Ever Hayes - Redemption

Danny, Blake, and Keena joined the other Pack members at the tables. They were dividing everyone up into search groups. Keena was going to stay in Blake’s office with Jenna to monitor the computer and keep in touch with Area 52. Axel was going to take the rest of the Pack and Tara—who insisted on going—over to Kauai so they could begin their search. Then he was going to come back for Dad and me to go searching for the missing boat, even though none of us thought we’d find it. Kate and Kaci volunteered to stay with Ollie.

Before heading out, Danny reconnected with Nicole. “Nicole, here’s the ELF I want you to send. USS GW. Two stowaways on board. Potential terrorists. Identities unknown. Search and report. ”

I was a little uneasy about Danny using the word terrorist— what if Hayley was one of them —but I understood he wanted the carrier to take the threat seriously. Surely they wouldn’t shoot first and ask questions later.

Nicole read the message back to him, and Danny confirmed it. Then everyone split. We all had important jobs to do and no time to waste doing them.

The last thing we wanted was for anyone on the carrier to know we were on board. The second-to-last thing we wanted was to hear the long shrill blasts of the alarm sounding throughout the ship. This can’t be normal. This can’t be good .

Lazzo immediately jumped to the worst conclusion. “Damn it, Hayley. I told you we couldn’t trust her.”

I didn’t say anything at first, and when I finally opened my mouth to speak, a loud voice boomed over the intercom, cutting me off. “Everyone report to the main deck immediately. Gather beneath the tower. Right now.” Captain Baker. Danny and Blake’s disdain for the guy made perfect sense to me now.

To be honest, I was kind of surprised. Even though I thought I’d pegged Flynn better than that, I couldn’t fault her. I probably would have done the same. Why should she have covered for us? It was, however, curious it had taken this long for the alarm. It was almost 7:00 p.m. now, and she’d left here almost ten hours ago. If she’d been intent on outing us no matter what, wouldn’t she have gone directly to her dad? Had she eventually confided in her brother, and he’d turned us in? The timing of this wasn’t quite right.

Lazzo was fuming though, cursing me and shaking his fist, muttering over and over how we should have killed Flynn—and how he wasn’t going to listen to me again. I finally turned to him and snapped, “Will you shut up?”

“Don’t—” He raised a finger and pointed it at my face.

“Well, what do you want me to say? If I was wrong about her, then yes, it was a stupid move. You think I don’t know that?” He looked angry, but what was he going to do? Hit me? “On the other hand—”

“There is no other hand.” He didn’t let me finish, and I rolled my eyes. “We need to move somewhere else, Hayley.”

“Lazzo, will you stop being so damn stupid?” I knew I was pushing it, but I almost wanted him to hit me. I wanted him to give me a reason to hate him more than I already did, if that was even possible. “If she went to her dad, don’t you think he would have come directly to where we are with all his men? Jeez, think about it.” I could see I’d finally gotten through to him.

“So—”

“No, I don’t think she said anything. That’s what I’m trying to tell you. If she told her brother, he’d know where we are too. They both would know exactly where to send people.” I let that sink in. “They’d have been here a loooong time ago. No, I think this is something else.”

“What?”

“I don’t know.”

“I still think we should move.”

“Lazzo, we’re in the darkest corner of the ship, as far away from the tower as possible. We have three potential escapes within a hundred yards of our door. There aren’t many better places we could be.” When he didn’t argue, I told him I was tired and needed to rest a little. I crawled beneath the steel bed frame in the far corner of the room—onto the thin mattress I’d slid under there—and closed my eyes.

A hard poke in the arm and a sharp whisper woke me a short while later. “Hey. Someone’s coming.”

I froze. I could hear steps approaching, and a light went on in the hallway outside our dark room. Crap. I was wrong. She did give us away . There were voices now, too—several of them. A male voice said, “We’ll check in here,” and the light came on in our room. I could see Lazzo clearly now, under the bed next to mine. He was ready to shoot if he had to. Based on the rhythm of the footsteps, it sounded like there were two people in the room with us. Stacks of boxes and mattresses blocked most of my view of the rest of the room, including whoever was in here with us. Strangely, no one checked under the beds. The light went back off, and the people left the room. I could hear them talking to someone else outside our door.

“You guys checked that one?” a deep male voice asked.

“Yes,” came the female reply. Sounds a lot like Flynn.

“Did you look under all the beds?” Same deep voice as before .

“Seriously? You think we wouldn’t?”

“An adult is supposed to check every room,” another male voice said.

“If seventeen isn’t adult enough for you, then go ahead.” That’s a younger male this time. Could that be Flynn’s brother?

“Come on, Chase.” Definitely Flynn . “They think we’re incompetent, so let’s go.”

The light came back on in our room. “You want me to check it again?” one of the men asked.

“Nah,” the other man with the deep voice replied. “Chase wouldn’t lie to me. He knows I’d kill him.”

“You got it, LT. Moving on then.”

LT? Lieutenant? As in the captain’s right-hand man, Brock? I certainly hoped so. That would make it far less likely anyone would second-guess his search area and come back to our room. I looked at Lazzo, and he was staring back at me, seemingly waiting for me to say something. “I don’t know.” I honestly didn’t know what else to say.

We stayed under the beds in case anyone came back. Lazzo seemed to understand the girl’s voice we’d heard had been Flynn’s. She—and apparently her brother—had been in here and hadn’t looked under the beds. They’d barely searched the room at all. So why were they in here? If neither Chase nor Flynn had reported us, then why was the ship being searched?

I had a headache now. I’d had one continuously from all my crying the night before, but it was really pulsing now. I needed to sleep. I turned my back to Lazzo and ignored him when he whispered at me.

A while later he tapped me on the back, and I rolled over to look at him.

“It’s been two hours. My turn.”

Wow. That felt like ten minutes! I nodded and slid out from under the bed. I sat by the door while Lazzo slept. After about an hour, I stood up and peeked out into the hallway. There was a surveillance camera above our door with a blinking red light. I hadn’t noticed it when we came in. Was it on then? Regardless, there was something strange about it now. I could see another camera down the hall pointed away from our room—toward the stairs—and the one above our door was pointed to our left. A third camera at the far end of the hall to our left was also pointed away from us toward the stairs. Holy crap . That left a fifty-yard gap with no camera coverage from the door by the stairs to our room. Someone had to have manually created that gap before the alarms went off—before the cameras on this end of the boat were turned on. Flynn . So she is actually helping us .