by Natalie Dean
After she’d picked all the splinters out of her fingers, she tried again. This time, she went for maximum height. She timed it well. As she flew up to the top, she grabbed the board with the smallest tips of her fingers and tried with all her strength to hold on.
She was extremely powerful. Back in high school, she’d been undefeated in arm wrestling—even against all the guys that decided to arm wrestle her. She’d whooped up on her peers. She also had briefly tried out gyms and found them to be too time-consuming, but in the time she had worked out, she had been very pleased with her own strength.
So it was with that strength that she held onto that board.
The first nail shifted out slightly, and the second followed suit.
Her fingers gave way and she dropped to the ground like a cat. She landed wrong, and something in her knee popped. She barely held in a yelp as her joint gave and she hit the ground.
She’d hurt it young, but it still hadn’t fully healed. She had no idea what she’d done. She never had surgery, which probably wasn’t a good idea, but it had seemed smart at the time. Every now and then, she’d hit it wrong and it would fall out from under her. Every time she did, it felt like she had torn something.
“Aaaaahhhhh….” She bit her bottom lip so hard she wondered if it was bleeding. Her leg felt like it was on fire. It was a bad one. It was going to swell up when she let it sit still.
Not too much scared her, but right near the top of her list was hurting her knee again. She’d spent most of a year trying to rehab before it even started to feel okay again. Every time she popped it, she felt a flush of fear. It always went away when she realized that she was okay, but it was still debilitating for a moment.
She wiggled her leg around. All good. The pain was fading fast, and her knee seemed to stay where it was supposed to.
Slowly, gingerly, she stood up. Her knee wobbled a little, but it held.
She readied herself for another jump. She had to be prepared. The plywood was close to coming off, but her knee was also ready to give at any time. The last thing she wanted to do was jump up, grab the wood, and pull it off to expose her valve of freedom, come down and wipe out, dropping the wood and making enough noise where the guards came to figure out what was going on.
It was a guessing game. Usually her knee ran just fine, but every now and then, it got into these little kinks. Here in about thirty minutes, she’d be fine. Given the option, she’d wait around for half an hour, but she had no clue when the guards were headed back for Round 2 of the interrogation.
She had no intention of being there when they showed up.
She jumped for it again, grabbed it, and came back towards the ground. She landed well, but for a second she wondered if her knee was going to take her down.
Luckily, though, it held.
She was standing in the middle of the room with a two-foot panel of plywood in her hands.
It had worked.
And the guards hadn’t heard.
She set the plywood down in the corner where it wasn’t easily seen from the door. Now, the second part: actually wiggling into the vent. It was entirely too small for her to feel confident about fitting through, but if she could make it through the entrance, she’d be fine. Right after the hole came a wider section that she could crawl through.
She made a jump and grabbed the steel vent and scrambled into the hole, trying to conceal the sound as much as she could. Her jeans caught on the metal and she nearly fell out. She kicked through the air and dragged herself in.
Her jeans had held, surprisingly. Almost as surprising was that she had actually managed to fit. She wasn’t a small lady. She wasn’t particularly heavy, but she was tall and athletic, so her hips had barely squeezed in.
She froze for a minute or two, waiting for guards to come running in. Nobody came.
Smirking, she started the slow process of crawling through the vents in the direction that she hoped led her outside.
Chapter 7
Adrianna was having a grand ole’ time crawling towards her freedom until she hit the outside vent. For some time, she figured that that she could just bust out and that the hard part would be getting into the vent.
But then she hit the vent leading out of the building and she realized that she was completely wrong.
If she’d been crawling legs first, it would have been no problem. She could’ve just kicked the grate out. As it was, she was army crawling chest-first, and she had nowhere near enough strength in her arms to shove open a screwed-in grill.
“Uh-oh,” she said. She pushed on it. It didn’t budge. “Uh-oh.”
At any second, the guards could discover her absence. She was tragically aware of that fact, and what would happen if they found out she was missing.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” she muttered. “Why does this have to be so hard?”
Because you’re breaking out of an abandoned building from dangerous, murderous thugs who are willing to torture you, her brain replied.
She braced her legs against the inside of the vent—it was a tight enough fit as it was—and pushed on the grate. It barely bent out as she strained, but when she stopped, it snapped right back into place.
She had to twist around and kick it open.
In a tiny space.
She curled up as much as she could, but when she was done, she could just barely twist around. For one frantic moment, she was afraid that she was stuck in the fetal position, but then she brought her legs around. It took her a second to unwind herself.
She touched the grate with her boots to get the spacing right. Too close, and she wouldn’t get enough power. Too far, and she’d extend an inch away from it.
She brought her legs back, clenched for a second, and kicked the grate. Immediately it ripped free and sailed off—straight into the face of someone outside.
Surprised, she resorted back to her martial arts training and kicked the person in the face. She quickly locked the man in a headlock with her powerful legs before he could scream and alert the others to her position.
The man turned out to be The Celtic, head locked in her crotch. “You’re alive!” he choked out, barely able to breathe in the leg lock. It wasn’t a great one, but she had reacted instinctively. The whole point was just to keep any guard from yelling loud enough for someone to hear and come find her.
“Oh, uh,” she blushed and unclenched her legs, and he pulled away. “Sorry. What are you doing here?”
“I tracked you here,” he said, holding out a hand. She took it and used it to hop down. She let her mind wander for one second and her knee gave again—it hadn’t really locked in place from earlier. She tumbled to the ground.
“Are you okay?” The Celtic said, obviously startled. “Did you just… fall?”
She peeled herself off the ground. “Augh… yeah…. I got a bad knee.” Suddenly, she realized. “You’re here to rescue me?”
“Well, duh,” he said, clearly not sure if he should help her or not. On one hand, he wanted to help. But on the other hand, he could tell she didn’t want him to help. She wanted to get up on her own. She hated feeling helpless.
She stood up, limping around for a second.
The Celtic looked up at the abandoned building. They still had no idea that she’d busted out. Adrianna looked around at their surroundings. They were still in the same area, forest: pine trees littered the hills around them with long, waving grass all around. On the outside, it became obvious that the building belonged to an ice cream company, which pretty much turned Adrianna off of ice cream for life.
They set off across the countryside. Both of them were pretty much falling apart. He’d been shot a couple times, and although none of the gunshot wounds were too bad—the bleeding had long since stopped—they were still a pain. Meanwhile, Adrianna’s rib was hurting and she never stopped to let her knee get back into place so it kept popping throughout the run.
Sometime later, when the sun was high in the sky, they came acro
ss a road. It wasn’t much of a road—just a slab of concrete that stretched on and on through the winding way of the forest—but to them, it was the most beautiful thing they’d ever seen.
“Praise the Lord!” exclaimed The Celtic, slowing from a jog to a tired walk. “We found the road.”
“I was starting to wonder if we would,” she panted back.
“All right,” The Celtic said. “Based on the sun…” he went through a couple calculations in his head. “And the position of that there…town should be…” he made random hand motions while he thought. “That way!” he declared, pointing.
“Wait, how’d you do that?”
“It’s a secret.”
“Okay… are you sure?”
“Of course not. I made that up right then.”
She punched him in the shoulder. “Jerk. I believed you.”
“Oww,” he grinned.
“Quit complaining. You’re a professional fighter. That didn’t hurt.”
“Yeah, you’re right.”
He grinned at her, and for half a second, he seemed truly happy. She felt comfortable with him, felt trusting with him. She’d never had that before. Any man she’d ever worked with was just an associate. She’d never had a partner. But there was something about The Celtic, something that she couldn’t explain, that made her want to know him better and perhaps… more.
But then his smile faded. She saw a glimmer of emotional pain in his deep, blue eyes before he glanced away. Something was hurting him, and she felt a compelling need to help but she didn’t know how, so she stood there, frozen and hesitant.
“We, uh… we better keep moving,” he said, purposefully avoiding her eyes. He turned in the opposite direction of the way he’d pointed and started walking.
Adrianna reached out a hand to touch his shoulder, but thought about it and drew it back. Her mouth opened and closed like a fish, but she couldn’t think of what to say.
So she followed him deeper into the forest, hoping that they were headed towards civilization and not deeper into the trap.
Chapter 8
When she first spotted the headlights, Adrianna thought she was hallucinating. It had grown dark, so they were walking along the road with only the moon lighting their way. Adrianna wanted to stick in the forest, but The Celtic didn’t want to lose the road, so they decided to walk along the road.
They were both exhausted at that point, not just from lack of sleep but from the wear that their feet had endured. Adrianna was wearing combat boots, which were great for everything except walking and jogging for hours. The undersides of her feet were aching and her rib was absolutely killing her. It was getting old in a hurry to have the same routine working over and over: hurting, walking, running.
So when the headlights appeared in the distance, Adrianna had a surge of emotions. One: she was happy that there was a car out there that might be able to give them a ride back to the city. Two: she was worried they might be the killers out looking for them. She doubted it; professional killers wouldn’t have the lights on. They’d be pursuing silently.
But they skipped into the forest and waited until the lights got closer, throwing light across the waving trees. It turned out that the approaching vehicle was a pickup truck—one of those rich-boy trucks with the lifted suspension, mean tires, perfect paint job, tinted windows, and overall just too nice to actually be used for work.
Was it possible that it was one of the killers? Yes.
Was it likely? No.
The two heroes dashed into the front of the truck. Well, not really dashed. Hobbled uncomfortably was probably a better way to describe their movement. For one second, the two thought that the truck was going to plow them, but the driver slammed on the brakes and stayed, frozen and surprised, with the blue, LED lights blinding the agent and criminal.
“What the hell?” Adrianna heard the driver say.
Adrianna raised her hands and walked towards the truck. She had no idea what to expect. He could be armed and she couldn’t see anything because of the light that was scorching her eyes. “My name is Agent Whetmore. I work for the FBI, and I need your help. I need a ride back to the city.”
She got past the lights and saw the driver. Just like she expected, it was a prissy city boy. Nice looking kid—handsome 20-something-year-old with a Rolex and Star Wars shirt.
“Umm….” His mouth was hanging open. She didn’t blame him. Not too many people have the ever-exciting opportunity to confront some lady claiming to work for the FBI with a person who had clearly been shot several times standing in the middle of the road, all while driving along an old country road in the middle of the night. “Do you, uh, have any…” he swallowed. “ID?”
She patted her jeans down. Not too surprisingly, she didn’t have her ID on her. The killers must have taken it when they’d been interrogating her. “No. I lost it.”
“You lost your ID?”
“Kid, give me your phone.”
Hesitantly, he pulled out a smartphone and handed it to her like she might bite. He unlocked it and she pulled up the internet.
“What…. What are you doing?” he asked. He looked drunk. Wouldn’t be too surprising, since he was driving along the road at that time of the night.
She typed in The Celtic MMA and up came a picture of the fighter along with the title “MMA fighter a killer?”. She clicked on the article and showed it to the guy. “Recognize him?”
As he read, his eyes widened more and more as he registered that the man in front of his truck was The Celtic, the wanted professional fighter for murder of George Ortiz.
“Oh…” he said. “Oh. Oh, get in!”
She felt gratitude and surprise wash through her. She hadn’t really expected it to be that easy. She’d expected to have to use her silver tongue to convince him, but he evidently was easy to persuade.
The two of them got in. Adrianna sat in the passenger seat and The Celtic piled in behind. Slowly, with the purr of a powerful engine, they set off towards the city. At first, the kid was full of irritating questions: Where’s your gun? Why did you shoot him? Are you on the run? Can I get a reward for this? Adrianna tried her best to answer all the questions, but eventually the kid picked up on the fact that she was exhausted and simply stared ahead, eyes wide and mouth open, still shocked.
They were making excellent time along the old road. The kid had a lead foot and Adrianna sure wasn’t about to tell him to slow down. She had no idea where the killers were, but she felt confident that they had discovered her absence and were trailing her at that very moment. She anxiously looked out the windows for signs of movement. If someone tried to stop them, they were going to keep driving.
“Look,” Adrianna said to the kid about fifteen minutes in. “I’ve been thinking. Let me drive.”
“Why?”
“Because if someone tries to kill us, we need someone who knows how to drive a getaway car.”
“If… if someone tries to kill us?” he whispered. “I thought you escaped.”
“I did. And they probably won’t even see us, but if they do, we need to be prepared.”
He looked terrified. She didn’t blame him for that either. He pulled over, scooted over into the passenger seat, and let her take charge at the wheel. She liked the truck. It felt like power. Stupid, unrealistic, unnecessary power, but power nevertheless.
She eased onto the road and kept picking up speed. She had always had a knack for driving. She didn’t even have an accident until she was 29, when some idiot had plowed her car coming out of a parking lot. As she liked to remind everyone, it wasn’t her fault.
“Hey,” Adrianna finally said to The Celtic. “Thanks for coming back for me.”
He had been uncharacteristically quiet since he had smiled earlier that day, when they had made a connection. He hadn’t said a thing the whole trip; he had just sat silently in the back seat, studying her chair with his arms folded across his chest.
When she spoke to him, he gave her the sadde
st smile she had ever seen before it wilted. “You would have done the same.”
“You were right about the direction we were walking,” she said, hoping to cheer him up.
“Yeah.”
She gave up. Obviously, he didn’t want to talk and she couldn’t force him to. She didn’t really wonder why he was so silent. According to him, he’d be killed long before he got to trial. Every mile that inched by, the closer he became to what he felt was sure death. She was starting to believe him. At first, she’d assumed he was exaggerating, but after seeing the rather professional system The Owl had going, she started to see that he had been being honest.
She thought about that the entire way towards town; if the Owl had found both of them out there instead of just her, The Celtic would have been dead. They both would have been out in the forest somewhere, dead. It was just good luck that they had found her instead.
If the Owl figured out that The Celtic was going to testify against him, he’d figure out a way to kill him. You didn’t get to be the head of an organization like that without a little expertise. She had no doubt that somehow, someway, someone was going to kill The Celtic before he could testify unless the whole organization toppled.
She thought about Agent Stone, and that he would never believe Adrianna’s warnings about The Owl. Then if The Celtic wound up dead, Stone would release a statement saying that the FBI had no idea that anyone was coming to kill him and that investigators were looking into it.
She was silent the rest of the drive. The GPS clicked down way too slowly. According to it, they were merely ten miles from the city. They’d been an hour and a half away when they first got in the truck. Now that they were getting so close, she was starting to get nervous. Things rarely worked out that easily for her. Normally, she had to fight something right at the very end.
So she wasn’t too surprised when she saw the barricade.
It was obviously The Owl’s men. Cops didn’t carry heavy assault rifles, but they had somehow gotten ahold of some cars and tossed some flashing lights on top. Even worse, they were wearing uniforms. Your casual driver would see them as genuine cops, stop, and keep driving when the killers figured out that Adrianna and The Celtic weren’t inside.