by Leigh Tudor
“Good God, Mercy.”
“What? It’s not like it would be the first time.”
“This is a young girl in high school, not a Colombian drug lord.” Loren rolled up the schematic. “And besides, we never gutted anybody with a spoon, and as for fingernails, they grow back.”
“Did you not just say that we were becoming complacent and ineffectual?”
Loren closed her eyes, took a deep cleansing breath, and opened them. “Just follow my lead and let me do the talking.”
Chapter Nineteen
“In mathematics, you don’t understand things. You just get used to them.”
—Johann von Neumann
Child prodigy who at six years old,
could divide two eight-digit numbers
in his head and converse in Ancient Greek
* * *
“What do you mean your sisters can sometimes overreact in a crisis?”
Cara felt perched on a slippery slope. One false move and all efforts prior to this moment would be for naught.
She sat in the back seat of Alec’s truck with her hands tucked between her knees. She needed to choose her words wisely; this was no time to overshare.
“I wouldn’t say this is a crisis, per se, but my sisters can be freakishly overprotective. And I wouldn’t want anyone to get hurt, uh, get their feelings hurt because they overreact.”
“Overprotective like your uncle?”
Dr. Halstead? That’s right, Loren referred to the doctor as their “uncle.” Nothing like that. “Something like that,” she said, glancing forward and to her right.
Ally sat mute in the passenger seat, quiet and resolute in their pact to keep their problems to themselves.
The truth was that Amarilla Simmons and her plastic friends had become a veritable bane to their existence. They were like vultures rummaging for easy prey who set their sights on Ally and started to peck.
Once they found her to be easy fodder, they’d included her sidekick, Cara, and begun to torment her as well. Cafeteria trays were upended, strategically so that the food splattered on their clothes. Notes were sent to popular boys, as if written by Cara and Ally, lamenting to them their unrequited love and adoration. Notes, to their mortification, ending with: “Will you take me to the prom? Please check yes or no in the squares below.” Lockers were tampered with and sometimes defaced with spray paint that spelled out “loser” or “poser,” or the worst one, which was “pathetic orphan.”
Cara and Ally figured they were the chosen ones to persecute because they were comparatively meek and mild. So, they decided to transform their perceived “weak” demeanors.
They would become strong and indifferent.
At the same time, refusing to stoop to Amarilla’s level.
The unapproved trip to Dallas was with others who had fallen under Amarilla’s sights in the past, and were given temporary reprieve once Ally and Cara became targets.
The girls couldn’t have been more surprised when this group of Amarilla-pegged misfits asked them to go to Dallas to watch a cover band for Queen.
Music was their ultimate escape, and this group of potential friends who shared in their passion was just too important to dismiss. So, in an effort to gain some type of camaraderie within a group that had also been tormented by Amarilla and her comparatively larger group of untouchables, they agreed to go.
Power in numbers and all that.
Unfortunately, their new personas had seeped into their relationships at home. But there was just no way they were going to mess up the chance of having more friends by asking permission to do things they knew would be denied.
And if they told Alec, Loren, and Mercy the truth of their predicament, there was no telling what they’d do. Loren and Alec would probably opt for homeschooling to protect them from a “hostile school environment,” but Mercy would go all Helter-Skelter on Amarilla and her friends.
Sister had a thing with gutting people.
Cara continued to navigate her slippery slope solo-style as Ally lost the ability to articulate a complete sentence.
Alec didn’t seem equally affected.
He continued with the questioning. “So, we’re going to Amarilla Simmons’ house, after midnight, because your sisters are overprotective and you’re afraid they might hurt her feelings?” His fingers tapped on the steering wheel with what seemed to Cara as barely restrained irritation.
He wasn’t even remotely convinced.
Beady and skeptical eyes looked at her through the rearview mirror.
Cara’s eyes broke away from his glare and stared at her hands she was now squeezing together. She didn’t like to lie, but the truth was too risky. Loren would never forgive her if she told anyone, let alone Alec. And Mercy would eviscerate her. In her sister’s favorite words, “. . . with a dull spoon.”
“That’s it,” she assured him, looking out the side window so he couldn’t read the deception in her eyes.
Cara exhaled as Alec’s gaze moved to Ally.
“You have anything of value to add to this conversation?”
Cara watched Ally raise her eyebrows as if completely oblivious to the situation. Pointing at herself, she said, blinking her eyes repeatedly with abject innocence, “Me? I don’t know anything.”
Cara watched the trees and prairie grass along the roadside flit by as she contemplated the multitude of sins she’d amassed in the last few weeks.
What would Madame Garmond say?
She hung her head in shame while her heart ached.
She was lying to Alec and her older sisters about what was going on between herself, Ally, and Amarilla. She was also lying to Alec and Ally about their past, withholding the truth behind her sisters’ excessive training in espionage and hand-to-hand combat and missions where very bad things happened that even she wasn’t sure about. Not to mention Loren’s obsessively protective nature.
Loren wasn’t as violent as Mercy, but she had a long history of putting herself at considerable risk to protect her sisters. And they couldn’t take the chance of Jasper finding them.
They just couldn’t go back to the Center. It was nothing short of hell on earth to watch her older sisters be ignored and even ridiculed by certain staff members who believed Dr. Halstead’s false diagnoses.
Not to mention Jasper.
Worst of all her sins, she prayed that Jasper had died in the trunk of his car. Now, she was agonizingly fearful of being found and regretted the compassion she had demanded of her sisters the day they escaped.
Oh, how she prayed he’d suffered a slow, painful death.
And then she prayed for forgiveness for wishing him dead.
Looking back, she and Ally could have handled this whole situation with Amarilla and her goons so much better than they did. But she couldn’t turn back now. If she did, she could lose Ally as a friend.
She closed her eyes and prayed they weren’t too late and that Amarilla could still draw breath by the time they arrived.
She thought of the one parental figure she’d had in her life.
Madame Garmond.
Who would say, in her vaguely odd Parisian dialect, “Ah, ma petite cherie, ca c’est la beaute de sagesse rétrospective. My little darling, that is the beauty of hindsight.”
Smoke from the cigarette wafted around Jasper’s head as he listened over the phone to the words he had been patiently waiting to hear.
He exhaled another puff of smoke and then snuffed the butt out in the crystal ashtray on his desk. “And you’re sure this is where they are?”
“Yes sir, one of the girls reached out to the informant. They confirmed their location.”
The voice hesitated, and then continued, “Are we ready to execute the extraction, Dr. Bancroft?”
“Not yet. I have a few obstacles to address before their return. Keep me posted with news from our informant, and I’ll let you know when it’s time.”
He ended the call and sat back in his chair with his hands laced behind
his head, his fingers grazing the scar from where he had been struck.
Precisely where he would instruct Dr. Vielle to place his first incision.
The sides of his mouth turned slightly up at the thought of finally besting the great Ava Halstead, aka Loren Wilder.
Yes. He’d gladly give them more time.
Time to get comfortable, maybe a bit more complacent.
Time to relish their newfound, albeit temporary, freedom; it would be all the more devastating for them and satisfying to him, when it all slipped through their fingers.
Chapter Twenty
“Do not worry too much about your difficulties in mathematics, I can assure you that mine are still greater.”
Albert Einstein
German-born theoretical physicist best known to the general public for his mass-energy equivalence formula E=mc2
* * *
Loren crouched behind the raised hot tub with Mercy close behind. She waited for any unanticipated motion detection alerts.
Nothing.
She predetermined, after some quick hacking, that the home was equipped with a security system, but the service had been recently terminated by the owner.
Unsure whether to find that odd or fortuitous, she decided to assume the owner was in the process of switching security companies.
Certain they remained undetected, she sidled up to the sliding glass door farthest from the master bedroom that led into the spatial living room.
She assessed the expansive glass doors.
Sliding doors were manufactured with two different styles: the slides were either on the inside or the outside of the fixed panel. The latter being the easier to open. She smiled at their good luck as the slider was on the outside. It would have been far more difficult—if not impossible—to pry open, otherwise.
After pulling out a small crowbar and screwdriver from her bag, Mercy clicked on a small penlight from over her right shoulder and Loren went to work.
She inserted the screwdriver between the door and the doorframe, six inches from the corner and diagonal from the latch, and pried it upward. She tilted the door, which lowered the latch, and visibly smiled as she heard it release from the bracket.
Moving the door to the side with just enough room for her and Mercy to slip through, they moved inside. They crept silently toward the staircase which, according to the drawings, was past the front hallway and to the left.
The room was almost pitch-black, as they felt their way past an eight-piece sectional sofa.
And then Loren blinked and had to shield her eyes from the blinding bright light to her right. The light came to her first as the geometrics of an illuminated net, not a usual occurrence when an unexpected sensory hit her retinas.
The source of the light lowered as Mercy ran into her backside, equally addled, but just as quickly raised the crossbow toward the source.
Loren heard the unmistakable sound of a rifle pump as her eyes began to readjust to see an elderly man sitting in a recliner with what looked to be a Winchester 61 perched on his shoulder, pointed directly at them.
“Whoa there, sir,” Loren said, taking a step in front of Mercy, with one hand pushing her farther behind her and the other hesitantly raised, “that thing could take an eye out.”
“Young lady, I don’t think you’re in any position to be telling me what to do.”
Which was true, considering he was the only one in the room with an armed weapon. A weapon that was typically used for target practice and small game hunting, but a weapon nonetheless.
“Told you we should’ve armed the crossbow with bolts,” Mercy clipped, reading her mind.
The man had to be in his mid-seventies. His gray hair was askew and he was decked out in flannel pants and a white tee. Despite his dishevelment, he was spry enough to keep the vintage rifle trained on her.
Behind her, Mercy hissed, “You said the security system was disabled.”
The elderly man also had great hearing as he answered for her. “Fired the greedy bastards. They wanted over a hundred bucks a month for their fancy security system. I paid a one-time fee of three hundred dollars to Amazon and put up my own cameras.”
Loren forced herself to relax her shoulders and plastered a bright smile on her face, hoping he’d mirror her demeanor. “Wow, we are such dunces. We were staying with friends and must’ve gotten their house mixed up with yours.” She lifted her Iron Man mask and laughed. “See, costume party.” She started to move back the direction they came, keeping Mercy behind her. “We’ll just be on our way.”
The rifle moved up an inch as he got a better grip on the action slide arm. “Did I mention the cameras have audio capabilities? Heard every word you two said.”
Loren stopped in her tracks, trying to remember the details of what they’d discussed after scaling the wall.
He lowered his rifle, slightly. “Allow me to refresh your memory. You’re here to scare the bejeezus outta my granddaughter, Amarilla.”
Loren’s shoulders sagged. “Yes, sir.”
“Then I suggest you put down that worthless crossbow and tell me what my ornery granddaughter’s been up to.”
Loren glanced back at Mercy, who was removing her useless mask, and then back to the man. “I’m going to need you to lower your rifle, sir.”
“You gonna sit down and work this out like sane and decent human beings?”
His eyes were full of reproach, which made Loren feel like a silly teenager rather than the fighting machine that she was.
She swallowed heavily and nodded. “Yes, sir.”
The rifle lowered and then Loren and Mercy sidled toward the sofa, Loren keeping her eyes on the gun until she deemed they were safe.
He finally set it on the arm of his chair, which she estimated would give them enough time to bolt before he could re-aim and cock the Winchester, if and when it became necessary.
“My name is Levi. Why don’t you introduce yourselves and then start at the beginning.”
It didn’t take long to share what Loren knew, as there wasn’t much to tell, thanks to her close-mouthed sister and her equally tight-lipped accomplice. Thankfully, it was enough to explain why they were sitting on this man’s sofa well past midnight and with unarmed weapons.
Then they heard what sounded like a car pulling into the driveway.
Three heads turned toward the sound of a key unlocking the front entryway and watched as an oblivious Amarilla surreptitiously eased through the door and then froze as she spotted the tableau of faces staring back at her from the living room.
Amarilla attempted a smile as if trying to regroup. “Grandaddy, oh good, you’re up.”
Loren recognized that the girl was doing her best to calm herself as she absentmindedly shoved the door behind her and woodenly made her way toward them. She knew the feeling.
“Come on in here and sit down, Amarilla. You have some explaining to do.”
Loren watched the girl hesitate and purse her lips, pushing a tendril of long blond hair behind her ear. She slowly made her way toward them, as if equally aware as to who was in her living room and to her imminent doom.
“I’m sorry I’m late, Grandad. We were studying and time got away from me.”
“Save that conversation for later. I wanna hear why you’re being hateful to some of the younger girls at school, namely Cara Ingalls and Ally Wilder.”
Loren watched with fascination as she battled between feeling sorry for the girl and wanting to slap her. She was just a wisp of a thing. Beautiful really, but dressed rather inappropriately for her age. That knowledge acquired from the Nazi-style training she’d received from Cara when they went clothes shopping, during the good old days of yore, when her sister chose to move about in human form.
Despite her suggestive attire, the girl’s makeup was applied remarkably well.
Still, despite artistically blended contour, her clothes were far too revealing, but Loren had to admit she’d worn similar clothing items; hipster jeans which sho
wed off a taut midriff with a halter top that exposed side and front boobage.
Loren also noticed she didn’t carry a backpack that would hold books for studying, but there was a sizable red welt on the side of her neck. Loren took in a breath, catching the strong scent of patchouli as well as an undercurrent of something more woodsy.
Amarilla’s demeanor was the opposite of the caricature Loren had imagined while planning her set-down. She’d imagined your typical female bully, someone more ballsy and rife with entitled self-confidence. She pictured a hefty girl dressed in camo, one hand holding a cigarette while the other dunked Cara’s head in one of the toilets in the girl’s restroom at school.
Instead, the young girl was rather pathetic. She sat hunched over in the chair on the other side of the coffee table opposite her grandfather with nothing less than deep shame.
“This is about your mama,” he said matter-of-factly.
Amarilla glanced up, shaking her head as if beseeching him not to continue this line of dialogue.
Levi turned to them, and explained, “My daughter, Amarilla’s mother, left six months ago. Ran off with the man who cleans the pool. He’s quite a bit younger than my daughter. Closer to Amarilla’s age than her mother’s. They’ve been cruisin’ along the Mediterranean on a fancy yacht. As you can imagine, my granddaughter hasn’t taken it well.” His eyes moved to Amarilla. “And she’s been taking it out on some of the younger girls at school. You aren’t the first ones to show up complaining about my granddaughter’s treatment of their kin.”
Loren remarked with wide eyes, “Your mom is having an affair with the pool boy?” She shook her head. “That sucks.”
Mercy leaned toward Loren and muttered, “In all fairness, we haven’t actually seen the pool boy.”
