Far from Done: Far Series Book Six, page 9
“We all are,” Rick agreed.
The others moved on, waving their goodbyes as I veered to the left. Knowing we’d accomplished what we’d set out to do made my steps lighter, and I actually started whistling. Despite the shit going on with Doug and Kiaya and Jace, I was in a good mood. A great mood, actually. I was even looking forward to spring now that the barricade for the solar field was done, which was something I’d been dreading just a week ago.
Apparently, I wasn’t the only one excited about the warmer weather. The square had twice as many people in it as usual, and like me, everyone seemed to be in a great mood.
I looked around, my grin stretching wider as I scanned the groups gathered in the street. Talking. Laughing. Eating. Basically, just out enjoying themselves. When I caught sight of a familiar pink jacket on the other side of the square, my smile grew until my cheeks actually hurt, and without thinking, I started walking that way. It wasn’t until I realized the person wearing it had red hair not blonde that I froze.
It wasn’t Rowan but it was her coat. I was positive. I’d seen her pull on that ridiculous, pink faux leather jacket more times than I could count. There was no mistaking it. Did someone else in Elizabethtown have the same one? It was possible. It wasn’t like it was one of a kind, and stuff like that happened all the time. They even used to have who wore it best sections in magazines, which let the reader decide which celebrity looked better in an identical outfit. Still, something about spotting the familiar jacket on another person bugged me. Why? Why should it matter if someone had the exact same coat as Rowan?
Because she doesn’t have it anymore, a voice in my head whispered.
When was the last time I’d seen her wear it? Not during the winter, which made sense considering how cold it had been. The thing wasn’t exactly meant to keep a person warm. But she hadn’t worn it during the fall, either. I was sure of it. It was her favorite coat, though. She’d told me more than once. So why wouldn’t she have worn it? Baby weight? No, she’d lost that pretty fast—rationing food made losing weight easier. What other reason could there be?
Because she doesn’t have it anymore, the voice repeated.
A sudden image of her standing in front of a mirror popped into my head. She was frowning, trying to zip up her jacket, which was impossible thanks to her round stomach. We’d still been at the hospital then. If I remembered correctly, we’d been getting ready to come here for the first time. She’d had the jacket that day, I was sure of it. But that was the last time I remembered seeing it on her. It had been in our room after that, though. I was positive. Not our room here, but the one back at the hospital. I distinctly remembered it being draped over the crib Kiaya and I had brought back from a run. The question was, did Rowan pack it when we came here?
She’d brought a lot of things with her. The ugly pink comforter and matching blanket, the music box and family picture she’d taken from her house, pillows. But the jacket? I couldn’t imagine she would have since it was well into spring by then, and she’d definitely been too big to wear it. Which meant she’d left it at the hospital. The hospital that was raided the night Elizabeth was born. The hospital that was picked clean by the vultures.
It hit me like a punch, and for a moment, I felt too stunned to move. Too stunned to do anything but stare at the woman on the other side of the square wearing Rowan’s pink jacket. Too stunned to fully absorb what it all meant. Then, in a sudden burst, the pieces of the puzzle came together, and the truth slammed into me. The vultures had been here. In Elizabethtown. They’d traded Rowan’s jacket at one of the booths, or maybe even ran one of them. I wasn’t sure which; I just knew I was right. The people we’d been searching for had been here. Right under our noses.
I was moving before I’d even taken the time to figure out what I was going to do, charging across the square, my sights set on the woman in the pink jacket. I sized her up as I walked. She was in her thirties, short and trim. She smiled as she talked to the man at her side, reaching up every now and then to push her red hair out of her face. There was nothing threatening about her. Nothing that made it seem like she could possibly be dangerous, but that didn’t mean anything. Look at Jace. His face made him seem innocent, almost angelic, but he was as far from a saint as a person could get in this world.
The woman caught sight of me when I was still ten feet away, and her expression changed. Something like trepidation flickered in her eyes, and she looked around like she was searching for help. It was enough to have the alarm bells going off in my head, and I pulled my gun on instinct. The woman’s eyes widened.
“Where’d you get that jacket?” I barked when I was still a good six feet away from her.
Again, she looked around before once again focusing on me. “Are you talking to me?”
“I’m looking at you, aren’t I?” With the hand not holding the gun, I gestured to the jacket. “Where did you get it?”
She took a step back, her eyes wider than ever. “From one of the merchants. I traded a pair of tennis shoes for it.”
“You sure that’s the story you want to go with?”
“It’s the truth.”
For the third time, she glanced around. It was then I realized the other people in the square had stopped what they were doing and were now focused on us. Not that I cared. If she was one of the vultures who’d raided the hospital, killed our friends, and stolen the kids, nothing would stop me from doing what needed to be done. Not even witnesses.
I took a menacing step toward her, and she visibly trembled. “You didn’t happen to find it at the hospital, did you? After you killed all our people?”
Her mouth opened, her lips moving as if trying to form words, but no sound came out. She shook her head slightly, but enough for me to see the gesture and know she was denying any involvement.
“Since that’s the last place I saw it,” I flicked the jacket’s collar, and she cowered, “I’m thinking you’re lying. I’m thinking you were there. That you helped kill all those people and clean out our supplies, and when you left, you took those kids.”
“No,” she managed to get out, the word trembling as her eyes darting around wildly. “I don’t know anything about that. I swear. I—”
I grabbed her by the arm. “Don’t lie to me.”
I lifted my gun, so she could see it, but didn’t point it at her, and she let out a low whine.
“Devon,” came a voice from behind me.
I glanced over my shoulder, my attention shifting from the cowering woman in front of me to Lisa, who was staring at me like I’d lost my mind. My gun was still up, and I still had the woman’s arm in my grip. She looked terrified when I turned my attention back to her, and I started to wonder if maybe I had lost it. What was I doing? Her story was just as likely as the one I’d hurled at her. Probably even more likely. The vultures had drawn us here before attacking the hospital, which meant they knew there were survivors and probably even knew we’d moved to Elizabethtown after losing all our supplies. Knowing all that, someone would have to be a moron to wear such a distinctive jacket. It made no sense.
“Devon,” Lisa said again when she reached me. “What are you doing?”
What was I doing?
I dropped the woman’s arm and lowered my gun as I took a step back. “I’m sorry. I just—” I blew out a long breath, trying to focus. “I saw the jacket and freaked out.”
The woman’s terror didn’t fade.
Noticing the coat for the first time, Lisa did a double take. “Is that Rowan’s?”
“It was at the hospital,” I told her. “We didn’t bring it with us when we came here.”
“But what does that mean?” Lisa shook her head, frowning, her expression confused but her brown eyes full of worry. “Do you think they’ve been here? The vultures, I mean.”
“It seems pretty likely,” I said, my focus on the still cowering woman. “I really am sorry, but I have to ask. Where did you get that jacket, and when?”
“I told you. From one of the booths. I traded for it.”
“I believe you. Okay? But I need to know who you got it from and how long ago. The people who had it, they’re dangerous, and I need to know if they’ve been here.”
Some of the fear left the woman’s eyes, replaced by uncertainty. “You said something about a hospital, right? I’ve only been here a couple months, but I heard about that. Someone said you were attacked, and all your people were killed…” Her words trailed off as understanding dawned, and her eyes widened, the fear returning. “Are you saying this coat came from those people? That they were here? In Elizabethtown?”
“I don’t know,” I said, “but I need to find out. Need to make sure we’re not in danger.”
She was breathing faster now, her terror mounting with each passing second.
“Can you tell us where you got it?” Lisa prompted, her voice a hell of a lot gentler than mine.
“First floor,” the woman said, the words shaky. “A lady with gray hair. She trades clothes and shoes. I don’t know her name.”
“How long ago did you get it?” I asked, needing her to keep talking. Needing to know what the hell was going on.
“A few days ago. I like pink and I thought it was cute. The woman said she’d just gotten it.”
Lisa and I exchanged a look.
“We need to talk to her,” Lisa said.
“Now,” I agreed.
I hurried off, not bothering to apologize to the woman again or even thank her.
8
Kiaya
The market wasn’t nearly as busy as usual, which I attributed to the nicer weather. It was something I wasn’t looking forward to. Spring. Summer. Moving the booths back outside to the square. In the old bank building, keeping tabs on things was easy. We patrolled, kept an eye on the people coming in, helped the vendors if anything went down. There was only one way in or out, which meant if there was trouble, it was unlikely anyone would be able to evade us. Not outside, though.
Peters had put me in charge of market security last fall, a month or so before it got too cold to be outside. I’d spent the first few weeks of my new job trying to come up with a strategy that would work given how open the area was, but nothing had made sense logistically. Being outside made people too brazen. Made them take risks they never would within these walls, and it seemed like three days didn’t pass without me and my men having to take someone in. Most were visitors, which meant they were banned permanently, but others were people living inside the walls who didn’t have enough to trade and resorted to stealing to survive. Peters dealt with those infractions, and he was more than willing to throw someone in a jail cell for a few days.
It had bugged me, knowing people right here in Elizabeth town were going without when we had the ability to help them. It also illustrated just how successful Peters had been at achieving his goal. On our first day here, we’d been told they were trying to build something as close to the way things used to be as possible, but the ramifications hadn’t really sunk in at the time. Or maybe I just hadn’t wanted to think about it. Coming from the hospital where we worked together and shared everything we’d had, it never occurred to me other groups wouldn’t do the same. They weren’t, though. Not in Elizabethtown. Here, people had jobs and had to trade for things. They had to contribute if they wanted housing, essentially paying for the roof over their heads with hard labor. It was why we’d been given a house while other people were crammed into overcrowded living spaces inside Three Weird Sisters and other former stores, because Devon, Doug, Dr. Summers, and I all had important jobs. Devon was head of security for the settlement, I oversaw the market, Doug learned to weld so he could help fortify the walls and he did regular shifts at the gate, and Rowan’s dad was one of only two doctors. Even Rowan’s position as the only new mother in Elizabethtown secured her a special place in Peters’ kingdom. Meanwhile, other people were barely getting by.
It pissed me off. I’d grown up with nothing, and I didn’t like seeing other people in the same position when it could be prevented. We were only a year and a half into this thing, and there was no reason we couldn’t still be helping each other. No reason we couldn’t be working together to create something better than what existed before rather than reverting to the old ways.
And now Peters was talking about creating a new currency. What a joke.
I was stewing over the idea when Devon stepped through the front door of the old bank, Lisa right behind him. He looked tense. Worried or pissed. Maybe both. Lisa was easier to read than he was, though, and right away, I could see the worry in her eyes. Something was up.
When they stopped at a booth on the other side of the room, I headed their way.
“Pink jacket,” Devon was saying to the woman behind the counter. “Fake leather. You remember it?”
The owner of the booth, a grandmotherly woman with short gray hair named Phyllis, shot me a confused and worried look. Her booth was stuffed with clothes and shoes—most of it shabby since things in the area were pretty picked over. Her grandson had scavenged the stuff. He was only fourteen, but since the rest of their family was dead and Phyllis had a bad hip and arthritis on top of it, it was up to Arvin to make sure they didn’t starve. Which meant leaving the walls and scavenging for things they could trade on top of the hard labor that gave them the right to sleep on dirty mattresses inside Three Weird Sisters.
“I remember it. Sure,” Phyllis said uncertainly.
“Where did you get it?” Devon asked, just as Lisa said, “How long have you had it?”
“What’s going on?” I asked, and they both turned to face me.
Devon’s response was immediate. “I saw someone in the square wearing Rowan’s pink jacket.”
For a moment, I thought he meant someone had stolen it, but I knew that didn’t make sense. He wouldn’t be asking Phyllis about it if that were the case. Since he was, I could only assume the woman who’d had the jacket had gotten it here. But how? How had it ended up in the market to begin with?
I thought back, and it suddenly hit me that I hadn’t seen the jacket in a long time. Probably not since before we moved to Elizabethtown. Considering the hideous thing had been Rowan’s favorite jacket, I could only assume that meant she’d lost it when the hospital was raided. Which meant—
I blinked, the epiphany coming to me so quickly it made responding momentarily impossible.
“They’ve been here, Kiaya,” Devon said when I didn’t reply. “It’s the only explanation.”
He was right. The vultures had been here. Inside our walls. In Elizabethtown.
I focused on Phyllis. “Do you remember the jacket they’re talking about?”
“Of course,” she said. “You don’t forget a coat like that. I would have thought it odd that someone wanted to trade it since it was in such good shape, but it was a man, so it made sense. He got some boots. Then I traded it to that girl, who gave me these.” Phyllis waved to her feet, and I leaned across the booth so I could see the scuffed, white Nikes she wore. “My old ones were falling apart, but no matter how hard Arvin looked, he couldn’t find new ones for me. Thankfully, that girl and I wear the same size and she was happy to trade.”
“You say a man brought you the jacket?” I asked, trying to get the conversation back on track.
“That’s right.” She paused, thinking about it, nodding. “It was definitely a man.”
“When was this?” Devon asked.
“A week and a half ago, maybe,” Phyllis replied.
“Do you remember what he looked like?” I asked.
“He was tall.” She held her hand several inches above her head. “A beard. Brown hair. I’ve seen him before, but not a lot.”
“Have you seen him since?”
That made Phyllis pause. “I don’t think so. But you know how it goes.” She waved her hand. “So many people come in and out of this place. Unless he stopped to talk to me, I probably wouldn’t notice him.”
Devon’s head bobbed, his expression thoughtful. “Can you tell us anything else about him? Was anyone with him? Did he have an accent or any discernable qualities? A birthmark or scar or anything? Did you see him stop at any other booths? Did he tell you anything about himself?”
“He barely talked,” Phyllis replied, “but he didn’t have an accent. Honestly, nothing much about him stood out, and he didn’t tell me anything about himself. I learned a long time ago not to ask those nomad types questions, though. They always suspect you’re trying to figure out where they live.” She snorted and patted the walker she depended on to get around. “As if I could do anything about it even if they told me.”
Devon, Lisa, and I exchanged a look.
“What are you thinking?” Lisa asked.
“It’s possible someone not with the group found the jacket,” I said. “Maybe the vultures didn’t want it and left it somewhere. It’s also possible it isn’t Rowan’s at all. There have to be other jackets like it out there.”
“I thought of that,” Devon replied, “but I can’t shake the feeling it was them.”
“Would they really bring it here, though?” Lisa asked. “I mean, they have to know we’re here, so why tip us off?”
I thought about the conversation I had with Jace last spring when he was locked up. Doug and I had stopped to see him in his cell on our second visit to the settlement, and I’d asked about the people who’d attacked his group. He’d told me how they started the fire, then gunned down anyone who ran out, but also how he and two others had escaped by going out the back, which had made me ask why the vultures hadn’t been guarding that door as well. It seemed logical they wouldn’t want any survivors to get away.
“They’re cocky,” Jace had said. “They don’t think it matters because they don’t think anyone can stop them.”
“They’re cocky,” I said.
“It has to be more than that.” Lisa’s tone was full of doubt.
“I don’t know,” I replied. “They could just be bragging, you know? Maybe they purposefully brought the jacket here because they realized we’d recognize it.”
