Mender (The Ashport Mender Series Book 2)

by G. K. Lund

  “Pervert,” I added for good measure.

  “Clearly, you’re not in Ashport because of Ms. Kirby’s kidnapping,” Hansen said.

  “Nor do you seem very intent on arresting her,” Larkin countered while nodding in my direction.

  “We don’t have time for this,” I interrupted. “Look at your situation, Agent.”

  He didn’t have a choice. If he turned to shoot at Hansen, I would attack him. If he shot at me, Hansen would shoot him. I hoped.

  Larkin considered for a moment and then took a pained step toward Hansen and handed him the tranquilizer gun, hilt first. I guess he didn’t trust me not to shoot him with it.

  “You’re making a mistake,” Larkin told Hansen, who simply changed his grip on the weapon and shot the agent. The dart hit him in the stomach, and he stared down at it in stunned silence. Then his eyes rolled back in his head and he fell sideways, hitting the ground with a thump.

  “Where did he come from?” Hansen asked, holstering his own weapon, before stepping over to the unconscious man, extracting the little red dart, and throwing it away. If someone came by, likely they would think him injured or drunk.

  I silently pointed behind me with a thumb over my shoulder. What had just happened? Hansen looked in the indicated direction–the agent had taken a steeper but shorter trail up the ridge. Hansen shook his head and turned back where he’d been heading.

  We started running again without saying a thing. There was no time to discuss any of what had happened, and we both knew the figure we’d seen had to have too much of a distance on us now. My back and side hurt, but as we neared the first camp, the pain subsided as I focused on moving further up. Desperately hoping we’d get there in time. I had been right about Hansen. He had to be running on a regular basis to keep up the pace he did. Despite the situation, I glanced at the tranquilizer gun in his hand. He hadn’t even thought twice about shooting Larkin. Simply removing the threat in one quick move. At least, for a while. I knew he’d done it before when Larkin had tried to take me out in the alley where Andrea was kidnapped. But from what Hansen had told me at the time, he had not been seen then.

  The noise from the first camp reached its peak as we ran by unseen, hidden by darkness. They were quite audible, with their singing, laughter, and loud talking.

  If there ever was a scream, we didn’t hear it. The smallest camp lay about two hundred yards above the other one, and I knew before we reached it that we were too late. The attacker had been too far ahead of us.

  A small fire was lit outside a tent. It hadn’t been tended to in a while and would soon be dying down. A light source in the tent revealed the silhouette of a person sitting in there. There was no sound.

  Hansen reached it a second before me, ripping the unzipped flap to the side as I stopped beside him. An apathetic face met us before a scream erupted. A young naked woman sitting on her knees suddenly backed away at our intrusion. She grabbed at a sleeping bag, covering herself as her scream died on her lips, terror making her stop moving. I held up my hands. Palms out, about to say something comforting as I noticed the young man who lay still next to her.

  Will. It had to be him. He didn’t move. Did not react to our being there other than looking at us with a familiar blank stare.

  Chapter 8

  “Too late,” Hansen said, straightening up. “How long since it happened?” he asked the girlfriend.

  She swallowed hard, looking at us with petrified eyes. It took her a moment to realize we weren’t there to hurt her. “Three, maybe four minutes,” she stuttered, pointing in the direction the attacker had taken.

  Hansen was about to run after the person, but I grabbed his arm, halting him. “No point,” I said. “He’s quick, and we can barely see as it is.” Hansen hesitated a moment but remained where he was. I reached out and took the tranquilizer gun from him. A question seemed to form in his eyes, but he caught on and didn’t stop me from aiming the thing at Will and shooting him with it.

  “What did you do?” his girlfriend shouted as she lunged forward so the sleeping bag fell down, pulling the little dart out of her boyfriend’s thigh. It was too late, though. I saw his eyes close as the drugs claimed him for what would hopefully be a while.

  “Right now, he was panicking. You couldn’t see it,” I said tucking the weapon into my waistband by the small of my back, while she covered herself with the sleeping bag again. “We have some long hours ahead of us. He doesn’t need to be awake for them. What’s your name?” I added. I kept my tone level, not making facts or orders optional. It worked in keeping her panic at bay.

  “Liz,” she said, tucking her dark long hair behind an ear. I saw then how young she was. Will was nineteen, and I would bet she was the same age.

  “All right, Liz,” I said. “Get dressed. We’ll wait out here, and then we’ll talk. Okay?”

  She nodded, sniffling a little and wiping away a tear that broke free. I didn’t really have time for crying people now. We needed to avoid the rest of their friends, and therefore, be quick about things.

  “You need to hold it together, and we’ll sort this out,” I said, voice stern. I didn’t have more than six years on the couple, but I suddenly felt like an old crone. Still, coddling her would get us nowhere.

  Hansen and I sat down by the fire, waiting as she got herself ready. I moved my right shoulder tentatively. It still stung from landing on the ground when Larkin threw himself at me, but all in all, I felt fine. Physically, that was. We had been too late.

  “First Andrea, and now this,” Hansen said, his voice low. He was thinking along the same lines as me. The thought of the lifeless kid in the tent next to us was intolerable. He was trapped in a living nightmare now. The drugs only staved off the inevitable. He would wake up and realize his predicament soon enough.

  I drew my knees up, leaned my elbows on them, and ran my hands through my hair. “Can’t catch a damn break,” I mumbled and grit my teeth.

  “You’re not comatose, are you?” Hansen said, surprising me. I looked up to see him putting a couple of logs on the fire.

  “Might as well be,” I said.

  “You should take your own advice. Not just dole it out.”

  “Yeah,” I sighed and looked around. He was right. The camp further down was still in high spirits. They were loud and hadn’t heard Liz’s scream, which was worrying but also a blessing for us. We didn’t need non-affiliates asking questions about this. Behind us, I saw a cooler and pulled it closer. The night was far from over, and I had no reservations in helping myself to some food.

  “So, we’re stealing now as well?” Hansen asked as he noticed what I was doing.

  “That, or asking permission after the fact,” I said, opening the container before I became disappointed. “What the hell kind of trail-mix is this?” I pulled out a bag of cut vegetables, carrots, celery and some sort of turnip? Boring.

  “Food’s food,” Hansen said, taking the bag and opening it. Apparently, he’d changed his mind. I found some water as well. That was a relief after our trip up the ridge. We ate in silence, while I stared down at the other camp. I suspected the real food was down there. Liz took her time, and I realized I might have to rush her. There wasn’t only Will. There was also an unconscious agent lying further down from us. What if one of the kids in the other camp wandered off and found him? We needed to be long gone if that happened. That did remind me of something, though.

  “How did Larkin know where I was?” I asked Hansen.

  “Ah, that.” He bit down on a piece of turnip and got his phone out of his pocket. “I guess he’s tracking me now,” he said as he took the turnip out again. He turned the phone off and removed the battery and sim card.

  “The auto shop, do you think?”

  He nodded. “Must have seen me. I knew there was something off about him.”

  “Oh, that hurts,” I taunted. “Those are your special words for me.” I couldn’t help smiling and I saw him tense up, whether because of my commen
t or smirk I didn’t know. In that moment, though, Liz finally came out of the tent, dressed in jeans and a thick sweater. It shouldn’t have taken that long to get those clothes on.

  “Please, for the love of God, tell me you’re an affiliate,” I said before she could ask us anything. She’d been there when it happened, so I couldn’t leave her there, but non-affiliates usually took some time when understanding what was going on. I had to give Hansen some credit, though. When first presented with evidence, he’d grasped the situation quick enough. But he had so many follow-up questions. It had to be an occupational hazard.

  Liz, to my relief, nodded. In turn, she looked relieved as well. Up until that point, she had probably thought we’d happened to come by their tent. I shouldn’t have been too surprised. Affiliates often found other affiliates as partners. It made life easier. Liz and Will might even have bonded because of it.

  “Okay,” I said. “My name is Maggie, and this is…uh…Nate.” Using his first name felt weird, but given the situation, formality was not what would make her trust us.

  “Oh,” she said. “I’ve heard of you. From Freddy. You know…before he—”

  “That’s nice,” I interrupted, giving her the slightest shake of my head. She did luckily take the hint despite looking confused. Unfortunately, I noticed Hansen watching me at this. Although he didn’t say anything, I could practically hear the cogwheels turning around in his head.

  I went on with what we were now to do, pretending nothing had happened. I told Liz to sit down a moment, noticing she didn’t even raise an eyebrow at our raiding their cooler. I told her what had happened, noting that she was holding any attempt at crying or panicking back now. Good. It made me like her.

  What she could tell was unfortunately very little. She and Will had been taken by surprise when a masked man had entered their tent, going for Will, who’d instantly slumped down. Liz, at first, thought he had fainted, realizing soon afterward as their attacker ran away, that her boyfriend was awake but unable to move or talk. What differed from the other attacks was the lack of violence. Both Jake and Michael had been assaulted first, but Will and Liz had obviously been in the middle of sex during the altercation. This had rendered Will distracted and confused, no doubt, when the attacker came in.

  “Why is that important?” Hansen asked when I lay this information out for them, noticing Liz blush at my directness.

  “I think it means he needs eye contact when doing his thing. If his victims run away, or worse, counterattack, remember they are quite capable of doing harm, then he’ll not be able to do this to them.”

  “He did turn Will’s face toward him,” Liz confirmed.

  “Kind of like you, isn’t it?” Hansen commented, eyes narrowed as he looked at me. I had not told him that, but I had read him. Damn it. He was good at putting two and two together. I looked away at that, focusing on Liz again.

  “You don’t happen to have an active ability, do you?” I asked bluntly. “You know, to help us get Will down to the cars?”

  It wasn’t considered rude exactly to ask about people’s affiliation, but it was kind of like asking a stranger what color underwear they were wearing. In my case, though, people usually didn’t think twice about it. I could seldom do my job if they kept things like that from me.

  Unfortunately, Liz shook her head. “I get death warnings,” she said.

  That made both me and Hansen stare at her.

  “Not at this moment,” she clarified, exasperated.

  “For crying out loud,” Hansen exclaimed. “Don’t any of you have any nice skills?”

  “Absolutely,” I said, choking down a laugh, “but they don’t really cause problems, do they?”

  “Is he…an affiliate?” Liz asked, looking at Hansen as if he was a fourth grader who’d snuck into a college lecture.

  “Nope,” I said, giving no more explanation. No need to reveal his occupation right now. She had enough to worry about. We all did. We needed to get Will somewhere he could get help.

  As we went to get him out of the tent, I saw the reason Liz had taken so long getting out of there in the first place. She had taken the time to dress him, protecting his body from both prying eyes and the elements. He would be heavy when unconscious, and I was dreading the trek back to the parking lot, and yet she’d managed this on her own. Despite the clusterfuck we were in the middle of, I was strangely moved by her act.

  Between the three of us, though, carrying Will wasn’t so bad. Especially when we got back to the trail, which was wide and without rocks and roots betraying us in the darkness. We’d taken a wide berth around the other more lively camp, and Liz hadn’t even suggested we ask them for help. That only made me more certain their friends were not affiliates.

  We passed Larkin on our way. He lay exactly as he’d fallen, looking like he was sleeping next to the trail, dressed in his dark suit.

  “Is that the guy?” Liz said, stopping as she noticed him, making us do the same. Hansen held Will under the arms, while we carried a leg each.

  “No,” I said. “That’s the pit-nipple from the FBI who’s trying to kidnap me.”

  “No kidding,” Liz said, sucking air in through her teeth, asking no more questions. “Damn cops,” she added and started walking again, making me laugh at her practical way of dealing with this information. It was such an affiliate reaction.

  In the end, we used both mine and Will’s car to drive back to Ashport as the Beetle would be crowded as hell if we were to stuff an unconscious man in the backseat. We drove to Mona’s house where Dr. Morris waited for us. There was no point in using the hospice for this. There wasn’t enough room for all three of the young men who’d been trapped in their immobile prisons.

  Hansen and I stayed until Will woke up. We could see nothing on him, of course, but I knew the panic that had to set in when realization hit him. We let Mona, Liz, and Dr. Morris deal with that. No one could help him better than his loved ones. I, sure as hell had failed him, and I had no more knowledge of how to deal with this.

  Which meant it was time to go see the Judge again.

  Chapter 9

  Gerard watched us with a look in his eyes so dark that I couldn’t think of any situation where it would be a good thing.

  “I’m sorry,” he suddenly said, the tension leaving both him and me at once. “What you told me makes me so mad, and then there’s all the pent-up anger in him mixing into it.” He pointed at Hansen, who sat next to me on the couch, seemingly calm. A flicker of confusion crossed his face, but he said nothing. Knowing his stance on my ability, I had told him about Gerard on the way over, figuring that was fair under the circumstances. Gerard seemed fine with it. He had picked up on it as soon as we’d walked through the door. He’d been surprised to see a cop in his house, especially in the middle of the night, but he hadn’t scolded me for it. It was, after all, his own orders that I deal with him.

  “This is terrible,” Gerard went on. “Three young men trapped like that. And poor Andrea Kirby, too.” He shook his head again. His soft eyes found mine and though his face didn’t smile, they did. “Are you all right, Maggie?”

  “Peachy,” I said, not wanting to go through this again. Not while Hansen was listening.

  “You’re not good at taking care of yourself when you get this invested.”

  “Yes, yes. Can we deal with your empathy thing later?”

  He smiled and nodded. “At least I tried. What do you need?”

  “I think this guy is targeting affiliates with dangerous abilities,” I said.

  “It’s not really a guess anymore, is it?” Hansen interjected. “Three cases kind of proves it, don’t you think?”

  “Fine. This guy is targeting them,” I said and turned back to Gerard. “Are there more affiliates like these three?” I could think of several in town with potentially dangerous abilities, but no one who could pose such a threat. Affiliates with thought control were, for example, never allowed to hold positions of authority in the commun
ities. One could never quite trust how they got there. It had happened in the past.

  “I can think of a few,” Gerard said, “but it’s the middle of the work week and they’re in Ashdale.”

  I sighed. Much as I hated it, I needed bait if we were going to get a chance at this guy again.

  “I would check with Annalise, if I were you,” Gerard continued. “No one knows as much about our affiliates as her.”

  This was the problem with not having a register documenting people and their affiliations. The problem did, however, not outweigh the risk of such a thing ending up in the wrong hands. He was right. Annalise was born and raised here; if anyone would know something, it would be her.

  “But I’d hold off until morning,” Gerard said. He was also right about that. It was tempting to disturb her, given the urgency, but I let the thought go. I didn’t want to cause her additional pain. We could wait a few hours.

  “Why?” Hansen asked.

  “Because she needs her sleep, that’s why,” I said, making it clear there was no discussing this. Her condition was painful to us all, but nothing compared to what it did to Annalise herself. Thankfully, Hansen didn’t press the matter. He would find out later anyway.

  I noticed Gerard tapping his thick thigh with his hand, a signal that I was allowed to listen in. I looked at him and focused on what was under the surface.

  How is he progressing?

  I could hear him as clear as if he’d been using his voice, but the little echoes and breaths in normal speech were not there. Instead, I could hear several words underneath talking over each other, vying for attention or trying to stay hidden. I focused on the conscious thoughts, though. They were easier. I could, of course, not answer Gerard the same way, but my feelings of exasperation were enough as they flooded into him.

  The corners of his mouth went up a fraction.

  I understand he is seeing some of the worst of us, but is he a threat, do you think?