They'll Call It Treason

by Jordon Greene

  Austin leaned back in his chair, his eyes wide open as the feed continued to play. He moved the mouse and closed the video just as Ethan went on the run. That was all he needed to know.

  Ethan is innocent.

  “Shit,” Austin exclaimed under his breath. Ethan was innocent. The real rogue agent was still at large. Austin pulled a USB drive from his pocket and inserted it into the PC tower. He needed a copy of that video; the media needed a copy of that video.

  Austin hunched closer to the screen and clicked on the file again.

  File Does Not Exist.

  The small warning flashed onto the screen. Austin raised an eyebrow and tried again. Same error. Someone had deleted the evidence.

  It’s time to leave.

  CHAPTER 28

  January 29 at 8:15 p.m. EST

  Location Unknown

  The air stank of mold and mildew. After half an hour of consciousness, Kate’s senses were only minutely adjusted to the foul air.

  She was bound to an old metal chair. It was uncomfortable and cold. The room was dreadfully dark. Although her eyes had adapted to the dark she was still unable to peer through the shadows around her. There was nothing within her sight — nothing but the blackness that surrounded her. It seemed like the dark was absorbing the faint light from the lone incandescent bulb hanging above her.

  Her wrists were bound tightly to the arms of the chair. Her ankles strapped to the footrest a little too far apart against the outside frame of the chair. Her thighs ached, and her head pounded from the wreck. Whatever they had used to knock her out was still working itself through her system. The last bit of nausea was just now diminishing.

  To her left sat a miniature, wheeled, metal tray with all manner of menacing implements laid on its surface. A long, pointed pick device, a t-shaped corkscrew, a scalpel, a pair of locking pliers, and a meat tenderizer. She held down the urge to vomit.

  After the first glance, she refused to look at the tray again. She had seen enough, and it horrified her. The thought of a scalpel running across her chest or the meat tenderizer bludgeoning her hand sent chills down her spine and another bought of nausea.

  When she wakened, bound inside this all too vivid nightmare, her mind raced for answers. Where was Gray? Had he been killed in the crash, or perhaps murdered? Or had they captured him, too? Maybe he was somewhere nearby. Torture. Would they torture her? Who was behind all this? Am I going to die here?

  Finally, her thoughts had slowed, almost normalized… almost. There was nothing she could do but wait and endure. Tears had long since failed to spill out of her bloodshot eyes and down her cheeks.

  Time and again Kate’s thoughts returned to Ethan. He is innocent. She knew it for sure now. Had he been caught too? She tried to hold on to some small string of hope. She imagined him waiting for her at the cabin.

  Her entire body ached. The rigid structure of the chair aggravated her injuries from the wreck. Minutes earlier, in a momentary wave of panic, Kate attempted to break free of the restraints digging into her wrists. Blood clotted around the plastic straps, and the slightest movement made her skin burn. It did not take her long to stop trying. It was useless, and painful.

  Click…

  It came from behind her. She froze. Then came another click, followed by a sharp staccato squeal. A faint light filtered in behind her. A door was opening.

  She heard the sound of calm, deliberate footsteps approaching. Against every inner warning, Kate tried to see the source of the sound. She pulled against the straps, but could not turn far enough.

  Panic set in. She jerked and kicked, trying to break free. The straps held fast; the pain in her wrists intensified. A scream rose in her throat.

  “Now, now, Doctor Connors. Calm down,” advised a deep, throaty voice just out of sight.

  Kate halted her struggling and tried again to look behind her to no avail. The footsteps came closer.

  “How are you feeling, Doctor?” the voice taunted her as it closed in.

  She fixed her gaze straight ahead, suddenly horrified to see her captor. Something inside had clicked and her desire to know to whom the voice belonged to vanished. A crushing fear of the unknown, of some ominous stranger, arose in its place.

  A tall figure walked out from the darkness behind her. He was nothing like her mind had conjured—old, ugly, twisted. That rough voice belonged to a rather handsome man, tall and solidly built. Arctic blue eyes, perfectly styled chestnut hair, and a flawless tan.

  For a brief second she felt a reassuring calm cast on her through the man's pale eyes. Blinking the calm away she resurrected the wall between them. She could not let her guard down. A pretty face meant nothing.

  The man continued to walk around her until he stood about a foot in front of her, next to the tray of horrors.

  “Good evening, Doctor. I hope you’re not too uncomfortable,” his voice turned sarcastic. “We just couldn’t risk losing track of you before we’d asked you a few questions.”

  “Who are you?” Kate stammered.

  The man smiled. “Agent Sean Abrams, FBI.”

  “Impossible,” Kate retorted, not really believing her own words as they flowed from her lips. “The FBI doesn’t kidnap people and torture them,” she said, referring to the tool tray.

  The Agent took a few steps in front of her, “Something tells me you don’t really believe that Doctor, considering the amusing opinion pieces you’ve published.”

  He was right; she had long spoken out against the proliferation of enhanced interrogation techniques by many in the intelligence community. Rendition came to mind. Experiencing it herself forced Kate to realize that underneath her criticisms, somehow she had still placed trust in their authority.

  She refused to answer. She waited stubbornly as a thought crossed her mind. Is this the man Ethan warned me about?

  Abrams turned and took a few steps toward the dark veil and then about-faced. “Now, Doctor. I’ll be asking the questions from this point forward and you’d do well to listen and cooperate, for your own sake.” His voice was calm and calculated as he turned to meet her eyes.

  “Where is Ethan Shaw?”

  She met his gaze, but refused to answer as she tried to pull herself back in, to concentrate on the situation.

  “Did you not hear me, Doctor?” Sean asked, still calm. “I asked you where Agent Shaw is.”

  Kate searched for a way out, a way to avoid torture. The only route seemed to be giving Ethan up, and that was not an option. She could not lie; she had never been any good at it and Abrams would see right through her.

  Just be silent. Don’t say a word.

  “Doctor, I know you spoke with Ethan just hours ago. I know that you met with another agent in Greensboro.” A light seemed to flick on in Sean’s eyes. “Oh, I almost forgot. I’m sorry to inform you of this, but your friend, Agent Whitaker… he’s dead. He died in the car wreck we found you in. We left him there for the coroner to pick up.”

  Kate lowered her head, letting the tears start, but she was only allowed to grieve for a moment. Gray.

  “Oh, and you really should have listened to your boyfriend,” Sean explained, his voice icy. “You didn’t tear apart your phone like he told you to, and it led us right to you.”

  A wall of shame bore down on Kate. It had been her fault. She meant to remove the battery, but in her fear induced frenzy she had forgotten. Gray paid the price for her carelessness. Her fear gave way to grief, and she began to sob.

  “Cheer up, Doctor. Just work with us here and no one else has to die.”

  Kate held in the sobs, but her body shook with them. Gray had died trying to save her. She could never repay him, never thank him. Her heart was broken.

  “Shall we continue, Doctor?” Sean urged. He slowed his speech, speaking each word distinctly. His voice deepened. “Where is Ethan Shaw?”

  “I don’t know,” she whispered, her voice cracking.

  “Stop playing games with me. I don’t have the patience
for it and you don’t have the time for it.” His voice became more dangerous. “To be honest with you, I am with the FBI, but… Well, you may have surmised this is not exactly an officially sanctioned mission. No one is looking over my shoulder, so I’m unfettered by pesky legal constraints. It’s very freeing.”

  Sean reached to his waist and lifted his shirt and peeled back a white cloth bandage exposing a tightly stitched wound running across his abdomen. Kate could see where something had torn along his side, leaving a long etching along his side. It was recent, freshly stitched.

  “You see this?” he prodded as he walked around her. She recoiled at the warm mist of his breath on her ear as he spoke in a hushed voice, “You see, I’m the man your damned boyfriend shot.”

  “No shit,” Kate surprised herself. “Why else would you have come for me?”

  Thrown of kilter for a moment Sean rebounded.

  “You surprise me Kate,” he said, for the first time using her given name. “Yes, you’re right.”

  “You killed Jason,” Kate railed bitterly as the realization hit her. It was him.

  Kate screamed as Sean grabbed a fistful of her hair and yanked, wrenching her head back.

  He spoke into her ear again, his hot breath rolling down her neck. A voice laced with malice filled her ears.

  “And I’m the man who’s going to run down your little boyfriend and put a round through his fucking skull.”

  Kate shivered. He was a monster. She was in awe of the rage inside him.

  “So. It’s you or him. Your choice.”

  Kate remained silent, tears flowing down her face.

  “Where is Ethan?!” Sean thundered in her ear, pulling back on her hair violently.

  Kate shook, her ears echoed. “I don’t know.”

  Sean released her hair and stood up straight. He walked back around to face her and bent down until he was at eye level with Kate. “Here’s the thing, Kate. You’re not doing yourself any favors keeping silent for him. You will talk. The only question is how much meaningless sacrifice you’ll make just to hold out a little longer. It won’t make any difference to me. If anything, I hope you’ll continue to be stubborn for at least a while, so we can have some fun.”

  He eyed the small tray to his right, surveying the tools that sat atop it. He looked back at Kate with a predatory grin. She closed her eyes against a wave of nausea.

  Sean walked over to the opposite side of the tray and picked up the long pick and then gave Kate’s body a once-over. He breathed in and exhaled, “I’ll give you some time to think about it, Doctor. It’s you or him, your decision.”

  Sean put the pick down and walked off into the darkness. Kate unglued her eyes from the tool tray and slowed her breathing.

  What do I do?

  She could not give Ethan away; she would not. It was not an option. The consequences of that choice flooded over her. It was to bear. She lowered her head and cried.

  CHAPTER 29

  January 29 at 8:35 p.m. EST

  Springfield, VA – Home of Richard Hunt

  “Mary, could you pass the gravy?” Richard asked his youngest daughter. Mary’s long, brown braid dangled down the back of the chair next to Richard, swinging gently as she passed the gravy bowl.

  She gave him one of her whopping smiles when he took the bowl, showing a gap left by two missing baby teeth. Richard had helped pull the first of them earlier in the week. She had cried, so frightened that it would hurt, until she realized it was nearly painless. He couldn’t help but smile tenderly now at the pride she held in her achievement.

  “Thank you, dear.”

  “You’re welcome, Daddy!” Mary giggled happily.

  He exchanged knowing smiles across the table with his wife, Sarah—a short, plump lady five years his junior, with deep brown eyes and short, greying hair.

  To his surprise, Megan, Richard’s eldest daughter, had graced them with her presence. A junior in high school, she rarely put in an appearance these days. She was usually out “studying” with friends, or if home, ensconced in her room, shunning the indignity of family togetherness. Tonight Megan sat to his right, silently nibbling away at the sliced turkey on her plate.

  Their relationship had grown strained. Richard did not approve of her short skirts, low cut tops or even her choice in friends. It seemed the more barriers he put in place the more she pushed the envelope of his patience. He remembered how reckless he had been as a teenager and there were so many more ways to mess up these days. He loved her dearly—it was just hard to show it when the largest portion of his time with her consisted of exchanging icy goodbyes.

  There was at least one thing they shared. Like his eldest daughter, Richard was not enthused about being at the table for dinner. It was Sarah who insisted on the tradition at least once every week, usually on the weekend. Richard preferred to take his meal to the living room and watch sports or the news, but Sarah put up with a lot and asked for so little; he felt he owed it to her.

  As he poured the gravy over his last slice of turkey, his cell phone vibrated at his side. He waited and put down the bowl. Only one vibration: a text message.

  He retrieved his phone from its leather case and unlocked the screen. Without looking he could feel the disapproving expression on his wife’s face from across the table. It was a text from Aran.

  Call me. We may have a lead.

  Richard raised his phone, “I’ve got to call the office, dear.”

  Sarah huffed and rolled her eyes. Richard silently thanked Aran and left the table. He walked down the hall and into his study before dialing. He took a seat behind his desk as the phone rang.

  So far the leads had all seemed to fizzle. A lot of scared or overzealous citizens in Georgia calling in every silver sedan they saw on the road, but nothing concrete. He needed good news.

  “Sir,” Aran answered the phone, “I hope I’m not bothering you.”

  “What do you have?” Richard did not bother to thank Aran for pulling him away from the silence of the dinner table.

  “First, we still don’t have any leads on Agent Whitaker or Doctor Connors,” Aran explained. “After our agents lost Gray on his way to Greensboro we’ve not been able to pick up his trail again. We’re not even sure he went to Greensboro.”

  Richard dropped his chin and sighed.

  “We also cannot get a lock on any of their cell phones. It's safe to say they've probably picked up some temporary pre-paid phones. So we cannot use that avenue to track them.”

  “You said you had a lead, Aran. What is it?” Richard complained. “I need good news, not more dead ends.”

  “I do, sir. About forty minutes ago we got a hit on the license plate for Ethan's last known vehicle at a convenience store. It seemed like a long shot, but we got a hold of the security cameras. The tags match; it’s him, sir.”

  Richard brightened. “Where was he?”

  “Black Mountain, North Carolina.”

  “What? That’s nowhere near Rockingham.”

  Aran paused for a moment. “That’s right, sir. He’s halfway across the state from where we’ve been searching.”

  “Dammit!” They had been tricked. Shaw had used a fake location on the phone call to his fiancée. That was always a possibility, but without more to go on, they’d had no choice but to follow the lead. The Bureau’s resources had concentrated on the false lead while Shaw moved well out of the search range.

  “He threw us off the trail. Not bad.” For a moment, Richard almost admired Shaw’s strategic forethought. “So do we know where he is now?”

  “No sir,” Aran informed the Director. “We’ve moved the center of our search to Black Mountain. We’re covering everything within a hundred-mile radius of the last known sighting. It’s mostly trees and wildlife out there, so the drones should be able to find him quickly.”

  “The population may be less dense, but there are a lot of places to hide if you really don’t want to be found,” Richard countered. “Keep the drones flyin
g. I want him located by morning.”

  “Yes, sir.” Aran paused and then added, more carefully, “One more thing, sir.”

  “Yes?”

  “Agents Austin Conway and Dante Mercer left their field office this afternoon. Conway had not yet been through questioning. They didn’t tell anyone where they were going.” Aran cleared his throat. “We think they may be on their way to meet with Agent Shaw.”

  Richard sighed. Could it get any worse?

  “Is everyone losing their damn minds?” Richard ranted.

  “We have drones searching for them, and eyes on the highways and CCTV cameras, sir.” Aran reassured him.

  “That’ll have to do. Keep me posted.”

  Richard ended the call and placed his cell on the desk in front of him. He leaned back into the comfort of his black leather desk chair. They still had a long way to go, but at least they now had something concrete.

  CHAPTER 30

  January 29 at 11:35 p.m. EST

  Blowing Rock, NC

  The highland road curved precariously over the mountain’s edge as the moonlight cast eerie shadows over the Blue Ridge Parkway. Ethan pushed past the speed limit as much as he dared.

  To his left rose a giant rock face decorated with towering red spruce and barren hickory trunks. To his right, the mountain fell steeply. The tops of countless trees were visible for miles out and the clear, starry sky sparkled above.

  Ethan tried not to look over the side of the mountain. Each time his eyes strayed, he imagined the car plummeting over the edge, crashing to a deadly halt hundreds of feet below.

  The cabin was only a few miles up the road. The closer he got, the more anxious he grew. Had Gray understood his message? Did he remember the cabin? The thoughts kept running through his head.

  Over the past two years Ethan had neglected the cabin. He believed Gray had used it once for a weekend getaway, but otherwise it sat alone, unused. He wondered how long they would have in the mountains before the Bureau found them. It would only be a matter of time before they checked in to his decommissioned alias. Once that happened, their time in the mountains would be short-lived.