Extracted

Benjamin

We wait at the far end of the old quarry, though the bowl shaped dip in the low hills isn't really that wide. The old quarry had gone inactive long before my birth, before my parents' births, in favor of the larger working quarry three miles up the dirt road farther from town.

Kids have been coming out here for as long as anyone in Jeffries Point remembers. It's where Tyler and I brought Jeremy to shoot tin cans with our rifles the afternoon I flipped the truck on Old Stone Road. Funny that it will all end here. One way or another.

There's a long chunk of white gray granite at our backs, the blasting holes and pick lines are still evident from where they stopped shearing the granite apart just under a hundred years ago. It forms one side of the bowl, a straight wall. The sun glints off the natural reservoir, collected from seeps and rainwater at our right.

"You're sure about this?" Mitchell's arm is solid and supportive against mine.

"I'm getting Gideon back."

"Okay." That's all he says. Of course he doesn't need to say anything at all. The fact that he's here, waiting out in the open next to me is enough.

There are four dusty roads that lead into the quarry, one's a straight shot from town, another takes a more circuitous route into the upper quarry, and the two are the original roads carved into the side of the hills from when the granite slabs were transported out by wagons.

I can't be sure which entrance Helena will emerge from so we hold our ground at a position where we can see all four routes.

Even though it's cool from the draft lifting off the water, perspiration runs down the back of my neck and my head still throbs.

What if they haven't looked and seen my signal is restored to my true position? What if she doesn't bring Gideon?

Mitchell's fingers squeeze tight around my wrist. "This is going to work."

I look up at him and immediately get locked into his brown gaze. He's ice and steely determination, as hard as the granite behind us and right now I'm so grateful all that focused resolve is on my side, my own nerves calm. Even if I can't save Gideon, I know that Mitchell will.

A droning purr yanks our attention upward and a shadow edges across the ground as a helicopter appears over the lip of granite wall behind us.

We turn. I hold my hair out of my face from the chopper moving over us, throwing us in its shadow for a moment.

We're sitting ducks like this. Tranquilizer darts, gas canisters, even rifles. Anything can take us out. I'm banking on the hope that they want us unscathed and cooperative.

Helena has to know I turned my signal back on for a reason. Simple curiosity may be the only thing holding back the darts. Not to mention the vulnerable position I've placed us in.

The down drafts of the helicopter blades push on us and we instinctively crouch as the chopper lowers. About twenty feet above us, it turns to go land several yards away.

The glass is tinted so I can't see how many are inside. I try to control my racing pulse.

No one moves. No one gets out. The helicopter might as well have been flown here by remote control for all the activity. I squint against the pebbles and dirt flying around us, upchucked by the slowing rotaries.

The engine cuts off and I tense.

The occupants wait until the blades slow to a slight rotation that stripes the ground in long moving shadows. The glass door is pushed open and Helena steps out. She's back in her black uniform with the addition of sunglasses perched on her tipped-up nose. She holds the large tranquiller gun casually near her hip. I want to claw the triumphant grin from her, a cat who knows her mice are cornered.