“I told you to stay with the car,” he whispered.
“And I never said I would. You need me,” she whispered back.
“I don’t need you. I can do this myself. Now just go back.”
He turned and started walking in the direction he’d been headed. After only a couple of seconds, he could hear her following him.
“Chloe, it’s not safe,” he said, turning back.
“And going into the psych hospital earlier was?”
“That was different. You were the one who knew the layout. I had no choice. But you don’t know this place. I’m not going to put you in a position where you might get hurt.”
“Not your decision,” she said. “I’m here, and I’m coming with you. Now let’s go, unless you want to stand here all night arguing.”
Short of carrying her back to the car and locking her in the trunk, he saw there was nothing he could do to stop her.
“Okay,” he said. “But you do everything I say.”
He took her silence for assent, though deep down, he knew it wasn’t.
For the next five minutes, his concerns that Olivia had been lying continued to grow. There was nothing but dirt and brush. No buildings at all.
“What’s that?” Chloe whispered a couple minutes later.
She was still behind him, so he had to look back to see what she was talking about. She pointed twenty degrees to their right. It took him a moment, but then he saw it, too.
Just ahead, the terrain dipped into a shallow wash, then rose on the other side, perhaps not high enough to be called a hill, but definitely higher than this side of the wash. At the very top was a post or, maybe, the trunk of a small tree. It appeared to be less than a half-foot in diameter, and stood two feet above the brush.
“There’s another one,” Chloe said. “About twenty feet to the left.”
She was right. After that, it was easy to pick out others. They spotted seven in all, stretching in what looked like a line blocking their path.
“A fence?” she suggested.
“Seems kind of low.”
They walked through the wash, then up the embankment, finally stopping ten feet short of the first post Chloe had seen. Though it was hard to judge color in the darkness, Ash got the sense the pole had been painted to blend in with its surroundings. Why? There didn’t appear to be anything attached to it, or anything sitting on the flat top. It was just…a post.
Chloe pulled out her flashlight and flicked it on.
“Turn that off. Someone will see it,” he whispered.
“Anyone who can see this probably watched us walk up the hill,” she told him, then pointed the light at the post.
Instead of wood, it appeared to be fabricated out of a plastic-like material. Near the top, a thin slot ran all the way around the post with what looked like curved, tinted glass covering it.
“Any idea what this is?” he asked.
“Motion sensor?”
“Could be,” he said. “Let’s see how far it goes.”
They went approximately seventy-five feet to the right before the row of posts took a sharp left turn. As they followed the new section, the hill fell away and they were on level ground again. Three hundred feet this time, then another turn to the left.
They’d gone twenty feet down this third part when Chloe touched Ash’s arm.
“There it is,” she said.
Ash had seen it, too.
Land had been carved out of the hill across from them and leveled off. Built exactly in the center of this area was a one-story, commercial-style building with no visible windows. On a large concrete slab next to it were several satellite dishes.
Exactly how Olivia had described NB7.
From their current angle, they could only see the back and west side of the building. There were no cars visible, but given the helicopter that sat on another concrete pad closer to the front of the building, maybe cars weren’t necessary. The aircraft was big enough to probably carry up to ten people, not including the crew.
There was a hundred feet between the line of posts and the building, or, as Ash saw it, a hundred feet between him and his children. They had to be there. It was the only possibility. To think otherwise would be pointless.
He continued down, following the odd-looking fence until he could see the front of the building. There were still no windows, but there was a door, and in front of it sat two cars.
He was contemplating walking all the way around to get a look at the east side of the building, the only part they hadn’t seen, when two people stepped out the door.
“Get down, get down,” he whispered as he crouched into the brush.
They watched the two men walk over to one of the sedans, get in, then drive toward the front of the property. Along that end was a traditional fence with a gate across the entrance road that opened automatically as the car neared. A few seconds later, the vehicle was heading down the half-asphalt, half-dirt road.
That was a problem.
Figure a mile and a half on a bad road would take them two to three minutes tops to reach the highway. If they turned right, no problem, but if they turned left, once they drove another thirty seconds, they’d pass Ash’s car parked suspiciously off the side of the road.
So, two and a half minutes plus the time it took to call back to the building, and those inside would know someone was there. He and Chloe had to move before then.
He was pretty sure the posts were motion detectors, perhaps triggered when something passed between them. But while breaking their invisible beam would betray his and Chloe’s presence, it would come as a surprise to those inside, and they would be on the defensive as opposed to being on the hunt because they’d been warned by their friends in the car.
A hundred feet. In college, Ash could run the forty-yard dash in four-point-seven seconds. He’d been younger then, and in slightly better shape, but he thought he could still do it in five and a half. And forty yards would actually get him all the way to the front door. Even if there wasn’t any kind of delay before the alarm went off, he should still be able to get there before anyone inside had the time to react.
“How fast can you run?” he asked Chloe.
“Fast enough.”
“Then that’s what we’re going to do.”
He moved over to the imaginary line of the fence.
“Wait,” she said. “What’s the plan?”
“The plan? Get my kids back.”
He put his head down, then started to run.
43
Their new room wasn’t that muchdifferent than their old one. There were two beds and a bathroom, just like before. The only difference this time was that the door was locked.
Brandon knew the people watching over them had done something to put him and Josie to sleep before they switched rooms, but he had no idea why. The thought that the room they were now in was in an entirely different building in an entirely different state hadn’t even crossed his mind. He thought they were still on his dad’s base, just down the hall from the room they’d been in before.
His biggest concern at the moment was his sister. She had yet to wake up. He, on the other hand, had been awake for at least a couple hours, maybe even more.
