Page 111 of Raised By Wolves

Then something huge hits me from behind. Pain explodes in my shoulder as I land hard on the ground. The next thing I know, my hands are being roughly yanked behind my back and I feel the cold click of handcuffs around my wrists.

“Citizen’s arrest,” Hardy growls.

Mac has Holo in a headlock. Holo’s howling and snapping his teeth.

A police van comes bumping over the ground, kicking up clouds of dust. It lurches to a halt and out come three cops.

“We’ll take it from here,” the biggest one says.

As he stalks toward us, I’m yelling for the chief—for Wendy, for Waylon—but none of them can hear me. Holo and I are yanked up and shoved into the back of the van. Holo gnashes his teeth and cries, and I scream my rage as loud as I can.

But no one comes to save us.

No one will. No one can.

Our story ends like it started—with a chase, a fight, and then handcuffs.

A cage.

EPILOGUE

CHAPTER 88

CHESTER’S EATING LUNCH at the KC Diner when he gets the call. He doesn’t finish his burger and he doesn’t pay his bill. He just runs out the door. He hears Lacey calling after him, but there’s no time to explain. He’ll text her later. Right now he just has togo.

He sprints down the street to the station, grabs his keys, and throws himself into the car. The map on his phone says it’s a forty-eight-minute drive.

Chester bets God fifty bucks he can make it in thirty-five.

But the voice in his head is wondering what the rush is.Isn’t it already too late?the voice asks.

Chester just ignores it. A man can’t always be logical. Sometimes the irrational heart takes over. And the heart says,Get there as fast as you can.

Chester takes the back way out of town. Pulling onto the highway, he hits ninety-five miles an hour, then a hundred. Sirens blaring, lights flashing. The cars ahead of him seem to melt out of his way as they pull over to the side of the road. Ifhe weren’t so upset it might be thrilling. It’s not every day he has an excuse to drive as fast as his old cruiser will go.

Then again, it’s not every day he gets news as bad as this.

Thirty-two minutes later, he arrives at his destination, a cinder-block sprawl in the middle of nowhere, with a chain-link yard under a cloudy white sky. The director of the facility is there in the lobby waiting for him, his hands clasped at his waist and a concerned expression on his face. “I’m so sorry,” Roy Washburn says. “We really didn’t see this coming.”

Chester tightens his fists in anger. Says, “You’re alocked facility.”

The director turns pink. “Yes, we are. But we can’t always control for human error—or human ingenuity.”

“So which was it?” Chester demands. “Did one of you people fuck up, or did those kids trick you?”

“We are currently investigating,” says Washburn.

Chester sinks down into one of the hard lobby chairs. A cyclone of emotions swirls inside him, the greatest of which are fury at Brookside and fear for Kai and Holo.

Where have they gone? Will they be okay?

“How did it happen?” he asks.

Washburn wipes his brow with a yellowing handkerchief. “As I said, the matter is under investigation. What we do know is that they escaped during their shift on road cleanup crew.”

“Road cleanup crew?” Chester repeats, incredulous. “That’s what convicts in state custody do!”

“We find that giving our residents responsibilities improves their behavior and their spirits.”

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