Page 29 of Empowereds
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C harity sat by Enzo as the armored truck rumbled away from the camp. She was only slightly jostled as they went over the bumpy road and an assortment of unfortunate vegetation. The truck had nice suspension.
Enzo had barely told her anything. He’d just said they were heading out and hauled their things to the truck.
He checked the rearview and side cameras a few times, then said, “I don’t think the truck is bugged. The military has no reason to bug one of their own vehicles and doing so would be a liability for them. They wouldn’t want their enemies to be able to patch into that frequency, but I’m sure it has a tracker on it. I’ll stop and take it off when we veer from the road to Kansas City.”
“We’re not going there?” she asked.
He told her about his conversation with his director.
Her father had been captured.
She felt sick. Panicked. Her head buzzed with confusion, with the wrongness of it all. Her father’s visions were supposed to keep him safe. She’d always depended on this fact. “How could he have been captured?” she asked, then answered her own question. “They put him in a position where no safe choice existed. The only way for him to protect my mother was to let himself be taken.”
“I’m sorry. If I’d known from the beginning that your father just wanted to protect his family, I never would’ve revealed him.”
Her heart pounded in her chest. She had the ridiculous desire to jump out of the truck and run—as though that would get her somewhere faster. “We can’t just leave him there. When he refuses to cooperate, they’ll kill him.” Torture him, maybe. “There has to be some way to free him.”
Enzo shook his head with resignation. “I wish there was. I really do. We can’t break him out, and you should stay as far away from federal agents as you can.” He took his hand from the wheel long enough to give her hand a squeeze. “Your father told you to go with me because he knew I would keep you safe. That’s what he wanted. That’s what we’re going to do.”
Enzo’s sympathy made the outcome feel so final. She couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t think straight.
“Once we get to the main highway,” he went on, “I’ll take the tracker off this vehicle, and we’ll head to Nashville. I have some friends there. Hopefully, I can convince them to take us in while we figure out how to buy new identities and start over. If that doesn’t work out, we can try to find your city and join your family there.”
He was making plans and contingency plans. It was tempting to tell him they should head to New Salem immediately. Her brothers were probably already there. Maybe even her mother. Her family would know what to do. They might be working on a way to free her father. Maybe her father had sent her with Enzo because she wasn’t supposed to be part of his release.
Charity tried to make that version of events feel true—Milo laughing when they reunited in New Salem and saying, “Dad knew you were a horrible shot and even worse at keeping secrets, so keeping you out of the way was for the best.”
As much as she wanted it to be true, another image planted itself more firmly in her mind: her family’s expressions when she showed up at New Salem and told them she’d left her father to die.
She wouldn’t be able to face them. She had to find a way to help him. Enzo was giving up too easily, settling on the safer option. “You’re a police officer. Don’t you have clearance that will let you into the Federal Detention Center?”
“I can walk through the doors and come up with an excuse to make it past the security guards. But finding and opening your father’s holding cell is another matter. The locks use facial recognition and a passcode. I don’t have clearance for either.”
For the first time, a ray of hope lit through Charity. “The number in my mother’s letter. You said you didn’t think that was a zip code. Maybe it’s a passcode.”
“And maybe it isn’t. You did hear the part where I told you what the government will do if they catch you, didn’t you?”
“Could Callum hack into the system, find out where they’re keeping my father, and change your clearance so you could open his cell?”
Enzo looked thoughtful, which meant he was at least considering the idea. “Possibly. We’d have to talk to him to know for sure. But listen, if your father gave us that number as a passcode to break him out of prison, wouldn’t he have mentioned it in the letter?”
“Maybe my father didn’t know what the number was for. Some of the visions don’t make sense until we reach the time when we need them.” To prove the point, she added, “None of us know what the last vision on his timeline means. He sees his eyes looking startled. But it will make sense when it needs to.”
Enzo tapped the steering wheel, silent for a moment, then shook his head. “You’re not considering all the obstacles. A guard is posted by the entrance to the wing. I’m not willing to shoot a fellow officer just because he’s in my way.”
“We’ve got the tranquilizer gun,” she pointed out.
“Even getting into the city would be a problem. If we tell the city checkpoint that we have clearance from the special ops department, they’ll notify Schmitt of our arrival. That doesn’t give us much time to go to Callum’s and convince him to help us. When we don’t show up to meet Schmitt at the right time, he’ll send people out to search for us. I’d be detained the moment I set foot in the Federal building.”
“We’ll go through one of the back ways to the city. We must have something we can use to pay our way in.”
He sent her an incredulous look. “The only things of any value we have are our weapons, which we’ll need. And even if we did make it into the city, trust me, the police will take note of an armored truck rumbling down the streets. We can’t sneak anywhere in this thing.” Another shake of his head. “I wish I had an answer you liked, but I’m not willing to throw away your life over a bunch of half-baked possibilities.”
She wouldn’t give up that easily. She couldn’t. “If you’d had the chance, even a small chance, to save your father or Kitra, wouldn’t you have taken it?”
He didn’t answer. He looked straight ahead, jaw clenched.
Minutes went by. The road leveled out into a gentler slope. Pretty soon they would reach the main road. Going right would eventually take them to Nashville. Going left meant Kansas City.
The highway came into view ahead, gray asphalt cutting through the trees. “When Kitra died, I swore I would never go through that pain again. And I did fine until I met you. I knew pretty quickly that I could fall in love with you, and after that, I tried to stay away from you.
“Now I’m wondering what I did to make fate curse me. It took away the woman I thought would be my wife and gave me a wife who I love even more. And now you want to throw your safety to the wind.” He slowed the truck. They were almost to the road.
“You love me more than Kitra?”
“I shouldn’t compare you.” His words were more resigned than complimentary. “But you’re kinder and more loyal. You’re also more self-sacrificing, which is an attribute I’m appreciating less each mile. I hate to admit it, but if Kitra was sitting beside me now, she would’ve quit campaigning to go to Kansas City the first time I mentioned the government planned to torture her.”
He let out a groan of aggravation. “If I don’t try to help your father, you’ll always wonder if we could’ve saved him. You’ll feel guilty and resent me. I’ll lose you either by death or my inaction.”
Perhaps Charity should’ve assured him that she would understand if he drove to Nashville. Enzo might be correct—going to the city could cause her death, or worse, his.
But the number. They had a number. Those digits had to mean something. She clenched her hands in her lap and stared at the road.
They rolled up to the intersection.
The way was clear. Enzo didn’t take his foot from the brake. Long seconds went by. His posture was stiff, agitated, and worry creased his brow. Finally, he said, “I’m still not sold on the idea of a jailbreak, but I’ll get close enough to the city that your cell phone will work. Maybe your first guess was right, and it’s the zip code of somewhere that isn’t a deathtrap.”
He turned to the left.
She wanted to hug him. “You’re more self-sacrificing than anyone I know.”
“I feel responsible that your father is in prison, and I don’t want to lose you. That’s different from being self-sacrificing.”
The truck picked up speed once they reached the pavement. Charity had never been on such a smooth ride. She hardly noticed the potholes. The trees flew by.
She kept checking the built-in GPS, watching their position grow closer and closer to the city limits. She tried the phone when they were fifteen miles away. No service. She tried again at ten miles. Still no luck.
When they were five miles away, Enzo said, “Help me look for a place to pull off so I can remove the tracker. We need something with good cover. If raiders see an armored truck sitting around, they’ll try and take it from us.”
Charity trained her eyes on her side of the road, searching for an area that could shield a truck. Almost immediately, she found one. She could tell the spot was good because a truck already waited there.
And she recognized the truck.
“Stop!” she yelped. “Turn around. We need to go back. I just saw Milo.”