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Maddy squinted to be sure.
Before Maddy could respond, she felt the crushing impact from above.
He must have gone around the tunnel.
A gloved hand wrapped around Maddy’s wrist. The crackling voice was older and surprisingly genteel through the black mask.
“Hello, Madison.”
Jacks thrashed his wings and rammed hard against the Angel, then dove. The agent’s grip on Maddy’s arm ripped loose painfully, and he fell back behind them. As he flew in evasive maneuvers, Jacks’s eyes scanned the sky, his head darting back and forth, until he trained on a hazy, blinking light above them. A chance.
“Maddy,” he yelled, banking sharply and preparing to climb. “I need you to hang on for me one more time. Will you do it for me?”
“I’ll try,” she said weakly.
Jacks wrapped her arms in his vise-like grip and, using his last ounce of strength, climbed straight up like a rocket into the night sky. The weight of the acceleration was crushing against Maddy’s small frame. Faster. Higher. Her eyes became long tunnels as the blood rushed out of her head.
“Just hang on, Maddy! Hang on!”
Jacks’s voice echoed somewhere far away.
She simply didn’t have any more strength in her fingers as they began slipping. The world began to recede. Her eyes closed as the blackout swept over her. She barely heard the sound of the jet engines growing closer or felt the sizzling heat as they passed through the jet wash. The next thing Maddy knew, she could feel metal below her feet.
Groggy, she opened her eyes. She saw riveted metal and glowing, round windows. They were on the wing of an airliner. Jacks maintained balance on the wing as the 747 banked to land at LAX. He pulled Maddy close against the side and they waited there, unmoving. The metal of the roaring aircraft was frigid against Maddy’s skin. She watched a woman inside the plane as she glanced out her window. The passenger’s eyes grew wide, and her mouth hung open as she took in the image of the two of them on the wing.
They left the airliner moments before the 747 touched down. Jacks flew them low over the palm trees until black, silent canals came into view. The pungent smell of stagnant water filled Maddy’s nostrils as they landed and Jacks pulled her under a white footbridge. They sat there next to the water, listening for anything. The lap of the canal was the only sound. Otherwise it was silent. Nothing.
For the moment, they were safe.
“Are you okay?” Jacks asked, panting, exhausted.
“I think so. What about you?” Maddy asked.
“I will be.”
“Was that . . . ?”
“Yes,” he said. “Those were Council Disciplinary Agents.”
“This is all my fault,” Maddy said quietly.
“No, it’s not. You had no idea.”
“I forced you to go to see my uncle when you knew the danger, and now”— her breath caught—“I’ve put him in danger too.”
“He’ll be okay, Maddy.”
They sat there listening to the lap of the water.
“What do we do now?” Maddy said.
“Hide. Find someplace safe and dry where I can recover my strength. I can’t trust any Angels. Not even my stepfather. We need someplace they won’t be looking.”
Maddy thought of the one place she had known as safe her whole life. The image of Uncle Kevin crouching in the kitchen as the ADC tore into her house made her shudder. There was Gwen’s. But that was just down the block from her home, and her friend’s entire family would be there. And for all Maddy knew, the Angels would be watching her best friend too.
After a moment, Maddy thought of it. It was far from ideal. But under the circumstances, it was the only place they could go.
“I know somewhere. We’ll be safe there, I think.”
