TWO

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Rage like he’d not felt before, or at least could not remember feeling, boiled beneath Jed’s skin. His hands trembled. How? How could they have found his family?

He cupped Karen’s face in his hands. Her eyes were red and swollen; her lips quivered.

Jed tried to calm his voice. She was already a wreck; he’d only make things worse if he showed his anger and panic. “Karen, who took her? Who, huh?”

“Men.” She sniffed, ran the palm of her hand across her nose.

Jed rubbed his thumbs over her cheeks, wiping the tears. His mind spun in a thousand different directions. He was already in planning mode, formulating a strategy to retrieve his daughter. “What men? How many?”

“There were three of them. They had guns. They . . . they said they were coming back for me.”

“What did they want? Why did they take Lilly?”

Karen sniffed again and licked her lips. “They wanted the thumb drive.”

The drive. It contained every damaging piece of information about the Centralia Project. It named names, pointed fingers, implicated politicians at the very highest levels. It would be the shock wave of the century, a scandal that would be talked and read about for decades to come. It’d been more than two months since Lawrence Habit and Roger Abernathy had passed it to Jed, and he’d done nothing with it. He would; he planned to. But he needed to make sure his family was safe first. And he wanted time to get to know them again, to bond and laugh and cry with them, to love them. Once he took steps to get the drive into the right hands, he knew their road would grow rougher.

He wanted to make sure it happened on his terms, though, and in the time of his choosing.

But he never got to make that choice. The roughened road had found him and now forced him to walk it once more.

“They thought I had it,” she said. “Or knew where it was.”

But she didn’t. Jed had buried it in a small metal box outside the cabin at the edge of the clearing. The location was marked with a formation of softball-size rocks.

Jed pulled his wife close and pressed her head against his chest. She began to sob again.

“It’s all right,” he said, stroking her hair. But it wasn’t. None of this was all right. He cursed himself for not taking action with the thumb drive sooner. He’d been selfish and now it had come back to bite him.

Outside, rain began to fall. Large drops pelted the roof of the cabin like hundreds of fingers drumming at once.

But how could they have found him? The only ones who knew their location were Habit and Roger Abernathy. And to his knowledge, they both perished helping Jed, Karen, and Lilly escape from the Centralia paramilitary forces.

Just then, his mind began swimming in a foggy memory:

He’s with his squad in a home. Afghan. A fellow soldier is on the floor, bleeding profusely from his face. He’s taken a round of Taliban fire through the cheeks. His mouth is a mess. Shattered teeth everywhere, tongue swollen. His eyes are wide, bloodshot, panicked. Breath comes in short bursts. Jed kneels beside him. The soldier is a Ranger, like Jed. His name is Martin, though Jed can’t remember if it’s his first name or last.

Jed removes Martin’s helmet. He speaks into his headset. “Man down. We need a medic in here!”

He strokes Martin’s hair, stares into the man’s frightened eyes. “It’s all right, Martin. You’re gonna be okay, buddy, you hear? You’re gonna be okay.”

But even as he says it, he knows Martin is going to die.

The memory faded and Jed squeezed Karen tighter. “It’s all right, babe. We’ll get her back.”

A thought struck him then, like a bolt of lightning from the storm outside. The Mobil station, the convenience store. The clerk. The bearded man. He’d been planted there to keep an eye on Jed and inform his cohorts. Jed had suspected the man, and now he scolded himself for not acting on his instinct.

Jed pulled away from Karen again. “We need to go.”

“What? Where?” Confusion wrinkled her forehead.

Jed stuffed his handgun into the waistband of his pants. “We need to go to the Mobil.”

“The what?”

He opened the top drawer of his dresser and rooted through the socks and underwear. “The gas station. The store along 95.”

“Why? What’s there?”

There, an extra magazine for his gun. “Someone we need to talk to.”

Karen glanced at the magazine in Jed’s hand. “Are you gonna talk?”

Jed shoved the magazine into his pocket. Normally he would have opted to leave Karen alone and go solo, but he couldn’t do that now. She wouldn’t leave his side. And besides, though he doubted the men who took Lilly would return for Karen like they promised they would, he didn’t want to take any chances.

He grabbed a parka from the floor and tossed it to Karen. “I’ll do the talking.”

Outside, the sky was as gray and lifeless as any long-buried corpse. Rain fell in a deluge, pummeling everything as if it had a point to make and wouldn’t relent until its mission was accomplished. The truck sat quietly, accepting its beating in humble submission, about twenty yards from the cabin.

Standing on the front porch, water splashing around his boots, Jed had to holler over the racket. “I’ll get the truck and pull it up.”

Karen nodded.

Jed ran for the truck, slipping on the wet grass only once. Great drops hammered his parka, beat upon his face, nearly blinding him. Never had he seen such fury in rain.

Inside the truck he wiped the excess water from his face and cranked the engine. He pulled the truck alongside the porch and Karen jumped in.

She pushed the hood from her head. “Why are we going to the filling station?”

“Like I said, there’s someone there I need to talk to.” Jed hit the gas; the truck’s tires spun on the wet grass, then finally gained traction. They lunged ahead. Water fell upon the windshield with all the violence of ax blades and hammerheads. The wipers were quickly overwhelmed.

“About Lilly? About the men?”

“I hope so.”

When they left the clearing, the rain let up a bit, hindered by the thick branches of the pine canopy. Traveling down the mountain was always more tricky than ascending it. And the heavy rain and muddy conditions made for a treacherous trek along the winding road. Jed gripped the steering wheel as if loosening his hold would send the truck toppling down the mountain end over end. The tires slipped and spun, found traction against a patch of rocks, then slipped again.

Karen pressed herself against the seat and held the seat belt with one hand while bracing herself against the dash with the other hand. “We should pray,” she finally said.

“I’m too angry to pray,” Jed said. “You do it.”

He wasn’t angry at God; no, he was angry at himself. Angry for not doing something with the thumb drive sooner, for being selfish, for being paranoid, for being careless. This was his fault and only he could make it right. Only he could get his daughter back. He was angry because he’d just gotten his life back; he’d just found his wife and daughter after never even knowing he’d lost them. And now Lilly was gone again. That was how quickly his life had been changed yet again, turned upside down.

Karen prayed softly, her voice edged with fear, trembling slightly. Her words were gentle and pleading. “Please keep my baby girl safe; hold her in your arms; protect her.” She prayed also for Jed. “Give Jed wisdom; show him the way to our Lilly. Keep him from harm.”

Whatever it takes, Jed thought.

When she had finished, she released the seat belt and placed her hand on Jed’s leg. He glanced at her, at her tearstained face, her reddened eyes, and more anger flared inside him. “Did they say anything else?”

“No. It all happened so quick.”

“Did they hurt Lilly?” He didn’t even want to think the thought, but it was there anyway.

Karen shook her head. “They were rough with her but didn’t hurt her. She’s strong, Jed.”

“I know she is.” His Lilly was truly incredible. All she’d been through, and she never once doubted God was in charge.

Karen began to cry again.

Jed covered her hand with his own. “We’ll get her back. I promise.” It was a promise he wasn’t sure he’d be able to keep; but one thing he’d already settled on: he’d die trying.

“She saw this coming, you know.”

“Lilly?”

“Yes. She told me the other day that she’d been having dreams about men finding us and taking us away, separating us again.”

Jed said nothing. He had no idea Lilly had been struggling with that.

“She may be strong, but she’s still just eight,” Karen said.

An eight-year-old kid who’d been through far worse than most adults. How much should his little girl have to endure? She always appeared so strong, but he realized what a struggle it must have been to cope with everything she’d faced. “And eight-year-olds have nightmares.”

“Adults have nightmares too.”

She was right, of course. She’d been through a great deal as well, and while they’d talked about it some, Jed could tell Karen had been hesitant to unload the full weight of what she carried. In time, he knew she would, but he now saw just how much she’d been trying to carry on her own. “You?”

“I’ve lived every day in fear of someone finding us, finding you. Taking us. Separating us. I’ve been so paranoid I barely sleep at night.”

How could he have been so oblivious to it? He had his concerns too. Of course he did; they all did. But he didn’t know her fears ran so deep. A great sense of guilt now layered the anger he battled. He would make this right. He would get Lilly back. He knew he would because he was willing to risk everything.