Zero Hour: Where are our Children (A Serial Novel) Episode 5 of 9

by Gary Sapp

something…anything feasible so we can try to figure Keaton’s next move. I want to know what that monster’s thinking before he does. Get your team together. Thanks to our friends in the Circle, we have less than 24 hours left.”

  “Yes, sir,”

  Sheridan then turned his attention to Agent Blue. “In speaking of a House in Chains, I’m placing you in charge of a task force responsible for finding the leaders of a House in Chains—the Circle.” He said.

  “Sir,” Blue nodded but a question was forming on her face. “Even if we find them it won’t be easy to acquire warrants for their arrest, it is a Sunday.”

  “Normally that would be an issue,” Sheridan agreed with her. “But with me standing in as the acting deputy director, I’ve been on the phone with several judges already who have are prepared to help us anyway they can; even on a Sunday.”

  “Alright,” Blue said. “Get warrants. Get something on the Circle. Bring them in. Check, check and check. I’m on it.”

  Sheridan then said: “Agent Dooley?”

  “Serena Tennyson?”

  “Serena Tennyson.”

  “I’ll find her, sir.”

  The other agents in the room all seemed to be scrambling to gather their belongings ready to disembark in a half a dozen directions. Angel called out to Felder asking him to hold up a minute, she needed to fetch her personal belongings out of one of the briefing rooms.

  “Agent Felder,” Sheridan said. “You have your orders. We are on a tight time schedule. You are free to leave.”

  Angel made her way to in front of Sheridan was standing. “I don’t understand. I thought my experience and expertise would serve you best by continuing to assist Felder in his investigation.”

  And as long as Angel lived, her redemption was possibly still at hand.

  She was alive.

  Sheridan took a deep breath. “Your services are no longer required, Doctor.”

  Angel felt a stab of pain in her chest.

  “What?” She asked him. “Tell me you’re not taking me off of this case, Goddamn you, Sheridan. I won’t be dismissed by you when I can still make a difference.”

  “I am doing just that, Doctor.” Sheridan stood at full height over her. “I’ll remind you of what I told you when we first met back at that café in Macon. I was given an order to solicit your services. The man who issued that order has been ousted as the deputy director of this organization because he is a member of Pandora. Your presence in this investigation has always been a potential liability to me. Now with the truths that has already has been revealed to the world about Agent Prince and Serena Tennyson, two people you have had friendships with—“

  “Don’t do this to me, Nicholas.”

  She reminding him that she had been right about Serena’s escape plans before Deliverance was initiated. She’d dissected the evidence in piecing together the crime scenes that Keaton or whoever had left behind for them to find. Her theories about Keaton and his transformations into something more were proving accurate.

  She deserved the chance to see the rest of this to its end.

  “And I won’t dare disagree with any of your evaluations. You’ve been damned good.” He said. “My question to you is what you can do for me now that justifies me jeopardizing what little credibility this agency has left.”

  Angel parted her thick lips to speak, but the words ran and hid at the back of her throat.”

  “Sheridan said instead: “Agent Reed?”

  “Yes, sir,” The last remaining agent who had dandruff flakes on the shoulders of his dress shirt stood up.

  “You are personally in charge of watching over the doctor until I give you new orders that she can exit this building. I can’t spare anyone else. She is to be treated with courtesy and respect, but at no time may she be allowed to leave this room without supervision.”

  Angel folded her arms and raised her eyebrows. “And if she does try to escape? What happens then Agent Sheridan?”

  “Agent Reed, I want you to choose a non-lethal target on her body—and shoot her.”

  “Yes, sir,”

  Sheridan seemed to exhale and turned to leave. He opened the door—

  “You are making a grave mistake, Sheridan.”

  “You’re right, Doctor.” Sheridan said, but he glanced at his Rolex and not at her. “I probably am at that. What I do know for sure is that the world that I’ve known and loved is 20 some odd hours away from coming to a very bleak, a very tragic end. None of my formal training has prepared me for any of this the way that it has unfolded. I’m now down to doing nothing or doing what my gut instincts tells me. I’m choosing the best decisions that I can manage from the little I have to work with left. Dismissing Christopher Prince was my choice. Leaving you behind is another. Good bye, Doctor.”

  Thirty minutes later Angel found herself glaring at the pint of whiskey she’d taken out of her purse and placed on the coffee table in front of her.

  She had her pistol out as well.

  She’d given consideration to shooting Agent Reed, but had put that idea aside—at least for the moment. For now, she settled on dousing the lights and had stripped off her jacket and heels. She hid the pistol out of sight. Whatever Reed was doing, he hadn’t interacted with her since Sheridan’s exit and that was fine by her. She’d had her damned fill of the FBI and their protocols anyway.

  Angel unscrewed the cap on the whiskey and the mere scent of it nearly overtook her. What do I have to loose now anyhow? She hadn’t changed her ways and drunk during all her spare time away while here in Atlanta and served her duties well. She wasn’t the one who let Christopher down. And where are you anyway? What had he gone through and more importantly—what solutions did he come up with since they’d spoken minutes after Lucy Burgess’ announcement on live TV.

  She threw the whiskey bottle at the window with her bottle taking the brunt of the contact and losing that battle. Agent reed stuck his head in the doorway and asked if she were okay? Angel told him to fuck off and keep all of his remaining questions to himself.

  Why did she speak to that man like that?

  Why did she have these streaks of virtual evil?

  Why had she’d been so mean and distant to her husband Seth…

  Most importantly, why in the hell would she shatter her last bottle of booze like that?

  Angel crawled over to where the last of the liquor rested on the broken glass. Who knew how long she’d be locked in here with Reed? She wouldn’t be able to leave and get any more liquor anytime soon. What was she thinking? What in the hell had she done?

  Her eyes searched frantically from broken glass to broken glass looking from enough of it to quench her needs. Sucking it off of the carpet itself would be disgusting. It was expeditiously running down the cracked mirror like an animal trying to escape a predator—escape her. She stood quickly and started to snatch just a tiny bit with her tongue, but that would be so degrading, but she needed the hit so very badly…

  She found a smooth spot on the glass and slid down it without cutting herself in the process. She sat on the floor for a long time and cried unlike she had in years. She remembered her husband again. You always broke first…you always cried first, Seth, that’s why I never had to.

  Seth.

  Where was Seth?

  For the first time since she left him in their bedroom, she wondered where her husband was and what he was doing.

  She reached into her pocket book and called her husband on her cell phone. Seth didn’t answer her call...

  …he didn’t answer her fifth either.

  The pistol:

  She’d stared down the furious fervor of death before. Others had tried to take her life.

  And she had failed in an attempt herself.

  It was a death by rights. If only she’d showed true courage and placed a shot in her temple during that attempt. Instead, she’d chosen the cowardly act of swallowing pills that left her only with a stomach ache and Seth to swoon over her for a week af
ter.

  She would not make that mistake again.

  She grabbed the gun, opened the magazine to make sure each chamber had a bullet in it and stuck the barrel between her teeth.

  She felt a little sorry for Agent Reed who’d have to hear the shot and discover her messy remains.

  Although she’d tried to contact Seth a few minutes earlier, she was more indifferent about her husband’s feelings. The other doctor in this relationship was a good man who deserved far better than the years that she’d given him.

  As for Christopher…she’d miss her best friend most of all. He too had deserved better than her friendship. The explanation she’d given him about her suspicions about Keaton and Erica Lovings only scratched the surface of a very complicated…very complex relationship she had with the most wanted man in Atlanta.

  Roxanne Sanchez had seen through it somehow—though through what extent Angel didn’t know.

  And I will never know.

  Angel’s cell phone rang.

  She ignored it.

  A tear ran down her cheek.

  The cell phone rang again.

  Delays, she thought, there are always delays when you have business with life and death.

  Angel answered it without looking at who was calling her.

  “Dr. Hicks-Dupree,” A woman’s voice. One that was not recognizable to her and barely audible. She sounded as if she had been crying. “Is this the Doctor?”

  “It is,” She said in her best professional voice. “I apologize to you madam. I’m not taking on any new patients in the near future.”

  “I don’t know what you mean,” The other said. “I told you people that my baby would return