Zeke shook his head, but he was frowning. “I don’t think so. Most of us aren’t. We just—”
But I didn’t have the patience to listen to Zeke’s excuses. “Most Collabs never meant to hurt anyone. You just took the easy way out. You protected yourself. I get it.” I pinned Zeke with a stare. “But that’s not who you are anymore. When you throw in with me, that has to change. If you want to take the easy way out, I can tranq you right now. You’ll wake up in thirty minutes, zip tied next to your commanding officer. If things go wrong on my end you still have plausible deniability.”
Zeke shook his head. “No. I’m in.”
“Are you in? Or are you all in? Because if you’re in this just to save your own ass, I don’t need that kind of trouble.”
Zeke’s gaze narrowed and his shoulders straightened just a little. “If I was in it for my own ass, I wouldn’t have told you this Farm was in trouble, would I?”
Good point. Still, I’d had to ask.
“Okay. Do you know any other Collabs who you can trust? Any you think we can win over to our side?”
“I know of at least three guys. They know something’s wrong, too. They’ll want to help.”
“Okay. Good. Do you know where you can find them?”
“This time of day, they’ll be in the dorms. We all worked the night shifts together.”
“Once we get out of here, securing the rest of the Collabs and finding the ones who could be allies will be our top priority. After that, we’re going to need to convince some Greens. Who do you know who’s got influence among the other Greens?”
Zeke thought for a minute and nodded. “I can think of a couple of people. There’s a guy. Named Wilson, I think. Real geeky, but everyone likes him. He’s been talking to people for months now about how the Greens need to be better organized.”
“And he’s gotten away with it? On most Farms, a guy like that would be fed to the Ticks.”
“He’s Brad’s baby brother.”
“Oh.” And Lily had thought she’d had problems keeping her sister safe. I almost felt sorry for Brad.
“Yeah.” Zeke winced. “And there’s this girl. Her name’s Trinia. She hangs out with Wilson a lot, but I don’t think they’re . . . you know . . . together.” Zeke paused for a second and I thought he might have been blushing. “Anyway, she seems to take care of a lot of other Greens. The younger ones, you know. She watches out for them. They’ll go anywhere she goes.”
“Okay. We’ll start there.”
“And there’s this one other guy. He was brought in about a month ago. His name is Joe. Even though he hasn’t been here very long, people like him. There are even rumors that he was at another Farm and escaped.”
I hesitated for a second, wondering. How crazy would that be if this Joe, this guy who had randomly shown up at this Farm in Texas after all these weeks, was McKenna’s Joe?
How crazy lucky would that be? How happy would it make McKenna if I could bring him back alive? How happy would it make Lily?
But then I remembered that Lily and McKenna weren’t even at Base Camp anymore. Wherever they were, it was far away from me. They were getting farther and farther away from danger—I hoped. And even if by some miracle it was Joe, how would I find McKenna to tell her? Not that it would be him, even if the name and timing were right. Because that’s not the kind of thing that happened in this world.
Once, I’d thought it would be a miracle if I ever found Lily again. Now I knew it was just another form of torture. Having her, but being unable to keep her safe. Finding her, but not being able to keep her at all.
“Good,” I said to Zeke. “Once we’ve secured the Collabs, we’ll need to find those three first.”
I swung the door open. Just as Zeke had said, James and Victor were watching Kate Beckinsale on the tiny screen. They’d even set their tranq rifles down on the receptionist desk behind them, a good six feet from their chairs. I didn’t bother securing the rifles yet, because I didn’t want to make any noise. Zeke followed my lead; for a Collab, he was light on his feet. Victor and James didn’t even look away from their movie until they felt the nose of the tranq rifles on their shoulder blades.
“Listen carefully, boys.” I kept my voice soft in case there was someone else on the floor that I didn’t know about. “Zeke and I are taking over. Neither of you is stupid enough to think this Farm is still functioning like it should. The Dean’s gone. He’s left you to die. Unless we stop it, the fences are going to go down soon, too.” I inched back a step to give them room to twist in their chairs. When they were both looking at me, I continued. “We’ve already taken out Brad. We’re going to work our way through the rest of the Collabs. Either you’re in or you’re out. If you’re out, I tranq you and you wait this out locked in a room. If you’re in, we could use your help. Which is it?”
James’s gaze flickered infinitesimally to the desk where his tranq rifle lay well out of his reach. He was thinking about going for it.
“Wrong answer,” I said and fired one of the tranq darts into his chest. He jerked to his feet, but swayed almost immediately. A second later, he staggered backward and passed out in the chair.
I turned my rifle on Victor. “How about you?”
He held his hands up in a gesture of surrender. “I’m in!”
Ten minutes later, we’d secured the top floor, had two more Collabs in custody and one more—a guy Zeke swore by—on our side. Better still, Taylor had reported back in that he’d found the site of the solar array and they’d secured it. Which meant we might—might—be able to at least keep the fences working for a few more days while we devised a game plan for getting these Greens out alive.
Maybe I was wrong. Maybe things didn’t
CHAPTER THIRTY
Mel
I know we’re in trouble when Sebastian asks me to drive. A passenger all my life, I’ve never taken the wheel, except for bumper cars at theme parks, but how can I say no when we were hunting all night and he’s been driving all day. He seems exhausted, so I slide into the driver’s seat. The car feels like it has a mind of its own, lurching all over the road. I control it just barely, like I control my hunger. I wonder if that’s why Sebastian makes me drive, but then I notice that he’s looking paler as he directs me through the streets of an abandoned town I don’t know. We’re in the desert somewhere.
Soon he doesn’t have to tell me where to go. There is light ahead and I am drawn to it like a moth . Where there is light, there will be food.
Though it is night, the area around the fence is lit up like a football stadium. The fences are taller even than those I’ve seen around Farms. Though we are surrounded by desert, a perfectly manicured green lawn stretches for hundreds of acres inside the fence. A cluster of pale, five-story buildings sits in the distance. And there are people walking from building to building. Even a crew of workers fretting over the landscaping.
“What is this place?” I say on a whisper. “Is it some sort of Farm?”
Sebastian taps his fingers against his leg in that world-weary way he has. “No. Not as such.” He looks at me. “Can you not guess?”
My mind races. He expects so much of me, but never more than I can give. If he thinks I should guess, the answer must be obvious. “This is Roberto’s lair.”
His chuckle is strained. “Ah no, dear Kitten. If it was Roberto’s lair, he would have yanked me from the car long before now.”
Okay, not a Farm. Not Roberto’s.
I feel a jolt of excitement. “This is the lair of someone else. Some other vampire I haven’t met yet.”
“Very good, Melly.”
Before I can ask more, someone walks out of the guard station at the gate. I roll down the window. He is human. The first human I have seen since my death. The aroma of him is intoxicating. It’s infinitely more appealing than the muck running through the veins of Ticks. This human, however, is no defenseless snack. He
