Chapter 11 #2
“No. Waller was speaking for Nicholas. The governor keeps himself separate. Had his own place, away from New Hope and Reunion,” Rhodda said.
Before Hallie could ask for more detail on what made the governor so dangerous, Rhodda tilted her head, looking from Hallie to Girard and back again, the ghost of a bitter laugh in her voice as she went on, “You really don’t know what you’re walking into here, do you? ”
“No, it seems we really don’t,” Girard agreed. From his serious expression, Hallie wondered if he, too, was remembering the shallow grave. “Will you tell us?”
“We should get moving,” Rhodda said, struggling to her feet. “We’ve been sitting here too long.”
“What’s the matter?” Hallie asked, getting to her feet along with Girard, and trying to listen outside their group as well as paying attention to Rhodda. She couldn’t hear or sense anything that might have alarmed the woman. But then, this was Rhodda’s territory.
“You’ll have been spotted,” Rhodda answered.
“I’m assuming you came here by some kind of transport?
The governor keeps an eye on those things.
He mostly leaves New Hope and Reunion alone, but he’ll want to know who else is on the island.
He’ll have sent people out looking for you. And you don’t want him to find you.”
“Why not?” Hallie asked. “What will he do?”
“I don’t know for sure,” Rhodda said, and pressed her lips together, pain shading her face.
She put her hand on her side, where the dressing was.
“Almost everyone who comes here arrives at New Hope, at the dock there. But we get newcomers in other places from time to time, boats run aground, that kind of thing. We know that, but we almost never see them. The governor takes them.”
If they hadn’t been standing in daylight, Hallie would have thought that was an old tale, one to be told around a fire at night to scare children.
As it was, a shiver worked its way down Hallie’s spine.
She exchanged glances with Girard. “Hold on here for a moment,” she said to Rhodda, and turned to Girard. “Let’s talk.”
“We don’t have time,” Rhodda protested.
“We need to work out what we’re doing next,” Hallie said. “Even if it’s run and hide, we need some kind of a plan.” She turned to Girard again and they moved a few paces away from Rhodda.
“This is not what we were expecting,” he said, pitching his voice so low Hallie had difficulty in hearing. Trying to hide their conversation from Rhodda’s human hearing. Hallie approved.
“Right,” Hallie agreed, matching his quiet voice. “I don’t like the sound of the principal or the governor. But we can’t stay here.”
“You seem very calm,” Girard commented.
“Skip tracer, remember?” Hallie said, with a rueful twist to her mouth. “I’m used to going after killers on my own with just a warrant and a pair of flexi cuffs.”
Girard’s mouth twitched in an answering smile and he glanced across at Rhodda. “Should we trust her?”
“She’s not telling us everything,” Hallie said, “but the only actual lie was when she claimed she didn’t know what the gunners wanted. I’d like to get more information from her before we decide what to do.”
Girard nodded his agreement but whatever he would have said was interrupted by Rhodda.
“We need to go.” Rhodda’s voice was loud enough that it was a shock to Hallie’s sensitive hearing after her low-voiced conversation with Girard.
“We’ll move on,” Girard said.
“Find somewhere safe and regroup,” Hallie added, more for Rhodda’s benefit. She caught a short nod from Girard.
He pulled his backpack into place and Hallie did the same with hers, trying not to grimace too much as she fastened the straps. The pack seemed to have gained weight in the short time she hadn’t been carrying it.
“I think we’re slightly closer to New Hope than to Reunion. Makes sense to keep going that way. Would that be safer?” Girard asked, eyes on Rhodda. Hallie wondered if he was also thinking about the warrimel and wanting to be out of their territory before dark.
Rhodda hesitated, and something in her face drew Hallie’s complete attention.
“You don’t think either place will be safer,” Hallie said. “But from what we’ve been told, the only radio is in Reunion. Is that right?”
Rhodda gave a short nod, lips pressed together. A story there, if Hallie had to guess. One for another time.
“If we can get the radio fixed, we could use it to call for back-up?” she suggested to Girard.
His radio phone hadn’t worked on the few occasions he’d tried it.
She didn’t want to mention either its existence or the signal failure in front of Rhodda.
The woman seemed mostly straightforward, but there were things she wasn’t telling them, and it seemed dangerous to admit that Girard had an additional means of contacting the Conclave.
But the Reunion radio had worked, until a handful of days before, and Rhodda had admitted that she’d hidden the means of fixing it.
So they might be able to get a message through to the Conclave and director and get back-up on the way.
The helicopter had taken a couple of hours to get them here, Hallie remembered, flying fast across the ocean.
That was the best case scenario, she told herself, stomach twisting with unease as she remembered the storm.
It had passed by the island but might still be blocking any transport from Daydawn.
“That’s a good suggestion, although we’d need to find a way of dealing with the warrimel,” Girard reminded her.
Hallie grimaced. She really didn’t want to face another swarm.
“We can’t outrun them on foot, but we could with an ATV.
I suspect there are more ATVs around New Hope.
If we could, ah, borrow one of those, we could get back and fix the radio much more quickly,” Girard said. He was watching Rhodda as well.
She flinched. It was a tiny movement, but it was definitely there. Unease crept across Hallie’s skin. From the way Rhodda had been talking, she’d assumed that the woman had been aligned with Reunion - the new settlement - and not with either the principal or this governor. But now Hallie wondered.
“I need to find my people,” Rhodda said.
She took a step away from them, as if she was planning to leave and head out on her own.
Hallie frowned. Rhodda was stronger than she had been when they’d met her, but far from in good health.
There had also been the faintest of hesitations before the word people.
As if Rhodda had been about to say something else.
All the same, Hallie didn’t sense an outright lie.
The woman was concerned about whoever she considered to be her people.
“The other people from your settlement?” Hallie asked. “Didn’t you say that the gunners took them? So they’d be at New Hope?” Which made Hallie wonder why Rhodda would flinch at the idea of going to the original settlement.
“Maybe. Maybe not.” Rhodda wasn’t telling the truth again.
“You think at least some of them were taken by this other person. The governor?” Hallie asked, feeling her patience wearing thin.
Only a few moments before the thought of compelling an answer out of Rhodda had made her feel sick.
Now, with the woman’s evasion, it was becoming more tempting.
And that made Hallie feel sick all over again.
She didn’t want to have this kind of power over anyone.
“Rhodda, you need to tell us what’s going on. We will do our best to help, but we need to know,” Girard said, the calm, quiet manner gone and in its place a sharp, focused air of command that Hallie hadn’t seen from him very often.
Before Rhodda could answer, Hallie heard something else, outside their circle.
“Engines,” she said to Girard, urgency taking hold. “I can’t tell what kind.”
“They’re looking for us,” Rhodda said, and all her evasion had disappeared into raw fear.
“Who?” Hallie asked, voice sharper than she’d intended, aware of an impulse to shake the other woman in the hopes of getting a straight answer out of her. “The principal or the governor?”
“I don’t know. Don’t let them take me,” Rhodda said, making her appeal to Girard, voice a harsh whisper. “Please don’t.”
“We’ll do our best. We need to hide,” Girard said, glancing at Hallie. “We can’t hold off a group.”
“Agreed,” Hallie said, glancing around. They were far enough away from the road that no one should be able to see them, surrounded by what looked to her to be dense forest. But they could be found by anyone following the trail she and Girard would have left as they followed the faint path Rhodda had made.
They needed to move, and quickly. “Do they have tracking dogs?” she asked Rhodda. The other woman shook her head.
“Right. We’ll head further into the trees,” Girard said. “Hallie, give me your pack. Go into the forest that way. Don’t worry, I’ll find you.” That last was directed to Rhodda in response to her panicked, inarticulate cry.
Hallie handed her pack over to him and then took Rhodda’s arm, gently steering the woman further into the forest, in the direction Girard had pointed.
“Don’t worry, he will find us,” Hallie said, echoing Girard’s words, with as much patience as she could manage. With the weight of the pack gone, she could feel the burden of the weapon she carried, along with the spare ammunition.
“What’s he doing?” Rhodda hissed.
“Hiding our stuff,” Hallie answered tersely.
She was quite certain that she didn’t want either the principal or the governor getting hold of the contents of her pack, even though it was mostly her clothes.
She was quite sure that Girard felt the same, and his pack had food, water and the radio phone.
Far more valuable. Things Hallie definitely didn’t want to lose.
Besides which, they could move far more quickly and quietly without the weight.