Survivor

by Logan Ryles

  “And you’re wondering if I’m going to back out.”

  Gambit shook his head. “No, I know you won’t. Unlike Enfield, I understand that the best way to motivate a man is to believe in him. If you help him get the thing he wants, he’ll help you get the thing you want. And Reed, I have the thing you want.”

  Some of the boiling anger that bubbled just beneath the surface spilled through Reed’s forced calm. His lips twisted into a sneer, and his next words came out as a growl.

  “Well, let me out of these cuffs, and let’s get to it.”

  Gambit cocked his head, regarding Reed with the appraising eye of a man selecting a steak at the grocery store. Probing. Thoughtful. Unsure.

  He shook his head. “I don’t think so, Reed. I’m not certain you’re committed yet. I’m just not feeling it.”

  Gambit turned toward the door, and Reed sat up, clenching his teeth. “Where’s my father?”

  The door swung open, and this time, blinding light poured in. Reed sat back and shielded his face.

  “Your father is safe, Reed. Maybe, when I’m feeling your commitment, you can see him. But don’t worry, there’s no rush. I can do this for days.”

  Gambit disappeared into the light, and the door smacked shut.

  Three

  Holly Springs National Forest

  North Mississippi

  The first thing Banks recognized was the ceiling fan. It spun slowly over her face, its blades drooping from a dirty brass fixture. She blinked, but the picture didn’t clarify. It was still blurry, and a further blink made her eyes sting.

  Everything hurt. Her back, limbs, and abs were sore from days of jumping, running, and dodging bullets, but her face hurt the most. It felt swollen and pressurized, as though her brain were trapped inside a helium balloon.

  What the hell happened to me? Where am I?

  Nothing about the small bedroom was in any way familiar. Nobody else was in the room—at least that she could see. In fact, the only thing her disoriented mind could process was the ceiling fan. It squeaked every two seconds, just audibly enough to be heard through the blur. Had the squeak wakened her? Maybe it was the pain.

  The throbbing in her face began to clarify. The epicenter of the pain was her nose, and from there, blasts of agony shot outward. There was a headache, too.

  Banks lifted her right hand and fished for her nose. It was difficult for some reason, as if she couldn’t find it. Her fingers touched something soft, but it wasn’t her nose. It was tissue paper jammed into her nose. And then, an inch or so higher . . .

  Banks jerked her hand back and grimaced. Her head exploded in pain, and tears spilled down her cheeks.

  What the hell happened to me?

  She focused on the fan, blocking out the pain while she tried to recall her most recent memory. Where was I?

  Wyoming. The memory of driving back from Wyoming with Reed was pretty clear. They were in a stolen car, and there was an incident with some assassins in Kansas. Is that where the pain came from?

  No, she survived that event. What happened next?

  The memories flooded back now, piled one on top of the other. They made it to Mississippi and met the funny Mexican with the panel van full of weapons. Reed bought some things, and then they drove to Alabama—she couldn’t remember where exactly—and rented a hotel for the rest of the day. Reed wanted to move at night to the prison . . . the prison where his father was housed.

  So they waited until the sun faded, then Reed drove down a long, rural road a couple miles from the prison. Nobody else was there. He parked the car, gathered his things . . .

  Did he leave her there? She thought so. She thought she remembered waiting in the car, then getting out because she heard something. Voices, or sirens, or something. She was outside the car, looking for Reed . . . then, nothing.

  Her nose erupted in another surge of pain so sudden she wanted to puke, but she couldn’t even swallow.

  Whatever happened next, it most definitely involved her nose colliding with something.

  The phone. The thought rang through her tired mind like a bullet. She blinked and pawed at the blankets and in her pockets, searching for the little plastic device. It was nowhere to be found.

  Her heart began to thump a little harder. Is Reed here? Did he make it out of the prison okay? Is he okay? Where is the damn phone?

  A foot tapped against the floor outside the bedroom. Banks froze, suddenly very aware that she was alone and unarmed. What if Reed isn’t here? Who brought her to this place?

  The door opened and then groaned against old hinges. Another footfall sounded against the floor, light and gentle, as though it were the step of a child. Banks blinked rapidly, trying to clear her vision.

  She twisted her head to the left, and a moment later, a figure stepped close to the bed.

  It wasn’t a child, although the woman standing next to Banks wasn’t much bigger than one. She was only a foot away, her petite body leaned over the bed. Smooth red hair was swept over one shoulder, and bright green eyes shone down.

  The woman had a nice face and a gentle smile. Soft fingers touched Banks’s arm and then traced their way toward her face.

  Banks pulled away.

  “Hey now.” The voice was warm, with no dominant accent. “You’re awake.”

  “Who are you?” Banks croaked. They were her first words in god only knew how long, and they rasped against a dry throat.

  The woman’s smile widened, and she produced a glass of water with a straw from next to the bed.

  “I’m Lucy,” she said. “We met in Alabama yesterday.”

  Banks gulped down the water as if it were the last drink on the planet and was disappointed to hear the empty rattle of bubbles shooting up the straw only moments later.

  Lucy took the glass away and stroked Banks’s hand.

  “Actually, I don’t know your name. I couldn’t find your ID.”

  Banks licked her lips, still desperate for another drink. Why is this woman here? Is she a friend of Reed’s or a friend of the other people?

  Banks decided there wasn’t much risk in sharing her name—her first name, anyway. Lucy had done as much.

  “I’m Banks,” she said.

  Lucy nodded once, her attention now directed at Banks’s swollen nose.

  “That’s a lovely name,” she said. “Can’t say that I’ve heard it before, but I like it.”

  “Was . . . was there anybody with me?” Banks asked. She didn’t want to volunteer any information, but she had to know.

  Lucy looked away, back to the nightstand, and fiddled with a bag. She produced medical supplies and began to remove the tissue paper crammed into Banks’s nose.

  “You mean Reed,” Lucy said.

  Banks winced, both at the pain of her nose being prodded and the mention of his name. A sudden swelling erupted in her throat, and she blinked a couple times.

  “You know him?”

  “Oh, yes,” Lucy said. She wiped Banks’s face with a damp cloth. “I’ve known Reed for a while now.”

  Something about her words, the gentle way she said them, and that little tagline a while now, ignited a strange irritation in Banks. She wasn’t sure why, but she suddenly felt jealous. She wanted to smack Lucy right across her pretty china-doll face.

  Lucy met her gaze and blushed. “Oh, no, sweetheart. Not like that. Reed and I are, well, we were business associates. We worked for the same firm.”

  “Wait, don’t tell me. You’re a venture capitalist.”Banks’s voice dripped with sarcasm.

  Lucy laughed. “No, sweetie. I kill people for a living.”

  Her words were so frank that there wasn’t anything left to say. Banks lay quietly while Lucy finished swabbing and replacing the tissue paper with fresh gauze.

  “I’m very sorry about your nose,” she said. There was a question in her tone, but Banks ignored it.

  “Was Reed there?” Banks asked.

  Lucy looked back into her bag and offered a sma
ll smile. “No, I didn’t see Reed. Although, based on news reports, I have a pretty good idea where he was. He’s spending a lot of time on the news these days, isn’t he?”

  Another loaded question that Banks chose to ignore. She felt something stinging the edges of her vision, and she tried to sit up.

  Lucy placed a hand on her shoulder and pressed her back into the sheets.

  “Lie down, now. I’m going to give you a little something to help you sleep.”

  Before Banks could stop her, she felt a sharp sting in the crook of her elbow. The sting was gone as soon as it came, and Banks fell back against the pillow as Lucy continued to stroke her arm and speak in soft sentences.

  Lucy’s words began to fade, as did the pounding headache. The last thing Banks remembered was the rhythmic squeak of the fan.

  Lucy watched Banks sink into the sheets, her eyelids growing heavy as her attention faded. It was a beautiful face full of warmth. At least it had been before it was smashed into the roof of the rusty old sedan Lucy found parked two miles from the prison.

  She had a pretty good idea who had done the smashing. The slender footprints that surrounded the car were too small to be Banks’s or Reed’s, but that evidence was superfluous.

  Lucy replaced the syringe in her pack. Banks would sleep eight or ten hours on that dose, and she desperately needed it. Lucy had reset her broken nose the night before, but the cartilage was busted, bruised, and inflamed. It would take weeks to heal and would remain sensitive the entire time.

  What a bitch move, she thought, busting another woman’s face like that.

  Lucy left the room, locking the door behind her. She wasn’t holding Banks hostage, but she wanted to be sure her patient didn’t wander into the woods. Holly Springs was a massive forest, and it would be easy to get lost.

  Outside the bedroom, the remainder of the cabin consisted of a small bathroom and a kitchen-living room combination, complete with a stone fireplace. It was a hunting cabin built on private land inside the national forest. She liked to rent it on occasion, usually for vacation, but this was the first time she’d used it as a safe house.

  Lucy stepped outside the cabin, her tiny shoes squeaking in the mud as she walked around back to the entrance of the storm cellar. She swung one of the twin doors open, then flipped the light on as she slipped down the stairs.

  A third woman waited at the bottom, tied to a chair, her mouth gagged. She wasn’t big by any stretch, but looked like a giant next to Lucy. Raven hair covered her head and hung down over a twisted, mutilated face. Burn marks crisscrossed the woman’s entire body, disappearing beneath her shirt. Lucy had traced each of them when she gently bathed the woman after knocking her out cold in the woods and before tying her to this chair.

  Lucy might have been a killer, but she wasn’t a monster. She was a warrior, and the warrior respected her defeated foe.

  She stepped forward, and the woman’s eyes darted toward her, sending venomous waves of anger across the storm cellar. Lucy gave her a pitiable smile and took another step, then gently tugged the gag out of the woman’s mouth.

  “Now then,” Lucy said. “It’s time we had a little chat.”

  Four

  State Capitol Building

  Baton Rouge, Louisiana

  Governor Maggie Trousdale collapsed over her desk, her face in her hands, and sobbed. The darkened office around her was silent and empty, the dull city lights blocked out by blinds.

  Governor for mere months, and now this, an erupting scandal that threatened to undermine everything she had ever worked for. When Maggie ran for office, it was because she believed in something, and when she won, it was because the people believed in it, too. There was corruption in Louisiana. Corruption from the seashore to the Mighty Mississippi, from the forests of upstate to the plains at the Texas state line. And the epicenter of it all was Baton Rouge, a city inundated by decades of dirty politics and dirtier money.

  Maggie was going to change that. She would rip it out by the roots and run a campaign based on integrity, not money and self-interest.

  The door to her office clicked, and Attorney General Robert Coulier, her personal appointment after the assassination of Attorney General Matthews a few weeks prior, stepped inside. He was a shrewd man, verging on ruthless, which was part of why she hired him. Certainly, it wasn’t because of his outstanding legal record, which was, in fact, stained with numerous controversies and disbarment in the state of Texas, but because he was relentless and dedicated. She called him her pit bull, the man who was going to help her destroy corruption.

  So much for that.

  Coulier settled into a wingback chair in front of her desk. His face was cold, his eyes unblinking behind round glasses.

  What a comfort.

  “Madam Governor, you have to decide.”

  Maggie looked away. She swallowed back the lump in her throat and ignored the wet trails on her face. She didn’t care if Coulier saw her this way. He knew the corner she was in.

  “I can’t do it,” she said. “Dan is innocent. You know that.”

  Coulier grunted. Daniel Sharp was Maggie’s lieutenant governor, a man who had campaigned beside her under the same banner of integrity-based leadership. LG’s were independently elected in Louisiana, but it was no secret that Sharp was only interested in the job if Maggie was elected. No secret that he was only running because she asked him to.

  She closed her eyes. Why had she asked Sharp to run? Because of his sincerity. His wise counsel. Sharp was an emotional man, but he always spoke the truth. She picked him because he could keep her focused, and he had until she’d decided to cut him out of the loop and pursue a dangerous path of self-destruction she knew he would never endorse.

  There was some manner of illegal operation happening at the Port of New Orleans. Maggie wasn’t sure what, but she had brushed up with the man running it—a man who called himself Gambit—and he had threatened her family, which made the fight personal. It was Coulier’s idea to pin Gambit down by closing the port—an idea that Sharp had vehemently opposed. But Maggie was ready for bold action, and Coulier said he had a safe and legal way to close the port.

  Well, he never said safe or legal. Maggie inferred those virtues on his reckless plan. Coulier slipped some heavy metal toxins into the harbor under the noses of a research team from LSU. When the toxins were discovered, Maggie responded by declaring a state of emergency and closing the port.

  The idea was to flush Gambit out by applying pressure to his operations. It didn’t work, and now the entire scheme was in danger of being exposed.

  “Madam Governor, you have to let me protect you.” Coulier’s voice was dry and monotone. “Nobody could’ve predicted this outcome, but it happened. Now we have to manage the fallout.”

  Maggie shook her head. “I’m going to resign and come clean. Dan will become governor to finish out my term.”

  “And then what?” Coulier leaned forward. “Do you really think he has what it takes to fulfill your mandate? Dan is a good man, but what Louisiana needs is a strong leader, somebody willing to get their hands dirty. What did your supporters call you? Muddy Maggie?”

  “They called me that because I’m from the swamps. Because I’m one of them.”

  “So be one of them. Get down in the mud. Get the job done.”

  Maggie turned toward the window. She couldn’t see through the blinds at the crowds of reporters gathered at the steps of the Capitol outside, but she knew they were there. The reporters, protestors, unemployed dock workers, and port officers were there because of her. Because of what she did.

  “Maggie.”

  She stiffened. Coulier never called her by her first name. Even now, there was no familiarity in his tone—only strength and command.

  “You are about to jeopardize the future, security, and integrity of this state,” he said. “People you promised to protect. Don’t be a coward. Do what a weak leader could never do, and allow me to protect the integrity of this adminis
tration.”

  Maggie met his gaze for a long moment, then looked down and nodded.

  Coulier stood up, leaned across the desk, and placed a file in front of her. It was an official statement typed on her own letterhead, and she signed without reading it. She already knew it was a memo from the governor’s office condemning the illegal conspiracy of the lieutenant governor.

  “Once the smoke clears and we’ve run these bastards to ground, you will issue Sharp an executive pardon. He’ll never serve a day for poisoning the harbor or for any related activities. After all, he had the best intentions. Your victory over the corruption in this state will prove that.”

  Maggie nodded again, but she didn’t look up.

  “There’s one final thing. I hate to ask, but it’s necessary. You have to confront Dan. Make sure he’ll be a team player.”

  Maggie’s gaze snapped up as footsteps rang out in the hallway, and she shook her head, but it was too late. Coulier stepped back, and the door opened.

  Lieutenant Governor Daniel Sharp rushed into the room. His tie swung loosely around his neck, and dark bags hung beneath his eyes. He rushed to the desk and pulled Maggie into a hug before she could stop him.

  “My god, Maggie. I’ve been looking for you all day. Are you all right?”

  He peered down at her, his face flooded with concern.

  She began to cry, not even trying to hold it back.

  “Maggie, we’ll get through this,” Sharp said. “Whatever it takes, I’ll never leave your side. The executive branch will hold together.”

  Maggie took a step back, and confusion crossed Sharp’s face as she broke free of his hands and shook her head.

  As though on cue, his gaze drifted down to the signed statement on her desk.

  “Maggie. . . .”

  He scanned the page, then scooped it up and read it in full. His hands shook. “Maggie, what the hell?”

  Boots rang out in the hallway, running toward her office, and the three of them looked to the door as half a dozen men in black suits burst in.