I remembered there was something at stake for him too, an old acquaintance of Henry’s. We would conquer this together.
With a quick movement, Hassan pushed the door open and we looked into the bright of the small bedroom.
The barrel of a gun stared back.
“Henry?” I asked, shaking slightly.
“That’s not Henry.”
Hassan’s voice was chilling. The man in front of us was younger, barely twenty, with a long head of hair and a knowing smile. He relaxed in his chair as he brought a radio to his lips.
“Found ‘em.”
We should have ran. Maybe we were too stunned to move.
The other end of the radio crackled. “You know what to do.”
Hassan moved quicker than I had realized; his hand came around my forearm and pulled hard, throwing me out of the doorway. He followed quickly after, grunting as a gunshot burst from the bedroom.
“Shit,” and Hassan’s hand clamped over his shoulder as he pushed at my back, forcing me up onto me feet. I didn’t need to be told twice.
I had never run so fast in my life.
The gunshot had alerted others in the wing, bedroom doors flying open as we fled past them, curious faces following us, recognizing slowly that we were not one of them, we were a threat. Behind us, again, another shot rang out. I ducked and vaguely registered it hitting the wall two feet from my head. People in their rooms shrieked.
The man who had been waiting for us was shouting something and people were scrambling now. An alarm went off somewhere in the compound. It was like everything had gone to total shit and chaos in less than five minutes.
As if things couldn’t get strange enough, Hassan’s phone rang. He pulled it from his pocket, staring at it incredulously. “Holy shit.”
“What?”
I could hear shouting from behind us. We needed to keep moving, but to where, I wasn’t sure. His hand fisted in my shirt as he pulled me into the nearest room; thankfully, it was empty. He shut the door tightly before flipping open his phone. In the dark, all I could do was hear him speak. I kept my ear to the door, listening for trouble.
Hassan didn’t greet the person on the other end of the line, only waiting a moment before hissing, “I should have fucking known.”
He hung up suddenly and I heard his fist make contact with the hard wall. I flinched, reaching blindly out for him. “Hassan—”
“We need to get home.”
“What?” I hissed. What the hell was going on? “Why?”
Hassan sighed. His hands came up to my shoulders, felt them as if he were mapping my body in the dark. “It was Henry.” He swallowed hard. “All of it was Henry—I should have fucking seen something like this coming—”
“Hassan?”
“He’s at your mansion. He was never here. He had someone waiting for us, but….” Hassan’s hands fell away. “Fred. He’s got Abella and the kids.”
He pushed the door open again, signaling for me to follow him once the coast was clear. As if on autopilot, I followed, still shaken by the news I had just received. My body felt cold, despite the sweat from our physical exertion.
“Where are we going?” I yelled to Hassan, lungs burning as we rounded a corner.
“Same rendezvous point,” he said, his voice was labored but firm, unwavering, as if he were in his element somehow. “We need to get out of here as soon as possible, but we need the others.”
It made sense. I stuck close to his side as we retraced the route—
Hassan tumbled down next to me and it took a moment to realize someone had tackled him from one of the doorways. Hassan rolled the man over easily, fist swinging, unrelenting. When he pushed off of the man, his fist was bloodied slightly.
I stared at him with owl eyes.
“C’mon,” he heaved, hand on my back, guiding softly. “Let’s go.”
Our mission had been compromised.
As had our rendezvous point.
When we got to the mess hall, it was a disaster. Already, Doc had been taken and by the time we saw Jackson writhing under the weight of three men, it was too late. I did my best to fight off the people who came at me, but they were too many.
Unthinkingly, I shouted for Hassan as I dug my fingernails into someone’s cheek. They responded with a solid punch to my stomach. My body folded, collapsing on the floor with the force of it.
A gunshot went off, my ears ringing at the noise of it.
The man who had slugged me crumpled to the ground in a heap. I could smell the copper scent of blood.
A strong arm came up around my middle, helping me to my feet; I didn’t need to open my eyes to know who it was. I knew Hassan by now—his body, his scent, his feeling—to know he had me at his side, just as he’d promised.
When I forced my eyes open, the room was at a standstill.
On the other side of the mess hall, in another doorway, Sam was on his knees, a gun pressed against his head.
A woman, old, her white hair feathered underneath a bandana, shouted at us and it was only her and the alarm that were making noise anymore. “We should shoot your friend because of what you’ve done.”
What you’ve done. I looked at the result of it where he lay at my feet. He groaned, fingers twitching slightly.
“He’s alive,” I shouted back. Hassan’s hand tightened on my waist. “Come and help him!”
“Put the gun down!” said another man.
Hassan weighed his options.
“You’re outnumbered! In manpower and fire power.” The woman shook her head. “This needs to end here. Drop your weapons!”
Hassan swore under his breath.
“Or your friend is going to die—”
The metal of Hassan’s gun hitting the ground echoed in the mess hall. He kicked it slightly and it slid under one of the hall’s tables. He couldn’t get to it easily, but neither could they.
The woman waved. “Round them up.”
20
Hassan
We were bound with zip ties, our hands kept tightly behind our backs, before we were moved to another location. The alarms has stopped; the people who had looked so curiously out of their rooms were now locked inside them, for their own safety, I assumed.
It seemed like it was a storage area we were moved into, dusty and full of dried foods. They sat us down in a line where they could watch us easily and I looked down at every one of my men who had been taken, counting—all but Mikhail were present. I wondered where he was, if he had gotten away. Had he deserted us? Had he gone for help?
I didn’t have a full mind to dwell on it.
For a long moment, I wondered if they would kill us here.
But this wasn’t an execution.
It was an interrogation.
The feather-haired woman spoke first. The team that was with her had bruises and cuts, and one held his elbow like it was very much in pain—I wondered with a little bit of pride who on our side had given him the injury—but for the most part they weren’t some crazy militia. They were people in plainclothes with non-uniformed weapons. The kind of people I had interacted with back when I was with Henry.
“What are you folks doing out here?” she asked. In her hand was shotgun, engraved with the name ‘ADDIE.’ I guessed it was her name. “You’ve caused an awful lot of fucking trouble. Because of you, one man is in the infirmary, fighting for his life—because of you.”
She pointed a finger at me.
I said nothing.
Addie moved quickly for her age. She stepped up to me, her hand winding back; tied up, there wasn’t much for me to do besides take it as she slapped me hard across the face. Pain bloomed through my entire head. I didn’t realize it until it cut my lip, but she had a nice little wedding ring on her hand.
Fred flinched hard next to me. “Hassan—”
“Shut up.” Addie’s cold stare silenced him instantly.
“Now, I’m gonna ask you one more time and then we ain’t gonna play nice anymore.�
� Addie twisted her ring on her finger as she glanced at us one by one. “What are you doing here in our compound?”
“We came here on a private extraction,” I told her. It was the truth. That was about as much of the truth as I told her. “My brother lives up North. He’s just trying to live his life quietly like the rest of you. Not harming anyone. Off the grid.”
One man asked, “The fuck does that have to do with us?”
I shook my head. “He was longtime buddies with someone in your compound. He’s been telling me his buddy—one of your men—has been trying to get him to come here for years. It started out with suggestion, but….”
“But what?”
Here’s where I wish I had some of Fred’s skills. Acting was different from lying. Lying was easy. Making it convincing was hard.
“Two months ago, your man came after my brother’s wife. She never saw it coming. She trusted him—they both did. He found her in a grocery store parking lot and ran her over with a stolen truck, then disappeared.”
It was bullshit. All total bullshit.
Addie’s eyes narrowed.
“We came here to get him. Take him back with us. He isn’t safe. Not for my family, not for you.” I nodded to Addie. “Is that the kind of crazy you want around here when the world really goes to shit?”
I needed her to buy it.
She looked like she was buying it.
I felt a small flicker of hope.
Then some jackass knocked on the door. It was rhythmic, a coded password. The door slid open.
“Phone call.”
It was a familiar voice. My stomach twisted hard, any shred of luck I felt we had eviscerated as the boy from before—the one we’d found waiting for us in Henry’s room—stepped forward, burner phone in hand.
Our eyes met. He smiled, cruel and unusual.
“For me?” Addie asked.
The boy shook his head. “No.” And, he pointed down the line—not to me, but to Fred, and I flinched, feeling the overwhelming need to defend him. “Frederic Reyes.”
Fred shifted beside me. I wanted to touch him, to assure him somehow this would be fine, but I couldn’t. It was its own kind of torture.
“...Me?”
Addie pursed her lips. “Put it on speaker.”
The boy did as she said, speaking into the receiver as he did. “He’s here.”
“Fred?”
It was Henry’s voice, easily recognizable. A cold kind of dread came over me. How much of this had he anticipated? How much had he planned?
Fred’s voice was tentative. “He-Henry?” His voice echoed in the storage unit.
Confused, Addie mouthed, ‘Henry Carter?’ to the boy, who nodded his head in confirmation.
“You remembered my voice.”
“Of course.” Fred took a deep breath, trying to be steady. How could you forget the voice of the man following you, practically tormenting you with the idea that you were being watched, but could do nothing about it? “Why aren’t you here, Henry?”
“I came to visit you, but you weren’t here.” Henry’s voice was toying, part real- and part mock-disappointment. “But your sister was—what’s your name again dear?” We heard a muffled voice before he was humming into the phone. It drew an unnerving chill up my spine how calm he sounded. “Abella. And her two beautiful children. And their nanny, and Lorna….”
“What do you want, Henry?” Fred’s voice was more resolute, tinged with anger, a desire to protect the people he cared about.
“For you to be here with me.” Henry paused. “That’s all I ever really wanted out of this, Frederic. It’s all just been so we could get closer. If you come to me, then they get to leave—”
“He’s holding them hostage,” Jackson said, not to Henry, but to Addie.
Addie considered it, shaking her head slowly. The boy took it upon himself to influence her, like a snake whispering in her ear. “Addie, Henry knew these people were coming. He’s told me about them, they’re from the government and they’ve been pursuing him for months—”
“That’s a lie,” I cut.
Addie’s favor seemed to be waning.
“Henry, it’s going to take me hours to get back, you know that.” Fred’s voice spoke over ours. He wasn’t interested in arguing who was telling the truth or who wasn’t and I admired him for that: his focus. There were people under his care who were in trouble now because of decisions he had made—it was everything I had warned him about.
“Well, then you better get moving. I’m losing my patience, Frederic.”
The line went dead before anything more could be argued and the words came out of me before I could stop them:
“Fred, you can’t go.”
“I have to.”
Our eyes met and there was a hardness in them I hadn’t seen before; it had only been partially present when we would argue over the right way of doing things. But this was truly life or death.
“It’s a trap—he’s been setting up traps for us to fall into every time we get close to him, Fred—”
“I’m sorry, Hassan.” Fred shook his head and he studied my face for a long moment, as if to remember what it looked like. The idea of not seeing his again made me sick.
Finally, he turned to Addie. “You heard Henry. He’s waiting for me. I need to go.”
“Fred—”
“Please.” Fred spoke over me, desperation on the edges of his voice. “He’s with my family.”
Addie’s face was hard to read. She was a hard woman. Slowly, she nodded. “Cut him loose. Escort him to the front.”
And that was all the direction she gave before two men were at either side of Fred, hoisting him onto his feet. There was a sharp snap as his cuffs were cut with the sharp edge of a hunting knife. Fred took a shaky breath as they took hold of either of his forearms.
“What about the rest of them?” asked the man whose elbow had been hurt.
Addie considered it. “Leave them here. I’m not finished with them yet.”
FRED
I wanted to tell Hassan a lot of things before I left.
Stay safe, or I have to do this.
I think I love you, too.
But there wasn’t time enough and it could have put him in an even more dangerous position. I didn’t need to gamble his life more than I already had.
The hills sprawled in front of me and I traced over them, trying to remember the route we had taken down into the valley as they back of a long gun nudged between my shoulder blades, pushing me out. “Start walking,” the man behind me instructed.
With nothing more to do, I followed his command.
I felt time slipping away, precious seconds like sand in an hourglass, like the sand of the hills I roamed and clawed my way back up as I searched for the car, remarking with a great amount of annoyance that we’d done almost too good of a job hiding the SUV.
It was difficult without light. When I checked my wristwatch again, it had already been nearly half an hour of hiking and searching blindly in the dark. The moon was thankfully out, though, with few clouds in the sky, so I had some light at least to guide me. And it was the moonlight glinting off a piece of the back bumper that alerted me to where the car was.
I heaved a huge sigh of relief, a hope rekindled in my chest as I crawled through the brush and into the driver’s seat. Maybe, I thought, smiling despite the situation, I could fix this.
I turned the keys in the ignition. The car revved, for a moment—before dying.
Again.
And, again.
And, again.
On the fifth attempt, it was pretty clear something was wrong. I popped the hood, but knew little more about cars outside of checking the oil and fluids to know what was wrong—there looked like there was some kind of wire or tube loose and it wasn’t something I could even begin to try and fix on my own, without potentially electrocuting myself or blowing up the car.
Over the lip of the hill, I could hear the very far-off sound of t
he occasional car rushing down the highway. I couldn’t remember what highway it was off the top of my head, but highways meant cars and cars meant people. Hopefully someone would stop to help if I flagged them down.
I slammed the hood down.
It didn’t end here.
I was Frederic fucking Reyes and I did not give up so easily.
HASSAN
“You’re a fucking prick, you know—?”
Jackson didn’t have time to finish his sentence before he was very unceremoniously kicked in the stomach. He rolled over, grunting, coughing.
I didn’t want to see my friend in pain, but I couldn’t blame them, to some extent. Jackson was a fucking loud mouth.
“We don’t take kindly to liars out here.”
The boy—Henry’s apparent lap dog—was fixated on me in particular. I wondered what Henry had told him about me, if anything. He looked at me like he knew me and that was maybe the most unsettling part. His hand came down hard against the side of my head.
“Why don’t we try this again?” Addie suggested, sitting herself down on a wrapped pallet of boxed rice. “Why the hell are you people trespassing?”
“Who told you the codes for getting in here?”
Jackson grunted. “Which do you want us to answer?”
“We told you,” I bit back. “They were given to us by one of your own men. He didn’t give a name.”
Addie shook her head. “Nope. All our guys know better than to hand out passcodes to just anybody.”
Unable to help myself, a mean grin crept onto my face. “Clearly they don’t, if we got them so easily—” and my words were cut off, another blow landing hard across my face. Henry’s lap dog seemed to take a pleasure in getting to harm me. I spit out on the floor, sitting myself upright again. I nodded to him. “Henry has you on a leash, doesn’t he?”
The boy didn’t say anything, because Addie had ordered him not to. I could see it in his eyes though; he wanted to speak, to give me a piece of his mind. Good, I thought. I wanted him sloppy, angry.
“What does he tell you? That he’s going to save you?”
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