Forsaken

by Dean Murray

  Even if my mom had agreed to let me go back to Sanctuary, the Alec I'd envisioned during the short time we'd been together hadn't really existed. There was no point in broaching a subject that would just leave us both unhappy, not when it was so impossible.

  "I don't know. For now, I'd just like to get away from the city."

  "Adri, you hated Sanctuary. For nearly the entire first month we were there every other word out of your mouth was a complaint about Utah. You just don't deal with change very well, sweetie. Give New York a chance; it will grow on you just like Sanctuary did by the end."

  I shrugged and turned to go to my bedroom but my mom cleared her throat.

  "Adri, honey, we're going to have a guest for dinner tonight."

  I should have known something was up when I saw that Mom was cooking. She didn't have dinner with me very often these days because she spent a lot of time networking with other people in the industry. Those people seemed to come in two categories: 'important' which meant they ate at some four-star restaurant, or 'reasonable' which meant that Mom could bring them back to our place and order takeout to eat while they brainstormed ideas.

  Mom bringing someone back to the apartment and actually preparing a meal for them automatically told me this wasn't a work thing, or at least not just a work thing. I waited silently, refusing to help Mom along with her explanation.

  "Russ is one of the financial backers for the Lasserti show. He saw me setting up before the shoot and sent me two dozen roses before the night was over. We've seen each other a couple of times since then, but I thought it would be good for the two of you to meet each other."

  Her words kind of hung in the air and it felt to me like they'd created an impenetrable barrier between us. I turned to walk away. "I'm not feeling very hungry. I'll just study in my room and leave the two of you alone to eat."

  "Adriana Paige, you get back here right now. You're not going to snub Russ. He's a nice guy, and this is important to me."

  I hadn't wanted to get into a fight with Mom, not when we had so little time together, not when she was all I had left, but her words gave the anger floating around inside me a focus that had been missing since we'd arrived in Manhattan.

  "Really, Mom? After everything that you said about first Brandon and then Alec, you're really going to bring this guy in here and tell me that he's a 'nice guy'? I know the kinds of shoots you've been doing, especially lately. Any 'financial backer' for one of those is going to be worth millions. You can't have it both ways. Either rich guys are jerks who can't be trusted, like you told me when we were in Sanctuary, or they are nice guys."

  My mom opened her mouth to respond but I kept right on talking. "How nice can this guy be if he hangs around fashion shows? He's probably just trolling for some hot model to sleep with."

  I'd slowly been moving towards Mom as I'd spoken which meant that I was within arm's reach, but her slap came as a complete surprise.

  "How dare you. You don't know Russ, and I don't appreciate what you're saying about my judgment."

  My hand came up to cover the stinging on the left side of my face, but the blow was nothing compared to what Agony's men had done to me.

  "It's not just your judgment that I'm questioning, Mom. Dad hasn't even been dead for a year yet. I've spent the entire time since he and Cindi died trying to piece myself back together, but apparently you've just been waiting for someone richer to come along."

  She slapped me again, but I didn't care. In some ways the physical pain helped. It took away some of what I was feeling inside, lessened it somehow. I walked out of our apartment and didn't look back, even when my mom called after me.

  I texted Isaac while I was still in the elevator.

  Changed plans...leaving my place...really needed to get out of the house...u don't need to follow me.

  Isaac's response came only a few seconds later.

  You have somewhere you need to be or do you want to just come here?

  It was perfect and a terrible idea all at once. I sat outside his building for a couple of minutes trying to decide before finally responding.

  Okay...brt

  The doorman opened the door for me with a nod and a, "Hello, miss," and then I was to the huge granite desk that dominated the center of the entryway. The slender, very proper-looking woman behind the desk looked up as I approached and then smiled.

  "Are you Adri?"

  "I am. Did Isaac already call down?"

  "Yes, he did. My name is Nancy. I'm the night clerk for the building. Mr. Nazir has asked that I key his private elevator to you. If you'll come this way, I'll scan your thumbs, and then he can confirm the new access protocol once you arrive there at the top floor."

  I followed Nancy across the polished rock floor and then waited as she turned a key to call the elevator down. Inside there was a biometric scanner that exactly matched the one outside and another lock. Nancy used a different key to open the panel next to the scanner and then entered a long code on the keypad.

  "Please place your thumbs on the scanner, one at a time."

  Once the machine had registered my prints, she put another code into the keypad and then locked the panel again.

  "The elevator will now go to Mr. Nazir's residence. Once he has approved your entry then next time all you'll need to do is use your thumb to call the elevator and then scan it again to go up to the penthouse."

  I thanked her, and then once the doors had closed and the elevator started up, I spent some time looking around. I didn't have any idea what a swanky elevator was supposed to look like, but I suspected that this one fit the bill. The marble floor combined with the stainless steel walls and the hardwood trim to give the feeling of new money.

  A few seconds later, the doors opened and my mouth dropped at just how spacious Isaac's new place was. The ceilings were at least ten feet high, and there were oversized windows looking out at Central Park which made it feel like I was practically outside as soon as I stepped out of the elevator and pulled my shoes off.

  Isaac came into view from off to my left, wearing nothing but a towel, and waved. "Sorry, I was in the shower when I heard your text come through. Once I knew I wasn't going to have to follow your scent trail through the urban jungle, I figured I might as well jump back in and finish up."

  "That's okay, just point me to an out-of-the-way corner and I'll stew privately."

  Part of me was taking in Isaac's massive, ripped chest and thinking that the new Jess must be more disciplined than the old Jess if she was able to say no to Isaac after seeing him shirtless, but mostly I was still way too numb to appreciate any guy, let alone Isaac who'd become almost like a brother back in Sanctuary. My heart still longed for Alec too much, even though I knew that was over.

  "I can do better than that. This place has four bedrooms and I've already staked one of them out for you. It's this way."

  I followed Isaac through the living room which had some of the thickest, softest white carpet I'd ever seen, past a media room that looked like it could seat twenty, and then he opened an oversized door into a bedroom that was more than three times as big as my current room. I stepped inside and spun around in amazement.

  One wall was all tinted glass, once again providing an amazing view of the park. The king-sized bed had an airy canopy and a soft cream bedspread. The wall opposite the bed had a large flat screen TV mounted to it and there was a massive, cozy-looking beanbag chair on the floor at what looked like the perfect viewing distance from the screen. A large desk with a computer sat in the corner where the windows met the interior wall, but I found myself turning and looking the opposite direction so I could take in the attached bathroom and huge walk-in closet.

  The shower was likewise spacious, all done in frosted glass and some kind of breathtaking white stone with silver fittings. The closet was nearly as big as my room and had three large boxes already sitting in it.

  Isaac had trailed along behind me with one hand on the towel to make sure it stayed put. He point
ed at the boxes as I turned back to look at him.

  "Rachel sent those. They arrived today. I don't know for sure what's in them, but knowing her, I expect your wardrobe from Sanctuary makes up at least some of the contents."

  I shook my head in amazement. "Are you sure about this, Isaac? I mean this room is incredible."

  He shrugged. "It's all Alec and Rachel's money, and Alec seemed more concerned with getting me here and set up somewhere close to where you live than what the ultimate price tag might look like. None of the other three rooms are really any less crazy, and honestly, if you're comfortable here, then there's less chance I'll have to follow you around the city just because you're looking to kill some time."

  I suddenly remembered the downside to a bodyguard. Every time I was thinking about going somewhere I'd have to balance how much I wanted to go there against the fact that it would be an imposition to Isaac.

  He seemed to read my mind and waved my concerns away. "This is my first, and maybe only, trip to New York. I'm happy to go wherever you want to go; this just gives you more options when you really don't feel like going out but need to get away."

  Given recent developments with my mom, there was a big chance I'd need a refuge. I managed a nod of thanks, which earned me a smile from Isaac, and then he pointed at the boxes again.

  "I'll go get dressed while you see what goodies Rachel sent you. If you need anything, I'll be in the study."

  "How do I find the study?"

  "Adri, the house isn't that big. Just walk around and you'll find it eventually. It will give you a chance to explore."

  Isaac smiled again and then walked away, leaving me alone with Rachel's boxes. I put my coat and backpack on one of the shelves to my left, and then I opened up the first box. Isaac had been right; all of the incredible clothes that Rachel had bought me on our Vegas trip were packed away, some of them still with tags on them. I'd known she was buying too much stuff, but I hadn't realized just how much she'd snuck past me until the first time I'd seen it all together in one place like this.

  I really couldn't take it all home; Mom would ask way too many questions, and it wouldn't all fit in my closet there anyway. I took a deep breath and started hanging things up in the closet. The stuff I'd never worn before was easy, but the second box held the stuff that I'd worn while I'd been living with Alec and Rachel.

  I knew Rachel would have had it laundered before packing it up and sending it to me, but in some indefinable way it still smelled like Sanctuary. Even worse, each article of clothing reminded me of Alec in some way or another. I'd worn the brown hiking boots on our trip up to the top of the mountain that sheltered the estate. The paint-speckled tank top had borne witness to the one and only time Alec had taken me to his studio and tried to teach me how to paint.

  It was both harder and easier to deal with than I'd expected when I first opened the box and saw all of 'my' clothes sitting there. Easier because I didn't pass out or even really have to fend off a serious panic attack. Harder because it was like I was having to leave Alec all over again.

  I was crying before I managed to finish cleaning out the second box, but it was the good kind of crying. It left me feeling tired and wrung out, but somehow lighter. I cleaned the remnants of my mascara off my cheeks and turned to the last box. There was a handwritten note inside the box, on the top of all the clothes.

  Adri,

  This is all of the stuff that I was planning on giving you for Christmas. I expected you to be able to wear it on the skiing trip. I figure you probably need the cold-weather gear there in New York even more than the rest of the stuff I'm sending. I'm sorry. I would have just sent it right to you, but I didn't know how you'd feel about that. You seemed pretty determined to cut all ties with us when you left.

  If you see this then I guess that means you and Isaac are getting along better than I'm afraid you will. I'm sorry about all of this. Alec wouldn't even talk about his decision before he sent Isaac to you. I'm sorry the pack is intruding on your life again, but I'm glad you'll have someone there to watch over you.

  The handwriting was unmistakably Rachel's, and for a few seconds I almost broke down into more tears, but I managed to hold myself together, if just barely. I'd forgotten about the trip that Alec had planned on taking us all on over Christmas. It took everything I had to keep myself from imagining what the trip would have been like, but I sternly kept my mind in the present as I put away a dozen incredibly soft sweaters and other assorted articles of clothing.

  I wasn't sure what to do with the boxes, so I wandered through the house looking for Isaac's study. The rest of the place was just as incredible as what I'd seen so far. The floors all seemed to be a combination of lush carpet or heated stone, and the furniture had the simple elegance that you only got when you were ready to really open up your wallet.

  Again and again my gaze kept coming back to the huge windows that seemed to occupy every single exterior wall. I'd started to feel almost...claustrophobic since we'd moved to New York. That wasn't quite the right word, but more and more I'd begun feeling like there wasn't any way to get away from all of the people around me. There were too many of us packed in much too small of a space, but I didn't get that feeling here. Looking out over Central Park with the light dusting of snow that covered all of the trees, I felt for the first time like I could deal with living in the city as long as I had access to a place like this.

  The study proved to be a massive room that had gigantic bookshelves on two walls and a desk with the biggest leather chair I'd ever seen. Isaac had a large antenna rigged on one edge of the desk and was typing commands into a terminal.

  "What do you want me to do with the boxes now that they are empty?"

  "Just pull them out into the hall and the maid service will take care of them sometime tomorrow."

  "You have a maid service, too?"

  Isaac nodded absently. "Yes, a very exclusive, bonded service comes in four times a week to keep everything tidy."

  Yet again with the whole bit about blowing my mind.

  "So what are you doing right now?"

  Isaac pushed himself back from his desk with the air of someone who was having to make a conscious effort to bring themselves back to reality.

  "Sorry, I was in pretty deep there. In short, I'm trying to create a more secure route to use for communications back to Sanctuary."

  "What, like encryption?"

  "Yes, but that's only one layer of what I'm doing. The encryption piece is pretty easy. The hard part is making sure the communications can't be tracked back here. In Sanctuary I've already got a pretty bulletproof system in place along with hacks into a few key bits of telecom equipment that allow me to monitor when someone starts getting close enough that I need to rework the paths. That isn't an option here, at least not in the time I'm willing to spend on it."

  My head was already starting to hurt. Isaac was going to get way over my head, but after the way that my mom had rocked my world earlier that day, I really didn't want to just hide out by myself in my new room.

  "Can you use less tech speak?"

  Isaac smiled like I'd just issued a challenge and then pointed to the antenna. "Essentially, I'm going to hack some of the nearby wireless routers. I'll bounce our traffic from one wireless device to the next so that there is a long trail that the Coun'hij or the police would have to unravel in order to trace everything back to here."

  That I could follow. "So how will you know if they start coming after you?"

  "That's actually the interesting part. Essentially, I go in and overwrite each router's firmware. The package that comes from the manufacturer is more bloated than most of them realize. I put a dummy interface in place that matches up with what the owner is expecting to see and then bury the true protocols further down. It lets me make sure that there isn't any kind of logging going on as well as forcing the router to connect to other routers."

  "So you've made it so that there isn't anything in place for them to track back?"<
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  "More or less. They could eventually figure out what I'm doing if they opened the device up and accessed the ROMs, but the only way they will really get me is if I load my firmware up onto a router that they've already turned into a giant trap. I'm going to suborn the closest couple of hundred devices over the next three or four days, and then I just won't go after any new devices that come online."

  I could kind of follow the fringes of what he was saying, and it seemed like a smart way to do things, but I could already see a problem even with my limited understanding.

  "So what happens when all of the devices you hack end up breaking or disappearing? Your network will vanish at that point."

  Isaac nodded, seemingly impressed. "Yep, you're right. That's why this isn't a great long-term solution. It's one of the reasons that I didn't use it for our Sanctuary security protocols, that and the fact that we don't have anywhere near enough wireless routers close enough together there to make it work. This won't last forever, but it will at least work for a couple of years, and by then, if you don't decide to go somewhere else for college, I'll have had enough time to put something more permanent in place."

  Isaac casually threw around terms like 'years' and 'college'. It made it sound like this arrangement was going to be longer-lasting than I would have expected. I opened my mouth to prove him a little bit on that point, but my phone vibrated with a text.

  Russ is gone, I made excuses for you. I'm sorry that I sprang things on you like that. Where are you and when are you coming home?

  I had to hand it to Mom; she trusted me more than she had back in Utah. I suspected it was because she'd seen me make a really hard choice and she was still confident that it was the right choice.