A Girl Undone

by Catherine Linka

  “They asked me if Yates and I could try to go for help. I couldn’t say no, could I? I didn’t know what would happen if we didn’t.”

  “You trudged up a snowy mountain in the dark…” Steele made me describe how Yates and I had gone out the secret passage, crept past the armed agents, and climbed in snowshoes to the top of the ridge. By the time I finished, Steele called me an “American heroine who risked her life for innocent children.”

  Steele reached out to shake Hawkins’ hand. “I can see why you picked this young woman to be your wife.”

  Hawkins beamed. “Eight days until our Signing, Evan! I’m a very lucky man to have such a beautiful, talented young woman at my side.” He squeezed my shoulder, and that was the signal.

  I placed my hand on Hawkins’ cheek, just as I’d been prepped, and beamed at him. My stomach churned, knowing the cameras were probably zooming in on our faces.

  Steele stood up. “We wish you success with your campaign for governor, Mr. Hawkins.” Hawkins and Steele exchanged handshakes and bullshit praise, and we all took off our mikes.

  The smell of damp wool came through the floral scent of my cologne and my armpits were slick with sweat. The walk back to the car was a blur. I focused on putting one foot in front of the other as shards of light split my vision. “Does anyone have a Tylenol?”

  Deeps helped me into the car and slipped me a bottle of water and a painkiller. Hawkins climbed in next to me. “You did a good job, controlling that interview.”

  “Thanks,” I said.

  Then Ho and Sig chimed in with their praise, and I covered my eyes with my hand, sick about the people I’d smeared, and hating that Yates or Luke might have heard me.

  I pictured Yates throwing a book at the television screen in his cell block and Luke leaving his lunch on the counter and stomping out of a small-town bar and grill. They’d never know why I’d said what I said, or done what I did, or that it was my messed-up attempt to protect them.

  Deeps headed for the studio exit. We passed through the gate, and I heard angry voices up ahead chanting, “No on 28.” Protesters filled both sides of the sidewalk, waving their handmade signs as we approached.

  “It’s Jessop Hawkins,” one cried.

  “It’s that bastard Hawkins!”

  “Hawkins!”

  Young men flooded out of the park. They ran across the six lanes and swarmed the car, surrounding us. Ho hit the panic button, but the crowd ignored the alarm.

  I slapped my hands over my ears, but the wail of the alarm was deafening. Protesters banged on the hood and windows, and the car shuddered from the pounding. Then the young men began to rock the SUV, throwing Hawkins against the door.

  “Paternalist scum!”

  “Fletcher’s puppet!”

  “Dirtbag!”

  “Get us out of here!” Hawkins ordered. Deeps became very calm and controlled as he crept the car into the street and nosed people out of his way, but then the crowd surged, trapping us.

  Traffic was paralyzed. Horns blared and protesters yelled back at the drivers. “We’re not your slaves. No on 28! No on 28! No on 28!”

  A young man with dreds snaking out from under a striped hat flung himself on our hood. Then he stood and began to stomp the shiny, black steel with his boots.

  Deeps shook his head. “I was hoping to avoid this.” He reached into the glove compartment and took out a can of pepper spray. Then he opened the sunroof and waved the can. “Get down,” Deeps warned.

  “Go ahead—”

  He called Deeps a name, but before he even got the word out, Deeps hit him in the face with the bright orange stream. The young man fell to his knees screaming, and Deeps kept spraying as his buddies pulled him off the hood.

  Then Deeps revved the engine and nudged through the crowd. For once, Ho ignored his ringing phone, but Sigmund held his up. “I caught the attack on video, and I’m posting it now. We need to show voters the lawlessness of these protesters.”

  Sig deserved an Oscar. How could he spout stuff like that so effortlessly? My life depended on playing the part of Jessop Hawkins’ adoring spouse, but the voice in my head was already beating me up.

  Luke would hate me, hate me, for telling lies about Maggie, but Yates knew me and maybe he’d understand that I didn’t have a choice about appearing with Hawkins. Yates would know I was acting, that I was saying what I was told to say.

  At least Luke and Yates would never know about the other deal I’d made to survive. Handing over Maggie’s and Sparrow’s files? Even Yates wouldn’t forgive me for that.

  My head throbbed, and I let it drop against the back of the seat. This wasn’t the person I wanted to be, but how could I change who I’d become?

  33

  Around two that afternoon, I got up and went downstairs, not bothering to change out of my pajama pants and hoodie. The pain in my head was gone, but I was fuzzy and thirsty for fruit juice, pineapple guava, something not too sweet.

  I scuffed past the huge blue acrylic fish, and for the first time, registered how the spear holding it up went right through the transparent body. I know how you feel, buddy.

  Deeps, Ho, and Sig had their heads together around the dining table. “Yes,” Ho was saying, “Jessop’s mail is screened for ricin and explosives at the facility that handles the mail for California state legislators. It’s superheated and X-rayed, then delivered daily by courier.”

  The three of them were so focused, they didn’t notice me enter. “What’s up?” I said.

  They all sat bolt upright like they’d been caught redhanded. “We’re reviewing security protocols,” Deeps answered.

  Ho’s phone pinged and he stood up. “Legal’s asking if we want to press charges for the damage to the car,” he said, walking away.

  I circled around the table. “Should I be worried about security?” I asked Deeps.

  “No. We’re taking a few simple precautions, that’s all.” He looked past me to Ho, who was motioning to him. “Got to go.”

  Sig waited until the two of them disappeared down the hall, then motioned for me to sit down beside him. Then he brought a video up on his phone, and turned the volume to low. “This just came out,” he said quietly, and handed it to me. “I thought you’d like to know.”

  A news anchor announced, “In breaking news, terror suspect Yates Sandell has been released from custody.”

  I shook my head. “I can’t believe it. Hawkins actually got Yates free.”

  A camera scanned a crowd of reporters gathered in front of the prison. Yates walked into the dog run of chain link topped with razor wire that separated the prison from the parking lot. His left arm hung in a sling, and his foot was cinched in a Velcro boot up to his knee. He was flanked by a man in a suit and two guards walked behind them.

  The gate opened, and the camera zoomed in on Yates. I leaned in close, searching his face.

  “How does he look to you?” Sig whispered.

  “Better. His eye was purple and completely swollen when I left. Now it looks almost normal.” I followed the scar on his forehead into his scalp where a patch of short black hair flopped over it. Yates looked like he’d lost weight, like the sport coat he wore was two sizes too big.

  “You must be relieved.”

  I shook my head as feelings I didn’t understand swirled inside me. “Why don’t I feel happy? They just let him out of prison.” Yates walked toward the sea of reporters. “I should be jumping up and down or screaming with joy, right?”

  My face crumpled seeing the reporters swell around Yates and thrust their mikes into his face. “I don’t understand what’s happening to me.”

  “Maybe,” Sig said gently, “it’s because it’s not the ending you hoped for.”

  It wasn’t the ending I’d pictured in my mind. The one where Yates walked out into my waiting arms. “I wanted us together.”

  “Oh, baby, of course you did,” Sig whispered.

  “But at least he’s free, right? That’s something t
o be happy about.”

  “Yes, at least he’s free.”

  Yates stepped up to the makeshift podium and gripped the sides. He glared at the row of prison officials lined up on his right, before addressing the reporters. “According to the terms of my release, I’m prohibited from discussing what happened in Salvation, Idaho. But I can tell you right now that I intend to devote my life to defeating the Paternalist movement, starting right here in California with Jessop Hawkins.”

  My temperature dropped twenty degrees.

  “Well, prison doesn’t seem to have changed him,” Sig said.

  Yates would never be silenced, never compromise or submit like I had. He would have died before he gave up evidence against Jouvert.

  I saw the chasm between us. Yates would lead the revolution while I stood at Hawkins’ side, smiling like I believed everything the Paternalists spouted.

  A reporter shouted my name. “Aveline Reveare, the girl you were with in Salvation, has returned to Jessop Hawkins. How does that make you feel?”

  I gasped, and Sig tried to take the phone from me, but I shook him off. Yates stared down the reporter, narrowing his blue eyes until they turned black.

  No, please don’t answer him.

  “It makes me sick. Apparently, she prefers being Hawkins’ lapdog to being free or loved.”

  Ice crystals filled the chambers of my heart.

  “What are you showing her?” Adam Ho leaned over us, his eyes widening when he saw what we were watching. We hadn’t heard him creep back in the room.

  I handed the phone back to Sig, and Ho gave us a long, disapproving look. “He is not going to like you doing that.”

  “Yates Sandell was released from prison,” Sig told Ho. “No matter how your boss feels about him, he would agree that it’s best to keep Avie apprised of anything that touches on her situation.”

  Ho quivered, his head shaking almost imperceptibly. I always thought I was the person he disliked the most, but now I saw Sig was coming up a close second.

  “You should be thrilled,” I told Ho. “Yates hates me for being your boss’s lapdog. It’s a dream come true.”

  I got up and pushed through the glass door. I wanted out of there, out of view of the house and its windows and endless view into my most private feelings. A dirt path zigzagged through the brush toward the eucalyptus grove and I took off in my bare feet.

  My heart was tearing away from my chest, and I needed to reach that circle of trees and throw my arms around one of those yellow-gray trunks, and have it anchor me to the ground. I needed to cry with no one watching or listening in.

  The branches were rising and falling in the wind, and sunlight glinted off what I realized had to be a sculpture. I was only fifty feet from disappearing into the grove when Hawkins emerged from the trees.

  I caught myself mid-stride and pivoted right around. Hawkins called out my name, but I didn’t stop, and charged back to the house. I’d done everything he’d asked. He and his freaking team could go to hell, because I was finished for today.

  34

  I shut myself inside my closet, and sorted through Mom’s letters until I found the envelope where she’d drawn a broken heart on the flap. Then I sat down on the floor, because even though the stone was miserable to sit on, at least I wasn’t being watched in here and I could be alone with my mother.

  I choked up reading the first sentence. Oh, Mom.

  “My sweetest girl,

  “You chose to open this letter which tells me you’re hurting.

  “I imagine you fell deeply in love, and this love filled you with a happiness you’d never experienced before. But now your heart is broken, and you can’t imagine life without him. You can’t eat or sleep, or let go of the last words he said to you.”

  Hawkins’ lapdog. Yates’ disgust echoed in my ears.

  “If I was there, I’d stroke your hair and tell you that you, my dearest, are beautiful and talented and brave and wise, and worthy of love.”

  Mom was wrong. I wasn’t any of those things.

  “I’d listen to you describe every moment you spent with this young man who made your world come alive. I would tell you that love will find you again. This is just the beginning of a lifetime of being loved. With each love, we learn to love.

  “Someday you’ll meet the young man who doesn’t just love you, but is willing to do whatever it takes to hold on to you, because he cannot live without you. I know this is true, because I married your father.”

  I folded the letter back into its envelope and set it down next to me. Mom couldn’t help me. Nothing she promised would ever come true. Mom couldn’t begin to imagine a world where love was mostly memories.

  I lowered myself to the floor until my cheek lay on the cold, hard slate. The energy drained out of my body until I could almost see it puddling around me.

  Yates had loved me, but now that love was buried beneath his hatred for what I’d become. What we had was over. My heart squeezed in my chest, but somehow kept beating. Why couldn’t it just let go?

  35

  Hours later, my eyes popped open as a hand closed over my mouth, pinning me to my pillow. I tore at the hand, and thrashed, trying to break free.

  “Avie! It’s me.”

  Deeps? I relaxed, and he let go.

  “Stay down and slide off the bed.”

  I dropped my head over the side. Deeps was stretched out on the floor, and he inched back to give me room.

  I slid down beside him. It was dark over the ocean and very late. The house was silent, but a hundred yards away, floodlights glared along the compound walls.

  “What’s going on?”

  “Security breach. The cameras picked up movement on the grounds. I’m taking you down to the safe room.”

  Suddenly, I was back in Salvation, watching the agents surround the church and aim their weapons on us. “I’m scared.”

  “I won’t let anything happen to you. Just do as I say.”

  We crawled on our stomachs out the door, Deeps insisting I go in front. Then we slithered along the hall until we got to the stairs above the main room. Hawkins’ fixation with clean lines meant the windows were uncovered, and every corner of the room below was exposed.

  “Keep low, but move fast,” Deeps said. “I’m right behind you.”

  The suspended stairs trembled faintly under our weight. I blocked out the pain in my ankle, and focused on moving quickly.

  We ducked into the gallery behind the main room, and I realized that the lights that came on automatically had been shut down. The exotic wood that lined the gallery was almost seamless, but Deeps felt along with his fingers, and then pressed. A panel opened, revealing stairs that led to the bottom level, ones I never knew were there. The panel eased shut and Deeps locked it behind us.

  Carpet muffled our steps. Deeps stopped me at the bottom of the stairs right before he opened the other door. “Don’t move until I tell you. If there’s gunfire or anything else sounds weird, lock yourself in here.”

  I held the door closed, listening so hard I was sure I heard a shot outside the house. My hand slipped, and I grabbed for the handle, afraid to lock it, but even more afraid to try to get to the safe room on my own.

  I pressed my ear to the door, praying Deeps would come quickly, while images from Salvation shot through my head. The agents struggling to hold Emmeline, then slitting the goat’s throat. Blood splashing onto the snow. Men and women lining the church windows, their guns ready. Yates pulling me through the narrow escape tunnel, saying, “It smells like a grave in here.”

  The smell of cold dirt flooded the stairwell and I put my hand over my nose, trying to block it.

  Deeps, where are you? Deeps, come back.

  I leaned against the wall and dug into the carpet with my toes. Feel that. You’re not in that tunnel. You’re in Malibu, and Deeps is coming back for you.

  A rapid knock. I released the door. “Come on out,” Deeps whispered. I slipped out and we crept down the hall
, going only about ten feet before Deeps flipped up a light switch to reveal a coded entry pad hidden underneath. He tapped in a code, and the wood panel in front of us eased open.

  The door was thick steel like a bank vault, and all I saw beyond it was blackness. “Go on, get in,” Deeps said, but I was bolted to the floor, knowing when I stepped inside, my bare feet would touch cold, damp earth.

  “Avie.” I turned toward Hawkins’ voice, and he yanked my arm, pulling me in beside him. Deeps shut the heavy door, and the darkness was total except for a faint light coming from the illuminated buttons on the back of the door. Jessop entered in a code, then flicked on a flashlight.

  The light reflected off brushed-steel walls. The room was cool, but it was dry, and smelled slightly of metal and plastic.

  Hawkins was wearing a T-shirt and pajama bottoms. I shivered and crossed my arms over my breasts, suddenly conscious of my thin cami and bare legs.

  “You’re cold,” Hawkins said.

  I expected him to offer to “keep me warm,” but instead he went over to a stack of black storage trunks in the corner, pulled out a blanket and handed it to me.

  “Thanks.” I wrapped the blanket around me as Hawkins clicked a remote. Overhead lights came on, and a screen in the corner went live. Shots from sixteen surveillance cameras turned it into a shadowy checkerboard.

  One glance, and I was back in the control room in Salvation’s church watching a dozen monitors capture the agents positioning for attack. I turned away from the screen.

  This isn’t the same thing.

  Really? How isn’t it?

  “We might as well settle in,” Hawkins said. “We’re probably going to be here for a while.”

  I glanced around for a place to sit.

  “There’s a cot,” he offered.

  I didn’t want anything that looked even a little like a bed in here with us. “No, I’m fine on the floor.”

  Jessop sat, leaving space for me to sit next to him, but I pretended not to notice and picked a spot on the opposite wall. I heard a faint whirr, and then air blew in through a vent near the ceiling.