As far as I can tell, Kansas is basically one really big grassy field. With some extra grass on the side.
The lonely road we’re cruising along winds through those stretches of grass, up and down and around low hills, and past the occasional more cultivated stretch of fading corn or other crops I can’t identify. We haven’t seen a building up close in over an hour.
Jacob is driving now, with Dominic studying the specifications Andreas wrote down from Dr. Gao’s memory of Ursula Engel’s land purchase. His head dips and rises as he shifts his attention between the notepaper and the GPS map on the guys’ joint phone.
“We should be just about there, from what I can tell. But I don’t know what the property will look like.”
He glances over his shoulder at Andreas, who’s sitting in the middle now, squished between me and Zian. “You didn’t see any mention of the usage of the property or buildings on it?”
Drey shakes his head, the slight motion sending a ripple of heat through my body that only amplifies my regrets about how I responded to his touch yesterday.
“It was definitely listed as a land purchase, not a house sale or something like that,” he says. “But that was more than twenty years ago. Who knows what she did with it?”
Zian gazes out the window with a frown. “At least if there are guardians around, we should be able to spot them way in advance.”
He’s right, but there doesn’t appear to be anyone at all around. I haven’t even spotted a tractor in the last thirty miles.
Something makes Dominic lean forward in his seat. “There’s a fence up ahead. That could be the boundary of the property.”
My expectations have clearly become skewed by life in the facility, because when he says “fence,” I immediately anticipate a ten-foot-tall monstrosity topped with spikes of barbed wire. What actually appears on the other side of the shallow ditch is a weathered wooden fence that’d only come up to my chest.
Here and there, boards are sagging or have fallen right off it. I crane my neck to get a better look past the guys. “I don’t think anyone’s been maintaining this place for a while.”
“Or they just want it to look that way,” Jacob mutters.
“We have no idea if it was ever connected to the facility,” Andreas points out. “Who knows how many projects Engel might have had going on?”
Jacob lets out a brusque huff. “We go forward assuming they’re here. That’s a hell of a lot safer than assuming they’re not.”
For once, I agree with him.
Dominic points at the windshield. “There’s a gate up there, so probably some kind of driveway. Should we head up that way in the car or on foot?”
Jacob slows the car as we come up on the gate. We all peer at the landscape around it.
Thereisa dirt lane, so overgrown with tufts of grass that it’s barely visible amid the larger field around it. No recent tire marks have crushed the blades or dug into the soil. The padlock securing the gate is blotchy with rust.
Beyond the gate, the field stretches out perfectly flat as far as my eyes can see. There’s no sign of any people, not a single building. Not even a freaking bush.
“Maybe she never actually used the property?” Zian ventures. “Or she tore down whatever she built here before she left?”
Dominic rubs his mouth thoughtfully. “If it’s the latter, we should still check it out. There could be remains that’ll give us an idea of what she was doing here.”
Jacob scans our entire surroundings and makes the final call. “We’ll drive up. It’ll look stranger for there to be a car stalled here on the side of the road. Let me get the gate.”
Not bothering to turn off the engine, he tenses his shoulders and makes a brisk motion with his hand.
The padlock clicks open. It floats through the air to hang on one of the fence boards.
With another shove of his power, Jacob pushes the gate wide. Its hinges let out an ear-splitting creak that has us all wincing.
He drives us through with a brief pause to heave the gate shut again. The flattened grass from our tires would give our arrival away, but only if someone looks closely.
The car creeps onward slowly as both Jacob and Dominic crane their necks to trace the faint path of the overgrown lane through the field. The bumps in the road jostle us, and my stomach starts to churn.
The effects of the poison have been sinking deeper into me throughout our drive here, but I’ve mostly been able to tune them out. I grit my teeth and focus on the terrain outside.
When Jacob hits the brakes, we’ve traveled far enough that I can’t see the road or the gate anymore when I check the rear windshield. “I think the lane ended here,” he says.