I laughed.
"That guy is a particularly bad example," Monroe huffed.
"Regardless. We need to escape this farmyard before we catch anything worse than the Hades Virus," Saint hissed.
"Like poverty?" I teased.
"Heaven forbid," he agreed.
Nash rolled his eyes and I laughed as I tried to scope out the best way for us to escape this place, striding down muddy walkways and glancing about before taking my cell phone from my boot.
The others all clustered around me as I sent a message to Niall, but the signal was fucking non-existent and the damn thing wouldn't even send.
“Shit,” I cursed, wondering if there were messages I hadn’t been able to receive too. But I had faith in Niall and I just had to hold onto that. If I could just trust in him to keep Tatum safe then all I had to do was focus on getting us the hell out of here to meet her.
"Take some footage of this place," Saint said, his lip still curled in disgust. "There's no way they only just opened it today. And the conditions are barely humane. We should leak the images to the press - really fuck with my father’s plans by showing everyone the shit show they can look forward to if they go along with this division bullshit."
"Yes sir," I agreed, hiding my phone in my hand and casually filming shots of the place, making sure I showed the mud and the insane queue for the bathroom. If I saw a video like this, I sure as fuck wouldn't wanna leave my cosy house to come stay here.
We walked right out to the edge of the camp where we found a freshly erected metal fence ringing it, manned by armed officers and lit up with huge flood lights.
"How the fuck are we supposed to get out of here?" Monroe asked and I bit my tongue against the curses which begged to spill from my lips.
"We're gonna need a distraction," I said, glancing down at my phone and smiling as I found a bar of signal on it. "Cover me while I make a call."
I turned away from the fence ringing the camp and ducked down like I was going to retie my shoe while calling my uncle instead. Thankfully I had a bar of signal again so it rang as I held it to my ear.
"Hello?" he answered, the sound of a large bang in the background making my heart lurch.
"What the fuck is going on?" I snapped as my heart leapt with fear for my girl.
"Nothing, nothing. I just knocked something over. We’re hiding out until nightfall then I’ll get your pretty wife out of the city. Besides, you know there’s nothing I can't handle," Niall replied excitedly, his Irish accent coupled with the thought of violence raising memories of my childhood to the surface of my mind. "What's up?"
"We're trapped in this camp. Gonna need a distraction to keep the guards' eyes off of us while we escape. Do you think you can help us out?" I asked just as Tatum laughed breathlessly in the background and the vice around my heart loosened a little. She was alright. Having fun too by the sounds of it and I had to admit Niall could be a lot of fun – assuming he didn’t flip the fuck out. But I trusted him not to harm her anyway so the worst that would happen in that case was that she might end up witnessing a murder or two which wasn’t anything new to her these days.
"I'm on it. I've already got your location and we're practically on route. Just a little issue to finish up with first. Then I'll let you know when I'm ready with that distraction,” Niall confirmed.
"What’s going-" I began but the line went dead and when I tried to call back, I just got his fucking voicemail.
I cursed as I stood, leaving the phone in my boot once more and the others all looked at me in concern.
"What did he say?" Blake demanded and I shook my head, glancing towards the closest group of soldiers and leading them back into the maze of green tents.
"He's coming. And Tatum’s fine," I replied, deciding not to worry them with any more details about my crazy ass uncle. "Maybe we should just get some rest until then."
"I hardly think I'm going to sleep in some heap of canvas," Saint muttered, but he didn't complain as I took the map from my pocket and we