Alien vs. Alien

tourists, a road ran around three-fourths of it, and there were other roads leading to it, some that ran through the Mall and some coming from other directions. However, it also had clumps of big, dense foliage around it.
    Sure enough, Bruno headed for the biggest, densest clump of trees and bushes, which was around the side and toward the back. He dove into the trees, and we lost sight of him. No problem, we ran into this little forest, too.
    After the way the rest of this weekend had been, I wasn’t really sure what we were going to find. My only hope was that we wouldn’t find nothing.
    So that worked out for me.

    Yi

CHAPTER 56

    O F COURSE, I’D EXPECTED TO SEE some Poofs and Peregrines mixing it up with Clarence or even LaRue and Ronaldo. What was there, however, was the Gower girls. They had their backs to us and were facing . . . something.
    I mean, I had to assume from their body language—which said “we’ve been at DEFCON Worse for a while now”—that they were facing something other than the trees around the Memorial. But there was nothing I could see.
    Well, that wasn’t quite true. As with Mona and her undercover bodyguards, something was going on, based on the fact that the trees and bushes were moving in the way they would if someone or something was being thrown into and against them. Either that or we’d found the Living Apple Orchard from the
Wizard of Oz
. The way things were going, I didn’t rule that possibility out.
    The Gower girls were holding hands, which was normal for them when they were really focusing their talents. However, it looked as though Abigail was holding onto Naomi and trying to pull her back, rather than them doing their Wonder Twins thing.
    White and I ran to them. I grabbed Abigail around the waist, and he did the same with Naomi.
    “Let me go!” Naomi shouted. “They’re going to die if I don’t go!”
    Ah, so it was the Bad Guy Go-To Plan for All Occasions. The Evil Overlord types really revered the classics. “Jennifer, you help hold Abigail. Jeremy, you help Richard with Naomi.”
    Once Jennifer had a hold of Abigail and was helping her stay upright, I went in front of Naomi. “What in the world do you think you’re doing?” I put my hands on her shoulders and pushed her back. She was really trying to get free, not that this surprised me all that much.
    “They have Chuck. And Jeff. And they’re going to kill them if we don’t e ago.” Naomi was practically crying. I’d never seen her this out of emotional control before. Then again, I could understand, and relate, to the feelings she was having.
    I shook her, hard. “Look at me!” I shouted it, in the same tone of voice I’d used when giving orders as the Head of Airborne.
    She blinked and looked at me, really looked at me. “What are you doing? Why are you trying to stop me?”
    “Let me rephrase. Shut up and look at me!”
    Naomi gaped at me, but I definitely had her attention.
    “I don’t know what Chuckie’s taught you in all this time he’s been working with you, but I’d bet all the money in the A-C coffers that it sure as hell wasn’t to trot over and give yourselves up to the bad guys when they have a hostage.”
    “He didn’t,” Abigail said. “He told us if and when we were put in this situation to run like hell in the other direction. And to find you, I might add.”
    “And here I am. Isn’t that nice? So, why, Mimi, when he needs you to listen to him the
most
, are you ignoring what Chuckie taught you?”
    “But . . . they’re going to kill him.”
    “Yeah? Like they didn’t manage when we were in Paris? I mean, clearly it’s time for the two of you to get some actual official field training and experience, because right now you, Mimi, are acting like the biggest noob on the planet. And you will
be
the reason they kill Chuckie and Jeff.”
    “What?” She sounded shocked. Naomi was far too smart to be falling for any bad guy’s line. But she wasn’t thinking with her head.
    “Get it together, and get it together right now.” I was snarling. Quietly, but still, snarling. Sometimes being nice didn’t work. This appeared to be one of those times. “You and your sister, along with your eldest brother and my baby, are what these bastards want. They have Jeff and Chuckie as bargaining chips. As long as we don’t give them what they want, then Jeff and Chuckie’s odds of living stay at least fifty-fifty.”
    “Those aren’t good odds.”
    “No. But if you