“We don’t have time to just stop all operations because one woman wandered off—against my orders, I might add. ”
“Dad,” Amy says so forcefully that he looks a little surprised. “Kit would not just wander off alone. That’s not like her. ”
Colonel Martin considers what she’s said.
Chris steps up beside him. I want to knock him aside; I don’t need one more person saying that Kit’s just carelessly gotten lost. “Maybe she’s in the latrines,” he says.
“She’s not; I checked,” Amy says. “We need to go looking for her. ”
“Let’s wait for the men I sent to get back,” Colonel Martin says, but his voice isn’t as commanding as before. “She might have gone back for more supplies from the shuttle . . . ”
“She wouldn’t,” I insist. “Kit is one of my people, and I know her. There’s no way she’d leave the colony without letting me know. I’m telling you—if she’s gone, something is seriously wrong. ” I watch as doubt crosses Colonel Martin’s face. He doesn’t want Kit to have been taken; he doesn’t want it to be his fault. His guard hasn’t protected her. But I don’t have time to assuage Colonel Martin’s hurt feelings. “If you’re not going to do something, I will,” I say. “I’ll get together search parties now. ”
“I’ll help,” Amy says immediately.
“And so will I. ” Emma shoots Colonel Martin and Chris a disgusted look.
We work quickly. As soon as word spreads that Kit has disappeared, people start volunteering for the search party—more than a hundred in less than an hour.
Colonel Martin casts an eye over the group assembling in the meadow. There’s a grim sort of determination to the search party, and they carry tools—shovels, scythes, even, in a few cases, just a large tree branch, smoothed down on one end for a handle on a makeshift club.
“They don’t need weapons. My men have guns,” Colonel Martin tells me. My people, armed as they are, make him nervous. I file this information away in my mind.
“Guns didn’t save Kit,” I say. “Or Lorin. Or Juliana Robertson, or that Earthborn doctor. ”
I track down the last person who saw her—Willow, a pregnant woman who had come to her in the middle of the night with stomach cramps.
“After she gave me a med patch, she left,” Willow tells me.
“Did you see anyone else?”
“There was one of them on patrol. ” Willow means one of the Earthborn military. She points at Chris, who’s standing on the edge of the gathering crowd, looking worried. “That one. ”
I stride over to him and confront him with this information.
“I remember seeing her,” Chris tells me, his hands already up as if defending himself from the accusation in my voice. “It was right before my shift ended. ”
“Did you make sure she got back to her building safely?” I demand.
Chris blanches. “I . . . no. I just assumed . . . ”
“That’s when she was taken,” I say, convinced of it now. I glare at Chris. It was his job to protect the colony, and he let one of my people pay the price for his carelessness.
The question is—who took her, and why?
33: AMY
As Elder starts sending groups off in search of Kit, Dad grabs my arm. “You’re not going,” he says.
I stare at him, too shocked by the order to protest.
“You can help in other ways. I’m not letting you go off with them. ”
“I can help,” I say angrily. “Kit’s my frien
d. ”
Dad looks at me as if he doesn’t believe his daughter could truly be friends with a shipborn. It’s the same look he gives me when he sees me with Elder.