CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Claire glanced at the clock on the nightstand and saw it was time to leave. As she threw back the blanket a sliver of light flashed under her door. She froze and listened as footsteps grew nearer. She dove back under the covers just as her door eased open. With eyes clenched shut, she could feel her mother staring at her. Katherine was never up this late and she hadn’t checked on her since she was a teenager, so the woman’s presence unnerved Claire. She fought her body’s urge to flinch as Katherine’s fingers gently brushed aside a stray hair on Claire’s forehead.

After several minutes, her mother backed away and the door closed with a faint click. Claire exhaled and opened her eyes. The light still glowed from the hallway, making her afraid to move, but she had to go now or be late. Claire eased out of bed, tiptoed to her door and twisted the lock so her mother couldn’t enter if she happened to come back. She bound her hair, removed her microchip and placed it on top of her pillow.

Claire grabbed a jacket and jimmied the window open. She slipped out into the night as quietly as if she was a professional burglar of old. She had planned to creep down alleys and around shrubs to avoid as many of the hundreds of surveillance cameras around town as possible, but necessity made her run along the most direct route possible. Claire didn’t look for cameras to avoid or worry about the noise made by her rapidly churning feet, she just ran, leaping over a small hedge and rounding the corner just as Nyla’s car rolled to a stop.

The door opened and Claire lunged into the car, gasping for breath. She eased the door shut, snapped her seatbelt in place and glanced over at her friend. Nyla returned the look with wide eyes, but to Claire’s relief, Nyla didn’t ask any questions as they pulled away from the curb and drove away from the lights of town.

Sneaking out was easy for Ethan and Jared since their rooms were far from Leah’s and in a different building than Vera or anyone else. They placed their microchips under their pillows and exited through their bedroom windows as they had done many times before and met behind the control room at the exact same time.

The farm had been silent for hours, except for the occasional howl of the reintroduced Mexican red wolf. They knew no one would come outside even if they heard something, yet they moved through the darkness with stealth to retrieve the packs they had stowed the previous night.

Ethan looked around at the farm one last time. Under different circumstance, he would have loved this place. He enjoyed working the landhe just didn’t enjoy working for Vera. He would miss the fields and the cactus-covered hills embracing them, but he wouldn’t miss the control the farm collective represented or his mother. Putting his hand in his pocket, he fingered the small fabric bundle containing the rattles of more than a dozen snakes he had killed over the years. Aside from his knife, the snake’s rattles were the only things he had taken from his room.

“Psst. Come on. We’re running late,” Jared whispered.

Ethan had the overwhelming desire to inflict some form of vandalism to the control room as a final protest, but his sense of responsibility to his friends won out. He couldn’t risk doing anything that would advertise their absence any sooner than necessary, so he turned his back on the only life he had ever known and followed Jared away from the farm.

As they approached the meeting place, there was no sign of Jared or Ethan. Nyla pulled over and parked, wishing they had discussed what to do if they were early or if the guys were late. Her anxiety grew as she watched Claire chew frantically on her fingernails, so she got out of the car and paced.

Nyla couldn’t see very far in the darkness, despite a descent moon, no matter how hard she strained her eyes. She looked overhead and saw few stars, so feared the predicted storm was closing in on them and knew a lot of rain could ruin everything they planned and make crossing the Rio Bravo very dangerous if not impossible. But, they would deal with that obstacle when and if it arose. For now her only concern was that Ethan and Jared had been caught or were unable to get away.

“They’ll be here,” Claire said, grabbing Nyla’s hand and pulling her to a stop.

Nyla hadn’t even realized Claire had gotten out of the car. The short sentence was the first words Claire had spoken since Nyla had picked her up and the sound seemed unnaturally loud. Usually Claire’s reassurances comforted her, but this time it did nothing to soothe the uneasy feeling bubbling in her stomach, but just as full-blown panic set in Nyla spotted Jared and Ethan jogging out of the darkness.

Within seconds, Ethan had dropped his pack and was lying on his back with his head under the car. Jared held the flashlight and passed the tools to Ethan needed to retrieve the tracking device. Once removed, Ethan pitched the tracker far out into the desert as Claire and Jared climbed into the tiny back seat of the car.

“You drive. I’m so nervous I’ll probably run off the road and kill us and all of this will have been for nothing,” Nyla said as she moved around to the passenger side.

“It’ll be all right. We’ll make it, I promise,” he replied with a hug and a reassuring smile.

“There’ll be plenty of time for that later,” Claire stated. “Let’s get a move on it. We only have so many hours of darkness.”

Once they were all in the car and driving south, Nyla’s anxiety began to fade and her stomach quit churning. They were all together and that’s all that mattered now. She couldn’t have lived the life she would have been forced to lead, and Ethan’s and Jared’s days were numbered if they didn’t flee, so even if their plan failed, it no longer seemed so frightening. They had nothing to lose.