Free Monument 14: Savage Drift (Monument 14 Series) by Emmy Laybourne Page B

one’s a real animal.”
    “I find that hard to believe.”
    You’re making it worse, lady, I want to tell her. Just leave us be. It’s almost over.
    “She’s just about done now, right, Josie?” Venger asks.
    I nod.
    Head down.
    The doctor leans over. I bow my head, avoiding her inquiring gaze.
    “You come by the clinic tomorrow and we’ll get some gauze on your knuckles,” she says.
    And I sigh as her heels click away.
    Now I couldn’t get Venger to kill me.
    Because that doctor was a sign from God and I couldn’t ignore it.

 
    CHAPTER ELEVEN
    DEAN
    DAY 32
    “You think you should go and not me?!” Jake hissed to me on the shuttle. “I’m the baby’s father. Me. You’re just a boyfriend. You’re a temporary condition.”
    “Stop it, you two,” Astrid said. “Captain McKinley said he’ll take all four of us. Why are we still discussing this?”
    An elderly couple at the front of the bus glanced our way.
    “Because Jake was drunk before noon!” I said, struggling to control my voice. “He’s a liability!”
    “STOP!” Astrid said. Her eyes were flashing and there were red spots of angry blush on her cheeks. “If you can’t be nice to each other, then I don’t want either of you to come. I mean it. Niko will take care of me just fine, if you two can’t get it together.”
    That shut us up.
    Though that whole time, Niko was just staring out the window. He didn’t even seem to hear us.
    He was smiling, for the first time that I could remember since the last time I’d seen him with Josie, before they left the Greenway.
    *   *   *
    Our plan was to go to the tent so Astrid could rest for the afternoon. She would sleep, and in the meantime, Jake, Niko, and I would pack up. We’d also call a meeting of the kids to tell them the plan. And I had to take Alex for a walk.
    Just imagining me telling him I had to leave made me feel like I’d eaten a loaf of lead.
    But when we got near Tent J, Niko suddenly motioned for us to follow him and he darted back down toward the greens.
    I saw why—two guards were stationed inside our tent.
    “Do you think they’re looking for Astrid?” I asked.
    “I have no idea,” he answered, looking over his shoulder. “But there’s no reason to risk it.”
    *   *   *
    So instead of lying on her cot, Astrid was lying on an odd little pallet of tree boughs Niko showed us how to make. A little Boy Scout daybed.
    The kids had chosen a good spot for their playhouse. The woods were thick, and there was a small rolling hill in between the stand of trees and the golf course, which meant it was out of view from the Clubhouse.
    One silver lining to the whole disaster was that the kids’ imaginations seemed to have grown back much stronger than before.
    I remembered them in the Greenway, how bored they were with the toys, after the initial feeding frenzy wore off.
    And now, because they had basically nothing—no toys except for a lone soccer ball and a ratty doll Chloe had conned out of some younger kid—they played outside. With leaves and branches and bits of bark and moss.
    We had all agreed that Jake, Astrid, and I should stay hidden until nightfall; Niko left us in the woods while he went back to pack.
    The kids would come for a meeting at 4 p.m. and Niko would come back after dinner with as much food as he and the others could smuggle out.
    Niko was specifically going to tell the other kids not to come down and see us until the meeting time. He didn’t want there to be a lot of going back and forth during the hours when everyone was usually waiting on line at the listings or watching the afternoon movie.
    There was one exception, though—Alex. I told Niko to send Alex to me. I needed to tell him alone.
    *   *   *
    He came bounding down the lawn, newspaper in hand.
    “What do you think?” he asked. Then he saw Astrid lying on her stick bed. Jake was sitting on the ground, drafting a good-bye note to his dad. “What’s going on? What are you guys