Save, p.14
Save, page 14
Greg carefully approached Sammy, ignoring the groans and cries of the injured men around them. He yanked off his fleece and, keeping it over his hands, touched the netting. A sharp spark ran up his arm. He yanked his hands back.
Okay, this is going to hurt.
Bracing himself, he grabbed the net and yanked it off Sammy. Pain darted up his arms, and the echo of the pain remained even as he tossed the net aside. He hopped from foot to foot as the tingles receded. “Ow, ow, ow, ow.”
He stepped closer to Sammy. Burns dotted the surface of his wings, but it didn’t look like any of them were too bad. “Sammy? Are you all right?”
Sammy opened his eyes and stared into Greg’s face. Then, without warning, he bolted into the air. Wind blew against Greg’s hair, making him stumble back. Man, that guy is powerful.
Sammy hovered in the air, his head turning from side to side. Greg knew he was looking for Ariana. Greg stared at him, trying to figure out how the hell Sammy was even here. Sammy flew off, staying about fifty feet above the ground, moving at a fast pace. Greg watched until he could no longer see him.
As he pulled his fleece back on, Jasper tugged on his sleeve. “We need to get going. Someone’s no doubt heard the gunfire.”
Greg spared a glance at the men lying on the ground around them. Jasper and Mike had put zip ties around the wrists of those less injured. They wouldn’t be following them anytime soon, but Jasper was right. The spot was isolated, but the gunfire had been loud. And with Sammy flying around, it was only a matter of time before someone called the cops.
Greg watched Jasper from the corner of his eye as they ran back toward the trailer. “Any idea how Sammy showed up? How’d he know where we were?”
Jasper shook his head. Greg could tell he was worried. “I have no idea. No one should’ve known where we were.”
“Did you see how he seemed to be going for Ariana? It was like he was protecting her, or at least trying to, the way he did Luke.”
“Why would he do that?” Mike asked.
Jasper shook his head. “I don’t know. I mean, if anything, Drummond was responsible for Sammy’s captivity. Do you think he was trying to get Ariana to get back at Drummond?”
“No, I don’t think it was that. He could’ve killed her.”
Even from a distance, Greg had seen Sammy lower himself and then stand in front of Ariana. Then he’d extended a hand. Greg had never seen him do that with anyone, not in the whole time they’d been in Norway. He was interactive, but everyone else had to make the first overture when interacting with him. He’d never seen Sammy actually make an overture to another person.
Greg had spoken with Luke, though, about his first meetings with Sammy, and he had described a very similar first interaction. Sammy had arrived in the barn quietly and had stayed perfectly still, allowing Luke time to examine him. Then he had extended a single hand.
Greg frowned. What made Luke and Ariana so different? Or maybe he should be asking what made them so similar? There had to be a link between those two, a reason why Sammy had the same reaction to both of them. And why Sammy somehow sought them both out.
That led to the next question: How exactly did Sammy seek them out? Sammy was fast. That was true. But he would have had to fly for days to get here. So how was he in the United States right now? Something didn’t add up.
Mike sprinted ahead to the SUV. Jasper and Greg clambered in as he pulled the SUV alongside them with a small shower of gravel. Without a word, Mike took off. Pulling his Glock from its holster, Greg glanced out the window but didn’t see any sign of anyone giving chase. He let out a sigh of relief.
Mike slammed on the brakes.
Greg jolted forward, barely managing to get a hand in front of him to keep from going face first into the back of the driver’s seat. “What the—”
His voice broke off as he looked through the front windshield. Sammy straightened from a crouch in the road.
“He dropped down right in front of me,” Mike said.
Greg put his hand on the handle of the door. “Well, let’s see what he wants.”
“Yeah, that sounds like a good idea,” Jasper mumbled, but he got out of the car as well.
Greg holstered his Glock and walked toward Sammy with his hands up. “Sammy? Are you okay? Do you need something?”
Sammy said nothing, just looked at Greg before he bolted forward, wrapped Greg in his arm, and rocketed up into the air.
Greg screamed. Then his ears popped, and the strangest feeling came over him, almost like he was being sucked through a small opening. His head felt heavy and his thoughts got muddled.
Then another pop, and he felt cold air once again rushing at him. Sammy touched down on the ground. Greg was half convinced that his brain was now leaking out of his ears.
He tumbled to the cold ground, feeling grass underneath his hands. He managed to lift his head, blinking rapidly at the image in front of him.
No, this can’t be right.
Chapter Forty-Three
Geiranger, Norway
Maeve and Chris stayed out in the woods for another hour before they walked slowly back to the cabin. They still weren’t sure how they were going to tell Alvie and Snap.
So for right now, they weren’t going to.
Maeve knew that keeping it from them was going to be all but impossible, but she just didn’t know how to have this conversation with them. She kept hoping that some sort of miracle would spring up, and maybe she would never have to. And if these were their last few days together, Maeve didn’t want unhappiness marring it.
On the walk back, they intentionally switched to another topic to try and get their emotions under control. They focused on the drawing Luke had done for Sammy.
“But what I don’t get is how would he even meet someone?” Chris asked. “I mean, he was kept in isolation, right?”
“During his time with the U.S. government, yes, undeniably. But maybe she was someone he saw when he was out.”
But that was just a guess. Maeve had no idea why Sammy was interested in the woman. But the fact that he was was intriguing. At the same time, she couldn’t help but wonder how he had found Luke. They had never been able to discern that. He had flown across state after state to arrive at the Gillibrands’ home. That was intentional. He’d sought him out, and neither Luke nor Sandra had any idea that Sammy even existed prior to his showing up. So maybe this other woman was connected in a similar way.
They were a little ways away from the cabin when Alvie came running up. He looked and felt anxious.
Maeve was immediately on alert. “What’s going on?”
In her mind, she saw an image of Sammy bursting into the sky and then disappearing. “Oh my God.”
She looked over at Chris, and from his shocked expression, she knew that he had seen the same thing that she had. Immediately, Maeve’s mind whirled.
Sammy had been able to avoid capture, unlike a lot of the other creatures from Area 51. Was that because he had some sort of invisibility? Could he make himself somehow untraceable to the human eye?
But the bigger question was: What had spurred this action? What was going on? And why hadn’t he returned? At the same time, she felt the fear from Alvie. And she couldn’t help but be angry at Sammy. He’d said he wouldn’t leave them.
Nora hurried over to them as Alvie took Chris’s hand to show him where Sammy had disappeared from.
“He just disappeared?” Maeve asked.
Nora nodded. “He was in the air one second, and then he was completely gone.”
“Do you think he disappeared or just went invisible?”
Nora hesitated. “I don’t think he was invisible. There was a strange noise, kind of like a small sonic boom. And then he was gone.”
“How long ago?”
“About thirty minutes, give or take.”
Maeve wasn’t sure what to say. She had no idea what was going on with Sammy. But she hoped for the kids’ sake he came back soon.
A noise sounded from the sky above. Nora’s and Maeve’s heads jerked up as a puff of smoke appeared, and then Sammy appeared out of thin air. This time, though, he wasn’t alone. He was carrying someone. He dove to the ground and stopped, gently placing his passenger on the forest floor.
Greg stood for a minute and then wobbled, dropping to his knees. He looked up for a minute, a frown on his face. “Maeve?”
Then he emptied the contents of his stomach to the ground below him.
Chapter Forty-Four
Washington, D.C.
The headache was beginning to build just behind Tilda’s eyes. She walked down the hall of the Pentagon toward her office. Almost everyone she passed acknowledged her with a slight flare of their eyebrows and a nod. She had become an unwilling celebrity within the ranks of the military industrial complex and the intelligence agencies thanks to the events of the last few weeks.
She keyed into her office and closed the door behind her, leaning heavily against it. God save me from any more useless meetings.
She pushed off the door and made her way to her desk. Tilda had been a part of R.I.S.E. for fifty years. She’d been in charge of it for the last few decades. With that role came a large degree of autonomy. She’d been able to make decisions for people and do whatever needed to be done without consulting a committee.
But now that she was fully embraced within the hallowed halls of America’s military forces, all that had changed. All of a sudden she found herself sitting in on committees and meetings about other people’s activities. She never understood why people felt the need to call a meeting when an email would be just as effective and much less time-consuming.
She sank into the chair behind her desk, leaned back, closed her eyes, and wished not for the first time that Adam was with her. They had met fifty years ago, when she’d first joined R.I.S.E. He’d worked for Wernher von Braun. She had been just out of college, and no one would hire her because no one wanted a girl with a science degree.
But Wernher von Braun had seen something in her and brought her on. As the years had gone on, Adam had remained unchanged. He was still the most incredible-looking man she had ever seen. She, however, like everyone else, had been affected by the sands of time.
Oftentimes, she felt like she had been run over by the sands of time. But Adam never once indicated that he wanted anything other than her. They had spent all of that time side by side. He’d been a constant soothing presence no matter how chaotic their world got. It had been the two of them facing every challenge together.
And now for the first time, they weren’t. She understood why he needed to go with Maeve and the others. She approved of him going with them. But she truly had not realized how difficult it would be without him. She prided herself on being a tough, no-nonsense, not overly emotional woman.
But she’d caught herself wishing she could see his face, wishing she could feel his hand in hers. She sighed. There was nothing to be done for it. Not right now.
Hope wagged her tail from the dog bed in the corner of Tilda’s office and gave a big stretch. Tilda smiled over at her as Hope carefully got to her feet, still a little unsteady at times. But she was healing well. Hope nestled into Tilda’s side. Tilda reached down and petted her, rubbing her hand through her not-quite-there-yet fur. “Well, at least I’ve got you, girl.”
Hope wagged her tail harder in response.
The office door shot open. Tilda’s head jerked up, her arm reflexively going for the desk drawer where she kept her Browning.
Pearl hustled in, her eyes wild. “There’s been an attack.”
She didn’t wait for Tilda’s response. She bustled over to the screens on the side of Tilda’s office. She quickly brought up the footage. By the time Tilda was next to her, she had it ready to go. “Where?”
“Phoenix, Arizona. At an outlet mall.”
Tilda held on to her other questions as the footage began to play. At first it looked like any other day in a shopping mall, with people wandering by in twos or threes. A few kids here and there running. Some people pushing strollers. Everything looked normal, peaceful.
The first sign of something amiss was a man and a woman running, a child clasped in the man’s arms as they sprinted across the screen.
Tilda narrowed her eyes, looking for the perpetrator as more and more people began to sprint for the exits. Without sound, she could only imagine the screaming as people desperately fled.
One hurried forward, constantly glancing over her shoulder. She was in her fifties, maybe a little older. Her stride was shorter, her pace much slower than the rest. She was halfway across the screen when something leaped at her from behind. It pounced onto her back, and the woman was down. The creature tore at her. The woman’s light top became a dark shredded mess. Then the creature was up and running again, sprinting for another target.
“Freeze it.”
Pearl did, zooming in without having to be told.
A cold chill fell over Tilda as she looked at the face of the Drago. “How many dead?”
“Eighteen. It would have been more, but by pure luck, one of our teams was just ten minutes away. There’s maybe another dozen or more wounded. Some people fled the scene before first responders arrived. It’s possible they’ll go to hospitals on their own.”
“How many Drago?”
“Two. Both were killed.”
Tilda nodded her head, imagining the chaos that the appearance of two Drago caused.
“What was the temperature in Phoenix today?”
If Pearl thought the question was unusual, she didn’t show it. She tapped on her tablet for a few seconds before answering. “A hundred and two.”
Tilda’s gaze went back to the screen, her mind whirling. The Drago had many strengths. They could withstand cold, their skin was practically impervious, but one of their weaknesses was heat. So why would two Drago be in Phoenix of all places?
She turned to Pearl. “I need all the video footage coming out of Phoenix. I want to know every car that’s been in and out of that city in the last twenty-four hours. I want everything—ATMs, traffic cams, cell phone footage. Get everything to Penny and get her whatever else she needs.”
Pearl’s hands didn’t stop moving over her tablet as she spoke. “What are you thinking?”
Tilda looked back at the screen. “I don’t know what I’m thinking yet, but something’s not right. And I want to know how two Drago got to that mall. They certainly didn’t take the bus. They certainly didn’t walk there. There is no Drago outpost anywhere near Phoenix.”
Pearl’s hands hesitated over her screen as she looked up at Tilda . “Do you think … Is it possible this is the beginning of them taking revenge?”
Tilda shook her head and spoke without hesitation. “No. If the Drago survived in large enough groups to seek revenge, they would have waited. They would have created a much more damaging response. For them, this is nothing. No, this is something else. This is someone else. And I think we both know whose fingerprints are all over this attack.”
“Martin Drummond.”
Tilda nodded. “Yes. So find me Martin’s fingerprints. This attack was actually sloppy, which is not like him. Which means he’s made other mistakes. I need those mistakes.”
Pearl’s tablet beeped. She glanced at it, a stricken look on her face before she looked up. “The Joint Chiefs want to speak with you.”
Tilda nodded. She had been expecting that. “When?”
“An hour.”
“Then let’s see what we can find out in an hour.”
Chapter Forty-Five
Geiranger, Norway
Greg felt like his insides had been whirled around and then put back in their place. Everything ached. He was on his hands and knees, losing the contents of his stomach. Even without the stomach purge, there was no way he could stand. He was pretty sure that he was about five seconds away from collapsing on the ground and curling up in the fetal position, praying to whatever god would make all of this horribleness just go away.
A hand landed on his shoulder and began rubbing his back softly. “Greg?”
Greg turned his head, looking at Maeve through slitted eyes. She hadn’t been a hallucination. “Maeve? What are you doing here?”
She gave him a confused smile. “I think the better question is what are you doing here? You’re back in Norway.”
Greg’s mouth fell open, and he stared up at her. The flight with Sammy must have messed with his hearing too. “What did you say?”
“You’re back in Norway. Where’d you come from?”
Greg’s mouth fell open, his thoughts moving slowly. He was back in Norway? Seconds ago he was in … “California, I was in California about ten seconds ago.”
“Seconds?”
Greg fell onto his butt. He pulled his knees up to his chest, knowing that was as close as he was getting to standing anytime soon. “Yeah. Jasper, Mike, and I found Martin’s daughter. Martin’s men found us, and then Sammy appeared out of nowhere. Or I guess here.”
“Martin has a daughter?”
Greg nodded. “Yeah, he has a daughter. It’s the woman that Luke drew. There’s a lot that’s been going on.”
“You don’t know the half of it.”
For the first time, Greg took a close look at his friend. Her face was drawn, her eyes rimmed red. Oh no. “I’ll tell you mine if you tell me yours.”
Maeve nodded. “Deal.”
Maeve and Nora helped Greg over to one of the Adirondack chairs. Maeve and Nora stayed with him while Chris kept an eye on the kids. Greg spoke first, telling them about leaving Norway and ending with Sammy appearing and trying to grab Ariana before Martin’s men did.
“What’s she like?” Maeve asked.
“She’s …” Greg paused, picturing Ariana. “She’s nothing like her father. She’s smart, resilient, kind, I think. She doesn’t even know what her father does for a living besides knowing he works for the government. He kept her sheltered, seriously sheltered, her whole life. I actually feel sorry for her.”
