Forever Freed

by Kathleen Brooks

  With a dazed look, she got out of her car at the gas station. She filled her tank and walked into the gas station. The woman behind the counter gave her a knowing smile. “Husband?”

  “Brother.”

  Evie pulled out the cash and the woman waved her hand. “Don’t worry about it. Get someplace safe.”

  With that, Evie broke down in tears.

  The woman came around the counter and pulled her into a hug. “Are you in danger? Do you need a safe place to stay the night?”

  Evie took a deep breath to calm down. “He doesn’t know where I am. Thank you for your kindness.”

  “We women have to stick together. Here, you probably haven’t eaten.” She let go of Evie and turned around. She took two wrapped sandwiches from the case next to the cash register. “Take these with you.”

  Evie’s stomach rumbled at the smell of food. It was then she realized it was past eleven at night and she hadn’t eaten for twelve hours. “Thank you. I’ll never forget this.”

  Evie drove through the night and stopped about seven and a half hours later in Billings, Montana. Operating despite pure exhaustion, Evie pulled into a casino near the fork in the interstates. She would either continue her eastward trip on I94 through Montana and into North Dakota, or she would go south on 90 where she would hit Denver, Colorado.

  Evie parked and saw a giant sign for the all-you-can-eat breakfast for players — Just 5 Dollars! Pulling a fistful of change from her purse, she hit the nickel slots until a server noticed her and gave her a ticket for the buffet. Evie ate until she could eat no more. Then she got another plate piled high with pastries and hid them under a napkin before stuffing them into her backpack. Right now, she had to devote most of her cash to gas. Feeling safe at the casino, Evie headed for her car and slept for a couple of hours. She was ready to go when she woke up. She just didn’t know where she was headed from here.

  Evie turned back into the casino and grabbed one of the free maps before entering the bar. She asked for her water bottle to be filled as she pulled out her map. As the bartender filled it, she looked up at the morning news.

  “There was an attack this morning on a government building in Seattle,” a reporter said seriously into the camera. It felt like the entire casino froze for Evie. She didn’t see or hear anything around her as she watched the anchor pass it to the national news reporter.

  “I’m here in Seattle at the Office of the State Department of Revenue where at eight this morning a group of masked assailants charged the building, throwing what police describe as Molotov cocktails through the windows. We are being told there are numerous injuries and at least one death. Pamphlets from an organization calling themselves American Rebellion were left behind. The organization says they are a non-political group set on a societal revolution. Politicians weren’t listening to the demands of the people and the bombing was in retaliation for the increase in the marijuana tax that was strongly opposed here in Seattle. The pamphlet calls for others to join the fight and that more rebellion is to come until America is no longer policed, the people are no longer governed, and the corporations are stripped of the power they obtained on the backs of their workers. Police have no comment at the time, but there is a press conference called for noon today.”

  “Here you go.”

  Evie jumped at the bartender’s voice as he placed her large insulated water bottle in front of her. “Oh, thank you so much.”

  It was time she got out of there. If she went south, she could cut east at any time. Too bad she didn’t have her passport or she could keep south right into Mexico. Evie hit the road again, determined to find someplace safe and to find someone to listen to her when she told them about Jon.

  2

  Fourteen hours and a thousand miles later, Evie stopped in Albuquerque, New Mexico. She couldn’t go on any longer. She’d bought a burner phone in Casper, Wyoming, but didn’t know who to call. She’d listened to the press conference on satellite radio as she drove. The police mentioned a possible suspect, but didn’t say anything further. It had to be Jon.

  It was dark when she pulled into a megastore parking lot to rest for the night. Maybe they had caught Jon. Maybe she could go home now. Taking a deep breath and pulling out her phone, Evie was about to call the police when she remembered they thought she was crazy.

  She thought for a moment and then dialed.

  “Who’s calling?” the operator asked when Evie asked for the officer in charge.

  “Jenny Thompson of the Casper Gazette.” The phone number should confirm that she was, in fact, calling from a Wyoming number.

  “One moment.”

  Evie sat on hold for four minutes until a man who sounded tired picked up the phone. “This is Rupi Joshi. I’m the spokesman for the Seattle Police Department. How can I help you in Casper, Ms. Thompson?”

  “I’m writing an article on the bombing. I heard you have a suspect. Do you have him in custody?”

  “I don’t believe we ever said the suspect was male.”

  Suddenly the whole world tilted. Surely they didn’t think she was the suspect.

  “The suspect is female?”

  “I’m not at liberty to comment. What I can say for your quote is that the Seattle police have a suspect they are searching for. We are positive we’ll find the suspect shortly and that justice will be served.”

  “How many people were involved in the bombing?” Evie asked, trying to sound like a reporter while counting the number of people she remembered seeing in her brother’s room.

  “At least twenty.”

  “And do you know their identities?”

  “We expect to know more soon but have several leads on the participants.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Joshi.”

  Evie hung up not feeling the relief she had hoped for. Was she the suspect? Either way, she wasn’t going back yet. Instead, she pulled out her phone and found the nearest library to visit in the morning. She got out of the car and stretched before heading inside the store. She went to the bathroom, walked around for a while, grabbed some food, and fell asleep curled up in her backseat.

  * * *

  The next morning Evie was the first one in the library. She pulled up her brother’s social media accounts and tightened her jaw when she saw they were all private—all except one post. The post was a grunge-like photo of the United States flag with an A as the flagpole and a backwards R coming off the left of the A. American Rebellion.

  Evie took out her phone and took a picture of the screen before taking a chance and signing onto her account. She immediately marked herself offline as she went straight to her brother’s page. The comments didn’t seem to make sense, but they were talking to each other. It must be in some kind of code. Her brother had a lot more followers than he did a week ago. And they weren’t just from Seattle. They were from across the country and even quite a number from overseas.

  Suddenly her messages blew up. One, two, three, ten, fifteen, twenty . . . Evie clicked the message tab and gasped. WE’LL FIND YOU over and over and over again from Jon’s account appeared and kept coming. Over and over, every second a new one. And then they were gone. She tried to click on his profile, but she was blocked. More than that, his whole account had vanished.

  Evie sat back suddenly as if he’d leap out of the computer at her. Taking a deep breath, she pulled up the Seattle news and read the articles on the attack. There wasn’t anything new except speculation that American Rebellion was a homegrown domestic terrorist group. Right when she was about to close the newspaper, she saw a headline that grabbed her: Silver Alert for Seattle Woman in Her Twenties.

  Evie pressed the link and saw her picture. She scanned the article that stated Evie had a mental illness and that her brother was looking for her. Any information on her location should be called into the Seattle police or posted to the social media page dedicated to finding her. And there was a picture of her brother holding a picture of Evie where they were laughing together. Behind him wa
s a man she recognized as the one who shot at her. The caption read, Evie Scott’s brother, Jon Ellis, and Ms. Scott’s physician claim the young woman has schizophrenia. They are asking for the public’s help in finding her. A social media campaign has been set up under “Find Evie Scott.” Evie’s hands shook as she pulled up the site. There were posts from her so-called doctor, details of her car and license plate, and plastered with pictures of her and pictures of her car she’d taken when she bought it last year. Evie had to get rid of the car.

  She read the comments before she left. Most were false, but then buried in the comments, was the bartender from the casino in Billings, and as she watched, the page updated and the doctor asked him to message with further details. She had to get out of there.

  Fighting the urge tor run, Evie searched how to hide a car’s ownership. She had a sticker that she needed to scrape off and then she needed to switch license plates. She also needed to get rid of the parking pass for their apartment building that hung on her rearview mirror.

  Putting her plan in action, she left the library and drove to the airport. She followed a car into long-term parking and waited until the driver left before taking off its plate. She tossed hers in the trash and headed to an old pay phone. It took a while to find, but Evie finally tracked one down near a shopping center.

  She parked half a mile away in a residential neighborhood and jogged up to the pay phone. Her first call was the local FBI office where she asked to be transferred to the DC office for domestic terrorism. The operator complied and Evie sat tapping her foot as she listened to elevator music while standing in the hot New Mexico sun.

  “This is Agent DeMille in Domestic Terrorism. The operator told me you had a tip?” a man’s deep voice asked over the phone.

  “I know who’s behind American Rebellion. His name is Jonathan Ellis, but he goes by Jon.” Evie rattled off their home address before the agent cut her off.

  “What’s your name, ma’am.”

  “It doesn’t matter. What matters is that I heard them talking about the burning of the government building in Seattle. I tried to warn the police, but they didn’t listen. There are more targets. I heard them talking about hitting soft targets. Jon mentioned . . .”

  “And you’re calling from Albuquerque? How did you know about these attacks?”

  The agent didn’t believe her.

  “Because I was there. I heard Jon talking about it. There were at least a dozen people in the apartment.”

  There was a pause and then the agent said, his voice gentle, “Just stay where you are, Miss Scott. I see the Silver Alert. Your brother and doctor are very worried about you. I’m dispatching someone to pick you up so you’re safe.”

  “Safe?! I’m not safe. That asshole who claims to be my doctor tried to kill me. And my stepbrother planned all this. There are more targets and something he called a finale in three weeks. You have to listen to me!”

  “Of course. Why don’t you tell me about it?” He was stalling. He hadn’t asked where she was in Albuquerque because he already knew.

  “Agent, can you tell me about a Silver Alert? Just hearing you talk calms me,” Evie said pleadingly. As soon as he began to talk, she set the phone down and ran. She needed to get her windshield fixed but had to get out of town first.

  Evie took secondary roads into Texas and stopped in Lubbock. She told the repairman she’d gotten behind a gravel truck that was too full and paid cash to have her windshield replaced. Losing that money hurt, but a shot-up windshield was too noticeable to chance it, even in Texas.

  Then she was back on the road again heading toward Dallas. Once Evie made it there, she parked in a packed megastore lot and slept. Her body was tired. Her mind was tired. She didn’t know how to go on, but go on she must.

  * * *

  It didn’t even feel as if she’d slept. The sun was up and so was she. Evie used the bathroom and washed up in the sink of the store before buying food and some clothes for the next couple of days. She could go to a national park and hide off-grid. Or she could rent a boat and try to enter another country illegally. She didn’t know what to do. Her phone was paid through the month and she began searching.

  Evie was engrossed in an article about how a woman escaped an abusive husband by integrating herself into a small town when there was a knock on the window.

  “Excuse me,” a woman said through the partially rolled-down window. “I see you’ve been here for a while. Are you having car trouble?”

  “Oh, goodness. You scared me. No trouble. I drove into town for a meeting and got here way too early. Thought I’d kill some time. Do a little shopping,” she said raising the store bag for the woman to see. “That’s so nice of you to check on me.”

  “Sure thing.” The woman smiled kindly and got into the car that had arrived over an hour ago.

  Get a job that can pay in cash. Use a fake social security number. Find a small town where everyone knows everyone. Get to know the locals. Then there are always people to help you. She could do that. Cash jobs. She could become a stripper. They got paid in cash. What other jobs paid in cash? Or mostly tips? Bartender! She could do that. She had put herself through college bartending. They might be a little stricter on the paperwork than stripping, but Evie didn’t think she’d be able to go through with actually taking her clothes off in public.

  She pulled up a bartenders’ national website and went to the help-wanted page. She clicked on the filter for small town or rural and hit enter. Two hours later, she had applied to six jobs. What was she to do until she heard from them?

  Evie drove around until she found a park and took a seat under a tree. She found a book in her backseat and was reading when her phone rang.

  “Hello?” she answered tentatively.

  “Hi. Is this Evie?”

  “Who’s asking?” Evie asked the woman with a slow Southern accent. It wasn’t the damsel-in-distress kind. It was the I’ll-run-you-over-with-my-pickup-truck kind.

  “Harper Faulkner of Shadows Bar in Shadows Landing, South Carolina. I got the résumé you sent and have called to check out your references. I hope you don’t mind me calling you Evie. Your references said you went by that name.”

  Evie slipped into her easygoing human resources role and smiled even though Harper couldn’t see her. “No problem. Evangeline is a mouthful,” Evie told her. Evangeline wasn’t her real first name, but she had to do something in case Jon was looking for her.

  “Well, your former employers spoke highly of you. They said their patrons loved you, but you left after college. You still think you can make drinks?” Harper asked.

  “I know I can.”

  Evie answered some more questions and then asked some about the bar and Shadows Landing. It sounded perfect.

  “My cousin is getting married in two days and I’m in the wedding. The reception is at the bar. Can you be here by then?”

  “Yes!” Evie said, pulling up the map. It would take her seventeen hours to drive there. “Um, I do need a place to stay, though. Are there any places that will rent to me, cheaply?”

  “You can stay above the bar. There’s a room. It’s not very fancy, but you can use it.”

  “I don’t need fancy,” Evie said with a sigh of relief. “So, would I be a full-time employee?”

  “I’m looking for part-time right now. I can hire you as an independent contractor. Does that work?” Harper asked.

  “Yes, that’s great. Thank you. I’ll see you soon.” As an independent contractor, she could give Harper a phony social security number when filling out her W-9. It would take years for the IRS to send Harper a matching notice. By then, hopefully, Evie would be back to living her normal life.

  Evie hung up and entered Shadows Landing into her GPS before pulling away from the megastore. She’d tried to warn the police about Jon and his group. She’d tried to warn the FBI. Now all she could do was stay alive until they were caught and hope that not too many innocent lives were lost while she thought of
another way to stop Jon.

  3

  Classified location in the Middle East . . .

  * * *

  Jackson Parker stood at the front of an Army tent overlooking the group of men dressed alike in tan desert fatigues and face paint. He and his team of six FBI Hostage Rescue agents had called this place home for the past two weeks. They were in any location only long enough to capture a fugitive, arrest a terrorist, or rescue a hostage. But tonight was the last one. One more raid. One more rescue. One more night. They just needed to survive it.

  Jackson, his teammates, and the special operations soldiers formed a specialized team that was the result of the little-known alliance between the FBI and the Joint Special Operations Command. The reason it wasn’t generally known was the fact that his presence overseas was still legally ambiguous. The higher-ups, world leaders, and, hell, even half the agents in the FBI were split on whether they belonged fighting side by side with soldiers outside the United States. Hostage Rescue Teams, or HRT for short, weren’t supposed to be in firefights. However, by circumstance, they had to shoot when their lives were in danger, which tended to be most of the time. Half believed it was okay since they were preventing terrorist attacks in the US by stopping them before they could reach American soil. Others couldn’t get past the fact that the FBI is a domestic agency of civilians operating on foreign soil. Jackson and his team were not soldiers. They were agents. Technically, they weren’t there to kill but to preserve evidence.

  As the years passed and terrorists were caught, FBI HRT agents were pulled out of the area. Then, Jackson and his team had been called back in two months ago. At first it was an increase in Somali pirates taking hostages. Jackson and his team worked with Special Forces on rescues. Then they’d been called back to the Middle East as the FBI and military intelligence were picking up chatter on a new cell of terrorists wanting to take the fight onto American soil with a series of lone wolf attacks. A car taking out a crowd, shooting at a mall, and a bomb at a college football game were all shut down in Los Angeles before they could happen. Now the FBI had found the source of those attacks, which was why its elite Hostage Rescue Team was in the middle of the desert.