The Vanishing Girl (18 page)

Chapter 27

“…
I’ve been the
one here next to you all these years. Not her. Me,” Desiree said. Her voice was the first thing I recognized when I teleported into Caden’s room later that night. Desiree’s back was to me, but I could see her shoulders shaking.

I gazed around Caden’s room. We’d come back from the lake about thirty minutes ago and parted ways outside my room. After that, I’d gone straight to bed. Caden, apparently, hadn’t.

Caden stood facing me, and his eyes moved to mine as soon as he saw me appear. I took a step back.

“Ember
—
” he said, reaching out as if to stop me.

Desiree spun around to face me. “What are
you
doing here?” she said. I saw her hand twitch; I just knew she was visualizing slapping me.

I’d like to see her try.

Caden caught her as she began to move towards me. “Desiree, stop it,” he said, holding her back.

She ignored him. “You’ve ruined my life,” she said to me, her eyes pinched and angry.

Geez. I rubbed my forehead. Did I really have to do this right now? “Screw it.” I turned on my heel and left.

“Wai
—
” Caden’s voice muffled as the door swung shut behind him. This was my ten minutes, and damnit, I would do whatever I wanted to.

The sight of the two of them together didn’t bother me so much as the look in Desiree’s eyes. They were too hurt, too desperate. I had every right to be wary of her.

I walked down the hallway and took the stairs down to the lower level of the facility. I hadn’t fully explored all the floors, and now seemed like the perfect time to do so.

This level wasn’t set up for teleporters
—
I could tell by the chipped off-white paint covering exposed metal pipes. The air down here was cooler, and it pressed in on me.

I ran my fingers over the walls as I wandered the basement’s corridors. I heard a click and froze. Down the hallway in front of me, a door squeaked, and a staff member exited it. He didn’t so much as glance my way before he turned and headed in the opposite direction. I watched the door shut, catching a fleeting glimpse of a filing cabinet in the room.

As soon as the staff member turned the corner, I approached the door he left. Something about the glimpse inside the room looked familiar. As the staff member’s footfalls became fainter and fainter, I realized what it was.

It was the room I’d traveled to. The room that held the project’s disturbing secrets.

I tried the door. Locked. I checked the pockets of the nondescript blue jeans I wore, looking for something to open the door with. All that I found was a wadded up ball of paper that had fused together in the wash.

I shook my head. Details like this always confused me. I mean, these jeans would disappear, dematerialize, in a matter of minutes along with the wadded paper I conjured up.

I eyed the door again, a small smile blossoming on my face as an idea formed. The room beyond it contained some of the project’s darkest secrets. As soon as I got the chance, I’d make my way back here to find out the rest.

One of the most basic rules of survival: have a contingency plan or two. If Adrian wouldn’t help me, then I’d have to do this the hard way
—
by taking whatever evidence I could and running away.

So far I’d gathered that there were two ways to do so
—
by hitching a ride on a helicopter or cutting my way through the fence. And now that I’d found the room with the files, I had the evidence I needed to bring along with me.

Caden’s face flashed through my mind, and my smile melted away. I couldn’t leave him. Somewhere along the way, he’d become a part of me. I’d have to adjust my plans so that he’d come along with me, if he wanted to. I hoped he did.

It was time to call in those favors of Caden’s. It was time to form an escape plan.

The next morning
, before our weapons class, Caden waited for me outside the facility’s main building. He leaned against the wall, his eyes glittering. The sunlight made his hair shine and his skin appear even tanner than usual.

I walked past him, making my way to the dirt trail. We were practicing our aim again at the shooting range.

“So that’s how’s it’s going to be, princess?”

I ignored him and picked up my pace.

He appeared next to me seconds later. “Someone jealous?” he said.

I pushed my legs harder to get us out of earshot. I didn’t want any casual listeners to hear what I was about to say.

“I’ll take that as a yes,” he said.

I glanced over my shoulder to make sure no one was right behind us. When I didn’t see anyone, I slammed Caden against a tree that bordered our trail. “Just shut up about Desiree for a minute, would you?”

He raised his eyebrows, his jaw working. It looked as though Caden was angry, though it probably had less to do with me pushing him than it did me ignoring him earlier.

“I’m cashing in on my question,” I said.

He hesitated, then nodded once, his temper draining away to something more solemn. At the back of his eyes I could see a spark of fear.

“Will you help me escape this place?”

He glanced up and down the trail before grabbing my arm and pulling me off the trail some distance. Only once we were a hundred or so feet from the trail did Caden speak. “Not that this would surprise you, but there are ears everywhere.”

“I don’t care. Answer the question.”

He exhaled, threading his hands together behind his head. “Yes,” he said, “I’ll help you escape, but I have a single condition.”

I waited.

“I’m coming with you.”

Chapter 28

“
Good. I was
hoping you’d say that.” I stood on my tiptoes and kissed him. His arms wrapped around me, and he pulled me up higher.

I hadn’t told him about my plans on exposing the government; that would be asking for too much. But he’d escape with me. That was more than enough.

When we finally broke apart, Caden said, “So I’m just going to venture a guess that the favor you want to cash in has something to do with planning our getaway?”

I nodded.

Caden glanced around again. “Let’s meet here Saturday morning at five.”

“Five o’clock
—
in the morning?” I hoped I heard him wrong.

Caden raised his eyebrows and folded his arms. “What, you thought planning our escape was going to be easy?”

I gave him a look. We both knew that I was more than willing to rough it
—
Caden was the one who’d seen all of my survival gear when he caught and cuffed me.

“We’re going to have to be extremely careful even talking about this,” he said. “The project doesn’t underestimate our resourcefulness, and they’re always on the lookout for teleporters thinking of defecting.”

“What happens to the teleporters who defect?” I asked.

Caden rubbed his eyes with his thumb and forefinger. “I don’t know. Some disappear permanently. Others, only for a short while. But the ones that come back, you can see the fear in their eyes. They don’t talk about what happened to them, but whatever it was, it scared them into cooperating.”

I heard the
pop of paintball guns beyond the obstacle course in front of us.

“You ready for this, princess?” Caden asked me nearly an hour later. He glanced down at me, the morning sunlight reflecting off of his tinted lenses. He held his gun at his side. Even though this was just training, he looked lethal.

We each wore vests, headgear, and protective glasses. In front of us the flat land of the shooting range had been turned into an obstacle course. Along the perimeter temporary walls had been erected and covered with black tarp. It prevented us from seeing what was inside, and once we were in there, it would prevent us from escaping until we’d made it to the end of the course.

“We’ll see,” I said. While I spoke, I stared at the tarp-covered entrance. The material fluttered and snapped in the breeze, hiding whatever lay beyond Caden and me.

“Remember, arms up and steady so the gun doesn’t droop,” Caden said. “Two hands on the gun. Keep your sight close to your eye so that you can aim and shoot as soon as you see a target. Lastly, knees bent when you walk
—
it will help you react faster.”

I nodded. Along with our sparring lessons, Caden and I had been working on my aim and my reflexes when it came to weapons
—
specifically guns. It had helped. Now I didn’t shy away from the cold metal weapon, I’d gotten comfortable pulling the trigger and used to the sound of a gun going off.

What I had to figure out now was how to be creative in a high stress environment, because inside the training course our classmates waited for us. Our job was to make it as far through the course as we could without getting a lethal hit on us, and our classmates’ only job was to take us out. Being predictable against smart assailants would get us killed.

Somewhere inside the obstacle course I heard our instructor blow a whistle three times, and the firing ceased. Now things sounded eerily quiet. I could hear my own breathing and the tug and snap of the tarp.

A minute later our instructor came out of the entrance, scribbling something down in his notes.

Once he was done, he glanced up. “You two ready?”

“Yeah,” we both said.

“’Kay, here’s the deal: There’s one entrance and one exit. Once you enter you cannot leave out the way you came. Your only way out is through the obstacle course.

“Twenty teleporters are hiding in there, and they will use every trick in the book to take you two out. Your job is to work together to systematically remove them before they do you.

“Lethal wounds are any shots that hit your head, chest or stomach. Anything else hit will not count.

“I’m timing you for ten minutes. If you can manage to stay alive for that long, I will count it as though you finished the obstacle course.”

Caden and I glanced at each other, and he gave me a slight nod. This would be how we stayed alive. Twenty assailants would take us out before we got to the end of the obstacle course. But staying alive for ten minutes? That, we were pros at.

“Just a warning you two: none of your classmates so far have managed either of those.”

We were the fourth group to go, so that wasn’t exactly making me quake in my boots, but it didn’t inspire much confidence.

Lieutenant  Newman grabbed a stopwatch. “You’ll begin on the count of three. Ready?”

We nodded.

“One …”

I brought my gun up.

“Two …”

My grip tightened and I shifted my weight to my left leg.

“Three.”

Caden and I burst through the tarp. I saw movement to my left, and I immediately fell into a crouch and pulled the trigger of my gun.

Blue paint hit my target in the chest, and he went down. I waited a beat, but no one else popped up.

Only now did I have time to notice that we stood inside a corridor, and from my quick initial glimpse, it appeared to have two exits
—
the one I faced and one at my back.

Behind me Caden’s gun went off. I couldn’t chance throwing a glance over my shoulder, but I suspected someone had tried to attack from the other side of the corridor.

“We need to get out of here,” I said. And fast. If the other teleporters decided to charge us, we’d be outnumbered.

“I have your back covered,” Caden said. “I’ll follow your lead.”

I learned from Caden that hesitation was lethal, but at his words I almost did just that. He trusted my skills. That’s essentially what his words meant, and that was a huge compliment coming from him.

I stood up, and keeping my knees bent, moved to the edge of the corridor. When I reached the end, I waited next to the wall and listened.

At first I heard nothing other than the flapping tarp. Then the scuff of a boot on sandy dirt. Someone was moving not far from us.

I got my trigger finger ready, breathed in and out once, and swiveled my body to face the obstacle course beyond.

Three shooters. That was all I had to time register before a paintball whizzed by, hitting the wall behind me. I crouched lower and pulled the trigger once, twice, three times. I managed to hit two targets in the chest.

Caden’s gun went off, and blue paint splattered against the third shooter’s chest.

I rose up as I took in the obstacle course. Piles of junk composed of large tires, old sparring equipment, and wooden crates offered the only cover. And unfortunately for us, our opponents were using many of them, making them harder to hit and forcing us to expose ourselves if we wanted to get to them for cover.

Two more shooters popped up from behind some of these piles.

Caden broke his own rule and took a hand off his gun to push me into a kneeling position as two paintballs came my way. He aimed and fired using only one hand, looking sexy as hell as he hit first one, then the other assailant.

He really wasn’t kidding when he said he’d spent the last five years training.

I spotted cover to my right, and I moved to it. I heard a shot go off, and a paintball hit my arm.

I bit back a very bad word. That was going to leave a welt. Behind me Caden shot the opponent who’d hit me.

We reached the cover, which consisted of two crates, and Caden did a sweep of the area we’d just come from.

“You okay?” he asked as he did so.

“Fine,” I managed. The shooter had given me a dead arm.

I saw a flicker of movement behind one of the obstacles we’d already passed, and Caden and I shot at it the same time. I missed; Caden didn’t. Paint splattered along the shooter’s helmet.

I leaned my head back against the crate and noticed that someone had strung up mirrors
—
probably hiding cameras
—
along the perimeter of the course. I could see two of them, one attached to the perimeter wall to our left and one to the right.

I nudged Caden and nodded to them. Their rounded surface allowed us to see the spread of most of the course. Together we watched them.

For a while nothing happened. Then one shooter moved and motioned to the others. I counted five altogether. And they were going to strike us at once.

I wondered if they knew we could see them. By the way they exposed themselves, I was guessing they didn’t.

Caden placed a hand across my chest, signaling for me to wait. When I glanced at him, he mouthed,
On my count
. He used his hands to indicate that I go left and he go right. Divide and conquer.

I nodded, and his gaze moved from me to the mirrors. He lifted his hand, holding up three fingers. I shifted my position to a crouch and watched the shooters approach. I’d take the two closest to me. I wouldn’t have a straight shot, which meant I’d have to pull a maneuver.

One of Caden’s fingers went down. Then another.

My muscles tensed. Caden’s last finger went down, and I stepped away from my cover and rolled, a technique I’d learned in close combat. I came up and shot off four paintballs
—
two for each assailant. One hit the first shooter in the chest, the rest missed.

I dove to the side as the unscathed shooter fired at me and cringed when a paintball hit my leg.

Jesus, I had to go on a mission in a couple of days. I healed fast, thanks to my ability, but these suckers were painful enough that I might still have a nasty bruise by the time my mission rolled around.

Clenching my teeth, I knelt, aimed, and fired three shots at the shooter. Two hit him in the chest and he went down.

I heard the whistle go off. “Time’s up,” our instructor said, walking into the obstacle course.

I blinked, the adrenaline still pumping through me. Caden took off his headgear and glasses and flashed me a wide grin. I dropped the paint gun and took off my own headgear.

The shooter closest to me high-fived me. “You were a beast,” he said.

“Thanks,” I said, dazed. I’d been so in the zone that it felt like I was waking from a dream.

“Congratulations to the first pair to stay alive for ten minutes,” our instructor said, and our classmates clapped on our behalf.

He glanced down at his clipboard. “Altogether you two took out fourteen opponents. Impressive by any standard.”

It was impressive, even for teleporters. The realization hit me square in the chest.

Here I was doing it again, showing off talents that I should try to hide. And now it was too late.

“You did amazing,” Caden said, coming over to me and grinning like a fool. When he saw my expression, his smile drained away.

He put a hand on my shoulder and leaned in. “Ember, you okay?” he asked, his voice low so that no one else would overhear him. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

I nodded, but I knew he could see the lie in my eyes.

Because the truth was, now that I’d demonstrated how good I already was with a gun, they’d begin to leverage that ability. That might mean more missions, more danger, and more violence.

Caden couldn’t possibly know just how accurate his words were; I had just seen a ghost. My own.

Early Friday morning
I grabbed the early bird breakfast from the cafeteria and brought a steaming cup of coffee back to my room. Once I had nestled myself in front of my computer, I read over the plans for today’s mission and studied Jacque’s picture. I was to go in, empty the suitcase of the stolen gemstones, and hide them underneath the bed sheets. Then I needed to get myself caught. Easy.

After I began highlighting the floor plan, I heard the knock on my door.

I took a deep breath.

Here we go.