“Please let us go. You don’t understand—” Charlie tries to reason with Maggie, but a shot rings out from her gun. I worriedly look to Will and Charlie, they appear bullet-less. She either missed on purpose or her aim isn’t very good. I’m not too keen to test her to find out which it is.
“Shut up, guys. Just do as she says.” I don’t want either of them to get hurt. I would rather see them captured than dead.
“Wise words. Are you going to listen to her?” Maggie asks the boys. I think it’s a stupid question until I hear them both answer her.
“No.” They both speak together and look surprised by their honest answer.
“I figured not. I’ll probably get in trouble for this, but who cares.” Maggie shrugs and then four loud gunshots blast from her gun. It proves to me that she hadn’t missed before. She shoots Will in each arm and leg.
“No!” I try harder to move, but I’m unable to get out.
“Will?” Charlie crouches beside Will. I see blood pouring out from him. My vision of him quickly overlaps with seeing Dana bleeding out in front of me, and I cry. My vision switches from seeing Dana bleeding and going back to Will.
“What the hell is wrong with you? They haven’t done anything!” Ocean seems to come alive. I drag my eyes away from Will long enough to see Ocean forcibly grab the gun away from Maggie.
“What are you doing? Give that back!” Maggie screams at Ocean.
I watch Will gasp in pain. I sob, hoping he will be able to heal from this.
“I’m sorry, Maggie can be heartless sometimes. We just need to take you in. We’ll get you medical attention. I promise.” Ocean sounds sincere to me.
“Charlie…” I need help getting out.
“Let me.” Ocean signals with his gun to get Charlie to move out of the way, but instead he stands in front of my open door.
“This doesn’t have to be any messier than it already is.” Ocean again sounds sincere.
“Charlie, it’s all right.”
Charlie is slow to move and my need to get out of this car gets worse the longer he takes to move.
Once my doorway is clear, Ocean, while keeping his hand with the gun trained on Charlie, uses his free hand to bend the dash forwards. The pressure taken off my legs brings more tears to my eyes. As I try to get out, I stumble to the ground beside Will, who has yet to move.
Charlie rushes towards me, but my eyes are only on Will. So much blood surrounds him now and his eyes have closed as sweat glistens over his forehead. I sit him up to lean against me as fresh tears pour from my eyes. Will is supposed to be bulletproof. This can’t happen. He can’t die.
“Call for help,” Ocean calls to Maggie, but I still don’t look away from Will to see if she does. I hug him tightly and refuse to try and feel for a pulse. If I feel for a pulse and don’t find one, I will lose it. I’m only barely hanging on after Dana, I can’t lose anyone again. He has to be all right, he just has to.
“Hold up, don’t get any closer,” Ocean calls out. I tense when I look up and watch Charlie angrily stomping towards Ocean.
“Charlie, don’t!” I yell, my attention immediately falling back to Will as I feel something press against my arm. I look closer and move my arm away, seeing something metal fall down onto Will’s lap. I hear a soft cling as another piece of metal falls from Will and hits the ground. I grab the one in Will’s lap and stare at it closely. It looks like a small, squashed bullet. Is his body pushing the bullets out? Is that even possible? Is this a good thing? Will still hasn’t opened his eyes.
“I don’t want to shoot you, but I will if I have to,” Ocean warns Charlie, cocking the gun.
“You killed him, you caused us to crash. You want us to believe that we’re the bad guys?” Charlie demands angrily.
“Listen you don’t understand—”
“I understand a fucking lot more than you know,” Charlie screams as he lashes out at Ocean. He first knocks the gun away from him and then pounces. Charlie is able to use Ocean’s injuries to his advantage and kicks hard at the leg that has him limping.
Will begins to stir in my arms, but I don’t have time to see if he’s okay. Maggie has jumped out of her car and is heading fast to the gun that has been tossed aside by the boys. It’s no more than a few feet from me, but with my legs and arms in so much pain I can only crawl slowly to it, and Maggie beats me to it easily. She sneers at me before pointing the gun at Charlie and Ocean who are a blur at the moment as they move quickly while they fight. There is no way she can shoot and know who she is going to hit. She shoots anyway. I try to pounce on her before she fires, yet I’m too late. She has hit someone.
She stumbles to the ground with me. I have no energy to do much else, and her kick to the side of my face sends me crashing into the road and nearly causes me to black out.
Maggie gets to her feet and stands over me. I try to force myself to move away since I know she’ll be aiming the gun at me, or worse, at Charlie.
I’m not sure what happens next. I can’t find the strength to lift my head up. One second Maggie’s shoes are next to my head, the next I see her flying through the air. She hits her car hard and the gun slips from her hand as she passes out.
Charlie helps me up then. I quickly check to see if he’s bleeding. Apart from bruises and Will’s blood on his shirt, he appears to be fine. Will is bent over, breathing deeply next to me, and I guess he must have charged at Maggie. He saved my life. He has also survived four gunshots. What else is this kid capable of?
“You’re okay!” I reach out my arms, ignoring the pain it brings, and pull Will in for a hug. I don’t care that he isn’t a hugging person. I feared he was dead.
“Remind me not to get shot again,” Will groans. I let go and watch as he slides to the ground and holds onto the places where his legs have been shot. He’s pale and sweat is still covering his face.
“You need a hospital.” I look to Charlie who has his eyes on Ocean. When Maggie fired her gun she missed Charlie, hitting Ocean instead.
“Are you sure you’re okay?” I ask Charlie, dragging my eyes away from Ocean and over Charlie’s body again.
“Better than you.” Charlie gently touches my forehead and when he brings his hand back it is covered in blood. I realize that is what has been causing my eyes to feel wet. I must have blood all down my face.
I pull up my sweater to wipe what I can away, wincing when the material scratches my gash.
“You’re sure you’re not hurt?” I ask him, getting another good look at him, reaching out and touching his chest, feeling reassured by the rapid heartbeat I can feel beating frantically under my hand.
“Yes.”
“Will?” I crouch down beside Will, touching my hand to his forehead, feeling the touch burn my skin. He has a fever.
“It hurts,” Will complains, still holding his legs.
“We need to get out of here, quick.” I stand and look at Charlie, knowing Will needs medical help.
Charlie nods and I find myself walking over to Ocean, who is lying limply on the road, his eyes wide with fear as I approach him. He is bleeding heavily from his stomach. I feel a violent flash of nausea take over as I see Dana’s face overlap Ocean’s for a brief second.
“Zoe, come on. We need to get out of here now.” Charlie has grabbed our bags from the car and I notice him dumping them into Ocean and Maggie’s car. While it is heavily damaged, too, it does appear to still be working.
“We can’t leave him.” I feel a wave of something for this man hit me, and I know we have to try to save him. It’s the right thing to do.
“He just tried to kill us,” Charlie angrily gasps. I turn and watch him help Will get up and move him to the passenger side.
“He needs a hospital.” I bend down and look closely at Ocean’s face. I still feel like I can trust him. There must be a reason why, there has to be something in my future that involves him.
“He’ll be fine, someone will find them later.”
“No.” I
look into Charlie’s eyes. I know I’m being stubborn, but I need to trust myself.
“We don’t have time for this; that bitch called for help. Stan will be on his way right now.”
“Then you might as well agree with me and help me get him into the car.”
I grab Ocean’s arm and feel him tense as he groans in pain.
“Zoe, you can’t be serious.” Charlie walks over to me, but doesn’t reach out to help me with Ocean.
“You’re Ocean, right? Think you can walk?” I ask him. He tries to stand up at my question.
“Don’t move!” Charlie is in Ocean’s face in a heartbeat.
“Charlie, no!” I put my arm out and shield Ocean as we move slowly to the car. Ocean is bleeding freely and a couple of times I gag from the sight of it. Once I get him into the backseat, with no help from Charlie, I find a towel that’s on the ground of the backseat and hold it against his stomach. It’s covered in grease marks and I can’t imagine this is very sanitary, but I doubt Ocean will care about that just now.
“Keep the pressure on it.” He doesn’t answer me, just holds the towel there.
“Zoe—”
“Hurry up. She might have told Stan that Rose and Dean are heading to D.C.. They might be in trouble.”
I can tell Charlie is angry, but he doesn’t argue with me further. He quickly gets into the driver’s seat as I sit down in the back with Ocean. No one is in any state to drive except Charlie. It takes three tries to get the car to work and as we reverse, Maggie hits the ground without anything to lean on. She is still out cold. As we drive away I fear that we might be followed by Stan, and that Rose and Dean are in a lot of trouble, having no idea.
How could this all be going so wrong when we haven’t even made it to D.C. yet?
Chapter 30 – The Blackout
The drive is tense, and I’m glad we don’t come across any other cars. The car we’re in looks incredibly suspicious, and we don’t need any calls to the police alerting them to us.
“Why are you helping me?” Ocean whispers to me, although I suspect it’s because he can’t manage to speak properly. He has slowly been losing strength to hold the towel tightly over him, so I have taken over.
“You’re a good person.”
Charlie snorts from the front seat.
“How can you know that?”
“I just do.”
“Zoe…” He closes his eyes for a moment and then they shoot back open. “You’re the psychic.”
“I wouldn’t say that…” I look away from him as I feel another wave of nausea come over me.
“So tell me, do I live?” Ocean smiles at me, but it quickly turns to a wince and then a cough.
“Yes,” I lie. I really have no idea what is going to happen to Ocean. “What kind of name is Ocean?” I ask, hoping to not be asked anymore future questions.
“My name is Henry Ocean.”
“And you’re like us? You have a gift?”
“Yeah, not as handy as the kid, though. I’m strong, but I don’t heal super-fast.” Ocean winces again. His head is dripping sweat now.
“What about Maggie?”
“She can get anyone to speak the truth, it’s impossible to lie to her. I’m sorry she hurt you guys. She’s an actual psycho.”
I try to process Ocean’s words. “I don’t understand. Why weren’t you guys at The Windmill with us?”
“The Windmill? What is that?”
“We were taken from our homes and placed there after we had attempts on our lives,” I explain.
“We heard there was a mole or something and we were in danger, but none of us had any attempts on us. We were just placed at a training place and told we were needed to serve our country. It’s actually pretty cool.”
“How many of you are there?”
“Five like us, including me.”
“There are three more? What can they do?”
“Nothing as cool as seeing the future. Tell me, when does the world end?” Ocean gives me a weak smile, or is that a grimace?
“It doesn’t work like that.”
“So I suppose no winning lottery numbers, either?”
“No.”
“That sucks.” Ocean groans then, and I move the now drenched towel to see he is still freely bleeding. It looks like it might have stopped gushing now, but I don’t know if that is a good thing or not. Is he losing so much blood there isn’t enough to be gushing? Is Ocean going to die?
“We need to hurry, Charlie,” I call out. We’re already pushing the limits of what this car can do.
“That’s a bit hard when I don’t know this area,” he snaps at me, still angry that I brought Ocean along.
“Use that GPS thingy,” I suggest, ignoring his anger.
“They can track us if we use that.”
“Who cares? They can probably track us anyway,” I counter.
Charlie lifts his eyes and glares at Ocean through his mirror, but he moves his hand to the console and turns it on. I quickly lean forward to the front and type in hospital and thank whoever is looking out for us as one pops up that is only a few blocks away. We have now entered the busy streets of Louisville. I hate to know what people are thinking as they see our car.
Our luck holds and no one pulls us over. The car continues to make it until we reach the hospital parking lot. We park it as close to the front doors as we can then Charlie and Will help carry Ocean inside.
Will has slowly gotten the color back in his face and his fever is practically non-existent now. He is limping on both legs, though, and I hate seeing him in pain. I wait outside and look down at my hands. They are covered in blood. My sweater is, too, and I can feel that I have dried blood over my face. I must look a real sight.
Charlie and Will rush out of the door then. I feel myself go on alert when I see the slight panic on their faces. Will runs over to a car and I don’t have to ask what he is doing. It’s time for new wheels, some less conspicuous wheels.
“What happened? Is Ocean okay?”
“I don’t know. They were asking a lot of questions and I think they called the cops.”
“Come on,” Will calls over to us.
We quickly grab our bags from Ocean and Maggie’s car and then run towards Will. Charlie gets back in the driver’s seat and Will sits next to him. I would have liked to have been the one driving, purely for the distraction. I keep my eyes peeled out the window and try to think of anything other than the blood covering me and the image of Dana that keeps wanting to float into my vision.
“That was a huge risk, taking him to the hospital. We need to be more careful than that,” Charlie barks at me from the driver’s seat. He is obviously still angry.
“I know, I’m sorry. He just seemed like a good guy,” I try to explain.
“He tried to kill us!”
“I know. There was something there, though. I felt like he’s important, that he will be important to us later on. Maybe he’ll help us down the track?”
“He’s been brainwashed by Stan, he thinks we’re misguided. He won’t help us,” Charlie snaps at me again.
“Drew said to trust my instincts and I did. They told me to help him, so we have. Just drop it.” My temper grows short with Charlie as the pain in my arms and legs return with a vengeance. The headache threatening to split my head open gets worse, too.
We drive in silence. We know that most likely our entry into D.C. is no longer a secret, except we have no choice other than to go there. Rose and Dean wouldn’t have been delayed as much as we have. They most likely will have already made it into D.C. and could also be in trouble. We have to drive to our prearranged meeting place and hope we get there in time to save them.
I wish I didn’t have such a bad feeling about D.C. I can’t help thinking that something is going to go very wrong there.
***
We arrive at the hotel ten hours and four vomit sessions later from Will. He hadn’t liked being in a car before and now he hates it. The weather ha
sn’t changed much since we got here, but the chill in the air is worse. It’s obvious D.C. has received snow recently. I hope it holds off for us.
We had planned to stay at this hotel and use it as our meeting place for the others. Unfortunately, we can’t see their car anywhere and fear going to reception to ask if they have checked in, just in case it’s a trap. So, we stay parked on the street with a clear exit.
After an hour of waiting, I know I can’t be in my clothes any longer. All of us need to change. Will’s clothes have bullet holes in them, as well as dried blood down his shirt and pants. All his wounds have already begun healing, and at the moment he just looks heavily bruised and swollen with deep red scars. He said it’s still causing him pain, which isn’t normal. Usually he won’t feel pain this long after being hurt. Being shot four times seems to be an exception to his normal.
Charlie and I walk over to the quiet gas station next to the hotel and manage to get into the bathroom without being looked at too closely. Charlie comes into the female bathroom with me, and I’m glad he does. The situation from earlier is pressing down on me and I know panic is bubbling inside me directly beneath the surface.
“How do you think they found us?” I ask him, running my hands under the tap and scrubbing them clean, grateful to finally get the blood off me.
“I don’t know. I suppose they finally figured out what car we drove and got lucky.” He shrugs before carefully lifting his arms over his head, pulling his shirt up and off him. His chest is littered with bruises. While I know a few of them are from training, some are from the crash and some from his fight with Ocean. No wonder he hadn’t wanted to help him.
I move the water to splash over my face and rinse off the blood there. I have to wet a lot of my hair since my blood has spread everywhere. I looked like someone out of a horror movie when I first saw my own reflection. Now, when I look up into the mirror, I see a large bruise and cut over my forehead, and the side of my face is grazed from the kick to the head Maggie had given me.
I glance back over to Charlie, who is just in boxer shorts now, and quickly look away to start the process of taking off my own bloodied clothing. I struggle to get my sweater off. When I do, I drop it into the bin by the doorway. I only have a t-shirt on under it. Already my arms are badly bruised. Examining my neck, I see a bruise the seatbelt made and from the pain I know it moves down my chest. I shiver, realizing how badly hurt I am. I’ve never seen myself so battered. My skin is finally beginning to match how messed up I feel inside.
Taken By Force (Taken Trilogy Book 2) Page 26