Leaving The Way: Book Two (The Way Trilogy), стр. 27
Making my way downstairs, I try my best not to make a sound as I pass by where Mateo sleeps in the master bedroom. Slipping out the front door, I cast a cautious glance around and seeing no one, I make my way across the driveway. It takes me only 5 minutes to make it to the front gate, and as I slip past the guard shack, a shadow appears. My heart jumps into my throat as I dive back behind the small building. Crouching down and holding my breath, I pray no one saw me.
“Clearly, we need to work on your sneaking abilities in training tomorrow.”
S.O.B.! Of all the people it could possibly be it had to be him?
Since its clear hiding will do me no good at this point, I stand and step out from the cover of the guard shack as casually as possible. He doesn’t know why I’m out here. I can just tell him I couldn’t sleep and went for a walk.
“General,” I greet him in a flat tone, crossing my arms across my chest and mimicking his posture.
Raising a brow, he asks, “Why are you sneaking out the gate at three a.m., Anna?”
Okay, act cool. You got this, Anna. “I couldn’t sleep, so I decided to go for a jog, clear my head.”
He doesn’t look like he believes a word I said, or sound like it either. “Uh huh. I’d say that’s highly doubtful, considering the amount of whining you do each day during training. So, what are you really doing out here?”
Did he just say I whine? How dare he!
“I’m serious, General.”
Shaking his head, he widens his stance further. “So it isn’t that you were going to try to find the man asking about you around town?”
I shake my head adamantly, but before I can rebuke his thinking he cuts me off.
“It’s like you don’t listen at all in training, Anna. If you want to figure this out, that I understand. But how can you be so stupid as to go out in the middle of the night by yourself.” It isn’t spoken as a question, the man just called me stupid.
First whiney, and now stupid. Geez, and I thought he was starting to like me.
Without another word, he turns his back on me and sets off down the dark dirt road.
That’s it? Call me whiney and stupid and then just turn around and walk off? You aren’t gonna tattle on me, drag me back to the house kicking and screaming, anything?
I huff out a breath, and figure I’ll just head back to the house. Maybe I can convince Luke to check things out with me tomorrow.
As I turn to head back, the General calls over his shoulder, “Well, are you coming or what?” He doesn’t wait to see if I’ll follow, just continues down the road until he disappears into the shadows.
This seems like a bad idea. Although, it can’t be worse than going alone, so after a moment of thought, I rush to catch up.
***
ANNA
We had only been walking for about fifteen minutes when the General had said he’d done his own investigating after dinner. He’d sought out Mateo’s man who’d made the report, and got him to tell him a general area where the couple had set up camp. He said we were looking at at least a thirty-minute walk, maybe forty, and despite having completed my first week of training, I’m already short of breath. The General has rolled his eyes at my dramatic wheezing at least five times, but ask me if I care.
Thirty minutes in, and the General grabs my shirt, pulling me behind a large tree and squatting down. Scanning the area, I don’t see anything, but it’s pretty dark given the moon is mostly behind the clouds.
The General makes some sort of hand gestures I most definitely do not understand before rolling his eyes and whispering, “Three O’clock.”
Aww shit, military time. Not my best subject.
Turning my head in the direction I think is right, I don’t see anything other than trees. As I’m about to tell him so, he grabs my head in both of his meaty paws, turning it the opposite direction.
Oh, my other three o’clock. Got it.
And now that I’m facing the right way, I spot two shadowy figures huddled together in a small grouping of trees. It’s freezing out here. If I was to guess it can’t be more than forty, and they don’t have a fire. That doesn’t seem smart at all.
I look back to the General, shaking my head to let him know I see them, then shrugging my shoulders because I’m not sure where we go from here. I want to ask him, what now, but before I can he stands and begins stomping through the dead underbrush, straight toward the couple.
Oh, I see, we’re going for the direct approach. Wouldn’t have been my chosen method, but you do you.
I march behind him, seeing two figures turn and begin scrambling back from the beast of a man. Honestly, who can blame them. The General is terrifying. I still can’t see their faces, but it’s clear one is a man and the other a woman. The man has one arm stretched across the woman protectively, and the other out in front of him to ward off the stranger approaching them.
When the General speaks, I swear he dropped his voice an octave just to sound scarier. “Who are you? What are you doing here?”
He stops only feet from the couple, widening his stance and throwing his shoulders back. Neither of them have spoken, but as I make it the last few feet to catch up, the clouds part just slightly, casting a sliver of light on the woman