Free Chase by James Patterson

onward into the dark. “We don’t have a TV. Grandpa says TV makes people stupid.”
    “He may be onto something there,” I said. What a brave and capable little girl.
    We finally reached the opening. When we stepped into the glorious open air from the long and nightmarish tunnel, I saw that the canal led into a huge lake. We were on the other side of the hill now. We’d walked straight through the mountain.
    I looked back. The roof of the tunnel was an almost perfectly rectangular slab of rock about ten feet thick. It looked like a knocked-over monolith, like the roof of Stonehenge half-buried in the earth.
    “People actually paid to do that?” I said.
    “So I’m told,” Rosalind said, shaking her head.
    “How long is it to this town? What’s it called?”
    “Chapman. About eight miles around the other side of this lake.”
    “Wait! Get down!” I said. “I see something.”
    About a mile away, along the left shore of the lake, there was a light. A flashlight. Somebody walking, coming toward us. Worse than that, I thought I heard a short bark.
    “You gotta be kidding me,” I mumbled. What are we going to do now?
    I looked back at the mouth of the cavern, then toward the slope of the hill above it. It was steep, filled with trees, but manageable.
    “But that heads right back up the hill to their camp,” Rosalind whispered. “Don’t we want to go away from there?”
    “We have no choice. C’mon,” I whispered, and slung the shotgun over my shoulder.

Chapter 27
    Dawn was breaking as we topped the crest of the ridge.
    The whole top of the mountain was covered in a silver mist that turned to a spectacular rose-gold in the light of the rising sun. If I wasn’t being hunted down like a rabbit by a group of what had to be Special Forces soldiers, I bet I would have appreciated it even more.
    Rosalind and I were freezing and exhausted. We’d only slept a little the night before, forty-five-minute catnaps in two different spots up the hill. We’d heard the helicopter twice, but it hadn’t sounded very close, thankfully.
    There wasn’t a peep out of Rosalind or Roxie during the climb. I couldn’t believe what a great dog that setter was. She, too, knew we were in very deep trouble.
    We had been walking down a small wooded rise for about twenty minutes when the mist started to lift. You could actually see the moisture rising slowly, like a stage curtain showing the feet of the trees.
    And then a few seconds later, we stopped when we suddenly saw something.
    Ahead of us about a hundred feet away, there was a man sitting on the ground, his back turned, leaning against a blown-over tree.

Chapter 28
    Though seated, he appeared tall and lanky, wearing camo, a gun propped on the log next to him.
    Gripping our cold shotguns, we knelt on the forest floor and watched him for a very long and silent five minutes.
    He didn’t move. Was he sleeping? Dead? Or was it a trap?
    Very slowly I began walking down toward him. When I was about ten feet away, the guy sort of stirred and reached for his weapon.
    I closed the gap and put both barrels of the shotgun to the back of his head. “Don’t!” I said.
    I made him lie on his belly, searched his outer pockets, and found zip ties that I used on his hands. Twenty feet away from where he’d been sleeping, the trees gave way to a clearing I recognized as the firing range I’d seen the day before. Beyond it were the trailers.
    We’d done it. We’d made it back to their camp. I told Rosalind to head to the tree line and wait for me there, while I went back to the soldier and lifted his weapon—an actual grenade launcher! Just amazing. These guys had to be CIA or something. You couldn’t get grenade launchers at Walmart. I’d never even seen one.
    The man remained silent as I removed his camo balaclava. He looked boyish, in his late thirties, a pleasant enough curly-haired guy with a goofy gap in his teeth. His driver’s license said his name was Justin De Souza, with