CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
Secrets in the Cathedral
Robyn struggled against her captor. “Shh,” a male voice whispered in her ear. “There’s a grid patrol coming.” He drew her back, all the way against the sealed church wall. The corrugated metal sheets thundered behind him. So much for silence.
Then he pulled Robyn straight through the wall. Darkness closed around them. Robyn gasped, as the hand dropped away from her mouth and the guy released her. Robyn spun around.
A young man maybe a few years older stood in front of her with his hands extended like a barrier between them. “I’m not going to hurt you. I swear, I only wanted to help.”
Robyn blinked, her eyes adjusting to the dim light inside the church. “Did you really just pull me through a wall?” she asked, incredulous. They were standing in the church sanctuary. The ceiling swooped into high arches above a cavern of shadowy air. The only light filtered through high, narrow stained-glass windows. Every regular window was boarded tight.
“There’s a loose panel,” the guy said. “You just have to know exactly where to pull. And they were coming up too fast for me to explain.”
“I would have been fine,” Robyn said. “You didn’t have to grab me.”
The guy shook his head. “Trust me, there wasn’t time. The MPs have the grid-search protocols worked out tight as a drum around here. Two were coming from the other direction, too.”
Robyn’s heart trilled. If that was true . . .
“I saw you from the choir loft.” The guy pointed to a set of stairs at the side of the sanctuary that led to a narrow balcony. “Come up and look,” he said.
Robyn’s mood wavered between annoyed and curious. Who did this guy think he was? She followed him. “Who are you?”
“I’m Tucker Branch.” He bounded up the stairs and onto the landing with a flourish. “Denizen of the Nottingham Cathedral.”
Curiosity won. Robyn climbed the stairs after him. “And you decided to save the day. Just for the heck of it?”
Tucker shrugged. “I figure, anyone who’s running from the MPs like that is probably a friend of mine.” He led her to one of the boarded-up windows, which had a plank missing. From this vantage point, she could see the MP who had been chasing her standing at the intersection with his hands on his hips. Four MPs approached from opposite directions, searching every inch of the block.
“Are you some kind of criminal?” Robyn asked. Not that she was judging.
Tucker smiled broadly. “Actually, I’m in seminary.” He pointed to a wooden table in the loft with a pile of thick old books resting on it. Several were open along with notes; it looked like he’d been studying.
“You’re studying to be a priest?”
“A minister.”
“And in your spare time you take in fugitives?”
“Helping the wayward is pretty much a full-time job,” Tucker said.
Robyn looked down at the searching MPs. “How long until they leave?”
“Less than five minutes to search the block. So I’d give it twenty or so for them to clear the whole area.”
Robyn nodded. So she was stuck here for a little while. “Thanks, by the way.” Tucker had saved her hide. She really hoped Laurel had gotten as lucky, and made it back to the woods.
Tucker leaned against the wall and crossed his arms. “Forgive me for saying so, but you don’t seem like the typical fugitive. What happened?”
Robyn sighed. “Kind of a long story,”
Tucker smiled. “It always is.” He stood, just waiting to see what else she might say.
“To be honest, they started chasing me for no good reason.” Which was actually true. Coming off a fire escape wasn’t necessarily a crime. “Although, I may have previously done a few things that are chaseworthy.”
“Or else, why run?” Tucker said.
“I’m Robyn,” she said. Tucker acknowledged the introduction with a slight nod but said nothing further. The strange, old quiet of the cathedral took over. “This is a weird place to study, even for a priest.”
“Minister.” Tucker’s expression turned wistful as he gazed out into the dim, dusty cavern. “I grew up going to this church,” he said. “I’m doing my thesis on its history.”
“So you come here to write?”
“Right.”
Robyn felt a stirring inside her, despite the stillness. She smoothed her hand over her pocket, where Dad’s map rested safely. She had to take advantage of this unexpected development. “Mind if I look around?”
“Sure,” Tucker said. “I’ll show you the place.”
Adjacent to the cavernous sanctuary, through a set of doors on the left-hand wall was the church house. The church house was a three-story building with lots of small offices, meeting spaces, and Sunday-school rooms. They had a dining room and industrial kitchen on the first floor and a smaller house-size kitchen on the second floor, near the office suite.
Everything looked broken down, unused in years, except for the second-floor kitchen, which had some snack items laid out on the counters. Macaroni-and-cheese boxes. Crackers and bread.
“The kitchen still works?” Robyn asked.
“Yeah,” Tucker said. “You want something? Help yourself.”
Robyn didn’t need to be told twice. She reached into the cracker box and pulled out a sleeve of round crackers and tore it open. She munched on them as they walked around.
Returning to the sanctuary, it seemed even huger than before. Cobwebs. Dust. Chipped wood furnishings. Cracked stained glass. Plywood. “It’s in pretty bad shape,” she commented. “What’s going to happen to it?”
“I don’t know. It’s been a landmark in the Nott City skyline for so long that they’re not going to tear it down. But no one cares enough to pay to fix it up, either.”
They walked to the front of the church. Dirty stained-glass windows lined the wall above the altar. It must have been really pretty in its prime, with light streaming through. But where was the light coming from? It couldn’t have been an outside wall; the building didn’t end there. Around behind the altar was a small fellowship room and a preparation room for the ministers. Narrow stone-walled hallways on either side of the altar led to those back rooms.
There seemed to be a hole in the church. An open cube in its floor plan.
“What’s on the other side of this wall?” Robyn asked. She put her hand against the stones. The crevices were sealed with mortar, yet she felt a slight breeze. The whiff of cool air drew her closer to the place.
“Nothing, really,” Tucker said. “It’s kind of a hole in the construction. People used to complain about why they put a wall here. Always having to walk around it. They said they did it to allow light to flow through the stained glass.”
Robyn followed the wall back to the stained glass and peered through. “It’s a courtyard,” she said. “There must be a way to get in there.” The gut-tugging feeling grew stronger.
“In theory,” he agreed. “I mean, I found a possible entrance. It’s hidden in the choir loft, back where we started.”
“Upstairs?”
“I know that sounds strange, but I think there’s a staircase that winds down into the yard. You can kind of see it.” Tucker directed Robyn to peer at an upward angle through a lighter-colored pane of the stained glass. “See those metal-looking dark lines? But the door is locked.”
“Show me,” Robyn said. The insistence in her own voice shocked her. The desire grew strong, though inexplicable.
They climbed back into the choir loft, skirting past Tucker’s massive mound of books. Studying to be a minister must be serious business. At the front of the loft, alongside the high stained-glass windows above the altar, was a black-painted door.
“The keyhole has been removed, see?” He pointed at a dark circular indentation about where a doorknob should have been. But there was no doorknob, either. “It must be permanently bolted.”
“No,” Robyn said, though she couldn’t explain her certainty. “I think that this is the keyhole.” She pushed against it with her thumb. It didn’t budge. She took out Dad’s pocketknife—her knife now, she corrected herself—and sliced through the layers of black paint. She peeled back the gummed-up disk of latex, revealing an oblong silver flap.
“I’ve never seen a keyhole like this.” Tucker’s voice came alive with wonder.
The shape was—to Robyn—both unusual and familiar. She pushed back the flap by inserting her thumb into a curved cavern just large enough for it. The keyhole came to a point inside. Two grooves along the outside edges seemed ready-made for a special kind of key.
Robyn glanced up at Tucker. She didn’t really know him. He might be what he claimed to be—a friend—but really, he could be anyone.
To succeed in this journey, you will be required to trust, Eveline had told her. Tucker had saved her from the MPs, after all. He had helped her get this far.
“I-I might have the key,” she told him.
The Moon Shrine
Robyn brought the moon pendant out of her shirt. She bent forward and slid it into the keyhole until it clicked into place. The door swung open, jerking her along by the neck. She found herself standing on a two-foot-square landing atop a staircase of rusted, black-painted metal. It felt even less secure and enclosed than a fire escape, but it was similar.
The key slid back into her palm, and Robyn straightened to survey her surroundings. The courtyard below was about twenty feet wide, along the stained-glass wall, and almost as deep.
“This is amazing,” Tucker exclaimed. “I have to get my notebook!” He dashed off.
Robyn descended into the courtyard alone. The steep stairs rocked with each step. She steadied herself using the narrow handrail on the wall. There was no second rail; just the open courtyard air. Diagonally across the courtyard, a second, dingy beige staircase led up into the opposite wall.
Gravel stones of black, white, and gray covered the ground. Robyn looked up—the space stretched clear to the sky.
What was this place?
At the center of the gravel stood a flat, wall-like monument, built of solid black stones, with a single row of white stones accenting the middle. It was smooth to the touch. Maybe the same kind of stone as the moon necklace? The wall looked old and weathered, with jagged edges like you might see on ancient ruins. The whole thing wasn’t more than seven feet tall. A base of the same black stones pushed out about two feet at the bottom. An altar, perhaps.
But an altar to what?
From a stone lip jutting out of the wall’s top edge flowed a segmented cloth curtain. It did not look weathered, but fresh and vibrant in the sunlight. Robyn stepped forward and touched it. This, this was the place that had drawn her. She could feel it, pulsing energy at her, strong and warm as the sun itself.
The curtain was segmented into six pieces, none wider than Robyn’s palm, though each was thick and heavy as a giant piece of fettuccine. The silky fabric strands felt smooth, but Robyn sensed texture at the same time. Strange.
She pushed the curtain segments aside. A row of small blocks in the black wall were etched with moon silhouettes, from a blank space that represented a new moon to a full circle. Slivers, crescent, half, gibbous, full. The crescent was centered and appeared largest.
Beneath it, on the single row of white stones, was another set of markings: doming curves and circles.
They looked to Robyn like the pattern of the rising and setting sun. Flat line of the horizon to a bright noonday sun and back again. The circles grew rounder and higher and then returned again.
Robyn heard a knock from above. The black door was closed again. She bounded up the stairs to let Tucker in.
“You trying to lock me out?” he said, looking hurt.
“I left it open,” Robyn said, puzzled.
“Well, it didn’t stay open.”
Robyn shrugged. “Sorry. I don’t know.”
Tucker poked in beside her. It took him about four times as long to get into the courtyard, because he kept stopping to write things down.
“You’re going to fall down the stairs if you’re not careful,” Robyn warned him.
But Tucker was too busy writing to answer. In the silence they both heard the door softly slough shut, of its own accord. They looked up at it.
“What is this place?” Robyn asked. Tucker’s frantic note-taking indicated a level of understanding that exceeded her own.
“I-I didn’t tell you everything I know before,” Tucker admitted, lowering the journal. “Most people don’t have time for strange old stories.”
“What else?” Robyn said. “Tell me everything.” Dad had led her to this place. She couldn’t imagine the reason, but if there was any chance that following his clues could lead her home again, she would do anything.
“It’s just a legend,” Tucker said. “I mean, I thought so, but then, here we are . . .” He gazed around in awe.
“A legend?” Robyn prompted. “You mean the moon lore?”
“Oh, I have whole books about the moon lore,” he said, waving his hand. “I meant the legend of the Nottingham Cathedral courtyard.” He had a nerdy, excited tone of voice.
Robyn nodded for him to continue.
“This church was built over two hundred years ago,” Tucker said. “It was commissioned by well-to-do businessmen from the Castle District, who had long since turned their back on the old ways. This site used to be a temple of the moon. No one even knows when the original shrine was built; it was just always there.”
Robyn shivered. She could feel the ancient truth of it, standing here.
“The church’s commissioners ordered the moon temple razed and built the cathedral on top of it, believing it would end people’s devout adherence to the moon lore and draw them into the church. They might even have thought it would end the civil wars, once everyone followed the same system.”
“You can’t change what people believe that easily, can you?” Robyn wondered.
“No,” said Tucker. “The civil wars only got worse, and the moon lore followers went underground for decades. The old legends have been surfacing again in recent years, but not like it once was. It’s almost become a fad.”
“Like a horoscope that people read for fun but don’t really believe in?”
“Exactly,” Tucker said. “But the workers who built the church truly believed in the ancient moon lore,” Tucker said. “So they preserved this most sacred shrine in secret, against the will of the church elders. It’s all going in my paper,” he told her. “I never thought I’d actually find it!”
Robyn felt sure it was fascinating . . . to someone. But it didn’t answer any of her questions. So many bits and pieces, but none of them made any sense. None of them brought her closer to finding her parents. She suddenly felt exhausted.
“I suppose I’ll be going now,” Robyn said, with a last look over her shoulder at the moon shrine. Part of her wanted to stay, but being here hurt her heart.
“I should to get back to work, too,” Tucker said.
They returned to the choir loft. As Robyn walked away, the door clicked shut behind her, as if on a slight breeze.
“I guess it has a mind of its own,” Tucker said jokingly. “Too bad. I was hoping to go back in there to study.” His gaze dipped down to the key around Robyn’s neck.
Robyn smiled and covered the pendant with her hand, a silent answer to the question Tucker was too polite to ask outright. The key was meant to stay with her. She knew it as sure as anything.
Something was happening here beyond her understanding. Whatever she had thought about the moon lore—it’s a myth, it’s old-fashioned—she was rethinking it now.
Chazz’s Challenge
“Where are you headed?” Tucker asked Robyn as they crossed the choir loft.
Robyn thought about how to answer without saying too much. Tucker continued anyway.
“If you feel like giving me a hand, I’ve got a lot of stuff to carry down to T.C.,” he said. He led Robyn toward a pile of canvas grocery sacks full of what appeared to be medical supplies. “You should come anyway and talk to Chazz. He knows all about the Crescendo and the moon lore.”
“The Crescendo?” Robyn asked.
Tucker passed her a portion of the bags by their handles. A hesitant look crossed his face. “Oh, I just assumed . . . because of the pendant . . .” He cleared his throat. “We should just go,” he concluded. “Chazz will want to meet you.”
Robyn remembered Chazz well enough. The old guy had kind of given her the creeps. She recalled him leaning back in the rainbow chaise, with his hands clasped in front of him, staring intensely at her.
Robyn followed Tucker out of the cathedral. The bags weren’t too heavy, but there were a lot of them. It seemed the least she could do, considering he had saved her from the MPs and shown her the moon shrine. She had been right about the rectangle symbols on Dad’s map. But the questions she had about these places only grew bigger.
T.C. wasn’t a far walk from the cathedral. “Whoa,” Robyn said. Last time she was here the parking lot portion of the fairground had been totally empty. Now it was occupied by a trailer, a couple of vans, several red-awning tents, and a big crowd of people. The trailer and vans were painted light gray, with big red plus signs emblazoned on the sides of each.
“What’s going on over there?” Robyn asked.
“It’s clinic day,” Tucker said. “Volunteer doctors and nurses come down one day each month to take care of people.” They headed toward that end of the lot.
The tents bore labels like Blood Pressure Screening, Foot Care, and Ear-Nose-Throat. A banner on the trailer said “Women’s Health.” Tucker nudged his way around the clusters of waiting folk. Two smock-clad women behind a folding table smiled at him. Each held a blood pressure sleeve in one hand and wore a PalmTab on the other.
“Hey, Tucker,” they said. He showed them his bags. “Great. We can use that stuff over by the vans.”
Robyn and Tucker carried the bags there. Two teenage boys sitting in the van’s sliding-door opening doled out sandwich-size plastic bags containing small bandages, gauze pads, headache medicine, and small tubes of ointment. While Tucker handed over the supplies he’d brought, Robyn took one of the pouches the other boys offered. She put it in her backpack. Even in normal life, she could barely go a week without needing a bandage for some reason or another. It was bound to come in handy.
“This is a great idea,” she told Tucker.
“Yeah,” he agreed. “People really need it. Especially now that the clinics are converting to BioNet. Not too many people around here are in the network. And they like it that way.”
Robyn knew about the BioNet. It was like the InstaScan checkout system—a way for doctors, clinics, and hospitals to keep track of patients. But it had never occurred to her what it would be like to not be in the system.
“Great, there’s Chazz,” Tucker said, pointing across the lot. Robyn looked in that direction. The older man slouched his way across the lot toward the cardboard city, clutching a paper bag. “Chazz!” Tucker waved. He tapped Robyn’s arm. “Come on, I’ll introduce you. Chazz!”
Chazz still appeared to be moving in the opposite direction. Tucker called out again, and pretty loud. “Hey, Chazz!” They caught up with him and Tucker tapped his shoulder.
“You again,” Chazz said, pivoting reluctantly. “The one with the questions. I done told you, I said all I got ter say about it.”
Tucker was not deterred. “I want to introduce you to my friend. This is—”
“Robyn. We’ve met,” Chazz said, giving her a once-over. “You the one I told to get outta Dodge. Still here, eh?”
“I have no reason to run,” Robyn lied. He was making her nervous with that piercing stare.
Chazz’s stern demeanor cracked. His hollow laugh echoed off the blacktop. “Every one of us got reason to run, missy. Ain’t most of us got the means, is all.”
“Tell him about the key,” Tucker said, nudging Robyn’s arm.
“What key?” Chazz’s gruff voice sharpened.
“It’s nothing,” Robyn said as casually as possible. She didn’t trust this old guy, even if Tucker and Laurel considered him something of a friend. The skeptical gaze Chazz pointed at her let Robyn know that he didn’t trust her, either.
“Oh, it’s really neat,” Tucker started. “To the door I was telling you about—”
“No,” Chazz said, cutting Tucker off. He kept his eyes on Robyn, though. “I don’t know what you think you found, but I ain’t interested. I got nothing for you.”
“But,” Tucker persisted. “It’s something to do with the moon lore.”
Chazz turned away, weaving in between the cardboard walls.
“He’s a bit stubborn at times,” Tucker admitted. “I guess you have to catch him in the right mood. He does know all there is to know about the moon lore.”
“Would it hurt him to just tell us?” Robyn grumbled. She felt angry all of a sudden. She hadn’t even wanted to talk to Chazz in the first place, but if he had the answers she was seeking . . .
Robyn tore after him into the cardboard city. She kept her eyes on the ground, since things jutted out into the walkways—narrow edges of blankets and duffels and suitcases and other belongings. In some stretches the pavement was spotless; in others litter like coffee cups and takeout containers rolled about, creating obstacles.
Chazz muttered as he walked. “What do I care? Waste of time, following the moon.” Robyn could hear him but not see him. The path between the boxes wound and wove. She followed the sound of his voice until the path opened up into a clearing. A bare circle of pavement, with a fire pit at its center, ringed in by the walls of the tent city.
Chazz was headed across the clearing. “Nothing good ever came of it. Good way to wreck your life, chasing it.” He poked his fist at the sky, as if to punch something. “You think you’re the One? You ain’t the One.” He disappeared beyond the far side of the clearing.
“You could just tell me,” Robyn yelled after him. “What do you care, right?”
A small campfire burned low in the rock-ring fire pit. The familiar wood scent nearly brought tears to her eyes. Memories of all the good times around a backyard fire with Mom floated back at her. The taste of roasted marshmallows and hot dogs. She stopped running, not wanting to go forward, or back. She closed her eyes and breathed it in.
When she opened them Chazz stood in front of her. Robyn flinched.
“No.” He spoke in the familiar low, insistent tone that chilled her and made her want to back away. “You find the curtain, you come talk to me. You find the Elements, you come talk to me. Until then, you leave me the hell alone.” He spun around and stalked off.
“I found it,” Robyn said softly.
Chazz froze, with his back to her. “You lie.”
“I found the curtain,” she told him. She could hear Eveline, loud and clear. If you are to succeed in this journey, you will be required to trust.
Silence. Silence, apart from the soft lap and crackle of the campfire.
Robyn swallowed hard. This would be the moment. Chazz would turn, and he would tell her everything she wanted to know, and more. She was sure of it. She clenched her fists and held her breath. Ready.
The older man breathed a long sigh. He looked up at the late afternoon sky as the sun began its descent behind the trees. When he finally spoke, his voice came more gently than she’d ever heard it. “It doesn’t matter, Robyn. You are not the One.” And he wove away between the cardboard walls, leaving her alone with the fire and its scent and its whisper.
Robyn stared into the small patch of flames. Tucker appeared beside her.
“The One?” Robyn said quietly. “What does that mean?”
“In the moon lore, the One is the leader of the people,” Tucker answered. It echoed something from Dad’s hologram.
The flames licked and snapped. “What’s the best way to put out a fire?” Robyn asked.
“Sprinkle dirt on it,” Tucker answered. “But we don’t put this fire out.”
They returned to the open lot. What had been a fairly calm scene a few minutes ago was no longer. Chaos ensued.
Under one tent several doctors hosted basic medical visits, right out in the open. Back to back they stood, examining sprained wrists, plucking out splinters, and asking people with sore throats to say ah.
Now, on the far side of the tent, a big line of people jostled and argued and seemingly competed for the attention of one of the doctors.
“What’s going on over there?” Tucker said.
“Let’s find out,” Robyn answered. They walked toward the commotion.
Standing alongside the doctor, a large, pretty girl in a red-and-orange dress held up her hands to the crowd. “Please step back,” she said. “Please. We’re doing everything we can.”
The girl had a very silky bob of dark brown hair and hazel eyes that sparkled. Robyn gasped. It was Merryan Crown—a classmate from Robyn’s school in the Castle District!
Trouble in Tent City
“H-hi, Robyn,” Merryan stammered. Her plump cheeks reddened. “I didn’t know you volunteered, too.”
“Merryan? What are you doing here?”
Robyn was alarmed. Not only was Merryan from Castle District—she was Governor Crown’s niece!
Merryan gripped Robyn’s arm and pulled her to the side of the table, her eyes wide and frightened. “Please. You can’t tell anyone you saw me here, doing this. My family really doesn’t approve of me coming here.”
Her frightened insistence baffled Robyn. “Who am I going to tell?” Robyn answered. It wasn’t as if she could go back to Castle District anyway. “I don’t care where you go.”
“You promise? I’ll get in so much trouble.”
“Not as much as I will,” Robyn answered. “I mean, I’m supposed to be dead, or something.”
“What?” Merryan relaxed her grip. “You haven’t been in school. I thought you had already left on vacation.”
“Vacation?” Robyn spat the word out like poison. “Not exactly.”
“Oh.” The pretty girl shrugged. “I thought you were going to be gone all month like the others.”
“What others?”
Merryan rattled off the names of a dozen classmates, all children of Parliament members. Her father’s friends, in fact.
Robyn’s pulse sped up. “They’re all missing?” Why hadn’t she realized she wasn’t the only kid affected by the disappearances?
Merryan’s tone turned confused. “They’re on the diplomatic trip. With their parents.” She added wistfully: “It sounds so exciting. When do you actually leave?”
Robyn shook her head. “What are you talking about?” Merryan was acting like she didn’t know about the disappearances. Had Castle District people been told something different?
But the conversation was interrupted by the jostling people clustering around the table. Merryan held up her hands again. “Please. Please wait your turn!” she cried. People pushed and shoved, trying to get closer.
Behind the table the doctor said, “That’s it, I’m afraid.”
The crowd simmered around the announcement. “I’m very sorry. It’s all we have for now,” he added. After a few moments of clamoring, the people accepted the truth—the medicine was finished.
“Stingbugs again?” Tucker asked.
Merryan nodded. “A lot of people are sick.”
“From stingbugs?” That doesn’t make any sense, Robyn thought.
“Stingbug infections,” the doctor clarified. “They carry bacteria that can cause a bad blood infection.”
“I’ve never heard of that,” Robyn said. Stingbugs were annoying, but no big threat.
The doctor continued: “It’s common for people in Sherwood to eat a particular herb from the woods that helps naturally repel the stingbug. If you eat it regularly enough, the bugs can smell it on your skin and they don’t bite you.”
“Bitterstalk. But the woods are off-limits now,” Tucker added.
Robyn looked down at the skin of her arms. She’d had plenty of stingbug bites in her life, but she’d never gotten a blood infection. The bites simply swelled into a round red knot and itched for a few days before fading. The people in line for the antibiotics had similar bites, but red and purple lines spidered out from the knots on their skin. Some of the infected people stumbled and staggered around, appearing dizzy and nauseated.
“I’m sure you are vaccinated, like me,” Merryan told Robyn. “Everyone in Castle is. But not here. Here they rely on bitterstalk.”
Dad used to eat bitterstalk. Robyn found it too tangy, but Dad loved it. It’s an acquired taste, he would say. Yes, Robyn always agreed, but why would anyone want to acquire it? Dad would just smile.
Now she understood—it had been protecting him.
“How long will they be sick?” Robyn asked.
“Weeks, without treatment,” the doctor answered. “Longer for some. And it depends on the bite. How big and where. Arms or legs, not so bad. Head and neck, worse. Abdomen—the worst of all. It can spread from there to the organs, and then—” he shook his head, as though hopeless. “But the antibiotic starts to clean the blood within a day or so.”
It sounded bad.
“Anyway, bitterstalk can’t cure the infection. What we need now is medicine.” The table was full of small pill bottles, yet the doctor shook his head in dismay. “Other antibiotics are less effective. We don’t have nearly enough to go around for the people that are already sick. And the bugs will keep on biting.”
“I volunteer at Sherwood Clinic,” Merryan said. “They have lots of the pills there, but they’re so expensive.”
“I bring as much as we can spare from my pharmacy,” the doctor said. “But it isn’t much. People in Castle rarely get this infection.”
That didn’t seem fair. She was safe, and Merryan, too. The crowd of bitten people thinned as they headed back to their living spaces. Disoriented. Dejected. Robyn swallowed hard. “There has to be a way to get them some medicine,” she murmured.
“What did you say?” Merryan asked. She had resumed her other volunteer duties, with a clipboard in hand jotting something down.
Robyn looked at her. Compared to Merryan, all clean and pressed and pretty, Robyn felt exactly like the grubby, homeless urchin she was rapidly becoming. A few days ago, Robyn would have called Merryan stuck up, annoying, prissy, all kinds of things like that. Seeing her here, down in the depths of Sherwood, of her own accord, dealing so kindly with the rough-edged folk of T.C. was pretty shocking. Still, Robyn wasn’t about to tell all.
“Nothing,” Robyn said. “You and me—we were never here. Is that the deal?”
For a moment it seemed like Merryan was about to say something. Then she just shook her head and smiled. “Deal.”
Called on the Carpet
The room was white and the floor was slippery. The warden trembled in her sensible shoes. She stood silent. Alone. Waiting.
Sunlight streamed in through the slats in the blinds behind the sheriff’s desk. The desk itself was a giant screen, angled slightly to favor the person sitting behind it. The warden tried to ignore the images flashing by, but there was really nowhere else to look.
“Warden,” said the sheriff as she strode in through sliding doors that led to her private conference room.
“Yes. Hello, Sheriff Mallet.” The warden admired the sheriff’s sense of fashion. Mallet didn’t bind herself to the uniform code the warden and the MPs were required to follow. She wore a crisp peach suit with a deep-orange blouse and narrow, heeled boots.
She took her seat behind the desk. The warden remained standing. There were no other chairs in the room.
“All the prisoners?” Sheriff Mallet’s tone conveyed her disdain. “Explain.”
“Not all. Only one from solitary,” the warden stammered. “W-we think the others were a diversion she created to mask her escape—”
“Stop.” Mallet dismissed the warden’s explanation with a wave of her hand. “I don’t need to hear your excuses.”
“It was out of our hands,” the warden blurted out. “They—”
“I said stop.”
The warden clamped her lips shut and lowered her gaze to the floor.
“Seventy-five low-level prisoners . . . and one Crescent.” Mallet glared. “Unacceptable.”
Mallet had been down to the jailhouse to survey the damage personally. The warden was wrong about one thing: the Crescent girl in solitary hadn’t masterminded the jailbreak. Not a chance.
Boltless hinges. A kicked-open door. This was not an inside job. Someone had broken in from outside.
Someone bold and brazen enough to stage a daytime jailbreak, right under the nose of the warden and guards, in full view of a half dozen security cameras, none of which managed to capture a clear shot of the perpetrator’s face. Just the crown of her head and that strange, elaborate braid.
Someone who, Mallet feared, would go on to cause more trouble in Sherwood. She ran a hand along the rim of her desk now, thinking.
“It won’t happen again.” The warden couldn’t keep herself from speaking into the silence. “We’ll change the doors . . . it hasn’t been in our budget to date, but we can . . . It will never happen again.”
“Oh, I know it will not.” Mallet pressed a button on her screen. “Come and take her now.”
The sliding doors opened. Two beefy MPs stormed into the room.
“But—” The warden flinched in surprise as the guards surged forward and seized her roughly by the arms. Her feet slipped on the slick white floor as they pulled her toward the door.
“Put her in Sherwood Jail. Solitary.”
“No!”
“Look at the bright side, Warden,” the sheriff said, gazing coldly across the desk. “Cell block security is out of the MP’s hands, remember? You shouldn’t have any trouble getting out.”
Mallet flicked her wrist. Her guards dragged the warden off.
Wires in the Tree House
Laurel bounced across the tree house with one giant leap and threw her arms around Robyn. “You were gone forever,” she cried. “I thought they got you!”
“I had to hide out for a while,” Robyn told her. “But I’m here now.”
Laurel’s spindly frame belied her strength; the hug was like a vise around Robyn’s torso. The almost-violent affection felt strange and lovely. Laurel’s words were a smaller, fiercer version of a scolding she might get from her mother for staying out in the woods too late. The truth sunk in for Robyn: she had been missed.
“Everything okay?” Key asked.
Robyn’s hand automatically went to the black pendant. Until she understood the significance of the moon shrine, she didn’t want to let anyone else in on the secret. Key was interested in the moon lore, like Tucker. He might want to go see it and discuss theories. Robyn wasn’t ready to talk about what it meant.
Key’s expression said he knew she was holding something back.
“There’s trouble in T.C.,” she said, to change the subject. “Stingbug infections.”
Laurel nodded knowingly. “No one can get to the bitterstalk.”
“Crown doesn’t understand the full consequences of cutting off access to the woods,” Robyn said, repeating what the doctor had told her.
“I think he understands them just fine,” Key said, with the characteristic bitterness that accompanied talk of Crown.
“There are always guards near the biggest patches,” Laurel said dejectedly. “I haven’t had any in weeks.”
“See?” Key said. “He knows.”
Crown couldn’t get away with this. It was basic cruelty. Robyn put her hands on her hips. “We’ll go to Sherwood Clinic tonight,” she said, “and get them the medicine they need.”
Laurel shook her head. “Getting medicine . . .” she said. “It’s not like getting food.”
“All the clinics are locked down tight. As a drum.” Key agreed. “You can’t even walk out of there with medicine if you don’t have a Tag. I mean, you physically can’t. There’s something in the door that scans you before it opens.”
“InstaScan?” Robyn said, feeling discouraged. She always used to like InstaScan. It made things easy, but now she realized it also provided very tight security.
“Getting in is easy. Getting out is the problem,” Laurel said. “Like always.”
“People need help now,” Robyn answered. “We can’t wait. The medicine is just sitting there. We have to find a way.”
The three sat quietly for a while, thinking. Robyn’s hands itched to toy with something. She reached for the hologram sphere in her backpack. She pulled the halves apart and studied the connections again. The wires were so delicate. The cords from her circuit board were much too thick to be helpful. None of the ones from Barclay’s box appeared to match, either.
“What is that?” Laurel asked.
“It’s a hologram.” Robyn glanced at Key, and admitted, “It’s why I needed my bag back.”
“A hologram,” Key said. “Who made it?”
“My dad,” Robyn answered. No harm in giving the basic facts. She was careful not to push the halves all the way together. She didn’t want to accidentally play Dad’s message in the tree house. She would look at it again later, when she was alone.
As she fiddled, Robyn thought about the map. The arrows, the strange message about gathering the Elements. The flames on the map did represent T.C., apparently. She simply hadn’t seen the campfire the first time through. Was she supposed to gather fire somehow?
“If a small flame is burning, how do you put it out?” she asked, remembering Eveline’s suggestion again.
“Blow it out,” Laurel answered at the same time as Key said, “Pour water on it.”
One question, three answers so far. Eveline was wrong, Robyn decided. That was no help at all.
“I don’t know about the clinic,” Key said finally. “But until we figure it out, let’s keep on with the food. I think we can go bigger.”
“How do you mean?” Robyn asked.
“Last time you just grabbed whatever was available and on top,” he said. “We can get more organized.”
“Food is food,” Laurel said. She popped open a can of peaches to punctuate her statement.
“Why do we need to get more organized?” Robyn said. “It worked pretty well on the fly.”
“Aim for a different target, maybe. One they’re not expecting. The trucks from the market, for one thing,” Key said. “Apparently they drove most of them to bigger storage compounds in other counties. Didn’t even unload. They’re just sitting there.”
“So?” Robyn said.
“We could take them back,” Key said.
“The trucks?”
Key nodded.
“Where are these compounds?” Laurel asked.
“There’s a couple way out in the boonies of Block Six, the warehouse district. Some here in Sherwood, and plenty in Castle itself. We could go in at night, and take a lot more stuff at once. Maybe a month’s worth of stuff, not just a couple of days.”
“What’s the security like?” Robyn asked, plucking and twisting at the hologram wires. She spotted the bad connection. One thin wire had been sliced and frayed by the edge of the broken sphere. It held together by threads. No wonder the image had failed.
Key leaned forward. “Less security than the jail, apparently. Some guards, but no walls. Big fences to scale—things like that.”
“Not a problem,” Robyn said. “So let’s check it out. For sure.”
“Well, we have to find them first. All I have is a list of compound numbers: 211. 760. 410—”
“The 410 Compound? I know that place!” Robyn exclaimed. “That’s where they’re keeping the other food trucks?”
“One of the places, yeah.”
“It’s in Castle District. I used to go there all the time,” she said.
“Cool,” Key said. “That makes it easier than I thought. Wanna go now?”
Robyn returned the hologram sphere to her bag. The three friends ventured out into the forest. They had only just pulled the camouflage off the bike when they heard voices in the forest nearby. MPs must have been patrolling deeper than usual.
The friends hid in the trees until it seemed the coast was clear, then they cautiously made their way forward.
“We’re going to need a new hideout sooner or later,” Key told Robyn. “Something inside of Sherwood.”
“What’s wrong with the tree house?”
“Come on,” he said. “We can’t keep dodging the woods patrol. There are more than there used to be. It’s only a matter of time before they catch one of us. Especially with that loud-as-heck bike leading them straight to us.”
“Hey.” Robyn had barely used the bike yet. “The wheels are going to be really useful. Especially since we have to go all the way to Castle and come back with a month’s worth of stuff.”
A month sounded like such a long time to Robyn. Time moved slower than ever. It was hard to believe only a few days had passed since the Night of Shadows, when her parents disappeared. Harder still to believe that a month from now, she still might not be home. She didn’t even have any leads on her parents’ whereabouts, beyond the cryptic reference to Centurion Gate. It bothered her, not knowing.
Was Dad still alive? Had Mom been moved yet?
The map, the pendant, and the hologram remained her only connection to them, and it wasn’t enough. She felt like she was letting her parents down.
Her spirits lifted thinking of a return to the 410, though. Barclay would be there, like always. Maybe she could get a wire to fix the hologram. Then she’d finally have some answers.
“I think we’re okay in the tree house,” Robyn told Key. “It’s pretty deep in the woods and hard to notice.” She didn’t add that, from here, she could get home without much danger. Moving into Sherwood felt like leaving behind the chance that things were ever going to go back to normal.
Bigger Than a Bread Box
They parked the bike in the woods behind Loxley Manor and struck out for the 410 on foot. Sneaking through the darkened streets of Castle District, Robyn felt at home. And with Key and Laurel by her side, the adventure seemed brighter than ever.
The 410 was still under heavy guard. Though she was happy not to be alone, Robyn felt more conspicuous with Laurel by her side. The two girls scrambled up the fence and vaulted over to the trailer top. Key moved off somewhere in the darkness, toward the other side of the lot. Dressed in his MP uniform, he would go to the truck gate and get it opened for them. If he could. That was the plan. And Key seemed confident he could talk his way into anything.
Robyn had bacon in her pocket, in case Waldo and friends were on duty. A little rummaging in a diner Dumpster had gotten them all the meat Robyn thought they needed. She brought the pouch to her hand as she and Laurel lowered themselves onto the gravel. But the dogs did not come.
Waldo? Robyn thought. Are you here? She realized she had been halfway looking forward to seeing that flop-tongued little bacon lover again. Had the MPs brought in dogs just for the Night of Shadows? That didn’t make much sense.
Robyn stuck the pilfered bacon back in her pocket. Had she gone hip deep in rancid scrambled eggs for no reason? That was annoying.
She led Laurel through the maze of junk toward the far side of the lot, where the trucks were parked. There were dozens of plain box trucks, like the ones they had seen MPs loading market wares into. But the market had many kinds of stalls—not just food stands.
“Which do you think has food?” Laurel whispered. Nothing would be worse than successfully stealing a truck and having it turn out to be full of potted plants or baskets or something else from the market.
Robyn shrugged. “Ones closest to the edge?” she guessed. The trucks would have been brought in very recently. The girls tiptoed down the line of the trucks’ cargo doors. They slid one open a crack and met with the musty fabric smell of carpets and drapes.
Nope.
They left the door ajar, to avoid making further noise, and moved on.
The second truck was full of men’s clothing. The third, a mix of pottery, clothing, and jewels. These were all things a normal thief could make use of for money, but they were no good to three kids just trying to survive.
By the time they cracked the seal on the fourth truck, Robyn was worried. What if Key’s information was wrong? What if all the food had gone to the depots, after all, and only the merchandise from the dry-goods and hardware stalls came to the compounds? And how many more trucks could they risk opening? The sliding sound was bound to alert someone eventually.
“Yes,” Laurel said as she breathed the scent of fresh bread that assailed them. This was the truck they needed!
Plastic-wrapped loaves of bread from Rennison Bakery. Bushels of fruit from Tommie’s Orchard. Root vegetables lolling about in mesh pouches on the truck floor. Perfect.
Laurel immediately reached in and took an apple in each fist. Robyn eased the door closed and made sure it had latched.
“This is the one. Let’s get out of here,” she said.
Robyn and Laurel hurried to the front of the chosen truck. They scooted along its length and mounted the metal running board. Robyn tugged open the driver’s-side door.
The small courtesy light in the ceiling lit up like a beacon, illuminating Robyn’s startled face.
A Dangerous Detour
The girls leaped inside and Robyn yanked the door shut, but not all the way. Just far enough to put the overhead light out. Not far enough to latch it and send a slamming sound echoing over the gravel.
The previous driver had been much larger and taller than Robyn. And she wasn’t short. But with the bench seat pushed all the way back like that, she was able to fold her entire body into the space between the seat and the pedals. Laurel did the same on the passenger side, clutching her apples like treasure. If anyone looked through the windshield, they wouldn’t even see the girls’ heads.
Robyn pulled the panel from under the ignition slot and reached for the wires underneath. She and Dad had built a solar engine together once. She knew how it worked and how to start it without the key.
It was almost time, but not quite. Key might not be in position yet. Huddled beneath the steering wheel, she pulled in her arms and legs, ducked her head and closed her eyes.
If I can’t see them, they can’t see me.
A memory washed over her then, unwelcome but warm. She’d been terrible at hide-and-seek as a small child. She’d hide behind anything—big couch, small table, thin lamp, whatever—and just close her eyes. Her dad loved to stomp around near her, pretending he couldn’t find her, until his antics made her giggle aloud. Then he’d scoop her up and tickle her until she curled up tight in a ball of laughter. Much later, she realized he could see her all along, but he’d played her game because he was a good father. She missed him . . . hard.
If he could see her now, would he play along? She was doing what she had to. Would he be proud?
Robyn’s eyes snapped open. She strained her ears, listening for the guards. As long as they were here, she wanted to try to get the spare wire she needed to fix Dad’s hologram.
They’d come here for this truck full of food, but if she could leave with something else, too . . .
Robyn reached up and flipped the cabin light switch, so that the light would not come back on when she opened the door. She was pushing her luck now, for certain. It had already been pushed to the breaking point. But with Dad’s last message to her at stake, no risk was too great.
“Wait here,” she told Laurel. “I’ll be right back. And I’m going to need to borrow this.” She plucked the second apple from Laurel’s fist. The girl whimpered over the loss.
Robyn climbed down from the truck. The guards appeared to be circling the other side of the compound, but she knew she had to move quickly.
She wove through the junk piles to his usual spot.
“Barclay,” she whispered. “Barclay?”
The sheet metal shifted. “By the moon, girl!” the man exclaimed brusquely. “What do you think you’re doing back here? How many screws you got loose in that pretty head?”
Robyn grinned and held out the apple. “No loose screws. Loose wires, though. I need something ultrafine. Do you have anything?”
“It’s for this hologram sphere.” She pulled it from her pack and showed him. “Right here.”
Across the yard, guards began shouting. Robyn’s heart raced.
Barclay sighed. “Girl, you always come with a pack of trouble, don’t you?” he said.
“Do you have anything? Fast. I have to go.”
“Let’s see what we can do,” Barclay said. The sheet metal moved farther. Robyn found herself staring into a box six inches deep full of electronics and wires and gadgets. Barclay pushed it out toward her. “Take what you need.”
“You’ve been holding out on me,” Robyn grumbled. “How long have you had all this?”
“Heh.” Barclay laughed. “If I gave you all the goods at once, how’s I gonna be sure you’d come back to visit me?”
Robyn plucked free several of the finest wires she could see . . . and the voltage adapter she’d been waiting for. “I’ll come back,” she promised. “And next time I’ll have more food.”
“You better,” Barclay said.
Robyn raced back across the lot. Something had happened. The guards were running rampant! Footsteps seemed to come from all directions. Floodlights snapped on, one by one, high overhead. The yard was suddenly lit as if it were daylight. Uh-oh!
Robyn hurried around the corner of one of the tin-roofed huts. She tossed a desperate glance through the curtainless window. The room appeared empty, lit only by the glow of a vast computer console. About a dozen monitors and various blinking machines filled one whole wall of the hut. It seemed like an awful lot of tech for a junkyard, Robyn thought. But she needed a place to hide. She slipped inside.
Instantly, she knew she’d made a terrible mistake. The console wasn’t empty, after all.
An Uneasy Alliance
In the large pilot’s chair sat a teenage girl with spiky black hair, dyed deep red at the tips. She swiveled around at the sound of the door, and Robyn realized why she hadn’t noticed the girl. She was short to begin with, and she held herself hunched low in the chair, no doubt to avoid being spotted through the window.
Robyn’s eyes narrowed. “You.” It was the girl from Sherwood Jail!
“It’s you,” the girl at the computer said back, at almost the same time. She sounded more relieved than upset, unlike Robyn. The girl spun back to face the computer, as if dismissing Robyn as any threat whatsoever. Somehow, that smarted.
“What are you doing here?” Robyn demanded. It felt like righteous anger, seeing her own act of trespass being trespassed on.
The girl’s fingers flew over the keys, flitting from switch to switch on the console. “Oh, like you’re supposed to be here, either,” she retorted. “Do you even know how to work a computer system?”
“Of course I do!” Although Robyn snapped at the girl, her confidence flagged as she witnessed her proficiency.
The computer emitted a series of beeps and whines. “Ha!” the redheaded girl chortled. She pulled a flat gray card out of one of the slots on the front of the console. A portable hard drive. “I got what I came for.”
“And what’s that?” In spite of herself, Robyn was curious.
The girl smiled and waved the portable drive. “Everything.”
“Everything?”
“Everything in this part of the system, yeah.”
“They’ve broken up the data pretty well, but I’m going to get it all. We’re going to find out where they took everyone.”
“Took everyone?” Robyn echoed.
“Everyone they disappeared.” The girl waggled the drive in Robyn’s face once more, then clipped it to a chain around her neck and buttoned it inside her corduroy jacket. Who wears corduroy in the summer? Robyn thought, though it was ridiculously beside the point.
The corduroy was but another layer between Robyn and the problem at hand. Her parents were among the disappeared! If there was information on the disk that could help find them . . .
But the girl was headed out the door. Robyn had to act fast. As the girl’s hand turned the knob, a great chorus of shouts and crunching gravel arose outside the trailer.
“Intruder alert! Intruder alert!” A blue blinking light strobed from somewhere inside the lot.
The girl’s eyes flashed with fear. She released the doorknob and crouched below the curtainless window.
Robyn, too, splayed herself low on the floor as the shouts rose and receded and flashlight beams cut into the room, painting the ceiling in haphazard arcs, like Grand Opening floodlights airbrushing the night.
The redheaded girl glared at Robyn, her catlike eyes widened in fright. “They’re probably looking for you. You’ve ruined everything,” she said, her voice cracking.
“They could just as easily be looking for you,” Robyn retorted. But the girl’s fear made her seem less annoying, more innocent. Now they had a common enemy, which would make them de facto friends. If there was one thing she’d learned in the past few days, it was that friends could help get you out of big trouble. She’d still be in prison if it wasn’t for Laurel, or she’d have got caught outside Nottingham Cathedral without Tucker to show her to safety. But under this girl’s hostile stare, a sudden burst of friendship didn’t seem likely.
Allies, then.
“We’re in this together at the moment,” Robyn said. “I don’t want to be caught any more than you do.”
Cat eyes. Glare.
“My name is Robyn,” she tried. “What’s yours?”
“Scarlet,” the girl whispered, with a resigned sigh, as if to say, We’re about to die; what’s the harm in telling you?
“I can give you a way out,” Robyn offered. “In exchange for sharing whatever you just downloaded.”
Scarlet perked up, though her eyes remained skeptical. “What way out?”
Robyn hesitated. If she told Scarlet the plan, what was to stop her from getting in her own truck and just following Robyn’s lead?
“You’ll have to follow me, and trust me,” Robyn said. “Just like I have to trust that you’ll actually share what you know with me once we’re away.”
Scarlet nodded. Robyn reached for the doorknob. The coast seemed clear, as if the chaotic search had moved to the other side of the compound. But no sooner had Robyn stepped onto the gravel than a small figure went running full speed past her.
“Laurel,” Robyn blurted out, unable to stop herself. “What are you doing?”
“Run!” Laurel cried, her small eyes bugged wide. “They’re coming!”
Pedal to the Metal
“Follow me.” Robyn led the way straight across the lot back toward the truck. There was no point in sneaking—the guards were onto them now. From various points around the lot they shouted to one another, clearly racing around searching for the intruder. Laurel or Key must have been spotted, or one of them tripped some kind of alarm.
Robyn opened the driver’s door. “Get in.”
Scarlet and Laurel clambered in quickly and scooted along the bench.
“Get down and hold on,” Robyn suggested, pushing Laurel’s shoulder. The other girls hunkered down in the cavity beneath the dash, curling their fingers into tears in the cloth-covered seat.
Robyn grasped the ignition wires and took a deep breath. She had learned that staying ahead of Crown’s military police force required a perfect balance of stealth and brazenness. The stealthy part was over. Time to be brazen.
“Where’s Key?” Robyn asked, pausing.
“You don’t have the key?” Scarlet said. “We have to go. Now!” But Robyn just looked at Laurel.
“I don’t know,” she answered. “He should be waiting at the gate.” But their careful plan was foiled. With intruders on the compound, surely there was no way Key could get the gate open for them without giving himself away.
Robyn eased herself forward on the seat. Perched on the front edge, with both legs stretched out, she could reach the clutch and accelerator comfortably. She wouldn’t be needing the brakes.
Robyn drew another deep breath. Three. Two. One. She tapped the wires together. The truck rumbled beneath her, vibrating to life with a noise that meant they were no longer silent intruders. The headlights snapped on, cutting a white swath across the gravel, illuminating the fence. Robyn clutched and shifted into drive. The truck lurched forward. It was not her first time driving, but the truck was huge. It felt like a beast with a life of its own beneath her.
The guards began to shout. They didn’t sound too near, but Robyn was sure they would be in a minute. She aimed to be long gone.
She accelerated, steering the truck out of its row and onto a long open stretch of gravel. She maneuvered the giant steering wheel until the truck lined up facing the distant exit gates. The gates stood high and tall, topped with barbed wire, connected by chains and padlocks. Robyn took a deep breath. There could be no hesitation. Out the passenger-side window, Robyn saw two guards sprinting toward her. The popping sound of long guns rang out.
“We’ve definitely worn out our welcome,” she murmured.
Robyn slammed the pedal to the metal. The truck lumbered forward, gaining speed with every rotation of the enormous tires. Not the greatest pickup, but understandable, considering it was weighed down with a full load.
“Come on,” she shouted. “I need more speed.”
She got it. The truck churned up gravel, heading straight for the gates. They showed no sign of opening. What had happened to Key? He was supposed to be near the gate. She had thought he’d be in sight by now. So she could see he was okay.
Robyn steered the truck at the gates anyway. No wavering. No apologies. Beside the gate, the door to a small guardhouse opened. A tall MP darted into her path and waved his hands overhead.
“You better move, guy,” Robyn called, though there was no way he could hear. Her heart raced. She didn’t want to hurt anyone. Her fist wrapped up in the dangling chain, sounding the truck’s horn. Beep. Beeeeeeep. Beeeeeeeep. Her foot on the pedal didn’t let up. Beep. Beeeeeeep. Beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep.
Oh no.
The truck was a matter of feet from the fence before the guard dove out of the way.
At the moment of impact, perhaps unwisely, Robyn closed her eyes. The entire truck shook. The metal on metal contact gave a sickening crunch. The truck slowed. Scarlet shrieked. Robyn opened her eyes, fearful that she had failed. But the fence snapped and twisted, and in seconds, Robyn’s stolen truck was whipping down the paved thoroughfare.
She hated leaving Key behind, but that was the plan. After opening the gate, he was supposed to drive the bike back to Sherwood. With his MP uniform disguise, he had a better shot at getting out on foot than any of the rest of them. They couldn’t afford to wait.
Robyn glanced in the rearview mirror. The gate guard stood among the fence wreckage, leaning against the twisted metal poles. The other two were still running along the road after her, but they were losing speed and breathing heavily.
“Winded already?” she scolded, as if they could hear. “That’s what you get for smoking, boys.”
Laurel giggled.
“By the moon,” Scarlet groaned, clambering out of the foot well and strapping herself into the passenger seat. “You sound like an after-school special.”
At that, Laurel laughed even louder.
“Look at them. They can’t run worth a lick,” Robyn said. Not that she was complaining.
Scarlet said something in response, just as sirens began to wail in the distance, drowning out whatever little quip she might have offered. Robyn stamped on the accelerator, hoping against hope that they would make it to Sherwood alive.