by Mark Lukens
“Michelle,” I whispered.
It was a shock to see her. For the last few days my whole life had been about finding her, and here she was.
“You can’t stop what’s going to happen,” Michelle said. “Even if you stop this here today, it will just happen somewhere else, with someone else. The plan will continue.”
“What plan?” I asked.
“You wouldn’t understand.”
“Why are you doing this?”
“For my country, Zach. For the world. Like I said, you wouldn’t understand.”
“So you kill us now? Is that it?”
“And a local cop gets to be the hero,” Michelle finished for me. “Then agencies sweep in. You three were suspects in a white supremacist ring, and we caught you before you could achieve your goals. We win either way.”
“You never loved me,” I said. “This whole thing was planned right from the beginning.”
“What I felt is not important,” she answered. “The plan and the mission are what’s important.”
Rage boiled inside of me suddenly. “My parents. They were murdered, weren’t they?”
Michelle didn’t bother answering me.
“You guys . . . you knew I was . . . was able to be programmed, and you killed my parents. Then you approached me with your bullshit story about losing your own parents. Everything’s been a lie. Nothing’s fucking true.” I felt tears stinging my eyes.
I wanted answers from Michelle, but I also wanted to stall as long as possible. Maybe there was a chance I could get to the gun Randy had on him. Alicia’s Taser was already spent, and no good now.
“Yes, everything’s a lie,” Michelle said. “How do you know what to believe anymore?” Her eyes shifted to Alicia. “How do you even know what she’s been telling you is true?”
I looked at Alicia.
She looked horrified. “That’s not true.”
“You think it’s a coincidence that Alicia just happened to be a friend of Stan’s?” Michelle said. “You think it’s strange that she was able to tap into your subconscious so easily, to help you find the clues?”
I glanced at Alicia again, wondering how she’d gotten the address to the beachside hotel from me this morning. Had she known it all along?
“Don’t listen to her, Zach,” Alicia said. “She’s just trying to get you to hate me so she can win you back over. She wants me gone so she can reprogram you, so this terror act can continue.”
I wanted to believe Alicia, but I felt a strange pull toward Michelle. Just seeing her, just hearing her voice again, the memories of us surfaced. I’d only known Alicia for a few days, but I’d known Michelle for years.
But if Alicia was telling the truth, then why didn’t Michelle just kill her right now?
“She can’t kill me just yet,” Alicia said as if she’d read my mind. “She can’t let that traumatize you or she won’t be able to put you back under. There must be others on their way here.”
“Who can you trust, Zach?” Michelle asked with a sinister smile, a crooked thing I’d never seen on her face before.
I didn’t answer her . . . couldn’t answer her.
“Shit,” Michelle said, sighing as she said the word, her gun aimed back at Alicia. “I guess it’s over, then.” She seemed about as remorseful as if a TV show had just ended. “You got me. You’re a clever girl. I guess we go back to Plan B—you two were killed in the act of trying to retrieve your weapons out of this truck.”
Michelle was going to kill us. I knew it then. And then they were going to frame all three of us. We were going to be remembered as white supremacist monsters.
Why not go for Randy’s gun? I knew I didn’t have a chance in hell of reaching it in time before Michelle shot both of us, but I had to try.
“You’re scum,” I told Michelle, surprised at how strong and even my voice was. “You’re not doing the world any good. You’re just trying to control it, to enslave it.”
“Doesn’t matter. You’ll never see it. Say goodnight, Zach.”
I heard the sound of the gun spitting out two bullets.
I flinched, expecting to feel the thud of the bullets, expecting to slip down into blackness. But I didn’t feel anything. Maybe I was stunned.
Alicia was still standing, her expression one of horror and shock.
Michelle’s gun hand dropped down to her side, the gun slipping out of her relaxing fingers. There were two bright red dots on her forehead. Her eyes stared back at me, but they saw nothing anymore. For just a split second she stood there as if by pure will, and then she crumpled down to the ground.
She was dead. Someone had shot her.
I was frozen for just a moment. I looked at Alicia, and then I was on the ground, grabbing the gun out of the waistband of Randy’s shorts.
“Zach, Alicia,” a man’s voice said from behind the Dodge Ram.
I spun around on the ground, on my back, aiming the gun at the man as he stepped out from behind the pickup truck, a silencer attached to the end of his pistol, the weapon down by his side now, not aimed at us.
I recognized the voice before I even saw him. I couldn’t remember from where I’d heard his voice, but I knew I’d heard it before. And then when I saw him, I knew who it was.
“Come on,” he said. “We need to go right now.”
CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE
“You’re not dead,” I said. I was still lying on the ground in front of Randy’s dead body, in a half-sitting position, my gun still aimed at the man nearly hidden in the shadows of the carport at the rear of the Dodge Ram. “How can that be?”
Joel stared at me. His face was as expressionless as it had been when I’d seen him in the RV with Adam.
“Alicia’s right,” Joel said. “There are more of them coming. Adam’s on his way with a car. We need to go now.”
Just then a black car sped down the street and stopped at the end of the driveway. It was a newer car, one I couldn’t distinguish from any other newer cars these days.
Joel moved toward me cautiously, his gun still down by his side.
Alicia had moved closer to me, and Joel moved around her, out from under the carport that hid us from the neighbors. He was tense as he moved, as he headed for the car waiting in the street. “We need to go now. We don’t have much time.”
Sirens blared in the background somewhere. They sounded like they were getting closer.
“You still can’t trust the police,” Joel said. “There are men on the cabal’s payroll. You won’t be safe with the police. I can promise you that.”
I looked at Alicia as I got to my feet. She looked as unsure as I felt.
Joel was between us and the waiting car, standing in the middle of the driveway. He sighed like he had come to a regrettable decision. “We can’t make you go with us. It’s your choice. You can bring that gun with you if it makes you feel better.”
It would make me feel a little better. But then again, it didn’t. I wasn’t even sure how to use it, but I knew I must have been programmed to use one, maybe even this gun I held in my hand right now.
The sirens were louder. Closer.
“Last chance,” Joel said.
I looked at Alicia again. It was only a second or two, but it felt like so much more time than that. In that brief moment, it was like we had communicated telepathically, both agreeing with each other silently, weighing our limited options. What else were we going to do? Trust the authorities? Try to run?
“We can help you!” Adam shouted from the driver’s seat. “Get in!” His fiery expression was the antithesis of Joel’s stoic expression.
We made our decision. We got in the car.
I thought about the Ford Taurus, our bags in it, our fingerprints all over everything. But I didn’t bother mentioning it to Adam and Joel, and they didn’t seem worried about it. Alicia had her purse with the video camera in it; I had some of the cash on me, the bank receipts and notecards with the strings of numbers on them. We had all we needed.
>
Adam drove down the side streets, heading toward the Intracoastal Waterway, then north toward the Ormond Beach Bridge. But then he drove past it, driving along Riverside Drive, and then we were back out on A1A eventually, heading up to Flagler Beach.
“They’ll be watching the bridges,” Joel said, explaining our strange route.
“You changed the way you looked,” Adam said, glancing back at us in the back seat. “That was smart.”
I didn’t thank him for his compliment. I still had the pistol in my right hand. Alicia grabbed my other hand with hers, holding it. I looked at her. I knew she was afraid I might still believe some of the things Michelle had said, but I didn’t. And I wanted her to know that right then. I think she did.
“The bodies in your RV,” I said, turning my attention back to Adam and Joel.
“Sacrifices had to be made,” Adam said.
You killed two people, I almost said, but didn’t.
“The media and much of the police department will always think it was us in that RV, but the cabal knows the truth. But they’ll cover it up like they cover everything else up. You don’t know how deep this goes, how high, how far. You can’t even imagine.”
But I could imagine—I’d seen it.
Seeing Adam and Joel made me think of Stan, my heart jumping in my chest. I couldn’t believe I’d forgotten about him. “We need to get Stan. If they know about you two, then he could be in danger.”
“He’s dead,” Joel said flatly without turning around to look at me. “Complications from his injuries; that’s the official diagnosis.”
“Oh God,” I whispered.
Alicia squeezed my hand even tighter.
“His mother killed herself in grief,” Joel continued.
“Tying up loose ends,” I muttered. “So what now? They’ll always be looking for us.”
“Yes,” Adam said. “That’s true. But you’ve got some evidence. You’ve got your story to tell.”
“No one will believe us,” Alicia said. Her voice sounded weak. She looked shocked and defeated. I hated seeing her that way.
“It’s true, but more and more people are starting to spread the word, the truth. We’ll show you how. We’ll put you in contact with someone else. You won’t hear from us anymore after today.”
“Where are we going?” Alicia asked.
“To a safe house of sorts. A house rented under a fake name associated with a fake corporation. Nothing’s traceable. You’ll be safe there for a few days. We’ll leave instructions with you on how to leave and when to leave.”
“My family,” Alicia said, her voice cracking. “My friends. School.”
“I’m sorry,” Adam said. “But all of that’s over for you now. If you go back, they’ll find you.”
He didn’t have to say the rest; he didn’t have to say that she would end up like Stan, or maybe more like his mother, a victim of suicide, overwhelmed by guilt.
“I’m sorry,” Adam said again, and he sounded like he meant it.
CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO
The safe house turned out to be a three-bedroom home on the Intracoastal Waterway in northern Flagler County. The house was tucked back down a long driveway and hidden by jungle-like foliage. It was a three-story home built on stilts. The first floor was mostly storage and a parking area for a car that looked a lot like the one Adam had driven.
Adam and Joel came inside and showed us around, spending a few minutes there with us. They had packages for us: new IDs with fake names, passports to go with them, new jewelry, a folder with our backgrounds—our cover stories. They also gave us each a handgun with plenty of ammo, and they took back the gun I’d gotten off of Randy. Both of our new guns were registered to our new names.
There were clothes in the dressers and closets for us and two suitcases to pack them in. There were photos of me and Alicia together in my wallet and her purse; we were Photoshopped into pictures together: at work, on vacation, a wedding photo.
The car was registered in my name. There was another folder with maps, the routes recommended to us already drawn out with written directions. Our destination would be a small town in Montana near a state college. Alicia could open up her practice there—she already had a degree in psychology from the University of Wyoming according to the new documents we had.
We each had a new laptop and cell phones. We had credit cards and a bank card. We had a checking account with three thousand dollars in it, and a savings account with thirty thousand in it. We had retirement accounts with considerably more. I asked Adam how they’d done this, and he said moving money around and creating fake accounts was easy—it was nothing but blips on computer screens nowadays.
“So we go up to Montana and hide?” I asked Adam after they were done showing us around the safe house.
“For now,” he said. “But soon this man will contact you via email.” He handed me a business card. “He’ll tell you what to do from there. He’ll tell you how you can fight back. If you want to, that is. It will be up to you. It will always be up to you.”
I accepted the card from Adam and slipped it into my new wallet.
“You had this ready for us,” I said as I looked around. “How did you know we’d survive? How did you know we’d go to the beachside, to the hotel? How did you know we’d try to stop the terrorist attack?”
“We didn’t. But we hoped you would. We had some of our people there. We had figured out parts of it, but not all of it. You had the missing pieces. By the time Michelle got to you . . .” He let his words trail off for a moment. “We didn’t think we’d get to you in time to help you. It was really close.”
A chill ran along my skin. I remembered stalling Michelle when she had the gun aimed at me. Maybe those few seconds had saved our lives.
“But we could have run,” I said, persisting. “I mean, we could have decided not to try to stop the bomb.”
“And if you had chosen that path, we wouldn’t have helped you,” Joel said in his expressionless tone.
I just nodded, understanding.
“We believed in you,” Adam said. “We believed you two would make the right choice. And there are many people alive now because of it.” He gestured around at the house we stood in. “We got the place ready in the hopes that it would all work out. We’re optimists at heart.”
I just nodded again.
“Thank you,” Alicia said.
“We need to go,” Joel told Adam.
They were about to leave, but Adam stopped. He stared at us. “I just want you to know that not everyone in the government is bad. There are some bad ones, like the cabal, but there are some of us who are good. Just remember that.”
I nodded.
Adam and Joel left. And they were right, we would never see them again.
CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE
After Adam and Joel left, Alicia and I locked the doors and checked all the windows. There was an alarm system in the house, a silent system that only notified our cell phones if there was an intrusion—a silent signal for us to get out. But Adam and Joel assured us that we wouldn’t need the alarm system, that we would be safe at this house for the next few days.
The refrigerator and cabinets in the kitchen were stocked with a few weeks’ worth of groceries. We ate, we drank, and we watched the news. We watched the breaking story about a ring of white nationalists’ plot to terrorize a beach party that had been foiled by local police. There were interviews with police and with terrified college students who had barely escaped death. There was one suspect dead and two others still at large. They showed photos of us with our names on the bottom of the screen. There was footage of the outside of our homes with police set up on watch.
We sat there, numb.
I apologized to Alicia again for bringing her into this. She cried a little over the next few days as we stayed in the house. Her dad had left when she was a child and her mom had died a few years ago from cancer. She had no brothers or sisters. But she had aunts and uncles. She had cousins
. She had two grandparents still alive. She had friends at college, friends she’d grown up with. She was sad, but she was also realistic. She was adamant that she didn’t blame me, that I was as much a victim as she was, that I had lost as much as she had, that my name had been sullied as much as hers had.
After three days we sat on the couch together after dinner. We had practiced calling each other by our new names, reading our histories over and over again, studying them until we knew them by heart. Quizzing each other about them and then making up some of the fake times we’d had after a few glasses of wine.
“Remember when we were in Hawaii and you slipped and hit your head?” she asked.
“No,” I answered.
We both burst into laughter.
And then tears.
Alicia seemed resigned to our fates, the sadness and shock wearing off a little each day. Of all the things she’d lost, she wanted her name cleared more than anything. And in the coming months, the coming years, maybe we would finally get that chance.
“We fight,” she said the fourth night we were there, drinking more wine, both of us buzzed. The news was on in the background, the sound turned down. “When the time comes we fight, and we tell the world the truth.”
“Yes,” I said.
She grabbed me and kissed me. And then I held her.
We would fight. I promised myself we would do everything we could do to expose them and the things they had done, the things they were still doing, and the things they would eventually do. We would fight . . . we would expose them.
AUTHOR’S NOTE:
Thank you so much for reading my book! I hope you enjoyed it. Being an author is a dream come true for me, and it only happens because of readers like you. I thank you from the bottom of my heart.
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