by Payne, T. L.
“How did you know Kim Yang?”
“I didn’t. Not really. I only met her the day of the EMP,” Will said.
“EMP?”
“The electromagnetic pulse that fried our electric grid and took out all the electronics.”
“What leads you to believe that was the result of an electromagnetic pulse?” she said in a way that had him questioning himself. All he knew was what Betley had told him. He’d known very little about them before meeting him. “Agent Betley told me.”
“How long have you known him?”
“The same amount of time I knew Kim. We met the day that whatever happened, happened,” Will said, doubt firmly setting in.
“And you met Kim Yang where exactly?” Stephens asked.
“At the convenience store near downtown. She plowed her car into a line of vehicles fueling at the pumps.”
“What do you do for a living, Mr. Fontenot?”
Her calling him by his last name made him even more nervous for some reason. No one ever called him that. Mr. Fontenot had been his grandfather. “I am…” He corrected himself. “Was an instrumentation technician with Preston Chemical in Pasadena. I turned valves.”
Will watched her write it down. She looked up, her head tilted to one side, her gaze lasering in on him.
“And you were conveniently there at the same time as a Chinese spy who had information about plots to destroy refineries, including the one where you work as an instrumentation engineer.
“No… I mean, yes. I’d never met her before. I was there with my son. We were evacuating the storm like two hundred thousand other people.” He acting overly defensive, he knew, but she was accusing him of treason or something.
“You have inside knowledge of how your refinery operates.”
“Not really. I’m a technician. I know the area I am responsible for monitoring. Mostly, I handle shutdowns.” His tongue felt thick. Will ran a hand across his Adam’s apple.
“You were working with Kim Yang to sabotage the refinery in advance of an invasion. Isn’t that the truth?”
Will shot to his feet, causing his chair to bang against the wall. The door popped open, and two soldiers stepped in.
Stephens raised her hand, and they stopped. “Mr. Fontenot was just stretching his legs.” She smiled. “Take a seat, Will.”
“I was not working with Kim Yang or anyone else. I had my kid with me. We almost died. Multiple times. I would never—”
She stopped him. Her tone softened. The corners of her mouth curled up.
“Just take a seat, Will, and tell me everything that’s happened from the time you met Kim Yang until you met the soldiers on the bridge.”
He lowered his voice. “I had nothing to do with whatever Kim did.”
“What do you think she did?” Stephens asked.
Wordlessly, Will waved his hand.
“The EMP?” she asked.
“Yeah, and whatever else they have planned.”
“They who?”
“I don’t know. All I know is I tried to help some people and me and my boy almost died because of it.”
Will’s legs were shaking under the table, causing their knees to knock together. He pushed his chair back and placed his hands in his lap.
“Tell me again how you were introduced to Kim Yang,” Stephens said.
They were going around and around covering the same ground. She was now wasting his time. Anger simmered just below the surface. Will’s shoulders and wrists were burning from being cuffed behind his back, but all Will could think about was Cayden and Isabella. He had to get to them—somehow—they had to escape this place.
“I told you. She plowed her car into a bunch of vehicles waiting to fuel up at the gas station. I told Betley all this. Why are you questioning me about it? Betley knows everything.”
“I need to hear it from you,” she said calmly.
Will exhaled hard and started at the beginning. “A car jumped the curb and plowed into vehicles at the fueling island. I pulled Isabella from her burning car. I was giving her first aid when Kim Yang, the Asian lady, approached us.” He took her through the entire story as best he recalled it. By the time he’d finished, he was worn out by having to relive it all. It sounded crazy, even to him.
Stephens picked up her pen and drew a circle around his name. “You're asking me to believe that you just happened to be in an accident with a Chinese spy and show up with her at the safe house of an FBI agent.
“She took us there.”
“Why?” Stephens asked.
“The hurricane. She said he had a safe place to ride out the storm.”
“So she lied to get you and your son to go along with her? Why? Why would she want you to tag along to meet up with her contact from the FBI?”
Will tried to recall her exact words. Was there something he’d missed at the time? Something that would have indicated what she was dragging them into. If there was, he hadn’t caught it.
“I don’t know. I… I think she really did want to save us. It was a good location—she didn’t lie about that. She gave her life to protect my son. I don’t know what else she was, but I know that in the end, she sacrificed herself for him.
“That makes no sense. You can see that, right? Why would she sacrifice herself for a kid she didn’t know?”
Will stared her down. “Maybe because some part of her was a human being, and maybe she felt guilty for dragging him into this mess. I don’t know why. I just know that she did.”
“What did she tell you about what was on the thumb drive?”
“Nothing. I didn’t even know there was a thumb drive until Betley told me. I knew that there was something important in her duffle by the way she clung onto it, but I swear, I had no idea what was in it until after I met Betley.”
Stephens leaned forward. “You never met Agent James Betley before that day in the storage locker?”
“No.”
“Yet he involved you in a mission to retrieve something he believed contained classified information?”
“We were trapped because of the storm, and outnumbered. We had no idea how many gunmen were in the building.”
“You had your son with you, yet you left him to engage with the men with guns?”
Is she implying I’m an unfit parent?
“I did what I had to do to protect my son. It wasn’t like I could call the police.”
Someone knocked on the door and Stephens excused herself. A moment later, two guards came and escorted Will out. He was led through a maze of hallways before the soldiers stopped at a closed door and knocked. “Where’s my son? Can we leave now?”
“Not yet,” one of the soldiers said as he opened the door.
Fourteen
Will
Day Six
Will sat in the dimly lit and sparsely furnished office for over an hour without hearing a sound other than the noise of military vehicles outside. The small south-facing window was closed tight and the sun shining through heated the room to unbearable temperatures. His clothes were soaked, and sweat dripped from his brow. If someone didn’t come for him soon, he could die of heatstroke.
He tried the door handle for the hundredth time and yelled as loud as he could. There was no response. Were they planning on leaving him in here to die? Wasn’t there some rule or law about cruel and unusual treatment? He still had constitutional rights, didn’t he? Or did he? What happened to the rule of law when there wasn’t anyone around to enforce it? A knot formed in his throat. He was screwed. Stephens could keep him there indefinitely and what recourse would he have? It wasn’t like he could call a lawyer or alert the media to his mistreatment.
While attempting to count the military personnel and vehicles that he could see from his window, he spotted a crowd of eight or ten civilians forming outside the gate. They were likely desperate and had come seeking assistance from the government. The fact that they weren’t let in concerned Will. That meant that the military had no intentions o
f helping—not in that way.
Keys jingled outside the door, and Will spun around. The same soldier from earlier appeared and motioned for him to turn around.
“What’s going on?” Will asked.
“Just turn around, sir. I need to cuff you. Lieutenant Sharp has asked to see you,” the soldier said.
“But why the cuffs? I’m not a danger to anyone.”
“It’s protocol, sir.”
Protocol?
Will suspected nothing that was going on there was protocol. Being offered a lawyer would be protocol. Not being locked in a hundred-degree room without water would be protocol. Anger seethed and threatened to surface. He held it in and turned, placing his hands behind his back. He’d needed to play nice for now. They had his son—somewhere. If he had any hope of finding him and getting the hell out of there, he’d have to rein in his temper. Through gritted teeth, he said, “Let’s go then.”
The window in Lieutenant Ryan Sharp’s office was open, and a fan blew the hot, humid air around the small office. He gestured for Will to take a seat in one of the two chairs in front of his desk. Will sat on the cushion’s edge as sitting back made the plastic cuffs dig into his wrists.
“What is this about, Lieutenant?”
“Analyst Stephens tells me that you were at the scene when Kim Yang crashed her car.”
“Yes. Her vehicle died when everyone else’s did. It jumped the curb, plowing into vehicles at the gas station.”
“You told Analyst Stephens that you found the way she clutched her bag odd. Why?”
Will thought back to the moment he first saw Kim. “I don’t know. It was just an impression. Everyone was upset. I really don’t know.”
“But you did learn later on that there was something inside that duffle that was very important to her.”
“Yes. I told all this to Stephens already. Why do I have to keep repeating everything?”
Sharp’s gaze narrowed. He leaned forward and placed his hands on his desk. He had perfectly manicured nails. He looked like he’d showered and shaved. The apocalypse hadn’t hit him like the rest of Houston. Not like the folks outside the gate, and not like him and Cayden. He wasn’t scavenging people’s homes and looting stores to eat.
“Stephens thinks you were working with Kim Yang.”
“What? No. I never met her before that day. I told her that.”
They were accusing him of committing treason. What the hell had Betley told them?
Will stood. “I want a lawyer. I have a right to counsel if I’m being accused of something.”
“Sit down,” Sharp said, gesturing toward the chair. “I said that is what Stephens thinks. I’m able to make up my own mind.”
Sharp pushed away from his desk and rose. He walked over to a cabinet by the window, poured a glass of water, and placed it on the desk in front of Will. Even though he was so dehydrated that his tongue cleaved to the roof of his mouth, he would have thrown it at the man had his hands been free.
Sharp reached into a pocket of his combat uniform pants and pulled out a small knife. He opened it and moved around behind Will. “Stand. Let me get those off you,” he said. “Frankly, I think it is pretty farfetched. I don’t think you are spy material.”
“Thanks,” Will said. “I won’t take that as an insult.”
“It wasn’t meant as one. I need your help to prove to Stephens that she’s barking up the wrong tree.”
“Help? With what?” Will asked.
Sharp retook his seat and leaned back in his chair. He pretended to be relaxed. Will could tell from the tension in his shoulders that he was anything but. “I need you to talk to Agent Betley.”
“Betley?”
“I need you to see what he knows about the other items in that duffle. The ones he didn’t turn in.”
“But he gave you the file and the thumb drive,” Will said.
“I need to know if there was something in Kim Yang’s bag that he is not telling us about. Can you do that? Can you help me clear your name?”
“As you said, I’m no spy. He will know what’s up immediately. He’s way too smart to fall for that trick,” Will said.
“You may be right, but are you willing to try—for your son?”
Will wanted to fly across the desk and pummel the man. For him to use his son like that proved these people had no soul. He couldn’t trust any of them. The sooner he found Cayden and got the hell away from there, the better.
“First answer me this,” Will said.
“I’ll try.”
“Why do you think Betley isn’t telling you the truth? He’s FBI. He’s on your side.”
Sharp just stared back at him. After a long, tense minute, he leaned forward and placed his hands back on his desk, steepling his fingers. “The same way you knew something was off with Kim the moment you met her.”
That shouldn’t have been a good enough answer, but Will couldn’t argue with it. Sometimes you have to trust your gut. If he had, he and Cayden wouldn’t have gotten sucked up into any of this.
Will shook his head. “I don’t like it, but I’ll do whatever I need to do to get my son and get the hell away from here.”
Another soldier led Will down a series of dark hallways to a locked room at the corridor’s end. The soldier stationed outside the door pulled keys from his belt and unlocked the door. Will was shoved inside, and the door slammed shut behind him. Against the far wall of the tiny space was the only chair in the room. He found Betley leaning on the wall beside the window that let the only light into the room.
“Will, fancy seeing you here,” Betley said sarcastically.
He was dressed in what looked to be workout clothes. Will could see bandages protruding from just below his shorts. His arms and legs were bruised and scraped, revealing the injuries received in the fight of his life. Will had some to match. This was the same man he’d fought next to and had trusted with his life—with his son’s life. Did he really believe Betley was anything but what he said he was? Not for a minute.
“Are they listening?” Will asked.
“Probably,” Betley said, turning to face him. “How’s Cayden and Isabella?”
“Good. They’re here…” He raised his eyebrows. “Somewhere.”
Betley gave a tiny bob of the head. He chewed his bottom lip as his gaze fell to the floor.
“Do you believe them—that I was working with Kim against my own country?”
Will shook his head.
“They blaming you too?” Betley asked.
“It appears so, yes.”
“They’re just paranoid. Stephens isn’t taking any chances. Not under the circumstances.”
“You’re defending them?” Will said. “They are accusing you of treason.”
“I know I didn’t do that. They’ll investigate and discover the same thing.”
“But how do you prove you didn’t do something? They’re not even letting us have lawyers.”
“Stephens is good at what she does, and Sharp—well, he’s…”
“Sharp?” Will pulled the chair into the middle of the room and took a seat. He was feeling light-headed, and standing wasn’t helping. “I don’t have the same faith in the system as you do, I guess.”
“They want you to get me to tell you there was something more in the duffle than I gave them. There wasn’t. You saw it at the same time I did, remember?”
“I didn’t see inside it,” Will said. Was Betley trying to get him to testify to something he didn’t see? Why? Could he be wrong about the man? The lack of food and sleep was affecting his brain. He was having trouble processing everything.
“Are you sure? Think. You and Kim had taken a walk. You came back alone, looking for her. I was seated at the table, going through the bag. You saw what was in it.”
“Not really.”
“What did you see?”
“The cash,” Will said. “A lot of cash.”
A loud boom startled Will and he jumped, nearly falling off hi
s chair. Will leaped to his feet as Betley dove away from the window. When seconds passed without another explosion, Betley ran back to the window.
“What is it?” Will asked as he came up beside him.
“My guess is that was the Texas Department of Public Safety building across the highway,” Betley said.
Smoke rose in the north. “It could have been the freeway interchange. I spoke to someone this morning that had witnessed Asian men attempting to blow up an interchange near Isabella’s apartment.”
“It could be that. They’ll want to interfere with our ability to get resupplied and block reinforcements. It is typical guerrilla warfare.”
Will’s eyes widened.
“Are we safe here? Is Cayden safe? I need to get to him. We need to get the hell away from here.” Will paced the room, walking in circles like a caged animal. “Dammit. I knew I should have left right away. But no. I had to overthink things like always. I wanted to wait until the water receded and gather supplies.” He turned to Betley. “I should have listened to you. I would have been halfway to my sister’s by now.”
As Will passed him, Betley reached and grabbed Will’s arm. “Stop beating yourself up over things you can’t change. It won’t help you get out of this.” Betley walked over and righted the chair. “Sit. Let’s figure a way out of this.”
Will curled his arms over the top of his head. “I can’t just sit here. I need to get my boy.”
“Sit!” Betley snapped.
Will studied him. He needed his help. He was his only ally on that base. Right then, he was Will’s only hope. Will rubbed his hands over his stubbled face and took a seat. “You didn’t answer me. Are we safe here?”
“As safe as anywhere,” Betley said, returning to his spot next to the window.
“That is not comforting.”
“It’s not my job to coddle you, Will. We all want the same thing. You want to keep your kid safe. Stephens and I want to find that list and stop the insurgents before they do irreparable harm.”