Gone

Perdido Beach, one from Coates, side by side.
    “Caine’s at the school,” Sam said. “I’m thinking maybe we take it to them.”
    “Is Drake there?” Dekka asked.
    “No one has seen him. He may be…he may be not showing up.”
    “Good,” Dekka said bluntly.
    “We haven’t had much time to get to know each other,” Sam said. “And now, well, I don’t have much time, period. How much control do you have over your power?”
    Dekka blew out some air and considered this question. She looked at her hands as if they would give her the answer. “I have to be pretty close. I can rattle a wall pretty good, or send someone flying, but only from a few feet away.”
    “Yeah?”
    “I’m up for it,” she said.
    Taylor popped in. “They’re all inside the school. One guard, as far as I can see. And definitely no Drake.”
    “Okay,” Sam said. “Here’s what we do. Dekka and I are going after them. Taylor, I need you to go tell Edilio. Then I need you to climb up the steeple, up where Astrid is. If Dekkaand I get in trouble, we may need a distraction.”
    “Dude. I don’t climb. I pop. And I’m on it.” Taylor disappeared.
    “I’ll probably get used to her doing that someday,” Sam muttered.
    He took a deep, shaky breath. It was his first big tactical decision of the coming battle. He hoped it wasn’t a mistake.

    Jack had kept the SUV hidden in a patch of trees all through the day. He had slept fitfully, crunched in the driver’s seat, all the doors locked, too scared to think about stretching out more comfortably in the back.
    Jack didn’t care how big a hurry Diana was in for him to reach Sam, he wasn’t going to die for her.
    Only when the sun set at last did he turn the key and creep from his shady hiding place.
    Down dirt roads with no signposts, lights off, moving at a crawl. Around blind corners, up, down, left, right. The SUV had a compass built in to the rearview mirror, but the directions never seemed to make sense. One second it would read south and the next minute east even though he hadn’t turned.
    It was impossible to know where he was going. He could drive with the lights on and see the road, but then others could see him as well. So he drove in the dark at little more than walking speed. Even at such low speed, the SUV bounced and lurched so badly that Jack felt like he’d been beaten up.
    That he absolutely had to get to Sam was clearer than ever. Caine would never forgive Jack for this betrayal. His only salvation lay with Sam. But only if Sam survived the poof. If Sam stepped outside, Caine would win. And then the FAYZ would be too small a place for Jack to hide from Caine and Drake.
    Jack checked the dashboard clock. He knew the day and hour of Sam’s poof. Just over two hours left.
    The moon rose and the road straightened so that he motored along at a somewhat higher speed than before, anxious to reach safety. A rabbit darted in front of him. Jack jerked the wheel and missed the rabbit but bounced off the road into a field.
    He yanked the wheel hard and swerved back onto the road just as a pickup truck shot by coming from the other direction.
    Jack cursed and turned in his seat to look back. Brake lights flared and the pickup screeched to a stop.
    Jack stepped on the gas. The SUV leaped forward. But now the truck was turning around and coming up fast.
    In the darkness it was impossible to see who was driving the truck, but in Jack’s mind it could be only one person: Drake.
    Weeping, Jack accelerated. The gas tank needle edged closer to empty. But still the pickup truck came on.
    The only escape would be to drive into the field where the truck might not be able to follow. Jack slowed just slightly and steered into the fallow field. The ground was plowed up, soft, and the SUV bounced madly across the rows.
    The truck kept pace.
    In the field ahead of him, powerful headlights snapped on. A tractor was moving with surprising speed to cut him off. Beyond the tractor a dark, dilapidated farmhouse was set far back from the road.
    Jack was sick inside. They had him. Somehow, impossibly, they had him trapped.
    Jack never saw the dry creek bed. The SUV went airborne for a few feet, he felt weirdly weightless, and then the SUV hit the far bank of the creek and stopped hard. There was a loud bang, the air bag deploying, and a sickening crunch, and Jack found himself lying flat on his back in the dirt, not hurt but too stunned to move.
    The SUV’s headlights illuminated the field