The Travels of Scout Shannon Books 1-3

Chapter 14

14

The roar of engines made speech impossible until Ken and Bente had unyoked their bikes and parked them on the other side of the rover. Tucker tugged Scout’s sleeve, wanting her to follow him as he went to take a closer look at the town car. Scout dug her hands deep into her pockets but stayed where she was near the door to the equipment room. Then someone jostled her. The sound of their approaching footsteps had been drowned out by the still-droning engines and Scout quickly stumbled out of the way.

If Malcolm noticed that he had bowled her over coming out of the equipment room, he didn’t react or even look back to see what he had collided with. Scout stepped back out of the doorway in case others would be following in his wake, slumping against the wall and trying not to be noticed.

Then the two bikes shut off, one after the other. The drone of the morning insects could just be heard in the distance. There was no grass growing in the little nook behind the gate so they had no home here.

“Perfect,” Malcolm said, clapping his hands as he approached the dusty town car. Ken and Bente emerged from behind the rover, goggles dangling around their necks as they threw back the hoods of their dusters and pulled off their cap-like helmets.

“It was just where you said it was,” Ken said. “Jacked up on a rock, but Bente got it moved all right. We searched the area in case anything had been dropped nearby but there wasn’t anything.”

“No, I didn’t expect that there would be,” Malcolm said. “There were only two or three footprints between the town car and the rover tracks. She was definitely picked up and transported.”

“Rescued or kidnapped?” Ken wondered. “If she had been chased and run off the road onto the rock—”

“There would have been more tracks in the road,” Malcolm cut him off. “It’s not a road that sees a lot of traffic. But there were just the town car tracks and then the rover.”

“So it was a rescue. But did she know her rescuers or not?” Ken said.

“That’s exactly the question,” Malcolm said. “If they were friends, she would probably have taken what she had with her. She would feel safe. But if they were strangers, if she thought they might be a threat, she might have hidden what she had in the town car so it wouldn’t fall into their hands. That’s why you are going to strip this thing down to the bones. We need to be sure.”

“These newer models have a much more complex design than the older ones,” Ken said. “More places to stash things. It could take all day.”

“Luckily, you have nowhere else to go,” Malcolm said, clapping him on the shoulder.

A flicker of motion caught the corner of Scout’s eye and she turned her head to see Arvid tossing canvas bags out the door, making a rough sort of pile outside the equipment room. The bags fell heavily, the pieces inside clanging against each other. Maybe weapons, maybe something else. Definitely not the same bags they had carried inside the night before.

“Tucker, give Arvid a hand with those,” Malcolm said.

Tucker had opened the town car door and was running his hands over the panels on the inside but quickly jumped at Malcolm’s command. “Give us a hand?” he said to Scout as he threw a bag over each shoulder.

She really wished she could remain unseen in the corner, but not complying with such a benign request was likely to draw even more attention. She bent and wrapped her arms around one of the sacks, then staggered after Tucker toward the jeep parked nearest the gate.

“What’s in here?” she whispered to Tucker as she put her bag next to his two in the back of the jeep. Tucker shrugged, uninterested.

Arvid came up behind them and Scout stepped aside so he could drop the last two bags into the jeep. He took a moment to adjust the bags more securely, then stepped back and seemed to finally see Scout standing there.

“Hi,” Scout said uncertainly. He had spoken the night before, so he wasn’t as laconic as his niece, but the eyes assessing her were not exactly friendly either.

“This is Scout,” Tucker said. “You’ve already met her dogs.”

Arvid nodded but continued looking Scout over. Scout thrust her hands back into her pockets. The fingers of one hand brushed against the data disks, the other the lens that was required to operate any of the equipment on Gertrude’s belt.

The belt—she had left it hanging from its hook when she had followed Tucker out of the rover.

Perhaps it was better she wasn’t wearing it now. The two grown-ups hadn’t seen all of her off-world gadgets yet. Had the others told them about what she had? No one had asked her about any of it, not even Tucker, and yet she doubted very much they hadn’t noticed any of it.

“Scout,” Malcolm said, his deep voice echoing through the canyon nook. “The kids have been telling me all about you.”

Scout swallowed hard. There was no way she could safely respond to that without knowing what exactly they had said. Then Malcolm walked over to stand towering over her.

He was a commanding figure, tall and the sort of thin that’s all wiry muscle, with a booming voice and an air of expecting to be obeyed. She reversed her assessment from the night before: He was like Joelle but bigger. But there was nothing particularly aggressive about his demeanor as he walked up to her. He seemed just to want to formally greet her, a visitor to his home.

So Scout was a little startled when Tucker took a step to position himself half in front of her, drawing himself up taller. Not that it helped much; Malcolm was twice his size. Malcolm stopped in front of Tucker, amusement dancing in his eyes. Then he put out a hand and gently pushed Tucker to one side so he had an unobstructed view of Scout.

Scout endured her second thorough inspection in as many minutes. He even reached out and knocked her hat back just as Tucker had done the day before.

“Not what I was expecting,” he said in the end and turned his back on her. Scout felt her cheeks flushing as she put her hat back on her head. What did that mean?

“Sir, I thank you for your hospitality, but I really need to be moving on. I have a place to be.”

Malcolm turned back to look at her again. Scout stiffened her spine and refused to drop her eyes.

“No. Not now,” he said.

“Sir—”

“Not until we have in hand what we need to have in hand,” he said.

“I don’t even know what that means,” Scout said, hoping she sounded more clueless than she felt.

“You want to get out of here?” he asked. Scout nodded. “You want to get out of here in a hurry?” Scout nodded again. “Then help the others tear this car down. No one is leaving here until I have what I need.”

“Sir—” she started again, but this time when he turned back to her his eyes were so furious she did fall silent.

“Malcolm, I did promise her,” Tucker said, gently, reasonably.

Malcolm turned that fiery gaze onto Tucker, who flinched ever so slightly but didn’t back down.

“Don’t go making promises you can’t keep,” Malcolm said, raising a warning finger. “You’ve already let me down once today.”

“That wasn’t my fault—”

But Malcolm wasn’t hearing it. “Find what I need. Until I have it, all of these doors are staying locked.” As if to prove his point, he took a small controller out of his pocket and pushed a button.

So far as Scout could see, nothing happened. But the slump to Tucker’s shoulders spoke differently.

Malcolm turned to march back over to where Bente and Ken were huddled over the toolbox, Bente listening intently to whatever Ken was whispering to her as he dug through the tools. Scout turned to stand in front of Tucker, close enough that he couldn’t avoid looking back at her. He shook his head sadly and she fought the sudden urge to kick him in the shins.

“You two have this in hand?” Malcolm was booming at Ken and Bente. Arvid brushed past Scout to climb up into the passenger seat of the jeep.

“We’ve got it,” Joelle said as she emerged from the equipment room. The red sweater was gone, the tactical vest back in its place. “Do you need one of us to go with you?”

“No, we’ve got help meeting us on the way,” her father said. “I expect to see this car broken down into the smallest possible pieces by the time I get back. If you should find anything, Joelle, send me a signal.”

“Wilco,” Joelle said.

Malcolm was about to step inside the jeep but stopped to look back at them all. Ken and Bente stopped consulting on tools to give him their attention. Reggie even appeared in the doorway behind his sister, Gert and Shadow peering around his ankles.

“I don’t think I need to impress the importance of all this on you. We all know where things are heading.” They all nodded their heads, but he went on anyway, his voice echoing through the canyon. “War.”

Scout was still standing with her nose centimeters from Tucker’s chin, watching his face. He had crossed his arms and closed his eyes as Malcolm started speaking, but he did not flinch at the word “war.”

“The governor’s daughter was coming to meet us, as arranged, but she never arrived. And I’m fairly certain she was not alone in this car. One of those murderous girls was with her. She was not the intended target, but with the governor behind locked doors, the target might change. And that would be very bad for our cause.”

Tucker had turned to look at Malcolm but was keeping his face carefully impassive. Scout looked to see what the others were doing. Ken and Bente had stopped with tools in hand to listen, their faces also carefully blank.

Joelle turned to shoo her brother away from the doorway behind her, but when she turned back she didn’t meet her father’s eyes. She kept her gaze fixed on a point on the ground just in front of him, arms crossed. Scout couldn’t say for sure, but she seemed to be biting her lip.

“But we don’t know if she’s dead,” Malcolm went on, his eyes moving from one of them to the next as he spoke. “Or what happened to what she intended to bring us. That is the most important thing now. War is inevitable. We are too few to change that fate. But hidden as we are, we are safe. We must make the others safe too. What happened before cannot be allowed to happen again. Whatever the cost. No sacrifice is too great to see that work done.”

His voice was booming now, his hands in fists, his eyes on the sky as he spoke.

“And those who have to die to keep our people safe, they will die. Guilty or innocent, for the sake of our people, they will die.”

Scout saw something flicker over Joelle’s face and her eyes went to Scout’s. The harsh sternness was still there, but there was a crinkling at the corners that almost looked like concern. Malcolm had fallen silent, but the words he was leaving yet to be spoken seemed to hover like a massive hammer about to drop and crush them all.

Scout turned away from Joelle’s eyes to see that Malcolm had been staring at her for some time, waiting for her to turn and see.

Was she the one who would have to die? Why?

But Malcolm, sudden storm of fervent emotion apparently gone, just turned his attention back to Ken and Bente. “Get going on that car.”

Ken saluted with the wrench in his hand and Bente nodded. Then Malcolm dropped into the jeep’s driver’s seat and fired up the engine. The wheels spun, filling the air with red dust. Then they were gone and the gate was closing.

“Wait!” Scout shouted, throwing up her arms as if she could stop those massive metal doors from closing.

“They can’t be stopped,” Joelle said. “I’m sorry.”

Scout whistled for her dogs and ran for the rapidly diminishing gap between the doors. To hell with the rover, she had the coordinates in the tablet on her belt and could walk day and night if she had to.

Scout took two steps and then stopped. The coordinates were on the tablet, and the tablet was on the belt, but the belt was in the rover. She would never reach it in time.

The gate shut with that deafening clang followed by the grinding of the lock engaging.

Scout spun to glare at Joelle.

“It’s not up to me,” Joelle said, her tone and her face both cold and steely. “My father has all the controls. There’s nothing I can do.” She was bracing herself as if waiting for Scout to take a swing at her and only then did Scout realize her hands were balled into fists. She took a breath and forced her fingers to splay wide at her hips.

“You’re not going to find anything in that car,” Scout said.

“You know this for a fact?” Joelle asked. “Because if you do, you can save us all a lot of time. You can save us a lot of everything if you’d just tell us what you know.”

“Nothing I know is going to help you,” Scout said. “Seriously, what was that speech?”

“He’s been under stress,” Ken said, but he flinched when both Joelle and Tucker turned to glare at him.

“Is that a secret too?” Scout asked.

“It’s not just stress,” Joelle said, turning her glare onto Tucker.

“I only did what he asked me to,” Tucker said. “He makes the decisions that are best for him.”

“Not for a minute do I believe you think what you’ve been bringing him is ‘the best for him,’” Joelle said.

“He makes the decisions—” Tucker started to say again, but Joelle cut him off with one upward motion of her hand.

“You told me before there was another way out of here?” Scout said after a painfully long moment of no one else saying a word.

“They’re all locked now,” Tucker said.

“Show me,” Scout said.

Tucker looked to Joelle. Joelle first shrugged, then nodded, then turned to head back into the equipment room.

“There’s the gate,” Tucker said, pointing at it as he continued walking away from it, along the outer wall of the compound. Scout followed, her dogs close at her heels. There was a small building tucked into the corner, like a watchman’s station. Tucker stepped inside, but it was too small for Scout to get more than half of her body in after him. “The gate controls are here, but like Joelle told you, Malcolm locked them down.” He pressed a few buttons that protested with red lights and negative beeping noises.

Then he turned to half sit on the control panel and pointed at the back wall. “There’s a crawl space that leads to a hidden doorway in the canyon.” Scout could just make out the outline. Tucker bent to push at it, but it remained locked.

“There are others,” Scout said with certainty.

Tucker nodded grimly, then waited for her to step aside so he could lead the way back through the equipment room, past the closed offices and the one open one where Joelle was standing behind Reggie sitting at the desk and tapping at a computer terminal. Then they continued on through the kitchen to the room where the dogs had gone hunting the night before.

There was a row of refrigerators and freezers near the door, but further in it was more like a warehouse, crates and boxes stacked on pallets to keep them up off the earthen floor. Scout could hear scuttling and both of the dogs raced past her and Tucker to chase something further in the dark depths of the room.

“Big space,” Scout said.

“Those stairs lead up to the barracks. And this is the last door out,” Tucker said, pointing to the wall to their left. Scout walked over to it. The stairway was steep with handrails on either side, hugging close to the wall. Further along the wall at the very edge of the room was a hatch, a heavy door with a wheel in the center. The wheel wouldn’t turn in either direction, but then the red light centered over the doorway was probably meant to tell her that.

She turned to glare at Tucker again. She had to. If she let that anger go, she was going to start feeling the despair.

“Why did you do this?” she asked, hoping he didn’t hear how her voice was about to crack.

“Come on,” he said, tugging at her sleeve again. “Your dogs will be okay in here. I want to show you something.”

He crossed the warehouse, heading for the far wall. It went further than Scout was expecting, and she guessed they were now inside the canyon wall that formed the back of the nook where the vehicles were parked. The walls were less squared off here, the ceiling coming down in irregular lumps and crags more like a natural cavern. Tucker led her around a larger outcropping of yellow rock and then up a steep slope that looked like it had been carved out by a stream once upon a time.

She saw sunlight up ahead. Then they were up in it, high atop the canyon. The sun was blinding, but even without a hat Tucker seemed less bothered by it than she. He took her hand to guide her further, then caught her in his arms before she took a step too far.

“Look,” he said.

She blinked, the sunlight bouncing off the yellow rock so bright it brought tears to her eyes. It was nearly noon. Already noon, a day half gone and she trapped immobile, nowhere near the meeting point.

Then she blinked again and started to make out features of the world around her. The canyon nook full of vehicles was below her, spread out under her feet. She could follow the contours of the canyon with her eyes, even see the cloud of dust that hid Malcolm and Arvid in their jeep heading back to the compound Scout had tried to bury with Ottilie’s explosives.

Having seen every detail of the compound and dust trail, her eyes at last settled on the canyon walls themselves. They gleamed brightly in the morning sun, so many bands of colors. How could stone come in so many colors? Not even in her dreams had she ever seen such a magical sight.

It brought a tear to her eye, but she had to shut her eyes to it. Block it out; not notice it. It was a distraction when what she needed was an escape.

Scout pushed away Tucker’s hands on her shoulders and walked along the edge of the ridge. It was a sheer drop down to the compound below, then a sheer drop down to the canyon she had entered from.

And the back side was even worse. There was a chasm so deep the bottom was lost to shadows.

Scout walked the entire way around, but there was no path to level ground, no way out of this complex but through the locked doors. She ended up back where she started, where Tucker waited for her.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

“Not as sorry as I am.” Scout turned her back on him and went back down the tunnel to find her dogs.