The Taking: The Countdown Part 13

She listened too, and then frowned an It's nothing frown back at me.

She was wrong. It definitely wasn't nothing. I hauled a.s.s toward the not-a-noise, warning myself not to get my hopes up.

"Simon . . ." There was a waver in Griffin's voice, something I'd rarely ever heard. It was dark as h.e.l.l, but Griffin wasn't the scaredy-cat type. Even spooked, I knew she'd never stand for being left behind.

I heard her boots crunching along the pa.s.sageway and the flashlight she held swept across the trash all around us. I barely noticed; my concentration was zeroing in on something else.

A mewling . . . a low, almost imperceptible yowl.

Whatever it was-a cat . . . a dog maybe-it didn't sound at all like Kyra. Had some animal gone and gotten itself trapped below these ruins?

It sure as h.e.l.l wasn't Ben's dog, that much I knew. He'd left Nancy back in his truck. He hadn't wanted to, but no way was I letting that spastic mutt anywhere near this place; she would have given us away in a second, with all her jumping and running around. We might as well have let her come though; her constant howling had been a dead giveaway, even from behind the truck's closed windows.

That's what this sound reminded me of, a m.u.f.fled howl.

Not willing to take the chance of running into some feral animal, I held my gun at the ready. I wouldn't be proud of myself if I was forced to shoot an innocent creature, but if it came down to it or me, I chose me.

"There," I whispered insistently to Griffin. "That! Did you hear it that time?"

When I looked over my shoulder at Griffin, her face was cast in an eerie veil of shadows. She held her position, straining to decide if she had heard it or not. Maybe, her expression told me. I don't know . . .

Keep moving, I answered with a head nod and this time she followed because she wanted to know too.

Then she grabbed my arm.

We were close. The whimpering sound was on us all at once, louder, and clear enough to leave no question. Griffin shifted the beam of light so it scaled the walls. She used it to search for a doorway, a window, some means of access. Then she let it hover over piles of garbage while I kicked at them, looking for an animal caught in the wreckage of this place.

Whatever was making the sounds was nearby. So nearby it should be right here, where we were standing. Yet . . .

There was nothing. Just Griffin and me and rubble for as far as we could see.

I kept moving, thinking we'd misheard, miscalculated. It was farther down. But after several steps the sound faded, got more muted, and I realized we'd pa.s.sed it.

Even before I said anything, Griffin had already turned to go back.

"Here," she said, stopping at the same spot we'd been in before. She secured the flashlight under her arm as she used her fingertips to explore the wall. "We must've missed it."

While she probed, I pounded, thinking I might dislodge a hidden door or something.

The sound came again. We were in the right place, and the thing, whatever it was, wanted to be found. It grew louder, more insistent.

"No, Griff. Christ. It's right here."

That's when we realized there was a hatch of some sort cut into the floor itself. A trapdoor. The handle was flush with the ground, making it almost unnoticeable in the dark. If it hadn't been for the sounds coming from below us, we'd have missed the d.a.m.n thing entirely.

"You sure about this?" Griffin asked, when a long keening moan reached up to us.

"Of course not. But we've come this far, haven't we?"

The hatch screeched when I lifted it-the kind of nails-on-a-chalkboard sound that made your skin p.r.i.c.kle.

Griffin aimed the light from the flashlight into the hole. It was darker down there, infinitely more sinister. The stairs going down looked as if they'd been hand carved into the dank earth itself-hard-packed and uneven, a death trap waiting for one misstep.

"Ladies first," I proposed breathily.

But Griffin was Griffin and no way would she back down from a challenge, joke or not. When she started toward the steps I grabbed her arm.

"Stop. I'll do it. You stay here and . . ." I tried to think of a good excuse that didn't sound like I cared what happened to her one way or the other. Finally, I ended with, "Just stay here."

But Griffin . . . Christ, she was stubborn, and she was right at my back the entire way down the steps.

"Watch it!" I grumbled, when she almost shoved me over.

She didn't apologize or back off, and although I wouldn't tell her so, I was glad I didn't have to face what was down there alone.

Her flashlight slashed through the darkness, landing just about everywhere in spastic fits, combing the carved ground. Until it landed on the thing responsible for bringing us down there to begin with-the demanding mewls that had turned to full-blown wails, still m.u.f.fled but unrelenting.

"Willow!"

A wave of emotions slammed into me, leaving me speechless and stunned and horrified.

Willow was here. Willow was alive. Willow had a rag stuffed in her mouth, and her hands and feet were bound.

But Willow was . . . here of all places. Buried in the hollow depths of this abandoned pile of rubble. And if we hadn't heard her, if we hadn't come to investigate . . . I shuddered. I didn't want to think about it.

She didn't look too bad, all things considered. She didn't have a bullet hole in the center of her forehead, and right now, that was a major triumph.

In fact, she looked completely uninjured, the way any Returned should. That didn't mean she hadn't been hurt, it just meant enough time had pa.s.sed that she'd already healed, and that was good enough for me.

Good enough because we'd found her. Somehow we'd found her.

"Jesus. Willow . . . ," I repeated, yanking the gag out of her mouth. "What happened? Who did this to you? How long have you been down here?"

In the surreal light from Griffin's flashlight, Willow grinned. She freaking grinned! "Good to see you too."

I'd have hugged her-really, I considered it-but I liked my face the way it was, and Willow wasn't what anyone would call the hugging type.

"Griffin," Willow said, nodding toward the one person she'd always believed was responsible for getting her kicked out of Blackwater all those years ago. "Thanks for coming." There wasn't a trace of sarcasm in her voice.

Griffin was even less comfortable with displays of affection than Willow. "A little light deprivation and some gentle torture, and you go all soft on us?"

Willow shot Griffin a tolerant look-huge for Willow. If I didn't know better, and if we weren't holed up in some grimy underground dungeon, I'd swear I smelled a friendship brewing.

"We gotta get outta here before she comes back," Willow insisted, when I finally managed to free her from the archaic straps that had held together long enough to restrain her.

"She . . . ?" I started, and then realized Willow was in the dark, literally. "Do you mean Natty and the others?"

Willow jumped to her feet and swayed slightly, looking like a drunken toddler. It took her legs a second to adjust as she flexed her wrists and her shoulders. "Natty and Eddie Ray," she told me with an intensity that made it clear she had no idea what had happened just one floor above her.

I shook my head and said flatly, "Dead. All of 'em."

"Is that what was happening up there?" She nodded at the ceiling. "I heard something. Did you at least question them first? Find out why she did this? What they wanted?"

"We were too late. They were like that when we got here," Griffin answered. "What do you know? Did they tell you anything? Maybe you overheard something."

Willow screwed up her face in concentration. "I didn't. Nothing useful, at least that I know of. But Natty's dead too, you're sure?" Her eyes searched mine. When I nodded, she just shook her head. "Too bad. I would've liked a shot at her myself." She frowned. "After I bailed camp I lost track of everyone, but I wanted to be careful not to draw attention to myself so I laid low . . . didn't reach out to any other camps in case the No-Suchers were listening to chatter. I hitched rides, listened for word of anything interesting to see if I could pick up your trails, but nothing." She stretched. "Then I heard about a group staying up at this place in Wyoming-kids, the locals called 'em. Apparently they weren't too careful . . . stocked up on supplies in town. Made a lot of stupid mistakes. I waited, hoping to catch sight of one of them, and when I did I was shocked to lay eyes on Natty."

"What did you say to her? Did you ask her about Thom?" Griffin interjected.

"'Course I did," Willow said, making a face to let her know what a stupid question it was. "And she fed me this c.o.c.k-and-bull story 'bout how Thom tricked her, and took her hostage as he left Blackwater, but how she'd escaped and found this new group of Returned and was up here, living with them." She shook her head, raking her hand through her hair. "I f.u.c.ked up, Sim. I fell for her bulls.h.i.t, all of it. When I got here, that b.i.t.c.h drugged me with something." She rubbed the side of her neck. "Next thing I knew I was down here, and that SOB Eddie Ray was breathing down my neck."

"What about Kyra?" I asked. "Did they tell you why they took her?"

Willow dropped her hand, her attention captured. "Kyra? What's she got to do with all this?"

"They were holding her hostage too," Griffin said.

"Were . . . ?" Willow stated as if this was news to her. "But not now?" Then her expression cleared and her face fell. "Aw, s.h.i.t. Is she dead too?"

Griffin answered, "Not dead, but missing. We're hoping to find her before it's too late."

"Then what are we still doing down here?" This was an accusation. The old Willow was ready for action.

TYLER.

WE HAD IT-A LOCATION.

Jett refused to give us all the details-plausible deniability, he maintained. But if I had to guess he'd somehow hacked into NASA or some other s.p.a.ce agency, and had used the reverse star chart to come up with the coordinates of a location here on Earth. Even better, it was in California.

The guy was a freaking miracle worker.

Now we just had to get there.

It was too far, and way too cramped, to make the 1,200-mile trip packed into two vehicles with eight people and a hyperactive dog. Or maybe it just felt that way.

Whatever the case, we stopped by Griffin's temporary camp and dropped off Nancy and whoever else wanted to get out, which turned out to be Griffin's two soldiers, who weren't invested in finding Kyra the way the rest of us were. Ben made the poor guys promise to guard the dog with their lives and to feed her only the best rations. They agreed, but only after their eyes slid to Griffin for authorization.

Nancy howled and both men had to hold her back while our two vehicles rolled out of camp.

"She's a dog," Simon told me, the only thing he'd said to me in hours. "She licks her own b.u.t.t. She'll forget all about him in two seconds."

Somehow, I doubted that. But I didn't want to debate the Nancy-Ben relationship with Simon, either, so I dropped it.

Less than a day and we'd be there. And with any luck at all we'd find something-some shred of information that would lead us to Kyra. Because right now it was killing me not to know where she was. That I couldn't pinpoint her location the way I had before-that beacon of light I'd sensed, leading me to her.

Simon didn't seem to notice the part where we had no real plan. He just charged ahead like it would all work out, because Simon was like that-like a bull, never thinking, never planning, just bulldozing his way through life. Willow sat up front in the SUV, seeming no worse for the wear, even after being imprisoned down in that asylum, while Griffin sat in back with me.

I stared at the back of Willow's head.

Everyone was so quick to accept her story, that of all the places in all the world, she just happened to cross paths with Natty in the middle of Wyoming. That Natty just happened to pull a fast one on her.

I wasn't saying she was lying, I just wasn't entirely convinced.

Still, it wasn't like I had many options. Right now, finding out where this map led was our only hope. Which meant this had to work. That, or we might never see Kyra again.

It wasn't easy though. I couldn't wipe the images of the mess we'd left behind back there at the asylum-the bodies, the strange equipment. What had they done to Kyra?

I forced myself to focus on my primary objective-finding Kyra.

And the first thing I'd do was tell her I forgave her . . . for everything, because I did. How could I not? I'd had time to think about it, and if the roles had been reversed . . . if it had been Kyra dying and my only option had been to send her to them in hopes that they might save her . . . even if it meant she might come back changed . . .

Well, I'd have done it too.

Of course I would have.

Because I loved her.

I couldn't remember everything about us, but I remembered that . . . deep in my bones . . . in every cell of my being, I loved Kyra Agnew.

And I'd be d.a.m.ned if anything was going to stop me from finding her.

CHAPTER EIGHT.

Days Remaining: Eleven WITHOUT THE DRUGS IN MY SYSTEM TO SHIELD me from daybreak, those orange-tinged tips of the sun's arrival felt like white-hot fire pokers gutting me.

Eleven, I heard inside my head as I bolted up from the seat with so much force that my forehead nearly rammed into the dash. But Chuck's reflexes were lightning fast, and instead I crashed against an arm as solid as a tree trunk.

"d.a.m.n, girl. Nightmare?"

From behind, Thom's fingers cupped my shoulder more gently. "You okay?"

Working to get my breathing under control while still being branded from the inside out, I clung to the lie Chuck had offered me. "Yep . . . nightmares."