“He’s a rather remarkable boy.” Victor confirmed my suspicions. He walked around the bed closer to where I lay helpless, as if to taunt me. “In fact, I would go as far as to say that you owe him one. Your actions at the address not only nearly got you killed, but were not appreciated by President Brooks. Cameron’s interference, in a way, saved your life a second time. Now, get your rest, Ms. Stevens. You have an address of your own to give to your adoring fans. They’re just dying to hear how you’re fairing, after all.”
“No,” I all but screamed. Pain tore through my body, further enraging me as Ian held me back from lunging at Victor. “I won’t do it.” Ian’s grip tightened around my arm, but I ignored his silent plea.
“Oh, but you will,” Victor answered, remarkably even-tempered. “And you will say exactly what I tell you to say in exactly the manner I tell you to say it.”
“Or what? What will you do? What can you possibly do to me that hasn’t already been done?”
“Don’t tempt me, Ms. Stevens. Trust me, you wouldn’t like any of the answers to those questions. Now, rest up,” he sneered, patting my leg, “you’ve got quite an impression to make with your fan club.”
Without even so much as another glance in my direction, he turned around and walked out of the room, leaving us to sift through his wreckage, like a village in the aftermath of a cyclone.
Chapter Three
A Witch Hunt
“Come on, Elizabeth, we haven’t got much time,” Roger said, stuffing what belongings of theirs he could into two duffel bags.
“Just a minute,” she shouted back from the garage. A loud bang, like the sound of a gunshot going off, accompanied her reply.
“Good God, woman, what’s going on out there?” Roger ran from the living room of their two-bedroom ranch to the adjoining garage. “What the—”
“I’m not sure whether this is going to help,” she said, swinging a sledgehammer down on a laptop that was on the verge of being broken in two. “But if it prevents them from getting any information, or at least gives them a hard time retrieving it, then it will have been worth it.” Another loud bang echoed throughout the garage as the laptop split in half.
“Good thinking,” Roger acknowledged. He ran over to his workbench at the opposite end of the garage and grabbed a hammer. “I’ll get your leftovers.”
“In the name of the Brooks’ Administration, come out with your hands in the air,” a voice commanded them from outside their home.
Roger held up his hand to stop Elizabeth from swinging the sledgehammer and silently directed her to pick up the shattered pieces.
“I’ll give you to the count of ten to turn yourselves in. I suggest you make things easier on yourselves and turn yourselves in willingly. Please don’t make us do this the hard way.”
Elizabeth and Roger quietly walked over to their garbage toter and threw the pieces of the laptop in it, closing the lid carefully.
“One,” the voice commanded.
“How did they find us?” Elizabeth whispered.
“I don’t know. The same way they’ve been tracking down and imprisoning all us so-called rebels, I guess. Brooks has started a witch hunt. Everyone’s turning on everyone else to survive.”
“Two.”
“What are we going to do, Roger?” she asked, visibly shaken.
“Three.”
“Go and hide under the tarps under that workbench over there,” he ordered her.
“Four.”
“What about you?”
“I’ll be right behind you.”
“Five.”
“Roger, no.”
“Just do what I tell you to, Elizabeth. Now.” He kissed her forehead. “Everything will be okay, I promise.”
“Six.”
She scrambled across the garage, crawled under the workbench and struggled to cover herself up with the tarp, trying to ignore the spiders and insects that would normally have sent her screaming into another room.
“Seven.”
She heard Roger’s footsteps grow farther and farther away as they left the concrete floor of the garage and entered back into their home. “Oh, God. No, Roger, please don’t,” she whispered, wincing as her hand brushed a spider web.
“Eight.”
The footsteps walked across the house toward the front door, where they paused as though he was reconsidering what he was about to do.
“Nine.”
“I’m coming. I’m coming. Hold your horses,” Roger called out, loud enough so anyone on the other side of the door could hear him. Elizabeth heard the familiar squeal of the front door opening. “Gentlemen,” he greeted the soldiers on the other side of the door sarcastically. “What can I do for you?”
“Roger Norland, you are under arrest for treason and other crimes against our president and country,” the voice of the commanding soldier snapped.
“Fellas, I hardly believe that my attending an address, a public event, no less, is grounds for arrest.”
“We have reason to believe that you crashed the president’s address, along with other members of your rebellion, with a clear plan to assassinate the president and disrupt an otherwise peaceful gathering.”
“Assassination? Really? I highly suggest you go back and check that video out one more time to see where that shot came from. Oh, wait, even if you did, it wouldn’t matter because your president had it manipulated to look like it came from us.”
“That’s enough of your insolence.” The commanding solider raised his voice. A loud crack pierced the air, followed by an unmistakable thump against the floor.
“Roger,” Elizabeth whined, doing her best to keep her voice down.
“Mr. Norland,” the commander spoke again. “Where is Mrs. Norland? We have a warrant for her arrest, too.”
“She’s not here,” Roger’s voice sounded muffled, even strained. “She left me shortly after I returned home from the address, and I haven’t seen her since. Could you get me something for the blood? We replaced this carpet just six months ago.”
“Your injury is the least of your worries. Now, Mr. Norland, call me a pessimist, but I do think you’re lying to me about your wife.”
“She’s not here. She’s—”
“Enough!” Another thump elicited a grunt from Roger. “You grossly underestimate the depth of our information, Mr. Norland. Tell me, should we add a charge of hindering an investigation on top of lying to an officer to your rapidly-growing list of transgressions?”
“Do what you want,” Roger managed to say through a series of coughs. “I can’t give you what I don’t have.”
“I’m growing tired of this,” the solider sighed. “I’ll tell you what. I’ll give you until the count of three to show us where Mrs. Norland is hiding. If you produce her, we’ll forget this little incident ever transpired, and your charges will remain as they are now. If you don’t, well, perhaps we’ll carry out your sentence right here, right now.”
“Roger,” Elizabeth whimpered, louder but still not loud enough to be heard outside the garage. She began to squirm out from underneath the tarp, only stopping when she heard her husband’s voice.
“No, Elizabeth,” he said. “There is no Elizabeth here.”
“One. Mr. Norland, seriously. You’re making this harder than it needs to be. Two.”
“Go to hell.”
“Have it your way. I guess I’ll be seeing you there, though I’ll be arriving much later than you, I’m afraid.” A sudden blast shook the house, startling Elizabeth.
“No. No. No,” she moaned, biting her bottom lip to suppress the scream that tried valiantly to escape from her throat.
“Find her,” the leader of the group of soldiers commanded. “Search every square inch of this house. Leave no stone unturned; no object intact.”
Given their commands, the other soldiers marched through the home—an army, it seemed, by the sheer number of footsteps that came from inside the house. Underneath the tarp, Elizabeth Norland curled
up into the fetal position to make herself as small as possible. Just feet away, she heard the door that led from the garage to the inside of her house open with such force that it bounced off the wall on the inside. Footsteps from the house into the garage followed seconds later. By the sound of it, there were three soldiers making their way into the garage.
Elizabeth remained still while their footsteps walked past her, searching the garage. Tools from the workbench fell down onto the concrete floor.
“Search the vehicle,” a new, almost robotic, voice ordered the others. Unable to open the locked vehicle the traditional way, Elizabeth soon heard the sound of glass shattering as one of the soldiers broke through the window to unlock their SUV. Sounds of the soldiers rummaging through the contents of the vehicle soon followed. “It’s clear,” the voice proclaimed after a minute of searching. “Keep looking. Leave no stone unturned,” he said, mimicking the instructions of their commander.
Footsteps soon resounded across the garage again, with each of the three soldiers searching different sections of the structure. “There’s a laptop in this toter,” one of them proclaimed.
“Take it out of there. We’ll bring it back with us,” the one who’d spoken earlier answered.
Elizabeth closed her eyes and took a deep breath, hoping the tarp would remain still. Minutes passed when she heard the sound of boots walking back up the stairs and into her home. Maybe they won’t find me after all, she thought, hopeful.
“Sir,” the more vocal of the three soldiers spoke. “I’ve located the female subject in the garage.”
What? Elizabeth felt a pair of hands forcefully grip one of her feet and pull her out from underneath the tarp, where she came face-to-face with the soldier who had found her.
“Very good,” their commander said, stepping out of the house. “Mrs. Norland, I suspect you won’t make nearly the scene that poor Mr. Norland did, will you?”
Elizabeth looked past the commanding solider into the house, where she saw Roger lying in a pool of blood on the floor. “No!” she screamed, tears falling down her face.
“I didn’t think so,” he said, smiling at her. He motioned for a pair of men behind him to step forward. “Please handcuff Mrs. Norland and take her to the van.”
As she was dragged down her driveway, her hands firmly secured at her back, Elizabeth looked over her shoulder to see a few of the soldiers removing all of the electronics from the home, as others poured gasoline in and around it before setting it on fire.
Chapter Four
Darkness
My eyes opened, revealing the same sight I’d grown accustomed to since regaining consciousness two days prior: the recovery room. The same drab, white, sickeningly sterile room that smelled of latex, hand sanitizer, and other substances I recognized by scent, but couldn’t put a name to. I wanted out. Despite the fact that the left side of my body still throbbed with pain, I just couldn’t take being cooped up in bed for a single second longer. I turned my head to face the chair situated in the corner of the room near the foot of the bed, expecting to see either Kara or Ian sitting on its green padded seat, but I was surprised, instead, to see Drew. He was sleeping, his feet propped up on the corner of the hospital bed, gone to the world. If ever I had a chance to escape, it was now.
Stealing one last look at Drew, I began to sit up, doing my best to ignore the searing, stabbing pain in my left shoulder. It made its way down my arm to the side of my rib cage, which forced me to collapse back down on the bed. After taking a moment to recover, I took a deep breath and willed myself up to a sitting position. An IV was still attached to my arm. This is going to be interesting. Carefully, I pulled the medical tape away from the catheter and the IV tube, inspecting the insertion site in my left arm. A sickness crept over me. I could handle the sight of blood, if it wasn’t my own. But if I had to choose between a little nausea and freedom, I would grit my teeth and bear it.
I gripped the catheter between my fingers, closed my eyes, mentally counted to three, and pulled it out of my arm, suppressing a squeal in the process. Within seconds after the removal of the IV, a warm wetness trickled down my arm. Even knowing what it was, I still couldn’t help but look down to see the blood trickling from the hole in my vein. With the bile rising from the pit of my stomach, I quickly wrapped a portion of my blanket around my arm. Next to Drew stood a cabinet containing a sink and a set of drawers. One of the drawers, in theory, had to contain a dressing of sorts—I hoped. In even more pain, I swung my legs over the side of the bed and allowed my feet to touch the cold linoleum as though its touch against my skin would somehow energize me, replenishing what had been drained from my body.
Slowly, I stood up, quickly discovering how weakened my legs had become. My body crumpled over, and it took all the energy I could muster to grab onto the bed to prevent myself from collapsing to the floor. I peeked back up at Drew, fully expecting to see him awake and gaping at me, only to be pleasantly surprised again by the snore that escaped his lips.
Okay, let’s try this again. Tightening my grip on the bed, I pulled myself up, inch by inch, to a standing position, and allowed my body time to adjust to my new stance. My legs were stiff, painful, but bearable in relation to the rest of my body. And it struck me then that I could now truly say that I know what people mean when they say they feel as though they’ve been run over by a truck. Not only did I feel like I’d been run over, but also backed over repeatedly, spat on, lit on fire, and beaten with a baseball bat. How I was still alive, I would never fully understand.
Painful step after increasingly painful step, I walked over to the drawers, finding bandages and strips of cotton in the first one I opened. It must be my lucky day. I unwrapped the blanket from around my arm, grabbed a strip of cotton out of the drawer, placed it over the still-bleeding puncture wound, and then secured it with a bandage. After one last glance at the still-sleeping Drew, I climbed over the hospital bed so as not to risk falling on him by tripping over his outstretched legs and walked to the door of the recovery room, first peering down the hall.
With no one in sight, I made my way through The Epicenter’s surgical room and opened the door to one of the many hallways. My energy seemed to make its way back ever so slightly with each step I took, as though my movements were charging some kind of internal battery. Hanging loosely from each one of my shoulders, the cloth gown I wore closely resembled one from an actual hospital, except without the opening in the back, for which I was thankful. However, it was still short, and even though I was the only one in the hallway, my self-consciousness kicked in, and I found myself tugging the hem down every so often. With no socks or slippers, my feet felt as though they were turning to ice on the floor.
I needed to change. I needed a shower. I needed to do something that would make me feel human again.
As I drew closer to the vacant sitting room, I began to realize that I might have lucked out on running into anyone. It must be nighttime, I thought as I rounded the corner to the final hallway that would take me to my plain, but somewhat strangely inviting, living quarters. When I reached Ian’s room, I paused at his door, wondering whether he was asleep or whether he was even in there at all. It was strange not being next to him, almost like a part of me was missing with his absence.
My room was exactly as I’d left it, nondescript, with the only signs of my existence being a balled-up pair of socks on the floor and my photo album on the nightstand. “Home, sweet home,” I muttered, making my way to the bathroom. The room lit up as I flicked on the light switch, and I saw my own reflection for the first time since the day of the address. Pale and arguably emaciated, I looked like the very definition of death warmed over. I freed my right arm by tugging the sleeve of my gown down, leaving the garment clinging to my left shoulder. Then I took a deep breath, braced myself for the inevitable pain, and gingerly allowed the gown to slide down my left arm.
The wound had been dressed and sewn together, a sight I didn’t particularly want to see. Still, I cou
ldn’t keep myself from undoing the gauze bandaging that hid it to see exactly what damage had been inflicted upon me. As I lifted away the gauze, I saw the entry wound for the first time. Although it still had a long way to go, it had healed at a miraculous rate, and wasn’t nearly as unsightly as I’d imagined it would be.
My shoulder throbbed as though reminding me of the actual severity of the damage, and the fact the bullet had deflected off my scapula before coming to rest in the tissue of my shoulder, somehow missing a major artery by mere centimeters. Centimeters. The difference between life and death, between an inconvenient injury and a life-ending bodily catastrophe, had been less than an inch away.
I allowed the rest of the gown to fall to the floor, revealing the flesh of my naked body. Bruised, scarred, beaten, and broken, my body resembled a human punching bag. Absentmindedly, I traced one of the darker scars that ran crookedly across my chest. Where this marking came from, I didn’t know. My body had been marred so many times since coming to The Epicenter, it was hard to keep track of where they all had originated. And as I stared at my beaten, naked form in the mirror, my mind couldn’t help but wander to thoughts of Blake. I remember seeing him shirtless, troubled by the remnants of puncture wounds, lacerations, surgeries, and other wounds that had healed, forming lines and discolored patches of flesh across an otherwise perfectly toned exterior. Cameron had nicknamed him Frank after Frankenstein, a monster. Now I was becoming the monster.
I shook my head, erasing the disturbing thoughts. Blake’s spirit had been defeated at the time of his death. He’d lost his fight, his will to live. My body may be scarred like his, but I wouldn’t lose my will. The Epicenter wouldn’t claim me as its victim the way it had Blake. Anger, red hot fury, swelled inside me. “You don’t have me. I am not yours,” I yelled at my own reflection, at the stranger in the mirror. Enraged and without thought, I punched the glass, shattering the mirror where my fist struck it, while a crack spread outward across the rest of it like a spider web.
Redemption (Enigma Black Trilogy Book #3) Page 3
