The man carries me out of the room, and now we’re in a hallway.
I breathe in and gasp. What’s that smell?
“Be quiet,” the man holding me says. “If you see another masked person, just be quiet. Act scared.”
Act scared? I am scared. Especially because of that smell… I swallow hard so I don’t puke on the guy. That will just make him mad, and if he gets mad…
We go down the hallway, and the smell gets worse.
“No!” the man holding Dale yells.
“What is it, Ry?” my man says.
“Nothing. I’m fine.”
“This is ridiculous,” the third man says. He has a weird accent. “We don’t even know where we’re going.”
“We’ll take them back to the yacht. One of us will have to stay with them,” my man says.
“Then it’ll be one of you,” the third man says. “I’m not paid to babysit.”
“You’re paid—and very well—to do what we say, damn it.”
“Tal,” the second man says. “We can’t get them back to the yacht. They’re in no condition to swim, if they even know how.”
“All right. All right. We’ll find somewhere safe to hide them. But damn it, we’re getting them out of here.”
I close my eyes, hoping it will ease the smell of—what is it? Rotten garbage?—that’s making me gag.
We’re getting them out of here.
Maybe these men really are helping us. I start to feel hope. Is Dale feeling hope?
I remember… If we get the chance… I remember the promise we made to each other.
Finally we go through a door, and—
Light! The sun! My eyes close against it, and Dale and I both scream. It hurts. Hurts my eyes so bad!
“Shh,” my man says. “You have to be quiet so the bad men don’t hear you.”
I stop yelling and squeeze my eyes shut against the light.
At least the nasty smell is gone.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
CALLIE
“Rory!”
My sister rustles back, shuffling through the falling leaves and pine needles. “What?”
“Help me. I’ve hit something.”
“What is it?”
“I don’t know yet,” I say, “but it’s hard.”