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“Are yousure?” Lenna feels a stab of trepidation. “What if they’re all working together? What if they’re all in on this?”
Sarah gives her a look that seems to say she hasn’t considered this. She shakes her head. “I don’t want to believe that. We have to take the chance.”
Sarah taps her phone. On the screen, Lenna can see that the Wi-Fi signal is indeed back. “I’ll call Ann,” Sarah says. “The woman who works with animals. Have you met her?”
“She wouldn’t be my first choice,” Lenna says.
“Why? Okay, Melissa, then?”
Lenna chews on her lip. What if they called Melissa but got Naomi? What if Naomi waspretendingto be Melissa all this time? She isn’t sure Naomi would want to rescue them on a rock.
“Amy?” she suggests. “Matilda’s mom? She’d come.”
“You’re not calling anyone,” says a voice behind them.
Lenna’s limbs turn to steel. She whips around, searching for the voice, but the desert is playing tricks. All she sees is shimmering dirt. Sarah seems equally confused. But in the very next moment, there’s a small, flatsmack.Something hard hits her leg. A stinging insect? A cactus needle? Lenna yelps and bends down, touching something unfamiliar protruding from her calf.
“What the…?” Sarah whispers. There’s one in her leg, too. When she pulls it out, it looks to be a tiny dart. Sarah stares at Lenna in horror. The dog starts to bark.
“Oh my God,” Sarah whispers, dropping the pointed end to the dirt. “Lenna.Lenna.Pull it out! Pull it outnow!”
“I’m trying,” Lenna says. Her fingers are shaking too badly. Her knees start to buckle.Jacob.The dog’s bark rises in pitch. But she can’t tell what he’s barking at.
She gets on her knees, knowing she’s about to fall forward, desperate not to cause any injury to her baby. Footsteps sound close—heavy boots on the dirt. Her limbs are liquid.Jacob.Her shoulder hits the ground. It brings the baby down, too, his body still strapped to her.No,she wills her body. She needs to protect him. She can’t let this happen.
But whatever was injected into her bloodstream is too powerful. Lenna can barely open her eyes. Her ears still function, and she hears the footsteps come closer and then someone’s hands click the baby carrier’s latch free from her waist. Weight releases from her—the carrier, and Jacob, too.No,Lenna tries to scream, but her mouth won’t open properly, and her body won’t move. She curls her hands into fists.
A figure looms over her, gently lifting Jacob up. “There, there,” a voice says over the sound of the barks. A woman’s voice.Gillian.
“Please,” Lenna croaks, but her mouth feels like it’s welded shut.Her baby.
“Please,” she says, trying to speak more clearly. In her head it sounds clear enough, but on her lips it’s something else.“Please.”
Jacob fusses. Struggling hard against the exhaustion, she forces her eyes open. Every cell in her body screams at the sight of Jacob’s chubby, sweet,innocentbody in this person’s arms—someone blurry, but just like Sarah said, with Gillian’s wavy hair like a haloaround her head. Jacob is twisting around, his gaze staring down at Lenna as if he knows what’s happening. The figure—blurry, growing blurrier by the second—is staring down at her, too.
Lenna’s lips part. She wants to scream out. But before she can, her ears thunder with echoing sound. And the world goes black.
34
Lenna
October
Present day
When Lenna opens her eyes again, the world smells like rot and sweat. There is only darkness and murk. She hears someone close to her gasping, sucking air through a straw.
She experiments with moving her fingers, then her arms. It comes back to her: the tranquilizer in her leg.Gillian.
And then:Jacob.
That thought jolts her fully awake. Pain shoots through her all the way to the roots of her teeth and palms of her hands as she tries to sit. “Jacob!” she screams. At least her voice works.“Jacob!”Her baby is no longer in her arms.
Nothing. No sounds at all, really, except for that ragged, sucking breathing from somewhere in the darkness. Tears prick Lenna’s eyes. Her heart is pounding so hard, she’s afraid it might seize. She thinks of Daniel, safe at home, thinking they’re coming back soon. She wishes she could scream for him.
She needs her baby. She tries to move forward, but something is clamped on her ankle. Her fingers fly there, touching plastic. It’sa zip tie. She’s attached to what seems like some sort of metal clamp bolted into the ground. She scrabbles at it, but it doesn’t give.
She lets her fingers fall dejectedly. Her mouth is dry with thirst. Her heart twists.
