Restored (The Missing: Book 9) [Formerly Titled Rescued]

Chapter Thirteen

"What are we going to do now?" Jonah asked Katherine helplessly.

Katherine made eye contact with Jonah for a moment, then glanced at Alexander.

The weight of realization that their plan had failed knocked the breath out of Jonah. Defeat was upon them. Alexander had no connection to his intended life. At any moment, he would leap up and attack, demanding the Elucidator. They'd fail their haphazard mission. They would never see Kevin or the other kids again. Jonah could feel time itself counting down to the moment it was going to end.

"Alexander, do you understand what's going on?" Katherine asked softly, interrupting Jonah's internal monologue of worst-case scenarios.

"You were wrong," Alexander said calmly, yet his words were cutting. "You lied."

"We thought–"

"It doesn't matter what you thought," Alexander replied, his voice full of a tranquil anger. The type of anger that he'd seen on Dad's face last year when he realized that the sleepover that Jordan and Jonah had gone to was actually a party, even though neither of them had done anything wrong. For the first time, Jonah didn't see Alexander as a sniffling brat, but as a man.

Alexander pushed himself up off of the ground and walk swiftly over to a tree. He grasped a low-hanging branch and yanked down on it. Jonah heard a crack as the branch started to break away from the tree. Alexander twisted it a few times and pulled again, tossing it to the ground after it came loose. Jonah and Katherine quickly stood, momentarily forgetting how tired they were.

"What are you doing?" asked Katherine, who was slowly approaching him.

"We need firewood for our camp, don't we?" Alexander replied with a cloudy film over his eyes.

He's trying to understand everything, Jonah decided. He needs to talk it out with somebody. And by somebody, I mean Katherine. She gets along with him better than I do. Jonah caught her gaze and nodded his head slightly towards Alexander. She gave a tight nod back.

"We do need wood for a campfire, but this won't do," Jonah said, tapping the branch with his foot. "It's not dry enough. Hey, why don't you and Katherine go look for some? Maybe you can find a dead tree that's dried out or something. I'll stay here and start setting up camp."

"Are you sure you want us to split up?" Alexander asked.

"Yeah, I can handle this. I'm a boy scout," Jonah replied, instantly feeling like a dork.

Katherine rolled her eyes and shook her head. "Come on, let's leave the boy scout to it." She placed a hand on Alexander's shoulder and guided him away from the small clearing.

As soon as they were out of sight, Jonah got to work. First, he cleared away all of the leaves and foliage surrounding the tree he picked to turn into a shelter. Then, he broke off more branches and propped them up around the tree trunk, forming a makeshift tee-pee-like structure and securing it with a vine. It was smaller than what he had in mind, but it would have to do. Finally, after searching around the outskirts of the clearing, he found enough rocks to surround the campfire.

Jonah flopped down on the dirt and sighed. He was drenched with sweat and exhausted. He would have done anything to be able to curl up and go to sleep, but he was still waiting for Katherine and Alexander to get back. I've had enough time to build the entire camp. They should be back by now.

"Or maybe not?" Jonah thought out loud. "This is a tropical climate. It's probably hard to find dry wood." He sat back up and listened, but couldn't hear anything except the humming of insects.