by Julia Derek
I hurried back to where Nadja and Ian were, placing the glass against Nadja’s lips. She drank greedily, all the sugar water gone in only seconds.
“More, please,” she mumbled. “But just water.”
I walked back to the faucet that was still running, filled it up again and returned to her. She drank this glass more slowly.
“Who did this to you?” Ian asked as she kept taking swallows of the water.
“That Massachusetts governor…” she murmured.
“Damon Chatterly?” Ian asked.
Nadja nodded, already looking better. “Yes. He came into my office last evening and told me he was having a cocktail party and that lots of the guests were looking to sign up for a health club membership. I’d make thousands in commission.”
“So you went with him?” I urged her on. “Weren’t you supposed to meet up with Burt?”
“Yes, but the governor was so insistent that I come right away, so I didn’t have a chance to tell Burt. And then Richard came into the office, telling me I needed to do as Chatterly wanted.” She paused to catch her breath, then, “The club needs more membership sales.”
“Who’s Richard?” Ian asked.
“Our general manager,” I clarified.
“He’s definitely in on it too then,” Ian said to me. He looked at Nadja, who was looking significantly better, color having returned to her cheeks. “So you felt pressured and left without notifying Burt about the change in plans?”
“Yes,” she replied. “I thought I could text him in the cab over to Chatterly’s house. And I tried, but Chatterly kept asking me questions and I didn’t want to be rude, so I kept putting it off.”
“Then what happened?” I asked.
“We arrived at the governor’s house and went inside.” She looked around the living room, her face tense with worry. Her skin was streaked with mascara, and it struck me that it must be the result of her having cried. “We need to get going. They’re supposed to come back here any time now, and then it’s over.”
“They?” Ian said. “Please explain quickly and then we’ll leave. We need to know what to expect.”
“The governor and that senator from North Carolina and their man. Burt will be back too.” Sadness mixed with terror flashed across her face. “To finish what they want him to do.”
“Burt was here?” I asked. “What did he do?”
“Please, let’s leave,” she implored, grabbing both my and Ian’s hands. “I’ll tell you everything as soon as we’re out of here. I don’t want them to come back. I’ll be dead if they do.”
Chapter 5
Nadja didn’t have to stress another time how important it was for us to leave the apartment right away. We helped her to her feet, each of us sticking an arm under her armpits and flanking her from either side. Her royal blue silk blouse was sweaty and had what looked like blood splatter on it in some places, and her black dress pants were wrinkled. Her legs were shaky and unstable, which, in addition to her low blood sugar, suggested that she must have been confined in the wheelchair for many hours, so it was difficult for her to walk at first. It got better as we kept walking, though. Soon, the three of us had left the old brownstone and were hurrying down the street, me holding Nadja’s purse that had been in the room with her, containing insulin injections. Right before we left, she told me to go pick it up.
“Where are we?” Nadja asked us, just barely avoiding stepping into a pothole in the sidewalk with her high-heeled black pumps.
“Northern Spanish Harlem,” I replied. “We need to find a cab to take us out of this area.”
Even with our guns on us, it wasn’t safe for us to be in this neighborhood, especially not at this late hour. There were too many shady characters hanging on the street corners, eyeballing us suspiciously, and we had enough problems on our hands; the last thing we needed was stumbling into gang territory. Unfortunately, the cab drivers of New York must feel the same way because there were no cabs in sight, we discovered after some time. No wonder the one that had gotten us here in the first place had seemed so uneasy about driving here, and then sped away.
“There should be a subway stop on the next block,” Ian said after having consulted his mini-tablet. “Let’s just take that.”
Ian leading the way, we headed in that direction and soon spotted a station for the green line. We descended the stairs and waited for a train to arrive at the platform. The other people already there seemed caught up in their own worlds, completely ignoring us.
It didn’t take long for a train to roar up beside us and we got into one of the last cars that contained few riders. The end of it was empty barring a homeless man who slept there, his body stretched out over three seats. As we got closer and the rancid smell of him intensified, it became abundantly clear why no one was in that part of the car. In addition to stinking like an overflowing garbage can, he snored like a bear. We still took a seat at the other side of him to be as far away from the other subway riders as possible.
“Okay, tell us what happened now,” Ian said to Nadja. “Everything after you got to the governor’s place.”
She took a deep breath, then, “I didn’t really get in there. As soon as the governor and I entered the hallway, someone grabbed me from behind and placed something wet and cold against my nose and mouth. That was the last I remember before everything went black.”
“So they drugged you then,” Ian said, summarizing.
“Yes. And when I woke up, I was sitting tied up in that chair in that room where you found me. At first, my vision was foggy, but I saw there were people in the room. That bitchy senator from North Carolina, Janine something, was there.” Nadja turned to me. “Do you know who I mean? I saw you train her once. Before that she trained with Ariel.”
I nodded. “Yep. I know exactly who you mean. Who else was there?”
“The governor and a couple of other men, both black. As my vision improved, I saw that one of the black guys was Burt! I thought I was mistaken, but I wasn’t. I was so confused and scared. Terrified. Why was I sitting there all tied up and why was Burt of all people there? He and I are dating—well, we just started a couple of months ago and it only recently got more serious, but still. Why would he want to hurt me in any way?” Her hazel eyes widened like she truly couldn’t understand this. “I was obviously there in that capacity because why else had I been drugged and brought to this room, tied up in a chair? I tried to open my mouth to ask him, but I couldn’t because something was taped over my lips, so I couldn’t move them. I was able to take tiny breaths through the tape, though. There must have been a bunch of holes in it.”
“Do you have any idea what time that was?” I asked. “When you woke up, I mean.”
Nadja pressed her lips together until they became a thin line, looking pensive, then shook her head. “No, I don’t. It could have been an hour after I was drugged, it could have been ten. I couldn’t see outside because of the boarded up windows in that room.”
“Hmm,” I said, thinking. “Well, if they brought you directly to that room, you can’t have been in there for that long. Max twenty hours. Less, probably.”
“I’m thinking it must have been pretty early in the day,” Nadja said. “It feels like an entire day passed after they left. But I can’t tell for sure. Maybe it was later. I was so freaked out I just cried and cried and began to lose track of time.” She brought her fist to her lips and bit it, staring at her feet. “I don’t know what was worse—the sudden gunfire or what they wanted Burt to do to me.”
“The sudden gunfire?” I asked. “Who was shooting? Did someone get hurt?” I pictured all the blood in the living room and in the room then, and saw it on Nadja’s own blouse as I lowered my gaze.
“Someone from outside,” Nadja explained. “Someone fired what sounded like a machine gun through the wall. Burt and the governor got hurt, and that’s why they had to leave before finishing. But they said they were coming back.”
I froze. “Is Burt seriously hurt? He’s not
… dead, is he?”
“No, he was only hit in the arm,” Nadja said. “The governor was worse off. The senator and that other black man had to help him out of the room. They were taking them to get patched up before returning.”
“What exactly was it they were supposed to finish, Nadja?” I asked. She gazed off into the distance, looking like she was in pain. I suddenly dreaded her answer.
“They wanted Burt to shoot me dead with a gun,” she said, her voice small.
Ian and I both stared at her. “What? Why?” I blurted, cutting Ian short; he’d opened his mouth to say something.
“To prove his loyalty to them and the cause,” she explained, looking at us again. “Those were the words they used when they initially ordered him to kill me.”
Ian’s and my gaze locked momentarily over Nadja’s head. The picture was becoming clearer now.
“Please tell us what happened in there word for word,” Ian said. “What did they say to each other when you were coming to? Were they talking?”
“Yes, but I’m not sure what they were discussing,” Nadja said. “Something about meeting up with others later. They noticed that I was awake pretty quickly. Governor Chatterly did.”
“Okay,” Ian said. “What happened then?”
“He notified the others that I was awake and said that they should do what they’d come for, so they could get out of there. The other man handed Burt a gun. ‘Go ahead and shoot her,’ the senator said. ‘When she’s dead, we can be sure that you’re loyal to us and the cause.’”
Nadja buried her face in her palms then, inhaling and exhaling deeply. Instinctively, I put a hand on her shoulder, stroking it. It could not have been easy having to listen to those words. She soon lowered her hands, though, and straightened.
“How did Burt seem?” I asked. As hard it must have been to hear someone ordering your death, I couldn’t imagine Burt being happy about having to complete such a task, either. Not the Burt I knew at least. Then again, I never did speak to him much as I went back UC the second time. Maybe he had changed.
She stared with empty eyes at the bum splayed on the seats before her. His loud snoring had calmed down significantly.
“Tense,” she said after some time. “That’s the only word I can think of to describe how he looked. I can’t tell what he was thinking because he wasn’t meeting my eyes. I kept trying to make him look me in the eyes to see what he must be thinking. Maybe to understand what was happening, how I’d ended up in this situation. Why they wanted him to kill me so badly. But he refused to look me in the eye as he took the gun from that other black man.”
She took a deep breath, her chest expanding and shrinking back again. “It was only as he raised his hand and pointed that gun to my face that he finally met my gaze. It was as though he was trying to tell me something with the way he was looking at me. Something like, ‘don’t be scared, Nadja. Everything will be okay.’”
The way Burt had looked at me in the apartment he shared with Jonah flashed through my mind. He had been trying to tell me something with his eyes, too.
“But he didn’t end up shooting you,” Ian stated matter-of-factly.
“No, because that’s when someone fired a burst of bullets into the room. Burt was hit and the governor so badly he collapsed on the floor. For a few seconds, I was sure that I, too, had been shot, but then I understood that I hadn’t. That sudden burst of gunfire was what saved me instead.”
“Was it a drive-by shooting of some kind?” I asked. My mind’s eye pictured the neighborhood we had just left. The shady characters hanging at the street corners. I wasn’t as familiar with New York as I was with Los Angeles, but it had sure looked like it could be a place where gangs fought it out.
“Yes, I think so,” Nadja said. “After the gunfire ended, everyone in the room was confused. Running around, checking who’d been hit and who hadn’t. Apparently, both the governor and Burt were hurt enough for them to decide that they needed to take them to be patched up by their doctors—‘their doctors’ was how that bitch senator put it, like they had their own doctors or something.”
Again, Ian’s and my gaze met. Nadja was too caught up in telling her story to notice.
“Janine rolled me into a corner,” she continued, “saying that I wasn’t going anywhere. They could return after Burt and the governor had gotten medical attention so he could finish the job. Then she and the other man helped the governor to his feet. After that they all just left.”
“Well, that explains all the blood stains in the apartment,” Ian said to me.
“Yeah, it sure does,” I said to him, then faced Nadja. “So, to conclude, Burt’s execution of you was interrupted by this drive-by shooting. I think it’s safe to say that it was some kind of gang settlement.” I glanced at Ian and he nodded.
“Yes, I can’t see what else it could have been,” he agreed.
“You told me you were undercover at the club,” Nadja said, looking at me. “What are you investigating? These people? The governor and the senator? They’re involved in something majorly crooked, that’s for sure.”
“Um, kind of,” I replied, not sure how to answer her question. Part of me wanted to tell her the truth—that I’d come to investigate my husband’s murder and that I’d done so without the permission of my superiors. But another part wanted to tell her what that had led to—the discovery of a secret, worldwide conspiracy that was in the process of changing the world as we knew it by filling it up with super humans and getting rid of the others. The ones who weren’t deemed good enough to be allowed to live. But first the “sub-standard” people would be used as slaves or for experiments. How did you tell someone something like that? I knew myself just how hard it was to buy a truth as extreme as that. You just didn’t. At least not until the evidence was so ample that you simply couldn’t ignore it any longer.
“Kind of?” Nadja asked. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“I think we need to get off here,” Ian said then, rescuing me from having to explain myself further right then. He got to his feet and motioned for us to do the same. The train slowed as it entered a station in midtown and then came to a full stop. I got to my feet and so did Nadja. Ian grabbed hold of both of us, ushering us toward one of the train’s exits. Soon, the three of us were walking on the platform, mingling with the other subway riders who had just left the train, surprisingly many considering that it was ten o’clock a weekday night.
“Where are we going?” Nadja wanted to know.
“For now, let’s just go to a diner or something where we can continue our conversation,” Ian said. He smiled at Nadja. “You must be starving.”
Nadja returned his smile. “Actually, I’m not, but I’d better eat something anyway.”
We left the subway station and came up on Lexington Avenue and forty-second street, which told me we were close to Grand Central Station. Ian spotted a cheap-looking diner at the other side of the street, so we walked over there and entered. The hostess showed us to a booth where we slid in, grabbing the menus the girl placed in front of each of us before she left the table. A busboy instantly showed up and filled our glasses with ice water.
Ian placed two cell phones on the table, regarding them.
“That must be Burt’s phone,” I said, pointing at the iPhone with the blood flecks on it.
“Yes,” Ian replied. “After hearing what Nadja here just told us, I’m really wondering how that phone ended up under the living room couch.”
Nadja stared at Burt’s phone as if hypnotized. “That’s where you found his phone?”
“Yes,” Ian replied, glancing at Nadja. “If it hadn’t been for that phone being in that apartment, we would never have found you. We were trying to find Burt by locating his cell phone.” He explained how he had software installed in his tablet that allowed him to track the location of cell phones.
“Wow,” Nadja said, looking up at him, impressed. “Thank God you were looking for him. If not, I would s
urely have died. If not by them, then from my insulin dropping. So thank you. I don’t think I ever did thank either of you for saving me.” She glanced at me and Ian with reverent eyes.
“You’re welcome,” Ian said. “We were just doing our job. Unfortunately, your life is still in danger. You now know too much and as soon as they see that you’ve escaped, they’ll be coming after you. Not Burt, but someone else. And they’ll kill you immediately.”
Nadja’s slanted eyes widened with fear this time and she swallowed. “Really?”
“Yes,” Ian confirmed. A male waiter appeared at our table then, asking us if we were ready to order.
Ian glanced at me and Nadja. “Are you?” he asked. “I know what I want.”
“Me too,” I said, looking at Nadja, who told us to go ahead and order and then she’d be ready. I ordered a tuna melt and coffee and Ian got a chicken sandwich and a Coke. Nadja settled for a Diet Sprite and a pasta dish.
As soon as the waiter had left, Nadja turned to Ian. “What do you mean by me knowing too much? All I know is that they’re crazy crooks. Can you please explain?”
I glanced at Ian, not envying the position he was in. But I’d rather he explain the disaster that was facing us than me.
“You were correct in assuming that Senator Easton and Governor Chatterly are involved in something really crooked,” he said. “Though the word ‘crooked’ is not anywhere near an accurate description of what they’re involved in. Not even ‘majorly crooked,’ like you put it. What they’re involved in is much, much worse than something that could ever be deemed majorly crooked. They’re part of a conspiracy on a worldwide level.”
Nadja seemed to take what Ian was saying pretty well because she just nodded and told him to continue.
“To put it simply,” Ian said, “a select part of governments across the world is working with The Adler Group in an attempt to change the world according to their worldview. They’re trying to create a master race in labs and have been doing so for years. Lots of their products are out there already. Human hybrids. Super humans, whatever you like to call them. Some of them are trainers at Nikkei. I’m thinking Burt and Jonah are both hybrid humans.”