by Diana Ryan
Myers’s voice came over the intercom again, sounding a much like a disgruntled parent. “Agent Raddemann, do as I say. Begin the surgery.”
My attention turned back into the operating room—Adam was still holding his ground. Myers was going to blow soon.
“Yes!” Drew had found some type of spray can and pulled it off the shelf. “Everyone in a two mile radius was suddenly hit with an intense dose of UV rays and—”
“They all got sunburned?” I snapped, perhaps due to my current state of stress.
“No, smart ass. UV radiation has so much energy it is able to actually knock electrons away from their atoms, causing molecules to split.” He walked over to me and looked at his watch. “In three minutes this watch is going to send out a micro-blast of UV radiation and cause everyone in a half a mile radius to fall unconscious and possibly suffer some serious cell damage.”
“Not much better than a bomb on your wrist,” I said, concerned. “What do we do about it?”
He stared me in the eye, and held up the can. “She left us an aerosol can of ozone in the cabinet!”
“Ozone? Like the layer of gases up in our atmosphere?”
“Exactly. Seconds before the freelance bomb maker set off his watch, he sprayed a dome of synthetic ozone around his body, intending to scatter and absorb the UV and protect himself.”
“So in a few minutes that watch will knock out everyone in Myers’s headquarters, except for us?”
“Only for several minutes, and only those who aren’t protected by the ozone spray.”
“What about Ava?” I turned to look through the observation window, but heard a loud click behind me. A gun cocked right behind my head. “How useful. I’ll take that, Agent Smith.”
Dammit! Harper. Of course—he was still Myers’s right-hand man.
He yanked the can out of Drew’s hands. “Put your hands up and slowly turn around, both of you.”
Myer’s voice boomed from the intercom. “Fine then. Darcy, hand me the scalpel. It’s time for me to finally take my revenge, with or without you, Agent Raddemann.”
“No!” Adam and I yelled at the same time. I turned from Harper to look through the window.
Harper kicked Drew in the stomach, and then grabbed my right hand and twisted it behind my back, holding me captive. I struggled while we heard Myers over the intercom.
“Just as I suspected, Agent Raddemann. I concluded a short time ago that you haven’t exactly been loyal to me.” He looked calm, yet irritated. “Perhaps your loyalties lie with someone very near us.”
Drew popped up from the ground, kicking Harper’s gun from his hand and catching it in midair. The trick startled Harper enough to loosen his grip, and I twisted around until I had him in the same position he had just held me in. I slammed his face up against the glass hard and stared through the window, over Harper’s shoulder, holding him hostage while he struggled to get loose.
Myers stood only a few inches from Adam’s face. “Do you love her, Adam? Have you fallen for the very stink of this earth?”
He didn’t have to say a word—his eyes told the truth of his heart.
With my own heart in my throat I went right to Ava’s face. Did she love him, too?
No!
There it was, right in her eyes. The end to us. The end to my existence. I involuntarily released my hold on Harper and fell to my knees, hunched over with excruciating pain in my chest.
Drew kicked Harper in the jaw but he bounced up quickly and threw a punch back at Drew. I couldn’t move. My world had started spinning.
Ava!
That British demon stole my sweet Ava! My stomach turned sour, my head pounded, and my heart was on fire. I suddenly felt like I couldn’t breathe, like all the air had been sucked out of the room.
“Two minutes, Nolan!” Drew yelled, but it sounded like he was at the end of a long tunnel. Harper growled and I barely heard items breaking around the room as Drew battled Harper.
This was all Myers’s fault. Not caring about everything around me, I stood and wandered toward the door, planning on busting through and ending Myers right then and there. But I only made it about three steps when I fell to the floor, dizzy and disoriented. My body had given up.
“Nolan, get up! I need you!” Drew’s ragged voice called for help behind me. “My Glock!” Harper and Drew still in combat, faces bloody and looking exhausted.
My mind went back to the old bartender in Dublin—“The man who is worthwhile is the one who can smile when everything is dead wrong.”
Was I really ready to give up on Ava? In Ireland I swore I would fight for her, even if I died trying.
“Thirty seconds, Nolan!”
I lifted my head off the ground and looked through the window at the most captivating woman I had ever met, lying helpless on the table. A woman who had shown me the true beauty of life. She had offered me comfort and ecstasy, and given my life real meaning. She held every inch of my heart.
As if she could hear, I pressed my hands up against the window and spoke to her. “I’ll be the one who loves you the most.”
And then as if I had just downed a can of adrenaline, I took the Glock from my waistband and pulled the trigger. Harper fell to the ground instantly. Drew ran over to me.
“Ten seconds!” We huddled together and watched Drew’s watch counting down. “I’m going to spray the ozone,” Drew said. ”Hold your breath and close your eyes!”
Drew sprayed a cloud of gas around us, and then held his wrist with the watch as far from his body as he could. I counted down in my head, hoping Drew was right about all this.
A series of high-pitched beeps rang out just as a massive burst of invisible energy sent three successive waves through the room, blowing papers, blasting pictures off the wall, and shattering the glass windows of the observation room.
My ears felt like I was deep underwater and my head experienced an uncomfortable squeeze of pressure, but I otherwise felt alright.
A few seconds later Drew told me to open my eyes. “It worked! Let’s go!”
I looked through the window inside the operating room. Two of Myer’s men and Adam lay on the floor unconscious, but no one else was in the room. Cabinets, furniture and medical supplies had toppled over and a large metal cabinet has shifted in front of the exit to the operating room.
“Where’s Ava?” I screamed. “Was she affected by the UV?”
Drew used his pistol to shoot out the door and then entered the room, yelling for Darcy. I crouched down and felt Adam’s pulse. He was alive.
“Adam! Where did they go?” I slapped his cheeks, hoping he would come to quickly.
“Darcy’s gone, too.” Drew tried to move the cabinet unsuccessfully and began carefully tracing the perimeter of the room with another one of his tech gadgets.
“When will they wake up?”
“Probably a few minutes.” Drew stopped at a black box that looked like a thermostat stuck to the wall. He lifted a false front to display a touch-sensitive screen. “I bet this opens a secret outlet.” He tried to guess the code with no success.
The more time we wasted, the farther Myers would get with Ava. I filled a metal container partway with cold water from the sink, and then splashed it on Adam’s face. He opened his eyes and sat up, gasping for air.
“What the bloody hell?” He looked around still breathing heavily. “Owe! My head! What happened?”
“It’s a long story that we don’t have time for right now.”
Adam rubbed his eyes and looked around the room quizzically. A line of blood dripped down from his nose as he sat up.
I moved in closer. “Adam, focus! Where did they go?”
“I can’t hear well.” He pulled on his ear lobes and moved his jaw back and forth. “Who?”
“Ava! Where did Myers take her?”
I pulled Adam to his feet as he stumbled over his words, looking stunned. “I…I don’t know. I have no ruddy idea.”
Drew turned from the box a
nd said calmly, “Adam, you don’t happen to know the code to this thing, do ya?”
“No,” Adam replied as he continued groaning and rubbing his head. He grabbed a stack of paper towels and pressed it to his nose. “Oh hell, I’m bleeding from the ears, too!”
With a hiss, a section of the tiled wall cracked open and swung out to reveal a dark tunnel behind it. Drew smiled and said, “Caducuspetra Morbus.”
“Come on, Adam,” I said. “You know your way around here better than us. You’ve got to get us to that girl.”
Adam made his way down the tunnel, Drew and I desperately following.
Epilogue
The hospital gown flew back behind me as I ran insanely through the parking garage, following the directions the pretty strawberry-blond lady had whispered to me. “Adam!” I yelled through tears, wondering if whatever that strange blast was had killed him. I knew Myers and his men must be only steps behind me, but I had no idea where I was or where I was going.
My muscles were weak and I felt nauseous from the drugs Adam had given me. Only a few cars were scattered throughout the lot so I could see out over the railings. The sun was just barely rising between the skyscrapers.
Skyscrapers? There are no skyscrapers in Stevens Point. Where am I?
“Ava! Stop!” someone yelled behind me. I turned to look and tripped over my clumsy feet. I fell hard, scraping my knee, wrist, and palm on the pavement. A wicked sting proved I had peeled a few layers of skin back in all three places. I screamed in pain and then in terror as I looked behind me, spotting a man dressed all in black running after me.
I forced my legs to stand and run up the ramp, blood dripping down my shins and toward my bare feet. I had nowhere to go. I was freezing.
This was definitely the last day of my life.
A bullet flew by my legs. “Adam!” I desperately cried out, hoping he’d magically jump out from behind the nearest car and whisk me away to safety. I was crying so intensely that mucus was pouring out of my nose and tears were blocking my view.
Suddenly a long, black car came roaring down the ramp ahead of me. It swung around, screeching its tires and coming to rest within ten feet of my body. The passenger side window rolled down and the person in the driver’s seat pointed a gun right out the window.
“Get down!” he yelled.
I collapsed to the ground and covered my head just as three shots— louder than anything I had ever heard in my life—rang out through the parking garage.
When the noise stopped echoing, I heard my name. “Ava, sweetheart. Get in!”
My attacker lay still on the cement floor. I stood from my crouched position and looked at my rescuer in the car.
My jaw fell open with shock. “Dad?”
I couldn’t believe it. My father was here, shooting a gun and swinging his car around like a regular old James Bond.
“Get in the car! Now!” He leaned over and opened the passenger’s side door.
I quickly slid in as Dad peeled out and zoomed down the parking ramp and onto the street, breaking through a wooden barricade across the exit.
My mouth hung open, eyes wide, as I tried to take in the truth of the last few minutes of my life. I stared at my father, not knowing what to say.
Dad pointed to a bag on the floor at my feet. “I brought you a change of clothes. There’s also a blanket.”
I couldn’t speak.
He kept his eyes on the road. “Are you okay, sweetie? Did Myers hurt you in any way?”
“Dad…I’m fine…I just…” Why the hell was my dad here? And how did he know about Myers?
“Honey, I’ve got a lot to tell you. But—”
“—I’d say,” I interrupted, sharply.
“Fine. You have the right to be upset with me.” He let out a deep breath. “But please, just listen to the whole story before you…react.”
“First, just tell me the truth: You are actually my father, right?”
I was completely serious but my dad laughed.
“Yes, dear. I am your father.” He took a deep breath and let it out loudly. “I’m just not entirely the person you always thought I was.”
“What do you mean?” I was somewhat terrified to hear his answer.
My father looked nervous. “I knew this day would eventually come. I just didn’t expect the truth to arrive quite in this manner.” He turned onto the Dan Ryan Expressway heading north toward Wisconsin and sat silently for a few moments.
“Dad?” Tears began to well up in my eyes and my voice cracked.
“I don’t work for a bank. I never have.”
“Okay…” I said with worry in my voice and tears sliding down my cheeks.
“I am a special consultant for the FBI.” He looked over at me but I didn’t react, so he continued. “I spend most of my days working in an office, conducting research and advising missions. When I was younger I was out in the field like Nolan.”
“Nolan?” How did my dad know about Nolan? I barely knew about Nolan.
“That’s right, you don’t have….Oh, Ava, I’m so sorry I haven’t protected you.”
His concerned stare was unsettling, and I was still frozen with shock.
My dad was FBI?
“Darling, at least put the blanket on. You’ll catch pneumonia.”
I pulled the blanket onto my lap just to humor him. Right now I could feel nothing—no pain, no discomfort.
“As you know, your mother and I have been overseas visiting Laura, but I was also working on a case for the agency.” He reached over to grab my hand. “We thought Myers got everything he wanted from us last August and that you’d be safe now. I learned just yesterday that Myers was ready to launch his assault on you and so I spent most of the night flying back to the US, sick with worry that you weren’t safe.” Then he stared out the windshield and muttered to himself, “Bowman assured me you’d be safe.”
I didn’t know much of what he was talking about. “So Mom knows all about this…life of yours?”
“Yes. Your mother has always been very supportive of my career choices.”
I closed my eyes and hoped that when I woke up, this entire day would just be a dream. I’d be in Stevens Point blissfully falling for Adam and enjoying the feeling of new love.
“Speaking of, I have strict orders to bring you straight home to your mother. She’s been crazy worried about you, just as I have been.” He looked over to me for some form of acceptance, but I kept my eyes closed, begging for sleep to come. “It’s a long way home, and I can imagine you’re exhausted, honey. But before you rest you have to hear one more thing.”
I didn’t know if I could take any more news, but I opened my eyes anyway. “Are you sure it can’t wait, Dad?”
“I can’t foresee the future, and I would hate for me to never have the chance to tell you this again, so I think you better hear this now.”
I couldn’t find any words.
“That scar you have over your heart…”
I instinctively felt my chest with my hand.
“It’s not from when you fell off your bike when you were four.”
“Dad…”
He lowered his voice, even though we were the only two in the car. “Nineteen years ago your grandmother and I desperately needed a hiding place.” He stopped for a moment, apparently looking for the right words. “There’s a secret inside of you, Ava. A secret you need to spend great efforts to defend, or very soon millions of Americans could find themselves at death’s door.”
Acknowledgements
Thanks again are due to my awesome husband, Wes, for supporting my choice to write. I’m sure you’re sick of me staring at my computer. I love you endlessly.
He edits, he compliments, and he does it all generously! Without you, Carl Stratman, Ava and Nolan wouldn’t pop off the page. Thank you, thank you, thank you!
To my amazing graphic designer, Hannah Christian Hess, for once again blowing me out of the water with your amazing cover design. Thank you so much!
http://www.hannahchristian.com/
To Lena, the voice of reason and advice in my ear. I thank you for continuing to feed the fire of my dream.
To the Carrier Series fans, for taking this journey with me! I hope you’ve enjoyed the second installment of the adventures of Ava and Nolan! Keep reading—there’s a lot more to Ava and Nolan’s journey!