“So what happened?”
“He escaped,” Chase said.
“What does that have to do with me? Or Jared?”
“We think he had help.”
“From Jared?”
“Possibly.”
“I don’t know anything about that.”
“You know I have to ask anyway. Do you know where Jared is?”
“No. And even if I did—”
“You wouldn’t tell us. Right.” Chase stood up and walked to the door. “The offer still stands,” he said as he held it ajar. When all of this had started, he’d promised her a shortened sentence if she gave him any information that might lead to Jared’s arrest.
Zira shook her head. “I’m halfway done. It’s all downhill from here.”
Chase gave her a wry smile and nodded. “Goodbye, Zira.”
“Goodbye.”
* * *
As promised, Zira was allowed one visitor the following weekend. Tripp wrote to let her know he was coming but didn’t say much else. Zira took great pains to make herself look presentable for the occasion, knowing he would worry seeing her in here.
He was sitting alone at a table when she walked into the visiting area. They were allowed one quick hug, and after so many months without human contact, Zira almost didn’t want to let him go. As they sat down across from each other, she tried to ignore his constricted pupils and pretended not to see the track marks on his arms. Her stomach knotted, but she put on a warm smile. She really was happy to see him. “Thanks for coming.”
“You know I would have come sooner if I could have. You look…” He paused as if trying to find an honest word that wasn’t going to offend her.
“I look terrible,” Zira said. She resisted the urge to comment on his own appearance, unsure of how to best approach the subject. “It’s really not so bad.”
“You shouldn’t even be in here.”
Zira shrugged. “I helped a criminal escape. I should be in here.” She hurried to change the subject. “Tell me what’s been happening. How is everyone?”
“Good,” said Tripp. “Busy, but good. Seth and Alma have been helping Chase organize this new democratic government, and of course they’re convinced it’ll solve all our problems. Not everyone’s happy about the changes, but hopefully, they’ll come around with time. Trinity runs her own news station on the Net now. She does a series meant to expose all of the Project’s dirty secrets, and she has plenty of material to work with.”
Zira grinned. “I bet she loves that.”
“Probably a little too much.”
“What about Ryku? His trial was supposed to end last month, wasn’t it?”
Tripp sighed and stared down at his hands. “Yeah. They sentenced him a few weeks ago. He’s going to serve life without parole in a maximum security prison.”
Zira’s eyes widened. “I thought he was looking at the death penalty.”
“He was,” Tripp said, the disappointment obvious in his voice. “But they’ve decided to do away with capital punishment. They only put it on the table in the first place because of what he’s done and the fact that he’s so dangerous.”
“And then they just let him live?”
“It goes back to all that stuff Chase said about Ryku still having supporters and turning him into a martyr. There are more people who still support the Project than they anticipated—a lot more. They couldn’t execute him and keep the peace.” He sighed and clasped his hands on the table. “It makes sense, I guess, but I just can’t get over it. It seems wrong after everything he’s done.”
She understood his frustration. She remembered Ryku’s threat and knew better than to believe he’d sit idly in a cell for the rest of his life. With a little extra effort, he could orchestrate assassinations from prison just as he had from inside the walls of the compound, and Zira didn’t even have to guess at who his first few targets would be. Perhaps she was safer in here than she would be outside, but that didn’t make her miss her freedom any less. “I’m sorry,” she said.
“It’s not your fault, kid. Sometimes I just wish we could have killed him when we had the chance.”
“We tried.”
“I know,” Tripp said. “It just never worked out. I guess I’m just not sure if what we got out of all this was even worth the effort. We gave everything to this rebellion, didn’t we? But now you’re locked up in here, Aubreigh’s dead, and I’ve got to watch my back everywhere I go, same as before.”
“The country is better off without Ryku in charge of things,” Zira reminded him. “Isn’t that what you wanted?”
“I don’t know anymore.” He looked down and traced a circle on the table with his finger. “They used us. Maybe you knew that already. I really thought I was making a difference and doing the right thing. But they just used us. Everything’s changing, but I’m still the same, and I don’t know where I’m supposed to fit into all of this.”
Zira had been wondering the same thing herself. She didn’t know what she would do or where she would go when she got out of prison. Tripp must feel the same way, especially after living on the run for so many years. He still had to look out for Ryku, but Ryku no longer had endless resources at his disposal to track him down, which gave Tripp more freedom. He could live his life—get a job, settle down, maybe even find a girl and have a few kids. Zira had tried to imagine herself doing the same many times, but none of the pieces seemed to fit right. They were drifters now, ghosts of a world that no longer existed and would soon only be remembered as a bad dream.
All of that, combined with his frustration over the outcome of Ryku’s trial, explained why Tripp had once again turned to drugs for comfort. Heroin was a warm, familiar friend—an escape from all the things he was unable to cope with on his own. Zira clenched her fists under the table. Maybe things would have been different if she wasn’t incarcerated. She could have helped him. They could have supported each other through all of this. Maybe she should have let Alma and the others take Jared. But they hadn’t just intended to take him. They’d wanted to kill him—or at least some of them had. Zira couldn’t have just let that happen, but she hated that the consequences of her choice might have exacerbated Tripp’s problems.
“We’ll figure it out together,” she told him, “but you have to get yourself some help.”
His eyes darted back to the table. “I know. I will.”
“Promise me.”
“I promise.” They talked for a few more minutes before the guard came to take Zira back to her cell. Tripp told her he’d come visit her again next week.
When the following weekend came, though, he never showed up. Zira feared the worst and repeatedly tried to call him using the code he’d given her in his last letter, but he never answered. When he showed up for visiting hours the week after, Zira was simultaneously relieved, furious, and concerned. He looked worse than before, and she suspected from his almost lifeless expression that he was still coming down from his last high. “You promised me you’d get help,” she said, trying not to sound as angry as she felt.
“It’s not as easy as you think,” Tripp muttered. “I’m working on it.”
“You think I’m an idiot? You’re even worse off than you were before.”
“You don’t know everything,” Tripp snapped. “I’m fine. I’m dealing with this. Get off my back.”
He’d never spoken to her that way before. Come to think of it, Zira could only remember a few occasions where Tripp had so much as raised his voice. “I’m just worried about you,” she said in a softer tone.
He stood up from the table and began to walk away. “I didn’t come here to listen to this.”
“Do you hear yourself?” she called after him, drawing attention from the other people in the visiting area. “You need help!” She wasn’t sure he heard the last part; the guard was already closing the door behind him.
She didn’t see him the following week, or the week after that. In the meantime, she tried to find a way t
o contact Seth, Alma, or Trinity to ask for help. The hoops she had to jump through to get the calls approved made the process long and tedious, but after almost a month of trying, she got through to Seth and told him what had happened.
“I’ll look into it,” he said. “I can’t promise you anything, but I’ll try to find him.”
He came to give her the news a few weeks later. Given their rocky history and how busy he must have been with his new work, the fact that he’d come all the way to see Zira in person told her something was very wrong. She braced herself for the worst when she sat down across from him. “I found him,” Seth said. “He overdosed.”
Zira’s palms became sweaty. “He’s not—dead?”
“No. Someone got him some naloxone and took him to a hospital. He’ll be fine.”
Zira swallowed the lump in her throat and resisted the urge to punch him across the table. “Fine? Nothing about this is fine. This shouldn’t have happened.”
“I understand you’re upset, but—”
“No. You just shut up and listen. I’ve been sitting in here for weeks trying to get someone to look out for him, and I shouldn’t have to do that. You should have been looking out for him already—you and Chase and Alma and whatever other friends he has. You all just bailed on him, and I can’t do anything for him because I’m stuck in here.”
“It wasn’t like that, Zira. Nobody bailed on him.”
“Then what happened?”
Seth sighed and ran a hand across the back of his neck. “He was doing fine until Ryku’s sentencing. He was angry—and I don’t blame him, but he just disappeared. He didn’t want anything to do with the rest of us. We let him have his space because we thought that was what he needed. And of course, we’ve all been very busy lately with—”
“I don’t care,” Zira said. “He did nothing but serve your stupid rebellion for six years, and this is what he gets for it? It’s not right.”
“I know, and I’m sorry, but—”
She didn’t want to hear his excuses. “Either get him the help he needs, or let me out of here so I can do it myself.”
Seth nodded. “I’m trying. I’m working on a deal to have you released early for good behavior. You’re almost finished with your sentence anyway. You’d have to do a year of parole, but you’d be out.”
“When?”
“It should only be a few more days.”
“Good,” said Zira.
“Look, I’m sorry, but at least he’s safe for now. We know where he is, and he’s being looked after. He won’t overdose again.”
Zira nodded. She was still angry, but there was some comfort in knowing Tripp’s corpse wasn’t just lying in an alley somewhere. “Don’t let them discharge him from the hospital until I can get out of here,” she said.
“I’ll see what I can do.”
Their time together was up. They shook hands and Zira walked back to her cell, unable to erase images in her mind of Tripp lying in a hospital bed or dying on the street. None of this would have happened if she had been there for him. He wasn’t just lost; he was broken. She hadn’t seen it in time, locked up in here. She should have been there for him.
True to his word, Seth cleared all the red tape to allow for Zira’s early release a few days later. She dressed in the same clothes she’d worn when the rebels attacked the compound, though someone had done her the kindness of washing the blood out. When she walked out to the lobby of the prison, there was no one waiting for her, but she hadn’t expected there to be. Tripp was hopefully still in the hospital, and everyone else was likely too busy to come pick her up. “There’s a bus stop down the road about a mile,” said the guard as he opened the door to let her out. “Good luck out there, and don’t come back.”
She felt a bit lost in the open air, but it only lasted a moment. The day was unusually warm for late December. The gentle heat of the sun on her skin was invigorating, and everything looked more vivid than she remembered. This was a new world she’d stepped out into, radically different than it had been when she’d left it nine months ago. She breathed in and smiled, then began walking to the bus stop.
A man was already sitting on the bench when she arrived. He leaned over with his elbows on his knees, head bowed and covered by a baseball cap. Zira sat down on the other end of the bench, and he glanced over at her.
Her breath caught in her throat, and all she could do was stare. Black stubble grew along Jared’s jaw and his clothes were worn and dirty, but he looked much better than he had the last time she’d seen him. What was he doing here? How had he known she was getting released today?
It didn’t matter. Warm relief spread through her chest upon seeing him there, alive and healthy. The unfamiliarity of the emotion jarred her. It had been a long time since she’d had anything to feel happy about. Happy, and apprehensive. She tried to find the right words. There was so much she needed to say and even more she needed to hear from him. She just didn’t know where to begin.
Jared seemed to be at a loss for words as well, his expression mirroring her own. They sat there in mutual confused silence for what seemed like hours. Then he gave her a small, tentative smile and scooted a little closer to her.
The silence persisted, but it was comfortable, just as it had been when they were still together. It was impossible to know what the future held, and they’d certainly a made a complicated mess of things. But for just a few moments, all the regrets and mistakes that separated them seemed to melt away. Whatever they needed to say to each other, it could wait.
They had time.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
To Taylor, thank you for your insightful feedback on this story and for continuing to be a fantastic critique partner.
To Elissa, I can’t thank you enough for the major changes you suggested in an early draft of this book. I know I was a little resistant at first, but you truly helped me figure out how to improve the story and tell it in the best way I possibly could.
Thank you to my other beta readers, Samantha and Samuel, for your thoughtful critique and suggestions.
I would also like to thank my husband, Alex, for his continuing unconditional love and encouragement, and my mom for being supportive and showing such an interest in my stories.
To all my other friends, family, and readers who have talked to me about my writing, read one of my stories, or dropped me a note to let me know you enjoyed them, thank you. Your kind words have meant the world to me.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
T. A. Hernandez grew up with her nose habitually stuck in a book and her mind constantly wandering to make-believe worlds full of magic and adventure. She began writing stories after reading J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings at age 10. Thankfully, her writing has improved significantly since then, though she will happily acknowledge that she has much more to learn and is looking forward to a long and exciting journey in her Quest to Tell Better Stories.
She is the proud mother of two girls and a college student working towards her degree in social work. She also enjoys drawing, reading, watching movies, riding her motorcycle, and making happy memories with her family and friends.
* * *
Find T. A. Hernandez on social media to stay up to date on the Secrets of PEACE series and other works:
tahernandez.com
Twitter
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Your questions and comments about the story and characters are always welcome and appreciated.
Table of Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Ch
apter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-one
Chapter Twenty-two
Chapter Twenty-three
Chapter Twenty-four
Chapter Twenty-five
Chapter Twenty-six
Chapter Twenty-seven
Chapter Twenty-eight
Chapter Twenty-nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-one
Chapter Thirty-two
Chapter Thirty-three
Chapter Thirty-four
Chapter Thirty-five
Chapter Thirty-six
Chapter Thirty-seven
Chapter Thirty-eight
Renegades of PEACE (Secrets of PEACE Book 2) Page 27
