“Reagan,” she repeats softly.
They’re gone. They’re gone. They’re gone.
She waits another beat for me to move on my own. She looks into my eyes, presses her thin lips together, then grabs me gently by the wrist and pulls me toward the weapons room. The tug on my arm forces one foot to step in front of the other, and I let her guide me up the stairs.
I begin to feel little things. Her thin fingers around my wrist and the stairs beneath my feet. My boots echo. I concentrate on the sound of my steps and the breath in my chest to drown out the screaming in my head. I focus on moving forward so I won’t crumble into a ball on the floor. I just move where she pulls me.
Sam guides me into the garage and through the glass-shattered kitchen. The crack and pop sounds under my feet hurt my spine. I want to throw my hands over my ears and rock back and forth on the floor. Luke steps on a large chunk of glass behind me. It shatters into pieces, forcing my body to flinch. Sam feels my body tighten; her hand slides down my wrist and laces my fingers with hers. She squeezes my hand firmly. I squeeze back and the nostalgia of that feeling crushes me.
When I was eleven, Mom grabbed my hand in a grocery store parking lot and squeezed it three times, which meant I love you. We had our own secret language with hand squeezes but this time, I didn’t squeeze back. I was embarrassed. I tried to pull my hand away, but she held on to me. She squeezed my hand three times again. A boy from my class walked out of the automatic sliding glass doors with his mom and I ripped my hand away. She looked down at me, hurt and confusion in her green eyes. The boy said hello to me as we passed and then she understood. I wasn’t a little girl anymore. I didn’t need, nor did I want, to hold her hand. I remember that moment so clearly. The way she looked down at the ground and laced her hands together, filling the empty space where my palm used to be. She never tried to hold my hand again. Never. Not in public. Not even at home. But I’d do just about anything to hold her hand now.
“Why don’t you sit down,” Sam says, pulling me over to the deep gray linen couch in the den. I obey and take a seat. I stare at the dark grooves and slashes in the hand-scraped hardwood floor, still unable to speak, as Luke sits down next to me.
“What is going on, Sam?” Luke asks, his worried eyes still on me. He’s met Aunt Sam a half dozen times at my house or at a backyard barbecue. He was told she was Mom’s college roommate and best friend.
“Luke, I think it’s best if you leave right now,” Sam says.
“No way, I’m not leaving her until someone tells me what’s going on,” Luke replies, his voice frantic. He gently places a hand on the small of my back. “We need to call the cops, the FBI, something.”
“She’s not asking you to leave. She’s telling you to leave,” the Black Angel watcher says.
“Who are you, anyways?” Luke asks.
“I’m Cooper,” he answers, arms folded across his muscular chest, gun in his hand. “Look, everything is fine. We don’t need cops. We just need you to go.”
“Everything is not fine,” Luke says, raising his voice and motioning down the hall. “There are bullet holes the size of bazookas in the office, there is shattered glass all over the kitchen, and the MacMillans are clearly gone. Things couldn’t be further from fine.”
“Luke, it’s complicated and now a matter of national security. I think it’s best if—” Sam begins but I cut her off.
“He needs to stay,” I say. The words feel thick and heavy as they fall off my tongue. “They saw him with me at the school. He’s in danger now too.”
Sam looks over at Cooper. He nods. She lets out a long breath. “Fine, he can stay for now. Until we assess the situation and confirm he’s safe. Luke, I know your background. You want to be a cadet, right?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Luke says, nodding.
“Well, your first code of silence starts this second,” Sam replies, her voice stern and serious.
“Okay. But what … how … who are you guys?” Luke stammers. He blinks wildly and shakes his head. His eyes search my face, my body, and linger on my right hand. I look down to see my pistol in my grip, my finger still wrapped around the trigger. I didn’t even realize I was still holding my gun.
The door to my secret life is swinging open. Part of me wants to run through it, embrace it, and be happy that Luke finally knows. The other part wants to slam the door shut, walk away, and pretend this never happened.
I tell my mouth to open and say something, but I’m still paralyzed. The only movements I seem to be able to master are blinking and breathing, and even those require some serious effort.
I feel Sam’s eyes on me. She’s waiting for me to speak. To answer Luke’s questions. But I can’t. So she begins.
Sam tells Luke about the Black Angels. That I’ve been training my entire life to be one of them. She tells him the basics about my parents and the double lives and the cover stories and the missions. But I’m only half listening. I fade in and out of the conversation as I stare at the corner of the ceiling. I let my body, my mind float there. Hide there. I hear Luke ask more questions. I hear bits and pieces of the answers. Danger. Protection. Secrecy. Code. I hear Luke ask how many people know about the Black Angels. My family. My mind comes back to my body, my eyes focus, and I speak.
“No one,” I say, my voice fighting to lift out of its fog. “No one in my life knows who I really am. If anyone knew, it would put my life at risk. Their lives at risk.”
“So the van, the guy at school…” Luke says, starting to put the pieces together.
“They were coming for me,” I answer and finally look up into his eyes.
“The last mission went badly,” Sam continues to fill him in. “Really bad. Revenge was promised and we think it was their mission to kidnap Reagan today.”
“I think they’ve been watching us for a while,” I say and stare at the ground.
“It looks like they’ve been monitoring you guys for the last month,” Cooper trumpets from the other side of the room. “Since your parents locked up Torres’s brother. How did you know that?”
“I saw the man who tried to take the girl at school last week dressed as a janitor and watching me. I tried to run after him but he disappeared. I saw the gray van near our street a couple times, but I told myself it was nothing. I thought I was just being paranoid.”
“Your first rule as a trainee is to trust your instincts,” Sam says, her voice growing tight. “Why didn’t you say anything?”
“I thought my mind was just playing tricks on me again,” I answer and shake my head. “You know it’s happened before. I’ve been wrong before.”
“You should have told your parents,” Cooper replies.
“I know I should have,” I say, my voice hard and defensive. I swallow the lump that is rising in my throat. “Because maybe if I did, I wouldn’t have had to hear my mother scream my name as they threw a brick through the back door and dragged her away.”
“Jesus Christ,” Luke replies softly. He shakes his head slowly. “Mac, I’m so sorry.”
“Don’t call me that. You don’t even know my name,” I snap. The moment the words escape my lips I regret them. Luke’s face tightens from the sting. I love it when he calls me Mac. But now, it just feels like a lie.
Luke’s Adam’s apple bobs as he swallows hard at something in his throat. He nods. “Okay. I won’t. What’s your real name?”
“Reagan Elizabeth Hillis,” I say. It sounds so foreign to me, like I’m talking about somebody else, a childhood friend or distant relative, someone only in my memory.
“Okay, Reagan Elizabeth Hillis,” Luke repeats the name. It sounds warmer in his voice than my own. Luke turns to Sam. “So what’s next?”
“Intel analysts at headquarters have been tracking them,” Sam says, holding up her phone. “They are trigger happy right now, waiting for us to pounce on them, so we’re going to hang back. Let them think they’ve evaded us so that when we do make contact they’re caught off guard. We think
they’re heading to a private airport somewhere in southern Ohio or Kentucky. We’ve got crews already on their way. And headquarters has already intercepted a message from Torres with his demands.”
“What are they?” I ask. The numbness is starting to wear off. I can feel my heart beating like a hummingbird in my chest again and the feeling in my arms and legs is starting to come back.
Sam looks at me and shakes her head.
“You don’t need to know the details, Reagan,” she says and looks away, hoping I won’t ask any more questions. She continues talking to Luke. “We’re assembling a team to intercept them at the airport and we’re hoping that we—”
“Why won’t you tell me?” I interrupt her. Sam pretends like she hasn’t heard me and continues talking to Luke, refusing to look at me.
“—have enough information to find them,” Sam continues, her voice steady. “We believe Torres is moving them—”
“Tell me!” I raise my voice, my tone startling Sam.
Sam finally looks back at me. She tightens the grasp of her gun. She looks down at the ground and then up at me.
“Please,” I beg. “No more secrets. I need to know.”
“Torres wants you, okay?” Sam says, throwing her hands up in the air with equal parts fear and frustration. “That’s why they tried to grab you at school. The plan was to take you back to your house and kill you in front of your parents, but they grabbed the wrong girl and now everything has changed.”
“Why do they want me?” I ask, but as soon as the question rolls off my heavy tongue, the pieces of Torres’s psychotic puzzle snap horrifically into place. “Because of what happened to Torres’s son?”
Sam and Cooper stare blankly at me, afraid to confirm my suspicion.
“An eye for an eye, right?” I say, my voice shrinking into a whisper.
“Much worse. He’d probably beat you. Torture you for days. Kill you and then kill your parents too,” Sam explains, the words getting tangled in her throat. “I’ve been intercepting and analyzing data from this guy since I was at the National Security Agency. Over the last seventeen years, he’s been responsible for over two hundred and fifty deaths. Pulled the trigger or twisted the knife in half of those. He is a merciless, psychotic serial killer and whether it was our guns or not, his son is dead and he won’t stop until somebody pays.”
My lungs stop working midway through my last breath. Luke’s hand reaches out for me, his fingertips lingering on my forearm. As he presses down, I can feel that my clothing is damp with sweat.
“We should have made you guys leave after the mission,” Cooper says and shakes his head. “But we thought we had a few days to track Torres and his team. See if you guys were in real danger.”
My mouth whispers, “This is my fault.”
“No. Don’t say that,” Sam says, shaking her head. Luke tightens his grip around my arm.
“No, it’s my fault. I didn’t tell them about the janitor and the van. And we got into the biggest fight this weekend, Sam,” I say, my hands balled into stinging fists. “I made Mom feel guilty about all the times they took me away. I clouded her judgment. This is my fault.”
“Stop it, Reagan,” Sam demands and crosses the room. She puts her hand on both shoulders. “Listen to me. We need to get you guys to the safe house immediately. You need to pull yourself together and grab everyone’s go-bags. You probably won’t be coming back here again.”
I stare at the ground, clenching my fists so hard my nails are one tight squeeze away from drawing blood. I knew it was coming. But I certainly didn’t think I’d be forced to slip away from New Albany, my house, my life, like this.
“Okay,” I say with a nod. I clear away the fog and will my body to move. It obeys. I rise and take the first step toward bringing my parents home.
NINETEEN
Bang. Bang. Bang. Hammering echoes through-out the house. Sam and Cooper are cleaning up the glass in the kitchen and nailing a board they found in the garage against the shattered patio door.
“They’re just behind this wall,” I say to Luke as I slide my hand along the smooth surface of the bookshelf in the bonus room. There’s the spot. I push and the bookshelf swings open to reveal our small emergency closet.
“Whoa,” Luke says as we step inside. The closet is wrapped in steel and weapons line nearly every square inch of its walls.
“This is in case we can’t make it to the basement,” I answer, still moderately numb and focused. I spot our three black go-bags in the corner and begin to haul them out of the closet.
“What’s in them?” Luke asks, helping me with the last one.
“Things we can’t live without,” I answer, laying my go-bag down on the ground. I unzip it and begin picking out different items. “My doll, Mimi. I used to drag her around everywhere with me when I was a kid. Letters and cards from my parents. Photographs. Jewelry. Stuff like that. We have to leave so fast most of the time, we don’t really get to pack. We have just enough time to grab our go-bags and get the hell out of here. We leave everything else behind.”
“How many times have you had to do this?” Luke asks, his hands reaching out to touch the fabric of Mimi’s fading yellow flowered dress.
“Too many,” I answer and move to zip up the bag, forcing Luke to pull his hand away from Mimi. He looks up at me and I finally meet his gaze. His eyes are wide, wild with confusion, but the corners of his mouth turn down.
“I just … I can’t believe you’ve had to live like this,” Luke says, shaking his head, scared and sorry for me.
I shrug, my eyes cast down as I finish zipping the bag. “I don’t know any different. This was the life I was born into.”
Flashes of the fight play back, jumpy and distorted, like a 1920s movie reel. Her tear-stung eyes. My fuming words. I shake my head, rattling my brain, trying to clear away the memory and say, “I got in an enormous fight with them about it this weekend. I told them that I couldn’t do this anymore. That I didn’t want to be a Black Angel. I said some terrible—”
“Reagan,” Sam’s voice interrupts from the doorway. “You’ve got five minutes to get the rest of your stuff together. Luke, can you come help me with something?”
“Sure,” Luke says, then glances back at me to make sure I’m okay. I give a small nod, a silent promise that I won’t fall apart in the next five minutes.
I grab the go-bags and run down the hall to my room. My body is still wet with sweat and freezing. I tear off my sweater and pull on a clean, warm sweatshirt. I close my dresser drawer with so much force, my mirror shakes. Jewelry and an envelope slide off the top of my messy dresser and onto the floor.
I lean down and pick up the envelope. My name is written in blue ink in my mother’s beautiful cursive handwriting. Mom is old-fashioned like that. While the rest of the world prints or emails or sends texts or Facebook messages, Mom insists on writing in the cursive she learned in third grade at her all-girls Catholic school. She says she’s afraid Sister Roberta will hunt her down and throw erasers at her head if she starts printing.
Is this letter old or new? Mom sometimes writes me notes about missing me when she’s out on a mission. I find them on my bed or on my dresser when she gets home. I flip the envelope and see the back is still sealed. New. I rip it open and unfold the single sheet of paper inside. Today’s date is written in the top left-hand corner. I sink onto the ground, my back leaning against my dresser, and begin to read.
Reagan,
I meant what I said the other night. I’m sorry that I haven’t always been the mother you wanted me to be. I have dreamt of having a daughter just like you since I was little. When I found out I was pregnant, it was one of the best days of my entire life. You moved around all the time. Kicking me, punching me right in the ribs. Everyone was convinced you were a little boy, even your dad. But I knew you were my Reagan. I knew you were a little fighter. I could feel your strength every day and, watching you grow up, I see it in your actions. Not just your physical strengt
h, but the way you fight for people and help them. The way you stand up for what you believe in, no matter what anybody else may think. You are the strongest woman I’ve ever met.
You were right. This life is a selfish one and I haven’t always put your needs first. Maybe I should have chosen when you were just a hope and a prayer in my heart. I didn’t anticipate how being a mother and a Black Angel would affect you and for that I’m so sorry. But just know if I had to go back and choose, every single time, I would choose you.
I want you to live your life for you. So if being a Black Angel is not what you want, then please, find your dream. If your dream is to be a doctor, then go be the best doctor in the world. If your dream is to get married and have children, go be the best wife and mother in the world. I have no doubt that you will be.
I’m sorry that your life has never been normal and we’ve put you in so much danger. I wish I could go back in time and redo my life so that you never had to feel scared. Not for a single second.
Always know how much I love you and how proud I am of the young woman you are. The world is expecting some big things from you, Reagan Elizabeth Hillis.
Love you always,
Mom
A tear runs down my cheek and splatters on her signature, making the ink expand. I quickly wipe it away so the ink won’t run and ruin the letter but it’s too late. The word Mom smears across the page, leaving a trail of hazy blue rivers.
My eyes stare blankly at random words in the letter. Life. Danger. Love. Mom. The adrenaline that’s been pumping through my body for the last hour begins to fade and the guilty knot in the pit of my stomach pulses. The guilt and pain and fear I’ve been trying to ignore radiates through my body and every muscle, every bone begins to splinter.
“Reagan?” Luke says from the door. I open my eyes and look up at him, my knees still to my chest, the letter still in my hand. When he sees my red eyes, his face drops. “What is it?”
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