If this Preacher Joe was the guy I’d known, then I sure as hell needed him here to convince these people I wasn’t here to butcher them.
“Find Preacher Joe,” I ordered Zeke. “Get him in here.”
“You can’t just arrest people!” Trinia launched herself toward me, but Wilson grabbed her and held her back. “People won’t stand for you arresting Preacher Joe! We’ll rebel! You can’t—”
I’d had enough, so I grabbed her by the arms. Wilson instantly bristled, but I didn’t do more than hold on to her to get her attention.
“Listen to me! I get it. You feel completely overwhelmed with the responsibility of taking care of all these Greens. That’s what Zeke said about you, that you take care of all the young kids. All of them. Was he right?”
Trinia’s eyes filled with tears. She was still looking at me with undisguised hatred, but with fear, too. Not for herself even, but for all those kids she’d put herself in charge of. Slowly she nodded.
“So you’re taking care of all the kids who are thirteen to . . . what? . . . fifteen or so? That’s about one-third of the Farm. You’ve appointed yourself the savior of over three hundred kids.”
She swallowed, but nodded again.
Yeah, I knew her type. That’s the kind of thing Lily would do. When bad shit like this happened in the world, you had to find some reason to go on. Some reason to keep putting one foot in front of the other. For Lily, it had been Mel. For Trinia, it was those kids. And unless I was mistaken, for Wilson, it was Trinia.
“You feel like if you make the wrong choice, it’s not just you who pays, it’s all of them. And it terrifies you.”
She dropped her gaze and averted her face. I let go of her arms and stepped away. She immediately went to Wilson, and he just held her.
“Hey, I get it. I wouldn’t want to trust me, either. To make matters worse, I can’t even promise we’re going to do any good here. I can’t promise we can get the fences back up and even if we do, that’s only a temporary fix. If it’s been three or more weeks since a food truck has come, then you’re all short on energy. We have to get out of here and fast. But I’m not going to lie. I have no way to get all of you up to Utah, where maybe—maybe—it’s safe. We’re going to have to find cars. We’re going to have to caravan it. I’m not going to sugarcoat it. We’re in trouble. Serious trouble. I can’t promise that we’re all going to make it, okay. Hell, I can’t even hope that. All I can promise is that there are guys here who know how to kill the Ticks. People who will help you fight them.”
Trinia was openly sobbing now, but her fear, her gut-wrenching terror, seemed to have morphed into something else. Determination, maybe. Despite the tears, she seemed stronger than she had when she’d first walked in.
Wilson stroked the back of her head reassuringly, but looked up at me. “Can they really be killed?”
“Yeah, they can. I’ve killed them myself.”
“God, I hope you’re right.”
Yeah. Me, too.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
Lily
Lily felt hungover when she woke up. Dry-mouthed, disoriented, head and body aching.
She sat up, shaking her head. It was dark. She was in the front seat of the Cayenne. Her neck hurt from sleeping sitting up. In fact, every muscle ached, especially her left bicep, which throbbed angrily. Blinking, she ran her hand down through the neck of her shirt to the spot on her arm where the bullet had grazed her shoulder last . . . when had that happened? Why couldn’t she remember?
She gingerly poked at the skin around her wound. The skin felt hot and too tight. Cringing from the pain, she tried to put the pieces together. She was alone in the Cayenne. The Cayenne wasn’t moving. It was dark outside, but where was she?
Ely and McKenna wouldn’t just leave her alone unprotected. Her brain stuttered over that thought. There was something she wasn’t piecing together. Again there was that foggy feeling. Her mind wasn’t working at full speed. What the hell had happened to her?
She patted at the wound through her sleeve and her fingers came away damp with blood. She had torn through the stitches. She’d jumped out of a tree. Or off a roof.
That’s when it all came rushing back to her. The farmhouse. McKenna. Josie.
Oh, God. Josie!
Where was she now?
And why the hell had it taken Lily this long to figure out she was missing? What was wrong with her brain?
She pushed the door open and stumbled out of the Cayenne. Her head spun and nausea hit her stomach. Sucking air in through her mouth, she sank back onto the seat and dropped her head between her legs. She knew this feeling. This dizzy nausea and foggy disorientation. She’d felt this before. This wasn’t a hangover. This was how she’d felt when she’d been shot by a tranquilizer dart back on the Farm. But who had shot her this time? And why?
Ely.
Shit. Shit, shit, shit!
“Don’t blame yourself,” Ely’s voice called from somewhere nearby.
Ely’s words sent a burst of hatred through her. She brought her head up, looking around through the haze of her nausea and anger.
“You’re probably already thinking about things you should have done differently.”
His voice came from the other side of the car, but not from nearby. Surreptitiously, she looked around, trying to pinpoint his location. On her side of the car, she could see dawn starting to peek over the horizon, a faint patch of gray. When she looked out the driver’s-side window, she could see a low, squat building not far from the Cayenne.
She couldn’t see him, but as he kept talking she could tell he was somewhere in that direction.
“You’re probably wondering how you didn’t see this coming.”
“Fuck off,” she growled.
Only then did she notice a mewling sound somewhere in the distance, coming from where Ely must be.
Terror shuddered through her as she realized what the noise was. Josie.
That’s why she wasn’t in the car. He was leaving her here. Leaving them here.
Instinct pushed her to her feet. But her right ankle throbbed in time with her arm, and it crumpled beneath her weight.
She ducked her head and scanned the interior of the Cayenne, looking for a weapon and cursing her sluggish brain. She didn’t see her bow and quiver, which meant Ely must have moved it. She couldn’t let him drive away.
In the backseat, all she saw was the blanket from that first night. She grabbed the blanket and pulled it into the front seat with her, but there was nothing else back there. Which meant Ely had at least the tranq gun with him.
If she made it to the back of the SUV, if she could pop the trunk, if her bow and arrow was back there, then she’d have at least a fighting chance. But that was a lot of ifs.
“All I’m saying is that you shouldn’t blame yourself. It’s not that you’re weak. It’s not that you’re gullible or too trusting. I would have betrayed anyone. And there wasn’t a damn thing you could have done to stop me. So don’t beat yourself up over it.”
If she had to guess, she would say Ely was still talking for only one reason: he was trying to distract her. Because right now, all her attention was focused on two things: fighting her pain and talking to him. He knew how bad her injuries were.
As long as he kept her standing here talking to him, he could be sneaking up on her through the darkness. And here she was, standing right next to the Cayenne with the dome light on in the car. The only bright spot in the
