Red and Black

by Nancy O'Toole Meservier

  “They’re not telling us anything,” Sylvie said, rubbing her face against the faux fur of her stole. “We’ve been in here for hours and they haven’t told us anything.”

  “They’re trying to make us sweat,” Johanna said with a tiny sniff.

  “Well, they’re succeeding!” Sylvie’s eyes were wide now. “I mean, people must have realized we’re missing by now. Called the police?”

  “Probably,” Johanna replied in a dry tone.

  “I just…they can’t be planning on hurting us in any way, right? It’s all about the ransom, right? If they would just call my niece…Why haven’t they told us anything?”

  “Let’s move to another room,” Dana said softly, pushing my chair toward a third doorway.

  We entered the second bedroom. Like the first, it was missing most of the furniture you’d find in a hotel, but it did have a mattress, some sheets, and a chair.

  And on that chair sat Arthur Hamilton, the person I had failed to save weeks before.

  I felt my body stiffen at the sight of him, so transformed. Like me, he had been given a pair of gray sweats to wear, a far cry from the suit I had initially seen him in. I felt guilt twist in my gut. While he was still a sizable man, he had lost a troubling amount of weight for such a short time. He sat, shoulders slumped, head tipped downward. He didn’t even look up when we entered.

  If only I had made better choices at the Commerce Center. If I had taken down Marty and Noel before they could even get to Mr. Hamilton’s door. Of course, that was only delaying the inevitable. Had he not been abducted weeks before, the lawyer would certainly have been taken at the benefit. And if Mr. Hamilton hadn’t been abducted, I would have never gone to his house and learned about Callie Saunders.

  In the long run, it seemed like I had made the better decision, but it was hard to feel that way, seeing him like that.

  “Arthur,” Dana said, then raised his voice. “Arthur?”

  Mr. Hamilton blinked, then looked up at us.

  “Hey, Arthur. This is Dawn, she’s…the latest member of our party, I guess.” Dana spoke loudly, as if the man was hard of hearing.

  Arthur blinked once more then looked in my direction.

  “Dana!” a familiar voice barked out from the other room. “Peterson. Come back in here.”

  Dana let out a long sigh.

  “Politicians,” he said, rolling his eyes. He paused and nodded at me. “I don’t blame you for trying to run before. I just wish you had been able to get away. Excuse me.”

  And with that, he left the room, closing the door behind him, leaving myself and Arthur Hamilton alone.

  For a long thirty seconds, there was nothing but silence between the two of us. Just my awkward self and Mr. Hamilton, staring off into the distance with a dead expression in his eyes.

  Right. Mr. Hamilton was clearly traumatized. I would have to lead the conversation.

  “Ah…have you been here this entire time?” I asked lamely.

  “Hmm? Well, yes. Close to a month, it seems like, by now.”

  As he spoke, he looked toward the boarded-up windows. Another awkward silence fell between us. I wracked my brain for something to say. Come on, Dawn. Normal people could be comforting in a situation like this. Helpful. It shouldn’t be that—

  “You’re Ken and Karou’s girl, aren’t you?” he asked.

  “Ah…yes.” I jerked in my seat. “Sorry, but most people don’t mention my father anymore. Uh…were you friends…or something?”

  “Friend is too strong a word,” the lawyer replied. “More acquaintances. Too busy with our own lives to be more than that. With me, it was my work. For your father, it was you and your brother.” He shook his head. “I remember looking down on him at the time. At the sacrifices he had made to focus on fatherhood. Of course, it wasn’t until Margaret died that I began to realize that I had made sacrifices too, perhaps the wrong ones.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  Arthur Hamilton shook his head before speaking.

  “Our generation…the expectations were so different when I was your age. A man was expected to provide for his family at any cost. And that’s what I told myself with every gymnastic meet or school-related event I missed. I was doing it for my family.” He paused, his voice suddenly sharp. “It may have started out that way, but by the end I was doing it for no one other than myself.”

  He sighed and leaned back in his chair. When he spoke again, his voice was soft once more.

  “It took almost a full decade to win my Martha back. To finally meet the young woman I should have raised. And then, a couple months ago, everything changed.”

  “How?” I said, leaning forward in my seat.

  “My daughter stopped showing up for appointments. Nothing dramatic, just a missed coffee date here and there. Not that unusual for a woman in a position like hers. And then I started noticing there were some things that used to bother her, but longer did. She stopped complaining about problems at work, that loser boyfriend of hers…I thought it was a sign that she was entering a more positive frame of mind. Then she started to talk about this…this woman.”

  I can tell you have holes in your life that need filling.

  “What woman?” I asked.

  “I didn’t know at first.” Mr. Hamilton shook his head. “And then…the phone call. It was the DA, letting me know my daughter had been arrested. That she was involved in a kidnapping attempt. And had refused an attorney. The daughter of a lawyer, refusing an attorney. The only words she would say, over and over again, were, ‘I don’t need anyone but the Mistress.’ And I thought…the Mistress? Is that this woman she’s been talking about? The one who’s been so helpful?” He let out a bitter chuckle. “I was making phone calls with contacts of mine, trying to line up a criminal attorney for her, and then…I got to meet this woman…this Mistress…face to face.”

  I felt my mouth go dry.

  “You…you’ve seen her?” I sputtered out.

  A single name escaped Arthur Hamilton’s lips.

  “Calypso.”

  And with that name, he finally looked up and met my gaze with his bloodshot eyes. His exhausted eyes, dark skin lined with even darker circles. When was the last time this man had slept?

  “Few people call her that, of course,” he said, his gaze going distant once more. “For most of them…that would be almost blasphemous. The one exception is that man, the one who isn’t under her control. He goes by Faultline.”

  “I…suspected that too,” I said, thinking back over my encounter with Susan. “He’s too rational, doesn’t have the same single-minded focus on Calypso.”

  “He’s a mercenary,” Mr. Hamilton said with a snort. “Only in it for the money. Don’t think you’ll get any help from him.”

  “I wasn’t counting on it.”

  “There’s another woman. Her name is Amity. She’s a little harder to read.”

  “Uh…have you met her, too? Is she another one of Calypso’s drones?”

  “I don’t think so.” He shook his head. “But at the same time…she’s loyal in her own way.”

  “How so?” I asked with a frown.

  There was a sharp knock on the door behind me. Before I could wheel myself toward it, it opened wide. On the other side was Dana Peterson, frowning.

  “Dawn, it looks like someone named Calypso wants to speak with you?”

  21

  Alex

  Noel White was the hero of the hour.

  The minute he had stepped into the garage, half of my boxing class surrounded him. I could still hear them patting him on the back with loud, heavy slaps, their whoops of approval echoing around the garage.

  And why wouldn’t they? He had taken out Red and Black, after all.

  I sat in the abandoned van. The same one that I had spoken to Noel in, right after he and Marty had had their little tussle. Hard to believe that had only been a few weeks ago. It felt longer.

  It had been a freak thing, being able to h
it her like that at the top of a speeding train. Never mind the fact that he could have killed her. Never mind that he just as easily could have shot me.

  Never mind the fact that he had hit Dawn.

  Dawn. How the hell was Dawn the Red and Black Woman? I held back a groan. You couldn’t blame me for being surprised. Even just physically, the two didn’t match up. Dawn had to be at least six inches too short. And that Costume clearly spent time at the gym, something Dawn just as clearly did not. Of course, that was secondary to the change in personality. Sweet, shy Dawn was nothing like the aggressive chatterbox I had encountered twice now. I couldn’t picture the girl who had blushed over every compliment being the same person who gave me shit for how I chose to disguise my voice.

  But blood doesn’t lie. The wound was in the exact same spot. And back when I had seen Red and Black at Antigoni’s, Dawn had been there too. She had even gone toward the back alley, right after Dana, and I had never made the connection.

  Dawn. I had hurt Dawn. Badly.

  I sighed, removing my helmet, slightly damaged from the fight just hours ago. My hair was slick with sweat. I pushed it back up and over my head and sighed.

  I wasn’t blind to the irony. Claire had told me that she hadn’t gotten into a fight for just any old reason, but because her best friend’s boyfriend was beating her. I had been angry. You didn’t lay your hands on someone you claimed to care about, not in that way. I had learned that long ago. But what had I really been doing all this time? Throwing the girl I had been romancing off of the top of buildings? Pummeling her while standing atop a speeding train?

  Calypso had never misled me. I had known, from the moment Amity first approached me, what I was signing up for. I wasn’t going to be performing good and noble acts. I was being hired to punch people and intimidate them. At first, it had been low level gang members. And then it was spoiled bigwigs who never gave a shit about me.

  And then it was a sweet girl who could make me forget about all my troubles with one smile.

  But I was doing it for the right reasons. To make sure my sisters had a good life. It wasn’t fair that they would have to further bury themselves in debt to get an education when so many other people just had their parents pay for it. Mariah and Claire didn’t ask to be born west of the river. They didn’t ask to have their father abandon them when they were kids. They didn’t ask for their mother to die.

  And they hadn’t asked me to do this. No, if anything, Mariah had distinctly asked me not to do this, even if she hadn’t understood the scope of what I was into.

  There are other solutions. Solutions we might come up with together. As a family.

  “Shit,” I murmured. “What are you doing, Gage?”

  Normal people didn’t turn to a life of crime in order to sidestep student loans and pay off debt. No, I had accepted the job because I was angry, angry at losing my mother, angry at the hand I had been dealt by life. God, I had been so sick of just accepting things as they came. Taking shitty jobs. Watching my sisters struggle. I had felt so powerless. But when I was Faultline…

  This wasn’t about helping my family. That had been the excuse. This was all about me.

  And I didn’t like the “me” I had become.

  “Well now,” I said, reaching for my helmet. “You know what to do.”

  I froze as the back door to the van swung open. I began to turn.

  “Noel, now isn’t…oh. Hello, Marty.”

  Marty stood behind the van. One of the “waiters” from the benefit had lent him a black tie, which he had tied around his head, bandana-style. I also couldn’t help but notice that there was a bloodstain on his pants. That hadn’t been there before the tram ride.

  The conductor. God, I couldn’t even remember her name. If she had gotten hurt…

  “Hey! You’re missing the party,” Marty said.

  I frowned.

  “Seems a little soon to party,” I replied.

  “What are you talking about? We won. It’s the perfect time to party.”

  I shook my head, and for a moment, I thought I saw Marty as he was meant to be. Not some crazy fool with a woman’s blood on him, but a college kid who just wanted to have a good time. Sure, he was annoying, but I hadn’t been perfect at nineteen either.

  Still not perfect, apparently.

  “I know, I know,” I said. “I just don’t want to relax too soon. I’m going to go talk to Amity. See what the next phase of the plan is.”

  “I guess,” Marty said with a shrug. “Anyway, Barry said he found some booze, and I am not saving any for you.”

  I forced out a chuckle and shook my head. Then, I reached for the damaged helmet and exited the van.

  It was time for me to go up a few floors.

  “Calypso wants to speak to the girl in the wheelchair.”

  The two guards at the door didn’t even question me. I guess after the benefit, they were used to accepting my orders.

  “Just watch out for that cop,” one of drones—a woman with a face full of bruises—said. “Even injured, she’s a pain.”

  “Good to know.” I slipped the helmet on. “This should help.”

  She nodded and reached to open the door. I was immediately assaulted with a loud voice.

  “The moment I get out of here, I swear!”

  The source of the voice was undeniable. Edison Kent stood there, flushed in anger, literally shaking his finger in the face of the blond woman cop, whose arm was now in a sling. It had been bad luck, having her arrive. It had been her gun that Noel had used to injure Dawn, after all.

  As I entered the room, both turned to look at me. The cop almost seemed relieved by the interruption.

  “You!”

  I blinked as the former mayor of Bailey City spun and went to barrel down on me. Oh, of all the idiotic things…

  I took a step into the room and shoved the guy into the unfinished bathroom. He let out an oof as he hit the sink. I slammed the door behind him, and the cop smiled.

  Her face immediately fell the second I began speaking.

  “Calypso wants to speak with Dawn.”

  The woman’s eyes darted toward the doorway that led to the rest of the suite.

  “The girl’s been through a lot. She needs a moment—”

  “She doesn’t have a moment. Calypso wants to speak with her now.”

  The cop’s nostrils flared. I suspected she wasn’t used to being interrupted or disobeyed.

  “You’re not one of them,” she said. “The drones.”

  I paused, surprised to hear my own terminology thrown back in my face.

  “And that means you still have all of your thoughts unscrambled.” She took a step toward me.

  I felt my eyebrows raise. It looked like someone had been piecing together what was really going on. I chose not to reply.

  “Listen. I have connections. I can argue down the charges, but I’m going to need your help. We have six hostages in the other room, and they’re—”

  This was wasting time. There was only so long I could go missing without someone noticing.

  “I’m only concerned with the one right now,” I said. “And I don’t need your permission to remove her.”

  I moved toward the door, and, to my surprise, the policewoman stepped in front of me. She reached out and pressed her left hand against the armor on my chest, and not in a gentle way, either.

  “She’s just a kid,” she said. “Regardless of what she can do. That doesn’t change what she’s been through—”

  “You could use reinforcements, right?” I dropped my voice to a whisper.

  Her voice cut off in shock. Her mouth gaped open.

  “What?” she asked.

  “There are a lot of men downstairs. Close to fifty total. Every one of them is completely devoted to Calypso. That’s more than one policewoman can take out on her own. I’ll take Dawn. She’ll call for help, and reinforcements will come.”

  “Are you offering—”

  “My numb
er one priority is Dawn,” I said. “After that…I’ll see what I can do.”

  She looked me up and down with narrowed eyes. Then she reached down with her left hand and pulled out a badge from her belt.

  “Have them call Detective O’Hara. He’s…the closest thing I have to a partner. Will have to wake him up for it, though. My name is Amanda Bronson. This is my badge number.”

  I nodded and stashed it in the armor’s one pocket.

  “Don’t make me regret this,” Detective Bronson said, then opened the door.

  The trip to the elevators seemed to take forever.

  Dawn was silent the entire time. Could have been a stone statue for all I knew. We must have passed more than a dozen doors before she spoke.

  “Is she…what does she want with me?” she said, the words getting stuck at her throat.

  Shit.

  It wasn’t like Detective Bronson had the chance to fill her in. For all she knew, I was still taking her to Calypso. I opened my mouth to console her, then realized it would be very easy for someone to be listening in at one of the rooms.

  “Wait for the elevator,” I murmured.

  Dawn’s gaze drifted up to mine, then dropped.

  We made it to the elevator doors a few seconds later, and I pressed the button to call it. Once we were inside, I hit the letter “G” for ground floor.

  The doors slid shut, and the elevator let out a piercing ding.

  “Can you walk?” I asked.

  Dawn blinked.

  “What? Well, yes, just not very quickly.”

  “Can you walk long enough to get across the street from the hotel? There’s a 24-hour diner there. Kind of shifty, but they have a phone. You’re going to call for help.”

  Dawn spun around until she was looking up at me, mouth agape.

  “What?” she repeated.

  I reached in my pocket for Detective Bronson’s badge.

  “This is the detective’s. Has her badge number on it. She wants you to talk to Detective O’Hara. Hopefully, he’s not under Calypso’s control.”

  “But—”

  “You’ll have to work as quickly as you can. I don’t know what Calypso’s next move is going to be.”