“Three hours?” JB asks.
“Yes. If you don’t want to get frostbite and lose your toes, put on the goddamned socks and boots.” Harding goes to the window. “Daylight is breaking. We need to go now.”
“But—”
I cut JB off before he pisses off Harding further. “We’re going.” I glare at him, and he winces.
“Fine.” Once he has his boots on, we all put on our coats.
“I’ll take the lead. Ozzie, you take the rear,” Harding commands.
We follow her order and file out the door one by one. Our footsteps crunch and echo throughout the empty streets.
“Hey, there’s a grocery store. Can we get something to eat?” JB asks.
“It’s closed,” Lightning says.
JB stops in front of the store. “Everything’s closed. How did you get these boots and coats?” he asks Harding.
“I know the shop owner, and I left him money. We can survive a few hours without food,” she says.
JB reluctantly falls back in line, and we continue trudging through the snow and ice.
We walk for about an hour before the snow starts falling hard.
Harding spins around. “Let’s take a break—”
Her eyes widen, and she lunges at JB. When she stepsback, she is holding a phone and scrolling through it. “Fuck! How did you guys not see this?” she asks us.
Lightning and I step forward.
“I hid it every time Lightning looked back,” JB says.
The vein on Lightning’s forehead pulses, so I step in front of Lightning before he does something stupid.
“Where the hell did you get a cell phone?” I ask.
JB appears confused. “What do you mean? It’s my phone.”
He had his phone all this time? Something isn’t adding up. “Your abductors didn’t take your cell phone?”
He shakes his head. “No. And I didn’t realize I had been abducted until a few hours before you guys arrived.”
Well, it gets worse.
“Explain,” I say.
“We don’t have time,” Harding says. “This dumbass sent his location to someone who said they could give us a ride.”
I grab the kid by his jacket and hold him up. “Who did you send our location to?”
For the first time since this all began, fear crosses his face. “My friend. The one I came here to see. He lives here and has a car.”
Harding steps up, so I release JB. “The friend who sold you out to a group of terrorists?Thatfriend?”
It’s clear she knows more than she’s told us.
“He didn’t sell me out! He wouldn’t!”
