Then I saw Miller’s face go white. Twisting, sickening fear hit me right in the guts. With every second that he stood there silently listening, it climbed higher. I’d never felt so utterly powerless.
When he hung up, he just stared at me, his expression unreadable. “What?” I yelled.
“Emily’s been taken,” he said. “Right outside the hospital. The Brothers of Freedom have her.”
The fear deepened and darkened. I had to get out of there and after her... now. I felt the familiar anger start to take over, comforting as a favorite blanket. Emily needed me and this asshole was in the way. “Let me help,” I said desperately.
He didn’t answer. He pulled a chair across the room, its legs shrieking on the linoleum, and straddled it backwards. Then he just looked at me. For the first time in hours, I felt the tiniest shred of hope.
He was starting to doubt the official story. I could see it in his eyes. For years, this guy had obeyed every single order he’d been given. But you don’t get hired by the Secret Service unless you’re smart and he was starting to see the holes in what Kerrigan was saying.
“I swear to God,” I told him, “everything I told you is true. I’m on your side. Get me out of these cuffs and let me help!”
“Harlan shot a guy at the hospital, a guy in a Rexortech uniform. Rexortech are saying they have no record of him working for them: they say he must have stolen a uniform and a pass card.”
“Kerrigan’s not stupid. That guy probably doesn’t work for Rexortech, to give them deniability if he gets caught. But they’ll have given him the uniform and the pass card, just like they supplied the weapons to the Brothers of Freedom.”
“She ran from the Secret Service,” Miller said, almost to himself. “That’s what I can’t figure out. Why would she do that?”
“Because she knew they’d take her right back here!” Over Miller’s shoulder, I saw one of the Rexortech guys in the hallway. I jerked my head. “Surrounded by them.”
Miller turned and looked at the guy but his expression was still unreadable. I was getting more and more frustrated—I didn’t have time for this!
“She said some stuff to Harlan,” said Miller, lowering his voice. “Told the same story about the Vice President.”
“Yes!” I yelled, the anger rising. “Because it’s true!”
Miller crossed his arms. He was wavering between believing me and not believing me and now I’d pushed him back the other way. “Or because you’ve brainwashed her into believing it. Is that what this is? You work your way into her bed and then fill her head with conspiracy theories?”
I saw a little flicker of anger in his eyes when he said bed. That’s the first time I realized he was a little bit in love with her, probably had been for years. What man wouldn’t be—it was Emily, for God’s sake. Of course, he’d never done anything about it, which must have made it all the worse when he’d realized I was sleeping with her. And now he thought I’d used her. Oh, great. Yet another reason for him to hate me.
I was about to lose it. She’s going to die while I sit here trying to convince him! I didn’t care how it would look, how much it would damn me. I was going to haul myself to my feet, and headbutt the fucker. Every muscle in my body went hard, the adrenaline pounding through me.
I leaned forward. Miller leaned forward, too, and that’s when it hit me. I realized he wanted me to get mad. He wanted me to be behind all this. If I raged and yelled and stayed his enemy, his world could stay safe and neat and understandable. I had to stay calm, had to reason with him but there was no way in hell I could—
And then I felt her hand, cool and delicate, right between my shoulder blades, a safety valve that let all the rage hiss safely out of me. I smelled her clean, warm skin as she leaned into me and told me I could do it.
My hands bunched into fists... and then relaxed again.
“You know Emily,” I said quietly.
Miller was silent.
“You know how smart she is,” I said. “Do you really think an asshole like me could brainwash her?”
He stared at me. “No.”
“This all came from Emily. She was the one who figured out what Kerrigan was doing, not me. Go to her room—there are notes there in her handwriting from when she was investigating him.” I forced my voice to be level. “Miller....”—I forced myself to say it—”Sir. This is real. You’ve looked at my history more than anyone. I’m an asshole... but I’m not a traitor.”
He just sat there watching me. I couldn’t tell what was going on in his head.
“Sir, please.” I think it was the quietest I’d ever spoken. “We have to find her. Right now. Or she’s going to die.”
He stared at me for a second longer and then stood up. “Stand up.”
I got to my feet. “You going to hit me again, sir?”
He put a hand on my shoulder and pushed, spinning me around. Then I felt my cuffs loosen and fall away.
“If you’re lying to me,” said Miller, “I will personally relish putting a bullet right between your eyes. You hear me?”
I turned to face him, rubbing my wrists. “Yes, sir.”
“And stop calling me sir. It doesn’t suit you.”
I nodded.
“You got any idea where those bastards are holding her?” He lifted his chin a little, assessing me. He still didn’t trust me—maybe never would. But he was willing to risk everything to find her and so was I.
“They were using an old Rexortech warehouse to plan their ops, but they won’t take her there: they know I know about that place. But they’ve got to be running things from somewhere. Emily had all sorts of notes on Kerrigan. We should start there.”
We turned towards the residence and started to run.
Emily
Slow breath in. Slow breath out.
I kept repeating it in my head like a mantra. If I breathed fast, the black cloth bag sucked against my lips and smothered me and, with my hands bound behind my back with what felt like a zip-tie, I couldn’t push it away again. It made me panic and that made me breathe faster, a cruel vicious cycle. Already, I’d nearly passed out twice and each time I’d heard the men either side of me laugh. There was an air of victory in the car.
The SUV was still moving. I had no way to guess the time but I was sure we’d been driving for at least fifteen minutes: we could be anywhere. I’d long ago lost track of all the turns we’d taken and, even if I’d known, the phone Kian had given me was gone, lost somewhere in the mad dash from the motel.
At last, we started to slow. With my eyes covered, my ears strained for any clue as to where we might be. I could still hear traffic in the distance, so we were still inside the city. But when I was bundled out of the car I could feel a cold wind whip across my bare arms, as if I was standing on a wide open plain. That made no sense.
I was pushed from behind and staggered forward. Walking with the bag over my head was terrifying, every step a potential plunge into nothingness. That cruel laughter returned, as they saw how scared I was. Then we were inside and I was shoved into a hard wooden chair.
The bag was pulled from over my head, leaving me spluttering and blinking. As my eyes adjusted, I gaped at my surroundings.
It looked like a ballroom, the kind you get in very old, very fancy hotels. It seemed insane but that’s what it appeared to be. And the place was falling apart: the long red velvet drapes around the edges of the room were worn paper-thin and full of moth holes. The wood paneling was coated in graffiti and a huge chandelier overhead didn’t have a single functioning bulb. When I breathed in, I nearly choked on the combination of dust and sharp, dank mold.
Powell walked around in front of me. “Hello, Emily,” he said. “Time to talk.”
My heart started thudding against my ribs. I kept my mouth shut.
“Our boss wants to know everything you do,” he told me. “And who you’ve told it to. Any recordings you’ve made or pictures you’ve taken.” He squatted so that we were eye-to-eye
. “You’re going to tell me all about it.”
Kian
We were in Emily’s bedroom, sifting through her notes. Well, Miller was sifting: lifting up one fucking piece of paper at a time, looking at it and carefully placing it back on a pile as if we had all the time in the world. I was tearing through the pile, scattering papers across the room. But neither of us was making any progress.
“We need to narrow it down,” said Miller. “We need some clue, any clue, as to the sort of place we’re looking for. Anything you saw when you went to the first warehouse. Anything you heard.”
I shook my head angrily. “One of them mentioned a woman, but that could be anyone.”
“What woman?”
“Isabella.” Despite my frustration, I felt my hopes rise for a second. “Why? Does that mean anything to you? Maybe someone connected with Kerrigan, one of his staff who’s in on this?”
Miller shook his head. “There’s no one called Isabella on the VP’s staff... and there must be thousands of Isabellas in DC. What else can you tell me?”
“Nothing!” I hurled a fistful of papers across the room and they fluttered down like snow. The rage was back, full force. This was a waste of time! Emily was out there somewhere and we were sitting here looking at papers!
Miller came over and stood in front of me. For a moment I thought he was going to yell at me, but his voice was gentle. “O’Harra,” he said, “think. Any little clue.”
Think. That’s what Emily would do, instead of raging and yelling. What if I never see her again?
I tried to be like her. I sucked in a long breath and let it out, going back in my mind to each time I’d seen Kerrigan’s guys: the park, the warehouse, the museum….
And after the museum, when they’d kidnapped Emily and I’d intercepted them. They’d been following a road north, probably heading for the same place they’d taken her to now. We had a direction. “North,” I said. “I think it’s on the north side of the city.”
“Good. What else?”
I closed my eyes and tried to pick through the details. Anything on their clothes, their guns? But they’d all been standard military issue, probably straight from Rexortech—
“That doesn’t make sense,” I said, frowning.
“What doesn’t?”
“All their clothes were new but... when I got close to Powell, his clothes smelled musty.”
Miller dug through the papers until he found what he was looking for: lists of property Rexortech owned. “Most of these places are pretty new,” he said, running his finger down the page. “And they’re in use. We need somewhere disused.”
I had a sudden thought. “What about derelict places? They’d be musty. Have they bought any land to build on, and the old buildings are still standing?”
He rooted around again and then stopped and grabbed a printout from a website. A news story about Rexortech buying up a huge plot of land in northern DC on which to build a new office complex. A photo showed the construction site: it looked like the surface of the moon, just gray rubble stretching on forever.
Aside from one building, standing all on its own near the center. One that had been subject to a preservation order that Rexortech had only just managed to overturn. The sign over the door said Hotel Isabella.
Emily
The ballroom had huge windows but they’d been boarded up long ago. Tiny holes in the boards let in pinpricks of sunlight from outside, stabbing like lasers through the air and showing just how much dust was floating around. Then there was one place, high up, where a board had fallen away entirely and a lozenge of bright light spilled from it onto the floor. That’s where Powell had dragged my chair, right into the light. Presumably so that he could see my reactions as he interrogated me.
Interrogated me. I wanted to be sick. I’d read about things done to prisoners overseas. There’d even been allegations that Rexortech contractors had been involved.
“What I want to know,” said Powell, “is who you’ve told. Who believes you.”
I thought of Harlan. And Kian. And my dad.
“No one,” I said.
He pursed his lips and shook his head. “See, that’s the wrong answer,” he said. “We know you at least told your boyfriend. You’re lying to me. That means you get punished.”
The other men had been sitting on one of the big, circular tables that still lined the edges of the room, mostly hidden in shadow as they watched. Now they stepped forward. Two of them could almost have been brothers, shorter than the leader but powerfully muscled, with light brown hair. Both of them grinned down at me, their eyes crawling over my body. Oh God. Not that. I was helpless, my wrists bound. I wouldn’t be able to fight back.
I didn’t think it was possible to be more scared. Then I saw the third one.
He was taller than the others, taller even than the leader, pale and wiry with a long, pointed black beard. He didn’t look at me with lust, like the other two. His eyes were utterly impassive, just mildly... interested. As if I was a lab experiment.
My chair suddenly tipped back and I screamed. I’d forgotten about Powell. He started dragging my chair backwards on two legs across the room, the wooden legs screeching across the floor.
“See, back in the park,” said Powell mildly, “I told you it was just business. And it was, back then.”
I twisted and strained but I couldn’t see where we were going. Oh Jesus. Oh fuck. Kian, where are you?
“But now, after making us run around after you all night? After your boyfriend killed so many of my men? Now? Now, I’m going to enjoy this.”
A door banged open and I glimpsed ancient black and white tiles and porcelain urinals. The men’s bathroom. Why would—
The chair was dropped back onto all four legs, hard enough that my teeth clacked together. While I was still reeling, Powell lifted me, cut the ziptie binding my wrists and then dropped me on my back onto a piece of board that was lying on the floor. I looked up at him and the other men, terrified. Oh Jesus, they’re going to—
But they didn’t. They grabbed my wrists and ankles and tied them with zipties to drilled holes in the board so that I formed a “T,” my arms outstretched but my legs together. And they didn’t make any move to take off my clothes. Instead, they lifted the foot of the board so that my feet were higher than my head.
I heard a rubbery sound. Looking up, I got an upside-down view of the bearded one twisting a rubber hose onto a faucet. He adjusted it until he had a steady flow of water coming out of the tube.
That’s when I got it.
They were going to waterboard me.
Kian
We ran. But before we were even out of Emily’s bedroom, Miller was keying his radio. “All units,” he began. Then I slammed him into the wall to shut him up. He gaped at me but I was already tearing the radio from him and jerking the earpiece from his ear. “What the fuck?” he spluttered.
I leaned into him. “Kerrigan’s men have been ahead of you since the start. Rexortech replaced all your communications gear, remember? They’re tapped into your radios. They’ll be gone before we get there and then we’ll never find her. If we’re going to do this, we’re going to have to do it my way: off the grid.”
For a second he stared at me like he wanted to kill me. Then I saw the uncertainty take over. The guy had never disobeyed an order in his life. Freeing a prisoner and taking him on an unauthorized mission, telling no one where we were going... this was way beyond his comfort zone.
“Fine,” he said at last, and stuffed the radio in his pocket. “Come on.”
We ran on, heading for the garage, but I slowed as we passed the armory. “I need a gun,” I said. “They took mine when they arrested me.”
I expected him to grab me one of the Secret Service pistols. But instead, he unlocked a gun safe, reached in and threw me the holster and gun that were inside.
My holster and gun. The Desert Eagle he’d taken off me the day I’d arrived. I grabbed it the way a kid grabs their
favorite blanket. Then we were running again, not stopping until we were in a Secret Service SUV. Miller slammed it into gear and we tore out of the garage so fast the barrier barely had time to lift.
I just prayed we were in time.
Emily
“No,” I said.
They ignored me. The one with the beard picked up a piece of cloth and shook it out, then walked towards me.
“No,” I said again. This time it wasn’t a plea so much as a denial. I didn’t want to believe this could happen.
The bearded man settled the cloth over my face, the weave rough against my lips.
I started to pull—really pull—against the zipties but they held fast. “No!” I yelled through the cloth.
And the water started.
Ever since the park, I’d always felt my fear like black water rising around me, threatening to reach my mouth and nose and spill down inside me, drowning me. This was the real thing. The cold water hissed out of the tube, soaked through the cloth and spread across my forehead. My eyebrows. My nose. My—
I was drowning. I spat and coughed and gagged but there was always more water in my mouth and nose. I was inhaling it, feeling it burn its way down my airway and into my lungs and Jesus oh Jesus I’m going to die. The most basic fear of them all. This was worse than anything I’d ever known and there was nothing I could do to stop it—I couldn’t even speak until they chose to turn the water off.
I stopped being rational. I stopped thinking at all. I was a screaming, choking animal that only wanted it to stop. My hands tore at the air and my feet twisted and kicked so hard that I pulled something and pain shot up my leg.
Saving Liberty (Kissing #6) Page 23
