Private 12 - Vanished (16 page)

“Wait! You can’t just leave me here!” I shouted.

But their laughter was growing softer and softer. I heard the three car doors pop as they got in the car; then I heard the engine rev. They didn’t pull away, however. Probably just sitting out there with the heat blasting, retelling my story and laughing their asses off. I looked around the room for the first time, the moonlight streaming through the window behind me affording the only illumination. The floor was covered in dust and the rest of the windows on this level had been boarded up. I wondered if the cops had locked the door behind them. Then, I looked down at my hands. They had uncuffed me. They had left me alone inside a house with who knew how many doors and windows, completely free to move around.

It was as if they were begging me to run. What the hell kind of cops were they?

I got up from my chair, my heart pounding in every one of my veins. Could I run? Where would I go? Did it even make any sense? I hadn’t done anything wrong. Maybe these losers refused to believe me, but the FBI would have to. They had zero evidence against me. None. As much as my flight reflex was urging me to take the opportunity and get the hell out, my logic got the better of it. I had nowhere to go. At least, nowhere they wouldn’t find me.
My best bet was to stay here, try to keep warm, and wait to see what happened next.

Just as I made this decision, my phone beeped.

I jumped halfway across the room and fumbled it out of my pocket.

ASSIGNMENT NUMBER FIVE: BEHIND THE HOUSE THERE’S A GATE. YOU’LL FIND A NOTE TUCKED THROUGH THE LOCK. THIS NOTE WILL LEAD YOU TO NOELLE.

First my heart sunk into my toes. A fifth assignment? They had said there would be four. But then, just as quickly, my skin started to sizzle. The cops were wrong. Noelle was alive. I could still save her.

And just like that I knew. I knew like I knew my own birthday. Those people were not cops. They were in on this somehow. They
had brought me out here, left me in the house alone, so that I could get this text and be sent off on the latest mission.

Adrenaline racing through my veins, I turned around and stepped to the side of the window, peeking around the frame. The cops were still sitting in their car, gabbing away, the overhead light on in the backseat so I could see Zit Lady’s laughing face. Did they know I’d already gotten the text? Were they supposed to follow me if I fled? The thought of those three trailing after me in the dark was not one I relished. All I knew for sure was that right then, no one was even looking in my direction. If I wanted to get out of here on my own, it was now or never.

On my way to the back of the house, I grabbed Gruff’s hat and gloves. The floorboards seemed to grow louder as I raced down a hallway, through a decrepit old kitchen to the back door. I tried the knob, but it was locked, the windows boarded over. Desperately, I whirled around, looking for another way out. Something moved in the corner of my vision and I flinched, but it was just an old, flimsy curtain, billowing in the breeze. I brought my hand over my heart and took a deep breath.

Wait. The breeze. That meant there was an open window.

I raced out the side door of the kitchen into an old, dusty library. The window behind the desk on the far side of the room was broken, with no board to cover it. I reached up and used all my strength to turn the lock, which had been painted over about ten thousand times. Finally, it cracked free and I was able to shove open the huge frame, using both hands and all my body weight.

Far preferable to climbing past the broken pane. But I would have done it, if I’d had to.

I stuck my head out and glanced toward the front of the house. I was well out of view of the driveway and the car. I tugged Gruff’s gloves on over my frigid fingers, pulled his still-warm hat down over my ears, and climbed out. My snow boots sunk into the six inches of untouched snow outside the window. I took one second to ponder how completely insane this all was, and then I turned and ran.

The white scrap of paper was there as promised. It had been rolled into a tiny scroll. My fingers shook as I extracted it from the lock, knowing someone must be watching me, as they had been all along. I could practically feel them breathing down my neck. I clasped the note in one hand and removed my glove so I could open the note. Tilting it toward the light from my cell phone, I read the words that would hopefully lead me to Noelle.

TAKE THE PATH INTO THE WOODS. DO NOT VEER FROM THE PATH. YOU’LL SOON COME TO AN UNLOCKED SHED, AND THERE YOU WILL FIND FURTHER INSTRUCTIONS.

Further instructions? Why couldn’t they just give it all to me now?

Cursing under my breath I shoved the note into my pocket and pulled the glove back on, squinting into the woods behind the gated yard. I knew it must be pitch-black under the cover of the thick trees, but what could I do? I wasn’t about to go back to ask the bad guys for a flashlight. Right now, all that mattered was finding Noelle. If she was out there, alone in the woods somewhere, she was probably terrified and about to freeze to death. There was nothing to do but go forward.

I unlatched the gate and pulled it toward me. It let out a squeal roughly the same decibel level as a sonic boom. Behind me, I heard a shout. That was when I started to run. I raced across the small space of snow between the fence and the woods and dove under the
low branches crossing over the path, my foot slipping out behind me in the wet snow. My breath already came in ragged gasps, as if I had sprinted a mile in ten seconds. One glance over my shoulder told me no one was gaining on me, no one was on my tail. But then I saw the footprint I had left in the snow and realized it would only be a matter of minutes. In this terrain, they could track me anywhere. Besides, they probably knew where I was headed anyway. My only hope was to get them off my tail. To confuse them long enough that they’d give up—long enough that they’d leave me out here alone to do what I had to do.

Don’t veer off the path.

So much for that. This was a matter of survival. Mine and Noelle’s. I took an abrupt turn, and dove into the trees. Shoving aside branches and jumping over a fallen log, I tried to keep my bearings. If I could keep a straight line and remain perpendicular to
the original path, then I’d be able to find my way back. I had to get to my hands and knees to crawl under the low-hanging bows of an evergreen, and when I stood up again, muddy pine needles clung to the legs of my jeans. At least Gruff’s gloves were vinyl and waterproof. Nothing could touch my fingers in those. After what felt like an hour of jogging, jumping, ducking, and the occasional scratch to the face, I glimpsed a huge oak tree looming up into the sky. The perfect hiding spot. I ducked behind it, took a deep breath, and attempted to calm my wildly beating heart. I tried my best to listen.

There was nothing. Wind swirled through the bare branches overhead, but other than that, silence. Had I just imagined that shout? Or had I gotten so far away from the path that I couldn’t even hear them coming after me?

I tugged my phone out of my pocket, cupped my fingers around it just in case, and hit the screen to light it up. The time read 9:46. And the battery indicator was seriously low. Perfect. That’s what you get for leaving your phone on twenty-four-seven waiting for psycho kidnappers to text. For a split second I thought about calling Josh. Thought about telling him everything and having him call in the cavalry. But the original instructions still applied. Tell anyone and she dies. I was on my own. I shoved aside my frustration and I told myself I would give it five minutes. Wait until 9:51. Then I would start back for the path.

Those five minutes dragged on for days. The longer I stood still, the more alone I felt, the more scared, the more frozen. I had to get moving. I took my first step the moment the clock ticked over.

Okay. All I had to do was retrace my steps. No problem whatsoever. Just keep to a straight line and I’d find myself back on the beaten path. Then all I had to do was hook a right and the path would take me to this shed, which would lead me to Noelle. I turned my phone on to the flashlight app to help guide my way.

I stepped over a thick branch I remembered vaulting over moments ago, then shuffled through a pile of wet, fallen leaves. Soon I was passing through a semi-familiar clearing. But then I paused. That evergreen I had ducked under … hadn’t it been right on the periphery of this clearing? Dead ahead, all I saw were white birches and elms. Not an evergreen among them.

Instantly, my heart started to panic. I turned around, looking for the evergreen. And there it was, just to my right. I took a deep breath and blew it out. I must have just gotten confused in the dark. No worries. Now I was back on the right track. This time, I walked around the tree, not feeling so daredevilish now that I wasn’t being chased, and continued on my way.

It took about five minutes for me to figure out it was the wrong way. Because I hadn’t jumped the little stream I was now standing beside. And I was sure I hadn’t come down that small hill on the other side.

Okay, Reed. Don’t panic. Do not panic. Just go back to the clearing and see if there are any other evergreens. Maybe you picked the wrong one.

But when I turned around again and retraced my steps. I couldn’t even find the clearing. It was right there a second ago. Right there.
And it wasn’t small. How could I have lost an entire clearing in the space of five minutes?

Now my pulse really started to pound. I was lost. Plain and simple. Noelle was out there somewhere, counting on me, and I’d gotten myself completely lost. All I’d had to do was stay on the path. Stay on the damn path. And I would have found the shed by now. I could have outrun Gruff and Cheese Breath and Zit Lady. And if I had, I could have gotten the next instructions, found Noelle, and the two of us could have hidden in the woods together until the coast was clear.

“So stupid,” I whispered to myself, turning in a circle. “So, so stupid!”

Why didn’t I ever stop to think? Why did I have to make such rash decisions? This was a life or death situation I was in here. And I just jumped off the path? Who did I think I was anyway, some
Survivor
star?

“Okay, wait,” I said to myself, stopping my crazy, dizzying circle. “This is not the end of the world. You survived days alone on an island, you can survive this.”

Of course, there was a difference. At least on the island it had been warm. If I spent another hour out here I was going to freeze to death.

Then, suddenly, my phone vibrated in my hand. My heart leapt into my throat. There was one more difference. Here, I had my phone.

The vibration was a text from Portia asking where the hell I was.
I yanked off my gloves and started to text back, but then paused. What was I going to say? That I was lost somewhere in Soldier Woods and to please come find me? Telling her that would mean Noelle’s death. What the hell was I supposed to do?

I looked down at the half-written text and was about to just finish it. Let her read it and call the cops. Maybe they could get here before the kidnappers figured it all out and hurt Noelle. I couldn’t do this alone anymore. I didn’t even know where I was. But then, the screen suddenly went blank.

“No,” I said, hitting the screen over and over again. “No, no, no!”

Shouting, of course, wasn’t going to do anything. The battery had died. And now I really was on my own. I stuffed the useless tech into my back pocket and told myself this was not the end of the world. Just pretty damn close.

My stomach grumbled audibly and I suddenly wished I had eaten more of that biscotti Tiffany had offered me back at the solarium. A stiff wind rattled the trees around me and I flipped up the collar of my coat, cuddling down into its warmth. It was time for me to find some kind of shelter. Someplace at least a little bit out of the elements where I could stop and think. Figure out what I was going to do next.

I kept walking in the general direction of the clearing—or at least where I thought the clearing would be—and came upon a little circle of evergreens. I stooped down to see between their trunks. Inside the circle was a bed of fallen needles, all dead and brown, and they
appeared to be dry, as though the crisscrossed netting of branches above had protected them from the snow and rain. Turning to the side, I shimmied my way through the space between two trunks and sat down. I waited for wetness to seep through my jeans, but my butt stayed miraculously dry. It was far warmer inside as well, shielded as I was from the wind. I curled my dirty wet knees up under my chin, held my legs to me, and took a deep breath.

Okay, Reed. Just think
, I told myself, listening to the wind above and the rhythmic creak of the branches as they swayed back and forth.
Just think. There has to be a way out of here. There just has to be.