When the Wind Blows - James Patterson [67]
Don’t let the attackers know that you know.
She angled herself out of the bed and went to the closest window. She peeked outside. It was a moonlit night. She heard the crackling of the underbrush. One of the men appeared, came sneaking out of the woods.
She knew who he was—one of the meanest guards. The Security people from the School were here. They had found her. And they were here for Frannie and Kit, too.
Suddenly, Max was eighty pounds of flapping wings, fueled with fear and fury. She flew out of the small bedroom! She flew inside the house.
She whipped back toward the rear bedrooms. Frannie and Kit were asleep in two of the rooms. Their senses weren’t nearly as sharp as hers. But then again, neither were the Security creeps’ senses.
Forbidden! Forbidden! She wasn’t supposed to fly! But who givesadamn what the guards say! They don’t run things out here in the real world. She ran her own life now.
Pip came out of nowhere, starting up a high-pitched barking frenzy. Pip knew, too. He sensed the danger, the men close by in the woods. What a good dog!
The barking woke Kit. He blew out of the back room with his gun in hand. He saw Max flying down the hall, coming straight at him. “Jesus, Max!”
“They’re coming, Kit! They’re real close. Lots of them. They’re here for us!”
“Who’s coming, Max?”
“Not now! Please. Let’s go. Let’s go. They’ll kill us. They’ll kill all of us!”
Frannie had come out of the other bedroom. She was in the hallway with a look of pure astonishment on her face.
“Please! Trust me!” Max pleaded with both of them, and it was at that moment she realized how much they already meant to her.
“Get dressed, Frannie,” Kit nodded his head. “Back door. The Jeep. I’ll drive. Don’t look back. Just run like hell.” He was shouting as he put on his clothes.
Kit grabbed Max’s hand. They were running full blast. Frannie went ahead of them and threw open the back door. Man, woman, child, and dog spilled out of the house into the pitch blackness of the night. None of them looked back.
The Jeep started like a lucky charm. As it screeched out of the rear parking area, shots slammed into metal. Glass exploded. The rear window had been shot out. The Jeep bounced high over the deeply rutted dirt road. Kit drove through the gunfire as if he’d done it before.
They fled.
Frannie and Kit had trusted her, Max kept thinking, and that changed everything.
Chapter 70
THERE IS NOTHING more exhilarating than to be shot at without result. I don’t remember who said that first, but whoever it was, they were definitely right.
The insane tornado of the night’s events had whipped us into persons we hardly knew, or even recognized. Coming off near death at my house, we looked like hell and felt worse. The idea of someone trying to kill us was so monstrous that it was difficult for me to make it concrete and real in my mind. What had just happened couldn’t have happened—and yet it did. Someone had shot at Kit’s Jeep, at us. Someone had tried to kill Max, Kit, and myself. I’d never had a terrifying thought like that before.
We were huddled in a cruddy, awful Motel Six somewhere off Interstate 70. I think we were in the town of Idaho Springs, which has its fair share of crummy motels. The door was locked and chained, but how safe were we? Not very. Cheap, lime-green curtains covered the plate-glass window. The room lights were out, but I could see Max and Kit by the flickering light of the television set.
Max was eerily detached from what had happened, or so it seemed. She was up to her chin in bedcovers and Kit had pulled a chair right up to the bed.
I knew that he liked Max a lot, but they were locked in a struggle now. Kit believed we’d die if Max didn’t talk to us about where she came from, and Max thought she’d die if she did.
His voice was cold. I had never heard him speak in that tone before. I guess he was being an FBI agent now. Professional, intense, very focused on what he felt had to be done.
“I really need some answers, Max. I’m telling you, you have to start trusting somebody soon. I mean, like right