Page 23 of Chaos

I check for bloody wounds or bones at odd angles, anything urgent that would require a medic and don’t find anything, so I lift her carefully, knowing I’ll be haunted later by the lax feel of her limbs.

Soldiers surge into the cellar, and I stand back to make room until they’re done, then I climb to the surface, Frankie’s head lolling against my chest.

“Not a trap,” I tell Church up at the top.

He cocks a shoulder, his eyes flickering over Frankie. “That we know of yet. She okay?”

“She’s breathing.” I head for the door, holding Frankie’s body against mine.

Frankie’s alive.

That’s the most important thing.

I cling to the single thought that she’s alive as I climb into the back of a vehicle with Jacquetta and Colleen up front, throughout a white-knuckled drive down the rutted road through the park, away from the house in the woods, as they go over logistics. There was no one else in that house, Renata and Sebi nowhere to be found.

It’s only when Colleen’s walkie crackles and Rey’s voice comes through and says, “Ben shot one of ours,” that I look away from Frankie’s face.

“Who?” Jacquetta asks, her hands tight on the wheel.

“Wendell,” comes the response.

“Where was he shot?” Colleen says into the walkie. “How bad?”

There’s a crackle and a string of garbled words. “He’s stable. Hit him in the thigh. No major arteries hit. They’re doing a field tourniquet. Getting him back to Sheila.”

More static comes through, detailing how Ephie and Ben are in custody, and will be moved to the holding cells we created in the Thornewood basement for interrogation.

The man who knocked Frankie over is in the back of a truck, and Sebi and Renata are gone.

A truck in our line holds a cage about four feet wide, three fat pigeons living inside it, presumably the ones people mentioned back during the first round of interrogations after Ben took Frankie.

I listen halfheartedly, staring down at the unsteady comfort of Frankie’s face, trying not to think about the ramifications of Ben communicating with someone organized enough to have carrier pigeons, or about Wendell having just been shot in the leg.

Thick shadows stain the skin under her eyes, her cheekbones press, gaunt, against her skin.

The car slows, then lurches as the front wheel goes over railroad tracks. In her sleep Frankie winces as the rear wheels follow.

As the car picks up speed, I touch her face, her dirty skin, the purpling bruise on her forehead, the swollen, angry red skin on her elbow, the fingers that looked like she was trying to dig herself out of a mine. Her clothes are filthy, torn, and she smells like hell.

“I know you want to kill Ben.” Colleen’s voice cuts into my thoughts as if she can read them. “You also know you can’t.

I slide my fingers along Frankie’s scalp and find a spot that wasn’t bald before and is now. I tilt her face so I can see the area, pale skin, pink in a few places like a freshly healed scar, no hair. Either he ripped part of her scalp out or smashed her head into something so hard, she lost hair there. “Do I know that? I’m not sure I know that.”

He smashed Shane’s hand.

His right fucking hand.

He killed Ruby.

He shot Wendell.

He kidnapped Frankie and he fucking tortured her.

“A hundred people just fled that farmhouse, Yorke. A hundred people loyal to him, who think of us as rampant monsters who burn down towns and beat prisoners. You haven’t been thinking clearly. And I get it, but things at Thornewood aren’t simple anymore. The new people who came from town outnumber us four to one, and they don’t like what happened with those men or the town. It’s a bad ratio if we mean to stay a democracy,” Colleen says.

Frankie’s eyes flutter open, yellow green surrounded by blood-shot white, just for a second.

I trail my thumb up her neck, so long, and slim, find her pulse, just to reassure myself it still works.

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