The Taking (The Taking 1)

“I’m not sure that’s possible now,” Simon said, pulling me aside. “We . . . have a situation.”

“What? No. We need to take Tyler. We don’t have time—”

“Kyra . . .” Simon didn’t lower his voice, but he gripped my arm, and it was clear from his tone that whatever was wrong, it was serious. “We have to get out of here,” he confided. “Somehow they know where we are.”

“Who knows? The NSA? How?” I turned to Willow, remembering what she’d said when she’d picked us up, that there was no way we could be found here. “I thought you said this place was safe?”

Willow took a step toward me, her shoulders hunched as if I’d just declared war with my accusation.

Jett jumped between us. “We don’t know how. Maybe your dad knew about us. Maybe there was something in his files—a map or a diagram with our location—and they found it.” He shrugged as if it was impossible to believe, even for him. “I thought we were more careful.”

Simon waved both Jett and Willow away. “Doesn’t really matter now. What matters is, they’re coming. And if they know where we are, it’s just as likely they’ll figure out about Devil’s Hole. It might not be safe to go there.”

I shoved Simon, pushing him against the wall. I couldn’t let him give up that easily. “Nuh-uh. No way. I won’t let you do this. You said it yourself—what choice do we have? If we don’t take him and at least try, he’ll die for sure.” I could feel my decision, and Tyler’s last chance, slipping like sand between my fingers, and I was desperate to keep hold of it. “We have to take a shot.” I lowered my hands. “Simon, please,” I begged. “Please. We have to try.”

Simon closed his eyes, clearly struggling with what to do.

My gut twisted, and I chewed nervously on the inside of my lip while I waited for his answer.

When he opened his eyes, he looked past me to Willow. “Stay behind with Jett and organize the retreat. Gather as many supplies as you can.” He turned to Jett then. “Collect all the hard drives, and any paper and electronic files we have. Don’t leave them anything they can use to track us. Understood?”

“Of course.” Jett nodded, and then took off back toward the computer room to start stripping it down.

Simon turned back to Willow. “When we’re done, Kyra and I will rendezvous with the rest of the group at the Silent Creek camp. I’ll radio ahead and let them know to expect us. They’ll take us in, at least until we can find a new place to call home.”

“And Tyler,” I added, relief overwhelming me.

But Simon just shook his head. “No, Kyra. Tyler will either be gone by then—taken by them—or he’ll be dead. We can’t wait around to find out which. Once we get to Devil’s Hole, we’ll have to leave him there. Even if we had the luxury of waiting around for the next day or so to see if he’s going to be returned or not, people are rarely returned to the same place they’re taken from.” He ignored me then and looked at Willow once more. “We should be meeting you there by morning.”

If it hadn’t been for the morphine, I definitely would’ve changed my mind.

As it was, the screaming had stopped once the drug had finally entered Tyler’s system, which was just about the time we reached the long, barren stretch of highway on our way to Devil’s Hole.

But the screams still echoed inside my head, as did the implications of what I was about to do.

Playing God.

Still, I prayed it worked. That we weren’t chasing a pipe dream. That I wasn’t pinning all my hopes on the impossible.

Next to me, in the driver’s seat, Simon gave up trying to find a decent station on the radio. “Jett was trying to help, you know? That’s just his way,” he explained. “He grew up in Vegas. He was young, but his old man was a bookie, so numbers—odds—come second nature to him. He thinks everyone gets the same comfort from them that he does.” I thought about what Jett had told me, about his dad not being the kind of guy people messed with, and I guess it made some sense.

With the radio off, I could hear Tyler’s gurgling breaths coming from the backseat. It wasn’t that I’d wanted to be in front with Simon, but I’d been too afraid to sit in back with Tyler. I didn’t want to accidentally brush any part of his skin, which had broken out in large lesions. My jaw tensed as I turned to check on him.

“Well, Jett and his stupid statistics only made me feel worse,” I shot back under my breath, not wanting to disturb Tyler. “Now it’s all I can think about.”

And it was true, I kept turning the numbers over in my head.

Most people who were taken were never returned, that much I’d already known—Willow had said as much—but Jett had hammered the point home. He didn’t have any hard numbers, but his best guess had been somewhere around 33 percent. That was one person returned for every three taken, he’d clarified.

I hated to think what might have happened to the other 67 percent.

Maybe they were returned, too, and had never come forward. Or maybe they were failed experiments. Maybe they hadn’t survived whatever torture we’d been put through.

Maybe we were all expendable.

I couldn’t afford to think that way, not when I had Tyler’s life in my hands.

According to my father’s records, Jett explained, the likelihood of being taken from Devil’s Hole was higher than anywhere else. In the past five years there had been seven people reported missing from that area. That was the highest incidence of repeat “takings” ever recorded if that’s really what happened to them.