The Aberration of Eden Pruitt, page 24
Eden pushed the unnerving possibility away. They had an entire week until then.
But then Friday came and Amir went off script again.
Instead of heading to the diner when he reached Bethesda, his car stopped along an unfamiliar side street.
Eden wasted no time.
She grabbed the glasses and her beanie, stuffed her shoulder-length hair out of sight, took one of the phones, the Miller’s keys, and made a beeline for the door.
Cassian snagged her arm.
“Be careful,” he said, his eyes brimming with intensity.
When she reached Amir’s car—which was dark and empty—she parked a half-block away and slipped out into the drizzle with her hood up. She tried to see into the storefront windows, but almost all of them were boarded. The ones that weren’t were as dark and empty as Amir’s car.
Where had he gone? And what was he doing?
She looked up and down the street, noting the number of cars parked along the curb. Not just hers and Amir’s, but several. Where were the owners? She looked at the windows above the stores. None of them were lit. They weren’t apartments. So why were so many cars parked on this abandoned street?
Eden tried a door.
It was locked.
She tried another.
Locked.
As she approached the next, she could hear the distinct sound of voices. Not a specific conversation, but the low, quiet chatter of many.
The door swooshed open.
Eden ducked into the shadows, her heart lurching into her throat as Amir opened an umbrella and stepped out into the rain.
She caught a glimpse inside before the door shut all the way. There was a bar. And tables. And people. Inside a nameless store with boarded-up windows. It reminded Eden of a speakeasy. Only this wasn’t the prohibition. Drinking was perfectly legal, so why the cover-up?
Amir crossed the street to his vehicle.
Eden’s phone rang—loud and disruptive.
She forgot to silence the ringer.
She answered quickly with fumbling fingers, eager to silence the sound. Thankfully, Amir was already in his car, driving away.
“He’s on the move,” Cass said.
“I know. He just came out of a … private drinking lounge.”
“Private drinking lounge?” Cass repeated. “Was he meeting someone?”
“I don’t know.” Eden stared at the door, wishing she could go inside. Knowing it would be too conspicuous if she did.
“He just parked at the diner,” Cleo said in the background.
Eden climbed into the car and made her way to the usual looking spot. Sure enough, Amir sat at his table in the window as the waitress brought him a Reuben and a side salad. Eden sunk lower in her seat with her hood up, her attention so zeroed in on Amir it was a wonder he couldn’t feel it.
And then it happened.
Something so discreet, she might have imagined it.
But no. She’d seen him do it—so imperceptibly, she would have missed it had she not been watching with such unwavering ferocity. Amir Kashif had reached inside the pocket of his shirt and removed something. Then he’d wiped his hands and left that something inside a crumpled napkin.
He paid his bill.
He nodded politely at the waitress.
Then he left.
Eden sunk deeper into her seat, her eyes glued to the napkin on the table.
Amir drove away.
Eden remained.
She watched as the waitress picked up the napkin and slipped it into the front pocket of her waist apron.
Eden’s pulse quickened.
Why would someone put a crumpled napkin in their pocket, especially when the crumpled napkin belonged to another person?
The waitress moved out of sight.
Eden slipped out of the car and darted beneath an awning, hoping a different angle might provide a view of the young woman. She needed to see what happened to that napkin.
A hulking figure on a scooter drove past, tires splashing up rainwater, then pulled into the diner’s alleyway. Eden pressed herself further into shadow as the side door opened and the waitress appeared, holding a to-go order.
She handed the bag to the hooded figure.
Eden stared hard at the waitress’s pocket, trying to figure out if the crumpled napkin was still inside. Was it there, or had she put it in the bag and handed it off to the mystery person on the bike? Eden’s heart raced, adrenaline coursing as the hooded figure drove away and the waitress went back inside.
She wasn’t sure what to do.
Stay here and watch the waitress or follow the bike?
She could always find the waitress. She’d worked the same shift at the diner every night this week. But the person on the bike? Eden might never have this opportunity again. And so, she made her decision. She didn’t get back in the car. That would be too visible, especially on these empty streets. Instead, she ran, the rain soaking through her hooded sweatshirt—stopping whenever she got too close, waiting to see which way the person would turn. Further and further, to a wooded park on the outskirts of town.
Eden breathed heavily and crept forward as her target hid the scooter in a bramble of bushes, then trudged over wet leaves. She followed from afar, her eyesight like a high-powered night-vision zoom lens. She watched as the tall, broad figure neared a terrace of wooden planks raised above the ground—a sun deck in the middle of nature. A place for park-goers to stop and rest and enjoy their surroundings when it was warm, and the sun was shining. Not a place to go at night in the dark in the rain.
The person looked around, then kicked through a pile of leaves at the base of the terrace. Eden hid behind a tree as the figure got down on all fours, stuffed the to-go bag underneath the wooden planks, and slithered in after it. Then the leaves re-accumulated, like the person on the other side was shifting them to hide his or her tracks.
Eden leaned against the tree, stumped.
Intrigued.
Excited.
Something was going on.
She stared at the deck.
Was the person homeless? Living off the grid?
She waited to see if the figure would reappear. She waited until she was soaking wet and shivering, too. Then she ran back to the car, returned to the Millers, and relayed the entire bizarre scenario to Cassian and Cleo.
38
Eden stood behind a tree, staring at Cassian as he made his way toward the bramble of bushes where the scooter hid. Cleo sat on the limb above her, a pair of binoculars in hand. It was early morning. A thin layer of ice frosted the ground. Fog hovered in patches as pink sunbeams crested the horizon.
Last night, Eden had asked Dayne about the existence of a local speakeasy. Was there one in Bethesda? If there was, the infamous media mogul didn’t know about it. Eden had spent the rest of the night hardly sleeping, her mind a beehive of buzzing thoughts.
She could have imagined the whole thing. Amir reaching into his pocket. Placing something into the crumpled tissue. There was a very real chance that her mind had played a trick. There was a very real chance the three of them were spying on a homeless person who’d found a warm, dry place to sleep on a rainy night.
Her uncertainty rose with the sun.
And now her heart was pounding out of her chest, her attention zipping from Cassian to the terrace, positive the person sleeping beneath would choose this moment to wake up and crawl out into the open.
“Are you sure he’s still under there?” Cleo asked.
“The bike’s still there,” Eden replied, her attention returning to the bramble of bushes.
Cassian had reached his target.
Eden silently urged him to hurry as he bent down and attached the tracking device beneath the left foot pedal. In the distance, a lady with a Great Dane wound her way up the path.
The muscles in Eden’s shoulders went taut. She hissed at Cass, who spotted the woman and ducked out of sight.
The lady stopped on the deck. Sat on a bench. Unleashed her dog.
The giant canine lifted its nose into the air and sniffed.
Cleo muttered an expletive.
Eden’s entire body coiled. What if the dog caught their scent? What if it raced toward her and Cleo, or Cass, with sharp barks and raised hackles? What if it blew their cover and despite Cassian’s facial hair and Eden’s beanie and Cleo’s new style, the owner immediately recognized them? They shouldn’t have done this. Not together. No matter how badly all of them wanted to go, only one of them should have. Time had made them foolish. They were much too exposed.
The dog caught a scent.
Thankfully, not theirs.
Eden watched as it ambled off the deck, its tail wagging as the lady made a phone call. Eden imagined the mystery guy underneath, listening to the footsteps overhead. The dog sniffing around the leaves that hid the entrance to his sleeping quarters.
Its tail wagged faster, then it let loose a deep bark and started to dig.
“Charlie,” the lady beckoned, pulling a ball from her pocket while still on the phone.
The dog looked up with a leaf stuck to its muzzle.
“Go get it!” The lady tossed the ball toward a line of trees. Charlie abandoned the scent to make chase. After several rounds of fetch, a jogger came up the path. The lady ended her phone call, pocketed the ball, and leashed Charlie. She nodded a friendly hello at the passing jogger, and a few minutes later, the path was empty again.
A pair of squirrels scampered along the bench, then skittered up a tree. Birds twittered in branches, hiding in leaves that had turned with the fall.
Cassian joined her.
The person under the deck didn’t appear.
She couldn’t imagine he was still sleeping. Not after that lady and her dog. She also couldn’t imagine staying under there for much longer. Eventually, he would have to stretch his legs. But time ticked by with no signs of movement, and Eden could no longer bear the wait.
With her eyes closed, she imagined extending her ears like they were on a fishing line that she had cast toward the deck. She registered nothing. No heartbeat. No breath. But perhaps she was too far away, even for her. She had to get closer and there was nothing suspicious about running in the park. She crept out from the trees onto the path and jogged. If someone came up the path, she would look down. Thankfully, the path remained empty. She stopped when she reached the deck. Pretended to stretch, her ears on high alert. But there was nothing to hear, which meant the guy was dead or no longer there.
She sat on the edge of the deck, near the disrupted pile of leaves. She pretended to tie her shoe, then finished the work Charlie had started—all the while listening. Just in case she’d missed it before. When she cleared the leaves away, she looked around—up and down the path—then went for it. Eden got on all fours and shimmied inside as Cassian and Cleo approached behind her.
“Holy crap,” she muttered.
“What?” Cleo said.
“It’s a … den.” This wasn’t just dry space under some slats of wood. This was cozy, dug to a depth a person of average height could stand in. There was a large tarp lining the ground, a sleeping bag and a pillow, and a makeshift table created by a broken, upturned barrel. There was no empty to-go bag or empty container or crumpled napkin, which meant the guy who lived here had taken it with him.
Eden crawled all the way inside. The tarp crinkled beneath her shoes as Cleo came in behind her, then Cassian.
“This is wild.” Cleo said each word like it was its own sentence.
It was wild.
And mysterious.
The guy had obviously left. But why was the scooter still in the thicket?
Cleo set her binoculars on the upturned barrel, then lost her footing.
“What the—?” She stumbled, the tarp giving way beneath her. Once she recovered, she tapped the spot with her shoe. When it didn’t connect with solid ground, she grabbed the corner of the tarp and yanked it up.
There was a tunnel.
An actual tunnel.
Big enough for a person to crawl into.
Eden stared—wide-eyed, dumbstruck—as Cassian turned on his phone’s flashlight and shined it inside.
The opening was narrow, the tunnel itself significantly bigger. A person wouldn’t have to slither through it like a snake or even crawl on all fours. It was big enough to walk. Perhaps not fully upright but walk all the same.
“Where do you think it leads?” Cassian asked.
There was only one way to find out.
As if reading her mind, Cleo moved toward the tunnel.
Cassian grabbed her shoulder before she could wriggle inside.
“Come on, Cass,” Cleo said. “We have to see where this goes.”
“We have to be smart.”
“Seeing where this goes is smart.”
“And if we encounter this mystery person along the way?”
“Eden’s superhuman. She can knock him out and we’ll run.”
“And when he comes to? What then? Say goodbye to getting answers. Amir will know we’re here. He’ll know we’re looking. We’d be a lot smarter to track the bike and see where this guy goes. See who he is.”
Cleo took a breath. “You and Eden have a bounty on your heads. If we wait until next Friday to see if this happens again—to try and establish some routine—that bounty is going to be in the millions.”
Cass shoved his hand toward the tunnel’s mouth. “That’s better than crawling into something completely blind.”
Cleo heaved a sigh and looked at Eden like she had the final say.
Eden twisted her mouth to the side. She saw Cassian’s point. She understood his hesitancy. But she couldn’t look away from that tunnel. Nor could she quench the curiosity thrumming through her veins.
“I think we should check it out,” she said.
A muscle ticked in Cassian’s jaw.
“You don’t have to come.”
He rolled his eyes. “If you’re going, I’m going.”
Cleo let loose a quiet whoop and grabbed her binoculars.
With a thrill of anticipation, Eden crawled inside.
The tunnel veered south at a downward angle, descending deeper underground.
Cassian led the way with the light from his phone.
Eden kept her ears perked for any signs of danger.
And Cleo kept muttering about the wildness of it all. About drug cartels and underground tunnels and a documentary she watched once upon a time. Eden wondered how long it had taken to dig something like this. They walked a mile at least, and then the tunnel came to a stop. Eden could see its end up ahead. A wall of roots and compact soil. Without a trace of the hooded figure anywhere. Confusion bubbled inside her, but then she felt it. A cold draft.
Another tunnel—one that led straight down.
Cass shined his light.
Whoever had created this had dug through the cement beneath and added a ladder.
After a moment’s hesitation, Cass climbed down.
Eden followed.
She landed on a set of rusted train tracks inside a massive tunnel that went in both directions. Eden had been expecting a sewer system. Instead, they were in—
“This is the DC Metro,” Cass said.
The DC Metro.
Goosebumps marched across Eden’s skin.
She swallowed the dryness in her throat as Cassian walked one way, studying the ground beneath him. Then he turned around and went the other way, stopping to examine a small pile of debris. “Tire tracks,” he said, bending into a crouch.
“Tire tracks,” Eden repeated.
Cass straightened and wiped his hands. “Judging by the tracks, it was a three-wheeler. Like an ATV. And he went that way.” He nodded toward Washington, DC.
The three of them stood in the silence—bloated with implication—until Eden shook her head. “How can he have gone toward D.C.?” It made no sense. The place was a radioactive graveyard. Completely off limits, unless someone wanted to grow a third arm.
Neither Cassian nor Cleo had an answer.
“Could it be an off-the-grid community?” Eden asked.
“It would have been on the map,” Cass replied.
“Unless this one has gone rogue,” Cleo said. So rogue, they were disconnected from all the others. Maybe Concordia reporters were partially right. Maybe this one was harboring members of Interitus. Maybe this one was home to The Monarch.
As Cleo hypothesized aloud, Eden heard something.
The grumble of a motor in the distance.
She shushed them quickly, then gestured for Cass to turn off the light.
The tunnel went black.
The sound of the motor drew nearer.
Cassian grabbed her arm. Eden grabbed Cleo’s. The three of them hurried in the opposite direction, around a bend, and flattened themselves against the wall as a beam of light sliced through the dark.
An ATV rumbled toward them.
They ducked lower—beneath the beam of light—as the driver pulled to a stop beneath the ladder. Immediately, Eden knew this wasn’t the same person from last night. That guy had been hulking—too big for the moped he rode on. This person was noticeably smaller. When he pulled to a stop, Eden could make out his features and his approximate age. A middle-aged man with thinning, blonde hair. He didn’t notice them at all—didn’t even think to look—as he cut the engine and the darkness returned.
Eden could hear him climbing the ladder, then slowly disappearing overhead.
Nobody moved.
They stayed in their crouched positions until Cleo released a long, shaky breath.
Cassian turned on his light.
“That wasn’t the guy from last night,” Eden said.
Cleo made a beeline for the ATV, her fingers stopping on the key in the ignition. The man hadn’t taken it with him. Probably because he didn’t need to worry about theft down here in a secret tunnel.
“We could take this,” Cleo suggested, gripping the handlebar. “Follow the tunnel. See where it goes.”
Cass could get on behind her. Eden could run beside them. It would be much quicker than walking, but the sound of the motor was loud, and they couldn’t be loud. They had to move slowly, with the utmost caution. If they were headed into Interitus headquarters, there would be surveillance. Besides, if that guy returned and saw the ATV missing, they’d be in serious trouble.
