The Vault (A Farm Novel) by Emily McKay

reason of any of us to want Ely dead and he hadn’t caused a riot.
    I was about to head back in to talk to Ely more, when Dawn and Darren came hurrying down the hall.
    “What happened?” Dawn asked. “I heard something about a fight, that it got really bad.”
    She looked from Zeke to me and back again.
    Zeke didn’t say anything, but he ducked his head and he tucked his bloodied hands into his pockets. “I’m going to—” He bobbed his head toward the stairwell and dashed off without saying another word.
    I nodded to Dawn and Darren. “Come on in. I’m going to need your advice.”
    A few minutes later, we were all standing around the map, which was still spread out on the Dean’s desk. Still trying to figure out which Farm Price would have headed for. A hell of a lot had happened in the past hour, but I was right back where I’d been. Only the pile of shit was bigger.
    “What kind of facilities would he need?” Dawn asked.
    “Enough space to keep the patients isolated from the rest of the population and enough meds to sedate them indefinitely.” I circled three other spots on the map. “I figure the Farms with those kinds of resources are here in Waco, here in College Station, and the Farm up by the border where Lily was when I first got her out.” I exed out that last one. “But this one is almost exactly three hundred miles from El Corazon. With the helicopter loaded up like that, that puts it at the very edge of the copter’s range. Price probably wouldn’t want to push it like that.”
    “That’s a big assumption.”
    I ignored Darren. “For now, we have to assume he was heading either for the Farm in Waco or the one in College Station.”
    Dawn pointed to a pair of spots on the panhandle. “What about Lubbock and Amarillo? Aren’t there Farms there?”
    “Yeah. But Amarillo’s too far and Lubbock is also three hundred miles away. Plus, Price left El Corazon heading east. We have to assume he’d head to one of the closer Farms.” And if one more person gave me hell about the assumption, I’d lose it. Because I was barely holding on as it was. Yeah. This was all based on assumptions. And Texas was friggin’ huge. Finding a downed helicopter would make looking for a needle in a haystack seem like an afternoon at the park. Even if all our assumptions were right, only an idiot would think he could wander out into Tick-infested no-man’s-land to find a downed helicopter. An idiot or an arrogant ass.
    Thankfully, I had an arrogant ass who owed me.
    Just then, Joe, Zeke, and Ely came in. I gave Zeke a hard look when he walked in the room. He seemed to know just what I was looking for, because he nodded slowly to let me know he was himself again. Beside him, Ely tensed and eyed Zeke, but didn’t say anything.
    Joe pushed past Zeke. “Zeke said Lily’s helicopter went down and—” Then he stopped short. “This is your big plan? You’re sending
him
?”
    “Look—”
    “No, you look. This guy’s an asshole. He betrayed us all. He tried to kill Lily. He—”
    “He’s also better at staying alive on the outside than anyone I know. He’s a good fighter. He’s been all over the—”
    “I don’t care if he has a squadron of winged monkeys who can fly around and spot the copter from the air. You’re not sending him.”
    “He’s the obvious choice. He’s the only one good enough to find them without getting killed and he’s the only other person with a dog in this race. His brother was on that helicopter.”
    “No.” Joe took a step toward me, anger radiating off him. “Not just no. Hell, no.”
    Okay, so much for Joe being the reasonable one. “Look, Lily is out there. She is turning into a Tick. We only have a few days to find her. If we lose track of her now, she’s gone. Forever. And he is the only guy who has a shot of getting to her.”
    “McKenna might be alive if it wasn’t for him! Have you thought of that?”
    “I have,” I said calmly, trying to soothe Joe’s