Chapter 45

soon found herself the envy of the tourist children when she got the most

attention.

The park closed to visitors at 17:00, so they were forced to head back to

civilization. In the interest of staying in a well-traveled place, they went to

the town center and did some window shopping before getting dinner at one

of Kira’s favorite restaurants from her youth. By 22:30, they were one of only

two couples left in the restaurant. They needed to move on.

Kira considered finding a hotel or some other place to wait out the night,

but everywhere she could think of was too inhabited; if MTech came for her,

she didn’t want to worry about civilians getting caught in the crossfire. Her

own cabin was fairly isolated, and she already knew the lay of the land. All in

all, it wasn’t a bad place to hunker down for a few hours of rest. With the

scheduled check-in time approaching, they headed back.

When they arrived in the residential neighborhood, Kira instructed Leon