Page 49 of Consume Me

I couldn’t stand it any longer. Maybe I was too hopeful, but this was the first solid lead we’d had. If Clara was there, why were we waiting here?

“If we move on Windsmoor without proof—without knowing what we’re doing—we could give them time to react,” Smith reminded me.

He was right. It didn’t make it any easier to wait though.

“I think I’ve got something.” Brex strode into the room and dropped a number of blue prints on the table. The papers were yellowing with age, but they were clearly marked Windsmoor.

Brex spread them over the table and pointed. “This is a planned bomb shelter.”

“Planned?” Georgia repeated.

“The papers are dated a few weeks before the war ended.” Brex sighed, stepping back, and pausing for a moment. He seemed to know that he was either delivering good news or bad news. “If they began construction…”

They probably wouldn’t have continued it after the war ended. “Why wait this long?”

England had been at war for years. It was strange to think they hadn’t bothered with adding the extra protection until 1945.

“Why would they do that?” My hope flickered, the news like a dash of water to the small flame. I’d let myself believe we’d found her. “I should have known.”

“Known what?” Georgia demanded, still pouring over the plans. “It could still be there. They could have finished it.”

“Who?”

“MI-18,” she said. “They would need a base of operations.”

“I think someone would have noticed if construction continued,” Smith said dryly.

Their henpecking wasn’t making me feel any better.

“It’s the only lead we have” I said softly.

The argument died down and the room fell silent. We all knew that the longer Clara was out there, the less likely… I couldn’t even bring myself to admit what might happen.

She couldn’t be gone.

“I promised her that I would protect her,” I murmured. And here I was impotent and useless. I had resources at my disposal. I had a team of people willing to do whatever it would take to get here back. And still, I had nothing.

Anger ripped through me and without thinking, my hand slid over the table knocking the useless documents to the floor. A second later and the table itself flipped over. To their credit, the others didn’t step in. They didn’t even flinch. They let me continue wrecking the room until there was nothing left to destroy. When the last paper had been ripped off the bulletin board, I slid down into a heap as broken and ravaged as everything else here.

“So we should check it out.” Brex straightened, instantly resolute.

“What’s the point?” My words sounded hollow even to me, echoing from the deep emptiness inside me.

“The point is that we’re not giving up.” Georgia crouched down beside me, placing a hand on my shoulder. “We’re going to find her, and we might as well start at Windsmoor.”

I glanced up, surveying each of them as I tried to decipher if I’d pushed them to this point. “You said it yourself. If we’re wrong…”

“If we’re wrong, so what?” Smith said. “We need to find her and we can’t wait around until we have all the information. If Norris was here, what would he tell you to do?”

I’d tried not to think too much about Norris, but I felt the same stab of pain at the mention of him. But by ignoring his absence, had I failed to consider everything he’d taught me? What would Norris do? He would know how to handle this. He would have found her already.

“He wouldn’t let anything get in his way,” I said. “He’d go.”

Brex leaned down and scooped the blue print remnants from the ground. “Then we go.”

We had no idea what we would find. Maybe we were all tired of sitting still. Maybe we all sensed the clock was winding down. Maybe we’d finally crossed the line separating rational action from bald-faced hope.

The consequences were obvious. If we were wrong, it could give MI-18 time to mobilise. But they’d plenty of time to do so already. If we were truly wrong, they were probably watching us and laughing. And if we were right, we might be walking into a trap. We might be walking in blind. I didn’t care, because some love was worth dying for.