“As long as they’re from you, I promise not to file a complaint.”
Lorna
Present day
My restless sleep was riddled with images, dreams, and nightmares. I continued on, disoriented, lost, and searching as I moved throughout alternate realities. The settings in which I roamed didn’t stay the same, instead, changing like scenes in a poorly produced movie. At one moment the terrain was rough—hills to climb and obstacles to avoid—and difficult to maneuver. The world seemed without light—even seeing my hand before my face was a task. Trees and roots reached out, snagging my feet, arms, and clothes. I forged on, in search of what I wasn’t certain, only that it was near. And then the foliage was gone, replaced by a stark, dried ground. In the sky, the sun shone unrelentingly bright, too bright, blindingly bright. Even my hands couldn’t shield my eyes from the meltingly hot sun. My tired body became covered with perspiration, my mouth dried, and my exposed skin seared beneath the intense brilliance, and still I searched.
The dreams continued without end as I pushed myself beyond my own limits.
In my heart, I knew my goal was close, and yet I couldn’t remember what it was.
I fought against the mounting resistance thrown my way, each step more grueling than the last, each movement of my arms more arduous. My breathing labored as the restraint became tighter and tighter. A scream boiled in my throat, stopped from escaping like the fizz unable to escape a corked bottle.
A stinging assault came to my cheek and then another.
I tried to lift my heavy eyelids.
The scene around me was out of focus.
Sound waves warped, their meaning lost to the odd bending.
I blinked against the brightness.
My eyelids fluttered.
Reality was returning.
I tried to shield my eyes, and then clear my eyes, to rub them, to remove the sleep accumulated in their corners.
I couldn’t lift my arms.
Looking down, I blinked again, seeing the restraints binding my wrists.
One attempt to kick let me know my ankles were also bound.
My face moved quickly to the side as another blow came to my cheek.
The taste of copper filled my mouth.
I spat it away, red droplets spewing forward in the radiating light.
“Stop,” a woman’s voice said. It wasn’t that she spoke the command with compassion. It simply was what it was.
I blinked again.
The illumination shone directly at me, making whatever was beyond difficult to see.
A man came into view, dark hair, a rigid clean-shaven jaw, nondescript eyes, and a towering presence. The mere fact he was not trying to hide his identity frightened me more than the menacing way he looked at me or the knowledge that he’d recently struck me. My instincts told me to look away to shield myself.
I didn’t.
Defiantly, I lifted my chin as blood and saliva dripped from my gagged lips onto my shirt.
I looked from him to a woman who had stepped into my line of sight.
With blonde hair starkly pulled away from her face and slacks and a blouse that seemed out of place, it was clear this was the woman in charge. This was her show. Her frame may not have been large; her petite body and athletic build looked much like mine. Yet it wasn’t her stature that illustrated her power; it was the venom displayed in her gaze and the determination in her expression. “It’s about time you woke. I really am losing my patience with the likes of you.”
The unflattering hairstyle wasn’t what held my attention. It was the skin on the left side of her face. The surface appeared bumpy in a familiar way, reminding me of Mason’s beneath his tattoos.
Prying my gaze away, I squinted my eyes and peered beyond the two individuals to the room around us. No longer were we in the cell I’d shared with Araneae. This room was different, unremarkable. The walls were the same cement-block motif. However, where the cell’s walls were white, this room was gray with gray. We were within a gray box with a high ceiling.
Near the door was a large mirror, one that was most likely a one-way window. Set up a few feet away was a large light within a silver casing, shining my way. It hadn’t been the sun I’d felt, but artificial light turned on high. The design of the room reminded me of an interrogation room on a television show or movie. There was even a small rectangular table with three chairs.
Only three.
I was in the fourth.
It was no longer placed at the table, but out into the room.
Uselessly, I pulled against my restraints.
As the woman walked closer, her shoes clipped on the hard surface floor. With a tug she pulled the gag from my lips. For a brief moment I wondered if it was my blindfold from before. However, there were more pressing concerns.
As her nondescript gray eyes met mine, I bravely asked, “Where is my friend?”
She shook her head. “No longer your concern.”
“Wait...what does that mean?”
The woman’s voice grew softer, unnaturally sweetened and dripping with sickening syrup. Her head tilted in mock sympathy. “Your earlier display of concern was admirable.”
I tried to remember. Araneae was brought back to our cell, but she wasn’t speaking, wasn’t moving. “She’s my friend.”
The woman’s lips curled upward. “Aww. That’s...sweet. Unfortunately, she wasn’t mine.” She shrugged. “And quite honestly, she was of no use to me.”
“So what did you do? Where is she?” My questions came quicker. “Do you know who she is? Her husband would pay—”
The next sequence of events all happened quicker than I could predict.
The woman’s nod to the man.
The man’s slap to my face.
The force at which my head turned.
The tears, the blood.
They were a physical reaction to the pain, not emotional.
My tears for Araneae would wait.
My attention was on the here and now.
“Where is she?” I yelled.
“My patience,” the woman began as she walked back and forth before me, “ran out on her.” Her gaze came back to me. “That doesn’t leave much for you. While I’m not out to make enemies of her husband or yours, they’re inconsequential and” —she shrugged— “I don’t really give a damn.”
This woman knew Sterling Sparrow’s identity and regarded it as inconsequential?
“Who are you?” I asked.
“Your friend asked the same question. I had hoped you would be more original.”
“Tell me she’s all right.”
The woman came closer and leaned down until we were eye to eye. “Is that all it would take, Lorna Pierce, for me to tell you? Would you believe me?” She stood with a grin.
Lorna Pierce, my maiden name.
My gaze went from the woman to the man. He was now standing behind her, his arms crossed over his chest in a silent demonstration of strength. I looked back at her.
“No,” I replied. “I don’t believe a damn word you say.”
“You’d better hope I believe you, or you too will be deemed useless.”
“Fine, new question,” I said, sitting taller. “Who do you work for?”
“Aww, there we go. You are thinking beyond your friend.”
I tried to concentrate on the here and now, not focusing on Araneae or where she could be. My energy was best spent not worrying about her baby or their future. Only for a moment, I imagined her back with Sparrow. I wanted that as much as I wanted to be back with Reid. I couldn’t help that I loved my friends as if they were family. I did.
The possibility of Sparrow without Araneae was as painful as Reid without me.
We’d all worked too hard and too long to forge whatever it was we all shared. I wasn’t willing to give up hope of us having it again.
The woman turned to the man.
I steeled myself, waiting for his abuse. Instead, he reached for one of the three chairs
still at the table and carried it to the space before me. With the grace of a choreographed script, he turned off the bright light, leaving me with circles dancing in my vision. Then, he set the chair down and the woman stepped forward and took a seat.
It was as she sat that I noticed her left arm and hand. She was wearing a glove. It wasn’t a medical glove as if to protect her from illness or germs that my bodily fluids could but didn’t possess. The glove was white, much like gloves Michael Jackson or the Queen of England wore or maybe women in the mid-twentieth century with large hats as they went to church or perhaps the Kentucky Derby.
This wasn’t Kentucky, to my knowledge, and we sure as hell weren’t at church. I was fairly certain if we were on a spiritual precipice, this was the gateway to hell.
As the woman sat, she crossed her legs at her ankles. Her left hand gently fell to her lap. With her right unpocked—unscarred—hand, she tapped her chin. “Now, where to begin?”
I pulled at the restraints on my wrists, those binding me to the chair. “How about we start with untying me?”
She shook her head as her lips pursed. “No, that isn’t where I was thinking.” She tilted her head one way and the other, taking me in, searching my expression, perhaps my presence. “I know, Lorna. Start at the beginning.”
My head bobbed as I tried to make sense of this. “Could I have some water?”
The woman’s chin lifted abruptly.
The man behind her turned and stepped away. Opening the one door to the room, he left. In that brief second, I saw and heard nothing. There were no other people in the hallway. I couldn’t even be sure if the walls were different than these. It was just more space.
Where are we?
It was then I recalled falling asleep with Araneae. “Was the water in the bottles drugged?”
“If I told you no...?” the woman asked.
I didn’t answer. She was right again. I wasn’t likely to believe anything this woman had to say.
I could ask if the bottle that I hoped was about to come to me was safe or I could refuse to drink it. Again, I wasn’t certain I would believe anything these people said. I knew what I did believe: even without the earlier smoldering heat of the light, my thirst was growing by the moment, as was, unbelievably, my hunger.
I had no way of knowing how much time had passed since our last meal.
How was I moved from the cell to this room without my knowledge?
It reminded me of a baby, one that fell asleep at Grandma’s only to awaken at home. Yet I didn’t have the sense of trust and safety that was innate in a baby. Thirty-five years had whittled that away, leaving a select few as those who deserved my blind allegiance.
How long had it been since Araneae and I were taken?
How long since I’d seen Reid?
The questions flowed.
Instead of thinking about them or contemplating their answers and how they fit into the future as I’d know it, I stared at my captor.
This wasn’t like the books I’d read. Although I’d at one time considered myself Cinderella, I wasn’t Belle in a grown-up version of Beauty and the Beast. There was no redemption or future love story to be written in this current scenario. This wasn’t a fictional trope. This was the dangerous reality of the life I’d accepted, and my captor was an evil woman with judging eyes.
When she didn’t respond again, I asked, “What do you want to know? What beginning?”
Reid
“I had to get out of the house,” I said into the microphone as the Montana landscape was laid out below us like a green and brown blanket, interrupted by blue streams and rivers and surrounded by deep purple mountains and white snow-capped peaks.
“I can use your help.” Mason’s voice came through the earphones though he was sitting beside me in the pilot’s seat. This plane had two seats, pilot and copilot. There was a jump seat in the back, but not one of us could or would want to fit.
“Sparrow came up with me this morning,” Mason continued, “and we made a few observations. My opinion is skewed so I decided to get yours.”
I could have given my opinion as I usually did, from behind a screen or two or five. I could have pulled up the real-time satellite images I’d successfully hacked. And while under normal circumstances that was sufficient, being here in Mason’s plane high above the ground, I understood the deficiencies in my normal. The satellite imagery paled in comparison to the reality of flying a little over five thousand feet in the air.
“When’s the last time you flew in something this small—an airplane, not a helicopter,” Mason asked.
I shook my head as I looked at the array of gauges, levers, and switches on the control panel before us. “I don’t remember,” I answered honestly. “If you want me to take the controls, I hope you have parachutes.”
Mason scoffed as we banked toward the west.
“Helicopters and the Sparrow fleet,” I went on, “are my main modes of air travel.”
“I miss piloting,” he said. “Small planes were always my thing. Sparrow and Patrick had an affinity for helicopters. I didn’t care for the restriction. While I wouldn’t take this baby out in a lightning storm, it’s more predictable in wind than a chopper.”
His statement made me think. “How was the weather Thursday?”
Mason turned; his gaze came to me as he grinned. “See how getting up here helps?” He inhaled and looked out the front windshield. “Clears your mind.”
It had been two days since the women were taken. In the last forty-eight hours we’d made headway. We knew the kidnappers arrived via helicopter. It wasn’t as large as Mason had feared, based on the landing skid length. I had been able to utilize cameras on Mason’s land to determine that the chopper came from the west and also returned west. With the help of satellite as well as survey maps from the state of Montana, we located possible hideouts. The capos who arrived from Chicago were mobile and checking out all large and small leads.
While progress had been made, no contact had been attempted to negotiate their release.
With each passing minute, hour, day, my nerves were stretched to their limits. I wasn’t alone. I knew that. The man flying the plane beside me was also rightfully on edge.
After a few more minutes, Mason hit a button on the side of his headset. As he did, my headset went completely silent. Such as the effect of noise-canceling headphones, there was nothing—a soundless void. When I looked at my brother-in-law, he removed his headphones and placed them on his lap.
Following his lead, I did the same.
Immediately, sound was back, no longer a hum but a roar. The engine and spinning propeller keeping us airborne rumbled with vigor, making the use of headphones seem obvious. I wasn’t one who rode a motorcycle, but it could be equated to the same phenomenon. Imagine the rush of air as a motorcycle cruises at sixty to seventy miles an hour. Imagine no helmet, the wind whisking past your ears, and the person in front of you speaks.
That was the impression as Mason yelled above the roars. “I’m going to contact the Order.”
I knew why he’d brought me up here. It was the one place, without the headphones, where we could speak in complete privacy. “I thought you’d cut all ties.”
“I did. But that doesn’t mean I don’t have means.” He weighed his words. “Before those ties were severed, we figured out Top’s identity.”
My jaw clenched as the scenery below lost its luster. “The last time you tried to contact the Order,” I yelled at the man less than three feet away, “you had all of us backing you up.”
“The last time was for my freedom. This time it’s for Lorna’s and Arnaeae’s. Do you think Sparrow can keep a cool head if he would suspect we’re dealing with his wife’s captor?”
I wanted to believe this wasn’t the Sovereign Order, the organization that Mason had been involved in while he’d been away from us. However, if we were dealing with a warring outfit—a cartel, bratva, or Cosa Nostra—we would have heard something. The gui
lty party would claim responsibility and seek to make a profit on their bounty.
Patrick and Sparrow had been in contact with various outfits throughout the country, more accurately, throughout North America. If any organization had the queen of Chicago or the wife of one of Sparrow’s trusted advisors in their hold, it would make sense that the organization would do its best to capitalize upon it. They would brag about their capture, ask for obscene amounts of cash or merchandise, or offer to trade the women to another organization to pay back a deal gone wrong.
Instead, for over forty-eight hours there has been silence.
Instead of answering Mason’s question about Sparrow’s ability to keep a cool head, I shook mine. “Sparrow wants a target.”
That was the truth in a nutshell.
Not having anyone to direct our anger toward was almost worse than having a target. If we knew anything at all, we could plot and plan. Uncertainty continued to mount with each passing minute, hour, and day. Not knowing who we were fighting against left the Sparrows in a suspended state of flux.
“If I’m right,” Mason said loudly, “Sparrow will have a fucking huge target.”
I wished we were on a motorcycle. I’d tell him to pull over and let us converse in private without screaming. “What do you plan to do?”
“I have to go to Washington DC” —the last known location of the man known as Top— “if that’s where Top still is. I did a search last night. Congress is out for summer recess. Edison Walters—Top—has a residence in the city. I found no record of his travel.” Mason shrugged. “That doesn’t mean anything. I’m sure he’s capable of incognito. If he’s physically out of DC and with the Order, I’ll need to make an SOS call. I’m hoping I don’t have to go that far.”
“You want to show up at his house?”
“The deal I made, the one for my freedom, was with him. He has that kind of power. If the Order decided to go back on that deal, he would know and by all rights, so should I be informed, not that the Order usually informs its targets.”
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