Trapped (Here Trilogy) (4 page)

I couldn't bring myself to look at him, in case I saw something that confirmed my fear. I kept my eyes on the road while Vera cried. She sounded so heartbroken, I felt a stab of sympathy for her—and then I felt like a traitor to humanity.

A few seconds later, Nick spoke over her crying. “Milo, would you mind if I drive for a while?”

Nick’s hand, I confirmed, was fine. At least, it looked fine. Five fingers, all moving the way they were supposed to. This skin was pink and, yes, “fresh” looking, so I tried not to look.

“It’s okay to stop?” I had almost forgotten about the DoD.

He nodded, and I found understanding in his eyes. “Yeah. We're in the clear for now. I thought you might like to get some sleep.”

I laughed, more a cackle really. “Sleep?”

I raised my eyebrows in the direction of Vera, who was crying more quietly now, then slid my gaze to Nick. How in the world did he expect me to sleep?

“Nothing will happen,” he said quietly.

“How do you know?”

One corner of his mouth tugged up. It was tired but intimate, the facial equivalent of a gentle squeeze of his hand over mine. He mouthed, “I know.”

I had never felt more confused, but I didn't want to talk about it with Vera around. I pulled off when I found a lookout point and climbed out of the truck, half expecting to be pounced on by aliens or knocked out by men in black. By the time my feet hit the snow-caked dirt, Nick had already made his way to my side.

The engine was loud, it was freezing cold, and we were standing in a cloud of smog. Nick looked into my eyes, and I was waiting for him to give me a clue about what I should expect when his hand smoothed my hair back off my head.

“Get some rest,” he murmured, and he kissed my hair before he opened the door to the back of the cab. I climbed in, shoving sleeping bags and camping gear out of my way, making myself a small space in the corner, behind Nick, who slid into the driver's seat at the exact moment Vera scooted over to the passenger's side door and curled up in a ball of misery.

The rear bench was warm, and the pile of sleeping bags I found myself leaning against was soft.

I watched Nick’s shoulders as he pulled onto the road, and I wondered why I had ever thought the climax of our story was him liking me.

I was barely a verse in their space opera. Or maybe it would turn out to be a horror movie.
Not a love story
. I closed my stinging eyes, and I thought of Mom and Dad, and how when he died, she'd cried so long, I thought she might die, too.

Later, she had told me, “It was like I felt him leaving. I wanted to go with him, and I couldn't.”

I DREAMED OF Paul Revere. Torch flames dancing, horse shoes pounding on the old brick roads. I watched the horse, and its urgency became mine, and all of a sudden Nick's voice was in my ear. We were dressed like Star Wars, lying in Annabelle's pink bed, our legs tangled, Nick's big body pressing pleasantly on top of mine. He leaned down, and I thought he would kiss me, but instead he smiled, that soft, sweet smile I knew was just for me.

“Help me, Milo, you're my only hope.”

I opened my eyes, and I wasn't in Annabelle’s bed. I was in the backseat of a stolen truck, lounging on a pile of sleeping bags with my arms crossed tightly around myself. Nick was—not in the truck. The truck was parked, off the road at what looked like an abandoned gas station, and I was by myself. For a terrible moment I was absolutely certain that he was gone, and then I heard voices.

Angry voices.

Nick and Vera’s voices.

My eyes followed my ears, and I quickly spied them, on a slab of cement maybe thirty feet to the left of the truck—rolling on the ground.

All the blood in my head drained away in one second flat, and again I had that sick feeling of
Nick isn't who I think he is
and OMG, I am such an idiot. I think those feelings were just offshoots of a more vast feeling, which originated with Dad's cancer: Don't trust anyone or anything.

My eyes refocused just in time to see Vera come out on top, straddling Nick, then punching him. I gasped. Nick flipped her off of him, jumped to his feet, and started yelling at her, his hands animated in a way I had never seen before.

Vera shook her head. She took a large step forward and slapped him. Nick turned on his heel and strode toward the truck.

I laid back down and held perfectly still while I waited for him to open the front door and climb inside, not wanting them to know I was awake. I was surprised when he opened the back door.

I raised my head, our eyes met, and on my end, it was like a collision. He held out his hand and quietly said, “Let’s move you up front.”

I was sliding down into his arms as Vera got into the back seat on the other side. She slammed the door so hard the whole cab shook. I wondered what had happened, and I thought I was going to get an answer, but instead Nick deposited me into the front passenger’s seat with only a tired smile.

He hopped into the driver’s seat without a word, buckled his seatbelt, and fiddled with the radio, eventually settling on a station of piano music—playing Satie’s “Gnossienne No. 1”—before he pulled back onto a highway.

“We're almost to Gardiner.”

“Montana?”

He nodded, and I could see his right eye swelling. Stupid Vera. My fingers itched to touch him, to ask if he was okay, but Vera Vera Vera.

“Wow. I didn't know we were all the way up here,” I'd been coming up this way since I was a little kid. Sometimes when Mom wanted an art weekend, Dad and I would take off for the parks—Teton or Yellowstone, or both—sometimes in a little twin-engine plane he'd had before he decided it was too dangerous and sold it to stupid Suxley
.
Gardiner was a sleepy little town that harbored the only wintertime access to Yellowstone.

“We were being held near Jackson, Wyoming,” Nick said quietly.

“Oh.” I wanted to ask about that. About how he’d let them torture him, because they’d threatened me. About ‘fragmentation’. Aside from whatever it meant to them, it felt like a really good adjective for the state of my heart.

I opened my mouth. The heaviness inside my chest moved into my throat. I could feel it on my tongue, but I couldn’t get it out. I felt vulnerable and small, so very beholden to Nick, not because of what he was, but because of who he was—to me.

Snow began to fall again, huge, fat flakes that dotted the windshield and overlaid the gauzy night beyond.

I was staring blindly at that night, wondering how on earth—indeed, on earth—this could ever end okay, when Nick took my hand and leaned near me, speaking softly in my ear. “I'm sorry for this. So sorry.”

I wanted to ask what exactly he was sorry for, but I could hear Vera stir behind us, and anyway, we were getting near downtown, so Nick had to focus on other things.

The foothills rolled around us, bathed in bright starlight that lent the falling snow an ethereal glow. I stared through it, at the ice-crusted firs, remembering the last time Dad and I made this trip—six days before Christmas 2008. That was the last year he’d been able to grow his winter beard.

The way I remembered it, the worn road would take us through a quaint community and over a small river. Once you crossed the river, storefronts became sparser, and the slim ribbon of asphalt led you south down 89, to the historic, brick archway that marked the north entrance to Yellowstone.

I battled feelings of painful nostalgia; this was the first time I’d been back, and the familiar slant of the mountains brought tears to my eyes. I tried to fight my anxiety, too. Nick seemed confident we were safe.

It was harder because he hadn’t explained how. And even if we were safe—it was temporary, unless Vera blew the whistle again and called the summons off. I didn’t think she would.

The worst part, the absolute killer, was not knowing when they were coming. ‘The Rest.’ What if I never saw Mom again? Or Halah or Bree or S.K.? Did the Mackris family even know about their cabin yet?

I actually smiled a bit when I wondered, because it was the least important thing I could have wondered. The whole world was going to be that cabin if Nick couldn’t convince Vera to blow that whistle.

I didn't want to talk to Nick in front of her, but I didn’t think I could stand not knowing anything any longer. Everything—literally
everything
—was hanging in the balance, and the longer I thought about that, the more confused I felt.

Didn’t I have an obligation to every other person on the planet? Shouldn’t I be Paul Revere? I glanced at Nick and felt how awful it would be. But even if it would be awful—even if he was the Nick I thought he was, and everything was innocent and genuine and true where he and I were concerned—I was nothing to Vera, and humanity was nothing to Vera. And the rest of Nick’s people?

I took a deep breath, because that’s what Dr. Sam had taught me to do if my thoughts started going to dark places. And they were. I wanted to disappear out of existence, or fall asleep and never wake up, because I simply couldn’t stand the wondering.

The town of Gardiner was all around us now. Lots of oversized shutters on big windows, swinging doors painted cowboy red, celebrity-dressing-room style light bulbs around windows that said things like, “Town Café-Casino” and “Reds Blue Goose Saloon.”

My gut clenched when we passed a little Sinclair gas station and I spotted a police cruiser next to a pump. I thought I might pass out when it pulled behind us.

“It’s okay,” Nick said, but I could hear the shortness in his otherwise even tone.

“We need to get across the bridge,” I said, breathless. “I think this is the—” right road. I trailed off when I spotted the bridge, just beyond a traffic light. I glanced in my side mirror, in time to see the cop turn off onto a side street. “Thank you, God.”

In the back, Vera was slumped against the rearmost window, sleeping or pretending to. She seemed completely unperturbed by the danger we were just in—but to her one cop was hardly dangerous.

It took us another few minutes
to reach the park entrance, during which a thick fog rolled in on the road. It looked about knee-high by the time we reached Roosevelt Arch, a thick, stone brick archway over the northernmost entrance to Yellowstone. Inscribed at the top was: For the Benefit and Enjoyment of the People.

Neither of us spoke as we rolled closer to it. I couldn’t breathe until I saw there was no ranger posted at the entrance. Nick cut out the headlights just before we reached it. “Just in case someone’s watching,” he said.

I heard Vera stir behind us, but I ignored her as my eyes swept the familiar, snowy landscape. You could still see some of Gardiner across the fields to the left. For the next quarter mile or so, I allowed my eyes to rove the flat, snowy fields around us. The scrubby brush that lined the road glittered magically. Across a swatch of brilliant white, a rabbit skittered, leaving a footprint trail. Nick steered us past a brown sign that said the park’s name, and I remembered something bad.

“In a half mile or so,” I murmured, “there’s this little wood cabin. In the daytime, at least, there’s always a park officer there.”

He nodded slowly. “I’ll take care of it.”

A few minutes later, I held my breath as we approached the official entryway: the road forked at a little cabin, which was, thank God, empty. A mechanical arm raised to let us through, and Nick winked.

I held my breath as he turned the headlights back on and drove us toward some little hills.
I wasn’t sure how long we drove; my eyes were drawn to the stars, which more so than ever seemed both breathtaking and horrifying.

I wondered what we were doing here. I figured Nick planned to hide us here and work on changing Vera’s mind. If her mind could be changed. With several miles of Yellowstone behind us, the fog was thicker. It seemed to hiss and swirl around us as it drifted into the sky. I caught a glimpse of the sign for Mammoth Hot Springs just before we passed it.

Vera sat up, looking around. “Why are we at a park?”

“We're stopping here for the night,” Nick answered tiredly. “There are tents on this roof—we’ll pitch them, and you can get some much needed sleep.”