AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Her head swung up. “We haven’t needed your supplies since January. Just to communicate.”
“Fake grocery orders? Okay.” He tilted his head, showing appreciation, in case that kept her talking. “So that greenhouse gives you everything you need? Along with trapping, hunting, so forth. Is that why you need Elias back? He’s a good trapper, but I’m guessing that’s not his only role. Future population diversity, am I right? Along with the occasional recruit, like this guy here?” He tapped Agent Useless on the arm, but he was out cold.
She didn’t answer.
“That’s Naomi’s domain, isn’t it? She’s the genealogical expert.”
A flicker of reaction told him he was right.
“How’d you turn an FBI agent? Money? Love? Hatred of the internet?”
No answer. Honestly, any of those could have worked, but it didn’t really matter right now. All that mattered was Molly and Elias.
“Now that we know Elias was brought here illegally, you’d better bet we’re going to be checking into every one of those kids. Your crazy scheme is over. I don’t care what your wacko prophecy says. You’re done, all of you. It was impossible anyway.”
Did Soraya even know where his plane was? Maybe not. It might have gone down somewhere else, either landed or crashed. He needed to search for it immediately.
He rose to his feet, only to get a kick to the leg from Soraya. “No. We did it. We were doing it. We didn’t need anyone from outside. We were surviving by ourselves.” Pride rippled through her voice.
“But you got impatient, right? If the outside world was so bad, why were you waiting to pull the trigger? Isn’t that what you thought? Luke was holding you back, so you moved against him. He told me all about it.”
“He didn’t. He wouldn’t. He’d never talk to the enemy.”
“Poor Luke,” Sam went on, as if she hadn’t spoken. “He wanted you all to believe that outsiders were the problem, but he didn’t know you’d take it so much to heart. Why did you shoot at me? Luke didn’t force you to, did he? Was that another part of the setup?”
Her top lip curled. “You were so easy to fool. Big bad man Luke, poor mother in need Soraya.”
“You got me,” he admitted. “But you fooled Luke too. He didn’t want violence, that was all you. The younger generation. He created a monster and couldn’t control it anymore.”
She bared her teeth at him. “You’re the problem. Not me. Not us.”
“Well, so sorry, but it looks like you’re stuck with us. You’re going to be in prison, surrounded by outsiders. Maybe I’ll visit, if I have time in between flying people to Firelight Ridge to view the Ice Falls. You guys just made them more famous, well done, you.”
He sidestepped her next kick and stood upright. Nothing more to be gleaned from her. Time to find Molly while there was still some light in the sky.
He signaled to the pilot that he was ready to go. “They’re either on the glacier or in the mountains somewhere. Let’s hope it’s the glacier because finding anything in that forest is almost impossible.”
On the other hand, if they’d landed on the glacier and it got dark, they could all die of exposure, especially if they’d left the plane.
Not happening. He was going to find Molly and when he did, he was going to tell her she was…everything.
40
One moment, the soaring peaks of the Wrangells seemed closer, the next moment they seemed impossibly far. Underneath her feet, the glacier seemed to moan and crack with every step. It seemed to breathe, too, Molly thought. An icy breath that wafted around her, sending a chill through her clothes, past her skin and into her bones.
She wasn’t dressed for a glacier hike. Her hiking boots didn’t have cleats, so she kept slipping on patches of ice where the sun had created a puddle. She had to keep moving her leather tote bag from one shoulder to the other. Maybe she should have left it behind, but she needed something to carry her snacks and water in. Her suede gloves were meant for the city. Every time she fell and caught herself with her hands, they got more stiff and sodden.
Ruined gloves were the least of her problems, if you tallied up the unknown distance she still had to hike, the blister developing on her left heel, potential exposure if she didn’t get off this glacier by nightfall, and the mystery of what the hell would happen after that.
Even once she reached the edge of the glacier, it must be at least another few miles through the woods to Firelight Ridge, and she had no idea if there was a road or a trail she could locate when she reached the end of the glacier. Elias had told her where to head, but not what came after.
Elias. In some ways, he could have been her kid, with his red hair and offbeat nature. In New York, she’d worked with any number of kids, but had never formed that kind of bond. Was he the only “child” she’d ever have, this vulnerable kid she’d vowed to protect, but who had then saved her life?
She’d worried about having kids of her own, given her family’s alcoholic tendencies and terrible role modeling. Was reproducing really the best thing for her, she’d wondered. But that was the beauty of genetics; an entire half of the DNA came from someone completely different.
Sam wasn’t an alcoholic.
She could picture Sam being a really good father, once he dropped the “I don’t give a shit” lone wolf act. That wasn’t really him, anyway. It was a ruse to fool the Chilkoots, and maybe to protect himself after his divorce. But he wasn’t that way with her.
