by Angela Foxxe
The bundle held against her wriggled slightly, but even without the cry, Frost didn’t need anyone to tell him that it was a sleeping baby.
Annie addressed the group of them, her face kind and patient, even though they had come with the intention of killing the people in the town just behind Annie.
“You have been fooled,” she began, scanning the crowd of nearly twenty agents as she spoke. “My father is a master manipulator, a narcissist of the worst kind. He didn’t have me killed. He ordered the hit on me because I questioned the ethics of what he was doing with the children and the human spouses of the WereLions. Tell me, do you think you can trust a man that would kill his own daughter for questioning his motives? Of course not. So, you will be given a choice. Join us, and fight by our side to take back the freedom that my father has denied so many, or take your chances in the woods with no gun. The bears haven’t found a good place to hibernate yet, and they’re still looking for a good meal to keep them satiated for the winter.”
Her voice was light, but she was obviously serious. Frost’s stomach dropped. Trudging through the forest as the sun was going down was already hell for him. Doing it now, in the dark with no weapon would be a death sentence without the possibility of bears.
He looked around at his men, but they were all looking at the ground. Decker was shouting into the earpieces, his voice high-pitched and cracking, his words laced with profanities and threats.
“Can you take this thing out of my ear?” he asked the man with the gun pointed at his head.
The man shrugged and pulled the piece out, tossing it to Annie.
“You lost, Father,” she said, then she dropped the earpiece to the ground and crushed it beneath her boot.
The rest of Decker’s men followed suit, asking for help and sighing in relief when the sound of Decker’s outrage was crushed into the ground beneath them.
Annie was smiling at the men when Frost looked up.
“Good. I thought that you guys might see reason when you realized that you were fighting for the wrong side.” The shifters yanked all the men up in one motion, setting them on their feet with their hands still cuffed behind their backs. “You will have to forgive us, but we aren’t going to uncuff you until we have had a chance to sit with each of you and make sure that you’re genuine. We don’t want to have any issues down the road.”
Frost nodded.
“We understand,” he said for all the men. “To be honest, we wouldn’t even give you the chance if the roles were reversed, so thank you.”
Annie smiled at him, her expression as sweet as he remembered it before her fake disappearance.
“Don’t make me regret it,” she said with a wink, then turned and led the men into town.
Frost’s cellphone rang in his pocket, the very specific tone loud and annoying, just like the caller.
“That’s Decker,” he called out to Annie.
She spun on her heel, closing the distance between them and taking the phone out of Frost’s pocket. She answered the phone, holding it to her ear without saying a word.
“You listen here, you coward. You pick your balls up off the floor and you do what you were sent there for. I went The Zone leveled and every man, woman and child killed. Do you hear me?”
“I hear you, Father,” Annie said. “Now you hear this. While you’re busy running the show from your office, you’ve left Hope House vulnerable.”
“How did you know the name?” Decker demanded. “I never told you where I was putting them.”
“I know a lot of things,” she said curtly. “And I know what you did to your own niece to fill your insane need for power. You’re going to be stopped, and the world is going to know what kind of monster you are.”
“That’s where you’re wrong,” he said, laughing. “You’re a fool, and you’ve called your friends out before they showed up. I’m looking at the security cameras right now and everything is how it should be. Thanks for the warning, Princess. Daddy loves you.”
He hung up, but Annie was smiling.
“Why did you tell him that?” Frost asked. “Now, he’s going to get there before they do, and people will die.”
Annie shook her head.
“My father is a fool and he’s horrid with technology. His computer has been running a security loop for over an hour. They’re already there, and he won’t get there in time to stop them.”
***
Paul held his hand up, stopping the group behind him and crouching down in the brush that dotted the edge of the tree line. He patted Sabrina’s leg and pointed to a man near a bench across the grassy area, the faint glow of a cigarette the only thing that really gave away his position in the dark. She nodded, stepping back and into the trees, quietly making her way around to where he was.
The trail was narrow, but clear, the ground even and packed. She would lay money that deer routinely walked this path, pounding the dirt down every morning and late afternoon without the humans inside being any the wiser.
There was a soft cough and the man muttered under his breath about “damn cigarettes” before sitting heavily on the cement bench and setting his rifle down beside him, propped against the bench and out of the way. Sabrina crept up behind him, slowly and carefully.
When her hand touched the man’s rifle, something inside him alerted to her presence and he spun, but it was too late. She took the rifle in both hand, bringing it up and across so that it hit him in the face, and knocked him out cold.
He fell face down in the sandy dirt that surrounded the benched, cigarette still clamped in his teeth. The end of it hit the ground first, snuffing out the light when it did. She checked to make sure the man was still breathing, then took a pair of zip cuffs out of her pocket and cuffed him up tightly. She dug through his pockets until she found the entry card and a set of keys. She put the keys in her own pocket and held the entry keycard in her hand.
She gave the all clear, whistling softly, then heading for the front door. The other were behind her in the space of a few moments, covering her while she opened the door with the guard’s keycard.
They piled into the hallway, careful to keep themselves against the wall as they went. Just like she remembered, the only cameras in the hall were pointed at all the bedroom doors. The only concern that Hope House had was that their little pet projects not escape. They had never considered people breaking in. But their heavily armed group of five men had gone down quietly and without any struggle, and the other two teams were already swarming the building from all sides.
The only obstacle left was a guard room, which would have no more than three guards, and two staff members that took care of the “guests” as the prisoners were called, and were unarmed.
Sabrina led the charge, ignoring Paul’s tap on her shoulder to give him lead. She was going to take care of this, and he could provide her with cover.
They went through the building quickly, Sabrina navigating the winding halls with ease. She didn’t have solid memories of this place, but whenever they came to a fork in the hall, she let her instinct guide her.
She was about to turn the corner when she heard a door open and a man call out to another one.
“I’m going to the cafeteria to get something to eat, do you want anything?”
“I’ll take a soda,” the other man said.
The door closed and the man’s footfalls moved closer to where they stood, just on the other side of the corner.
When the man made the sharp turn, he looked up at Sabrina in shock, then opened his mouth to call out to the other guard. Before he could, Sabrina punched him in the throat and he went down like a felled tree, gasping silently for air and writhing in pain. Paul grabbed the man by the shoulders of his button up shirt and dragged him out of sight, handing him off to the man in the back to be cuffed.
Sabrina checked around the corner, but the other guard hadn’t heard a thing, and the caretakers were nowhere to be seen. She looked at her watch, realizing that those caretak
ers were probably preparing dinner and setting it out on tray in the cafeteria.
She pointed to the cafeteria door, making the hand signal for “unarmed” and indicating that there would be two or three people inside. Two of the men nodded, breaking away from the group to stand at the ready outside the cafeteria door.
Sabrina led the rest of them down the hall, keeping her eye on the remaining guard through the large window, his back turned to the hall as he focused on a video game on the computer screen.
He doesn’t even have the outside security feed up, Sabrina thought, incredulous at the man’s careless behavior.
She used the keycard to open the door, walking in normally. The guard laughed as he spun the chair around.
“That was quick, Hera-” He stopped, looking at Sabrina as if he was looking at a ghost. “You,” he whispered. “I thought you were dead.”
“No,” she said, recognizing him as the man from her dream. “But you’re going to wish you were.”
He stood up then, lunging for his gun in the small space. She kicked him hard in the gut, sending him flying backward into the desk. He hit the floor with a grunt, getting to his knees and attempting to get to his feet. Sabrina spun, kicking him in the side of the head. He slid across the tile floor on his face, eyes already rolling back in his head as he struggled to hold onto consciousness.
“Stay down,” she said. Her boot landed on his outstretched hand, grinding with her heel until she heard a crack and he whimpered in pain. “If you move, I’ll do more than break your hand.”
“I won’t move,” he whimpered, sniveling like a small child. “I’m not going to move, please, you’re killing me.”
Paul rush forward with a pair of zip cuffs. He kneeled beside the man, taking his good arm behind his back and somehow managing to “accidentally” knock the man’s face into the floor. The guard whimpered again, but he kept as quiet as he could. When Paul asked him to put his broken hand behind his back, he complied without a fight.
He left the man where he was, face down and trying to keep himself under control. He was breathing hard and Sabrina could tell that he was doing his level best not to cry. She almost felt sorry for the man, who was now almost fifteen years older than he had been the last time he had roughed up Sabrina, and he was pushing sixty and quite a bit more frail.
There was movement behind them, and the rest of their team and the two other teams showed up, smiling and declaring that the building was clear and they were ready to set up.
One of the men went to the computer, pulling up the video feeds and getting the passwords from the guard on the floor. He switched around until he found the camera that was trained on the entrance to the sixteen-hundred-acre park’s remote controlled gate. A car was already coming toward the gate from the long, winding road that led there from the two highways on the north and south side. The car paused and the gate started rolling back, activating an alarm in the building.
“He’s here,” Paul said with a big smile. “Right on time.”
He turned to Sabrina, hands on her shoulders and looking deep into her eyes.
“Are you ready for this, Sabrina?”
“I am,” she said. “I’ve been waiting for this moment since I was twelve years old.”
“Alright then,” he said, looking up to address the teams. “You all know what to do. Get in position and let’s make this count. We only have one shot at this.”
THE FINAL CHAPTER
Decker parked his car in the reserved spot with his name on it, getting out and looking around. He heard a groan a few feet away and turned, rolling his eyes when he saw the man in a heap on the ground, hand cuffed and obviously beaten.
He went to him, picking up the man’s assault rifle and kicking the man in the stomach.
“You’re worthless. You have trained for this night for years and look at you.”
He gave the man another kick for good measure, turning abruptly and heading toward the front door. He used his keycard to gain entry, walking boldly into the foyer that stood just outside the beginning of the main hall.
Sabrina was there, keys in hand, opening a second door. Another door beside her stood open, but the light was out and it was obvious that she had already released a few of the children to run for it. He laughed, shaking his head.
“You’re a fool,” he said. “Those children you’ve already let go are trapped in this building. You can’t get in or leave without a keycard.”
She stared at him, too afraid to speak, he was sure. He laughed again.
“I always thought the dark room would break you, but you never seemed affected by it. It looks like now; your brain has turned to mush and you’ve lost your touch. You’re a coward, sneaking into here in the middle of the night, attacking a guard while he sat on his break. What kind of monster are you?”
“I would ask you the same thing.”
“Oh look, the puppet can talk. Isn’t that cute? Where is your boyfriend? I’m sure he helped you get here. Looks like all you know how to do is follow an alpha man’s orders, even when you run away to freedom. I’ll admit, you had me fooled. When you didn’t die in the crossfire at the hotel in Denver, I was certain that the lion has actually kidnapped you. It was perfect. Instead of dying in a hail of gunfire, you were going through exactly what my Annie did, and the public was going to eat it up. I couldn’t have planned it better myself.”
“Except, that’s not what happened,” she said, smirking at him.
“No, it gets even better. After spending less than a week with the shifters, you’re already breaking into an orphanage and the children are in danger. I wonder how many you will have killed by the time I’m done killing them. And then, I’ll step in, valiantly wrestling the gun from you and killing you in the process. I’ll be a hero, and there will be proof that I will save the children of the shifters, even if they come from evil.”
“Shifters aren’t evil, you are,” Sabrina countered, bantering with him like an errant child.
“The people don’t know that. The people are too stupid to ever see beyond their fears. Fears that will only be more heightened by this event. I’ll rise to power in no time, and people will thank me for oppressing them. They’ll say it’s for their safety, and I’ll be hailed as the truest patriot of all time.”
“It will never happen,” she said, staring at the gun in his hand with a cool indifference that set off the rage inside Decker.
But he kept his cool, moving toward her slowly so he had a better chance of hitting her when the moment was right. The closer he could get, the better. He wasn’t the best shot, but she didn’t know that.
She stood her ground, almost daring him to come at her. He was happy to fulfill her request.
“Why did you kill your own brother?” she asked suddenly, stopping him in his tracks.
He recovered quickly, not letting on that her question and the fact that she knew had rattled him. She wasn’t supposed to have her memories.
“Because he married a shifter and had a child. A child, with a shifter. Can you imagine how embarrassed my parents were? When they died, I extended an olive branch, hoping that he would have come to his senses after being shunned by our family for thirteen years. He responded by inviting me to a performance, so I could watch him butcher music with his shifter wife and their shift blood child. I was incensed. I couldn’t let him ruin our good name.”
“So, you killed him?”
“I didn’t kill him. I paid a hitman to do it, and make it look like your mother had gone mad, shifted and killed your father, then come after you. What choice did I have but to shoot her? My hitman did his work then left me to call the police. You were asleep when it happened, so I asked the police to tell you that they died in a car accident and I made a big show of taking you out a side door of the mansion. They bought it, hook, line, and sinker. I went to file for guardianship the next day and the judge granted it without question.”
“You’re sick,” she said through clenched tee
th.
“Actually, you were the one that was sick, so damaged by what had happened that you had to be committed. You see, the rumor mill is a beautiful thing. When you weren’t around and there was talk about you being sent away for treatment, people started speculating that you had found your parents, and that you were irreparably damaged by the experience. It was easy to believe, as awkward as you were on some of the videos they showed on the news. When I announced that you were institutionalized, it was the month before I was elected to the Senate. I won by a landslide.”
“You used the murders you committed to further your career.”
“The people are a stupid breed,” he laughed. “They gave me the vote and thanked me for raising their taxes to fund HLF. They didn’t question anything when I shut down Bear Creek Park, and they all but begged me to raise property taxes to help keep shifters out of public schools. I could have sold them bear spray for grizzlies and they would have sent their children to school with it. You opened so many doors for me, just by being you.”
He took another step, and this time, Sabrina did retreat one step.
“I don’t know where you think you’re going to go,” he said. “This gun has a wide range and you can’t outrun it. You will be dead before you make it to the end of the hallway. And then I’ll kill all of the children and blame it on you. No one will even question why there’s an orphanage in the park. They’ll beg me to run for president, and then the fun will really begin.”
“So, that’s the bottom line?” Sabrina said. “Tom Decker would kill his own family and murder innocent children in order to be the president.”
“I have no plans to stop there. When I build my army of shifters, I will rule the world. You will call me King Decker. Well, not you. Because you will be dead. Then I’ll get on the news and tell them how hard it was to take down my own, sweet, broken niece, but that I did it for the good of the children, and for the country.”