by Kate Morris
“Yes,” he says softly. “That’s him.”
Simon turns to her and reveals the sketch of Parker.
“Holy shit,” she whispers under her breath. Her husband catches her gaze, and he slowly shakes his head. A pulse in his throat pumps hard and fast. She knows he wants Parker’s head on a spit. She recognizes the fury and rage inside of him, in that place deep in the darkest places of his heart that he doesn’t like her to see. She’s seen it, though. The first time was in the Home Depot store in Clarksville where she’d hidden up above him in the metal shelving, and he’d killed two men right in front of her in pure, brutal fashion. It doesn’t matter. He did it to protect her. She knows he always will protect her, and that’s part of why she loves John with every fiber of her being.
“Are you sure?” Simon repeats.
The man only nods.
Simon, God knows how, has cracked the case, broken the mystery wide open. She has a lot of questions for him later tonight.
“Where is his camp?” Simon asks, confusing her. Parker’s camp is Fort Knox.
“I don’t know. He was at a big compound up north with the McClane,” he says, to which she can only guess he means her father.
“At Fort Knox?” Simon reiterates.
“Yes, and other places,” he says, stunning her further.
“I’ll need those locations,” Simon tells him.
He looks directly at Simon and answers, “I don’t know. He never tells us where he’s going. Sometimes he goes to the fort, but I know he has camps in other places. He’s building his army.”
“Why? General McClane is in charge.”
“He’s leaving it all to him,” the man states. “The President is in charge. McClane is just his top general and advisor. Once he’s dead, the President will inherit the fort and the army in it.”
Simon doesn’t understand this any more than they do. “What do you mean?”
“The President is taking over. He was recently elected. The general up there is dying and leaving it all to Parker. All of it.”
This makes no sense. Reagan doesn’t think they have the whole story here, but she also doesn’t believe they are going to get any answers from him that make sense. This is all too much to process.
“Can I leave now?” he whispers weakly. “Are you gonna let me go? You said I could go if I cooperated.”
John steps forward and asks Simon, “Are you done?”
“Yes, sir,” he says.
John drags the man back to the spot in the corner and cuffs his hand to the steel pipe.
“Noo…no, you said I could leave now,” he whines and pleads. “None of this was my fault! It wasn’t me! It was them!”
They exit the milk house, totally ignoring his cries of anguish and torment and lies. Kelly sets the lock attached to the chain holding the door closed.
“What the hell was that, Simon?” Cory barks as if angry.
Simon turns to him with genuine surprise on his face, “What do you mean?”
“You knew? You knew all this time that Angelica was actually Sofia from Robert’s camp?”
“No, only recently did I form that opinion,” he explains.
“When?” John asks with less blame.
He sighs and says with his usual logic, “Why don’t we go inside so that we can discuss this with the rest of the family. Herb is waiting for us.”
They walk to the house, and Reagan has to resist the urge to jog ahead. She, too, is anxious to hear what he has to say. Once they have gathered the family in the dining room, Simon tells them.
“I had Samantha draw the dead girl in the woods because I just couldn’t figure out why she’d be on our property,” he says, looking at Sam across the table. “I recognized her from Fort Knox. It took me some thinking, but I remembered seeing her.”
“Wow, good memory,” Cory remarks. “I don’t remember her.”
Simon nods and goes on to explain, “There were hints, things that didn’t add up. Why were Parker’s men being picked off? Why so close to the farm? And now the girl from Fort Knox is dead close to our property. And it bothered me about other stuff. How were they one step ahead of us?”
“Yeah, that was annoying the shit outta’ me,” Kelly confirms, getting a glare of disapproval from Hannie. He squeezes her hand gently on the table.
“Herb and I talked a few weeks ago, before the battle at the mansion,” Simon continues. “I discussed this hunch I had, and he decided that we shouldn’t jump to conclusion but that we should take precautions. That’s when he hid the radio cables.”
“I knew it!” John declares. “I knew you wouldn’t have misplaced them, Herb.”
Her grandfather smiles knowingly and nods. “Well, we couldn’t take any chances. I didn’t want Parker or one of his men leaking information to the highwaymen if they were. When Samantha found him in my office that night, I kind of figured it might be him. It’s true that I did give him permission to use the radio but certainly not at one in the morning. But my son trusts him, so I wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt. That being said, it seemed wise to err on the side of caution and remove the temptation. I still wasn’t a hundred percent sure if Parker was trustworthy.”
“Yeah, creep,” Sam comments with a wrinkle of her pert nose.
“And just a lot of little things were pointing to him,” Simon says to them. “The prisoner even eluded to the fact that the President was infatuated with Paige.”
That must’ve been why he looked at Cory, Reagan remembers. Cory is now married to her, which takes her off the market for Parker. He must be very upset about that. Cory will need to be careful for a while until they get this all figured out. And it also explains why the car dealer said strange comments to Paige and gave her knowing looks as if she should understand his meaning.
Simon adds, “I think we all know that Parker is in love with her, or whatever would be love for a psychopath. I’ve certainly seen it and wanted to send some friendly fire down range on him.”
“Ditto,” Cory concurs.
“Oh, I wasn’t aware,” Paige admits. “I just thought he was weird. Or lonely. Or weird.”
“That was two ‘weird’s’,” Sam points out jokingly.
“It seemed fitting,” Paige says in a deadpan tone that causes a few of them to chuckle.
“What else, Simon?” Reagan asks.
“He kept disappearing,” Simon tells them. “Every dang time we were either preparing for a battle or in the middle of one, he’d be a no-show.”
“Or he’d try to change our plans,” Derek reminds them.
“Right,” Simon agrees. “He didn’t actually want us defeating the highwaymen. Those were his men. They were a part of his army.”
Paige groans, “This is horrible. He was working against us. The whole time. We trusted him, and he was the mole.”
“Yeah, but he didn’t succeed, sweetheart,” Cory says and tucks a stray cluster of red waves behind her ear.
Simon just continues, “No, he didn’t, but if he could’ve used the radio that night to warn them of our battle plan changes, he would’ve. Then we may have been defeated ourselves.”
“Thank goodness,” Hannie remarks.
“Yes, thank goodness, indeed,” Sue agrees before Simon continues his theories.
“And the way he’s running Knox. The hidden caches of food and ammo and vehicles that Cory found. I think that was all his emergency, get outta’ Dodge stash. I really don’t believe that it was an emergency contingency for anyone but him. He hand-picked those items, the vehicles, and weapons so that if he was ever figured out he’d be able to flee on a moment’s notice.”
“What a rat,” Sam comments, earning a simple grin from Simon, which she returns with a grimace. He doesn’t seem to mind and keeps going.
“I don’t think Robert even fully understands what’s going on up there behind his back. Parker’s communistic approach to the whole place is disturbing. I just kept getting the impression that Parker wanted
it run that way and that the general was in the dark about a lot of it. Robert was just so busy trying to secure the people and establish his own advisors and peacekeepers that he wasn’t keeping close enough tabs on the day to day activities of Parker. Robert never seemed like he wanted socialism on the base. As a matter of fact, he even told us multiple times that he left the bunker out west because of that very thing.”
“I agree, Simon. I don’t think my son shares the same viewpoints,” Grandpa says.
Simon keeps going, “And the way that Parker was keeping those files on people.”
“Oh, yeah,” Cory says as if remembering. “He even had the red ones with cabinet appointees and positions in the new government or something.”
“Yes,” Simon says with a nod. “I think it was all by design.”
“What was?” Reagan asks, too curious to wait for him to continue without being prompted.
Simon regards her directly across the table, his blue gaze intense and somber. “He’s the President.”
“I don’t know how this makes sense, though,” Sue comments. “How is Parker the President? The President is out in Colorado. We know that he’s not Parker. His name was Ezra Hofstetter, not Parker whatever. Is that his first or last name? Who even cares? Anyway, the President is supposed to be on his way here.”
“I believe he still is,” Simon relays. “He has everyone thinking the President is coming. And he probably is, too. But I think Parker’s playing both sides. I’d bet anything that he is behind a lot of the feuding between General McClane and the actual President when they were all living at the bunker. He sewed those seeds of hatred before he left Colorado. What better way to get them to kill one another than to turn them against each other? Then all he has to do is get rid of the one who is left standing and step in. He’s established himself as a person of importance and authority at Fort Knox already. Heck, some of the people there seem like they’re scared of him and probably are. General McClane’s people trust him. I mean, just look at the facts. They left security at the bunker out west to come here with just what they could carry.”
“True,” Sue agrees.
“And I figure he started the foundation work communicating with the senator here to get him and the car dealer building the highwaymen. He probably started that before he even left Colorado because he went to school with the senator and already knew him,” Simon tells them. “It would’ve been easy to get that up and running if the two men were like-minded. The car dealer is obviously just like them, too, despite what he says. Nobody would fall in with a group of men like Parker and his senator buddy if he wasn’t agreeing with their sick, twisted plans.”
“What do you mean?” Kelly asks next. “I still don’t understand. Why did you call Parker the President?”
“I showed the car dealer the picture Sam drew of Parker. Thanks to Sam’s amazing artistic skills, of course,” he praises, causing her cheeks to turn pink. Everyone chuckles.
John rubs the top of her head and then says to Simon, “Ok, Romeo. Stick to the facts.”
Simon grins and continues, “Remember the car dealer saying that the President knew the senator way back before this all started? He said that they went to military academy together. Well, the President, or as we know him as our former Vice President, never went to military academy. He went to Harvard. He was never in any branch of the military. I read up on him in one of Herb’s books in his study. It was all there about his past. He was never enlisted in any branch of the military. But, I did ask a military friend of Parker’s up at the base in a casual way so that he wouldn’t think I was snooping if he knew of Parker attending military academy when he was young, and he said that he did and that it was in upstate New York or something. That’s exactly where the senator went, too. I’d bet if we still had the internet available to us we’d be able to pull up photographs of the two of them in the same graduating class. They knew each other before. The real President doesn’t know the senator, not in the same way that Parker did. They weren’t friends for decades. They didn’t go to school together. They didn’t plot and plan together. The President was being plotted against by Parker and probably doesn’t even realize it. General McClane, too.”
“Interesting,” John states, obviously trying like the rest of them to absorb so much information in one sitting. “You could be right, Simon. But why did you call Parker the President? You still haven’t explained that part.”
“Because the car dealer thinks that Parker is the President. I asked him if the picture Sam drew of Parker was the President and he said yes. He thinks Parker is the President. I don’t get it. He has everyone who doesn’t know any better convinced he’s the President. I’d bet that the car dealer and the dead senator don’t even know about the President being alive and well out west. Or here if he’s made it here yet.”
John says, “Yeah, you could be right. Plus, there were deaths that we’ve seen in the last six months. Even before we realized that we had a problem with the highwaymen group, the attacks were something of a regularity on the highways. Remember? We found some people in Clarksville murdered the same way the highwaymen were executing people.”
Derek adds, “And Dave had seen the same thing. It could’ve been them, but we just hadn’t made the connection yet.”
“Then I saw in a red folder,” Simon starts, “that he had a few of his men marked as troublesome or not able to follow orders, notations of that sort. Those were the ones, including Shorty, who were killed. I figure they knew something wasn’t right, either. Maybe they confronted him. Maybe they threatened to tell General McClane or us. Maybe they even pulled a gun on him.”
“Get rid of anyone of dissent,” Derek says quietly.
“Exactly,” Simon agrees. “He’s a dictator all right. If he sensed that one of his closest men wasn’t going to pass muster, he got rid of them when they were out alone and told people that he never saw them or that they ran off or deserted.”
“Right, that makes sense,” Sue says. “There have been quite a few of his men who have gone missing or turned up dead.”
“He’s looking to be the new President of the United States, too. He never had any intention of working on the sidelines for the general or for the President out west.”
“What about Angelica?” Reagan asks.
“That was trickier to piece together,” Simon relays. “Once I began suspecting Parker, I started looking for the person who could’ve been leaking information to him from General McClane’s camp. I knew she had to be someone close to Parker, someone he really trusts. The night I had to hide in the tree I saw him with a woman. I couldn’t see her very clearly. Certainly not well enough to make a positive identification. I asked around, but nobody knew who Angelica was. Then it was a hunch, a calculated guess. When Sofia delivered papers to us, I saw her staring at me. She didn’t look as if she liked me too well. I’m not sure why. I certainly don’t know her. Then I was introduced to her sister, Isabella. They certainly look alike. She was shy, wouldn’t look me in the eye. Sometimes that’s normal now. A lot of people have been through traumatic things. I don’t remember treating her or her sister in town, either. Dr. Avery told me that her sister was rescued from a sex slave camp near Nashville. It has to have been the one we raided.”
John breaks in to ask, “Then why would she hate us? We freed those women.”
Simon shakes his auburn head, causing a lock of hair to fall over his forehead, which makes him look like a kid. “Not sure on that one. I’m still working on it. But when I saw Isabella in the woods and figured out who exactly I was looking at, it just struck a funny note in me. Sofia’s sister was within a stone’s throw from the farm. I remembered Sofia having blonde hair. It triggered a memory I had while hiding in that tree. I remembered a patch of blonde hair swinging from a ponytail as she left Parker’s office that night. I didn’t realize it then. Didn’t even really process that. Honestly, I was a lot more worried about not getting caught. But I know that’s what I saw. An
d when I saw her sister, it just clicked. The person I saw with Parker that night was Sofia.”
“And the car dealer confirmed that the drawing Samantha drew of Sofia is actually a woman they all know as Angelica,” Reagan tells the rest of them. “She goes by Angelica so that she can keep her other name at our father’s camp. She was smart about covering her tracks.”
Sue sucks in a shocked gasp of air. Paige covers her mouth. Everyone is surprised and just sits there in silence for a moment trying to process.
“But that’s not who’s in the woods,” Paige points out.
“No, it’s her sister, Isabella,” Simon says again. “I’m not sure why she was here. I’d bet the man that took a shot at Wayne was Parker fleeing the scene. Or perhaps someone on his side he sent with her to get rid of her and spy on us at the same time. Or it could’ve just been Parker. He’s capable of anything. With the way his men have come up missing or dead- probably just all actually dead- I’d say he did that. He murdered her. I don’t know for sure, though.”
“If Angelica, I mean Sofia, is Parker’s mate, then why’d he kill her sister?” Sue asks confusedly.
“I don’t know that, either,” he answers. “It seems to me that he kills the people who cause him trouble or stand in his way of becoming the President. Maybe she turned on him. Maybe she was going to turn her sister against him, too.”
“Why were they so close to the farm?” John puts forth the question for anyone.
His brother says, “Most likely he’s spying on us. Remember, he still thinks the car dealer is dead. We told him that much.”
“Yeah, I remember,” John says. “But why continue to spy? It’s over. We took out his entire army.”
“Not necessarily,” Cory interjects. “If he’s still planning on the general and the President fighting this out to the death, then he’s still planning on taking over afterward. The car dealer said earlier that he suspects Parker has more than one base camp.”
“I assumed he meant the highwaymen,” John says.
Simon answers, “But what if he doesn’t? What if he has other armies, just smaller ones?”
