The Imaginary (The Imago Trilogy Book 2)

by J. J. Stone

  “Have you ever been to see her?” It was strange how casual James asked this, like she was going to visit an old friend who had moved away.

  Ada’s eyes began to burn and she ducked her head. “No. My mother’s family doesn’t have anything to do with me. Apparently Uncle Mike had to fight them pretty hard to get custody, and that left things between me and my mom’s family in a really bad state.”

  “I’ve gone to my Mom’s grave a couple of times. It helps.”

  “I think if I saw her grave now, it would make everything a million times worse.” Ada sniffed and heard James move. She could feel him looking at her but didn’t want to chance looking up. “It’s better that she’s only in my head.”

  They both decided that story time was done and the car filled with thick silence again.

  ——

  Eli kicked the refrigerator door shut and carried four bottles of beer to the couch. “You’re sure the kid had no idea it was you?”

  Travis Smith took two of the bottles from Eli. “He’s never seen my face or heard my voice. It’s fine.”

  “You know it’s your head if the kid names you.” Eli sank into the patchy recliner by the cabin’s giant masonry fireplace. He placed his beer bottles on the floor and picked up the poker. He jabbed the glowing stack of wood in the fireplace, getting a touch of satisfaction as embers fizzled off the wood and into the air.

  “Hey, I tracked that kid for over a day. And I managed to pick him up without anyone seeing me.” Travis uncapped his first bottle and tossed the cap onto the coffee table. “I just did what we were told. If that gets me in trouble, so be it.”

  Eli turned away from the fire and pushed his chair out into the fully-extended lounge position. “I still think letting one of them go was a bad idea.”

  “It paid off, though. We got this lady Sakima’s so obsessed with.”

  Eli bristled at their leader’s name. “He still hasn’t said what to do with her.”

  Travis took another swig and cocked his head to the side as he thought for a moment. Then his eyes widened. “You don’t think … he’ll come here?”

  “I doubt it. Not with the feds still in town.” Eli opened his first bottle. “No, we’ll probably take her to a meeting place as soon as the snow lets up.”

  “What are we going to do with them?” Travis nodded at the floor.

  “The storm won’t let up for at least another day. We still have time for them.” Eli slowly drank a few long swallows. “I want to get a few more batches of stew done. We can take it on the road with us.”

  “Man, I just bought a truckload of boiled peanuts to take with us.”

  Eli shot Travis a scathing look. “Not funny.”

  Travis snickered. “I’m still not convinced you’re allergic. I think you just don’t like ‘em, so you tell people you’re allergic so you don’t have to eat them.”

  “Well, I’m not proving it to you, so just take my word for it and shut up. Forever.”

  The two men returned to their beers in silence, watching the fire roar and listening to the incessant sharp whistle of the blizzard winds against the sides of the old cabin. Eli’s phone buzzed and he fumbled it out of his pocket. “Damn weather alerts.”

  “You’re sure that shed will hold up?” Travis asked.

  “It’s solid.”

  “Will the lady survive another day or two?”

  Eli chucked his phone onto the coffee table and leaned back in his chair. “I left her enough food for a week. She’s only been down there a day and a half.”

  “And she’s fine?”

  Eli rolled his eyes as he downed the rest of his beer. “I checked her when I took their phones and the guy’s gun. She’ll have a hell of a migraine, but she didn’t seem too bad.”

  “What about the guy?”

  Eli shook his head. “He wasn’t moving. Barely breathing. He’s probably gone by now.”

  “Any idea who he is? Or was?”

  “James Deacon. I took his ID.”

  Travis nodded, impressed. “I think that’s the lead agent. I saw him at the hospital. Nice to know he won’t be on our trail anymore.”

  An enormous gust of wind collided with the side of the cabin, shrieking across the top of the chimney. “I hate snow,” Eli muttered and opened his second bottle.

  ——

  Brenda bent down and retrieved her vending machine purchases from the bottom slot. She shoved everything into the crook of one arm and wrapped her fingers around the soda bottles from the other vending machine. “Feast of kings,” she said to herself as she left the station’s break room.

  It was going on two days that she and Dade had been holed up in the station. They set up camp in the interview room across from their conference room. The station had a decent supply of emergency cots, so she and Dade had claimed their corners and decided to enjoy the rare R&R on the job. Not that the close quarters was something that Brenda was really enjoying. She now knew that Dade snored, and he had gleefully informed her that they had had a 15-minute long conversation the night before, during which Brenda had been sound asleep. He still wouldn’t tell her what she said, but from that idiotic smirk on his face, it was probably something incriminating that he would whip out at some point down the road.

  She arrived at their makeshift bunk room and nudged the door open with her hip. “Dinner,” she said cheerily, dumping the sugary, fatty, carbonated elements of their fifth consecutive vending machine meal onto the interview room’s table.

  Dade craned to look at his options but didn’t move from his sprawled state on his cot. “Same choices?”

  “No, they got a new shipment in, so I grabbed us some steak and lobster tail with a side of potatoes.” Brenda plucked his usual choice of peanut butter filled pretzels and tossed them in his direction.

  “Now my mouth is watering. Thanks.” Dade caught the pretzels one-handed and begrudgingly scooted into a more upright sprawl. “We’re going to be ten pounds heavier by the time this storm leaves.”

  “Speak for yourself,” Brenda said as she opened her diet soda. “I’ve been abstaining.”

  “I know you haven’t been living on gummy snacks.” Dade shook a mouthful of pretzel bites into his mouth. “I know you go shame eat in some other corner of the station.”

  Brenda gave him a disgusted scowl as she took her default fruit snacks from the stockpile. “I know your mother taught you not to talk with food in your mouth. I think you just shot pretzel debris all the way over here.”

  Dade awkwardly heaved himself up from the low cot and shuffled over to the table. He grabbed a bottle of cherry soda and gave Brenda a sickly sweet grin. “Aw, you got my favorite.” He unscrewed the cap and chugged a few swallows.

  “How does that not burn your throat?” Brenda asked. “Also, the machines are down to diet, cherry, or water, so I didn’t really have a choice but to get you cherry.”

  Dade gave her an “Oh, sure” expression as he pulled out one of the chairs at the table and tossed himself down into it.

  “They had the TV on in the break room. Looks like the snow is finally starting to clear up. Depending on how quickly they can clear the roads, we should be able to head out in the next day or so.” Brenda pulled out her own chair and sat down.

  “Finally,” Dade groaned, knocking back another handful of pretzels.

  “I spoke to Tanya, too. She said Quantico would try tracking Deacon’s car.”

  Dade sat up. “Really?”

  Brenda nodded and frowned at him a little. “Did you think they wouldn’t?”

  “I don’t know.” Dade pointed a sad frown at his empty bag and glanced at the remaining snacks for his next victim. “I guess I was hoping they wouldn’t have to do that.”

  “I get that.” Brenda sipped at her soda.


  Dade decided on a bag of cheese puffs and slung his feet up onto the table. He popped the bag open and carefully placed a couple of puffs into his mouth. He chewed for a moment, staring off into space. “They’re OK.” He glanced to Brenda. “Right?”

  “I’m sure they stayed at the cabin when the snow hit,” Brenda said, trying valiantly to infuse as much positivity into her tone as she could fake.

  Dade nodded and studied the cheese puffs before selecting his next handful. “Well, we’ll know once they track the car.”

  “Hopefully we’ll be on our way to them by that point, anyway. So it won’t really matter.”

  As if to mock their brightening outlook, the blizzard winds shrieked against the roof more violently than they had been for the past hour. Dade and Brenda sighed in unison and each took another forlorn bite of junk food.

  CHAPTER 15

  “You should sleep in the backseat,” James said as he watched Ada try to curl into as comfortable a ball as she could in the passenger seat. Her shivering had intensified over the past couple of hours, and he was sure it had something to do with the amount of time she was in the front of the SUV. The crackled windows and windshield offered hardly any protection from the dropping temperatures of the shed.

  Ada shook her head as she stretched her blanket over as much of her as she could. “I’m fine.” Her breath caught on the last word.

  James considered coming clean on the real reason he wanted her in the seat behind him. The storm was almost certainly leaving the area at this point, which meant that whoever had locked them away would be coming back. And James was not going to have Ada be the first target in their crosshairs. “It’s warmer back there. You get any colder, your teeth are going to crack into a million pieces.”

  Ada looked at him then glanced to the backseat. “It’s warmer?”

  “Warmer than up there, at least.”

  Surprisingly, Ada uncurled herself and sidestepped out of the front of the car. James pulled his knees up to give her room to climb over his seat. She shed her blanket and handed it to him then planted her hands on the back of the middle seat and vaulted into the third-row seat in one smooth leap.

  “Track star in high school?” James joked as he straightened his legs out again and handed the blanket back to her.

  Ada snorted. “No.”

  James reached down to the floor with his left hand and felt around under the seat for one of the guns. His fingertips found cold metal and he pulled the weapon toward the front of the seat a little more. He didn’t want to be groping around for a gun if things got messy. “You should wrap yourself up in these bandages.” He rubbed his hand across his heavily-padded chest which Ada had piled high with gauze wrap. “I think I’m starting to sweat.”

  “You’re wearing all the bandages we had,” Ada said before letting out a drawn out, contented sigh.

  James looked at her over his seat. “Comfortable?”

  “I feel like I haven’t laid down in years.” Ada shrugged out of her boots and flexed her legs, pointing her wool sock toes toward the window. She draped her blanket over herself and rolled onto her left side, facing James. “Maybe I’ll get some real sleep now.”

  James rested his head back against his window. “Go ahead. You look like you haven’t slept in months.” He turned his head slightly to the left to check his line of sight around the driver seat to the shed doors. From his current position, he could make out the majority of the door while remaining behind the cover of the driver’s seat.

  Ada yawned and shuffled around a few times, trying to get comfortable. When she stilled, James turned his head and glanced down at her. She had pillowed her head against her folded arms, the crown of her head the only part of her not sheathed in her blanket. Earlier, she had twisted her chestnut hair up into a loose bun on the very top of her head. It stuck out like a wiry rabbit tail and made James smirk every time he saw it.

  A sharp itch sprang to life on his cheek and he reflexively scraped his nails over it. The beard growth that slid beneath his nails shocked him. His facial hair grew pretty fast, but this felt like more than he was expecting, which meant they had been holed up longer than he had estimated.

  He tweaked his back to the left and right, trying to find the perfect groove to rest his aching back into. The amount of time his spine had been pressed against the door had left bruises, which Ada had discovered when she added more bandages to his ribs. With the extra padding, the door was now a little less tormenting. Still, he couldn’t wait to lay completely flat. He had tried, but he was just tall enough to not fit comfortably down the length of the seat.

  A sharp intake of breath from the back seat made his head snap back toward Ada. She was twitching slightly in her sleep, her body already heading into the deeper stages of slumber. The blanket had fallen away from her face, giving James the rare opportunity to study her. She’d scrubbed the makeup from her face with a wet napkin, revealing flawless bare skin. Even now, it had an almost ethereal glow in the dim light of the flashlight they’d wedged under one of the headrests.

  It felt strange to be near her while she slept. James peeled his eyes away and stared out the window opposite him. While it felt good to be able to relax around her now, James wondered if their camaraderie would survive once they left the shed. He realized he wanted it to. He knew now that shunning her friendship had been an easy “out” of their situation for him. His mind ran through their last exchange in Sacramento. When Ada had stood up to him and called him out on everything, he hadn’t gotten angry or insulted at first. Instead, he’d been impressed, even a little intimidated. No one had contradicted him in years. He was surrounded by people whose job involved doing what he told them to, no questions asked.

  Ada had never really fallen into the same rut as everyone else. From the moment they’d met, she had questioned him, spoken her mind, and made it clear that she didn’t want to be controlled. That had pissed him off from day one, but eventually he had come to find her attitude oddly refreshing. She brought a different dynamic to the group that had made his job a little less routine. In a way, Ada treated him like more of a person than anyone else in his life, and that made him want to be around her. He had feared that he craved her company and she loathed the thought of his, but the place they’d gotten to recently gave him hope that maybe she liked being around him, too.

  Exhaustion crawled behind his eyes and made them heavy. He hadn’t had a solid stretch of sleep since he’d first regained consciousness following the crash. For as bad as Ada looked, he was sure he looked just as bad if not worse. If someone was coming for them, he needed more than adrenaline to keep moving. He rolled his neck and tilted his head toward the front of the SUV then let sleep drag him under.

  What felt like a millisecond later, a croak from outside the SUV yanked James back to reality. A jolt shot through his body, and he was pleased when his ribs didn’t throb. The bandages were working. He kept as still as he could and slipped his eyes open halfway. The shed was still dark, but the doors were definitely attempting to open. His left hand dropped down toward the waiting gun and hovered over it.

  After a few more seconds of jostling, one of the doors slid back and blinding white light poured into the shed. James’s eyes watered as they failed to adjust quickly enough to the increased light. He squeezed them shut for a moment and waited for the burning to subside. When he reopened them, the other door was groaning to the side until there was an opening big enough for the SUV to fit through.

  For a moment nothing happened. Then a figure appeared from the other side of the second door. James could just make out broad shoulders and a parka hood. Definitely a man. He watched as the newcomer studied the car for a moment, as if trying to remember what he was supposed to be doing. James knew only a few more seconds would go by before the man would notice the two front seats were empty.

  Like clockwork, he heard
the man swear loudly and stomp into the shed toward the SUV. James wrapped his hand around the handgun and fluidly pulled it up into his lap. He remained perfectly still, watching as the man stopped outside the passenger door and tried to open it. Thankful for the ink black tint that covered all the windows, James continued to watch the man. He slipped the safety off on the gun.

  The man slammed his fist into the passenger door after a few seconds of failed tugs on the handle. James heard Ada gasp and saw her fly upright out of the corner of his eye. He slowly turned his face to her and held the gun up to his lips to signal that she needed to remain silent. Her eyes widened at the sight of the gun then grew larger when she saw the man move down to the door at James’s feet. She shrunk back into the farthest corner of her seat, ashen fear seizing her face.

  James wiggled the gun enough to get her attention then pointed the barrel down toward the space between the middle and backseat. She nodded quickly and slid down without hesitation. Satisfied that she was out of sight, James turned back to the man. Now that he was feet away, James could make out his features. He matched the description of the hunter, James realized with a cynical shake of his head. So it had been a trap all along.

  He prayed the man would move around to the driver side of the SUV instead of trying to come in through the trunk. That would put Ada right where James didn’t want her. The man shouted and slapped both palms against the window of the side passenger door when it too did not let him in.

  A small yip came from Ada.

  James wished he could talk to her.

  The man stepped away from the door and thought for a moment. James watched and prepared to push himself into a seated position if the man went for the trunk. Instead, the man decided to walk around the front of the car to try the driver side doors. Thrilled, James sprang to action. He waited until the man was out of sight before he pulled his legs off the seat and maneuvered into a normal seated position.

  James watched as the man approached the driver door. He reached for the handle then abruptly paused. After surveying the shattered driver window, the man sidestepped to the driver-side passenger door. James drew a steadying breath and adjusted his grip on the gun.