“Would it be?”
Faith leaned in for a closer look. There wasn’t even a doorknob. A red light was mounted over the jamb. What did the IPA want that was stored inside of that building? They had risked exposure by bringing Michelle here. Then they had risked taking her to the hospital. Had they been planning to drive her back to the airport once she’d had surgery? The handprint scanner wouldn’t work without her actual hand being attached to her body.
Faith stood up. She faced Van. The room was so dark and the monitor was so bright that her own reflection stared at her from his glasses. “You facilitated that briefing for me at the CDC. You gave me case files on Michelle that would lead me to the airport. You had this edited video cued up for me before we walked into this room.”
“Edited?”
“Michelle and Hurley were supposed to get out of the car together. Hurley was going to use bolt-cutters to cut open a hole in the fence. Michelle was going to use her CDC ID card and her handprint on the biometric scanner to open that door, and then they were both going to go inside that building.”
“You think?”
“Here’s what I think: Your boss and my boss are friends, but they’re quarterbacks playing in different conferences. So your boss told you to tell me some things, but not everything, but you think I can actually help you, which is why every God damn interaction I have with you gets turned into a teaching moment.”
“I love that you know about football.”
Faith hissed out air between her teeth. Amanda was waiting for her at the Capitol. Faith was supposed to be finding out what the hell had happened at the airport with Michelle. All she had right now was what she always had: supposition and gut instinct. The only tactic that had ever worked with this maddening FBI asshole was honesty, so she tried a version of it now. “This is what my boss doesn’t want me to tell you. My partner is missing. He’s undercover with the IPA. We haven’t seen him since three yesterday afternoon, and I’m worried that whatever Dash is planning is going to happen today, as in right now, and I think that you feel the same way, too.”
Van gave a curt nod, as if this was what he’d been waiting for. “Let me buy you that coffee.”
20
Wednesday, August 7, 8:56 a.m.
Sara sat in the cabin with her back against the door. She had Will’s pocket knife in her hands. He had slipped it under the gap before he’d left last night. She kept pressing the button and springing out the blade. The noise had a rhythmic comfort. After so many days, so many wasted hours of feeling helpless, the knife gave her a feeling of power. Dash didn’t know that Sara was no longer defenseless. Gwen was clueless. The sentry outside had no idea that Sara was armed. She could hurt someone with this. Kill someone.
At the motel, Michelle had provided a roadmap with Carter.
The jugular. The windpipe. The axillary arteries. The heart. The lungs.
Sara folded the knife. She pressed the button again. The blade flicked open. Her distorted reflection showed in the stainless steel. She folded down the blade.
She could feel Will on the knife. On the other side of the door. Wrapped around her hand. His essence had infiltrated every part of the cabin. Sara was reminded of the first time she had walked through the house after Jeffrey had died. One of the most devastating parts of losing him was that she had not lost their things. The bedroom furniture they had picked out together. The massive TV he had hung over the fireplace. His tools in the garage. The smell of him that had lingered on the sheets and towels and in his closet and on her skin. Every item, every scent, had been a stark reminder of her loss.
Sara thought back to three days ago, a lifetime ago, when she’d watched her mother snap beans in Bella’s kitchen. Cathy had been right. Or close to right. Sara’s weepiness was not because she could not let go of Jeffrey. It was because she was terrified of holding on to Will.
She folded the knife closed again. She studied the lines across the floor, checking her crude sundial. The blue light filtering through cracks in the walls had long ago turned yellow. Eight-thirty? Nine o’clock?
Her head pressed against the rough boards. She was exhausted from doing nothing with her body. She tried to tune herself into the regular cadence of the Camp. The cooking women. The little girls spinning like tops. Gwen glowering over every perceived slight or misstep.
Sara was not one to believe in auras, but something felt different in the air around her. Was she missing the pops as the men trained inside of the Structure? The giggles and cheers of the children? The smoky scent of wood burning, laundry boiling, food cooking?
Were they gone? Was this part of Dash’s Message, to send away his followers so that Sara could bear witness to their utopian mountain community?
She stood up. She stored the knife in her bra. The underwire was already stabbing her in the side, so the discomfort was added to a very long list.
Her desire to pace had left with Will. Sara’s hands went to her hips. Dash had usually unlocked the door by now. She assumed he had left the Camp. Delivering the Message. Or trying to.
Sara had to think that Will would stop him. He hadn’t put much trust in the GPS tracker, but Sara knew that he wouldn’t stop until Dash was taken down.
She pressed her hand against the door, testing the padlock. She heard metal scrape against metal. The hinges groaned, but did not give. Gwen would have the key. It would be exactly like the heinous bitch to let Sara stew inside the cabin.
She listened for the sentry outside the door. The new man had not bothered to introduce himself when he’d replaced Will. Sara assumed Lance was still in the bunkhouse. Not-Lance had sat on the log all night. He was heavy-set and clearly suffered from sleep apnea. He kept gasping himself awake with panicked gurgles between deep snores.
Sara got down on her knees. She looked under the door. Not-Lance was broad through the back, blocking her view of anything but his black shirt.
“Hello?” Sara waited, but there was no response. “Can you open the door, please?”
Still nothing.
Sara thought about the knife in her bra. Will’s hand had barely fit underneath the door, but she could wedge under most of her forearm. She could stab Not-Lance, below his left shoulder. The blade was long enough to pierce his heart.
“Hello?” She decided against murder. She pushed out her hand, her fingers stretching to jab at him. “Hell—”
He tumbled forward, slamming head-first into the ground.
Sara backed up in surprise. She listened. She waited. She put her eye to the gap under the door.
Not-Lance had fallen face-first onto the ground. The impact had pushed him over to his side. His body was still locked into a sitting position. The fall had been hard. The muzzle of his rifle had opened up a furrow of skin along the side of his neck.
Sara watched the wound, studying it the way she would a piece of art. She waited for a drop of blood, but there was no blood coming out of the deep gash because Not-Lance’s heart had stopped beating hours ago. Rigor had already stiffened his muscles. His ankles were ringed with purple livor mortis. His pants were soaked where he’d defecated and urinated on himself.
He was dead.
Sara sat on her knees. She brushed the dirt off of her hands. Her heart banged inside of her chest. Had the apnea killed him? Was it something else?
A sudden, eerie sense of wrongness took hold of Sara. She shivered, though she was sweating. The fine hairs on her arms rose to attention. Her senses strained to pick out the usual activity from the Camp. The odors, the sounds, the feeling that she was not alone.
Was she alone?
Sara stood up. She walked to the back of the cabin. She tested the wall with her hands. She found the springy section where the nails had rusted. The boards flexed against her palms. Sara shifted her weight onto her heels. She braced her hands against the wood. She pushed until the muscles in her shoulders started to burn.
“Shit,” she mumbled. Splinters had dug into her skin. The board had moved, but not enough. The space between the slats showed more sunlight.
Sara wiped her grimy hands on her dress. The splinters flicked like tiny needles. She did the same thing again, pushing with all of her strength until the boards started to bow. There was a small crack, like a twig breaking, then the board started to split.
But still not enough.
Sara looked down at her hands. The palms were bleeding. She stepped back. She kicked the boards as hard as she could.
The wood splintered. The crack was much louder this time, more like a bolt of lightning spiking through a tree.
Sara waited, listening for sounds outside the door. The men in the deer stands. The armed soldiers in the woods. Gwen, Grace, Esther, Charity, Edna, Hannah and Joy.
Nothing.