Shadows of Sherwood (15 page)

“Which bed is yours?” Laurel asked. “And where are all the other kids?”

Robyn shook her head, disgusted. “This is
my
room. Someone took away my things.” She marched into the other half of her bedroom suite, her playroom.

Additional bunks lined the room. Her circuit board still sat atop the bookcase, but all the wires she'd spent hours carefully arranging around the room now coiled haphazardly on top of it.

Laurel pointed to a cardboard box on the foot of one bunk. The open box flaps revealed a pile of mottled brown uniforms, brand new and wrapped in plastic. Nott City Military Police–issue camouflage.

The MPs had taken over her house!

Robyn's pulse surged in outrage. She ran into the hallway, heedless of the fact that she should take care not to be noticed.

In her parents' bedroom, she found the same. Twelve bunks, for the room was much larger.

Robyn couldn't help herself. She dashed into the adjoined master bathrooms. They were full of towels, some neatly folded, some draped and damp. The counters were piled with massive shampoo bottles, aerosol shaving cream canisters, and wrapped stacks of soap. Nothing familiar remained. Not even a whiff of her mother's perfume.

Robyn dropped to her knees on the rug—even the rug was new, a locker-room-style rubber mat, with hair tangled beneath its woven rings. Gross.

Robyn lunged toward the toilet and heaved.

“
Shh
,” Laurel whispered from the doorway. “Someone could be here.”

Robyn shot her a wry glance. “I'll try to keep it down next time.” She wiped her mouth with a piece of industrial toilet paper and reached for the flush lever.

“No!” Laurel blurted, grasping Robyn's wrist. She was right. Better to take the chance of someone seeing the vomit later than someone downstairs hearing the flush right now.

“Good call,” Robyn said. She shook her head as she stood up. She used to think she was all kinds of stealthy, running away and sneaking around. Doing stuff her parents didn't know about. The worst thing that could've happened back then, if she got caught, was some length of grounding or maybe extra chores. Real sneaking around, with deadly consequences, well, that was still pretty new.

Robyn and Laurel tiptoed down the hall to the secondfloor security room. The room had no windows, but Robyn had never seen it this dark. The entire system was shut off. Every screen was blank. Maybe if you had a house full of the baddest bad guys, you didn't worry about other bad guys breaking in.

Her father had worried about it. In fact, Robyn wondered what had happened the other night, why her father hadn't
been able to hear the alarm and stop the intruders. Then a new thought slipped in, cold as ice against her skin. Robyn herself had shut off the second-floor alarm system that night, so she could get outside. What if . . . what if that was how the intruders got in undetected?

Robyn powered the system on. The lights flicked on in sequence. Now it looked familiar. Laurel nervously kept watch from the doorway as the machines buzzed and hummed to life. If anyone came down the hall right now, they'd be trapped.

“Close the door,” Robyn suggested. She sat in the large chair and fiddled with the controls. “Obviously they're not using this room.”

Laurel did as asked, then came and perched on the arm of Robyn's chair. They stared at the monitors. The live image came up immediately. “You can see all the entrances,” Laurel observed. “That's a lot of doors.”

There were eight monitors altogether, each with a split screen. Each showed two views of the same entrance: an inside angle and an outside one. Outside the driveway gate and inside the driveway gate. The front door, the back door that led to the porch, the back door from the kitchen to the garden, both garage doors, the side door, and even the door to the moon porch on the roof.

Robyn knew which buttons to push. She had watched her father do this before. She got caught sneaking out through the kitchen one night, and Dad had shown her the footage to prove that he would know if she ever sneaked
out of the house again. That was when she had started using her window.

Robyn cued up the recordings to midnight, two nights ago. She took a deep breath and pressed Play. Then she used the little roller ball on the keyboard to advance the frames faster than real-time.

“There,” Laurel said, pointing at a flash of movement at the front gate. Robyn released the ball and let the video play normally. Her heart raced and the queasiness returned. She knew she had to see, but here and now, she didn't want to.

A truck drove up to the gate. It was a small mover's or delivery truck. Something like that. It parked outside. Four darkly dressed men leaped off the runners and two more came out of the cab, leaving the doors ajar. They scaled the high gate—just jumped right over it with moves that would have impressed Robyn if she wasn't occupied with hating them for what they were coming to do. They breached the front door and disappeared into the house.

“They came in the first floor,” Robyn commented, relieved. She was positive she hadn't shut off the first-floor alarm. Maybe it had gone off. These cameras did not capture sound. Maybe Dad heard it and tried to respond. Maybe that was why her parents ended up in the kitchen.

Long tense seconds passed.

“There he is!” Robyn slammed her hand against the side of the monitor. Dad was making a run for the kitchen door.

 

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

A Message in Blood

Robyn watched in horror as Dad, clad only in boxers and his second-favorite robe, plunged toward the kitchen door. His fingers snapped the door lock open, but before he could reach for the knob one of the men grabbed him. He threw his arms around Dad and pointed a blade at his throat. Dad fought anyway. He elbowed the man and tried to duck loose. The pair grappled their way backward into the kitchen, out of sight.

Robyn stifled a scream, along with the urge to run downstairs and try to save him.

The camera angle allowed only a partial view of the kitchen floor. Her father's feet thrashed into view two more times.

Then his arm lolled into view. It smacked against the tile, bloodied fingers twitching. Robyn slammed her eyes shut. She couldn't bear to watch it.

“No, look. He's drawing something,” Laurel said, nudging her.

Robyn squinted at the screen again. Dad's hand moved in a deliberate pattern. “
L-I-V-E
,” she read. “
Live
.”

“He wants to live?” Laurel said.

The fingers twitched again, then fell still. “Is that a
C
?” Robyn couldn't tell.

Laurel shrugged, looking nervous.

“
C
. . . or
O
. . . or
G
,” Robyn said. “
Q
maybe?”

A large booted foot stepped onto the letters, smearing them beyond recognition. Then it disappeared and that screen remained blank, except for the blood smear, and the seeping edge of the puddle Robyn would find upon her return.

Motion shifted to the front-door cameras. The men lugged Dad outside. One carried him under the shoulders, the other held his ankles. Dad's body arced between them, completely limp, head lolled against his chest. The pale blue bathrobe wound around him awkwardly, soaked with blood.

Robyn let out a strangled, choking cry.

“Are you going to throw up again?” Laurel asked. She glanced around, as if looking for a receptacle.

“No,” Robyn said, although she wasn't too sure.

A third man followed shortly, carrying Robyn's mother.

“She's moving,” Laurel exclaimed. “Doesn't it look like she's moving?”

Robyn scrolled back. Sure enough. The man had her mother draped over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes, but her arms did not hang limp at his back. She was reaching, stirring . . . and then they passed out of sight.

Robyn had seen enough. She hit a button, ending the playback.

The cameras blinked and displayed a large van pulling into the driveway. At the same time, a line of men in MP uniforms entered through the front door. “This is when they came back in the morning?” Laurel asked, puzzled. The footage had clearly been shot in daylight.

“No,” Robyn said, her voice rising. “That's the live feed.”

 

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

The Mystery of the Live Oak

There was no way of knowing how many men had already come inside. Laurel cracked open the door, and the sounds of the MPs' laughter and chatter wafted up the stairwell.

The girls looked at each other. So much for their hopes of food and rest.

“Run for it,” Robyn suggested. After seeing that footage, she felt certain the men downstairs would stop at nothing to subdue and detain them, if not kill them outright.

Laurel didn't need to be told twice. She sprinted to Robyn's room and in one smooth move, vaulted over the dresser and drove herself feetfirst out the window.

Robyn raced into her playroom and grabbed her circuit board. She hugged it to her chest—it was coming with her this time. But there was no bag to put it in. How could she get it down the wall? The board was practically indestructible, but she couldn't just throw it out the window. Not after what had happened to the hologram.

Robyn responded to a sudden impulse and lunged for the box of MP uniforms on the bed. There were somewhere around a dozen plastic packages in the box. She tore a slit in one with her fingernail, then shoved the circuit board inside, slipping it between the folded shirt and pants. It barely fit, but it would do. She grabbed two more uniforms and stacked them as padding above and beneath it, then wrapped the wires around to somewhat hold things together. She lobbed the parcel gently out the window, startling Laurel amid her descent. It landed in the grass with a soft thump.

Robyn lowered herself out the window, and by the time she reached the ground, Laurel had taken her cue and scooped up the unwieldy package. Robyn gathered stray wires from around Laurel's knees as they darted for safety.

Robyn breathed a sigh of relief once they reached the cover of trees. It didn't seem they had been noticed. Looking back at the manor house, all seemed calm and still. It looked . . . normal. Robyn's heart panged with sorrow. Deep inside, she had thought by coming home, everything that had happened might be erased. That they would have walked in the kitchen door and Mom would be there, worried and angry and relieved.