Wrong Time

by Mitchel Grace

  “Hey,” Trish said weakly.

  “I’m so glad that you’re okay. I thought I had lost you,” Lee said.

  “Thank you for saving me. Without you, I don’t know how I would have gotten out of there.”

  “No, I should have been watching your back. None of this should have ever happened.”

  “Don’t blame yourself. You did all the right things. Now if you want to talk to someone about the wrong things, then go talk to Zane.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, why do the foot soldiers get body armor and the bomb squad just gets a pea shooter and a good luck wish?” Trish asked with a forced smile.

  “I’ll definitely talk to him about it,” Lee said and smiled.

  “I’m going to try to get some sleep. In case you haven’t noticed, this is really painful,” Trish said.

  “All right, you do that, and Trish, if I didn’t say this after everything that’s happened, I would regret it.”

  “What is it?”

  “I love you, and I’m so glad that you’re okay. I don’t know what I would have done without you.”

  “I love you, too. Do me a favor, and don’t leave me alone. I want you with me,” Trish said.

  Lee refused to leave her side until she was able to be released from the hospital.

  Chapter 27

  A few days earlier . . .

  Markus Boyd found himself wounded and on the run from two intruders. As he limped to the lift, he clutched his leg, which had a fairly large knife sticking out of it. Once he was inside, he thought hard about the two faces he had seen. They were none other than the faces of Nathan Grey and Samantha Fisher.

  “So the reports were true,” he mumbled to himself.

  Earlier in the week, he had gotten reports that Chloe flipped on him. She had given up information on where he might be. That much was clear, but Markus still had a hard time believing it. He had pulled that girl off the street and rescued her from a life that was unacceptable for anyone to live, and this is how she chose to repay him? He was furious and determined to find Chloe. Torture would do no good to get information out of her. Instead, he would make her an offer she couldn’t refuse, and only when she had told him all that he wanted to hear and done everything that he wanted her to do, would he kill her. At least that’s what he thought he would do at that moment. The door to the lift opened on the ground floor, and Markus exited and limped outside to his car. He was losing blood, and he didn’t really feel like he should drive, but it wasn’t as if he could walk four blocks over to the facility, at least not in the shape he was in. He began to drive, and soon he arrived at his destination. He got out of the car and hobbled toward the doorway until someone saw him. His men rushed toward him and carried him inside. The place may have looked like an ordinary business, but it held countless soldiers in disguise. The particular reason that he came here was because of the doctors who they had inside. They wouldn’t ask questions about the wound he sustained. Once he was on the table and the doctors began to work on him, he felt a prick in his arm.

  Ah, an old familiar feeling, Markus thought to himself. Markus wasn’t a drug addict in his own mind, but a man in his position had to have something to sooth his worries, or so he told himself every night. The truth was that Markus couldn’t sleep at night, and without such medications, it was a near impossible task. The only thing he couldn’t stand about injecting himself in order to sleep was the dreams that came with it. He could never figure out if these dreams were actual dreams or thoughts from another time that he didn’t have the courage to face when he was awake. As a cool feeling worked its way up his arm, he felt himself slowly start to drift away. Markus was asleep, but his eyes were clearly flickering back and forth at the moment he fell asleep.

  Markus looked up and saw only a screaming drill sergeant. He just lay on the ground, crying in the dirt and screaming for his mother.

  “Your precious mommy isn’t coming for you. Don’t you know that all you useless kids either have parents who abandoned you because you were so useless, or your parents are dead? Either way, no one’s coming for you now or ever,” the man said.

  Markus couldn’t remember his exact age, but he couldn’t have been more than eight years old. He was part of the beginning of a project that was called the Ripple Effect. The idea behind the project was to take children who had no home and no family and then train them from a very young age to be the perfect soldiers. They broke the minds of the young boys in the camp quickly, but they never anticipated just how broken Markus would be when they got through with him. Today the same project operates as a half educational and half physical camp, but back in the days that Markus was a prisoner there, it operated as an almost exclusive physical military camp that pushed children and teens to their breaking point. Many of the young boys died from exhaustion. Many others simply gave up on living and withered away, but after that first day, Markus made up his mind. His parents hadn’t wanted him, and now this man standing in front of him was going to make his life a living hell, and that was fine for now because someday he would kill everyone responsible for his pain. As the years went on, it became clear that Markus stood far above his peers. He was stronger and far more intelligent. Instead of being scolded, he was now being rewarded as if he were some kind of success story for the evil men who had put him here. He went along with their little gestures, the whole time pretending that he was proud of his accomplishment. The truth was that he was only biding his time and waiting for the perfect opening to take back the life that was his and to take the life of a few choice people. Once he had graduated and was given his first mission, he eagerly accepted. He was to kill a certain target located in Germany. Markus didn’t know what the man had done, and truthfully, he didn’t care because he wasn’t going to go after him anyway. Instead, he waited outside of their camp for his old instructor. He followed him home that night and watched him from a distance. At home, the man appeared to only be a normal person with a wife and two sons. Markus wasn’t just angry. From the years of torment he had received from different instructors like this man, he had grown sick in the mind. He didn’t want to just kill this person, but, instead, he wanted to see how much he could make him suffer first. He made his way up to the house with only his field knife and a rope. Markus burst through the door, and he was immediately met by his old drill sergeant, but Markus was ready for him. In fact, he had been fantasizing about this moment for years. He met the man with a hard right hook to the jaw, knocking him down to the floor. Markus had the strength that would be expected of a professional boxer. They had taught him well at the camp, maybe a little too well. The man’s wife ran to the phone, but Markus ran to her and grabbed her. He placed the blade up to her neck, but then he paused. He had a better idea.

  “You don’t want to do this,” the man said to Markus.

  “Tie the children up,” Markus commanded as he threw the rope to him.

  “What?”

  “You heard me. Do it, or this precious lady you love so much is going to need a new head,” Markus said while sniffing her hair in a sick way.

  “All right, just hold on,” the man said as he took the rope and started to tie his children to their chairs.

  He didn’t want to do as Markus said, but he didn’t feel as if he had a choice.

  “What are you going to do?” the man asked after he was done with his task.

  “They’ll make fine little soldiers, won’t they? They’re both about the same age as I was. Well, I think that one of them may be a bit younger than I was, but it doesn’t matter,” Markus said as he quickly slashed the woman’s throat.

  “Why?” the man cried in a half angry but also very desperate voice.

  “I want you to be traumatized as much as possible before I kill you, and I want you to die knowing that your children were as desperate and shocked by their own circumstance as I was,” Markus said with a sick smile.

  The man came at Markus in a rage, but he was hasty. He had
no weapon, and Markus was half his age and had twice his strength. Markus caught him by the throat with one hand and slammed him against the wall.

  “I’m really going to enjoy this,” Markus said as he plunged the blade deep into the man’s stomach. As Markus released his grip from the man, he slowly slipped to the floor. Then he handed the man a small knife from the kitchen table.

  “I’m going to give you a few tasks and every time you fail to do one of them, one of your children is going to be hurt,” Markus said.

  As the night went on, the screams of a man and his children could be heard outside the small country home. The only sound that could be heard from Markus was laughter. He was the happiest he had been since he was a boy. Markus didn’t hurt the children because the man complied with every single self-mutilating task he gave him until he bled out. As Markus left, he turned to look at the children he was leaving behind. He felt a small twinge of guilt in his heart. Maybe it was that even a monster such as him still feels some level of guilt, or maybe it was because he had felt the same fear and anguish that those two boys were feeling, but either way, as Markus walked out of the house, tears began to stream down his face. His task was done, and regardless of how he had to accomplish it, it somehow gave him peace.

  At first, Markus found work with common criminals. He was given a new identity, and he helped smuggle things in and out of Mexico. It was a lowly job for him, but he changed his appearance, and with his new papers, it was truly a second chance. After working there for a year, something occurred to him. As a child he was powerless, and as an adult, all he was doing was following the orders of others. Markus had a need to feel in control of his life, and he was determined that he would never feel powerless again. He went to Las Vegas to find some of that power for himself. While most crooks make money in Vegas by paying people off to throw games, Markus had a different approach. Paying someone off only cuts into the profits. Threatening to break someone’s face if they didn’t do what you told them to do, and then actually delivering on your threat if they didn’t come through, was a much more profitable and effective means of gaining money and power. Markus’s name was one that spread quickly amongst criminals, although it was never truly his real name. Markus’s real name was Drew Barnes, but that was a name he was ashamed of. Drew was only a weak child, but Markus was a powerful man who was not to be crossed. Markus had all the power and money a person could want in Vegas. Before long, he had so many things going on that he had to hire associates to help him with all of his many endeavors. This still wasn’t enough power for him. In his spare time, Markus studied, getting smarter and smarter daily. He went to school and got degrees to build up his knowledge. Being a powerful Vegas thug was one thing, but he desired the ability to control the strings of the very system. He would control the masses and the very government that had controlled him for so long. As he went through school, his ideas grew to a scale that was nearly unimaginable. He understood how to not only control people, but he also had ideas about how to control small governments and even turn nations against one another. All it took was someone smart enough, committed enough, and just devious enough to do the task. Soon he would begin his exploits. He had the money, and he had the time. Now all he needed were people, and that wasn’t going to be much of a problem. No matter where you go, there’s always someone who craves money, power, or in special cases, just the ability to kill people without limitations.

  Once Markus had established dummy offices around the world, he began his reign of terror. All it took to get things stirred up was a little supposed terrorist attack here or there. You could attack one location and make it look as if someone else was responsible for the action. Then after the fighting between the two countries began, you could sell weapons to both sides and kill targets for a price. It was perfect. He would use their system, a system that had manipulated the people and killed many innocent children, to manipulate them. They would pay him for his services, and he would control who lived and who died from afar. It was an added bonus that he could give people like himself who were alone, sick, and generally lost, a chance to start anew. He could give them a chance to kill the very people who had tortured them so much. Jacob had been one of these people, and Markus was sure that Chloe was, too. She had been abused as a child in ways that made even Markus cringe. He would never say it, but he felt a human connection with her. Here was a woman who had felt the pain he had felt. She was someone who understood how to block out pain and to go to another place in your mind where you can buy some time until you can kill the very people who are hurting you. That much he loved about her. He couldn’t help but think of how it was truly a shame that she would have to die for crossing him. He almost wanted to show the girl mercy when she was found, but to do so would show an extreme weakness that would without a doubt be taken advantage of by someone like Chloe. Markus forced his eyes open. His leg was throbbing, but he turned to his left to speak to the man sitting next to him anyway.

  “You should rest, sir,” the man said.

  “I need you to find the location of Chloe Schneider now,” Markus said.

  Once the man scurried out of the room, Markus began to look for his phone. As he looked to his right, he found that it was lying on the table next to his bed. He turned to grab it, but he was interrupted by a visitor in the room. It was Daniel Gronkowski. Daniel was the man who led the facility here in Paris, and he wanted some answers as to what was going on. Markus set the phone down momentarily.

  “God! What happened to you Markus?” Daniel asked.

  Markus explained the entire situation to him.

  “I need you to do two things for me. First, I need you to schedule a flight out of this place for me, and second, I need you to prepare everyone here to fight. They know they have me on the run, and they’ll strike here soon. That much, I’m sure of,” Markus said.

  Daniel couldn’t help but be shocked by what he was hearing. Markus Boyd was running away from a battle. This was the man he had come to think of and fear as an almost indestructible being, and he was just going to run away like a coward. After noticing the look he was receiving from Daniel, Markus spoke.

  “I have to go see to some details. There’s a certain young woman who needs to die elsewhere. I’m only leaving because I have all the confidence in the world that you’ll take care of the problem here.”

  Daniel was relieved that Markus hadn’t gone soft. It was actually almost amazing to see how quickly he was thrusting himself back into his job right after taking a knife to the leg.

  “Thank you, sir. I won’t let you down,” Daniel said.

  “I wasn’t saying that as a complement. I have faith that you’ll get everything done because you don’t want me to have to come back here and deal with you,” Markus said while shooting Daniel a hard look.

  What is wrong with this idiot? Why is he looking for approval from me, Markus wondered.

  “I understand, sir,” Daniel said and made his exit.

  Markus turned back to his phone and made a call.

  “Yeah, some things have gone wrong in France, and I need you to do something for me.”

  Markus then proceeded to tell the person on the other end of the line to have explosives planted in a choice few locations.

  “If and when you get word that the facility here in France has been attacked, then I want you to send word to detonate all of them,” Markus said.

  As he hung up the phone, he couldn’t help but smile. If they wanted a war back in Washington, that’s exactly what they were going to get. Soon, not only would they know he meant business, but they would also be dead. It was only a matter of time really.

  * * * * *

  A few days later, Markus was sitting in the one place that no one would expect him to be. It was a place that was in plain view. Oftentimes, when people are looking the hardest for you, they forget to look in their own backyard. He was in Las Vegas. This was the place where it all started for him. From time to time, he liked to come back he
re and remember his humble beginnings. As he was sitting there that evening, he received a phone call.

  “They have attacked in Paris,” a man on the other end of the phone said.

  “You know what to do now. Show them that every time they touch us, innocent people will die,” Markus said.

  “All right, I’m on it.”

  “Wait one moment, though. Do we have any updates on the location of Chloe Schneider?”

  “Not yet, but I’m sure we’ll have something for you soon.”

  “You better have something soon,” Markus said and hung up the phone.

  He flipped the television to the news and waited in excited anticipation for the fireworks to start. When the time came and the first reports started coming in, Markus couldn’t help but feel an enormous amount of pride swell up in him. Any amount of hurt or pain that someone could ever dish out, he could return tenfold. He waited for a time and enjoyed the panic on the screen. Finally, when he had grown tired of the chaos, he picked up the phone and made a call. He was going to call the man who likely led the attack in Paris now that John was dead. He was going to call Zane in order to tell him exactly who he was dealing with. You see, some men like to strike their enemy by surprise, but not Markus. He preferred to tell his enemy exactly what he was going to do and then do exactly that. There was just something that was absolutely thrilling to him about watching another person who was powerless to escape their fate, even when they knew it was coming.

  “Hello,” Zane said on the other end of the phone.

  Markus smiled and then began to speak.

  Chapter 28

  One month later, Nathan and everyone else had relocated to Miami. Zane felt that with what had happened to Campbell, everyone should be moved to a new location and that it should all be done off the books. Everyone agreed, and honestly, Miami wasn’t a hard location to sell to anyone. Everyone, except Lee and Trish, had been trying to uncover and chase down leads as to where Markus could be, but so far, they had found nothing. Things were unusually quiet for the last month. Things were almost too quiet, but it’s not like anyone was complaining. The extra time had given Trish plenty of time to recover. She came out of her situation in great shape, but there had been some complications. The location where she was shot had caused more damage than the doctors initially thought it would. Although she was perfectly healthy now, she had lost the ability to ever have children. She never wanted children, or really even thought about it, but now that it wasn’t even an option, she felt somehow lost. Lee didn’t care if she could have children or not. He only cared about her, and you would have thought that the experience back in Paris would have only brought them closer together, but the truth was that ever since Trish got the news that she would never have a child, it was like a wedge had been driven between them. Nathan and Sam, on the other hand, had grown closer than ever. The long lull between any real work had left them plenty of time to almost live like normal people would. Sam was really starting to warm up to the idea of running away with Nathan when this was all over, especially if life could be like it had been every day for the last month. Michael and Jess still weren’t together romantically, but they had certainly grown closer. Jess found that she could lean on him more than ever. In fact, she had actually begun to trust him. Surprisingly, he was starting to be a model for stability. Burt and Jason had their own place, and despite Burt’s rough appearance, he was certainly enjoying the trips to the beach throughout their stay. Zane and Dan both had places of their own. Zane set it up so that all three of the couples could stay with each other. Sam was with Nathan, Trish was with Lee, and Michael was with Jess. While Michael and Jess weren’t actually a couple, Zane figured that they were close enough to one to let them stay together. Burt received a medal for his supposed heroism back in Paris, but much to his dismay, the medal was taken away right after he received it. The operation that was carried out was a secret, after all. Life here was actually pretty ordinary. Something about that was both comforting, and at the same time, maddening to Zane. He couldn’t help but feel as if everything was about to come crumbling down around them at any moment.