Chapter 20 #2
When she’d got her breathing more or less under control, she pulled the remaining water bottle out of her jacket pocket and took a few careful sips.
It was a small bottle and she didn’t know when she’d next find clean water.
She also broke off half a protein bar and chewed it slowly, then gave in to the hunger cramping her stomach and ate the rest of it, not knowing when she might be able to get more food.
Being on the island was giving her a new appreciation for all the widely available fast food in low city.
Vegetable protein burgers and fries might not win many points for nutritional value, but they had filled her stomach more than once and kept her going.
She tried to imagine a burger van parked in the middle of the trees and choked on a laugh.
No self-respecting business owner would set up somewhere with only one customer in sight.
Tucking the empty wrapper and half-full bottle back into her pocket, she focused on slowing her breathing still further, body cooling now that she’d stopped, and running through a mental assessment of where she was and what her resources were.
She also had to wonder where Girard was, worried that he hadn’t found her yet.
He’d had Jonah’s men after him, and possibly some of the gunners, too.
Had he been caught again? Should she have stayed with him?
But then they both might have been caught.
She scrubbed her hands across her face, grimacing as she felt traces of soil and dried leaves on her skin.
Girard was fine, she told herself, trying to believe it.
He had just taken some extra time in leading Jonah’s men in the wrong direction.
That was all. He’d started with the advantage of darkness, but that had gone.
Even so, he probably had another advantage over Jonah’s men, as Girard had been born into a family with their own country estate and so he was used to being outdoors.
Despite the daylight, if he was on foot in the forest somewhere, he would almost certainly outmatch the less experienced humans.
He was fine. She was sure of it. If she kept repeating it to herself, she could pretend to believe it.
She couldn’t help him. Not right now. What she could do was the mission she’d assigned herself.
Get close enough to Jonah’s base to gather information.
Girard would find her there and together they could pass the information on to the director then wait for back-up. That was the plan.
A heavy, cold drop of water landed on her exposed face and she grimaced, wiping the moisture away.
That’s what she got for standing under a tree heavy with morning dew.
Another splash landed somehow under the collar of her jacket and she twitched, pulling the fabric more tightly around her neck.
She might love the scent and sight of the forest, and feel drawn to the wild places, but she didn’t feel particularly well suited to them. Not right now.
Despite the protests from her legs and muscles, she pushed herself away from the tree and started making her way up the hill again.
She thought it was probably mid-morning by now.
It was taking her an absolute age to get up this hill.
It had looked small from the helicopter, but she was fast learning that was deceptive.
She had no idea how far she’d come, or how far she had left to go.
What she did know was that there was a real danger of getting cold and her muscles stiffening if she stopped too long.
As she moved, she split her focus between her breathing, her next step, and trying to make sure there was no one else around.
The last thing she wanted was to be caught by one of Jonah’s men.
She wanted to see his base for herself, not be dragged in against her will.
After another horrible stretch of time during which she found herself wondering if being caught by Jonah’s men would really be such a bad idea - after all, they would then be responsible for getting her to the top of the hill - she realised that the could see brighter daylight ahead of her.
She stopped, swaying slightly, then moved to press herself against the nearest tree trunk.
No, she hadn’t imagined it. The trees thinned out ahead and she could see a dark, straight-lined outline that looked like it might be the corner of a building.
Relief that she wouldn’t have to do any more climbing warred with apprehension about what she might find.
And also how she was going to escape detection.
She’d been reasonably sure that Jonah was not keeping an eye on the lower slopes of the hill, particularly not the wild forested bits, but now she was close to the building, there would be patrols and perhaps security measures.
And it was daylight where she lost any advantage of her sharper eyesight.
After a pause long enough for her to become aware of just how tired and heavy her body was, she moved forward as slowly as she could, trying to stay quiet and scan her surroundings before each step.
She caught the glint of sunlight against something hard and metallic or plastic in the undergrowth a couple of times.
One was certainly a trip-wire, strung at knee-height between two trees.
The other she thought was some kind of a spring trap, the kind that some people in low city used to catch vermin.
Except this one was designed for much larger prey.
Making her way around the traps took time and energy, but it was worth it if it kept her safe and uninjured.
She didn’t see any sign of cameras or other more sophisticated equipment.
That made sense, from what she’d seen of the island.
There was no net to receive feedback or readings from a camera.
But a trip-wire or spring trap would be effective at alerting the guards to any intruder, or stopping them in their tracks.
Then she reached a point where she had a clear view, between tree trunks, of the building ahead. She huddled down, trying to make herself a small shadow against the wide trunk of an ancient tree.
The building was larger than she’d expected, and far from being the tumbledown ruin that she had imagined, with barely any walls intact, it looked surprisingly solid and in good condition.
Some of the windows she could see were missing their glass, and patches of the roof looked more like gaping holes than tiled sections.
But the walls all seemed to be intact and straight, holding the shape and weight of the building.
There were families living in worse buildings in low city.
At some point in its past, perhaps when it had been built at least a couple of hundred years before, it must have been a beautiful and impressive sight.
It had been designed with a basic core of two storeys with fanciful round towers at either end that stretched up another two storeys.
It had probably been designed to mimic some ancient castle or fortress, and certainly from the air that was the impression that Hallie had taken away.
Close up, though, it looked far more like a grand house.
The sort of thing that Nicholas Rigg might aspire to, which made her wonder if he’d ever been up the hill and seen the residence that Jonah had claimed.
From her vantage point at the side of the building, Hallie could see that the front of the building held a large, curved wooden door and that there was a decorative geometric pattern etched into the stone walls.
Turning her head slightly, she could see that there was a gap in the trees to the front of the building meaning anyone standing there would have had an impressive view of the island and possibly out to the sea as well.
She thought that the building was facing the general direction of New Hope, but she couldn’t be sure.
She didn’t have Girard’s talent. But she did think that the careful placement of the building and the decoration on the walls had been designed to meet the requirements some long-ago hochlen family who’d had this place built.
If she’d been here not long after its construction, there would probably have been some kind of garden around the building and the interior would have been decorated far more lavishly than the outside.
Hallie could also see a series of single-storey outbuildings around the back of the house and a pair of ATVs parked in front of them.
She imagined that at least one of the outbuildings had been used as a stables when the house was first built.
Hochlen would have had no concerns about the costs of bringing horses or large livestock to the island.
The horses, like the original owners of the property, had long since gone.
The set-up of the main house and outbuildings reminded Hallie of Cotovatre’s house, Vertiger, and she couldn’t help wondering if it was standard across hochlen residences.
The elite houses she’d visited in high city had also shared the layout of a main residence and service buildings.
It made even more sense out of the city, where Hallie imagined that there might be messy and noisy activities necessary for running a large house, even if she couldn’t quite imagine what they were.
The outbuildings could also house servants, so all the grubby day-to-day things could be kept outside, where they would be less disruptive to the elite owners.
And also run less risk of damage to the main property if something went wrong.