The Lair

She had to bring her to a Farm.

The Farms had tons of pregnant Breeders. They had to have some plan for dealing with the babies. They’d have supplies. Diapers. Formula. Medicine, if Josie needed it. All the things it took to keep babies alive.

The cynical, bitter, darkest part of her brain asked the unthinkable: What if the Farms had never intended to keep the babies alive? What if they were just more food for the Ticks?

But that didn’t make sense. Not really. Yes, they’d be food for the Ticks in the sense that, at some point, they would be giving blood donations. But Farms needed Greens to replace the Greens who were aging out of the program.

She had to believe that if she brought Josie to a Farm, the Farm would be able to care for her.

It would mean turning herself in. It would mean going back to a Farm herself. But she could live with that, because she had no one else to protect except Josie—she had no one else to love.

But before she did that, she had one more thing to do. She had to tell Carter what Ely had done. Ely had betrayed her. He’d tranqed her and kidnapped her. Why? What was it he’d said? That Carter wasn’t the only one who needed her alive.

What exactly did that mean? Ely hadn’t confirmed he was working for Roberto but who else could possibly need her alive? Why her?

Obviously someone still thought she was an abductura. That was her only value, right? But who?

The Dean from her Farm had obviously believed she had powers, but he was dead. Had he told someone else she was an abductura before he’d gone chasing after her and Mel? He must have, but who had he told? Another Dean? Unlikely, but not impossible. The more likely answer was Roberto.

She knew nothing about Roberto other than what she’d learned from Carter and Sebastian. They believed that he had at least one, but possibly more, powerful abducturae working for him. That he had bred the Ticks on purpose so that he could take control of some vast swath of territory in the former United States. And that he’d used the one-two punch of the Ticks and the abducturae to convince humans that the Ticks were unbeatable and unstoppable. They could only guess what his endgame was.

But whatever his motives were, it was a safe bet he’d do anything to get an abductura working for him rather than for Sebastian.

So if Ely was working for someone else, it was most likely Roberto. Just because she’d escaped Ely, that didn’t mean she’d escape whoever Roberto sent after her next.

She didn’t dare go back to Base Camp, even if she could make it. The only solution that didn’t endanger Carter and the rebellion was to hand herself over to Roberto. And finding him wouldn’t even be a problem. All she had to do was find the nearest Farm and present herself to the Dean.

She could live with turning herself over to Roberto. After all, she had no powers, so she would endanger no one but herself. But first she had to find a way to contact Carter.

By now, Josie had drifted off to sleep. A fitful, hungry sleep, but sleep nonetheless. So Lily moved the baby off her lap and onto the seat. Then she started searching the Cayenne. Ely had a lot of crap in the back of the Cayenne. He’d been living out of it for months. He had the same training as Carter. Carter never went anywhere without his satellite phone. She was betting Ely would have one. If she could just find it.

Searching the backseat turned up a dozen Clif bars, a flashlight, and a well-stocked first aid kit. Since she was starting to feel punchy from the lack of sleep and her arm was still aching, she ate one of the bars and took an Advil for the pain then went back to the search. Finally, she found what she was looking for, wedged into the Cayenne’s spare-tire compartment. It took her a few minutes to figure out how to set up the antenna, but she’d seen Carter do it and it wasn’t that hard. A few minutes after finding the phone, she was still working up her courage to call Carter. She was worried that just the sound of his voice might weaken her resolve. She couldn’t risk him talking her out of it.

While she thought about what she was going to say, she watched Josie as she slept in the backpack. She had strapped the seatbelt through the straps on the backpack. Yeah, it screamed “bad idea” as a car seat, but it was the best she could do.

That pretty much summed up the entire situation. It all screamed bad idea, but she was doing the best she could.

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

Carter

I didn’t know if I’d actually convinced Wilson and Trinia, but at the very least Trinia was no longer yelling at me and trying to gouge my eyes out. That was an improvement, right?

The not-having-my-eyes-gouged-out wasn’t much comfort when I got the news from Taylor: The generator couldn’t be expected to hold for more than another night, even if we turned off everything but the fences. Which meant we had less than twenty-four hours to devise an exit strategy. Without sounding like I had a Messiah complex, I couldn’t help wondering if Moses had had these kinds of problems when leaving Egypt.

I had teams outside the Farm now, looking for vans and trucks we could use to transport the Greens to Utah, and to siphon what gas they could find. I was talking with Victor about organizing teams of Greens to look for food and weapons when my satellite phone rang. If anyone was calling me, it should have been one of the other Elites, hopefully with good news about . . . oh, I don’t know, finding an RV park or something. Instead, it took me a minute to recognize the number.

I gestured Victor out the door of the Dean’s office as I picked up. “I hope to hell you have good news, Ely, because I could sure use it.”

There was a moment of silence so long, I wondered if maybe the connection had gone dead. Maybe the phone’s antenna had broken.

Then a quiet voice said, “This isn’t Ely.”

“Lily?” My heart rate jumped.

“Yeah. Hi, Carter.”

A thousand questions raced through my head. Where was she? Was she safe? Had they made it to Canada? Instead, I asked the stupid question. “Where’s Ely?”

“He’s, um . . .”

I would have heard the hesitation in her voice even if she hadn’t been stuttering. Then it hit me. That wasn’t just hesitation. She was crying.

“Lily, what’s wrong?”

In the moments of her silence, my mind raced. Lily wasn’t a crier. I’d seen her go through some crazy shit. Crap that would have had grown men sobbing, and she hadn’t broken down. If she was crying now . . .

“Are you hurt? Where are you? If you—”

“I’m okay,” she broke in, her voice trembling. “I’m not . . . Jesus, I’m sorry. I thought I could do this without crying.”

“Do what?” Shit. If she didn’t tell me what was wrong soon, I’d frickin’ leap through the phone and—

“It’s Ely.”

“Is he hurt? Is he—”

“No. He’s fine. I mean, sort of.” I heard her take a shuddering breath. “Carter, he can’t be trusted.”

“What?” I heard her words, but they didn’t register.

“I know he’s your friend and you’ve known him forever, but he’s not on our side and I need you to believe me and—”

“Lily, of course I believe you.” My mind was still reeling. Whatever had happened, it had obviously messed with her head. Because this was Lily. She was always coherent. She could always make a cogent argument. Always. I’d never heard her fumble for words or ramble like this. Ever. That just wasn’t her style.

“Of course I believe you.” But Ely had betrayed her? He couldn’t be trusted? It made no sense. “Back up. Tell