For the rest of the day, we stayed in the library, splitting into two groups as we watched for the Hunter. Ethan couldn’t remember anything about Hunters besides what we had told him, so he went with Kole and I went by myself. We watched for the entire day, only leaving to get lunch and then dinner later on, but there was no sign of a Hunter. We watched every person that came in and every person that went out, but our desperate search came up with nothing.
Periodically, Kole would sit down at one of the computers and check the website to see if there had been an update, but there were none. He said that he would have checked the I.P. address like he had seen Chrissie do, surprising me with his memory skills, but there was no chance to use them. When it came time for the library to close, we met up outside at one of the benches.
“What now?” Kole asked as he sat next to me, “Do we wait and try again tomorrow?”
“We can’t just keep coming every day,” I said, hanging my head back over the bench as Ethan leaned against the wall next to Kole. “Someone’s bound to notice. . . Maybe we can just start sitting on the roof and watch as people walk in.”
“Yeah, but if someone notices that would make it worse.”
“True . . . very true.”
“I don’t think we can get a hotel.”
“Oh, great. . .” I sat up straighter. “I hadn’t thought of that. . . Well . . . we could always threaten the manager.”
“Even so, we probably can’t afford it.”
“Yeah, I could probably afford a two bed room for a few nights . . . but then I’m tapped out.”
“Seriously?”
“Hey, I work at a restaurant and I have to pay for my apartment, small though it is.”
“I could probably fly home, get Dad’s credit card and come back before it gets too late.”
“But like you said earlier, we probably can’t get a room even if we had the money. Unless we want to go to some nasty motel where the manager doesn’t care, none of us are over eighteen and we wouldn’t be allowed to rent a room.”
“Why go to an actual building?” Ethan asked, “I know a perfect place that’s absolutely free.”
Kole and I exchanged a confused look and spoke simultaneously. “Huh?”
“Right over there?” He pointed off to the right, looking that way. I could see the tips of trees poking over buildings.
“You want us to sleep in the forest?” I asked, still feeling confused.
“Scared of a little dirt?”
“No, but I’m a little freaked out at sleeping out in the open so close to where a Hunter has been. A bunch of times, according to what Chrissie found.”
“So we’ll sleep near the lake or something. That’s far enough away, isn’t it?”
“Yeah, I guess . . .” I stood up and stretched with a sigh. “We should get going then. Don’t want to stay out too late and we have work to do tomorrow.”
Kole nodded, looking tired and stood up to follow Ethan. I followed close behind him, feeling like I needed to be ready to catch him when he fell asleep standing up. I still didn’t want to take him with us, but I knew he was dead set on coming with us and nothing we did was going to stop him. I didn’t blame him. I was doing this for a Cat I didn’t even know. He was doing it for his sister.
We walked until we could just barely see the lake before stopping. We didn’t have tents, but I didn’t think any of us needed them. Kole climbed up into the tree above us, feeling more comfortable up high, and settled himself on the branches so he wouldn’t fall off as he slept. I laid down a foot or so from being underneath him and noticed as Ethan settled in that he stayed far enough away that there was no chance of us touching, but he wasn’t so far away that it would be suspicious. I doubted Kole would have noticed even if he’d been looking, but I was on edge.
I kept thinking about how I’d blurted out my secret. And even since I’d done that, he hadn’t shunned me. In fact, I had noticed that he stayed a little closer than normal, probably trying not to be suspicious by staying far away. With that thought on my mind, I felt myself starting to shake before I fell asleep.