Ever Hayes - Redemption

Blake and Hayley also knew I could be right, but I could tell by the look on Blake’s face he still felt terrible. “Still, Danny, maybe I should stay and—”

“Forget it. That’s not happening.”

“But if she is alive and does shut down the Shield,” Blake reasoned. “I could get in there and blow the place. We still have the two demo packs we took from those snipers. It’s definitely enough C4 to do the job. And then they couldn’t launch any missiles controlled from here at least—”

“You’d have to get to the command room in there. You’d never make it. No, if they do shut it down we have to hope Trigger or Twix can get to the top of the mountain in time to power it back up manually.”

“And if they can’t?” Hayley asked.

We all knew there probably wouldn’t be enough advanced notice. There was total silence for a minute. I heard someone cough down the tunnel. I shook my head. “Listen, guys, I hate talking in hypotheticals. We can’t control what might happen. But I do know if we try to go back in there, we give away our only escape option. I’m sick and tired of having to leave people behind and losing people in general, but we’re all dead if any of us goes back.”

I let my words sink in. “If Keena is indeed still alive,” I continued, “then Baker is going to break her. Whatever his endgame is in helping Commander Boli now, he intends to follow through—he believes he’ll get whatever he was promised. You, me—we know how good Boli is with keeping his word, but Baker must believe this is his only out. All we can count on—all we know—is that Keena will hold out as long as she can to let us try to get back home.”

“She’s not a soldier though,” Blake mentioned then. “Not really.”

“I know.” I nodded. “But I think she’ll be as tough as she can be. Our only hope is that she was…” I paused, then—insensitive or not—I continued. “That she is strong enough to buy us time.”

“What is time ?” Hayley asked.

“One, two days… tops.”

“So we’ve got two days to get all the way home?” Hayley didn’t like my answer.

“Maybe.” I shrugged. “Maybe less.”

“So…” Hayley spoke slowly.

“We have to go.” I turned and headed back toward the others, Blake and Hayley at my heels. My mind was swimming in the deep ends of that message. Storm coming? Cleaning house? It has to be an actual storm. But cleaning house? Why would they be going in now?

“Everything okay?” Ava asked as we rejoined the group.

I gave my most reassuring smile. “For now.”

“We ready to go?” General Niles asked.

I held a thumb up. “Ready as we’ll ever be.”

“Then let’s do this,” the general replied and shut his Hummer door.

Yes . I nodded. Let’s do this .

Wednesday was a stormy, nerve-wracking day on Redemption. Since Deacon and Royce had left us last night—to join Trigger and Twix on Kauai—we hadn’t heard anything from them. No one at Area 52 had either. Due to the mole concerns at the Hexagon, we knew the “radio silence” was intentional—but that didn’t make it any easier to take. Tara was going crazy. Kaci was going crazy not hearing anything back from her brother. I was going crazy not hearing anything from Danny or Hayley. There was a lot of crazy.

Dad had suggested we all hang out at the Brady house—Blake and Kaci’s—so we could stay by the computer and at least get weather updates from Nicole or Damien. That was fine for a while, but the Brady house was only spacious enough for maybe four people. Six adults and a baby were too much.

By mid-afternoon, Tara’s patience was completely fried. “I need to go take a walk.”

“It’s a little insane out there,” I objected. There were frequent wind gusts upward of fifty miles per hour. It wasn’t a good idea.

“I didn’t say you had to go,” she snapped.

I wasn’t in the mood for a fight. I raised my hands, submitting, and turned back to the computer. I heard the door open and close behind me. I had my hands on the back of the chair Dad was sitting in. He turned his head and looked up at me.

“What? I don’t want to fight, Dad.”

“Okay. But put yourself in her shoes. Do you think she wants to be alone out there?”

I glanced around the room. Kate held Ollie and was bouncing him around. She didn’t look at me. Jenna and Kaci had gone into the kitchen. “I don’t think she wants me with her.”

I expected an argument but didn’t get one. Instead Dad pushed his chair back and stood up. “I’ll go with her.”

“Dad, you don’t have—”

“She shouldn’t be out there on her own.”

I agreed with him, so I shut my mouth and nodded.

He hurried out the door after her.

They came back a half hour later, and Tara took Ollie from Kate to put him down for a nap. Dad closed the door to the office so no one could overhear what he was going to say. “You were right, Ryan. She didn’t want you out there. She is rather angry with you.”

I hung my head. I knew it .

“But.” Dad placed his hand on my shoulder. “She’s more angry at herself.”

I highly doubt that .

“Look, I know you—and I know you probably don’t believe me… but it’s the truth. Some of this you need to hear from her, but I do need to say that this wall you two have built between each other… it’s nothing—it’s imaginary—for now anyway. Tara has lost so much—not that we all haven’t, of course—but she only had her parents and Emily before the attacks. Now she’s got you, and us, but the thought of losing Emily… I don’t know if this makes sense but it’s more than just losing Emily. It’s losing her entire past. Everyone else here still has someone from that past. She doesn’t.”

I could tell by the way Dad was speaking, by the pauses and tone in his voice, that he didn’t know if he was saying it right or explaining it well enough. But somehow I understood exactly what he was saying. I nodded. “I get it.”

He hugged me. “Go talk to her.”

“Thanks, Dad.”

I tiptoed into the bedroom where Tara had put Ollie down for his nap and slipped over to the bed. I leaned in to see her face in the dark and saw her mouth was slightly open—her chest steadily rising and falling. She was asleep.

Ollie was lying beside her, his mouth open as well—also knocked out. There was enough room beside Tara for me to squeeze in and I really wanted to, but I didn’t. She needed her sleep more than she needed a hug. I grabbed my journal from my backpack and slipped back out of the room.

I sat in the kitchen and wrote for a couple hours. I found an envelope in Blake’s office and folded in the letter I’d written Tara. I took it into the bedroom at four to check on Ollie. He was stirring but she was still out, so I slid the letter into her bag and took Ollie out of the room with me. She hadn’t slept this well in quite a while. This would be good for her. We could always talk later.

Tara joined us for dinner at seven. The sleep had certainly done her good. She wasn’t happy, but she wasn’t angry—somewhere comfortably in between. After dinner we checked in with Nicole at the Hexagon and moved everything valuable into the bunker under Blake’s office—all our bags, keepsakes, electronics, etc. Then we headed over to the Big House.

Everything in the big house was built around the kitchen so Dad felt that was where we should be—the least exposed place on our island.