Through the Dark (A Darkest Minds Collection) (A Darkest Minds Novel) (9 page)

I see it out of the corner of my eye, resting on the front passenger seat next to a small handgun—a shiny black tablet, the kind they only give to registered skip tracers.

“Oh my God,” the boy cries when she’s able to untie the gag. His chest is heaving with every breath he takes, and he’s crying the way I used to when I was a kid and I came home with a bad grade or after a lost soccer match and my mom would tell me not to be so goddamn pathetic about such stupid things. He’s sobbing the way I did the night I found my dad’s body.

“Thank you, thankyouthankyou,” he sobs, clinging to me.

The boy’s legs don’t seem to be working, so I lift him into my arms and carry him to my truck. I already know it’s not going to be this one, either.

I don’t know what the hell I’m doing anymore.

I hit the I-10 and all of a sudden I’m just driving, going as fast as I can without catching any attention I don’t want. Every time I look up into the rearview mirror, I expect to see some kind of military SUV gaining on me, streaking down the freeway with guns blazing. Or at least a white van with a frizzy-haired woman sporting a new shiner leaning out her window to fire at me mid-chase.

I’ve seen too many action movies.

Zu calmly holds the boy’s hand, and he actually lets her. I guess that’s the difference between kids these days and the kinds of kids I grew up with. They don’t have much pride—at least not enough pride to act like a punk and be rude because he’s secretly humiliated about having pissed himself and cried in front of a girl. I guess they can overlook these things, given their circumstances. It’s kind of sweet, in a way…like normal puppy love, only with the addition of freak superpowers and hormones.

I have to hand it to him, too. Now that he’s calmed down, I think he might be trying to flirt with her. He keeps asking her questions, but she only nods or shakes her head.

“She doesn’t talk,” I explain finally. “But she understands what you’re saying.”

“Oh.”

I look at him out of the corner of my eye—ginger, an explosion of freckles across his face, dressed in nice enough clothes to tell me someone out there cares enough to know he’s missing. He fidgets and shrinks back against the torn leather seat.

“What’s your name?”

“Are you like the woman?” he asks instead of answering. “A skip tracer?”

At this point, I am the exact opposite of whatever a skip tracer is supposed to be. Zu points at me and gives a big thumbs-up, and I feel like she’s just singlehandedly elected me the next president of the United States.

“Oh,” he says again. “Okay. My name’s Bryson.”

“Nice,” I say. “I’m Gabe. This is Dorothy.”

She reaches around Bryson and punches me in the arm again. “Ow. Fine. Zu.”

“Zu?” Bryson grins. “That’s cool.”

Okay. It is a little cool. Better than, like, Pauline, I guess.

“How’d you get picked up?” I ask. After two days of talking to myself, it feels weird to be having a conversation.

He sighs, banging his head back against the seat again. “It was really stupid. Della’s gonna kill me.”

“Della being your mom?” I didn’t start calling my mother by her first name until I turned twenty and was embarrassed to have the word associated with her.

“No, she’s…she’s watching me and my brother and a couple other kids. She and her husband are really nice and they’re taking care of us until things get better.”

“She’s hiding you?” I ask. Wow. The lady must have balls of steel. I should know. Terror’s got mine in a viselike grip. “Then yeah, I’d say Della is probably going to kill you.”

The whole setup is really fascinating. This woman, Della, and her husband, Jim, had recently moved to a quiet neighborhood in Glendale—one that was still hanging in there while the streets and cities around it started vacating with foreclosures. They didn’t have children of their own but were the friendly kind and, more importantly, were open enough with their views on Gray to be immediately trusted by the others. It started with one kid in Bryson’s neighborhood disappearing the night of his tenth birthday. Then, a few months later, another kid vanished. Finally, when it was Bryson’s birthday, his mother woke both him and his brother up in the middle of the night and brought them over to Jim and Della’s house, telling them only that they needed to be good and stay hidden until she came back for them.

“You didn’t like it there?” I ask.

“No—no, Jim and Della are the best. She’s a really good cook and Jim’s been teaching us how to fix cars in the garage. It just sucks to have to stay in the attic a lot of the time. We don’t really get to go outside, either.”

“And you got caught because you got sick of it?”

Another sigh. “Because they said they were going to take us to California, to a place there that was safe, and my brother, he’s such a baby—he didn’t want to go without this stuffed bear he used to sleep with. I just thought…it’s not so far between our houses, and if I snuck out during the night I could be real quick, you know?”

Zu nods, all sympathy, but there’s something about her expression that makes me think she wants to ask him a question.

“I’m guessing the skip tracer was lurking around the neighborhood, waiting for one of you missing kids to turn back up?”

“I guess.”

This is the part where I’m supposed to say something to make him feel better. I know it is, because Zu is giving me this look like
That’s your cue, buddy
.

“Well…it was nice of you to try. I’m sure, um, your brother appreciated it.”

“If I were smart, I would have taken Marty with me. He’s a Blue—he could have, like, thrown her down the street to help us get away, or something.”

“What are you?” Do not say Red, please, God, do not say Red….The Yellow was scary enough at first. I’m not really sure I could handle that.

“Green.”

“Which means what?” I press. Jesus, where am I even going? I need to pull off eventually, but I just want to get as far away from Phoenix as possible. “You have a good memory?”

He shakes his head. “I’m just good at math—puzzles. Sooo dangerous. Too bad you can’t throw puzzles at a gun.”

I let out a low whistle, more at the bitterness in his tone than the mental image.

“I’m really…I’m really scared I messed it up for everybody. That somehow the skip tracer figured out where I was hiding and got Della and Jim in trouble and the others—”

“Nah, man, I doubt it, not unless you said something,” I say, cutting him off. If I’m not allowed to panic and freak out about this situation, no one else can. “Do you have a way to contact them?”

He has a phone number I can call; it’s just a matter of finding a working, unoccupied pay phone. They basically went extinct once cell phones came around, and then, when no one could afford cell phones or their service, suddenly there were lines around the block to use the precious few pay phones remained.

I find one, finally, at one of those outdoor strip malls that have one nail salon and one Chinese food restaurant still open. I have no idea what they’re doing that the rest of us aren’t, but whatever. Good for them.

Just to make sure no one’s going to stumble across us, I decide to wait it out a few minutes. Make sure it’s safe to leave them here alone. When I’m convinced it’s safe, I turn to interrupt their conversation.

“But I’m sure Della would let you stay, if you wanted to,” Bryson is saying from where he and Zu are huddled in that little bit of space between the dash and the seat. “The attic is big and we have video games!”

I snort, but a second later, a sharp pang cuts through me. I look down at Zu for her reaction as she scribbles out her response on the back of the same worn scrap of notebook paper I saw her looking at earlier.

I lean over his shoulder to see her response. It’s weird, because her handwriting looks the way I’d expect her voice to sound—big, girly, light.
I’m going to my uncle’s ranch in San Bernardino.

Which is…where, exactly? California, I think. If she expects me to drive her all the way out to Southern California, she has another think coming.

“I’ll be right back,” I tell them. “Lock the doors, okay? And stay down.”

I pick up the receiver gingerly, wiping down the mouthpiece against my shirt, like that’s going to help. I pop in the dollar in change and dial the number Bryson wrote out on the back of my hand. It takes a moment for the call to click through to the tone; I glance back over my shoulder, making sure they aren’t peeking over the dashboard to watch when I specifically told them not to.

It rings three times, and just when I’m sure I’m going to be kicked to voice mail, a breathless voice answers.

“Um, yeah, hi, I think I…” Oh, shit. Does Gray still have his cronies listen in on calls? I mean, would they have any reason to listen in on this particular house’s calls? “I think I found your, um, stray…ra-dog.”

Shit, I almost said rabbit. Be cool, Gabe.

The woman—Della, I’m assuming—is silent.

“I’m happy to drop him off, but maybe it would be, um, better for you to come get him? He is a big dog. Nice…uh, reddish fur? Do you know which one I’m talking about?”

“Yes,” she says, her voice soft. She’s Southern—unexpected. “Can you tell me where you are? I’d be happy to meet you.”

I lean back out of the booth, trying to see the nearest street name. Sweat is pouring down my back, and not just because of the heat. “I’m grabbing dinner at Mr. Foo’s on Baseline and Priest Drive.”

“All right.” I can hear her keys rattle as she grabs them. “Okay, I’ll be there in less than a half hour. Do…do I need to bring anything with me? To thank you?”

“What do…” Oh.
Oh.
She’s asking if I need some kind of reward, I think. Crap. I mean…I guess I just assumed the only financial gain was in turning the kids in, not, you know, returning them. I’m so stunned I can’t think of a thing to say.

“Hello?”

“Some gas money would be great, I guess,” I manage to get out, “if that’s okay?”

I can’t really sort out my thoughts, even as I hang the phone up and make my way toward the car. The kids both turn and look at me, these little faces with big eyes, as I slide in and slam the door behind me. My forehead falls against the steering wheel as I lean into it, closing my eyes.

“Did you get Della?”

There’s a rustle of paper and faint scratching. I open one eye just in time to see Zu pass a note back to Bryson. It’s such a natural, typical thing for these kids to be doing in such a bizarre setting under such horrible circumstances that I have to smile, just a little bit.

“Zu wants to know if you need her to find us something to eat,” Bryson says, reading the paper.

I sit back, giving her an exasperated look of my own. “Della’s coming in a half hour. If you’re hungry, I can get whatever fifteen bucks will buy at Mr. Foo’s.”

They both shake their heads, and I realize, my exasperation blooming to a whole new level, that they’re worried about me being hungry. “I’m fine. We’ll wait until Della gets here.”

It’s my job to keep a lookout in the parking lot for her car or anyone or anything that could be suspicious—which in this day and age is pretty much everything, but this part of town is as dead as we could hope for. Out of boredom, I start fussing with the skip tracer’s tablet I swiped.

The home screen is a map of the United States that quickly zooms in on Arizona and then drops a red pin on the location of the PSF base in downtown Phoenix. A window pops up, letting me know it can’t connect to a local wireless network, but would I like to engage the satellite service for a small fee?

No. Hell no. That means someone on the other end can use that same connection to trace the location of the tablet.

What’s surprising, though, is that I can still use it without letting it hook up to the Internet. Maybe all the information is preloaded into the tablet, and you only need the Internet to download updates? That seems reasonable; the only thing spottier than the Internet these days is President Gray’s resume as leader of the free world.

The main menu is a series of buttons that range from GPS services, to a digital version of the handbook, to something called “Recovery Network.”

So
this
is what Hutch was going on about. After I tap the button with my finger, the screen changes, switching over to a list of names and pictures of kids. Most of the photos are kind of heartbreaking—they look terrified in them. The ones that are in camps have the red word
RECOVERED
across their photos. None of them list where the camps are, but in each profile is a kid’s basic information—approximate height and weight, hometown, parents’ names, whether or not the kid was turned in or “recovered.”

It’s curiosity, I’ll admit it. There’s a search bar at the top of the screen, so I type in
Zu
. I try not to glance down at her as the tablet loads the results. And, great, over three hundred names come up. It went through and picked out any kid who had
zu
in any part of their name, including a surprising number of Zuzanas and Zuriels.

But her name is Suzume. I know it the minute I see it, even though her doll-like face is framed by thick, glossy long hair. The tears hadn’t finished drying on her face when they’d taken the photo. She looked at the camera like the lens was the end of a gun waiting to fire.

Twelve years old, from Virginia. An only child.

At large,
her listing says.
Yellow. $30,000 reward for recovery. Highly dangerous, approach with caution.
Then, because it’s all not horrible enough, it lists the date she escaped her “rehabilitation program” as being only four months ago. The number they gave her is 42245.

Below that is the field the skip tracers use to leave tips. There are two sightings reported in Ohio and one dated a few months ago, in late March, in Virginia.

A pounding between my ears starts at a low, uneven beat and races to a shattering pulse. Suddenly, I’m seeing two screens instead of one, and then they’re both blurring and I can feel my blood start to fizz beneath my skin, pounding at my temples. My whole body heats, like it’s being taken by a fever. I can’t breathe, I can’t breathe, I’m going to be sick.