Capture (11 page)

“Hayden, either you follow that truck right now or I will find a way to make them arrest me! I have to at least know where they’re taking him.”

Her eyes widened, turning wild in th
at way they always used to when we were kids just before she went berserker crazy on her enemy, regardless of whether that enemy at the time happened to be me, my brother, or an imaginary dragon. Once her temper was up and she’d made up her mind, there was absolutely no stopping her.

Seconds ticked by as the military truck got caught by a light one block ahead of us, giving me a little more time to decide but not much.

If I didn’t help her follow that truck full of prisoners and her dad, she would do something crazy to purposely get arrested. And then I’d have no hope of helping her. At least this way I would be the one behind the wheel and able to keep her safe.

“Fine,” I growled. “Put on your seatbelt.”

Dad was really going to kill me if we got caught doing
this
.

We stayed several car lengths away from the truck while it was in town, the frequent stoplights and the truck's height making it easy to keep the truck in sight despite the distance and other cars between us.
Then it turned onto the highway and headed west. It looked like we might have a long drive ahead of us.

I let the distance grow between us and the bigger truck.

“What are you doing? We’re going to lose it,” Tarah muttered.

“
No we won’t.”

“
What if it turns off—”

“
Then we’ll see it turn and follow,” I said. “But we’ve got to stay back far enough so they don’t notice us. If your dad is at the nearest camp, we won't be any use to him if we get caught following them and they throw us in with him.”

“
Oh please, like you’re really worried about that. You’re Senator Shepherd’s son. You’re not going to do time in any internment camp or prison no matter what you get caught doing.”

“
I wouldn’t be so sure of that,” I grumbled.

She glanced at me,
one eyebrow raised. “What are you talking about? Your dad would bail you out in a heartbeat.”

But she didn't know my dad or his idea of tough love.
Dad had called in a ton of favors to get my last mess cleared up after all those deaths. If I wound up in trouble over this Clann business too, it might push him too far.

Knowing my dad, he might decide to let me spend a few weeks in an internment camp just to teach me a lesson, especially since the media would never find out about it.
He could always explain away my absence, say I went on a trip abroad or was studying at some secluded private school for final college preparations. Mom would be ticked off at him, of course, and she'd probably work hard to convince him to reduce my sentence. But if a short stay in an internment camp seemed the way to finally ensure I got the message to fit in or else, he just might allow it.

Feeling Tarah's waiting stare, I glanced at her.
She was frowning, confused, trying to understand. But she'd never get it. How could she? Before they'd moved away across town, I'd spent enough time as a kid at Tarah's house eating homemade cookies and snacks to know she came from a tight knit family who actually loved each other, in spite of how much they used to yell at each other. Tarah would never have to fight to earn her parents' approval, never have to doubt their love.

Growing up as one of the many generations of Shepherds destined for political greatness, and all the endless pressure of expectations and responsibilities that came with it, was an experience no outsider wo
uld ever understand. So why try to explain?

Tarah

Silence filled the cab as I waited for an explanation Hayden didn't seem to want to give.

I drummed my fingers on my thighs.
He had to be joking. How could his parents really be that horrible? Sure, his parents had never been around when we were kids, leaving their boys in the care of a housekeeper while they went to charity and political events. But even busy parents still loved their kids. And no parent would ever knowingly let their kid stay in an internment camp. Right?

As the silence stretched on and on, I started to wonder.
Maybe I knew even less about Hayden than I'd thought.

My parents would do anything—absolutely
anything—
to get me out of an internment camp as fast as they could. Even my mother, who never agreed with me on anything, would still fight tooth and nail to free me.

When the silence lasted longer than I could stand, I sighed and gave in
to at least part of the source of my nagging guilt. “Thanks for getting me out of there back at the bookstore.”

One corner of his mouth lifted then relaxed in a half smile so brief if I'd blinked I would have missed it.
“Old habits are hard to break.”

At first I was confused.
Old habits?

Then I remembered a thousand and one playdays spent with Hayden and Damon in the woods behind our houses before my family moved closer to the university
and Dad's lab: The boys dressed up in plastic armor with shields and helmets and swords left over from Halloween costumes. The feeling of dragging around that old red and gold embroidered comforter their housekeeper Hilda had given me for a robe, wearable only in the fall and winter because of the blanket's thick, hot weight. The way I'd pretended to knight the brothers with one end of a black iron curtain rod-turned-scepter, its one fleur de li-shaped finial adding to the royal illusion, and the lump I'd accidentally given Damon over his right ear from it. How many times had the boys pretended to save me from a nasty dragon or evil wizard so I could join them as a warrior queen and turn that scepter into a wand that wreaked havoc on weeds and imaginary wizards alike?

Then I realized
the truth behind what he'd said.
Old habits are hard to break.
So he'd only saved me from some old childhood habit?

My throat tightened.

Blinking fast, I stared out the passenger window again.
“So what were you doing at the protest? Helping out your buddy’s new club?”

He hesitated, then said,
“Something like that.”

“
What's it called again? Jerks Against Humanity?” I’d only meant to tease him, but my tone came out ruder than planned.

Before I could apologize, he frowned and said,
“Not exactly.”

More silence while I waited for him to explain, until it became clear that he wasn't going to.
Again. Talking to him was about as enlightening as talking to a fence post.

“
So why did you join TAC anyways?” I grumbled, crossing my arms over my chest to keep from fidgeting.

“
I had my reasons.”

“
Peer pressure made you do it?”

He snorted.
“You're one to talk about peer pressure. Rumor has it you’re doing weird rituals with that emo crowd of yours every weekend in the woods. Since when did you get into all that crap?”

“
Crap? It’s not crap! And speaking of doing weird stuff in the woods, rumor has it
you’re
the expert in that area.”

H
e froze, even his chest no longer moving with his breathing. “I have no idea what you're talking about.”

“
That night in the woods last summer? With Damon and all those other people? Y'all were doing magic, weren't you?” I didn't bother to give him an opening to lie again. “Gary's older brother was a friend of Damon's. He was there. He died. Gary heard the doctors tell their parents that everyone who died there looked like they'd been hit by a bomb blast or something, but they couldn't tell what the bomb materials were made out of.”

“
That doesn't prove anything.”

“
Gary talks about it all the time, you know. Most people believe the only way you could have survived that night is if your spells were more powerful than everyone else's there. But there is one detail Gary and the others at school are still divided on.”

“
Yeah? What's that?” he said between barely moving lips.

I wasn’t sure why I kept pushing the issue. To distract myself from the fear that was trying to crush my lungs every time I looked at that truck ahead of us with my dad trapped in the back? To hurt Hayden? To finally get the truth out of him about Damon’s death?

Whatever the reason, something made me push on. “Well, some of them have this theory that the normals who died that night showed up in order to attack the ones who were doing a ritual or magic training, and both sides took each other out in some kind of massive blaze of glory or something. Their theory says you were the lone survivor because you were able to use a spell to protect yourself while everyone around you fell. Those are the people who believe you'll use your power to follow in Damon’s footsteps someday.”

"What people...Clann people? Outcasts?"

"Maybe. At least, they think they are."

Silence for several long heartbeats before he muttered,
“And the others? What's their theory?”

“
The others, Gary included, think you...” But the words didn't want to come out of my mouth. As irritated as I was with his insisting on lying to me, Hayden had once been my best friend. I didn't really want to hurt him. I just wanted the truth.

“
Go on,” he muttered.

I took a deep breath.
I'd started this. I might as well finish it. “They think you were the only survivor because...because you killed everyone else in the woods that night.”

More silence, in which I could both feel and hear my heartbeat racing in my chest and ears.
And that's when I realized just how much learning the truth about that night mattered to me. This wasn’t just some distraction. I wanted to know,
needed
to know the truth. And yet I was scared to hear the answer.

Most of me said there was no way Hayden could ever hurt, much less kill, seventeen people.
At least, not on purpose. And especially not his brother, not for any reason.

But there was this tiny part of me that just wouldn't shut up about how
long it had been since I'd ended our friendship. How little I knew about Hayden now. How much a person could change over time, especially once they realized the heady and sometimes addivtive power their abilities gave them. And how accidents could happen when a novice first tried to learn how to use and control their magic.

He glanced sideways at me, his eyebrows pinched together, his eyes completely unreadable.
“Which side do you believe?”

I chose my words carefully.
“I'd like to believe a former friend of mine could never kill a bunch of people. And especially not his brother. At least, not without one heck of a good reason to.”

“
Like?”

“
Like maybe self defense. Or it was an accident.”

As I braced for his answer, an awkward silence filled the cab
. And this time, Hayden was the only one who could fix it. But his next words weren't what I'd dreaded
or
hoped to hear.

Hayden

“They're turning off.” I had to work to keep the relief out of my voice. How the heck had we ended up talking about the one subject I'd sworn never to discuss with anyone ever again?

“
Should we get closer?” she asked, those probing eyes of hers now thankfully locked on the military truck again.

“
Not yet. It's pretty open out here.” We'd driven far enough west that the rolling hills had flattened out and turned dusty with few buildings and more scrub than actual trees or bushes. We could hang back quite a ways and still not lose sight of them.

Then the truck turned off the state road into what looked like a field.
I slowed our truck to a crawl and had an idea. “Hey, would you mind looking in the backseat for a set of binoculars? They'll be inside a hard case.”

Tarah unbuckled her seatbelt then leaned over the seat back to dig through the piles of stuff.
I tried not to get distracted by how the denim of her jeans hugged all those curves she never had when we were kids.

“
You mean these?” She held up a camouflaged plastic case. I nodded, and she flipped its catches open. “These are some serious binoculars. Stalk people much?”

I fought the urge to smile and almost won.
“They're for deer hunting. Dad and I plan to go this year.” If he could manage to tear himself away from all those mysterious committee meetings he'd had to attend lately.

“
Sure they are.” She removed the binoculars, made a face as she tested their weight in one hand, then resorted to using both hands to look through them. “I see the truck. It's stopping at some kind of building.”

I pulled over to the side of the road and squinted.
The truck was half the size of my thumbnail at this distance. “Is it the camp?”

“
I don't think so. Too small. More like a guard shack or something.”

“
Okay. Let's find a parallel road to follow them on.”

We were lucky we were out in West Texas now with its flat, treeless desert-like geography. If we'd still been in East Texas, the rolling hills and dense pine trees would have blocked our view.

I found a long dirt road to turn onto that ran the same direction as the one the military truck had taken. Our path was probably someone's driveway running through a field half a mile away from the internment camp. If anyone showed up and asked us what we were doing on their property, we'd say we were lost.

“
I see two buildings, big ones,” Tarah called out a few minutes later. “They're pulling up to them. I think it's the camp. There's a smaller tent-type building too, and a huge fence around the whole place with barbed wire on top.”

The problem with how open it was out here was that the visibility went both ways
. Which meant if we could see the camp, then they could see us with binoculars too. We needed more cover.

I pulled over in the ditch on our right, hoping the slope of the dirt would at least partially hide our vehicle if anyone looked our way from the camp.
“Come on, let's take a walk.”

We
crossed the road then walked hunched over in the ditch closest to the camp, our shoes fighting the sandy dirt for a few minutes, till we found a mesquite tree. The tree wasn't much, its low, zigzagging branches bare for the winter and hazardous to get under with their thousand and one thorns. But at least we wouldn't be the tallest objects out here. I checked for snakes and cacti. Then we hunkered down near the twisted tree trunk, hiding as much of ourselves from view as we could.

“
They've got a lot of guards,” she said, frowning as she passed me the binoculars.

I scoped out the camp.
She wasn't kidding. In addition to the barbed wire-topped fence that must have been at least twenty feet high and surrounded the entire compound, they had two lookout stands at the double gate entrance, each with a guard posted, two more guards on the ground at the inner gate, and seven more spaced out along the fence. They were armed too, every guard holding a rifle in addition to side arms strapped to their outer thighs.

Strangely, though, none of the guards were facing in towards the prisoners.
It was almost as if they only worried about an outside attack on the camp and not the prisoners themselves.

And then I realized why.