“It might be easier when we’re out of this,” Ben murmurs, evidently reading my mind as he often does. “To figure out what you want, whether you can trust me again. I’m not pushin’.”
“I know you’re not.” I move the hand that was on his sleeve to the front of his shirt. I squeeze the fabric just over his heart. “Thank you.”
His face is soft in the gruff way that’s purely Ben. He’s about to say something when Ryan calls down from the roof of the building behind us, “Trouble!” He’s been up there with a set of binoculars, keeping watch in the dark.
I climb up the rope ladder to the roof with Ben on my heels. “What is it?”
“Troops coming this way. From the north.”
“Shit.” I take the binoculars he offers and adjust them until I can see the lights on vehicles. He’s right. They’re headed toward us. “How did they get moving so quickly?”
“Don’t think they’re from the Capitol. Must’ve been somewhere closer and heard reports of activity here.”
Ben has been peering through the binoculars I passed him after I looked. “Yep,” he says. “No way they coulda got here from the Capitol so quick. Looks like six or seven units. Almost forty guards. No way we can fight that many. We gotta get outta here.”
Ryan is already collecting his stuff and heading for the rope ladder. I’m about to follow him when I think of something. “Wait! Oh fuck. Robin. Oh no.” I grab the binoculars back to sweep through the dark landscape between here and the approaching troops.
Sure enough, Robin’s group is traveling on a road that will run right into the troops.
My stomach drops. Churns.
Robin is smart. He’s got a well-trained and competent crew. He won’t let them be sitting ducks. But his people will soon reach one of the highest hills in the areas. He won’t be able to see over the incline to what’s coming in the distance.
The guards will see him before he sees them.
“Ryan, wait. See if you can radio and warn them.”
Ryan drops his stuff and starts tuning the knob on his handheld radio. “They use a different channel than us.”
“I know. But maybe they’ll be listening in.” I’m still watching the scene in the distance play out like a dark, doomed storyline, already spiraling down to the end. “They have about five minutes to turn off the road without being seen.”
“If they don’t,” Ben murmurs, peering into the dark as if he might see without aid, “it’s gonna be a disaster.”
Thirty minutes later,the sun is starting to rise, and disaster has come.
Ryan couldn’t reach any of Robin’s people, and—as we feared—they came over the crest of the hill just as the troops were ascending. His crew reacted quickly, but they were greatly outnumbered and encumbered by the overloaded cargo truck.
I couldn’t see all the details in the dark at this distance, but there was gunfire and collisions and a lot of chaos.
The skirmish did halt the advance of the troops. Otherwise, they’d be on us right now. But there’s nothing good about what’s happening down there. Half of Robin’s people are probably dead, and the rest will be soon.
“We need to get out of here, ma’am,” Roderick says. He and the others climbed up to the roof with me, Ben, and Ryan a few minutes ago. “They already got a prize down there, but you’re the gold. They’ll be coming here any minute, and we can’t let them find you.”
“He’s right,” Vella agrees. “I hate it as much as you do, but there are only twelve of us. We can’t take on all those troops.”
“We have to do something. We can’t leave Robin and his people to be killed or captured.” With sun inches up at the horizon, there’s dim light to see more details. I find the place on the road where vehicles collided or veered into the ditches. There are bodies littering the ground.
“It’s too late,” Roderick says. “What can we do?”
I feel sick. Weak and cold and nauseated. I wish I could fall apart, collapse in a heap and cry, but I don’t have that leisure. There’s got to be a way out of this, and I’m the one responsible for figuring it out.
My hands are shaking, so I lower the binoculars from my eyes.
“Let me look for a minute,” Ben murmurs softly, gently removing them from my hands.
I wait, watching him peer through the lenses, hoping desperately that he’ll see a way out of this that I couldn’t.
“Wh-what?” Ben bites out. “What the hell are they doin’?”
