by Leigh Tudor
“For how long?”
“How long did she commit crimes on Halstead’s behalf?”
Alec nodded.
“She was adopted by Halstead at fourteen and began intense training shortly after. We’re talking about a study regimen mapped out by Halstead, executed and monitored by both computer and mathematical geniuses. Not to mention combat training by a team of former elite Israeli soldiers known as the Shayetet.”
Alec’s eyebrows rose. He’d heard of the highly secretive commando unit. Rumor had it they were masters of Israeli martial arts and Krav Maga.
Forrest forged on. “As far as we can tell, she started working smaller jobs at seventeen, so four or five years?”
Forrest continued. “That cyborg back there,” he said, stopping at a light. “He wasn’t the first man she’s killed. According to anecdotal evidence, she’s not known for gratuitous violence. Rather, she’s known for her speed and agility at planning and executing a mission. So much so, that sweet old stepdad, Dr. Halstead, raised his prices until only criminal organizations the size of small countries could afford her services.”
“So Halstead croaks, and she and her sisters break out of the facility.”
Forrest nods. “Bancroft took over the research facility and the side hustle. He’s the biological son of Halstead. Loren escaping the Center put him in a lurch, and he attempted to fill contracts with a less qualified team.”
“So Bancroft is Loren’s stepbrother?”
“Estranged stepbrother.”
“Yeah, picked up on that,” Alec said, having similar feelings of disgust for the little prick. “And Mercy and Cara?” Alec asked, “You sure they’re not involved?”
“There are unverified rumors that the middle sister’s expertise is in painting artistic dupes. Several criminals, looking to reduce their sentences, claim that she and Loren became a formidable team, exchanging works of art worth millions with Mercy’s replicas. That said, there are higher-ups in the FBI that doubt she’s the artistic savant capable of creating artwork of such high caliber.”
“How high?” Alec asked. Even though he had seen a few of her paintings in the sunroom of the Ingalls home, he didn’t possess the knowledge necessary to assign a value.
“We’re talking levels that supposedly rival that of some of the world’s most famous artists.”
“What do you think?” Alec asked, knowing somehow she was precisely that artistic savant.
“I think it’s highly unlikely that two sisters could possess a savant-level mastery of two completely different subjects. I think someone else on the inside created the dupes.”
“And Cara?”
“The youngest sister? Well, once upon a time, you could google Charlotte Halstead, now going by the alias of Cara Ingalls, and you would find a virtuoso pianist, traveling the world and ranking as one of the top-ten classical pianists in the world.”
“Let me guess, when the sisters broke out of the research facility, she disappeared from the face of the earth.”
“Correct. The story online is that she became ill and is bedridden.”
“That pretty much proves your theory wrong. Seems to me you’ve got, at the very least, two sisters with unique gifts. Maybe all three.”
Forrest scratched his beard. “Okay. I’d still take odds against three sisters possessing genius-level skills in three different areas of expertise.” Forrest glanced at Alec. “What do you think? You’re close to the Ingalls. Any of this sound believable?”
Alec smirked. “Sometimes the truth is so hard to imagine it needs to be wrapped in fiction to make it believable.”
“Deep,” Forrest said with a nod and then glanced at Alec. “Now, answer the fucking question.”
“Not until you answer mine,” Alec said, glaring back. “What else did they do to her?”
Forrest breathed in, confirming what Alec knew deep in his gut. He was holding back information.
“This has yet to be substantiated, but there’s intel from the inside suggesting the sisters are neurologically altered.”
“Neurologically altered?” Alec asked. “What are you saying . . .? They fucked with their brains?”
“Apparently, Halstead had controversial ideas on savant syndrome. Some contend the sisters were used in lab experiments to validate his theories.”
Alec sat back in his seat, staring straight ahead.
Forrest added, “The FBI confirmed that Halstead had a neurosurgeon on staff. The doc’s name is Charles Vielle. He lost his license in Paris for doing some shady surgeries. He made his way to China, where Halstead tracked him down and recruited him.”
Alec checked the camera on the dashboard, recording what was going on in the back of the highly secure medical transport vehicle. Loren continued to appear sedated from the medication Bancroft had injected in her arm before departing Wilder.
Prior to leaving the lot of the hardware store and the town of Wilder, he stood by and watched as Bancroft instructed two of his men to remove enough of the straitjacket to expose her shoulder and bicep. Bancroft stuck the syringe in the vial with an oddly pleased expression. Alec tried to determine the medication and dosage but couldn’t get close enough without causing a disruption.
Alec’s heart wrenched as Loren turned her head away when Bancroft jabbed it in her arm with unnecessary force.
His throat constricted, unused to seeing Loren with dead eyes and devoid of spirit. It was as if they had disabled her effervescence with the flip of a switch.
Then Forrest tapped Alec’s arm to catch his attention and touched his own ear, communicating he was checking the front cab of the ambulance for listening devices.
Alec distracted Bancroft and his henchmen by insisting they remove the straitjacket and instead handcuff her to the gurney. Bancroft was resistant, and Alec surmised his reasons for using the outmoded restraint had more to do with the humiliation factor than functionality. Alec stood his ground, asserting there were reasons prisons used handcuffs as opposed to straitjackets.
Bancroft finally backed down, advising Alec and Forrest that his team would follow them the entire twenty-two hours to the research facility. He warned against making any unauthorized stops, except for a pre-defined location on the outskirts of Albuquerque for refueling.
He fucking hated the smug little bastard.
Before pulling away from Wilder Hardware, Forrest held up the poorly hidden listening devices that were now secured onto the radio speakers with medical tape.
The only thing the white van would hear in this vehicle was country music.
Very loud country music.
They had been driving for several hours, nearing the fueling destination.
“Tell me more about Bancroft’s claim that Loren is certifiably insane.”
Forrest appeared unsettled. “That’s the piece in all this that just doesn’t click for me or the FBI. It’s not in line with the BAU’s research and the thousands of individual assessments they’ve conducted of the criminally insane.”
Alec squinted, nodding his head. “Agree. Think about it, why allow someone with that level of mental imbalance to plan, execute, and potentially botch a lucrative mission? Not to mention, lose credibility with some pretty vindictive criminals. I don’t care how talented or fucking smart she is. She’d be a constant risk. A weak link.”
Forrest added, “I’d bet good money that Bancroft’s clients are more certifiable than Ava—excuse me, Loren.” He glanced at Alec. “Sorry, I’ve been referring to Loren as either the target or Ava for years now.”
Alec didn’t respond. He glanced at the camera again.
Loren was still under, her wrist dangling in midair as it hung from the handcuff attached to the sidebar of the gurney.
Alec stared out the window, considering what he’d learned so far about the woman he had fallen for. “If she were such a finely tuned fighting machine and strategist, why work for Halstead all those years without crossing him?”
“Good question,�
� Forrest responded with a head tilt. “Maybe she cut a deal? Got a percentage of the take.”
Alec sat up straighter in his seat as realization hit. “Her sisters.” He nodded his head with understanding. “Halstead coerced Loren by leveraging the two things that mattered most to her. Cara and Mercy.”
“Sounds possible,” Forrest replied slowly, as if not really buying it.
Alec continued, “I’m telling you, once we peel back the layers of information and get down to motive, that’s what we’re going to find.”
They rode in silence as Alec processed what he knew and created a mental list of questions he would ask Loren as soon as she came to. He checked the camera for what seemed the hundredth time.
No change.
“So, what does M2M stand for?” Alec asked.
“Meta to mission.” Forrest turned on his blinker to make a turn. “Meta being the explicit awareness of oneself. So meta to mission implies the awareness of your role within a particular mission. When every individual executes flawlessly, the whole has no other option but to succeed.”
“Catchy,” Alec said. “So what made you go with M2M?”
Forrest slowed down to allow the van to catch up after missing the last stoplight.
“I needed to work in an environment that cared more about getting the job done than following mind-numbing protocols and kissing ass.”
Alec scratched the stubble on his face. “When I was first briefed on M2M, it appeared to be a moderate-sized organization. But despite that, I’m not seeing a lot of field support.”
“That’s because I’m at the end of a failing FBI-led mission to expose the Halstead facility and to dismantle several interrelated crime rings.”
“So Loren was a means to an end?”
“She was.” Forrest pulled into a gas station.
“And now?”
“And now, I’m reassessing. It’s clear Bancroft didn’t strategically place her in Wilder as some of our agents had asserted. Rather, she escaped to Wilder.”
A few hours later, Forrest pulled up to the pump at the predetermined gas station and opened his door as the white van parked in the lane next to them.
Alec needed time to get to Loren before Jasper to let her know she was safe and he was looking out for her. He’d die before letting anyone harm her, including Jasper and his fucking syringe.
He checked the camera. To his disappointment, Loren was in the same position as she had been for the past several hours. The little fucker must have tranqed her with enough juice to stop a bull.
Alec and Forrest jumped out of the ambulance just as Bancroft stepped out of the white van. The supposed medical team of six piled out of the sliding door, still wearing their scrubs, covered in bruises and black eyes, and two with arms in makeshift slings.
“How’s our patient doing?” Bancroft asked while his men scattered in different locations of the lot, inconspicuously circling the ambulance.
“Sedated,” Alec responded.
Bancroft lifted a syringe and vial from his pocket. “She’s due for another dose.”
“Not happening,” Alec said, shutting the door forcefully behind him.
Alec wasn’t a doctor, but she hadn’t moved the entire trip and he was about to tear the head off anyone who messed with her. The last thing she needed was more drugs. He strode toward the back of the ambulance and pulled on the latch as he tried to come up with a reason to dissuade the little jack-hole from doping her up again.
He pulled both doors open and froze.
“Fuck me,” Alec said with a slow blink.
The gurney was empty, the handcuffs still attached.
She was gone.
“What do you mean she’s gone?” Bancroft spat as his face turned a mottled red. “How could this happen?”
Forrest was immediately at Alec’s side, staring at the empty gurney. Bancroft continued his conniption while Trevor and Alec contemplated what sort of escape artist could have exited the vehicle undetected.
Alec pushed his way past Bancroft, who immediately began instructing his men to search the premises.
Onlookers pumped gas, at first confused, but then digging for their cell phones to capture a potentially viral video.
The little piece of shit was creating a scene.
Alec whipped open the passenger door to the ambulance to check the camera. There she was on the screen and in the same prone position as when Bancroft gave her the first dose.
Forrest was soon behind him, gazing at the same camera view Alec had been looking at for the past several hundred miles.
“What do you know? She tampered with the camera system,” Forrest remarked with more awe than concern.
Bancroft marched toward them, the veins in his skinny neck bulging as the hem of his lab coat flapped in the wind. “How could you lose her? You had one job. Transport the patient back to the facility. And. You. Lost. Her.”
“Oh, puh-leeze. Take a chill pill, Jasper.”
All three men turned their heads toward the impish voice that should’ve been sedated and handcuffed to the gurney in the back of the high-security medical transport vehicle.
Loren was leisurely making her way toward the three men, her face washed clean of blood and her blond hair pulled back with a red velvet scrunchie. She had replaced her blood-speckled polo shirt with a junior-sized lime-green T-shirt with printing on the chest that read Albuquerque Rocks across the front, and her lips were painted with a fire-engine red lipstick.
She toted a plastic bag in one hand that appeared full of travel snacks while the other held an open bag of Skittles.
“I thought this was the gas station we were supposed to stop at, but I wasn’t sure.” She looked around as if still trying to determine if she was in the right location and lifted the bag of candy to her lacquered lips. “Anyone need a sugar fix?”
“How?” Alec shook his head, so many questions hitting his brain at once as she upended the bag of candy into her mouth without so much as smearing her lipstick.
Loren sauntered toward him with a coy smile. She held up her forefinger, showing her mouth was full, swallowed, and replied, “If I told ya, I’d have to kill ya.”
This wasn’t his Loren.
Mouthy, yes, but in a different way.
Darker, more dramatic, and a little disturbing.
Bancroft grabbed her by the forearm, then turned to Alec and Forrest with the expression of a narcissistic dick-hole. “I no longer require your services. My staff and I will take it from here.”
Loren yanked her arm from Bancroft’s grip, causing several of his men to close in on the smaller group, appearing hesitant to either cause a scene or set her off.
Bancroft held up his hand, instructing them to stand back.
“That includes you two,” she said, making a scooting motion toward Alec and Trevor with her hand while chewing a mouthful of candy. “Run along. We’re good here.”
“That wasn’t the arrangement,” Forrest objected, glaring at Bancroft with what Alec knew was a weak attempt to save the mission. “We were contracted to deliver her to the facility.”
“You’re clearly incapable of fulfilling the contract as she escaped a high-security medical vehicle,” Jasper sputtered as a thin waft of hair stood tall in the breeze.
Loren tsked in surprising agreement with Bancroft. “That’s right, Jasper. Blatant incompetency. We can’t work with these clowns.” She smirked, bringing the small bag of candy to those red lips. “Hey boys, I passed a diner across the road before pulling into the gas station. Check it out.” She shrugged one shoulder. “Maybe call an Uber.”
She drove here?
Alec’s eyes narrowed as her persona morphed from Bancroft’s worst-nightmare mental patient to his accomplice.
Bancroft began instructing his men to regroup to the nondescript white van while Loren waved wiggly fingers at Alec and Forrest before turning away with an exaggerated swing of her hips.
The two hulking men who had led comple
x military missions and were entrusted with the lives of their soldiers and teams stood in the middle of the gas station parking lot handing over keys to a pissant of a man wearing a lab coat and sporting a comb-over waving in the wind.
Leaving them stranded in the middle of the New Mexico desert.
Loren and Bancroft made their way toward the ambulance as Bancroft’s goons filed into the van. And then Jasper stopped as an argument ensued. Jasper’s arms flailed and gesticulated while she remained nonplussed. She made a comment the two men couldn’t hear and crossed her arms over her chest as if in smug defiance. Loren held out her hand with a death glare, and to their shock and surprise, Bancroft dropped the keys into her hand and stomped away.
She skipped to the driver’s side of the vehicle as if going on a joyride rather than returning to an under-the-radar experimental lab where her brain might have been excavated as a child.
Forrest stood beside Alec as the van and the ambulance pulled out of the gas station and onto the highway. He crossed his arms over his chest. “What just happened?”
“I’ll tell you what happened,” Alec said with his hands on his hips as Loren drove away in the ambulance, unrolling her window and tossing out what looked to be Trevor’s cell phone. “We got played.”
Chapter Two
“No great mind has ever existed without a touch of madness.”
― Aristotle
Loren refused to back down, standing resolute in the middle of the parking lot of the obscure gas station. She glanced over at Alec and his partner, who seemed beyond confused as Jasper’s meatheads waited in the white van.
“Let me be clear, Jasper, you need me if you ever want a future without a red scope targeting your forehead. Now, hand over the keys.”
“I. Am. In. Charge.” He threw his hands in the air and then pointed at her. “If you want your sisters to live in that shithole town instead of the research facility.”
