.

The desk drawers were unlocked, so she dug through them. She found a few useful things, including a roll of packing tape that she slipped on her arm like a bracelet and a pair of heavy metal scissors she slid into her back pocket.

Why in the world would they imprison her with a hundred things she could fashion into a weapon, and a window right in front of her? Either Lewis’s men were painfully incompetent, or they didn’t care if she escaped. She guessed that meant her role in this was finished. She’d merely been the bait, after all.

The window was nailed shut. Carly watched for a few minutes, but no one passed by, and when she pressed her ear to the glass, she couldn’t hear any voices either. Removing the roll of tape from her arm, she peeled off long strips, tearing it with her teeth. She then plastered the tape in layers over the glass.

“Ready?” she said to Sam. He wagged his tail.

Using the metal stapler from the desk, she gave the window a hard blow. The glass cracked, but there was no sound of shattering. She waited, but she didn’t hear pounding boots approaching the door. No shouts of “Hey!” from outside. Silence. She supposed it was as close to a confirmation she was going to get that they didn’t care if she escaped.

She peeled the tape back, and the broken glass came away with it. She had to pry some jagged pieces from the frame with the scissors, but it had worked. With a hard yank, she pulled down the drapes that framed the window and used one to cover the bottom of the window frame.

She wriggled through the opening, sucking in her gut and cursing her hips. Her figure was fuller since she’d had Dagny, a fact Justin claimed to appreciate, but it made squeezing through office windows much more difficult.

She finally worked her way through and fell with a graceless “Oof!” onto the ground outside.
 

“Come on, Sam,” she whispered.
 

His head appeared, but he had the same problem she did. He couldn’t just jump and sail through it. He had to wriggle. He braced his forelegs awkwardly on the sides of the window frame and writhed his way out. She tried to catch him when he fell, but he more or less landed on her with a grunt.

He licked her cheek.

“I love you too, Sam,” she whispered. “One more stop and we can get out of here.”

Sam just looked at her.

“I know, but I can’t leave here without it. I have to.”

She crept along the edge of the building with Sam right behind her. She counted the windows as she passed, guessing each room would have only one and comparing it to the number of doors she had passed in the hallway. She stopped under the fourth and pressed her ear to the wall. When she heard nothing, she raised her head, peeking over the sill. It was Lewis’s office all right. Still illuminated, but his chair was empty. She dared another peek just to be sure.

She could hear a voice in the back of her mind telling her she was a fool for doing this, chastising her for taking such a stupid risk, but she couldn’t leave until she did this. Lewis might not care if she escaped, but she was pretty sure he would care about this.

Carly ripped off pieces of tape as fast as she could and covered the window. It cracked with one blow, but the pieces were harder to pry from the frame. Her heart pounded as she pulled at the little shards. She kept glancing up at the door, straining her ears to listen for footsteps that might herald his return. She sliced her thumb on a particularly stubborn piece of glass and cursed. She stuck the injured digit in her mouth while she looked around for a rock, tasting blood. She used the rock to break off the stubborn shards as quickly as she could. It wasn’t as good a solution as working them free, but she knew she was running out of time.

You’re an idiot,
Carly told herself, but she hauled herself up and through the frame, wincing as a piece of glass cut her arm. Sam whimpered behind her as she writhed her way through the frame and landed on the carpet inside. She scrambled to her feet.

Sam stood on his back legs with his front feet propped against the wall, watching her through the broken window.

“Stay,” Carly whispered, holding up a hand and hoping he’d listen to her. He did, but from his urgent whine, he didn’t like it.

She darted over to Lewis’s desk and yanked on the drawer. Locked. She nearly groaned aloud.

The scissors. Carly pulled them from her back pocket. She jammed the point of one of the blades between the desk frame and the drawer and shoved upward. The drawer resisted for a moment, but finally gave under the pressure. Carly gasped at the loud
clunk
of the lock breaking. She froze in place, but the sound didn’t summon anyone. She yanked open the drawer, and with a sigh of relief, Carly saw the picture.

She dropped it out of the window and pushed her way back through, ignoring the way the glass scraped at her arms and stomach. She heard her shirt rip as she fell through, but luckily her wounds amounted to scratches. Some of them were a little deeper than she would have liked. Her palm came away streaked with a little blood when she touched her shoulder, but she’d worry about that later.

Carly picked up the picture frame and looked down at her dad for a moment. The pang of sorrow made her eyes sting, but she exhaled and put her mind back on the task at hand.

She yanked off the back of the frame and took out the picture. Carly caught a glimpse of her dad’s handwriting on the back before she slid the photo into her pocket, but that was something that would have to wait for later.

She dropped the mangled frame on the ground and took stock of her location. The fence was about twenty yards away. She ran to a pile of tires nearby and peeked around the edge. No one was in sight.

Carly continued on to the next cover, a jeep that had been stripped for parts. She opened the door as quietly as she could. She kept her fingers crossed that the battery had been removed, or was long dead, and there were no automatic dome lights in these things.

She swept the interior quickly for anything she could use. A tool kit lay in the back seat, its broken, rusted lid askew. Little was left inside. A pair of pliers, a hammer, a ball of twine, and a mangled measuring tape. The hammer, at least, would come in handy.

Sam followed her as she darted along the fence line, looking for a gate. She found one down near the propane tanks, but it was locked with a rusted chain held closed by a padlock. Carly whipped off her shirt and wrapped the chain. She glanced around, hoping no one was in earshot, before she brought the hammer down as hard as she could on the chain. It was one of the things Justin had once told her.
“Don’t bother with the lock. They’re tough as hell. The chain is usually weaker
.
”

It took three blows before one of the links cracked, and then she was able to use the hammer’s claw to pry it open the rest of the way and unhook the chain.

She donned her shirt and slipped through the gate, Sam at her heels. She closed it behind them and looped the chain around through the fence to hold it closed, at least enough that the tampering wouldn’t be evident at a casual glance. She stayed crouched until they reached the tree line, where she collapsed in a sigh of relief.

Concealed in the woods, she lay there for a moment to catch her breath. She stared back at the camp, her mind buzzing with suspicion. It had been far too easy to escape. Even if Lewis had pulled back most of his people, there still should have been some patrols. Was no one guarding the place? No one stationed along the fence at all?

If they didn’t care that she escaped, they must be thinking she would run straight home to Colby, having played her role as bait, and could be dismissed, her chess piece plunked down beside the board, no longer in play. But whatever game Lewis was playing, Carly was going to win. She didn’t have the option of failure. She had to win for Justin, for Dagny, for Colby.

She took the scissors from her back pocket and used one of the blades to cut a notch in the tree, facing the direction from which Justin would be coming.

“If we ever get separated, this is what I want you to do,” Justin said. “Cut into the tree and remove as small sliver of bark, like this.” He demonstrated, using his knife to cut away a piece of bark and reveal a rectangular section of light colored wood below.