by C. L. Stone
He was expressionless. No feeling. Empty.
I was still by the closed door, my back to it, and I didn’t know how to continue. Not when he looked at me like that. Hollow.
He jumped off the bed and went to the closet, where he pulled out a flattened cardboard box. He opened it up and started assembling it, taping the bottom so it’d hold things.
“So it’s true,” I said. “We’re actually moving?”
“No,” he said, his voice still calm, which was odd to me with his flurry of activity. He placed the box near the side of the table. “This isn’t going with us.”
“Then what’s…I mean…”
He moved to the other end of the table, opposite the box, and then lifted, tilting the table heavily and letting the paperwork, the files, the books, even a jar of pens slide hazardously in one swoop into the box, with some of the stuff falling to the floor.
There was enough noise at once that Marc opened the door behind me, taking a peek and asking with a look what was going on. I waved him off, and he closed the door again. At least I knew I had backup. Just in case.
When everything had slid down and the table was clear, he let it drop. It ended upright again on the floor, a bit cockeyed from where it had been.
With that, he breathed in slow and then let out a breath. “They let me go.”
“From the Academy?”
“From my job,” he said. He turned to me, his dark eyes meeting mine.
A wave of anger he wasn’t expressing in his tone filtered into me, making me angry. “You mean…the animal hospital thing? From…”
“Yes,” he said. He tilted his head. “Too high a risk. I’m exposed. I risk the people around it since it’s such a public venue. It doesn’t have the security. They can’t expect a place like that to carry the cost of higher security just for one person…” He rattled it off, although there was sarcasm in his tone by the end.
My hands were now clenched into fists. The Academy made him quit. Or got him fired.
Because of other people.
People who had kidnapped us. Now with the phone call from Alice, it was confirmation we were still on their radar.
It was just like Brandon giving up his garage. They were all having to let go of everything they’d worked for. Only, apparently Axel hadn’t been ready to let go just yet.
This wasn’t our fault. We didn’t kill people. We weren’t the bad guys. But we were suffering for it.
“What do they want us to do then?” I asked him. “Lay low? Not talk to anyone? Live in a bubble, camping in a tent in the woods?”
He approached me, his hand pointing sort of in the direction of Brandon’s apartment where they’d had their meeting. “They want us to be happy. And safe. And if we’re with them, helping them out.” He closed the distance between us until we were toe to toe and his nose hovered over mine. “They want me to take you away from here…,” he said, his voice dropping down to a shallow whisper.
The change in his tone surprised me. An odd sensation drifted through me as I sensed Marc at my back, probably listening through the door.
“Do you not want to leave?” I asked.
He backed up a couple of inches. His gaze went to the wall and then down to his feet. He put his hands on his hips. “I don’t like running.”
It was hard to argue with the Academy on why he needed to leave work, but I didn’t agree with the approach. “If we run, they may chase us.”
“We could get away from them,” he said, looking up at me.
“I know we could. Live in the woods. Cut off contact. Pretend we don’t exist.” I hissed at the last part. “Is that what they want us to do? Fly under the radar and hope we don’t get noticed?” I touched at the center of my chest. “I don’t like being told where I can and can’t go.”
“They aren’t telling us…”
“I’m not talking about the Academy,” I said. I don’t know how it happened, but I felt I was saying what Axel wanted to say. I knew what he was thinking and had the guts to say it out loud. “Sure, they want you protected. Maybe the Academy genuinely wants us safe. But right now, that means giving those bad guys exactly what they want anyway. What do they care if we’re dead or gone, as long as we’re out of the way? While all those bad guys we kept exposing, they’re going about doing whatever they want and hurting people. It gives them control. Not us.”
“If Alice and old Mr. Murdock find us—"
“If they are still chasing us, why not let them find us? Alice didn’t even know I was in that hospital. It didn’t sound like she was even looking for me. We know they might look now, but let’s just be on guard and watch and see who shows up. Then we’ll know. We can find out who still cares about killing us off or whatever and then get to them. Or even better, let’s do your secret spy things and find them.” I smirked. “Or are you not spies like I thought you were? Are we just a bunch of snitches who run at the first sign of trouble?”
He leaned over me again, this time with hands on the door on either side of my shoulders. He looked at me, the hollowness fading out, replaced with something else. Something brewing just under the surface. “Go away, Marc.”
“Got it.” There was shuffling behind the door and footsteps fading away.
With that, his hand slid down the door until he reached around me and locked it.
His nose touched mine. I closed my eyes as he was too close to look at.
The hand drifted from the handle of the door to my lower back.
“The Academy wants to turn us into ghosts, Kayli,” Axel whispered, his warm breath against the skin of my cheek, close to my lips. He tilted his head forward, until he was whispering in my ear. “Ghosts that can disappear and can’t be hurt. Because when those bad guys decide to come for us, it won’t be to kidnap. There won’t be a warning. They’ll kill us.”
“They tried before…”
“They’ll be smarter next time.” He pulled back, focusing on my face, looking into my eyes. “Because they thought they were dealing with normal people. Now we’ve shown we know the game. They won’t send a team with guns in an obvious drive by. It won’t be some punk in the street with a knife told to stab us. It’ll be discreet, and it’ll be permanent. They’ll bide their time for the right moment. They were willing to do it by poison last time. They tried to kill us while they still talked to us and promised to let us go if we just listened to them. They’ll lie while sticking a needle in your back, willing to walk away without telling us what they’d done. Next time, it might be the same. Subtle. We won’t even know it’s them.”
He was right. It almost took us too long to discover what they’d done to us. We were lucky the Academy even had doctors and a hospital at their disposal. One advanced enough that they could discover what was happening.
So maybe the Academy wasn’t wrong to be so cautious. “So you want to move? You want to turn into a ghost?”
His lips twitched but went back to the stoic expression he usually carried, nearly unreadable. “We’ve got time to think about it. From what you’ve said, Alice didn’t even seem to be thinking about you when she called. You were the afterthought.”
“Did you get Blake’s brother and his wife out of town?”
He frowned. “Let’s not talk about that.”
Something must have happened but apparently nothing bad enough if Axel was here and not with Blake. It wasn’t really like him to not tell me anything I asked about. “What do we do next?”
He turned away from me, putting a hand to his mouth, wiping at his lips. He paced a bit in front of me.
“If we ghost”—he slowed his pacing—“it’s not because I want to. And if we do, it’s completely over. We can’t work for the Academy. We would have to do what they say, stay underground. Wait until Alice and others have been arrested by authorities.”
I frowned. “But you don’t like running.”
His eyes widened. “I hate running.”
“So what do we do? What do you want?”
I didn’t want it to come from me. I wanted him to say it.
He quieted. From the way his eyes danced back and forth, from my eyes to my nose to my lips and back, he was thinking.
“We can’t tell the others,” he said.
He didn’t have to say more. He had a plan. I was with him. I crossed my fingers over my heart. “Hope to die.”
There was just the faintest glint of amusement in his otherwise stoic face. “Which means we’ve got a lot of planning, too.”
A loud thud shuddered the door at my back, making me jump into Axel in reaction. The thud was followed by voices, at first like harsh whispers, then getting louder.
Axel pulled me away from the door so he could open it. He blocked the doorway, so I had to stand on my toes to look over his shoulder at what was going on.
Raven had Marc in a vice grip against the doorframe. Marc struggled to get an arm free to wedge himself out of it.
Raven stopped saying whatever he had been saying to look at Axel.
Axel said nothing. It seemed like he was waiting for an explanation, but since he had his back to me, I couldn’t see his expression.
Raven released Marc, who immediately started rubbing at his throat and coughing. “Sorry,” Marc said through his coughs. “He wanted to listen. Was trying to stop him.”
“I’m in,” Raven said directly to Axel. His voice deep now. His expression was dark, almost frightening.
So much for not telling the others.
“I thought we didn’t listen in,” I said to Raven from behind Axel. Axel moved out of the way and opened the door further.
Raven smirked. “That’s just Academy meetings. Anything involving my wife, I’m involved in, too.” He redirected his gaze to Axel. “So I’m in. What do we do first?”
“Me, too,” Marc said, standing up straight, still rubbing at his neck. “I can’t believe you’d keep it from us.”
Axel’s face was that blank slate he always seemed to wear. “We’ll be going against what the Academy wants. Again.”
“So?” Marc said. “We seem to have that reputation lately. Once more won’t hurt.”
“I’d rather hurt their feelings,” Raven said, “than risk our lives.”
Axel grunted. “You know if we leave, we won’t be risking anyone’s life.”
“Yes, we would,” Raven said. “We’d be leaving the Academy behind to deal with them, and they can’t handle it. Not like we would…” His voice dropped to a harsh whisper, but he leaned into the three of us as he spoke. “Alice, that old fucker with her, everyone one of those shits, they’re the sort you put down. Because they don’t stop. Only worse now when they were almost caught, since they can’t show their faces.”
“We’re not murdering anyone,” Axel said.
“Then they need to be deported,” Raven said. “To Russia.”
“Alice is from Germany,” I said.
“But she needs to go to Russia. They’ll take care of it.”
“None of that,” Axel said. “We don’t need a conspiracy to send people to execution. We’re in enough trouble as it is.” He waved a hand shortly and then put out one finger at a time to count off. “If we’re doing this, we have to agree to not tell anyone at the Academy. But we must protect them all. We pretend to pack up. We find our exit strategy to leave town. We yes, sir anything they ask. And maybe once this is over, they’ll forgive us if we’ve sorted it ourselves.”
“So we can’t work with anyone else,” Marc said.
“Right,” Axel said in a lower town. He looked at me. “Obviously, first choice is Blake.”
“It may mean exposing some Academy things to him,” I said.
“He already knows,” Axel said. “More than I’d like, but he trusts you. I think he trusts me and the rest of us. Especially now.”
I wrinkled my nose. “What happened? Is this about how his phone got stolen?”
He twisted his lips. “Let’s just get ready. Okay?”
Again, he wasn’t answering.
Something was going on with him. It involved Blake. I wanted to know.
For now, I nodded. “Yeah. Let’s pretend to get out of town. Let’s go find some tents.”
PREP WORK
Step one: Get ready.
Step two: Leave town, making Alice and even the Academy unable to find us.
Step three: Sneak back and deal with Alice ourselves and make sure the Academy isn’t discovered.
How? I wasn’t sure.
I took a quick shower and changed into my own jeans, a shirt from a laundry basket and some boots I dug out of Marc’s closet.
While Marc was helping Axel box up his stuff to get that to his workplace, I was sent to Corey’s and Brandon’s apartment to find them and let them know what we were up to. It wasn’t likely we’d be able to get away with doing this without them, and it was their choice if they were going to be in on it.
I’d volunteered to go while the others talked strategies, but the moment I was facing their apartment door, I was regretting it. Would they be upset we were going against the Academy again?
I didn’t have a key, so I knocked and waited.
It was Corey who answered, peering out at me with a curious brow lifted in question. “What’s wrong?”
Was it my face that gave it away? “There’s uh…change of plan.”
“What?” he asked, opening the door further and ushering me in. “What’s going on?”
I sidestepped into the tiny hallway space and then further into the living room area. His computer monitors were on. One of the screens seemed dark, until a blue outline of a person walked across it.
Trying to figure out what he was doing was distracting me. “Uh, well, they decided to try to find Alice and do something about it ourselves.”
Corey’s mouth opened wide for a moment. “They said that?”
“Yeah. For the most part. We fake leaving town but then come back and try to get to her. They’re working out how right now.”
He then closed his mouth and nodded. “I’m not totally surprised.”
“Not a good idea?” I asked.
“It’s probably the best calculated move,” he said. “At least at this point.” He did something with his hands, making numbers like he was writing out a formula in the air. “Best case scenario, we find out where they are, catch them in the middle of something, and point the police at them so they can take care of things.”
“What’s the worst case scenario?”
“I don’t want to do that math.”
I didn’t want to ask further. “They need to know you and Brandon are in on this.”
“Oh, we’re in,” he said. He went back to his desk, watching his monitor that was dark for a second and then looking at a second one that had some program running numbers and formulas, and those were flying across the screen quickly. “Brandon’s not going to want to be left out.”
“Left out of what?”
My heart jumped at the familiar voice.
Kevin was standing just outside of Brandon’s bedroom. I would have thought it a bit suspicious, as he was never around, but I knew they sort of let their own team do whatever, trusted them.
It was just hard to think of him as on the team.
He stepped forward, his face turning from curiosity to something bordering angry as he faced off with Corey. “Don’t tell me…”
Corey stood up. “It’s not what you’re thinking.”
“It better not be.” He waved his hand around. “I can’t do this again, man. I’ve been laying low just like everyone told me.”
“It’s for your own safety.”
“And Mindy is asking questions!” He pressed a palm against his forehead, and then brushed at the tight curls, cut short against his scalp. “I can’t keep this up.”
Corey looked at me and then back to Kevin. “We’re doing what they are telling us. Leaving.”
Kevin squinted his eyes at him. “That’s right we are. I’m taking my fiancée with me a
nd we’re getting out of here. She’s already pissed I’m asking her to move and leave her family without telling her why.” He walked around Corey and then me in a wide circle to get to the front door. He pointed a finger at me as he left. “I don’t want to hear about any more schemes. No more running around.”
Corey frowned. “It’s not that simple.”
Kevin stopped short of exiting and approached him in an aggressive rush, enough to have Corey back up a step. “It is that simple,” he said. “It was always simple. Do what they said. In some cases, it was to not do stuff. Not doing stuff is the easiest.” He angrily switched his gaze to me. “I should have known this was all a bad idea.”
I’d never seen him so angry.
It was my fault.
Corey stepped between us. “We can’t change what happened.”
Kevin stopped glaring at me to simply frown at Corey. “I trusted you all. You told me it was important. You told me we needed to. I believed you.” He headed to the door again. “Maybe when Mindy and I leave, we’ll just go on our own. Seems safer.”
Corey only looked at the floor, letting Kevin walk out.
I bit my lower lip, unsure what to say. I couldn’t blame Kevin at all for anything he’d been saying. He was scared. We’d pushed him to do highly dangerous things. Now he was being forced to leave this life, possibly for good.
“He’s not happy with any of us,” I eventually said.
“He’s got a reason. They want to get married and have a family.” He went to his computer and tapped a few times at his keyboard and then brushed a palm across his lips. “To be honest, he’s been drifting away from us. He started out just like us, but he’s…”
“Gone straight,” I said. “He’s about to be a family man. Doesn’t want to take risks.”
Corey smirked and refocused his attention on me. “Sometimes I think it’d be better if we did the same. If we left all this and went off and just…did stuff for us.” He shrugged. “But then, that’s selfish.”
