by Vicki Hinze
Amanda looked from mother to son. “Why, Jeremy?”
“So they don’t hit my mom anymore.” He gazed up at her, the look in his eyes far too old for his years. “I don’t like it when they hit my mom.”
Amanda and Joan locked gazes and the woman’s fear grew thick and dense between them. “Yes, Jeremy, I’ll teach you,” Amanda said. “I’ll teach you both.”
Jeremy smiled and hugged her leg.
Startled, Amanda wasn’t sure what to do. Stiff and unfamiliar, she patted him on the shoulder.
“Thank you for protecting my son, Amanda.” Joan extended her hand and clasped Amanda’s.
Inside her fist was a note. “Of course,” Amanda said, taking it.
Joan looped an arm around Jeremy’s shoulders and they walked back into the apartment.
Amanda palmed the scrap of paper and went inside, wondering where in the world she could go to read Joan’s note privately. If she ran to the bath, which appeared to be unmonitored, after every encounter or interaction with Joan, the men minding the monitors would pick up on it. She needed a second safe place. When she toed off her sneakers near the bed, she found one. She kicked them under the edge of the bed.
Hoping whoever was supposed to be coming to talk with her would be a little more late than he already was, she waited twenty minutes, then pulled a fake search of the apartment for her shoes. She checked inside and out, the closet, the bath, and then “remembered” taking them off at the bed.
She looked under the bed, saw no cameras or devices. “Great.”
Crawling on her belly, she slid under, grunted, pretending to stretch for her sneakers, and unfolded the note. The lighting was awful, but just bright enough that she could make out the words.
Thank you for protecting Jeremy.
Mark is alive. The entire compound is under constant surveillance. There are a few safe zones the camera doesn’t reach. At 5:00 p.m., come and ask me to take a walk. I’ll show you.
They go through the trash. Eat this note.
Chapter Seven
Amanda discreetly watched the clock. Promptly at 5:00 p.m., she walked out the front door, cut across the lawn to Joan Foster’s door and knocked.
Joan answered, wearing jeans, a yellow sleeveless top and sneakers. Her brown hair was pulled back into a ponytail and clipped at her nape. “Yes?”
“Hi,” Amanda said. “I want to go for a walk. Being inside has me edgy. But I don’t know where I can and can’t go. I was hoping maybe you could spare a few minutes to show me.”
“I suppose I could.” Joan’s knuckles were white from the tight grip she held on the edge of the door. “Wait here while I tell Rosalita. She helps me with Jeremy.”
The older woman had come to Joan’s about one o’clock that afternoon, dressed in a gray maid’s uniform. Amanda’s nerves had been like live wires all day. Hour after hour she’d been armchair investigating from the apartment, waiting and waiting and waiting, but the guards had been wrong. No one had shown up to tell her anything, though the guards posted on the front sidewalk had switched every two hours. They hadn’t budged long enough to give her a chance to slip away and do any serious reconnaissance.
Joan came out and closed the door. They stepped off the stoop and walked to the sidewalk. The sun beat down on them relentlessly, and the pavement felt hot through Amanda’s shoes.
When they got close to the guard, a burly guy with a severe overbite, Joan paused to speak with him. “I’m going to show Captain West where she is and isn’t permitted to walk.”
Sweating profusely, he dabbed at his forehead with a white handkerchief and nodded but held his silence. Why these guards had to stand out in the sun in the middle of the day in suits, Amanda had no idea. It wasn’t only impractical, it was vicious, and it surprised her that none of them had collapsed from heat exhaustion.
No doubt Thomas Kunz insisted on the suits to prove he was a cultured thug, the ultimate authority and in total control. He seemed to have a penchant for little reminders to his staff, as well as his captives. Though, on second thought, the formal attire seemed more like something Paul Reese would insist on rather than Thomas Kunz. The fallen white knight with now-scarred face was very much into image.
Joan motioned, and Amanda moved down the sidewalk. She didn’t dare to hope that the guard wouldn’t follow them, and she’d been right. He paced himself to stay about twenty steps behind them. “Jeremy is a cute boy,” Amanda told Joan.
“He’s a good child.” She spoke softly, gazed off down the street then whispered, “I hate him being raised in this place.” At the corner, she left the sidewalk and walked through a patch of grass that led to what appeared to be a golf course. How bizarre. Kunz must be into golf. A clump of trees stood on the right.
Joan didn’t walk up to them, but paused about fifty feet out, where the trees were at a perfect right angle to them and to a sign that they were at the seventh hole. She deliberately stared down at her feet.
Amanda saw a red tee stuck in the dirt, and nodded to Joan.
“This is a safe zone. Move one foot in either direction and you’re back on camera, with audio. There’s video everywhere out here. That’s why the guards never get too close.” The wind blew her hair loose from its clip at her nape and across her face. She smoothed it back. “Because of what you did for Jeremy today, I’m going to trust you, Amanda. For God’s sake, don’t make me sorry I have.”
Amanda gave her a solemn look. “Because of what you did for me today,” she said, referencing the note, “I’m going to trust you. Please don’t make me sorry, either.”
Joan looked deeply into Amanda’s eyes. “Mutually assured destruction.”
“Yes.” Amanda acknowledged what she believed to be true. For the guard’s benefit, Joan smiled and pointed across the course, as if she was telling Amanda about the place. “Mark is alive. I’m doing what I can for him. Don’t expect anyone to come for you until tomorrow. They always tell you someone is coming and then make you wait so you have a lot of time to dread it, and to show you that things here happen at their convenience, not at yours. The whole place is one long succession of mind games.”
“I’ve more or less gathered that.” Amanda faked a smile, glanced at the guard, who had stopped out of earshot, as Joan had said he would, and stood watching them. After her foray into the tomb and seeing her black market body double in her kitchen, nothing about the level of psychological warfare GRID practiced here could stun her. Mark was alive. That was good news. Provided he wasn’t being tortured. “Is Mark safe?”
“He’ll survive it, Amanda.” Joan’s eyes held pity. “I’m sorry. I’m doing what I can.”
Not the reassurance she had hoped for, but at least Joan was honest and helping Mark as much as possible. “I’m not surprised, but it’s unfortunate that it can’t be stopped.”
“You have no idea how unfortunate matters can get for people around here.” Joan shuddered.
“Tell me.”
Again she pasted on a smile, but this one barely curled her lips and never came close to touching her eyes. “My husband, Simon, is being held hostage in the cabins farther down the course. His living conditions are not nearly so nice as ours.” Her expression changed, puzzled. “You do know that this is a GRID compound, and what GRID is, don’t you?”
“Yes,” Amanda admitted without hesitating. True, the information was classified, but with her son living in this horrible place and her husband held captive in it, no one had more to lose than Joan Foster. “Why does GRID want Simon?”
“It doesn’t.” That truth caused her pain. “It wants me.” And the guilt she felt about that threatened to bury her. It pounded off her in roiling waves. “Why?” Amanda asked.
“Because I’m an expert in my field.” Joan tilted her head, blocking the sun from her eyes with a hand cupped at her forehead. Still, she squinted. “Though I never thought I’d hate to say that, I do.” Her eyes filled with tears and she blinked hard to keep them from falling
down her face. “You have no idea how many times I’ve cursed myself for becoming a doctor. I wake up at night praying in my dreams that I’m a clerk in a grocery store or a gas station attendant. Anything other than this.”
Amanda picked up on the problem. “What are they making you do that you don’t want to do, Joan?”
Pain flooded her face. Her chin quivered and she clamped her jaw, looked Amanda right in the eye. “Every kind of work they tell me to do. I won’t insult you or myself by saying I have no choice. I do, Amanda. I can do what I’m told when I’m told, or Thomas Kunz will torture Simon and Jeremy in front of me until they die, and then do the same to me.”
An effective motivator for a loving wife and mother. Heartless, but effective. “What kind of work are they ordering you to do?”
“Illegal and immoral work,” she said, bitter and blunt. “The kind of work that will have me burning in the abyss for eternity.”
Amanda frowned. Obviously the spiritual ramifications of Joan’s work here troubled her enormously. “Be specific, Joan. It’s important.”
“I drug intelligence operatives and plunder the depths of their minds. I expose every dark secret buried in every nook and cranny inside them and I plant specific ‘memories’ that are manufactured and not memories at all.”
Horror swept up Amanda’s back, tingled the roof of her mouth. “Just how successful are you at this?”
“Very.”
Amanda’s heart stopped, flipped and folded. Thomas Kunz was identifying operatives with high security clearances and then generating duplicates to gain access to intelligence and classified information. God help them all. “I’ve got to see Mark, Joan. The sooner the better.”
“I’ll work something out.” She cast yet another sidelong glance at the guard. He was definitely getting antsy. “We’d better go.”
Chapter Eight
Someone pounded on Amanda’s front door so hard her apartment walls shook.
She awakened from a doze on the sofa and glanced at her watch: 2:00 a.m. Who in the world—Wait. Kunz. Proving he’s in control.
Amanda regrouped, then answered the door with a resigned, “What?”
Standing on the stoop, Beefy took two steps back, again staying out of striking distance. He didn’t say a word.
Amanda glared at him. “Are you just beating on the door because you’re bored and have no life, or do you actually want something?”
“Mr. Kunz wants to talk with you.” Beefy backed down the steps, waited on the walkway. “Let’s go.”
A white sedan was parked at the curb with its lights on and its engine running. Beefy had come for her alone? How interesting was that?
Liking her odds, she walked to the car, then reached for the handle to open the front door.
“Get in the back seat.” Beefy motioned with his head. “I don’t want you up front with me.”
Smiling to herself, she paused and let Beefy get within range. When he did, she whipped open the door and broadsided him with it.
Heaving a hefty grunt, he doubled forward and expelled a swooshed breath. Before he could recover, she twisted, hiked her knee into his stomach and drove the heel of her hand into his throat.
He crumpled to the ground, out cold.
She scrambled into the car behind the wheel and then took off, her tires screeching on the pavement.
Okay, Princess, what now? Where do you go? Out of here, or after Mark?
“Out. Definitely out.” There were guards every six inches on this compound. She needed backup—a lot of it to get Mark, Joan, Jeremy and Simon out of Kunz’s clutches. And she still had to kill Paul Reese for hitting her. That job headed her personal list.
Taking the corner at forty, she slammed on the gas pedal, and ate up the road. There were no lights in the distance, only darkness. She shot a glance into the rearview mirror. All the lights were behind her.
There was nothing out there.
The car lurched, hit the dust-dry dirt. She’d run out of road. Silently swearing, she kept going, but the dirt was beyond dry and loose and she couldn’t gain traction to get up her speed. Swearing she’d kill for Mark’s Hummer at the moment, she tried every maneuver she’d been taught on driving and even a few she hadn’t tried before, but nothing worked. The car slowed, then stopped, bogged down in a thick cloud of choking dust.
She turned off the headlights, got out of the car and looked around. Desert-like. Nothing. No place to seek protection or coverage. Nothing at all, actually. No lights, no buildings, no signs, not even a self-respecting weed.
Something didn’t feel right.
Humidity.
The air was humid. And it was the middle of the night and hot. Baffled, she made sure her perception was right; that it was humidity and not anxiety. It wasn’t. The air was thick and heavy and almost wet, which didn’t fit at all. The desert cooled down at night and the air was dry, arid. Right now, Amanda didn’t know a lot, but she knew one thing without question.
She was not in the Middle East.
A broad stream of light streaked through the sky and shone down on the ground. Amanda tracked its sweep long before she heard the whine of the helicopter’s props. Running would be a futile waste of energy. Her best shot was to take the chopper.
It spotted her and she stood still in the blinding light, until the aircraft set down on the dirt nearby, kicking up a dust cloud that would have her coughing for a week. She didn’t move.
A disembodied male voice barked out an order. “Come to the chopper.”
She still didn’t move.
“Now, Captain West.” To punctuate that order, he fired a shot six inches to the right of her feet.
She stirred, slowly heading toward the chopper, veering toward the pilot’s side. When she stepped under the beam of the light, she could make out two shadows inside. Both men. Both large, and no doubt armed.
The pilot stayed seated, but the other man opened the passenger door and left the chopper. She recognized him as one she’d seen before, the guard with the extreme overbite. He took aim on her with a submachine gun and motioned with its barrel for her to get inside.
A submachine gun? Talk about overkill. It was another of Kunz’s “I’m in control and don’t you doubt it” dominance reminders. Arms raised, she walked around the chopper, “accidentally” bumped into the flat of the gun barrel to knock out Overbite’s aim, and then backed off. “Sorry. Loose dirt. Not quite stable.”
“Save it, West.” He hiked the barrel. “Just get in the chopper.”
She snagged the cool metal, shoved the gun back into his shoulder, throwing out his rotator cuff, and he went down. Flipping the gun from her right to left hand, she shot him without taking aim, then spun on the pilot—and stopped in her tracks. “Harry?” She couldn’t believe her eyes.
“Hi, Amanda.” He smiled. “Get in, will you?”
She scrambled into the chopper. “I thought you were dead.”
“So they’ve been telling me.” He sighed. “Guess it’s true then.”
Replica.
How could she tell if the man flying the chopper was Harry or his double? “Frank told me you died in Iraq.” It had been Jim.
“GRID faked it,” Harry said. “Is Frank still flying relief for me?”
No pilot named Frank had ever flown on Harry’s CIA drop-zone route. “Last I heard,” she lied. This was not Harry. But Kunz wanted her to believe it was.
Or it was Harry and he was trying to let her know that things weren’t right.
Which one, she had no idea. But she couldn’t shoot Harry, if he was Harry.
In a fluid motion, she shoved open his door and kicked him out of the chopper. He hit the ground with a thud and a swooshed breath. “Sorry.” Maybe she was, maybe she wasn’t, but now wasn’t a good time to debate. She slid into his seat, slammed the door shut and lifted the bird off the ground.
Amanda wasn’t on steady feet here. She could fly nearly any fixed-wing aircraft, but a helicopter was a differ
ent breed, and she hadn’t been checked out in any of them. The craft, all too aware a rookie had the stick, lurched wildly, erratically, and she scanned the gauges looking for assistance. Her gaze locked on the fuel gauge. A red light flickered and began blinking. Low fuel light.
The tank was empty.
“No!” She cranked her head back and groaned. “Can I please catch just one break here? Just one? I don’t think it’s asking too much for just one single thing to go right.”
She looked around for additional fuel, checked the panel for a spare tank and found nothing.
A warning beep pierced her ears, joining the flashing red light. The engine was fuel-starved and about to choke; she was running on fumes....
Noise outside the chopper grew loud and then deafening. Four helicopters came into view. They swooped down from above and surrounded her.
Her stomach sank and the hope that she would escape died.
Apparently, God was fresh out of breaks.
Chapter Nine
Beefy blindfolded her, shoved her into a second helicopter and took her on a short flight across the compound.
Upon landing, he jerked her out of the aircraft and led her across rough ground into a building with smooth, dirt floors that smelled of freshly mown grass.
Fresh air quickly disappeared and the stale stench of recycled air filled her nose. The sound of six men’s footsteps—no doubt, armed—escorted her down what echoed like a long corridor. The floor was hard and slick here, like tile. She hadn’t seen the building or the corridor, but from the moment she stopped sensing the wind, and the air smelled recycled, she began counting her steps.
In her mind, she saw the building Beefy had dragged her through on her first visit with them. Every six feet, there had been a framed photo of Thomas Kunz. Black hair and evil eyes that glared out at whomever walked past. On passing each photograph, Amanda had felt a little niggle of something not quite right that had put her instincts on alert.
Though she couldn’t see a thing, and she somehow knew this wasn’t the same building, she was having the same experience now. Oddly, she was also recalling the image and feelings of seeing that photograph.