Page 23 of Rescuing Air

“At ease, this is an unannounced visit,” I assured him. “We were on a different mission in Cape Town and ran into some trouble. I’m in need of the resources at this base as well as needing to get in contact with the rest of my team.”

“Right away, sir.” The guard nodded and stepped back into the shack and opened the gate. “I’ll radio ahead and let your father know you’re here. I’m sure you’ll want to get him up to speed.”

I had to hide my shock at hearing that my father was here. This base wasn’t one that any of us visited often, since it was more intel related. “Thank you and good work.”

None of us said anything as we rolled through the gate. They both knew how tense my relationship with my father was without the added stress of my mother missing. For him to be here wasn’t a good sign and their agreement was deafening even without saying a word.

“Don’t say anything until we know what he knows,” I ordered as we pulled up to the main building. “My father is a master at getting others to spill their secrets but unfortunately for him, I’m better.”

Parker looked at me in the rearview mirror. “You don’t think—”

“Doesn’t matter what I think, but it would be the first thing that makes sense in all this,” I said, cutting him off before he could say it out loud. “Keep those thoughts to yourself for now, only trust each other, and we’ll make it through this like we have everything else.”

fourteen

Lailah

It was wise for none of us to drive, since ten minutes into the hour drive, we all fell asleep, trusting that the driver would get us to our destination. It was foolish of us after all we’d been through but none of us seemed to be able to fight how tired we were. After I made contact with the guys, I didn’t get any other communication from them. Knowing they were alive and well was enough until we reached them. We’d asked the driver to bring us to another hotel, so it didn’t make us stand out like dropping us on some street corner would, especially with us bringing along all our bags.

“We’ll be arriving in a few moments,” the driver called back to us.

Stretching, I tried to pull myself together enough to get with the program. “Thank you. The jet lag is catching up to all of us it seems. People always talk about it when you travel overseas but man, it’s no joke.”

“Where is home?” he asked with mild interest.

“The States. We all live in Wisconsin. This is our big summer trip for surviving our first year of college,” I answered, trying to make the story simple yet believable. They always said too many details were a dead giveaway.

The driver just grunted as he wove his way through traffic to pull into the hotel parking lot. Hudson and Brayden both seemed tense as we collected our things from the trunk and watched the man drive away. I shouldered my bag and grabbed one of the others as we trudged to the next part of our journey.

“You guys gonna fill me in on why you’re so freaked out?” I asked after a few more minutes of awkward tension.

“Something isn’t right,” Brayden commented. “I can’t figure out what it is, but something in my gut is telling me to be careful.”

“Do you think the dirty cops could have found a way to reach out and tell them we got away?” I questioned.

We walked past a bar with televisions behind the bar and I caught a glimpse of the destruction we’d left behind in Cape Town. It wasn’t in English but I got the feeling that whoever knew about the mission to get rid of us would also know it didn’t work. If it was being blasted all over the news, then we were screwed.

“Well, I guess that answers my question.” I huffed. “At least they don’t have our faces plastered on the news. That would make things even worse.”

No sooner had I said those words, images of Jay, Parker, and Micah appeared with the images of a burning building behind them. It didn’t take a genius to figure out they were blaming them for the bomb, just as they tried to do with us. Then another set of images showed up with our faces looking back. The image they used was from my student ID at Ryevick. The only way they could have gotten that was from someone on the inside.

“Things just got so much worse,” Hudson muttered. “It’s better we keep moving.”

“You know this proves that it’s someone inside the Elementi that has fucked us over, right?” Brayden growled as we hurried along.

It was tricky to move quickly and not draw attention to ourselves as we did so. “Are you sure we can’t take a taxi or something?”

“Not after our faces have been plastered on the news,” Hudson pointed out.

“Guess I’m not good at this whole fugitive thing,” I mumbled as I realized how stupid that question had been.

“The base is outside the town. It would be much easier to get to if we had a vehicle of some kind,” Brayden reasoned. “There has to be something we could try.”

Hudson paused and turned to face us. “If we’re lucky and that’s the first time they’ve showed the images on TV, we might have a chance, but do you really want to risk it if it’s been running for the past hour we’ve been driving here? They want us in jail or otherwise detained. We can’t make it that easy for them.”

Brayden cursed and kicked at a cup someone had missed throwing into the trash can. It skittered out into the street only to get crushed by a car driving by. I couldn’t think of a better representation of how I felt in this moment right now. Every time we got out of one situation, we ended up in another that was even worse than the last. The Dark Lord was doing a bang-up job in keeping us out of his way, even if we weren’t captured. Having a manhunt for us was effective in its own way.

“What if we call Cami and see if she can reach the base and have them send someone to come get us? If the guys are already there, they can make sure it happens,” I suggested. “I feel like us running around the streets is going to get us caught faster... unless one of you can steal a car?”