G.U.A.R.D. Book #2: Aberrations

-7-

    The sun still shone brightly hours later. The clouds were pink and thin. Night was definitely coming, but we still had a four hours' worth of light.

"Lisa, start taking the car down," Slade said in a soft tone.

Max took a deep breath, and his eyes fluttered open for half a second, but then he went right back to sleeping. With both the girls slumbering away, the guys changed out of their dirty and holey clothes. Anthony could only do so after Slade and Lisa together studied the metal blindfold, then managed to take it off. It probably took them about an hour. Slade then stored it in one of the car compartments, saying the G.U.A.R.D. scientists would be interested in seeing it.

In a few moments, the wheels of the car hit gravel, and Winter's eyes opened from the rough difference. The sleeper instantly fell off. She gazed around, taking her head off my sore shoulder and letting out a yawn, stretching her neck.

"Ouch," she muttered as she rubbed the back of it. "Where are we?"

"Not that much farther behind the League car than when we started," Slade answered. "I don't think they know we're following them."

Winter grimaced and ran a hand through her tangled hair. Slade reached over to Cindy and pressed the middle of her sleeper. It slipped off into his hand, and he put it back in the duffel bag. He also put Winter's in the same place.

"What League car?" Winter asked. Right, she must have been asleep by the time we decided to save Conner. I gave her a brief description of what we were doing.

"Oh..." was her only answer. Her fingers played with each other, as if she was nervous. "Do you think he's really okay?"

Slade answered, "Being so close to Jo and her family, they won't kill him." He took a deep breath. "I'm going to be straight with you. They'll do everything in their power to get Conner to tell them any information he knows. Every means of torture they know."

Winter's breath caught. She brought up her knees and wrapped her arms around them. I felt sympathy and worry rise up, but offered no encouragement for my friend. All I could do was change the subject.

"Who's Jo?"

"Right," he answered. "Forgot you didn't know. Jo Race was your mom's false name. She changed it to Shelby Apply for security reasons—you can guess why."

"False name?"

"Uh." He rubbed the back of his neck. "Wow, this is weird explaining. A false name is a name G.U.A.R.D. gives you to make sure no one recognizes your name in your normal, everyday life."

"So people at G.U.A.R.D. actually have normal lives?" Winter asked with a slightly cracked voice.

He dropped his arm. "Not all of them."

"Do you?" Anthony questioned, looking back to us.

Slade's eyes went downcast, and he answered in a quiet tone, "I used to."

"What happened?" Winter asked.

Slade looked up to us, and I could see years of pain in his eyes. "Jo left."

   ----  

A good number of hours later, I felt the car begin to slow, driving up the road next to a mountain.

"Where are we?" Winter asked, glancing outside.

"Uh... Colorado?" Slade asked. "Lisa, why are we stopping?"

I jumped when I heard the female voice of a computer coming from the car.

"The League of Blood's car has stopped near here."