CHAPTER 12
“So, there are four gates into the Salton Sea, all of them strong with four Guardians,” Daedric says, as we feast on the last bit of almonds in the morning. “I tried getting into every one of them and got the crap beat out of me four times. Fun stuff.”
“For them, I’m sure,” Isaac mutters.
“Anyway,” Daedric continues. “The weakest gate is the north gate. Elysia and I scoped out all the gates for days before we tried to get in. The north gate is unguarded for about ten minutes every day.”
“How is that possible?” I ask, before I crunch down on my last almond, possibly the last almond I’ll ever eat.
“The guards change every hour exactly on the hour. I think they rotate from one gate to the next. There’s a ten-minute delay for them to get to the north gate when they change guards at the end of the day. A fresh set of guards comes in at the west gate to relieve them. It always takes about ten minutes for the guards to hand over their weapons and deliver the daily reports. It’s our only shot.”
“Even if the guards are gone, isn’t the gate locked?” Mary asks.
Eve tosses back the curtain of black hair over her eyes and she’s wearing makeup. “What?” she says, as we stare at her.
I’m aware she has a supply of nail polish she uses like glue for her traps, but I didn’t realize she had blush, black eyeliner, and shimmering lip-gloss. The liner along her lash-line makes the crystal blue irises of her eyes appear almost clear.
“You look really pretty,” I tell her and the pink blush on her cheeks blooms to a brilliant red.
“What’s with the face paint?” Isaac asks.
Eve’s hands trembles before she faces him with a fierce expression in her eyes. “In case I run into them.”
“Run into who?” Daedric asks.
Eve is referring to the guys who robbed her mother’s grave and left her for dead. Though Eve has never said it, I always figure her mother’s jewelry isn’t the only thing the grave robbers stole from her.
With everything that’s been going on, I haven’t even stopped to ask Eve how she’s doing. I crawl around the dead fire pit and put my arm around her shoulders.
“Don’t waste another minute on them, Eve. Don’t let them take any more pieces of you,” I whisper.
She shakes her head. “I can’t let it go. If I see them, I’m going to kill them. Then it will be over.”
She doesn’t tremble or cry as she says this. It’s the first time Eve has ever appeared confident and resolute.
“I’ll help you, Eve,” Isaac says. “If we see them.”
I look at Isaac, but his eyes are locked on Eve. He’s serious.
“We’ll all help you,” Mary says.
A tear finally breaks free from Eve’s eye, but she’s smiling.
“What do we do if we’re able to get inside?” Isaac asks Daedric. “Do you know where they’re holding your sister? Have you been inside?”
“The gate is locked, so we gotta figure out a way to pick the lock quickly,” Daedric replies. “Any suggestions?”
Isaac, Mary, and I all turn to Eve. She nods and begins rummaging through her backpack for her toolkit.
“After we get inside, we gotta make it all the way to the southern end of the lake. That’s where they have Elysia,” Daedric continues. “I don’t know what happens after that.”
“This is a suicide mission,” Mary remarks, as she slips her third and largest knife into the holster on her waist.
“We gotta get cleaned up,” Daedric says. “Everyone in there is clean. Nice hair, clean clothes, all that jazz.”
We pick out our nicest clothes and wash them in the last gallon of water we have aside from the water in our canteens. We use some water from our canteens to wash our bodies and Eve applies a touch of makeup to Mary’s and my face. Mary has trouble brushing the tangles out of her hair so I offer to help.
She sits cross-legged in front of me as I carefully brush out each tangle. I try to be as gentle as possible because she has so much hair.
“Nada?” she says. “I’m sorry for what I said about Isaac. He didn’t use me. I knew what I was getting into. It just… it still hurts a little, you know, to not be good enough.”
I think of how Mary’s father left her to save himself in the middle of the storm. However hard it has been for me losing my sister and my mother, I still think it would be harder to be rejected by the one person who’s supposed to love and protect you.
“Mary, Isaac didn’t leave you because you’re not good enough. You’re much prettier than me. Look at this hair. It’s so luxurious,” I say.
She smiles. “Oh, shut up. Look at your hair. So long and black like an Indian princess. And your eyes. I’d kill for your eyes.”
My mother’s parents were Irish and my father’s parents immigrated to California from China. I used to think I was cursed with slightly slanted green eyes, but I began to accept my unusual appearance after hearing Isaac call me beautiful a thousand times.
“Can you braid my hair?” I ask her. “I don’t want it getting in the way.”
When Mary finishes braiding my hair, we brush our teeth and change into clean clothes. It’s the first time in over two years I feel totally clean and refreshed.
“Look at you,” Isaac says, as he looks me over with a huge grin on his face.
“What?”
He shakes his head. “Nothing.”
As the sun begins to set, we find a ditch to hide our backpacks then we toss a bunch of leafy branches into the ditch to conceal the gear. We crouch low and try to stay hidden behind the small trees, bushes, and the few buildings left in the former resort town of the Salton Sea. There’s no one around. No one else is stupid enough to come this close.
The dim moonlight barely illuminates the desert until we get closer to the ten-foot wall surrounding the city. Every twenty yards, bright spotlights propped atop the wall spin slowly, lighting up the surroundings.
Isaac was right. This is no shelter. This is a prison.
I try to imagine Lara locked inside these walls. I’d be overwhelmed with worry.
“They’ll be changing in about twenty minutes. You got everything ready?” Daedric asks.
Mary pulls out her medium-sized blade, the one with the picture of a dove carved into the ivory handle. I pull out my jade knife, though I’d probably do much better without it. Eve removes three steel pins from her hair and hands them to Isaac. Eve may be good at building traps, but Isaac is great at cracking locks and picking pockets. The proof is hanging around my neck.
Apart from the minutes after I found Lara, these are the longest twenty minutes of my life. I crouch behind a dried up Mexican palm tree, watching the gate and tapping my hand on my knee. Isaac puts his hand on mine to stop the tapping.
“It’s going to be okay,” he says.
As he says this, the Guardians in their black bandannas and combat boots begin to walk to the next gate leaving the north gate completely unguarded.
We creep across the two hundred yards between our hiding place and the gate. As the spotlight turns, we scatter to dodge the light. Once it passes, we meet each other at the gate.
The gate is ten-feet tall, like the concrete walls, and each rung is topped with a sharp spike that glints in the moonlight. Isaac goes straight to work on the lock, but it’s not an easy lock to crack. Beyond the gate, a small boy wearing a knit cap and pajamas passes us. He spots us at the gate and he seems perplexed.
I wave at him and he runs away. “Great. All we need is to get ratted out by a four-year-old.”
“Hold this, Nada,” Isaac says, placing my fingers around one of the pins. He sticks the other two pins just below the pin I’m holding in place and soon the lock clicks.
I can’t help but shake my head in disbelief. Just as Isaac pushes the gate open, the last person in the world I want to see rounds the corner.