Loving Wilder

by Leigh Tudor

  The man stared at his hand as if stunned, and then the veins in his neck began to pulse as pure rage bloomed on his face.

  He growled, grasping onto the wood handle of the tool. He pulled it out, causing a spurt of blood to splatter onto the floor.

  Sensing the momentary distraction, Nate stood and swiveled fast to kick him in the stomach, causing the man to briefly lose his footing.

  “Run, Cara!” he yelled.

  She hesitated, while madness erupted on the man’s face. Flinging the chisel to the floor, he grabbed Nate by the collar of his shirt, and slammed him onto the stairs. Big, meaty hands, one dripping with blood, reached out and began to squeeze his neck.

  Cara gazed at the top of the staircase. Escape would be an easy effort as the man’s attention was fully centered on crushing Nate’s throat with his bare hands.

  She stared down toward the floor of the basement, where something caught her eye. Grasping the handrail, she propelled her body through the opening between the staircase, landing on the floor.

  Latching onto the can, she turned toward the man who was laughing maniacally as Nate’s face turn a mottled red. His small arms working in vain to dislodge hands the size of baseball mitts.

  Without thinking, Cara snatched the chisel that had been thrown thoughtlessly to the floor and with all the strength she could muster, she stabbed him in the nape. Howling in pain and disbelief, he released Nate and redirected his raw rage to her.

  But this was a contingency she was prepared for.

  Lifting the can of hornet spray toward his face, she pressed down while closing her eyes and turning her head to the side.

  She didn’t release the nozzle, not even after hearing him scream and flail about, unsure if the spray was even aimed at his eyes. He crashed through the handrail of the staircase, falling to his knees in sheer agony. She peeked from the corner of her eye and caught him with his palms pressed against his eye sockets.

  She finally let up on the nozzle after seeing the man was incapacitated and ran to the staircase, grabbing Nate by the arm as he continued to gasp for air.

  Pulling him up the rickety steps and through the doorway at the top of the stairs, she slammed it shut and turned the deadbolt lock.

  Nate fell against the door, and they listened to the wailing sounds of agony emanating from the other side.

  Cara gave him a moment to catch his breath, his hands on his knees and buckled over as if having an asthmatic fit.

  “We need to keep moving,” she said, and looked around. “Oh crap, where to?”

  Nate simply pointed toward a turn in the hallway to the left.

  It had been a while since she had navigated these corridors. And when she had, she’d never been as avidly curious as her sisters.

  “Can you lead the way?” she asked, rubbing his back and making a silent promise to be more engaged and aware of her surroundings in the future.

  If she had one.

  He nodded.

  Chapter Sixteen

  “I don’t deserve a Songwriters Hall of Fame Award. But fifteen years ago, I had a brain operation and I didn’t deserve that, either. So I’ll keep it.”

  — Quincy Jones

  “Why isn’t she responding?” Trevor asked, with the binoculars pressed against his face. He had sent Mercy a half a dozen texts with no sign or word from her since she’d gone in an hour ago.

  “I dunno, maybe because you’ve been a monumental dick?” Alec responded.

  Trevor lowered the binoculars and turned a narrowed eye toward his partner. “What would you do if Loren lied to you, putting Ally in danger?”

  “That’s kind of a narrow way of looking at what happened, don’t you think?”

  “There’s no other way of looking at it, Alec. We had a discussion about telling one another the truth under any and all circumstances. Not a week later, she flat-out lies to me and takes Nate to a sketchy as fuck party, and then to an even sketchier as fuck street across from a house that should be condemned, or at the very least broken into by a SWAT team, where my foster son gets attacked and taken away by a wife-beater, a homicidal maniac, and a criminally insane neuroscientist with a god complex. Yet I’m the monumental dick?”

  “Everything’s so black and white with you.”

  “That’s what keeps people safe. Knowing the difference between right and wrong, good and bad. And acting accordingly.”

  “You’re so full of shit. Haven’t you ever been forced into an impossible situation?”

  “Of course, but I’ve always done the right thing.”

  “Jesus, sanctimonious much?” Alec smirked. “Again, if Mercy hadn’t driven Nate to the party and followed Landon and Cara to Raley, those motherfuckers would still have taken Cara and we wouldn’t even know about it. But somehow, in your monumental dickdom, you choose to see this as a failing of Mercy. Whereas I see it as what makes her so incredibly brave and fucking honorable. Because she’s willing to take a risk to help people. She’s willing to listen to a ten-year-old kid and trust him enough to help him help somebody else. But you’re so bent on being holier than thou and narrow-minded that you can’t even see what a fucking amazing woman you’re about to lose—because you’re a. Monumental. Dick.”

  “Nate’s twelve,” Trevor corrected, rubbing his forehead and then his mouth.

  Maybe he was being a dick.

  And then he heard Alec’s phone chirp.

  Alec looked at his screen and grinned. “She gave me a thumbs-up. She’s okay.”

  Trevor breathed in with relief.

  But he couldn’t help but notice Mercy had sent the message to Alec, not to him. And that stung.

  Maybe it was because he was being a monumental dick?

  Alec typed something back.

  Mercy responded, and it was everything Trevor could do to keep himself from jumping on Alec’s back and wrestling him to the ground to confiscate his phone.

  Instead, he remained still in all his sanctimonious dickery while Alec conversed with the woman he loved beyond all reason.

  No, not beyond all reason. The woman he loved for very sound reasons.

  Alec’s phone pinged again, and he looked down at his screen. “She says she has a loose end to tie up, and then she’ll get back with us.”

  Shit.

  “She’s going rogue,” Trevor said, his heart beating wildly in his chest.

  “She sure is,” Alec replied. “The good news is that’s when she does her best work. The bad news is that’s when we typically suffer the consequences.”

  Mercy watched Dr. Vile move about the room as if he owned the world.

  Her entire body seized with an intense feeling of indescribable indignation. This evil, heinous man who’d assumed the right to plow into her brain, slice through her reproductive organs, and ransack her innocence was walking around with moral indifference as if he were fully justified and wholly entitled.

  She wondered if this was how Loren had felt when the final straw of Jasper Bancroft’s despicable nature had broken through her tender grasp on reality. When she’d no longer been able to contain and rationalize the inner demons that plagued her all because of Bancroft’s belief that he had every right to determine the dire futures of children, including hers.

  Watching the doctor move about the room, readying for his next patient, was almost comical. He had no idea the level of retribution that stood just around the corner.

  She rammed her palms into her eye sockets, attempting to search for some level of humanity within herself to stem the almost giddy feeling of being in a position of seeing this man come to justice.

  On her watch.

  On her terms.

  And then his phone rang.

  He picked up the call, and at that moment, she decided that this conversation would be the determining factor for the level of benevolence she would bestow upon him.

  “Dr. Vielle here. Yes, I just spoke with Mr. Vieja. He stepped away for a moment. I would highly recommend that, at the
very least, we prepare baseline functional MRIs prior to leaving the Center. Of course, my preference would be to perform the surgeries here, despite the power restrictions. Yes, I think we could find a temporary workaround.”

  He continued listening to the person on the other line as Mercy’s blood coursed through her veins, counting the number of items in the surgical room that could be retrofitted into potential weapons. To her delight, there was a veritable cornucopia of options.

  “No, I have not performed surgery on the male patient, but I have on the female patient. Yes, she was given lesions that allowed for her prodigious musical gifts, which earned Dr. Halstead a respectable net profit.”

  Mercy rubbed her eyes with her forefinger and thumb, laughing at how he was determining his fate.

  “The male patient?” he asked, unaware of who was eavesdropping and the dire consequences of his response. “I have some experimental surgical theories that could prove promising and foresee potential neuro-economic advantages given a few tweaks to the parietal lobe.”

  Mercy pulled out her phone, wondering for a moment if she should make an impromptu call to Loren for some sort of benevolent guidance. Thinking better of it, she grinned and slowly slipped her phone back into her pocket, choosing to make her own decision based on her level of humanity toward a man she considered nothing less than a soulless monster.

  With that, she didn’t bother removing the smug look on her face and strolled into the room, arms crossed. She leaned against the wall and faced the man who, moments ago, chose an irrevocable path.

  “Hey there Dr. Vile. How’s it hangin’?”

  Mercy laughed as Dr. Vile stopped almost in slow motion as she summoned his attention, standing just inside the room, leaning against the door without a care in the world.

  With the exception of eradicating him from it.

  Making some apologetic excuses to the person on the line, he ended the call and frantically began poking his meaty fingers on his phone screen and grimacing when he reached voicemail telling him to leave a message. He gave a weak response, demanding the individual come to the surgical room immediately.

  Mercy smiled at the wishful thinking. He’d be dead by the time help arrived.

  He set his phone inside his lab coat pocket. “Miss Mercy, what brings you to our Center?”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” she said, meandering into the room and standing on the opposite side of the gurney. “What brings you here? Reproductive organ annihilation? Frontal lobe evisceration?”

  His beady eyes darted from side to side. “My aim is only to enhance, not to debilitate,” he responded with beads of sweat dotting his forehead.

  She chuckled at the gross misrepresentation of this man’s surgical goals. “You are such… a lying… bastard.”

  “I think you should know I have a team protecting me from any insurgent activities.”

  She waved him off. “Oh, I’m not at all insurgent. I think what you’re doing here is truly commendable. I mean, I am such a better person for having had my brain carved into and my babymakers tampered with. So I’m just here to personally thank you for everything you’ve done in my best interest. You. Evil. Motherfucking. Monster.”

  His eyes darted side to side as he took several steps away from the gurney, more accurately sensing Mercy’s level of vengeance.

  Which couldn’t have brought her more satisfaction.

  “And there you’ve gone and made me curse,” she said, throwing her hands to the side. “I had been doing so well, but the minute I stepped foot back into this cursed compound I lost my morals, and… my self-restraint.”

  Noticing a stack of boxes sitting next to the door. She squatted next to them, reading the name ‘Mara’ written on the side of several, and the names ‘Charlotte’ and ‘Ava’ written on other boxes in Sharpie as well.

  She opened one of the boxes with ‘Mara’ written on the side and pulled out a file. “I’m surprised these weren’t taken by the Feds when they swept the place.”

  She looked up as if demanding a response. He cleared his throat and said, “I had them stored in an off-site warehouse.”

  “Why not store all this digitally? Easier than lugging around boxes.”

  He didn’t respond as she pulled out a rather graphic set of photos of her receiving surgery for the first time. She looked so young and scared out of her mind. The picture managed to capture the indifference of the medical staff as they had their backs turned to her while she cried with thin, outstretched arms.

  In another photo, she was sedated while the evil doctor himself stood behind her. A paper drape allowed the person chronicling the event to capture him performing surgery without her morbidly exposed brain putting a gruesome damper on the picture.

  And then she came across one taken from the other side of the paper drape that made her want to heave.

  Or, to sever body parts.

  “You get off on these pictures, Vile?” she asked, dropping the photos on the floor and standing to face him. “You got a fetish for pictures of helpless little girls getting involuntary surgical procedures by you?” She took a step toward him, the gurney separating them. “Does it make you feel like a big man to sift through photos of me and my sisters with our arms and legs restrained while you cut into our skulls?”

  “Don’t be absurd,” he replied with a wobble in his voice. “Those photos are for the sake of posterity. Veritable medical miracles were achieved in this very room. And if you had any regard for the surgical skills required for these hands to be able to provide you and your younger sibling such remarkable gifts, you would be thanking me rather than castigating my efforts.”

  Mercy nodded while squinting her eyes. “I believe you’re right. I think I’ve failed to appreciate your lofty efforts.” She plucked at the tubing running down the IV pole standing next to her and then lifted one of the more ominous looking surgical tools from the tray. “But I can’t help but wonder if you would feel the same way if it were you on the receiving end.” Her eyes widened as she feigned an epiphany. “Oh, I know—why don’t we find out?”

  “She’s still not responding. We should go in,” Trevor said, lowering the binoculars as he blinked and shook his head back and forth. “Or maybe storm the place, just start blowing shit up.”

  “Hold on there, cowboy.” Alec extended his arm to hold him back and act as the rational part of the dynamic duo. “How about we first see if she was able to unlock the main entrance doors?”

  They shimmied down the hillside, and then jogged toward the front of the building to the double doors at the side entrance of the facility. Trevor provided cover while Alec pushed and pulled at the main entrance with no luck.

  Alec returned to the side of the building and grunted in frustration. “Why do I think she didn’t unlock the doors on purpose?”

  Trevor gave him an ‘are you kidding me’ look. “Can we shoot our way in?” Trevor asked, desperate to get inside.

  “It’s a bullet and blast-proof door, so no.” Alec looked around and then turned to Trevor. “You want to try the drawer?”

  Trevor stared at him in disbelief. “I’m not small enough to cram myself through that tiny hole.”

  “Okay, well, that’s our only option getting in.” Alec set down his weapon and pulled a small crowbar from his side toolkit. With a couple of forceful tugs, the drawer pulled open.

  Trevor grimaced. “I’m never getting my body through that. I’m too big.”

  “Never say never, little man,” Alec replied with a grin.

  “I’m six feet and one hundred and eighty-five pounds,” he ground out.

  “Yeah, a little man.” Alec agreed offhandedly.

  “Just because I don’t have the body mass of an adult-sized Wookiee doesn’t make me a little man.”

  “You were a total nerd in high school, weren’t you? Only a nerd would use the formal term for a humanoid alien from the Star Wars universe in every day conversation.” Using the butt of his rifle, he banged the false
metal sides.

  “There, I’ve given your extensive girth an additional six inches.”

  “Jesus, just step aside.”

  Trevor entered the contraption headfirst, wrenching and contorting his body into the small opening. Surprisingly, he was able to pull his torso through, followed by his lower body.

  “See there,” Alec said, grinning from the other side of the glass. “Little man.”

  “Fuck you. I’m malleable,” Trevor argued.

  “Okay, yeah, whatever. Open the front door.”

  Less than a minute later, Trevor unlocked the front entrance doors and opened them.

  “Start looking for the kids,” Trevor instructed as Alec pushed his way in.

  “On it. Go get your girl before she rains hellfire onto this entire compound. She’s to the left in the surgical section of the building.”

  Trevor nodded, aware the whole ‘raining hellfire’ thing a distinct possibility and then hesitated, “How did you know that? Did she text you where she was?”

  Alec lifted his phone. “Find My Friends,” he replied with smirk. “Not my first rodeo with Mercy ‘Subterfuge’ Ingalls. I might’ve messed with her phone while she wasn’t looking on the way here.”

  “Impressive,” Trevor admitted, waiting while Alec pushed through the partially opened doorway made by someone with a much smaller frame. Trevor gave Alec a chin lift, indicating he was going toward the surgical area and for him to follow the corridor that led deeper into the compound.

  Then he heard an unearthly scream and began running that direction.

  He reached a set of double doors that took a moment to open and pushed his way in, causing an alarm to reverberate throughout the compound. Racing toward the wailing sound that turned muffled, he came to a stop in front of what looked to be a surgical room and slowly entered with his weapon at the ready.