Frantically Jed continued scrambling up the hill. If he could reach the other gunman before he retrieved his gun, he would have a fighting chance. But when he was still thirty feet away, the man launched himself forward, scooped up the rifle with his left hand while holding his right hand against his chest. He spun around and pointed it at Jed.
“Hold it! Stop right there!”
Jed pulled up, panting, sweating. His arm was going numb, his hand and forearm swelling. Blood dripped from his fingertips. He was growing weaker by the second.
“Hands up,” the man hollered.
Jed raised his right hand. His heart hammered in his chest. This was it. This was how it would all end. In the woods, alone, with no one but this killer to even witness his death. He was glad for that, though. He wouldn’t want Karen or Lilly to see this. He prayed again that they were far enough away and that they’d make it to the cabin in Idaho, someway, somehow, that they’d be safe and able to start a new life.
A familiar voice spoke then from an unseen location. “You’re a difficult man to hold on to, Peter.”
Nichols. His voice was unmistakable. He emerged from behind the trunk of an ancient oak, hands behind his back, head held high, like a big-game hunter who had just brought down his prize trophy and now wanted to gloat in his victory.
The gunman approached Jed cautiously, making sure to keep enough distance between them to avoid any hand-to-hand engagement. As he drew closer, though, Jed noticed two fingers missing from his right hand. He held the rifle tight against his shoulder, but still it wavered. He’d gone pale and his skin glistened from a cold sweat.
“They want me to discontinue you, you know,” Nichols said. He too made his way closer to Jed, carefully navigating the rocky, sloped terrain.
Jed said nothing because there was nothing to say, no argument to make, no sentence to deliver. He didn’t want to give Nichols the joy of hearing him beg, either.
Nichols and the gunman stepped closer to Jed until they were fifteen feet away. Nichols put a hand on the gunman’s shoulder. “I don’t want to kill you, though. There’s still more to do. But you know those military types—they do want their orders followed. They’re so obsessive about it.” He drew in a deep, melodramatic breath. “So I guess I have to reluctantly comply.”
Jed’s mind whirled, searching for any way out of the situation, but there was none. He was trapped, had no plan and no options. End of the road.
“But I don’t have to watch,” Nichols said. He tapped the gunman on the shoulder. “Whenever you’re ready.” Then he turned his back to Jed and began making his way up the hill.
The gunman repositioned his feet and tucked the stock of the gun even tighter against his shoulder. He tilted his head to the left to bring Jed into the gun’s sights.
Jed tensed. He had to do something; he wasn’t about to go down without a fight. But if he lunged at the gunman, he’d be dropped before he could take one complete step.
Nichols continued making his way up the hill. Every now and then his shoes would slip on the pine needles.
Before Jed could do anything, the crack of a gun sounded, and he flinched, thinking it was the gunman. Nichols spun around. The gunman wavered, lowered the rifle slowly, then went to his knees. A hole the size of a quarter oozed bright-red blood from side of his head.
Nichols reached inside his coat, but before he could draw his own weapon, Jed snatched the rifle from the falling gunman and aimed it at Nichols. “Don’t do it,” he said.
Nichols froze, his hand still buried in his coat, feet wide, eyes intent and serious.
Jed quickly closed the gap between himself and Nichols, keeping the rifle trained on Nichols’s head. “Pull it out and drop it.”
Nichols slowly removed his hand, which grasped not a handgun but rather an envelope. He held it high.
From Jed’s right, Karen and Lilly emerged from behind a stand of three close pines. They walked quickly to Jed, Karen still grasping the rifle she’d just used to put down the gunman. When she reached Jed, she said, “I told you we weren’t leaving you.”
Jed gave them both a subtle smile, then said to Nichols, “What’s that?”
“My insurance.”
“Throw it on the ground in front of you.”
He did. The envelope landed midway between Jed and Nichols. Jed asked Karen, “Can you open that, please? Tell us what’s in it.”
Karen moved forward carefully to retrieve the envelope, then opened it and slid out a packet of papers. She unfolded them and scanned the top sheet.
“What is it?” Jed asked.
Nichols stood relaxed, arms at his sides, his eyes bouncing back and forth between Karen and Jed.
Karen held out the papers. “You’ll want to see this for yourself.” She handed over the papers, then trained her own rifle on Nichols.
Jed stared at the documents, not sure he wanted to know what was printed there. He’d been told so many lies already; how could he ever sort it all out? He was still getting spotty, sporadic memories stuttering through his mind, images and voices and feelings, as valuable to him now as pure platinum and yet so foreign.
Jed took a deep breath and read the top page. It was a birth certificate for Peter Ryan, born in Baltimore, Maryland, on August 15. His own birthday. The parents were Richard and Serena Ryan.
“It’s yours, son,” Nichols said. “Your true identity. Abernathy told you your name was Jedidiah, didn’t he? That you were an orphan and the military became the only real family you ever knew.”
Jed flipped to the next page, a military medical report for a Sergeant Peter Ryan. Ryan had apparently spent time in Walter Reed Medical Center after suffering severe head trauma, six contusions across the cerebral cortex. Words like blunt force trauma, comatose, unresponsive, vegetative state, and death jumped out at him.
“It’s just a name. Peter Ryan could be anybody,” Jed challenged, even while an eel squirmed in his stomach.
“Keep reading,” Nichols said.
Jed flipped to the next page and nearly dropped the papers. There was a picture of him in his dress blues, an official Army photo. Peter Ryan, Ranger.
The forest floor seemed to shift beneath his feet. The trees overhead and all around loomed menacingly, their branches reaching for him. It couldn’t be him.
“You were the best,” Nichols said.
Jed didn’t look up from the paper. He stared at it but read none of the words. They were just black letters floating in a white sea.
Nichols took a step closer. “It was an ambush. You were part of a team sent to rescue our ambassador to Kenya. His convoy had been attacked, everyone killed except him. A group of rebels held him hostage and we needed to get him out. But someone must have tipped off the rebels. They knew you were coming. Casualties were high.” He paused to shove his hands in his pockets. “You were beaten to within an inch of your life. It was a miracle we got you out and even more of a miracle that you survived. The doctors at Walter Reed wanted to pull the plug on you, but I wouldn’t let them. I believed in you, Peter. You were the best I’d ever seen. I knew if anyone could pull out of that coma, it would be you. And you did, but . . .”
Jed looked up. “But what?”
“You had complete amnesia. Couldn’t remember a thing. Doctors said, considering how extensive your brain damage was, you would probably never regain your memory.”
“So you decided to give me a new memory.”
“That’s simplifying it, but yes. Physically you made a complete recovery, maybe even in better shape than you were before, if that was possible. Emotionally you were stable. You just had no memory. Your mind was a complete blank.”
“And what about my family? Did you contact them?”
Nichols sighed, ran the toe of his shoe in a line in the dirt. “You had no family, Peter. Your father walked out when you were ten and was never seen again. Your mother and little sister were both killed in a car accident.” Nichols hesitated, stared at Jed as if giving h
im a moment to process this new information. “You were raised by your aunt in Wisconsin. She died of cancer when you were nineteen. She was the only family you had until the Army became your family. And after your injury and recovery, we retrained you. That’s what the Centralia Project was all about. You were the first and the best until bits and pieces of your past started resurfacing. We tried to weave them seamlessly with the imprinting we were doing, but there’s no substitute for the real deal. Finally we had to retire you.”
“Jed.” It was Karen. For a moment, he’d been so absorbed in trying to process this new rendition of his past that he’d almost forgotten the two of them were standing there. “What about us? This man says you’re some stranger named Peter Ryan, but look at us.”
Nichols’s eyes twitched between mother and daughter. He shifted his feet in the leaves and adjusted his collar.
But as Jed turned his gaze, though his eyes saw two strangers, his soul recognized two people who truly loved him.
“You’re Jedidiah Patrick,” Karen said. “Papers can say anything. We’ve got a stack here with yet another name on them. I don’t care what you remember or what you’ve been told. We’re standing here, in the flesh, and telling you who you are. And whose you are. And I know one thing: you don’t belong to him.”
Nichols caught his attention. “Peter, there’s no conflict here. They’re only telling you what they think is true. But they don’t have all the answers. I told you they’re actors. They’ve been scrubbed too. Don’t you see? They’re only regurgitating the reality we put in their heads. How else could we guarantee their performance would be convincing? They’re not trying to deceive you. They’re just—”
“Enough! I’ve listened to too much already.” Holding the papers in one hand and the rifle in the other, Jed kept his eyes on Nichols as he said, “Karen, take Lilly and head down the mountain.”
Karen started to protest, but Jed silenced her. “Please, Karen. I’ll catch up with you.”
She and Lilly left, and Jed stood statue still until he no longer heard their footsteps. He then balanced the rifle against his leg while he grasped the papers in his hand and crumpled them into a small ball.
“Lies,” he said. “More lies.” He tossed the ball of paper onto the ground.
There was no mistaking the truth of what he’d seen in Karen’s eyes, of what he’d felt in her kiss, in the touch of her hand on his face, the feel of her body against his. Abernathy had told him the truth, the complete truth, and it had opened a floodgate of memories. His past was coming back to him in streams of revelation.
Jed reached into his pocket and lifted out the flash drive Abernathy had handed him. “I have some insurance of my own.”
Nichols eyed the drive. “What do you think that is, son?”
“The truth. About you, Centralia, everything. It’s all right here and I’m going to blow it wide-open.”
Nichols shifted his weight and forced a smile. “Is that what Abernathy told you? Maybe Habit? They’re both liars, you know. Abernathy is a traitor, convicted of treason. It’s only because of me that he’s still alive. Did he tell you that? They were gonna give him the death penalty and I saved him, convinced them that exile would be just, fair.”
“Just like I should be grateful for the way you saved me? Well, I didn’t see you jumping to anybody’s aid a few minutes ago.” Jed nodded toward the soldier near his feet, then held the drive higher. “We’ll find out who was lying, won’t we?”
Nichols started to advance, slowly and carefully on the rugged terrain.
Jed pointed the rifle at Nichols, who stopped and raised his hands, stepped backward, and almost fell.
“Peter, wait. Please. You have to listen to me. Listen to the truth.”
“Take out your wallet,” Jed said.
Nichols hesitated.
“Now! Do it.”
Nichols reached inside his jacket and pulled out a black wallet.
“Throw it to me.”
Nichols tossed the wallet to Jed.
“Now your phone.”
Nichols retrieved his phone.
“Throw it to me.”
He complied.
Jed picked up the phone and wallet, wincing from the stabbing pain in his left arm. “Now, turn around and get on your knees.”
“You can’t do this, son,” Nichols said.
“On your knees. Now.”
Nichols’s face twisted into an awful scowl. “If you’re going to kill me, do it while you look me in the eyes. This isn’t how you were trained.”
Jed walked to Nichols and stopped no more than six feet away. “Fine. Get on your knees facing me.”
Nichols straightened his back and glared at Jed.
Jed swung the butt of the rifle around and caught Nichols along the side of the head. He listed to the side, stumbled, and struggled to regain his balance. While he was fumbling, Jed shoved Nichols with his foot. Nichols fell and landed on the ground, facedown.
Quickly Jed put a foot on Nichols’s back and the barrel of the rifle to his head. “You know what I’ve been trained for. Kill without mercy, without remorse. You put that in my head, didn’t you?”
“So do it!” Nichols hollered. His voice had a defiant edge, but Jed could feel the man’s shoulders quaking.
Jed pulled the rifle away and lifted his foot. “I guess I’ve been reprogrammed. Roll over.”
Nichols turned over on the ground. His face was red and wet from tears and sweat. Fear widened his bloodshot eyes.
“Don’t try to follow us,” Jed said. “Let us disappear. Leave us alone.”
“You know I can’t do that.”
“If we meet again, I’ll look at it as self-defense and I won’t hesitate to kill you.” Jed turned and left, not looking back once to see if Nichols had climbed to his feet.
The map Habit had given Jed led to a large stretch of forest in the Coeur d’Alene National Forest near the Montana state line. A small cabin sat miles off any regularly traveled path, tucked into a clearing and surrounded by towering spruce and fir trees.
Jed, Karen, and Lilly gathered around an outdoor fire, something they’d been doing every clear evening since arriving at the site two months ago. The fire writhed and gyrated, sending sparks crackling into the chilly night air. Above, a cloudless sky shimmered with millions, maybe billions of stars. Jed was no longer wearing the sling to support his left arm. The shot was a flesh wound, a lot of blood loss and torn tissue, but nothing more. Stitches, the sling, and a robust course of antibiotics had made it just about good as new.
Once a week they all trekked into the town of Coeur d’Alene for groceries and other supplies they needed and to pick up reading material at the library. Other than that, the remote homesite was where they spent all their time, away from people, away from cameras, and miles off the grid.
Karen leaned forward and poked at the fire with a stick. Firelight reflected off her face, softening the corners of her jaw and smoothing the roundness of her cheeks. She was a beautiful woman, caring and patient. They’d spent every day talking, reviving memories, reliving moments, laughing, crying, holding each other. So much had returned to Jed, but there were still whole blocks of missing time, absent memories. And occasionally the imprinted memories would interfere in disjointed segments and disorient him. But he was learning to decipher the difference between the reality past and the manufactured one, developing ways to cope with the false memories. And always there was the truth, the deeper truth that no amount of brain manipulation had managed to entirely scrub out of him.
Karen poked at the fire again and said, “I keep thinking, how do we know they won’t find us here?”
She’d mentioned similar concerns several times before. The captivity she’d endured and her inability to protect Lilly from harm had left scars that would take a long time to heal, if ever.
Jed broke a stick and tossed half into the fire. “If we’re careful and limit our exposure, we’ll be okay. This place is a speck
on a map, one in any number of hunting and camping sites just like it. The forest is dense and desolate. It’d be like finding one particular pine needle in a forest of pines.” He looked at Lilly, who smiled at him. Her smile always gave him strength, for it radiated confidence and certainty, faith and trust. “We’ll be fine,” he said. “We just need to stick together.”
“The money will run out eventually,” Karen said. “And then what will we do?”
Jed dropped the other half of the stick into the fire and watched as the flames received it. “We won’t run out. I think I should look for a job next week.”
Karen looked up, her eyes wide. “What? How? Where?”
“The people here don’t know me as Peter Ryan or Jed Patrick. They only know me as Eric. They don’t know where we’re from or anything else about us. I’ll get a job lumberjacking. I think I’d like that.”
Karen was quiet for a long moment. Finally she said, “I don’t like it, but if you think it’s safe . . .”
“It’ll be all right,” Jed said. “Besides, the townsfolk will begin to wonder where we got all our money from if I don’t soon go to work. They’ll start talking, getting curious. Better to avoid giving them reason to take a second glance at us.”
Lilly rested her head on Jed’s arm. “It will be okay, Mommy. Daddy will be careful and God will be with us. Just like he always has been.”
Karen had told Jed how he’d encountered Jesus, how he had come back after his first tour in Afghanistan a changed man, solemn, introverted. Dark thoughts had tormented him, pushed him inward and haunted him with nightmares. She told him how she’d urged him to read the Bible and how under compulsion he’d complied. It was there he’d found the light and the hope it brought. He remembered most of it now. The scrubbing Nichols had done had tucked it into a dark and remote corner of his mind. But it was still there, and nothing Nichols did could erase it.
They all sat quietly while time passed slowly and the fire danced before them, crackling and popping to its own disjointed beat.
Karen eventually lifted her face and said, “Jed, I’ve been thinking a lot about the dream you said you used to have and about the last room, the empty one.”
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