William felt a strong hand grab the back of his shirt, and the agent from the back seat yanked him, trying to force him into the back seat. “Stay with me, son! When I give the count of two, we run—”
The back door was thrown open, and Rudd was there, pistol raised. Over his shoulder, William could see Lily’s face. Her worried expression turned to one of anger, seeing the agent with his arm protectively around William.
No, Lily. No.
The girl blinked, her furious expression immediately fading.
“Don’t move, asshole,” Rudd said.
“He didn’t hurt me,” William said. “Listen—”
“Get down on the floor and cover your head. Now!” Rudd ordered. “William, let’s go!”
The agent’s grip loosened and let go, his hands up in the air.
Everything spinning now, William felt like he could throw up. He stumbled from the car into the opened door of the SUV, where Lily was reaching for him.
He slid inside, clutching his head.
“William, are you OK?”
He tried to focus his eyes, seeing Quincy’s face come into view.
“Go!” Rudd yelled, jumping into the front seat. The driver, a black man in a Memphis Grizzlies hat and sunglasses, began to back out of the ramp.
William looked to Lily. “You got out.”
“Barely,” Quincy said. “One minute later and we would have been burnt toast.”
William saw Rudd turn angrily to the windshield. “Don’t speed, for God’s sake. Make it seem like we’re out for a leisurely drive. We were pretty far down that ramp, maybe nobody saw what happened back there. That agent stayed on the floor. If we’re lucky, he didn’t see the license plate…”
Rudd rubbed his eyes. William could see the sleeve of his shirt was singed.
“Do we need to get you to a doctor—?”
“What we need to do is get you out of here,” Rudd snapped.
“How…” William began. “How did you even know where I was?”
“We didn’t,” Quincy said, motioning to Lily. “Looks like you have your own personal tracking device—”
“Can you all just be quiet?” Rudd said. “Please.”
William felt the girl slide up against him. He lifted his arm and she leaned against his chest.
“I’m a monster,” she whispered.
She looked up at him, the proximity to her bringing forth a sensation, almost a jolt, that threatened to take his breath away.
“I’m a monster in the mountain,” she said.
She then snuggled up closer to him and closed her eyes.
He stared at her in stunned realization, almost reaching down to place his finger under her chin, lifting so she would have to look up.
He was wrong to think that Lily looked familiar when he found her inside his trailer. Nothing about her—the tightly-pulled hair, cheeks still round with baby fat, the dimpled chin—was recognizable.
But he knew her.
In his nightmares, a pair of eyes watched each disaster, including the dying people at the hospital. Doctors rushing, gurneys wheeling, sunken skin and faces ultimately covered by white sheets, all observed from another who was somehow inside the stone formations in the distance.
Each time, he went from witnessing the horrors himself at the hospital to being trapped within that stone. There, in the dark, with something slithering across his skin, his only companion was that singular pair of eyes.
I’m a monster in the mountain.
Eyes belonging to the girl beside him.
* * *
The helicopter’s blades tossed the flags of the federal building, the last light of day falling across the building’s hundreds of windows. Without an official helipad, the helicopter had to circle the building to position itself to land in a small grassy courtyard.
Circle for hours if you want, Kate thought. Circle for days.
She needed more time to think, to attempt to process what she’d read. The few hours hadn’t been enough.
A lifetime might not be enough.
You were wrong. You have been wrong the entire time.
She felt like an elephant had settled onto her chest. She’d made many difficult decisions in the past fourteen years, from calling for a congressional investigation into a prominent member of her own party using taxpayer dollars to take luxurious trips overseas under the guise of business development, to approving a budget that increased welfare benefits and military appropriations but sank the country further into debt.
Centrist Democrats is what we are, her father often said. And we vote with our mind, but lead with our guts.
But no decision, no maneuver, no judgment came anywhere close to the agony of declaring herself a nominee for father’s vacant seat without discussing it with him, knowing she could no longer associate with her own family.
Yes, she was infuriated by what she’d read in the government investigation into Argentum. But what very few knew is that she privately went to the town herself, to question the staff at the hospital. Hearing denial after denial, a sliver of doubt wormed its way into her heart, which had always aggressively protected her family. And when her own mother—her rock, her guiding star, her dependable foundation—refused to even discuss what happened with her own family, citing her desire to protect them all, that sliver began to expand.
Her father’s abrupt decision to step away from the Senate had been the final straw. She’d lashed out at him, saying he was officially destroying what was left of the family’s good name. Her father, always strong to the point of being defiant, seemed different now. Older. Weary. He’d listened to her furious words saying he was being caught up in a ridiculous conspiracy. He’d simply said, “I believe your mother,” and was committing all his time to her work. She’d left the office that day vowing to not speak to him for an entire day until she cooled off.
Instead, she’d gone directly to meet with trusted strategists. A day turned into weeks and months. There was the campaign, and then the election, and then assembling her staff. Her work was all-consuming. Her dedication to her constituents and her country earned her a reputation as a tireless public servant. The corridors of power had slowly opened up to her, extending the type of access most politicians dream of: to the oval office and a second-term president.
It only cost her a family.
When her father died, she’d realized their fight over his decision to leave politics was the last time they’d ever spoken.
After reading the files on her mother and nephew on the flight from DC, she kept thinking about her father’s face that day of their final conversation. She couldn’t pinpoint then if he was just exhausted from having to make such a monumental decision. But she recalled thinking she’d never seen him look that way.
Having now examined the records from the SSA, she understood. She’d never seen her father look that frightened before.
How much her mother had revealed to her father about what happened in Argentum, Kate didn’t know. But if her mother had told him half of what was contained within the files, then she understood why he was so afraid.
Kate wished she could have seen the videos referenced in the pages herself, of the interrogation of her mother when she was a little girl, and of William at seven years old. All she had was the transcript, but what both of them described, especially William, of why they were returned, and what frightening abilities rested within them, made her physically ill.
She also desperately wanted to know why a large portion of the file on her mother was missing. Stolen, the SSA director had said. An internal problem that we’re still looking into.
But she had seen the videos of the little girl and what she’d done in those moments in the field and at the airport before those fanatics took them all.
“It’s happening again, Senator,” the SSA’s director had said, leaning on his desk. “All you have to see for proof is on any news network’s website.”
He’d then turned around his laptop t
o reveal CNN’s front page, showing the next burgeoning hurricane on the coast of New Orleans.
“Take your pick. Hurricanes on the coasts of twelve countries now. Wildfires too. Uprising in violence and hospitals suddenly overrun with people dying rapidly of diseases. Over and over. But faster and more powerful than before. And when you look at this,” he said, calling up the surveillance video from the airport, “you understand why.”
She’d told him she needed time to examine the records. He’d allowed her to take copies of them home, and arranged for them to have a conference call at seven. By midafternoon, the news about the disaster in Memphis and William’s appearance broke, and she’d called, demanding to speak with him. Director Wolve was already dispatched to Memphis, she was told. But he had staff coming to her at that very moment.
When the men in suits arrived, they had with them a signed order from the FBI. Having read and reread the files repeatedly at that point, she’d co-signed the document, and accepted the agency’s offer to fly her to Memphis.
As the helicopter finally began to descend, Kate took a long, deep breath. She had always been decisive, able to take command and feel confident about her decisions, even if they were painful to make. Now, she hated the waffling within her, born from the reality that she was going ever deeper, entwining with an enemy she had fought against her entire political career.
As soon as the whirling began to diminish, the doors opened and the suits were waiting. A tall man with short gray hair followed her as she brushed past them, his long legs allowing him to keep up with her brisk pace.
“Where exactly did it happen?” she demanded.
“On the east side, on a service ramp, I’m told. Luckily no one heard or saw it.”
“No one heard a car crash and an agent get shot outside a federal building?”
“I asked the same question. It’s Sunday. If anyone is in downtown Memphis on the weekend, it’s on Beale Street. There’s also the distraction of a motel on fire at this moment.”
“Director Wolve, I cannot imagine how this could have been handled worse,” she said, walking into the building, the door held open for her by the accompanying agents. “And all I want to know is the location of my nephew.”
“Agent Hallow knows to give us a full briefing.”
“And my mother? Is she safe?”
“She’s been brought in. On her way to Washington now. She was not pleased. And as you anticipated, she was not alone. The woman…”
“Roxy Garth.”
“She had to be taken in as well. She threatened to put it all on social media.”
“And she would have. As I stated before: They are to both be treated with extreme care. Anything they need, they get. They’ll be furious that they are under constant watch, but as soon as I’ve addressed the mess you’ve made here, and made sure my nephew is safe, I’ll go to them.”
“That is the deal, Senator.”
“This way, ma’am,” one of the agents said, directing her to the elevator.
“And trust me on this,” Kate held up her finger as she stepped in. “My family will not stand for this. My sister is a well-connected journalist. My brother-in-law is a hell of a lawyer. We’re in for a battle on this one once they figure out my mother has been taken in. And just exactly how am I to explain this to them? That my nearly eighty-year-old mother is a potential deadly threat to all those around her?”
“You know what you’ve seen, Senator. We just have to determine why she hasn’t been activated like the others.”
The doors opened, and the agents led them down another empty hallway. At the end, they reached another office, where a man with an earpiece stood.
“Director, Mr. Hallow would like to see you for a moment—”
“He can see us both,” Kate said, striding over to the only other door in the room. “I assume he’s in there?”
“Ma’am—”
She opened the door to what had clearly become a war room in the last six hours. Along with multiple white Styrofoam coffee cups, laptops beside large monitors littered the room. Agents clustered around the screens.
In the midst of the chaos, Flynn Hallow rose, brushing his thin strands of hair across his forehead.
“Director Wolve,” he said. He looked over to Kate. “Senator.”
“Bring us up to speed, Agent Hallow. Everyone, continue your work, I want those people found,” the director said.
As the conversations continued at a much more subdued tone, Flynn walked through, brandishing an iPad.
Before he could begin to speak, Kate stepped forward. “Begin with where you think my nephew is at this very moment.”
“We believe with the same fanatics that took him in Little Rock.”
“How can that be, when you obviously blew up an entire hotel room to stop them?”
“Let me be clear that we are investigating at this very moment what caused the explosion, that it could very well have been these true believers—”
“Don’t bullshit me,” she said. “Spin it any way you want it to cover yourself, but don’t attempt it on me. While I wholeheartedly disagree with your methods, including the danger you put many innocent Tennesseans in, I have read the files. I understand that you believe this girl, even my nephew, pose some sort of danger—”
“Not some sort,” Flynn said.
“Agent Hallow, please explain to the senator what happened here,” Mark said.
“The car driving your nephew crashed and he is now missing. Three of our best agents were in that car.”
“How in the world did that happen?” Kate asked.
Flynn swiped the screen of his iPad, and turned it around. “The girl happened,” he said.
Kate covered her mouth at the sight of the photograph of two agents slumped over in the front seat of the smashed vehicle, their skin splotchy, their hair having fallen out in massive clumps.
“One of our agents survived, though. And verified what this video shows. There was a camera posted on the parking garage ramp.”
He swiped again, and surveillance video appeared on the screen. It showed the agents’ car suddenly speeding up and crashing into the side entrance. A white SUV pulled up alongside, and a man jumped out.
Kate held her breath as the man pulled her obviously disoriented nephew from the car and led him into the SUV. For a brief moment, a little girl could be seen reaching for William as the door shut behind him.
“An APB has been put out for that SUV,” Mark said.
“Only on private channels to law enforcement,” Flynn added. “We suspect they’ve already changed out the license plate, even though the agent who survived was unable to see it. But we’re monitoring cameras throughout the city, and social media. We are holding off putting it out to the media until we develop a next course of action.”
Kate frowned. “I want to make one thing very, very clear. I want my nephew found, but I will not have innocent people in my state—or any other state, for matter—put in danger. Blow up another building in Tennessee, and I’ll shut down your entire operation.”
Flynn’s face flushed. “You can’t—”
“I can and I will. I did what you asked in signing that order with the FBI. But I’m now going to be included in all your briefings. Is that understood?”
“Senator, we need time—”
“You have two hours to come up with a course of action to find him. We’ll meet again at nine o’clock. I’m issuing a statement that I am closely monitoring the investigation by the FBI. I won’t hover, but I won’t be far either. Find my nephew, gentlemen. Bring him in safely.”
“Ma’am, please realize there is much more to discuss,” Flynn said. “All this needs to get to the top levels—”
“When my nephew is unharmed and safe and I know exactly where he is, we can discuss more. He needs to be your top priority. Am I clear?”
Kate did not wait for their response before walking away and reaching for her phone, glad that her back was to them so
they could not see how badly her hands were shaking.
EIGHT
William felt hands on his shoulders, shaking him, Quincy’s voice repeatedly asking what was wrong. When he opened his eyes to the familiar feeling of his throat scratchy from crying out, he could see the driver of the van had pulled over to the side of the road and was looking at him in astonishment beneath the brim of his hat.
Rudd turned around in his seat, wearing an annoyed expression. “Again with the screams?”
A soft hand rested on William’s own. Lily looked up at him, sitting so close that her eyes were only inches away from his.
In his nightmare, he saw those eyes trapped in stone.
“Seriously, are you OK?” Quincy asked from where he sat forward in the back seat. “You sounded like someone set you on fire. What the hell were you dreaming about?”
“It’s OK,” William said. “Just a nightmare.”
“Well, get yourself together. We’re almost there.” Rudd motioned for the driver to keep on.
Lily removed her hand. William wiped his eyes and leaned in towards her. “Lily … you have to talk to me.”
As she had done in each of the several attempts he’d made in their overnight travel south, she once again turned away but scooted up next to him. She’d proven that she physically couldn’t get close enough to him, like a nervous child to a parent, but refused to communicate.
I’m a monster in the mountain, she’d said.
Lily’s eyes in stone. Eyes in the mountain? People dying in a hospital nearby. People dying as Lily watched.
Once they got wherever they were going, he would find a way to get her alone. She had to explain what she meant by those words. Why she had made the national parks investigator bring her to Little Rock. How she had tracked him from the motel to the federal building.
And, more important than anything else: How she wielded the power to kill.
“We’re here,” Rudd said.
The expansive oaks claustrophobically close to the windows were another reminder that their final destination was Florida. If the windows hadn’t been locked, he could have reached out to touch the Spanish moss hanging in the branches.
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