by Sharon Sala
“Thank you, sir,” Charlie said, adding, “See you tomorrow” before he hung up.
“Be at the hangar at 7:30 a.m. It’s less than a two-hour flight, but it’s always good to leave time for delays,” Wyrick said.
Charlie nodded and then glanced at the clock. It was less than an hour before quitting time.
“Switch the office calls to voice mail. I’ll lock up. You’ve done a good job today.”
Wyrick was surprised and she let it show before she thought, and then she tried to blow off the compliment.
“It’s a kid in danger. That always changes the level of trouble,” she said. “Don’t forget to log off your PC. I’ll empty the coffeepot before I go,” she said and left his office.
Charlie eyed the computer on his desk and frowned.
“I would have remembered to do that,” he muttered but did as he was told.
Wyrick dumped the coffee grounds, rinsed out the carafe and made sure all of the appliances were turned off, then logged out of her own computers, grabbed her things and left the office.
Charlie wasn’t far behind.
* * *
Hank Raines’s visit to the deputy director’s office had raised new interest in a cult already on their radar. He was already initiating contact with the Kentucky division of the Bureau, who would be coordinating contact to take them to the location.
Telling his partner, Luis Chavez, they were leaving in two days for Lexington, Kentucky, had been easier than he’d expected. Normally, Luis liked to stay close to his family in Dallas, but his mother-in-law had been visiting from Phoenix for over a week, and he was ready to get out of the house.
* * *
Jordan had already explored the old dormitory, looking for anything she could turn into a weapon. The power and water were still on, which must have made it acceptable quarters for them to put her there.
Windows opened from the inside, but there were bars on the outsides of every one. The back room was devoid of furniture, and water still dripped from rusty showerheads in the gym-style showers. The bedsprings on which the mattresses rested all squeaked, and there were obvious signs of rats having nested within the stuffing.
She found an old flashlight in one of the bed stands but the batteries were dead. Still, it felt good to have something solid in her hand. After poking around in the storage closets, she found a piece of two-by-four about five feet long, so she took it with her back into the main room. The place was cold and creepy and she wanted Mama and home like she’d never wanted anything before.
When the sun began going down, she turned on the lights in every room to remind them she was there, still needing the necessities. She was headed toward the bed where they’d tossed her bag, when she caught movement from the corner of her eye, then shrieked in panic.
A six-foot-long rattlesnake was slithering across the floor, and when she screamed, it coiled up and began to shake its rattles in warning. Her heart was pounding so fast it was hard to breathe, but she couldn’t let it get away. She couldn’t spend the night in here knowing there was a live rattlesnake anywhere on the premises. Holding the two-by-four like a baseball bat, she began inching her way closer.
The snake’s tongue was flickering like the flame of a tiny candle as the rattles grew louder. It was coiling tighter now, readying to strike when Jordan swung the board down onto the coils with all of her strength.
The snake began writhing in a way that Jordan knew it was injured, so she swung again and again until it was broken and bleeding in multiple places, and the head was nearly severed from the body. She had been sobbing with every blow.
Once she finally realized it was dead, she shoved it all the way to the front door and left it as a greeting for the next people to walk in. She turned around to scan the room, making sure there wasn’t a second snake anywhere in sight, but all she saw was the pool of blood and the blood streaks where she’d pushed it to the door.
She didn’t want to be in here, and the thought of accidentally walking in that blood in the night gave her the creeps. She was looking around for something to wipe up the blood when she heard rustling in the shadows behind her. Fearing it was another snake, she spun around and caught a glimpse of three huge, fat rats scurrying away.
“Nooooo!” she screamed and began chasing after them, then swinging the board at the windows and the walls, shattering glass from one end of the dormitory to the other until there wasn’t a solid piece of glass left in any window.
She could hear shouting outside, so she knew they’d heard her, but she wasn’t through. There were rats at the door now, eating on the snake, and she ran toward them screaming in rage. She stomped one as it ran past, then finished it off with her two-by-four, before killing another one.
She was standing in the middle of the room with the two-by-four held across her body like a soldier holding his weapon, splattered in blood, her chest heaving and her hair as wild as the look in her eyes, when the door flew inward.
The first man to come through the doorway stumbled when he saw the snake, and the one behind him ran into him and knocked him flat onto the bloody carcasses of two rats and one snake.
He began shrieking and screaming, trying to get up, and his screams brought even more men coming. They saw the snake, the dead rats and the girl standing in middle of the floor, waiting for her next victim, and they froze, suddenly realizing what they’d done by putting her here.
But it was Jud who pushed past them and walked toward her, horrified by what he’d allowed to happen, and holding out his hand.
“It’s okay, baby. It’s okay. You aren’t going to stay here. I won’t have it,” he said softly.
Jordan shook her head once from side to side, as if trying to clear away the horror of what she’d endured, and then backed up, still holding the wood.
Her voice was flat, completely devoid of emotion, which made the scene that much more horrifying.
“Stay away from me. All of you.”
A two-way radio suddenly crackled.
Jordan heard the man answer, then begin to explain what the noise had been about.
“Yes, Master. Right away, Master,” the man said, then signed off and pointed. “Archangel Troy, get her bag. The Seraphim has ordered for her to be taken to the dormitory with the other girls.”
Two of the men started toward Jordan, and when they did, she swung the board back over her shoulder like she was at bat waiting for the next pitch, and hunched slightly to center her stance.
“Don’t come near me!” she screamed.
Jud wanted to weep. The blood splatters on her hands and arms were telling, but it was the streaks on her cheek and clothes that told the full story of how frantic she’d been.
“Don’t!” Jud told the others. “I’ll take her.”
Jordan was cornered and she knew it. She didn’t want another knockout injection in her neck, and when Jud started toward her, she dropped the board and held up her hands like she was being arrested.
“Damn it, Jordan! Don’t do that,” Jud said.
“Is that other dormitory a lockdown facility?”
He sighed.
“That’s what I thought. Then I’m a prisoner, and you’re all still perverts waiting for your old pimp to pick the next girl for you to fuck. I hate you. I hate all of you.”
And with that, she walked out of the building with her hands still up in the air, stepping over the dead rats and the bloody snake as they escorted her to the other girls in angry silence.
* * *
The girls had also heard the glass breaking and all the screaming, and they’d watched through the windows as the Archangels went running. They knew why she’d been isolated, because they’d witnessed her fighting the men and defying orders. So when they saw her being marched toward them with her hands in the air, they stared at each other in disbelief.
“She
’s all bloody. What happened to her? Did they already beat her? Is she going to fight us, too?” one girl asked.
Miranda Powers, who called herself Randi, was secretly in awe of the new girl’s defiance.
“Of course not,” Randi said. “She’s just scared, like we were when we first came.”
The girls agreed with the explanation, but they were still huddled together with uncertainty when the men brought Jordan inside.
“Don’t talk to her,” they ordered.
The girls ducked their heads and looked away.
“You will sleep here,” Jud said and left her bag on a bed that was already made up. “The girls will show you where everything is. They’ll all go to dinner soon, so get cleaned up. You can’t go looking like that.”
“You’re not my father anymore. You can’t tell me what to do,” Jordan said and turned her back on him.
Jud’s heart was hurting, but he left with the other men without arguing with her.
Jordan turned around as soon as the men left. The girls were all staring at her. She guessed they were afraid of her because she’d fought back. But instead of talking to them, she just lay down on her bed, rolled over to face the wall and curled up into a ball.
“Aren’t you going to clean up?” one girl asked.
Jordan closed her eyes, listening to their whispers and the occasional giggle. The door opened again later, and she heard them all marching out, then heard a lock turn.
Her belly was grumbling from want of food, but she’d rather go hungry than obey. However, now that she was alone, she got up and scoped out the building. The only entrance was the one she’d come through, and it was locked. These windows didn’t have bars, but the heavy wire screens over the windows were permanent and served the same purpose.
One thing she noticed was the lack of mirrors. There was a bookshelf full of books about psychic phenomena and mediums, as well as books on astrology and child-rearing. Ridiculous reading for kids.
The ancient refrigerator in the corner had nothing in it but bottled water. There was a small sitting area with a sofa and a few easy chairs, and a long craft table with a dozen straight-backed chairs lined up around it. The projects were simplistic and in various stages of completion, along with a stack of men’s clothing that they were obviously mending...or learning to mend. Things they would need as married women. The absurdity of it all equaled the horror of their situation.
She went back to her bed, unfolded the blanket at the foot, then wrapped it around her like a cocoon. Unwilling to undress or remove her shoes in case she got a chance to run, she lay down and curled up, facing the wall.
She knew when the girls came back, but they thought she was asleep. Oddly enough, now that she was no longer alone in the building, she felt safer and fell asleep listening to their chatter.
* * *
It was 4:00 a.m. when Charlie’s phone began to ring. He woke abruptly, always afraid it would be Morning Light calling about Annie, and then saw it was Wyrick.
“What’s wrong?”
“There’s a huge thunderstorm heading this way. We either cancel the appointment or try to leave ahead of it. If you can be at the hangar in an hour, I can get us out of here. It’s your call,” Wyrick said.
“I’ll see you at the hangar,” Charlie said, rolling out of bed. This was going to be the day he went to work without a shower or a shave.
He dressed in record time, grabbed his things and raced out the door. The traffic shouldn’t be bad at this time of the morning, although there was always traffic in Dallas. By the time he hit the loop, he had a little over forty minutes to get to the hangar on the outskirts of the city.
* * *
Wyrick was already dressed and heading for her Mercedes when she called Charlie. She knew what he’d choose and she wasn’t going to call her flight mechanic at this time of the morning. She could get the chopper out of the hangar on her own, and she’d already called her flight mechanic to get it ready after Tara Bien’s visit. If their timing didn’t get messed up, they’d be in the air and on the way to Phoenix before the storm reached Dallas.
For once, she drove without checking headlights behind her. Focused on the urgency at hand, she darted in and out of lanes and accelerated in the open spots until she finally reached her exit. She took it without slowing down, and was checking for headlights coming and going at the cross street before she reached the stop sign. Since it was clear both ways, she blew through it and took a right. Ten minutes later she came over a hill, saw the security lights at the landing field and gunned the engine. She sped through the gate and headed toward her hangar, then came to a sliding stop. Within moments she was out of the Mercedes and running toward the doors. She keyed in the code on the security panel, then waited impatiently for them to open.
As soon as she was in, she began flipping on lights and then made a run for the aircraft caddie she’d pimped out to tow her chopper. Once she had it out of the hangar, she drove her Mercedes inside, grabbed her things out of the passenger seat, then locked her car and set the alarm.
She used a flashlight to do her exterior check of the chopper and was almost finished when she felt the wind change. She looked up just as the distant rumble of thunder sounded, and glanced toward the south. She saw a flash of lightning, and then it was dark again.
“Come on, Charlie Dodge. We don’t have much time,” she muttered and then finished what she was doing.
When she noticed her little ice chest behind the pilot seat, she guessed Benny had gone above and beyond when he’d fueled up the chopper for her yesterday. She jumped in and started it up, going through the preflight check and hoping Charlie would show up soon.
The rotors were spinning when she saw headlights come over the hill. At that point, she breathed a sigh of relief. He’d made it.
She jumped out, waving him into the hangar to park, and when he got out running, she pointed toward the chopper.
“Get in and buckle up!” she shouted.
Charlie didn’t miss a step and kept running while Wyrick keyed in the code to shut the hangar doors.
Charlie jumped into the seat and slid his door shut before he bothered to look up, then watched Wyrick sprinting toward the chopper. She was in blue jeans, a plain white T-shirt and a denim jacket. He’d never seen her without makeup, and his first thought was how beautiful she was. The moment that went through his mind, he froze. Oh hell no, you don’t go there, Charlie Dodge. Then he looked away as Wyrick jumped in and buckled her seat belt. Within seconds she had her headset on and was revving up the rotors.
The storm was close now, because she could see trash blowing across the runway. She looked back just as a bolt of lightning shot across the sky. She glanced at Charlie once to make sure he was ready, then lifted off and made a half circle over the landing field before heading west, less then fifteen minutes ahead of the rapidly approaching storm front.
Charlie adjusted his headset and turned up the volume so he could hear her speaking.
“That was close,” he said. “Thanks for this. It was a good save.”
“Didn’t you watch the weather last night?” she asked.
“I didn’t think to, but you obviously did,” Charlie said.
“Obviously,” Wyrick replied.
Conversation was sparse after that.
Charlie dozed.
Wyrick chewed gum and wished for coffee. Without her usual outrageous clothing and makeup, she felt naked, so there was that to add to the stress of being this close to Charlie without her armor.
About an hour into the flight Wyrick remembered the ice chest, then swallowed her gum and poked Charlie’s arm to wake him.
He woke abruptly, making sure that land was still before them rather than coming up at them.
“What?”
“I need caffeine,” she said. “There’s an ice chest behind my seat,
likely with pop and candy. Hand me a Snickers candy bar and a Pepsi.”
“And...what do you say?” Charlie drawled.
Wyrick’s eyes narrowed warningly. “Please, dammit, hand me a pop and a bar of candy.”
Charlie laughed out loud and reached behind her seat, rummaged around inside the contents that were kept cold with ice, and pulled out two cans of pop. He opened the top on hers and handed it to her, then put his can between his legs as he reached for the candy.
Wyrick took a quick sip of the Pepsi, relishing the carbonation tingle as it went down the back of her throat, then took a few more sips until she felt the caffeine beginning to kick in.
After that she tore the wrapper off her Snickers with her teeth and ate while trying to ignore Charlie’s presence.
The caffeine and sugar were enough of a pick-me-up to last until they landed in Phoenix.
Six
The sun had already risen behind them when Wyrick began talking to the tower at Phoenix Sky Harbor International, requesting landing instructions. It was barely 7:00 a.m., which meant they were going to have some serious time to kill before their 11:00 a.m. appointment.
A short time later they were directed to a smaller runway and came down on a landing site near a hangar. They emerged from the chopper, and then Wyrick reached back inside, got a bag from the back and slipped the strap over her shoulder.
Charlie promptly transferred the bag from her shoulder to his, then narrowed his eyes, daring her to argue.
She shrugged.
“You’re welcome,” he said and followed her all the way to the car rental.
After standing in line for a bit, they picked up the key and then the SUV—a white late-model Jeep Sahara.
“Nice,” Charlie said, and Wyrick tossed him the key.
As soon as she was seated, he handed her the bag and then got in and started it up.
