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

by Cecilia London

  It was hard to keep the disbelief out of her voice. “You applied for a job at The Fed.”

  “Don’t look at me that way,” he said hastily. “I didn’t know how shit went down at that place. Learned pretty quickly, though. I applied and they called the next day. Fast turnaround, right?”

  Jones didn’t sound all that enthused about his employer. He seemed rather eager to talk about his frustrations, too. No doubt he didn’t get many opportunities to vent.

  “You seem suspicious of their motives,” she said.

  He polished off the rest of his beer, wiping his lips with the back of his hand. “Black man can’t find a job. Black man has a criminal record, which makes it even harder. Doesn’t matter that it’s a misdemeanor. Applies for months to normal places and doesn’t hear a peep. Government creeps who like to torture inmates hire black man who knows damn well what prison is like. Like they think he’ll be okay with their behavior or something. Like he has no values. Like he doesn’t have a soul. You read?”

  This guy was a lot more introspective than she’d assumed. She was damn fucking lucky that he’d even been near that place. What were the odds?

  “I read,” she said. “Do you think they knew about your pardon?”

  “I wouldn’t be surprised if they did. Those fuckers know everything. They probably know stuff about me that my mama doesn’t know.”

  It was hard not to be paranoid. If they knew about the pardon, they probably knew who had helped him obtain it. And who had prosecuted him. And they had assumed that even though he’d been pardoned, he harbored bitterness toward her. Thankfully that didn’t appear to be the case.

  “What made you risk your neck for me?” she asked.

  He rolled the bottle back and forth between his palms. “Gotta do the right thing when you can. Not a whole lot of that anymore.”

  “You could have been killed. They might catch up with you.”

  “Everyone’s gotta die sometime,” he said, a little too nonchalantly. “Gabe and I are keeping a low profile. We haven’t been figured out yet, have we?”

  Yet being the operative word. “I feel like I remember you being there. I don’t remember much.”

  “I’m kinda glad you don’t. That was a bad night.” Jones looked uncomfortable. “I’m sorry they did that to you. They shouldn’t treat good people that way. Especially a woman as nice and beautiful as you.”

  Caroline didn’t know what to say to that. She hadn’t looked in a mirror in ages but suspected she looked awful. Since she wasn’t getting out of bed any time soon, she didn’t have to worry about it for a while. Maybe Jones would change the subject again. He seemed to pick up on her mood pretty quickly. He and Crunch were good at that. Very high emotional intelligence.

  “Gabe’s gonna want to talk to you,” he said. “About secret stuff.”

  “What kind of stuff?”

  He lowered his voice to a dramatic whisper. “About the movement. He talks about that shit all the time. How do you think we got you out of there?”

  Her spirits lifted. Maybe their numbers were larger. Maybe there was a network. Maybe there were other people. Some sort of Underground Railroad of political activists waiting to take her somewhere she could truly be safe. “You had help?”

  “No.” His voice faltered a little, the disappointment evident. Maybe he wasn’t as in the loop as he wanted to be. “But Gabe’s been poking around on websites and stuff. He’s hoping you can help us get the fuck out of here, go someplace where we can do something.”

  It struck her as odd that a few ragtag misfits could get her out of a government facility without anyone figuring it out. “You didn’t have any help at all?”

  The disappointment quickly turned to pride. “Nope. Did it all on our own.” He tilted his head. “We’re just that skilled, lady.”

  Or that crazy. She liked his cockiness. He’d need it if they were going to get anywhere. “But how-”

  “Don’t ask. I promised not to tell.” His expression darkened. “I shouldn’t have brought it up. Let it go. You got enough shit to deal with right now.”

  Well, that sounded ominous. He had a point. Busted up hands, torn up back, stitched up stomach...and all the other things she didn’t want to think about. The people. Bob and Ellie and Katie and Jen. Her emotions were already on high alert. She wouldn’t want to know how everything had gone down.

  “Okay,” she whispered.

  “How ya feeling, though? I know those hands are sore but Gabe thinks that you’ll be able to use them all right. You were in pretty bad shape when we brought you in here.”

  No shit. Her abdomen, though rather numb, felt okay. Her stomach gurgled but didn’t appear to be in unusual condition. Her ribs and back hurt, as did her nose and cheekbones, but it could have been worse.

  “Did you help Crunch and Gabe fix me up?”

  “Kinda.” He laughed. “I’m not all that skilled with the medical stuff, you know? You’re real lucky that blade didn’t go any deeper. I mean-” He stopped. “Sorry. I bet you don’t want to talk about that.”

  His mention of it triggered another set of disturbing flashbacks that she immediately pushed aside. She’d have to work on that. “No. I don’t.”

  “Then we won’t,” he said breezily. “Whaddaya want to talk about?”

  Anything but The Fed. She didn’t want to think about that place ever again. Caroline stared at the empty bottle in his hand. “Do you want to get another beer first?”

  “I could stand to have another.” He stood up. “You want something else while I’m upstairs?”

  She’d nibbled on the cheese as they chatted and it appeared to be sitting well. “Maybe some more crackers? And juice?” Christ, she had the appetite of a toddler. Hopefully that would improve.

  He smiled at her. “Sure.”

  * * * * *

  It didn’t take long for him to run up the stairs and down again. Caroline envied his energy. His strength. The ease with which he was able to move around.

  Jones slid onto the chair next to the bed and put her food on the side table. “Let’s get to it. Gabe and Crunch will be down at some point so if you want me to tell you their secrets we need to act now.”

  His humor was endearing but her practical questions were a more pressing concern. “How long have I been here?” Caroline asked.

  Jones paused, mentally calculating his answer. “I dunno. A couple of weeks? You’ve been out of it for a while. You were struggling the first couple of days and we weren’t sure if you were going to pull through.”

  Delirium. That rang a bell. Two weeks was a long time for her to be sitting in a hospital bed without moving around. Not that she hadn’t done it before. She seemed in remarkably good condition.

  “Crunch took care of you most of the time,” Jones said. “Doing, you know, the, um, awkward stuff.”

  Caroline blushed. She had a catheter and didn’t have any bedsores, so Crunch’s best efforts had been largely successful. She didn’t want to pursue that topic at all. “I’ll have to thank him.”

  “You don’t gotta worry about him touching you weird or nothing. He’s a fag.”

  Her head shot over to him. A slur, the trigger she didn’t need. Even if he’d said it in an affectionate tone. “Don’t ever use that word in front of me,” she snapped.

  Jones was taken aback. “Sorry. He uses it all the time. I didn’t think-”

  “It’s deeply offensive.” Caroline gave him a stern look. “You should know better.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “How would you feel if someone used a derogatory term for people of color in front of you?”

  He smiled slightly. “I’d kick their ass.”

  “So there you go.” She returned his smile. “For future reference, you probably don’t want to use nasty words to describe women, either.”

  He laughed. “I don’t ever do that.”

  “Good. Because I’d kick your ass for that.”

  “I don’t do
ubt it, even if you are sitting in a hospital bed. Don’t like those slang words for black folks, either. Never said them myself.”

  Caroline thought back on their earlier conversation. “I have a vague memory of listening to some jail calls you made when you were much younger than you are now. I beg to differ with that statement.”

  He looked a little ashamed. “What I meant to say was, I don’t use them anymore.”

  “Well,” she said. “Good.”

  It took him a while before he made eye contact with her again. “Whaddaya say we talk about stupid shit for a while? I’ve had a long night.”

  They’d get back to the deep stuff soon enough, and inane conversation seemed like the best way to regain her mojo. She wasn’t sure how much longer she could stay awake, anyway. “You’re on.”

  Chapter Seven

  The Safe House

  Caroline and Jones chatted about trivial topics for another couple of hours before he went upstairs to get some sleep. She felt badly that she’d kept him so long. She’d have to remember that he and Gabe worked an overnight shift. But she’d been asleep for so long that she wanted to talk to someone. Anyone.

  She found herself revived by their conversation. Jones made her laugh a few times and insisted she call him by his nickname, which sounded friendly and playful, so she agreed. Once he went upstairs she nodded off for a bit. When she woke up Crunch was sitting next to her.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I must have fallen asleep.”

  He smiled. “You might do that again from time to time. I bet you’re exhausted.”

  “Probably.”

  “You don’t have to rush into anything. We’re here for whatever you need.”

  He and Jones kept saying that and their actions had more than backed up their words. She knew he wasn’t blowing smoke. “Thanks.”

  Crunch had an amused expression on his face. “I hear you laid into Jonesie for calling me a fag.”

  Caroline shrugged, then winced. She’d been emboldened by the past few hours of borderline human functioning and had forgotten that she was in pretty terrible physical shape. That amount of movement had been a serious mistake. “I did.”

  He rubbed her shoulder gently. “It’s not a big deal. I should have told you.”

  “Your sexual orientation is none of my business.”

  “He wanted to let you know that you can trust us. We aren’t going to do anything bad to you.”

  Caroline closed her eyes. “I know.” She had a feeling about these men. They would make sure that no harm would come to her. She just hadn’t figured out why they were doing it.

  “I use that word myself,” Crunch explained. “He probably didn’t realize it would set you off like that.”

  “The two of us might have had a nice discussion about reclaiming language,” Caroline said.

  She wondered if that was what drove him off to bed. It had gotten a little intense. They hadn’t argued but they both felt passionately about social issues, agreeing on most major points. It had been a most enlightening conversation.

  Crunch smiled. “Jonesie’s no dummy. He might talk a good game but he’s a smart guy. Not sure if he can keep up with you but I bet he tried.”

  Caroline smiled back at him. “He did. He also said that if I wanted to piss you off, I should call you Sebastian.”

  He made a face. “Don’t call me that. Don’t call him Marcus, either.”

  She made a mental note to keep that gem in her back pocket for later. “Why don’t you guys like your names? They’re nice. And they suit you.”

  “Jonesie just doesn’t like his, for whatever reason. Sounds too old school for him, I think.”

  “What about you? Sebastian is a beautiful name. Why wouldn’t you want to call yourself that?”

  “I won’t bore you with all the details, but I’ll give you a little something else. Want to know why people call me Crunch?”

  She could go for a good story. It meant she could rest her voice. “Yes.”

  “I was a pretty scrawny kid,” he explained. “I grew up tall and lanky, never all that comfortable in my own skin. When I was in junior high I realized I wasn’t into girls. It didn’t help that I was really devoted to books, art, you know, all the ‘soft’ stuff. Not a big sports fan, either.” He paused. “It was hard for me. I had some friends I thought I could trust and I came out to them near the end of the spring. They told the entire school.”

  “How old are you?” Caroline asked.

  “I’m twenty-eight.”

  She calculated backwards. “Huh,” she said. “Nice friends you had.”

  “Yeah. I try not to think about that. I thought we’d made progress in the past couple of decades but-” He bit his thumbnail.

  Caroline knew what he was going to say. All that progress had been wiped away. Unless they’d imagined some of it. Maybe hearts and minds hadn’t changed as much as the law. She didn’t want to divert their conversation so she used a standard lawyer technique for when a witness got sidetracked. “What happened after that?” she asked.

  “The guys in my class were assholes,” Crunch said. “I got beat up a lot. No one really did anything about it. I knew I had to learn to stand up for myself. There was this guy who gave boxing lessons in my apartment building. After the school year ended I asked him to teach me. Didn’t take us long to figure out that I’d found something athletic I was really good at. I worked at it all summer and was at a stage in my life where my body developed accordingly.” He laughed at the expression on Caroline’s face. “As you can see, it kept responding as I got older.”

  Her eyes widened as he flexed his arms. Now that she took a good look, he was stacked. “Yes. I can see that quite clearly.”

  His cheeks reddened, just a little. “I came back to school and the classmates who had fucked with me learned real quick they couldn’t push me around anymore. I started hanging out with a new group of guys who ended up being my best buddies in high school. They didn’t care about all that macho crap.”

  “I’m sure it didn’t hurt that you could beat the shit out of them,” she said.

  “No, it didn’t. They were great friends. One of the hardest parts of going underground was having to leave without telling them goodbye.”

  He was staring down at his hands. She knew better than to ask him the details. “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be. We all make choices. It’s safer for me here. And it’s better for them not to be around me.”

  Caroline swallowed back tears. She didn’t want to think about why she and Crunch were safer holed up in a basement than wandering the streets of the most powerful nation in the world. “Sebastian is the patron saint of athletes,” she said. “Maybe the name suits you better than you think. And you never specifically explained why they call you Crunch.”

  “That started my last year of junior high,” Crunch said. “Got it from the noise that came when my fist connected with a bully’s nose.”

  She was familiar with the sound of broken bones. But she was glad he got his. “You were good at what you did, I guess.”

  Crunch sat up proudly. “Still am.”

  “Can you teach me to box?”

  He cracked his knuckles. “That’s the plan. You got any background in self-defense?”

  “A little.”

  “You have a ways to go before we start,” he said. “You have to gain a little weight and a lot of strength before we even consider training you.”

  “We?”

  He grinned. “You think Jonesie doesn’t know how to fight? Gabe is the brains. We’re the brawn.”

  Caroline would have to hassle Jones about that later. “The two of you. Hell on wheels, I suspect.”

  “We want you to be as safe as possible,” he said seriously. “Part of that will be schooling you on the finer points of how to fight dirty.”

  She grinned at him. Something to look forward to. “I like the sound of that.”

  * * * * *

  Gabe didn
’t come to see her until early the next morning, after he and Jones got home from work. She wasn’t sure how to react when she saw him. Jones and Crunch had spoken of him with such respect and reverence that she had pictured an older man. Wearing a business suit, maybe carrying a paper and a glass of scotch. A silly image since she knew he worked at The Fed with Jonesie. Caroline could hardly be expected not to let her mind drift every once in a while. To other things, other times. Other people. Husbands, in particular.

  Gabe was in his early thirties with dark blond hair and brown eyes, with a nice guy look she’d never been able to fully articulate. He looked nervous. When he sat down in the chair next to her bed, his hands were shaking.

  “Hi,” he said, smiling at her.

  Caroline recognized that kind of smile. She hadn’t received it very often over the course of her life but she knew what it meant. And she hadn’t expected it from any of the men in this house. Shit. He liked her. Like liked her. Broken nose, splinted fingers, stitched up and scarred body and all.

  What. The. Fuck. No wonder he’d been avoiding her. Oh, she was going to have to nip that in the bud, and fast. Maybe pointing out the obvious would calm him down.

  “You must be Gabe,” she said.

  He smiled again. “Guess I’m the only one you haven’t met.”

  If her math was correct, yes. “You got me out.”

  “I did.”

  “Thank you.”

  “It was my pleasure.”

  His hands weren’t shaking anymore but he couldn’t hide the fact that he thought he was in over his head. Maybe she could get him to relax a little faster by asking the hard questions.

  “How long was I in there?” she asked. “Do you know?”

  He looked like he didn’t want to answer the question. “I’m not sure. Maybe a couple of weeks. It’s the middle of March now.”

  She and Jack had started running at the beginning of February. Barely a day later she’d been caught. “A couple of weeks?” she echoed. It had seemed so much longer than that.