Untrained Eye

by Jody Klaire

  “You letting her use the gym?” Frei understood that Montgomery was worried but Aeron wasn’t an open and shut case.

  “No. She’s not leaving the room.”

  Frei took a breath. She was the head of the base. It was her call, still, she didn’t want to stick Montgomery’s nose out of joint. She knew what she was doing.

  “Let her. Give her the violin too. It’s how she coped in the institution.” Frei offered a tight smile. “Aeron’s a good kid. She’s not going to hurt anyone.”

  Montgomery eyed her for a moment, again that searching look that most people turned away from. Frei didn’t. “You sound like you know her well.”

  A leading statement. Montgomery wanted to know what the dynamic was. She could unravel Renee with ease but it would be an impossible task with Frei. “Aeron Lorelei poses no threat to herself or anyone else. I have no doubt.”

  Her words were neither an endorsement or a judgment but a simple statement of fact. Montgomery offered a brief nod and left the room.

  Frei watched her go. She watched Renee hurry to the clinic with Aeron’s violin. Odd how she could see Aeron for who she was. Maybe that was her upbringing, if she could call it that. Aeron was simple and straight down the line. If she liked someone, she liked them. If she thought something was right, she’d do it. She was all heart and noble conscience. How was that so hard to see for everyone around her?

  Frei’s cell phone buzzed across her desk and she answered it without paying much attention.

  “I have a proposition for you that you will love.”

  She shut every window and perched on the edge of her chair. Her heart pounded with a heaviness that she’d long consigned to bad memories. “Huber, I don’t work for you anymore.”

  He laughed, the same infuriating laugh he’d always had since she was a kid. “You know that’s not exactly true. I let you play with those people but I still have the papers.”

  “And I still know where you hide your money.”

  Huber laughed again. “I’ve missed your insolence.” He slapped his hand against something. It used to make her jump as a kid. Now, it didn’t even make her flinch. “There’s an auction, a big one being held at an academy . . . Caprock.”

  She tensed at the name, glad he couldn’t see her face. “I don’t care.”

  “You will. Two children, fifteen and sixteen. Prized for brains and talent. Worth a lot of money.”

  Frei clenched her jaw. Huber could have been drooling the way he was talking.

  “Even the Kühns are going to be there.”

  That did make her flinch. A powerful family. “What is so important about these children?”

  “No one knows. Principal won’t give out any details. I want them.”

  Him and everyone else by the sound of it. “Why would I be interested in this?” The more she spoke in German to him, the more her accent came through.

  “Easy. If they don’t impress, like the others in their class, they’ll suffer like your sister did.” His chair creaked and she could see him recline, whiskey glass on his desk. “Not everyone is as lucky as you.”

  Frei crunched the chair between her fingers at his snide remark. “You were the lucky one. I made you millions.”

  “A billion actually.” He slapped his hand against something again. “I will get you into that school but you’ll need a team. If you pull it off, think of the acclaim . . . Think of how it’ll look for Caprock.”

  That line used to work a long time ago. It irritated her that her fingers flexed at his pitch. She’d tried helping, tried making a difference but straddling his sordid network and CIG had come to a head.

  Renee had threatened to turn her in. She’d walked away. Renee had been taken by Yannick. So she made a choice. Renee or the helpless kids.

  It was a no win situation.

  In spite of everything, Huber had been good to her. He’d been a tyrant and intimidating but he’d never raised a hand to her and he’d never touched her. In return, she’d made him richer than he could ever have imagined. “I don’t work for glory.”

  “Then, how is this. Thirty children in that class, you get me two, you can smuggle the rest out for your own purposes.” He clicked his tongue. “Twenty eight strays that you can save.”

  He had her. Even more than he realized. Twenty eight kids who would end up like her sister otherwise. Twenty eight lives. “Give me a week to build a team.”

  Huber hummed his approval. He came from a long line of slave owners, that was the excuse she’d always given on his behalf. What else did he know? He’d been good to her, atrocious to others, but good to her. He treated her like a daughter. A bound, enslaved, and useful pawn of a daughter. Stupid, but she still felt loyal to him.

  “I knew you’d see it my way. Be in touch.”

  He cut the line and she stared down at her cell phone. Aeron and Renee’s problems felt distant now. She had kids to save.

  Aeron and Renee . . . Frei tapped her cell to her chin. With their help, she could pull it off. Renee wouldn’t go for it but Aeron . . .

  Frei looked at the medical block.

  Aeron . . .

  She got to her feet. If this plan worked, it could save lives and save the CIG team from imploding. Why not?

  Chapter 7

  EVERYTHING HURT. I didn’t know where I was when I finally came around but I felt as if Blackbear Mountain had dropped on top of me and run for it.

  I was pretty sure that I’d been restrained, again, and given another dose of something, again. One thing guaranteed to make me want to hurl objects across a room.

  I was different. I had some issues, I got that but who were these people to lock me in some tiny cell and get all defensive when I didn’t like it? I hated shrinks.

  I hated padded cells and I was in one.

  I pushed myself up to my knees and glared around at the stupid place. What was next, stick a straightjacket on me and act like I shouldn’t have any rights? Why should I be happy about getting locked up? I’d been locked up for most of my life.

  The door opened and I braced myself. If they were going to try hitting me with anything else, I was going to get mad.

  “I done my time yet?” It sounded snarling, aggressive even to my own ears.

  Frei appeared in the doorway in running shorts and a tank top. “Gym.” She turned and strode out.

  If she was fazed by my mood, she weren’t giving nothing away. There was a surprise.

  I followed her out of the room, already a million times calmer than I’d been in there. I hated confined spaces. At my height and build, being stuck in the “pillow prison,” as I called them, just rubbed me raw.

  I hadn’t seen the outside of the room in what felt like a decade. In Serenity, I’d been through some nasty stuff and some nastier treatments and gotten through with a smile on my face. I’d smiled most of the time to irritate the shrinks trying to break me.

  A year away from the place and I’d lost that ability to cope. I was at a breaking point a lot faster than it used to take me to get there. Right now, I was ready to cry and beg Frei never to let me go near one of those stupid cells again.

  “Who are you mad at?” Frei said as we walked into a well-stocked gym.

  I yanked at my prison wear. The top rose up on my stomach and the pants had ripped at the seams. They flapped around my calves as they were way too short and all in orange. I had a thing about orange. I’d spent a decade in orange. “Institutions thinkin’ they know what’s going on in my head.”

  Frei patted the weight bench and I headed to it and racked up in an automatic motion.

  “But they don’t, right?” Frei sat beside me on an identical bench and racked up the same weight I’d put on. I just stared at her. She was crazy if she thought she could lift that.

  “A degree don’t make you smarter than anybody else. Just means you planted your butt on a seat and regurgitated something you memorized.” I shunted the weights up. The t-shirt ripped from my biceps. I knew I lo
oked as unhinged as I felt but relief in the expulsion of energy flowed through me.

  “So what do you think is smart?” Frei used one arm, half the size of mine, and glided the weights up like they were balloons. I was pretty sure whatever they’d shot into my system must still be working.

  “Being a good person. Being somebody that tries to do the right thing.” I got into a rhythm, my tension draining out with each push. “Learning from the dumb mistakes you make.”

  “Are you going to be smart?” Frei continued to glide up her weight like she wasn’t taxed by it. I knew from the sweat dribbling down my chest that it was not that easy.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” Frei’s cool appraisal made me sigh. “Look, I did what I needed to. Neither of us wanted Renee to live her life like that. You did what you needed to do and I did what I needed to do.”

  “That doesn’t make it smart.”

  I slammed out the last few of the reps. “I didn’t ever say I was. I spent most of my life locked up for some guy who tried to rip all I had left from me.”

  “So trusting people is stupid too.” Frei switched arms as I started another set. It didn’t sound like a question.

  “Trusting the wrong folks is dumb. Trusting a serial killer who wants to tear your heart to shreds makes me nothing but a fool. A big, stupid, gullible fool.”

  “Nice.” Frei’s tone was cutting. “Add in some self-pity to it, that’ll help.”

  “You want to wind me up?” I slammed the weight up harder, making the machine ding.

  “I’m not afraid of you, Lorelei.” Frei stopped and added more weight. She started again, still one-handed.

  “Why would I want to scare you?” I scowled at her.

  “Growing up, I learned there were two ways to survive.” Frei pushed away with ease. “Make yourself useful and build as big a wall as you could.”

  “Sounds wise.”

  Frei finished her reps the same as I did mine. My arms began to protest at the punishment. “Where I was, yes. Where I am now, it becomes foolish.” She leaned forward onto her knees. “The rules outside are different. People don’t understand the loyalty being imprisoned breeds. They also don’t get why you want to rip something apart when threatened with it.”

  She sounded like she knew, like she understood. “I can’t imagine you being inside.”

  “Should have been.” She started another set, driving me to follow. “The prison I lived in was far worse than Serenity.”

  “I thought you said you weren’t inside.” I shunted up another set. My heart started to pump harder. A welcome feeling.

  “I was a slave.”

  The bench dinged again as I stopped. “You what?”

  Frei kept her smooth motion going. I was sure she wasn’t even sweating.

  “People . . . that don’t happen no more . . . does it?”

  Frei gave me a look as if she thought I was an idiot. “You saw the things that went on in Serenity Hills. That isn’t meant to happen anymore either.”

  Good point. “How’d you get out?”

  “I didn’t.”

  I finished my set and leaned onto my knees to draw in my breaths. “You’re still a slave?”

  “I’ll always be one, at least in some ways. Same as you will always be a locked up mental patient.” She met my eyes with her steely gaze. “It never leaves you.”

  “It don’t?” I had pretty much gathered that. I guess, before now, I hadn’t wanted to admit it to myself.

  “That’s what most people, including Renee, will never understand.” Frei, moved us over to work out our legs. She added my weights for me this time before doing the same herself. “It isn’t their fault you were locked up and it isn’t yours either.”

  “If I’d told—”

  “No.” Frei started her set. Her weights looked more than mine yet her legs didn’t even wobble. “If you told everyone you ‘saw’ the crash or didn’t at all, they would still have locked you up.”

  I started my set and my legs protested. She was working me. I gritted my teeth and gave it what I had. “Least you get that.”

  “Here’s the thing about Renee.” Frei looked like she was flicking her feet in a nice cool stream. “She comes from a happy home life. She attended the best schools. She lost her father who was a national hero but she is close to her mother now.” She kept her slow, steady rhythm. “Her perspective on life means that she thinks justice comes through the courts, that injustice doesn’t happen.” She sighed. “And she has a nasty knack of thinking she’s right, a lot.”

  It sounded like a pretty cutting description considering Frei was supposed to like her.

  “You confuse her,” Frei said.

  I frowned. “How?”

  “Because you don’t know much about her, yet you’re prepared to do anything for her. She doesn’t get that it’s part of surviving inside. You bond or you isolate yourself. Simple.”

  “If you’re isolated, you’re prey to the bullies.” That was something I did understand. There was always somebody with bad intent, somebody who took offense, safety in numbers.

  “Yes. Thing is Renee can’t understand that’s where you’re coming from. Neither does anyone else. Which is why she has the whole freak out when people like Sally sniff around.” Frei shook her head, a wry smile on her face. “That was the extent of her biggest problem before Yannick. That is still her biggest fear.”

  “Why?”

  Frei finished her set. More so to give me a breather by the way my heart was thudding. “She cares what people think. She has a family name to uphold.”

  I didn’t get how somebody as heroic as Renee could think that.

  “She gets embarrassed but suffering is relative.” Frei gave me a “quit judging her” look. “It’s a big deal to her. Now you’ve erased her fear of what happened with Yannick, her other issues will rear their head.” She sighed. “And you’ll get to see just how irritating and pig-headed she can be.”

  “She made you mad or something?”

  Frei gave me a tight smile. “She’s made you mad which is why we’re in the gym.”

  Okay, so some of what she said was getting through. I hadn’t even realized it myself ’til she did. I was locked up in a pillow prison because I’d helped her. I didn’t regret helping her, not one iota, but I was mad that I’d had to. I was mad that she’d lied and I was mad that until she saw me have a heart attack, she was happy to cut me off.

  “Not just her.”

  Frei nodded. “No, you’re mad at everything because that’s how you survive when you don’t know what’s going on.”

  Man, she was good. She was better than any shrink. “That why you’re mad all the time?”

  “You don’t want to know.” She got up off the weight bench and squeezed my shoulder on her way past. “I like you, Lorelei. I get you more than you realize.”

  I turned to see her in the doorway, not a patch of sweat on her top. I looked like I’d been caught in the sprinklers. “Pick up your violin on the way out. I want you back on duty tomorrow.”

  She liked me?

  Frei shook her head at the dumb expression I must have had on my face. “Doesn’t mean you’ll get flowers, Lorelei.”

  She shut the door on her way out and I went over to check the weight rack she’d been using. I tried to lift it for good measure. I couldn’t help but smile at the thought in my head. Frei a machine? Nope, a machine had nothing on her.

  Chapter 8

  FUNNY HOW WALKING out of the clinic felt as though I was escaping. Kinda like when I’d left Serenity Hills, I got the feeling somebody was gonna haul my butt back inside.

  Nobody did though.

  I shivered without my jacket as I stood there, waiting to be escorted but no one batted an eyelid at me. They’d returned my clothes at least so now I was in the clothes I’d been in when running. Black cargos, boots, and a t-shirt with my name stamped on it, because they must have figured I was dumb enough to forget my own name.
r />   The main drag was busy. People hurried from building to building. Frei’s office was opposite and I looked up at the top window, assuming that’s where a general would be. From a slave to a general, that was some going.

  I rubbed my cool arms and decided that the escort wasn’t gonna turn up. I had to have one everywhere before. Maybe I didn’t need one anymore. It would have been nice if someone would have talked me through everything but that would take communication. It would be logical. It would help me know what I was and wasn’t allowed to do. Least if I broke the rules then, I’d know I’d done it before guards with guns showed up to escort me to get hollered at.

  The wind whipping down from the snowy mountain top stung my cheeks as I trudged down the gritted sidewalk. Renee must have been on duty as she weren’t there to meet me. A few folks cast glances at me, either ’cause I was Lilia’s kid, or the fact I was in a t-shirt.

  A few minutes later I stopped outside the door to my quarters. A concrete slab, next to lots of other concrete slabs. Lorelei was chiseled into the heavy door. I stared at it half expecting to see the sticky notes that had been used in Serenity. The ones that told the guards just how unfriendly the wild animal locked inside was.

  Renee’s place looked empty so I took a hot shower, changed into something that wasn’t military, and opened up my violin case. I’d missed it. It was sweet that Renee had dropped it off for me.

  I picked up the violin and ran my hand over the wood. Perfect time for revisiting a friend.

  Time kinda flew by and before I knew it, the heavens were filled with a twinkling starry sky. I peered out from my window and smiled up at it. There was nothing like a canvas of nature’s glory.

  A breeze tickled my arms and I shivered and turned to smile at who I knew was there. “You getting air miles for all this, Nan?”

  I heard her chuckle and placed my violin in the case.

  “Shorty, I got some things to say to you.”

  Knowing I was tensing at her words, I tried my best not to let my temper rise. “My darlin’ mother has already given me a lecture, Nan. I don’t need another.”