Ending ELE (ELE Series) (20 page)

“
Where did the others go?”
Tony asks as we run quietly through the forest, staying within the shadows of the trees.

“
They took the kids out towards some lights that Michael saw not too far away from here. We think it may be the military camp,”
I tell him.

“
What? Why didn’t I know about this?”
he asks without stopping.

My breathing is labored as we pick up speed.
“He just showed it to me this morning. They aren’t going to go near the lights, just in that direction.”
Tony’s free hand clenches into a fist. I can feel the jealousy and mistrust—towards Michael, not me—rolling off him. I do my best to brush it off, knowing that I need to let him blow off some of this steam before we talk about my disappearing into the night with Michael.
“They are supposed to find a safe place to wait for us.”

The sound of a gunshot rings out in the air behind us. I drop to the ground automatically, even though it came from back near the burning house. Nowhere near us. My blood runs ice cold as realization hits me.
“Michael.” I whisper out loud. I genuinely hope he’s okay.

“
We don’t know that. We need to keep moving.” Tony pulls me up and we run faster towards the river.

It has to be Michael. Guilt tries to creep in as I think of my dad, Alec
, and Marya. It has to be Michael, not one of them.

Tony grabs my hand and squeezes it. All without missing a step, he tells me
,
“Don’t think about it, Willow. If it was Michael, we don’t know if he was on the giving or receiving end of that gunshot. We just need to get to the rally point and wait for him and the others.”

Another startling realization hits me.
“He won’t make it to the rally point.”

“
Why not?”
Tony asks.

I duck under a low-lying
branch and sidestep a large rock.
“Because I told them to meet us at the river beneath the cave we stayed in. Michael doesn’t know which cave we stayed in.”
I don’t have proof that there are more caves in the general area, even though that’s usually the case. I begin to wonder why he didn’t question me about it… My explanation was very nondescript in the first place, especially for someone like Michael, who hadn’t been there before.

“
Well crap,”
Tony says, although I can tell he isn’t too concerned about finding Michael. I think that statement was more for my sake than anything.

“
If he’s smart, he’ll double back and head toward the lights. He knows we are bound to try and meet up with the others soon.”
The sound of the waterfall grows closer as we move at lightning fast speeds in its direction.

“
We can’t afford to wait around for him too long. If those lights are from the military camp, we need to put some distance between ourselves and it,”
Tony says as the waterfall comes into view.

“
We need to save the others. We have to investigate—find out where those lights are coming from.”
I stop behind a large tree and turn to look at Tony. I’m surprised that he wants to keep running when we don’t know if the others are safe.

His neon
-yellow eyes flash with intensity.
“What do you expect, Willow? For us to go rushing in there and demand that the army of soldiers just give up their hostages?”

“
We don’t know that they are hostages,”
I say back, while giving him a snarly look. My reasoning makes no sense though. Why would they have taken everyone in?
Not
to make new friends. I don’t know though. I have a strange feeling that the people who took them aren’t planning to harm them. After all, there wasn’t a single casualty left behind. If they intended to harm them, they would have used serious force.
“Look, I’m not saying that we rush in there without a plan. I’m saying that we need to investigate the camp. We don’t even know if it’s a military camp. That could be Blake’s men.”
I surely hope not though. From what I could see, the camp was huge. If Blake has that much backing behind his vicious schemes, then we are in a legion of trouble.

The sound of footsteps makes us both go still. Tony raises his hand to my mouth and instantly we both go invisible. The footsteps near
and I realize it’s more than one set of feet trampling through the snow. The tree that we are hiding behind begins to shake. Tony and I dive to the side as it starts lifting from the ground, uprooting the roots.

“
Willow!” my dad calls in a loud whisper.

The tree drops back in place as my dad, Alec
, and Marya come into view. Marya looks relieved and out of breath from lifting such a large object with her mind.

“
Dad.” I run to hug him, so relieved to have him safe.

“
I see you found your man,” he whispers into my hair before releasing me. I chuckle at his words.

“
Actually, he found me,” I tell him, releasing the hug.

“
We were so worried about you. We heard the explosion and saw the smoke,” Marya tells us.

“
I wanted to check it out, to make sure you were okay, but Alec has a good head on his shoulders. He reminded us that Blake’s men could have set a trap. I agreed to check here first before going to investigate,” my dad tells me.

“
I’m glad you listened to Alec. We heard a gunshot as we were running this way. I’m not sure if Michael made it. He disappeared shortly after the explosion and I couldn’t find him,” I report to them.

“
We better get going to find the others,” Tony recommends. “How far off were the lights, Willow?”

“
It’s a few miles from Hastings’s secret exit,” I reply.

Tony nods his head.
“Let’s move out then.”

It takes us under an hour to make it to the point just beyond the secret exit. I see the ridge that Michael pointed out early this morning. Just beyond it
, somewhere in the distance, is the base camp of the military. At least we are hoping it’s the military and not Blake’s posse.

Getting here was the easy part. Now we have to find the others. My stomach is growling loudly from hunger. Tony hands me half a protein bar with a reassuring smile.

I feel on edge. I don’t like being separated from my little brother or my friends. I will feel much better when I know everyone is okay. We make our way towards the ridge. It was easier to make out the lights of the camp when it was dark. Now, during the daylight that is slowly starting to wane away, it’s hard to find the spot in the distance.

I
squint my eyes, searching for it. The ridge slopes down into a valley of snowcapped treetops for as far as I can see. Nothing sticks out to me. The lights were a few miles away from this point when I saw them. I point to Tony in the general direction that I recall Michael pointing. “It’s somewhere out that way.”

“
It’s going to be hard to make it out during the daylight if it’s that far away. Do you think the others would have stuck around up here, or do you think they made their way down into the valley?” Tony asks aloud. It seems to me like a rhetorical question.

“
It’s hard to say. We weren’t specific on where they were to hide. We just asked them to bunker down somewhere safe and to keep an eye out for us,” I answer. I try to open myself up in hopes that I can sense them nearby. I give up a few seconds later with a small feeling of defeat.

“
We should probably scour this area up here first, and then make our way down if we don’t find them,” Alec suggests.

“
Sounds like a plan to me.” Tony pats him on the back.

We split up to search the perimeter. Marya and Alec take one direction and my dad, Tony
, and I take the other. An hour later, we meet back at the ridge with no sign of the others.

“
Let’s head down then,” I say as I take the lead. Thankfully, the slope downwards isn’t steep. We’re able to work our way down easily and quickly.

When we make it back under the canopy of trees that seem thicker than they were up above, we
begin looking around again. My stomach feels unsettled and Tony, having sensed my anxiety, squeezes my hand. I’ve been trying not to think of the many dangers out here. I can’t help it though. They could run into Reapers, Blake’s men, the military, a bear… Really, the list is endless.

“
Carrie could totally take a bear,”
Tony says trying to be helpful.

“
Yeah, she totally could.”
I give him a half-smile and continue looking around us. A small amount of snow begins falling from the sky, blanketing the ground in a new layer of white.

“
Willow,” Marya calls from behind me.

I turn around to see her with a hand on my dad
’s shoulder. His face is blank as he looks at nothing in particular. A moment later, the fog clears from his expression and he looks up with a wondering smile.

Hope rises in me.
“Did you see them?”

He nods his head, still smirking.
“Yes, they aren’t too far from here. Connor found a tree house.”

“
A tree house?” Alec asks.

“
Yes, or it could be a hunting blind. I couldn’t tell. All I know is that there isn’t much to it, but it’s keeping them out of the way,” he answers.

“
Do you know where it is?” Marya asks.

“
It’s near a small creek. Where the creek is, I have no idea. We must find them soon though, since it was still daylight in my vision.” My dad pats her hand, which was still on his shoulder.

She smiles and drops her hand. She was worried about my dad and that means she cares for him.
I like that.

“
Good. They have the food,” Alec jokes.

“
Let’s keep heading in this direction then,” Tony says since we don’t have a better plan.

We keep moving forward. Every once in a while, we stop and fan out to search the area around us and then meet back in the middle again. It
’s on one of those searches that Marya and Alec report that they found the creek.

“
It was covered in snow, making it hard to see, but it’s definitely a creek,” she tells us as we follow them.

The creek is small but keeps going on for as far as we can see. We follow the bank a short ways before we hear them.

“Wello!” Sabby calls out to me.

I turn around to look behind me. When I hear his giggles, I look up to see my brother above us in the tree house. His little face is smiling at me from its
cut-out window. Connor and Claire are peeking out behind him. The place is very well camouflaged. If Sabby hadn’t called out, I never would have noticed it.

We move towards the tree.
“How do we get up?” Tony calls up.

A second later, a hatch opens above us and Connor lets down a ladder.

“That’s pretty cool,” Alec says as he climbs up first.

We all make our way up into the small room. There isn
’t much to it, but from the old aluminum chairs and empty ammo containers, I can tell that it had to have been just right for a hunter. Plus, the vantage point to the creek made it perfect for spotting deer.

“
Where’s Michael?” Claire asks.

I look down and answer
, “I lost him before I found Tony.”

Nobody asks any more questions about Michael. We all realize that chances are we won
’t run into him tonight at least. This is a huge forest and he doesn’t have any gifts or abilities that could help him track us down. All we can do is pray for his safety.

Tony tells everyon
e about the house exploding as Carrie and my dad start passing out food. Carrie had dumped as much of the pantry as she could into a duffle bag. We all huddle together in the small, cold room under a few blankets as we pass around crackers, peanut butter, and a can of beans. A totally random combination, but we are so hungry, we could care less.

“
I was looking through the binoculars at one of Blake’s men when the house exploded,” I say out of nowhere. I’d been going over the last few hours in my mind. “I saw a man in a ghillie suit staking out the house. A family of raccoons had come across him, not realizing that he was there. I think that one of them triggered a remote or something because one of the baby raccoons fell on something and then the man started running. I thought at first that he must have been scared of the mom, but I think he knew the explosion was inevitable.”

“
So they rigged the house. I wonder why,” Carrie says.

“
There could be several reasons. They could have been trying to kill us off. Which I would think they wouldn’t do if they wanted to get their hands on Willow. Maybe Hastings had something in his house incriminating Blake... Sorry, man,” Tony says to Alec when he realizes what he said.