Shadows of Sherwood (28 page)

Nope.

They left the door ajar, to avoid making further noise, and moved on.

The second truck was full of men's clothing. The third, a mix of pottery, clothing, and jewels. These were all things a
normal thief could make use of for money, but they were no good to three kids just trying to survive.

By the time they cracked the seal on the fourth truck, Robyn was worried. What if Key's information was wrong? What if all the food had gone to the depots, after all, and only the merchandise from the dry-goods and hardware stalls came to the compounds? And how many more trucks could they risk opening? The sliding sound was bound to alert someone eventually.

“Yes,” Laurel said as she breathed the scent of fresh bread that assailed them. This was the truck they needed!

Plastic-wrapped loaves of bread from Rennison Bakery. Bushels of fruit from Tommie's Orchard. Root vegetables lolling about in mesh pouches on the truck floor. Perfect.

Laurel immediately reached in and took an apple in each fist. Robyn eased the door closed and made sure it had latched.

“This is the one. Let's get out of here,” she said.

Robyn and Laurel hurried to the front of the chosen truck. They scooted along its length and mounted the metal running board. Robyn tugged open the driver's-side door.

The small courtesy light in the ceiling lit up like a beacon, illuminating Robyn's startled face.

 

CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

A Dangerous Detour

The girls leaped inside and Robyn yanked the door shut, but not all the way. Just far enough to put the overhead light out. Not far enough to latch it and send a slamming sound echoing over the gravel.

The previous driver had been much larger and taller than Robyn. And she wasn't short. But with the bench seat pushed all the way back like that, she was able to fold her entire body into the space between the seat and the pedals. Laurel did the same on the passenger side, clutching her apples like treasure. If anyone looked through the windshield, they wouldn't even see the girls' heads.

Robyn pulled the panel from under the ignition slot and reached for the wires underneath. She and Dad had built a solar engine together once. She knew how it worked and how to start it without the key.

It was almost time, but not quite. Key might not be in position yet. Huddled beneath the steering wheel, she
pulled in her arms and legs, ducked her head and closed her eyes.

If I can't see them, they can't see me.

A memory washed over her then, unwelcome but warm. She'd been terrible at hide-and-seek as a small child. She'd hide behind anything—big couch, small table, thin lamp, whatever—and just close her eyes. Her dad loved to stomp around near her, pretending he couldn't find her, until his antics made her giggle aloud. Then he'd scoop her up and tickle her until she curled up tight in a ball of laughter. Much later, she realized he could see her all along, but he'd played her game because he was a good father. She missed him . . . hard.

If he could see her now, would he play along? She was doing what she had to. Would he be proud?

Robyn's eyes snapped open. She strained her ears, listening for the guards. As long as they were here, she wanted to try to get the spare wire she needed to fix Dad's hologram.

They'd come here for this truck full of food, but if she could leave with something else, too . . .

Robyn reached up and flipped the cabin light switch, so that the light would not come back on when she opened the door. She was pushing her luck now, for certain. It had already been pushed to the breaking point. But with Dad's last message to her at stake, no risk was too great.

“Wait here,” she told Laurel. “I'll be right back. And I'm going to need to borrow this.” She plucked the second apple from Laurel's fist. The girl whimpered over the loss.

Robyn climbed down from the truck. The guards appeared to be circling the other side of the compound, but she knew she had to move quickly.

She wove through the junk piles to his usual spot.

“Barclay,” she whispered. “Barclay?”

The sheet metal shifted. “By the moon, girl!” the man exclaimed brusquely. “What do you think you're doing back here? How many screws you got loose in that pretty head?”

Robyn grinned and held out the apple. “No loose screws. Loose wires, though. I need something ultrafine. Do you have anything?”

“It's for this hologram sphere.” She pulled it from her pack and showed him. “Right here.”

Across the yard, guards began shouting. Robyn's heart raced.

Barclay sighed. “Girl, you always come with a pack of trouble, don't you?” he said.

“Do you have anything? Fast. I have to go.”

“Let's see what we can do,” Barclay said. The sheet metal moved farther. Robyn found herself staring into a box six inches deep full of electronics and wires and gadgets. Barclay pushed it out toward her. “Take what you need.”

“You've been holding out on me,” Robyn grumbled. “How long have you had all this?”

“Heh.” Barclay laughed. “If I gave you all the goods at once, how's I gonna be sure you'd come back to visit me?”

Robyn plucked free several of the finest wires she could see . . . and the voltage adapter she'd been waiting for. “I'll
come back,” she promised. “And next time I'll have more food.”

“You better,” Barclay said.

Robyn raced back across the lot. Something had happened. The guards were running rampant! Footsteps seemed to come from all directions. Floodlights snapped on, one by one, high overhead. The yard was suddenly lit as if it were daylight. Uh-oh!

Robyn hurried around the corner of one of the tin-roofed huts. She tossed a desperate glance through the curtainless window. The room appeared empty, lit only by the glow of a vast computer console. About a dozen monitors and various blinking machines filled one whole wall of the hut. It seemed like an awful lot of tech for a junkyard, Robyn thought. But she needed a place to hide. She slipped inside.

Instantly, she knew she'd made a terrible mistake. The console wasn't empty, after all.

 

CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

An Uneasy Alliance

In the large pilot's chair sat a teenage girl with spiky black hair, dyed deep red at the tips. She swiveled around at the sound of the door, and Robyn realized why she hadn't noticed the girl. She was short to begin with, and she held herself hunched low in the chair, no doubt to avoid being spotted through the window.

Robyn's eyes narrowed. “You.” It was the girl from Sherwood Jail!

“It's you,” the girl at the computer said back, at almost the same time. She sounded more relieved than upset, unlike Robyn. The girl spun back to face the computer, as if dismissing Robyn as any threat whatsoever. Somehow, that smarted.

“What are you doing here?” Robyn demanded. It felt like righteous anger, seeing her own act of trespass being trespassed on.

The girl's fingers flew over the keys, flitting from switch to switch on the console. “Oh, like you're supposed to be
here, either,” she retorted. “Do you even know how to work a computer system?”

“Of course I do!” Although Robyn snapped at the girl, her confidence flagged as she witnessed her proficiency.

The computer emitted a series of beeps and whines. “Ha!” the redheaded girl chortled. She pulled a flat gray card out of one of the slots on the front of the console. A portable hard drive. “I got what I came for.”

“And what's that?” In spite of herself, Robyn was curious.

The girl smiled and waved the portable drive. “Everything.”

“Everything?”

“Everything in this part of the system, yeah.”

“They've broken up the data pretty well, but I'm going to get it all. We're going to find out where they took everyone.”

“Took everyone?” Robyn echoed.

“Everyone they disappeared.” The girl waggled the drive in Robyn's face once more, then clipped it to a chain around her neck and buttoned it inside her corduroy jacket.
Who wears corduroy in the summer?
Robyn thought, though it was ridiculously beside the point.

The corduroy was but another layer between Robyn and the problem at hand. Her parents were among the disappeared! If there was information on the disk that could help find them . . .

But the girl was headed out the door. Robyn had to act fast. As the girl's hand turned the knob, a great chorus of shouts and crunching gravel arose outside the trailer.

“Intruder alert! Intruder alert!” A blue blinking light strobed from somewhere inside the lot.

The girl's eyes flashed with fear. She released the doorknob and crouched below the curtainless window.

Robyn, too, splayed herself low on the floor as the shouts rose and receded and flashlight beams cut into the room, painting the ceiling in haphazard arcs, like Grand Opening floodlights airbrushing the night.

The redheaded girl glared at Robyn, her catlike eyes widened in fright. “They're probably looking for you. You've ruined everything,” she said, her voice cracking.

“They could just as easily be looking for you,” Robyn retorted. But the girl's fear made her seem less annoying, more innocent. Now they had a common enemy, which would make them de facto friends. If there was one thing she'd learned in the past few days, it was that friends could help get you out of big trouble. She'd still be in prison if it wasn't for Laurel, or she'd have got caught outside Nottingham Cathedral without Tucker to show her to safety. But under this girl's hostile stare, a sudden burst of friendship didn't seem likely.

Allies, then.

“We're in this together at the moment,” Robyn said. “I don't want to be caught any more than you do.”

Cat eyes. Glare.

“My name is Robyn,” she tried. “What's yours?”

“Scarlet,” the girl whispered, with a resigned sigh, as if to say,
We're about to die; what's the harm in telling you?

“I can give you a way out,” Robyn offered. “In exchange for sharing whatever you just downloaded.”