Trapped (Here Trilogy) (2 page)

No matter what happened, eventually, it would all be over.

I tripped over something, pitching forward, and Nick's arms closed around my waist.

“Faster! Milo, please!”

His fingers, now gripping my own, tugged so hard I thought my hand might pop off my wrist.

“I can't!” I panted, but I tried anyway.

As we ran into the trees, Nick called, “Vera!”

I saw a streak of red somewhere up ahead, a flash of color in the dim and snowy grove, but she didn’t turn back toward us. Was it her fault that they'd found us? Was she trying to force Nick’s hand? She was powerful—so obviously powerful. Why was she running at all?

The snow under the trees had turned to sheets of ice, and with every step I skidded. I heard shouts—the agents calling for us to stop—and deep, menacing barks.

“It's okay,” Nick panted, shoving me ahead. “Just keep moving!”

Adrenaline made my limbs jerky and uncoordinated. The slope had gotten steeper and I was flying down it now, my stolen lab coat flapping behind me like a cape. Nick caught my elbow, and at that instant, Vera shrieked. In the beat of time between her scream and our plunge, Nick's fingers found mine, and he clasped our palms together.

Then the trees and the ground disappeared and we soared over the edge. The world seemed frozen as my legs scissored uselessly. I heard a sick smack below us—Vera, hitting the ground—as I toppled into true free fall, flipping end over end, my fingers grasping air. The frigid
whoosh
of the wind was deafening. I saw a glimpse of a narrow road cut through the mountain. Then sky, then road, then sky, and then my hair blew into my face.

I had only a moment to wonder how badly it would hurt, dying from impact, when I smashed into something—
hard
.

I moaned, and then my lungs screamed for air. I gasped, coughed, gasped again. Once I was breathing, my feet started throbbing, my bloody bare feet. And if my bleeding feet were still my most painful body part...

With all my strength, I pried my eyes open. I was lying face-down. I was lying on top of Nick.

Nick, who was on his back, his head lolled to the side, on what looked, to my bleary eyes, like asphalt. My face had been buried in the spot between his ribcage and his underarm. As I looked down at his face, he turned his face toward me and his eyelids fluttered open. His eyes rolled back into his head before they focused on my face, exposing a sea of broken blood vessels.

I watched, horrified as a line of blood trailed from the corner of his lip.

“Milo...?”

He wrapped his arm protectively around my thigh while his other hand stroked my face.

“I—Nick, oh my God.”

“I’m okay,” he said. “Are you?”

“I don’t know. I think so.”

“Vera?”

She had gone splat. Or I thought she had, but when I glanced up, I saw her…
dancing?
She stood a few feet away, waving like she was twirling invisible batons. She was talking fast and emphatically, but I was still too rattled to make sense of her.

I pressed one hand against the road, testing my arm, my fingers. I put my other arm down, then pushed myself up off Nick, moving slowly, just in case. To my surprise, I didn’t break. My mouth tasted bloody from where I’d bitten my cheek, and my ribs felt pretty sore and bruised. My head throbbed and my eyes felt heavy, but I was able to grab Nick’s arm and help him sit up.

I guess I was seriously stunned, because when I heard the DoD's shouts, I felt a second of pure shock. I shot up, whirling to face the cliff we'd fallen from, maybe fifty feet above. My eyes scanned the top, quickly spotting a dozen or agents.

“Crap.” I was wondering if they would catch us before the aliens arrived when I heard something loud and—

“OH SHIT!”

The truck was big, white, and one second from my face. My eyes shut as the squeal of breaks tore through the frigid air. Then the screech was snuffed out by a loud crunch, and I opened my eyes to find Nick standing between the truck and me, his arm outstretched, palm facing out. The truck's grille had caved in the middle, like it had hit a tree head-on. My mouth fell open as the camper behind it fish-tailed, its rear corner smashing into the mountainside with a violent boom and a spray of rock.

Flashing light like from a camera drew my eyes back to the cliff. Maybe five or six agents were repelling down it.

Nick clasped my hand and tugged me toward the truck. He opened the driver's door, pulled a screeching woman out, and shoved her toward the roadside, where two agents were lunging toward us.

Nick slammed them against the cliff with a flick of his wrist. Then he grabbed me around the waist, threw me over his shoulder, and climbed into the cab, tossing me onto the long, bench seat and stomping the gas pedal before he’d even shut his door.

I found Vera on my other side. She dragged her eyes over me and sneered. “Still alive.”

For just a second, I thought about reaching across her lap, opening the passenger’s door and literally kicking her out. Before I could, the windshield cracked. A bullet whistled between Nick's shoulder and mine, and I shrieked, dropping down so my cheek was pressed against my knees. A second bullet burst through the passenger window, sending a spray of glass over my head.

“Stupid animals,” Vera hissed.

“Milo, are you okay!” Nick's hand pressed on my back.

The tires squealed as we spun into a higher gear, and I lifted my head for long enough to catch a glimpse of black suits in the road as we sailed past. I ducked as the glass in the back of the cab exploded—once. Then we were around a curve.

THE VIEW THROUGH the windshield reminded me of footage from a race car’s dashboard camera. The mountain road was extraordinarily narrow—though technically two lanes—and it was curvier than scissor-teased ribbon. And Nick was flying.

I grabbed his thigh and might have said his name. My ears were popping, and I was dizzy. Nick’s hand found mine. He squeezed my fingers.

“Tell me you’re okay,” he said. I caught a glimpse of wide brown eyes before they returned to the road.

“I’m fine.”

Nick's answer—“Good”—was more felt than heard.

He navigated the hair-pin curves with seeming ease, and that only made things more surreal. I could feel gravity tugging on the base of my neck, urging my torso back against the truck's bench seat. I gave in, slumping.

The curves kept coming, our speed making me tremble and sweat. After I'd braced for a crash more times than I could count, I realized I had tears running down my cheeks.

“Milo, buckle up,” Nick urged.

Vera hissed, a sound that reminded me of pain but was probably just disdain or ridicule. I didn't care; I didn't even look at her.

As my fingers fumbled with the belt, I wondered what would happen if we crashed. Would Nick and Vera heal themselves? Would they disappear—just
poof
?

Again, I remembered that even if we somehow survived this mad dash down the mountain,
they
were still coming. Vera had blown that damn whistle.

Sitting between her and Nick, looking out at a dark night that might be hiding hostile UFOs, I had never felt so fallible.

The universe must have appreciated irony, because Vera picked that exact moment to wail, “I'm bleeding!”

She leaned over me, keening in pain, and I noticed her left shoulder was slick with blood.

“The pain,” she half-sobbed, reaching for Nick's arm.

His face hardened. “Blow it again,” he said, each word a punch. “Blow my whistle again and send them back.”

Her eyes widened. “You would let me bleed to death simply for following protocol!”

Nick rolled his eyes. “You’re going to be fine.”

“I am not fine! Look what's happening!” She cried, waving at her tear-streaked face. “I don't like this!” Her voice was squeaky with pain, her bangs sticking up as the wind whipped in through the shattered passenger-side window. “Nick.” Another gasp, followed by an almost audible gritting of her teeth. “MY SHOULDER HURTS!”

Nick glared at her, a surprisingly harsh look considering his partner was now drenched in horror-movie quantities of her own blood. “Sit back down, Vera. You'll heal soon.”

I'd tried not to look at her as she accosted Nick—knowing how she hated me, I didn't want to anger her any further—but I couldn't resist a quick glance now. Already, her tears were drying on her mascara-streaked face, and there wasn’t any fresh blood.

Vera was opening her mouth, no doubt to continue ranting, when a rumble shook the air, and I nearly died of fear.

“Shit,” Nick hissed.

“Is it them?” I cried. At the same time, he said, “How many of those things do they have?”

“What?!”

He frowned at me, moving his gaze off the road to see my face. “It's a helicopter.” His hand left the wheel, reaching across my lap and taking mine. “The Rest won’t be here for a long time. And before then, Vera will blow my whistle.”

Vera stuck her chin out; she looked very pretty, even with her mascara all over her face. “Don’t bet on it,” she said.

Nick squeezed my hand before returning both of his to the wheel. The THUMP THUMP THUMP of the helicopter was louder, the helicopter closer. I rationed my breaths, seriously worried I might hyperventilate.

“Their positioning system is so sloooow,” Vera taunted, making little sense to me. She was looking at Nick, who was looking in the rear-view, his face dotted with sweat.

Seconds later, a sonic boom rocked the truck, and the mountainside somewhere behind us blew apart. As my arms covered my head, I caught a glance out Vera's window, where a majestic fireball crawled over the shadowed cliffs on the other side of the metal railing. I realized it was the helicopter.

Nick made the helicopter crash. I gaped at him even though I had seen it before, back at S.K.’s cabin. But then they had been so far away, I hadn’t really seen it. Not like this, up close, with a big, Hollywood-sized fireball.

When his hand came down to cover my knee, I jumped. I felt terrible, and the look in his eyes—wounded—made me feel worse, but there were people in that helicopter. I remembered Nick’s face, twisted with pain on the gurney at the DoD compound, and put my hand over his knee.

“Vera, are you going to help?” Nick asked in a voice I could tell was carefully controlled.

Vera snorted. “I’m not contributing any more to this farce.”

“Milo.” Nick’s eyes hopped from the road to mine, holding for an intense second. “I understand that you're afraid. But— Milo, I need you to drive.”

I laughed, then my laughter collapsed into hiccups. “Is that a—” hiccup “—JOKE?!”

“Can you do it?” he pleaded. “Try?”

Hiccup. “Why!”

He took a deep breath, then, in a kind of rush said, “There are a few more helicopters on the way.”

“What! How many?”

“Just a few. Can you do it?”

“I don't know,” I cried. “Of course I can't, I'll crash!” Nick must have been going at least ninety miles an hour, and we were in a huge truck pulling a huge camper, whipping around
hair-pin
curves. I was a decent driver, but I wasn't Danica Patrick.

The road straightened just a little, and again, I found Nick's gaze on mine. “Can you try? Please, Milo?”

He might have been an alien, but his handsome face had worked its way into my heart, so when his mouth tugged down and worry filled his eyes, I still felt like Milo, Saving The Day; Milo, Saving The Lost Boy. I still wanted to be that person, like I still wanted him to be Nick as I’d imagined him to be.

I nodded once, my head jerking. “I’ll try.”

“You’ll do fine,” he told me warmly.

He sort of stood in his seat, and I went low, so, after a warm brush of his body over mine, I settled behind the wheel. We'd eased off the gas pedal as we switched places, but now, as I tried to become one with the twisty-turvy road, I pressed a little harder.

Nick gave my arm a squeeze. “You can do this. Just stay focused, and only drive as fast as you’re comfortable.”

That was like fifty, tops, but I nodded.

Nick switched places with Vera, and within seconds, I felt the ground shake. There was a loud boom, and somewhere behind us, the sky went orange and red as Nick began picking helicopters out of the sky.

I flew around one curve and then another, keeping my eyes trained on the yellow lines and not the massive hunk of mountain to our left, nor the steep drop-off beyond the railing to our right.

Vera was using a piece of her dress to wipe the mascara off her cheeks, clearly unconcerned by the life-and-death situation that seemed to have even Nick a little bothered. He was crouching on the far end of the bench seat, his head and shoulders hanging out the window. As a straight shot turned into a harrowing curve, he slowly stood, moving more of his body out the window.

“Holy shit.” My legs were shaking so hard, I could hardly keep pressure on the pedal.

“Here comes another,” Vera said, almost a taunt.

“I don’t see anything,” was Nick’s response.

A second later, the chopper Nick didn’t see was pulling down close to the peaks beside us.

“Shit, Nick!” When I glanced over at him, and I could only see his legs.