The Bellator Saga: The First Trilogy (Dissident, Conscience, and Sojourn)

by Cecilia London

  “We’re leaving.” He started gathering up their coats. “Now.”

  They walked out as the organ started playing and the liturgists, altar servers, and the priest lined up to proceed toward the altar. Their pastor nodded solemnly at them as they whisked the girls out the door and back to the car waiting to take them back to the mansion. He looked very sad. Caroline felt bad they hadn’t been able to talk to him first. She very much liked him. She and Jack hadn’t wanted the beginning of Mass disrupted like that. The last place of refuge for so many people, and now it was one more precious thing that had been taken away. Faith couldn’t protect them anymore.

  * * * * *

  Caroline paced across the master bedroom later that night. Jack sat on the bed removing dress shoes. His tie was askew, his shirt wrinkled. She’d been avoiding him for most of the day, although they both knew what they had to do.

  “We have to get them out,” she said. “Before it’s too late. It might already be too late. I told Christine and Tom earlier today. They’re ready. So is Jess. They’ll be here tomorrow. I-” She swallowed back tears. “I have to go tell Mo and Feef.”

  “Do you want me to talk to them too?”

  “No, this is something I need to do by myself. Although I know you’re going to want to talk to them at some point. I just need to be the one to say it first.”

  “I know.” Jack sounded a little hurt. He considered himself more than just a stepfather to them. “Are you sure that Santos won’t get wind of this?”

  “He probably will at some point. He may know now. I used code with Chrissy but they might still know something is up. I think it’s better for us to travel separately than together, don’t you think?”

  Jack nodded. “That’s probably one of the only safe assumptions you can make right now. Although none of what we’re doing is particularly safe anymore.”

  Caroline had been a federal prosecutor for years. She routinely filed requests for wiretaps, GPS trackers, and pen registers, and involved herself in other methods of surveillance. She would occasionally make jokes about being The Man or Big Brother, but her humor had a hint of veracity. She knew how much power the government had, even before Santos assumed the presidency. That aspect of her job always frightened her and made her incredibly uneasy, and she had been quite careful in wielding that intrusive sword. She never knew if she could truly be trusted with that kind of power. If anyone could.

  She had no doubt that very few of their communications were private anymore. Maybe not even in their own home. But it would make them both incredibly paranoid to think about that aspect of it, so she hadn’t mentioned that possibility to Jack. Although it had probably occurred to him too. Among other unsettling thoughts.

  “What if we waited too long?” she asked.

  Jack heard the fear in her voice and wrapped his arms around her. “Don’t worry about that. Let’s focus on the best way to deal with where we’re at now. It’s not as if we haven’t taken the steps to do this. We just have to change our plans a little.”

  Caroline leaned into his shoulder, and he tightened the hug. His arms were warm. Strong. Secure. The one place she still felt safe.

  “Okay.” She kissed his cheek and tried to smile. “I’ll go talk to them.”

  * * * * *

  Caroline heard both girls talking in Marguerite’s room. Good. They were together. This would make it so much easier. She looked inside the small bag she had in her hand, willing herself not to cry. This was the hardest thing she’d ever done, aside from the night she had to tell them about Nicky. She wanted Jack with her, and contemplated going back to the bedroom to get him. She wished she hadn’t decided to do this alone. But she owed that much to her daughters.

  She knocked on the door. “It’s mom. Can I come in?”

  Marguerite flung it open, bowing theatrically as she did so. An old routine. “Of course you can. Aren’t you a taxpayer?”

  One of their little jokes. It wasn’t their house. It belonged to the people of the Commonwealth. Mo was growing up to be a goo goo. In a different world, she would have ended up running a federal agency someday.

  Caroline spontaneously kissed her on the cheek, ignoring the nonplussed look on her daughter’s face. “I need to talk to you both. It’s important.”

  Marguerite gave her an uncomfortable smile. Smart kid. She probably knew what was coming. “Okay.”

  The two of them sat down on Marguerite’s bed next to Sophie. Caroline reached into the bag and pulled out two small jewelry boxes.

  “I have something for you,” she said.

  Marguerite opened hers first. “It’s a Miraculous Medal,” she said.

  “Just like yours.” Sophie pointed at her mother’s neck.

  Caroline’s parents had given the medal to her after she graduated from Marquette. It had held up for more than twenty years. She wore it off and on over the course of her life, but started wearing it on a more consistent basis after she was shot. Now she didn’t even think about it anymore. She just put it on every day, even though she was no longer sure whether she appreciated its significance.

  “Exactly like mine,” Caroline said. “I got Aunt Chrissy one too.”

  Their family wasn’t overtly religious, but all of them were still practicing Catholics. Since Mo and Feef had spent the past few years in parochial school, they were well catechized. Maybe more so than their parents. Caroline’s faith had weakened over the past several months and Jack generally only went to church to placate conservative voters. They weren’t exactly stunning examples of spiritual devotion. Which engendered a ton of guilt, at least for Caroline.

  She wasn’t even sure she still believed what she was about to say next, but her children would understand what she meant. “Our Lady will protect you,” she said. “She will always intercede on your behalf, even if Jack and I aren’t there.”

  “What are you saying?” Marguerite asked.

  Caroline took a deep breath. She really didn’t want to do this. She’d put them in so much peril already and she couldn’t guarantee that this decision was the right one.

  “Aunt Chrissy and Uncle Tom are getting you out of here,” she said. “Tomorrow night.”

  “Tomorrow?” Marguerite said incredulously.

  Even quiet Sophie couldn’t let that slide without comment. “Mom, no!”

  Caroline struggled to keep her voice calm. “We don’t have any choice. It’s not safe for you to be here anymore. Look at what happened in church today.”

  “We’re not going to school tomorrow?” Sophie asked.

  “No. We’re going to pack. And talk.”

  Marguerite narrowed her eyes. “Does this mean you and Jack are coming with us?”

  Caroline lowered her head. She couldn’t look at either one of them. “No,” she whispered. “We’re staying here.”

  “That’s bullshit,” Marguerite said.

  “Don’t curse.”

  “I don’t care. Take away my allowance. Why aren’t you coming with us?” she asked.

  “You know why, Mo. It’s safer this way. It sounds awful, but it’s true.”

  Sophie started crying. “I don’t want to leave. Especially not without you.”

  Caroline wanted to keep herself in check but couldn’t help it. She started crying too. “I’m sorry, Feef. I am.” She threw her arms around her youngest daughter. “But we need to get you out. It’s better for you to be with Chrissy and Tom than it is to be with me and Jack. Being around us puts you in enormous danger. We can’t guarantee your safety anymore.”

  Marguerite scooted over and put her chin on her mother’s shoulder. “I want to stay here,” she said softly. “I want to stay with you.”

  Caroline wiped her eyes. “You both have to leave.”

  Her eldest daughter sat back and clenched her teeth. “I don’t want to. I’m almost sixteen,” she pointed out, as if that somehow gave her a free pass.

  Caroline frowned at her. “This family isn’t a democracy. You don�
��t get to vote.”

  “What if I refuse to go?” she challenged.

  Of course Marguerite wasn’t going to make this easy. Not with her genetics. “I know you won’t do that to me.”

  Sophie broke in. “Mo, I don’t want to go alone!”

  “Listen to me.” Caroline grasped both their hands. The bag on her lap tumbled to the floor. “I need you to trust that I’m doing what’s best for you. Jack and I will meet up with you as soon as we can. Chrissy and Tom are going to get you up north and we’ll come right after that. I swear.”

  “Then why can’t you leave with us now?” Sophie asked.

  Caroline had a feeling that this was going to be a continuing theme for the next twenty-four hours, and she would never be able to give her a satisfactory answer. “We just can’t.”

  Marguerite yanked her hand away from Caroline’s. It took mere seconds before Sophie did the same, though her withdrawal came with a bit more reluctance. Caroline couldn’t blame them for being pissed at her. She was mad at herself. But she could do this without falling apart. She had to.

  “Jack and I are going to help you pack,” she said. “We’ll have tomorrow morning and afternoon to spend every minute with each other. And then you, Chrissy, Tom, and Jess will get to where it’s safe, where I won’t have to worry about you as much.”

  Marguerite folded her arms, avoiding eye contact with Caroline. “I don’t like this.”

  “I’m not thrilled about it either,” Caroline said.

  The three of them sat there for a few moments. Sophie cried softly. Marguerite subtly turned away from her mother, her shoulders set rigidly toward the wall. Caroline couldn’t stand the tension.

  “I have something else for you,” she said.

  Her words went unacknowledged. She wiped her eyes and picked the bag up off the floor. She was the adult. She had to act like it. Marguerite still had her back to her, so she turned to Sophie. Caroline reached into the bag and pulled out the stuffed hippo Sophie had given her after she’d been shot. She tried to give it back after she was released from the hospital, but Feef refused to take it, saying she really wanted the hippo to take care of her mommy for her. Caroline had taken it with her on almost every cross country campaign appearance when Jack wasn’t with her. It helped her feel less isolated.

  She handed the hippo to Sophie. “I know you’re probably a little too old for this now but-”

  Sophie took the soft plush from her mother’s hands and cradled it in her arms. “I want him,” she said. “Are you sure you don’t need him?”

  If only a stuffed animal could keep her safe. Caroline would damn near strap him to her chest. “I think he’s better off with you, don’t you think? You can give him much more attention than I can. “

  Sophie squeezed her eyes shut. “I will, mom.”

  Caroline placed a hesitant hand on Marguerite’s shoulder. “Mo Mo?”

  Marguerite slowly turned around to look at her. Her eyes were red. “Oh, I don’t think there’s anything in that black bag for me,” she said, and managed a weak smile.

  Classic movie humor. Caroline tried not to think about how much the two of them were alike in that way. She could always badger Marguerite into watching all of her old favorite films with her. They had a blast watching Disney flicks and classic film musicals together. Sophie probably could have quoted The Wizard of Oz just as easily as her big sister, but classic movies bonded Caroline and Mo together. Caroline reached into the bag and pulled out a gold and blue striped scarf.

  “That’s your Marquette scarf,” Marguerite said.

  A mistress of the obvious, her child. “Nothing gets past you, Mo.”

  “You love that scarf. You wear it all the time.”

  “I do.”

  Marguerite brought it up to her nose. “It smells like your perfume.”

  Caroline reflexively closed her eyes so she wouldn’t start crying again. “I want you to have it.”

  Marguerite held it gently in her hands. “Are you sure, mom?”

  She took the scarf and wrapped it around her eldest daughter’s neck. “Absolutely.”

  Marguerite leaned in on one side with Sophie on the other. Feef pressed the hippo into Caroline’s hand so that they were both holding onto him. The three of them sat on the bed crying and holding each other for a very long time. Finally Caroline looked at her watch.

  “It’s late,” she said. “We should get some sleep. We have a lot to do tomorrow.”

  “Can I stay in here with Mo tonight?” Sophie asked. Marguerite had a double bed.

  “I can’t think of a good reason why not,” Caroline said.

  Marguerite gave Caroline a hug. “Can you stay in here too?”

  Caroline kissed her forehead. “How about we all stay in the master bedroom tonight? It might be a little tight, but it would mean a lot to Jack. Let me go change. I think he wants to talk to you anyway before we go to sleep. Are you okay with that?”

  The firm hugs her daughters gave her were all the response she needed. Her beautiful, wonderful angels. She had no idea how she was going to get through the next day.

  “I’ll go tell him,” Caroline whispered.

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  The Fed

  What did those awful men do in the wee hours of the morning when they were monitoring that camera? That goddamn fucking piece of shit, that evil eye blinking at her erratically even when the lights were off. The guards loved that part of their job, no doubt. They were probably placing bets on what she’d scream out in her sleep.

  There had to be even odds that night on the names Marguerite and Sophie. Back in the day, when she’d been far more self-deprecating, she would have joined in on such an activity. But that was when she played with house money. Now she was in the red. Deep in the red, her idealism now permanently and painstakingly crushed by the unyielding fist of authority.

  She tried not to think about it. About them. But each attempt to push them from her mind led to thoughts of greater tragedy, greater agony…greater grief. She flashed back to that day in January so many years ago, when she arrived at her office to find Ellen, Christine, Jen, and Kathleen waiting for her. She walked in after a subcommittee meeting and her receptionist couldn’t even look at her. Caroline was in the process of leaving yet another voicemail for Nicky, begging him to call her back. Her heart thudded into her stomach when she entered her private office.

  Two Maryland State Police troopers were standing next to her desk. It didn’t take a genius to connect the dots. She figured it out right away. Why Nicky hadn’t called from Baltimore, why he hadn’t responded to her texts, why her calls had gone straight to voicemail. She almost keeled over at the sight of them.

  Jen or Kathleen must have called Ellen and Christine, to soften the blow. They all pulled her over to the couch as the troopers tried to explain what happened. At some point the men might have offered their condolences, but the words slipped into the ether, the roaring rush through her head too powerful to let them in. The four women had her wrapped up in a cocoon of sympathy, Ellen and Christine on either side of her on the couch, Jen and Kathleen kneeling on the floor with their arms around her. The voices in the room started to run together. Caroline started making some horrible guttural cry that didn’t even sound human, and wasn’t sure if the troopers stopped talking or were still trying to explain things through the sound of her agony. She’d never felt that kind of grief before, not even when her parents died almost two years apart.

  Ellen drove her car home, with Kathleen in the front passenger seat. Christine and Jen sat with their arms around her in the back seat. No one spoke the entire time. It was eerie. Christine somehow convinced Caroline’s doctor to prescribe her a sedative to calm her down, but by the time they arrived in Rockville she was too numb to take it. She sure as hell took one before the girls got home, though.

  She sat them down in the room she and Nicky shared, told them what had happened, and could actually see their hearts ripping apar
t. They were both so young, particularly Sophie, but they knew what death meant. As the days passed, Caroline felt herself changing. There were moments when time stood still, when the world appeared to stop turning on its axis and reality ceased to exist. She had hoped never to experience those moments again. She’d dealt with enough, or so she thought. But it had been foolish to think she could cheat life’s most harrowing experiences.

  Now she had no one left. Her children were dead, which meant Chrissy, Tom, and Jess were dead too. The adults would have fallen first, defending Mo and Feef with their own lives if need be. And it was Caroline’s fault that they were all dead. Her soul split apart on that icy day in January when she became a young widow but that grief paled in comparison to the way she felt now.

  Was it possible to die of a broken heart? She pressed a mangled hand to her chest, feeling the steady beat. The tempo a little faster than normal. She half expected there to be no activity at all. But no, that would be too easy. Too simple for her to suddenly ease into a permanent sleep, never to wake up. This was only the beginning of her payback for her sins. There was no way that the pain, the agony, the absolute defeat she felt would ever subside.

  I want to die.

  For the first time, she heard no dissenting opinion.

  * * * * *

  She didn’t know how much time passed. She stopped drinking from the sink, stopped getting up to use the bathroom. Her head pounded non-stop and she drifted in and out, never able to stay asleep or awake for any length of time. Caroline stayed curled up in a ball on the bed, hoping that death from dehydration wouldn’t be nearly as bad as she imagined it to be.

  The lights flickered on and Murdock and several guards came in wearing smiles. She didn’t recognize any of them. Night. It had to be nighttime. Fischer and Powell worked the day shift. One of the guards yanked her off the bed. Her knees buckled. He didn’t bother holding her up.

  Murdock knelt down beside her. He’d taken off his suit jacket and tie. Even at his most horrible, he’d always been wearing a suit. Because he was a pretentious tool.