Chapter 32 - Tootinagin

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We ditched the bikes a couple of miles down the trails, gathering everything before starting off in the direction of the house we had seen on the maps. We had stepped off the trail for the long before now, and it felt as though we had been walking for hours at this point. Marissa and Robert were in the front, with Marcus and I behind and Liam and Lukas in the back. My bruising was really starting to set, and I could tell that Marcus kept glancing over at me. 

"What did you do after your stormed into the house from the garden?" I asked him quietly. Marissa and Robert were in their own conversation, and I couldn't tell if the others behind us were paying much attention. I saw Marcus tense, his jaw tightening as he chose his words. 

"I cooled down," he finally said. 

"Did cooling down involve your father?" I asked him. 

"At first, but there isn't much that I can say." His words were harsh, like he a little piece of his anger slipped out every time he said a word. "He might be my father, but he is also my boss." I nodded and returned to look straight ahead, focusing on stepping over roots and keeping my footing. No matter how hard I tried though, I couldn't stop thinking about the situation. I was angry enough about it on my own, and it had happened to me. Marcus being angry about it only made me feel....guilty. 

I opened my mouth to say more, but right then Robert made a signal for us to stop. We kept walking only until were he was crouched. In front of us, the woods started sloping down and a couple hundred feet away were the start of the grounds. Far off the start of the smooth grass was the house, but there was nothing to be able to cover ourselves from the sight of anyone looking. 

"How are we supposed to get there without being seen?" I asked. No one offered me any answer, so I settled down further into my crouch and looked through the property once more. There still was nothing that would be useful to us. 

"We could make a run for it," Liam offered. "They'd see us for sure, but at least we would be on our way to getting to the house."

"That would be suicide," Lukas countered. "They would shoot us down before we could say tootinagin." We all glanced at him with questioning looks, but soon forgot about it. 

"Lukas is right. We have to find some other way of getting past them." We all sat in silence, thinking about what we should do before an idea came to my head. I narrowed my eyes, scanning where I could see the little dots of bodies moving. 

"How many are there per side?" I asked. Everyone looked at me strangely as a result of my tone, indicating that I had an idea. 

"I could two patrolling the top and one on the ground on the sides we can see," Marcus answered. 

"Does anyone remember about the location we were at when we ran into the two men?" I asked them. Marissa thought for a moment.

"We're on the east wall here. We walked south for twenty minutes, east for half an hour, and then north another twenty. We must be on the east side then, so we would have had to have been on the west side," she concluded. I turned to Marcus, looking at the radio in jackets before reaching in and grabbing it. 

"If we signal to them that there is something wrong at the west side, maybe they will send their men into the woods and looking for trouble over there."

"There will be less defenses on this side. They will send all units from the west side out, and pack more on the west side at the house where they are expecting trouble. They might have to start circling the top, giving us a window of opportunity to try and make a run for it," Liam finished my thoughts. I nodded my agreement before looking at Robert. 

"This could work, but they also might start searching through all of the woods, not just the west side."

"If we make it sound like it just happened, they won't think that it was possible for us to make it to the east side. They will think that we are somewhere over there," I said, pointing across the yard and to the woods on the other side. 

"Whatever we do," Marissa said. "we need to do it quickly. They have had John for almost a day now. There's no question what he might have gone through, what Newman has told him."

"You mean the photos being staged, and that wherever those bruises came from it wasn't him?" Marcus threw at his father. Robert looked at him before turning back to me. 

"Do it," he told me. I clambered, not expecting him to ask me to do it. 

"What? I don't know what to say. You guys sound way more menacing than me."

"It was your idea, now you do it. That's how things run here," Robert told me. I swallowed, nodding slowly before raising the radio to my lips and clicking the button. 

"Hi, this is just a friendly call from your friendly neighbor. It seems that your two, I don't know, maybe you'd call them men, have fallen asleep on duty. Happy napping!" I made my voice resemble that of an airline attendant instructing people on the exits. I clicked the button off, taking a deep breath and handing it back to Marcus who was chuckling.

"You've got a knack for pushing the right buttons, you know that?" he asked me. 

"It's my specialty," I responded with a smile before turning back to watching the men around the house. Ten seconds passed by and there didn't seem to be a change in security, and I began to second guess my plan. They definitely knew we were here now, and once they got to their men they would know who and how many. If this didn't work, then we had just exposed ourselves for no reason.

"Fuck," I muttered, sitting on my left leg and closing my eyes, angry at myself for thinking something so stupid would work.

"Don't say that just yet," Lukas, who was on my left, said to me, urging me to continue looking. I got back up and looked over the edge to see two sets of ATV's heading for the treeline on the west. I smiled, feeling triumphant as I looked then to the roof and saw that Robert had been right. There were only two men left on the roof, others now guarding some other portion of the home. 

"Okay, so, what," I say, looking at the others. "We just run?" I asked. Marissa smiled at me, giving Robert a quick kiss before throwing her legs over the edge and sliding down the dirt. Robert smiled, following her with Lukas and Liam not far behind. I glanced over at Marcus.

"Ladies first," he told me. I smirked. 

"I haven't seen any evidence that isn't you," I winked at his horrified expression and threw my legs over, struggling to make it down with hurting myself. The bruise on my side was yelling at me, but it was nothing compared to my ribs my first nights with the Theins. 

Marissa and Robert were standing at the edge of the woods, waiting for the rest of us to make our way down. 

"We need to go. The guard is going to be passing in the next five seconds. It's about 500 feet, give or take, and we need to do it in under thirty seconds." We watched the guard come into view and then walk across the roof. We hid behind trees until the moment before he was going to be passing behind the building. 

"Go time," I heard Lukas say with a smile. While he seemed to be having fun, I was terrified. Terrified that the man was going to come back and shoot me and I really would be dead. Terrified that we weren't going to make it across the lawn without the others coming back. And mostly, I was terrified of what I was going to see when I walked in the door. 

But I didn't have that much time to think about it, because a second later Lukas had taken off down the yard, Marissa, Robert, Marcus, and Liam in tow. I pushed off the tree, trying to leave all my negative thoughts behind me as I sprinted after the group.


N/A  Another chapter done, getting closer to the end of the book. Any theories yet? 

Love you guys :)

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