by Dale Mayer
The thing that had bothered her the most was that sense of defilement at the most elemental level. She wasn’t who she was meant to be; she didn’t even know who that was anymore—because of them. She struggled with it a lot. Her identity, her wishes, all felt like they mirrored Lizzy’s because Beth and Lizzy had been through so much of a similar trauma. But Lizzy had come out stronger. Lizzy had come out whole, though that was probably not the right word either, but she’d certainly come out a very different person than Beth.
She wondered at the files that she’d seen and the little bit that she’d read. So much more information was in there. She would work on that later. However, she came down here first to heal her soul in the lake.
Nature had always been her salvation. When she had been locked away, sometimes the specks of dust in the air just danced in front of her. Sometimes that little shard of light that came through the tiny gun-slot windows high up in the wall would land directly on her. When she had lived on her own, just touching a leaf or bending down to feel the grass with her fingers, those moments had fed her soul and had kept her alive, kept her fighting, because, when she got locked up again, her interaction with Mother Nature would be taken away again, and she knew that her soul wouldn’t survive.
With her legs dangling in the water, she turned her face to the sun above. It would be a gorgeous morning, yet cool enough that now she shivered, with just a towel wrapped around her shoulders. Deciding it was still better to be chilled and to fully enjoy the moment, she dropped the towel and slipped into the cool water.
She gasped as it hit her skin, before she sank underneath, striking out strongly toward the end of the dock, refusing to let the fronds of grasses growing deep underneath and touching her feet stop her from enjoying the moment. Something was creepy about those things below her in the darkness.
She’d spent her life in the darkness, and she wanted to find the sunshine as her main place to live, the place where she felt good, the place where she felt strong. She knew there would always be shadows, particularly for somebody like her. She just had to get to the point where she could live, knowing the shadows would be there, yet not be affected by them. She almost laughed at that because she was asking for a lot.
Her heart broke for Lizzy, who would never know the sun or the freedom out here. Even as Beth thought of it, she felt Lizzy almost turning in her direction, looking for her. Beth immediately shut down her thoughts, holding her breath tight, pulling in her energy. Anything to keep Lizzy from finding her. Beth loved her friend dearly, but this had to stop. Calmly she struck out for the center of the lake, before turning around and coming back toward the dock. As she neared the wooden piers, she saw Hunter standing there, his hands on his hips, glaring at her. She smiled up at him and said, “I needed this.”
Immediately the condemnation on his face dropped away, and he nodded. “In that case,” he said, “enjoy, just please stay safe.”
She nodded. “I’m doing what I can,” she said simply. “And, if it’s not enough, then it’s not enough.”
He smiled. “And that sounds better to me.”
She looked up at him and said, “I thought you would approve of that. But it doesn’t mean that I can hold this thought, this belief, for long.”
“You’ll do what you can,” he said, “and then you’ll try again.”
“Maybe,” she said. “I’m always afraid that I’ll give up trying.”
“Not while I’m around,” he said, “because I’ll always be there to help bolster you and to remind you that the good fight is worth fighting.”
“Is it though?” she whispered, as she studied him. “Sometimes I have to wonder.”
“Ah, no more of that,” he said. “Are you ready to come out of the water?”
She remained in the water for a long moment and nodded. “I am getting chilled.”
“No wonder,” he said. “You don’t have enough body fat to survive out here very long.”
He reached down a hand, and she reached up, stunned at his simple and effortless strength as he hauled her onto the dock in front of him. He bent down and grabbed the towel and wrapped it around her. “Come on up, and you can have a hot shower, if you need it.”
“I hope I don’t need that,” she said, “but I don’t know. I was thinking I was doing okay, until I started back, and then it just seemed like I’d pushed the limit again.”
“I think you do it all the time,” he said. “You want to bite off more than you can chew. You want to live more than you’ve been able to. So your natural safeguards of what you can and cannot do don’t apply.”
“Well, I don’t have any experience. I think those safeguards are something you learn over time, as you understand when your strength is waning and when it’s okay,” she said. “For me, I don’t have those memories. I don’t have that experience to draw on, you know?”
“But you’re getting there,” he said, “and that’s what’s important to remember.”
She nodded again. “And, yes, you’re right. I’m eager and, at the same time, almost self-defeated because of it all. It’s just so much at once.” She said it so simply that she hoped he’d realize it wasn’t self-pity. She’d come a long way, and she knew that she had so much more to do, so much more to learn, and yet so much farther she could go. She looked around and smiled. “And again, you’re truly blessed to have this place.”
“I am,” he said, “and that’s one of the things that I do understand. When you have good things in your life, you should rejoice in having them. You should feel blessed. You should make a point of saying, Thank you to the world, because you’re here, proud in your achievements, proud of what other people have done. They’re all important,” he said, “and too often people forget to celebrate the milestones as they hit them.”
She grinned. “We’re back to you being a good cheerleader,” she said, chuckling.
He smiled. “Hey, whatever it takes.”
“I got it,” she said, “and, at some point in time, maybe I’ll feel like I do have it.”
“I hope so,” he said, “because there’s so much more to life, and you haven’t had a chance to live any of it.”
“But I’m getting there.”
He led her up toward the cabin. “Do you want food?”
“Do we have anything? It seemed like we devoured it all last night.”
“Nope, we have quite a bit left,” he said. “I’m looking for a big breakfast, if you’re up for a meal.”
“I’ll take anything you’ve got right now.”
“Good. Go take a hot shower, and I’ll get something ready.”
She dashed up to her bedroom and then into the shower, gratefully standing under the hot water, wondering how she even managed to get into the lake, when it was so very cold. But something had been so absolutely freeing about it, something so gorgeously enlivening about being out there.
As she stepped from the shower and dried off, she heard him talking to somebody on the phone. Not wanting to listen in, and yet unable to help herself, she crept downstairs, only to understand that he was talking to Stefan. She frowned; she wanted to know what that conversation was about, but she also wanted Hunter to tell her honestly.
She stepped into the kitchen. He turned, saw her, and smiled, then pointed at the coffee and continued to talk to Stefan. Well, that was good because that meant he wouldn’t hide the call from her.
“No, she’s here right now,” he said. “I can tell her when we get off. Sure, not a problem.” He hung up and asked, “So you got some coffee?” He saw the cup in her hand and smiled.
“Was that Stefan?”
“Yes,” he murmured. “He has contacted somebody in the FBI to track down your family.”
She raised her eyebrows. “Wow, the FBI?”
“Yeah, when crimes cross state lines, they can get called in, and, of course, he has a few connections who get him information that other people might not get.”
“What connections?”
> “Remember Dr. Maddy?” she nodded.
“Her partner works for the FBI.”
“Ah, interesting,” she murmured. “And very convenient.”
“Very convenient in many ways and not so much in others,” he said. “Sometimes having that information at your fingertips is good. But, other times, once you know something, it means you must act on it. Not making change where change is needed means you’re guilty of sitting by and doing nothing. And that’s not something Stefan is capable of doing.”
“Right,” she said, “so, in many ways, this is a gift.”
“Remember that about gifts,” he said, quirking an eye at her.
She smiled. “Yes, and we have to be grateful for them.”
“Exactly, so just smile. Stefan is doing everything he can, and, when we have more information, he’ll pass it on.”
“Good,” she said. “In the meantime, I shut Lizzy down from finding me, and, with any luck, we can stay here for at least a few days, while I regroup a little bit.”
“Good,” he said, “but you also have other injuries. So time to rest would help too.”
“My body is full of scars,” she said, “if that’s what you mean.” She let the cheerfulness in her voice guide the mood. “Remember that part about not always wanting to do what I should do and not always being good at it?”
He nodded. “They tortured you too, didn’t they?”
“Of course,” she said. “None of us were spared. Just one of those things we accepted. Not necessarily adjusted to but part of the process. If we failed, we were punished. If we didn’t fail, we weren’t punished.”
“You don’t remember any of their names, right? Nobody we could go after? No faces? Nothing tangible that we can find in the world out there?”
She shook her head. “Not that I can remember, no. And I’ve racked my brain about that for a long time—just the one guy I told you about that I dealt with the most.”
“But no name.”
“Well, I called him …” And she stopped and frowned. “What did I call him? He wasn’t the big boss. He was like the little boss, but I had a name for him.”
“And yet you don’t remember?” he asked curiously.
She shrugged. “At the moment it’s slipped my mind,” she said, with a shake of her head. “I feel like somebody has put safeguards in my brain to stop me from remembering a lot of stuff.”
“Hell, even Stefan could have done that,” he said.
She looked at him. “Without my permission?”
“All kinds of things can be done without your permission, as you should well know.”
She stared at him and then nodded. “I guess that’s quite true. I just hadn’t thought that he might do it.”
“And I’m not saying Stefan did it,” he corrected. “Keep that in mind. Just because it’s something he could do doesn’t mean it’s something he did do.” She relaxed slightly. “Right, and besides,” he said, “if it were done, it would have been done to aid in your healing, since all that trauma rushing back through your head won’t help you heal.”
“Maybe not,” she murmured. “But, at some point, you want to stand on your own.”
“Then you need to pick a time when that’s possible.” He turned and motioned at the pans. “Sausage and eggs are ready. Sit down with your coffee.”
She looked at him. “Like, you can cook-cook?”
“I told you that I could.” And then he remembered what her childhood had been like and the other conversation they’d had about cooking. “I can’t imagine how much you had to catch up on.”
“Well, we weren’t as far behind as you might have thought. I was afraid of the world out there, afraid it would be much worse, but it turned out to be not as bad as I expected. Plus, I’m a pretty fast learner.” She shrugged. “That was another thing that they needed from all of us—to pick up things quickly. And, when we didn’t, we were punished.”
“That’s hardly a conducive learning environment.”
“I don’t think they cared,” she said, looking at him. “Not about us. It was about the entire team.”
“You don’t remember much of the team aspect though.”
“Not in the last few years, no,” she said.
“So, let me get this straight. When you were younger, you were with the larger group.”
She nodded.
“As you grew older?”
“As I grew older, I was singled off to one handler, and I was led into rooms where I validated tests of other psychics.”
“So, you would see those psychics.”
“Sometimes, sometimes not,” she said. “Often they were on the other side of a wall or a blacked-out glass window.”
“The location we found looked like some major building had been destroyed there. Do you know anything about that?”
She shook her head. “I only saw internal rooms that they allowed me to see. So I didn’t see the grounds.”
“Do you remember the details of your surroundings when you escaped?”
“Not too much. I took the opportunity and ran. That’s the only thing I remember.”
“He went out to pee or something?”
She nodded. “But, as I think about it, maybe he went out to turn on that energy barrier. I don’t know what he was doing, but I saw the opportunity and went for it.”
“Understood,” he said, but something odd was in his voice.
Still, she studied him and asked, “What are you thinking?”
“I just wish I knew how many other people were there at the time.”
“Well, I assumed that all the other cars had left ahead of me.”
“Who told you that other people were there?”
“My handler.”
“And he told you that you were the last one?”
She nodded. “Why? What difference does it make?”
“Maybe nothing,” he said.
But obviously something troubled him. She hesitated, wondering what she should do about it. Then she decided that it would be in her best interests to leave it for the moment. “If you learn anything, I want you to promise you’ll tell me,” she said slowly.
He looked at her, as he lifted a forkful of sausage to his mouth. “Of course.”
She shook her head. “No of course here,” she said. “I need to know I can trust you.”
“You can definitely trust me,” he said instantly.
She smiled. “That means sharing information as you get it.”
“Deal.”
Chapter 20
The next few days settled into an uneasy truce. Beth swam, rested, healed, swam, ate, healed. On the third morning she woke up, assessed how she felt, and, for the first time, took a long slow deep breath, searching deep inside herself to see just how the pain was. She had put up a lot of blocks, so she didn’t have to listen to her pain receptors. So many, so she didn’t have to worry about cringing every time she took a breath or stepped wrong. But it seemed like everything was going pretty well now. She slowly stood, not even wincing with pain as she bent and twisted with her morning stretches.
After a hot shower she felt even better. Dressed, she headed down to the kitchen but saw no sign of Hunter. She put on the coffee and rummaged in the fridge, looking for food. They were running low again and needed to get more groceries, something they were both avoiding. They had just enough reasons to stay here, where it seemed like they were somewhat safe. She knew Lizzy was out there; no way she wasn’t. And unfortunately Beth would have to step up and deal with that problem soon, but she just didn’t know how to do it yet.
She didn’t want to do anything to hurt Lizzy. They’d been best friends for the longest time; they were akin to sisters, and yet how could there ever be a friendship after being hunted by her? But Beth also knew Lizzy was hunting under duress and that Lizzy wouldn’t have done it on her own. No way she would have. But who knew how damaged she was at this point, or whether she had a choice in anything anymore?
Beth kept racking her brain for any way to cut loose from the energy that she knew Lizzy was tracking, but it’s not like Beth could simply excise it. Maybe, if they didn’t know each other and hadn’t spent years fighting against a common enemy, then maybe their energy wouldn’t be so intermingled. Cutting that energy from her own system would probably kill Beth. She’d thought about it a lot; she’d even tried a couple times, but the pain in her body had been excruciating, and the similar loss in her heart had been almost as bad.
As she stood here, staring out the window, she whispered, “I love you, Lizzy. Please stop doing this.”
She thought she heard an answer but probably just the wind. She tried hard to listen again, as she repeated her message twice and then a third time.
Hunter asked her from the doorway, “Is she answering you?”
Startled, she turned and stared at him, then shook her head. He frowned at her, as if knowing she was keeping something from him. She glared right back. “She can’t be,” Beth said. “It’s just my imagination.”
“And what is it that she’s saying, that you think is your imagination?” he asked, taking a step into the kitchen.
She immediately stepped back, so she was against the counter. He frowned and stopped where he was. Not his intention to corner her. She shook her head. “I just keep hearing the same thing that I hear in my nightmares.”
“And what is that?”
“Remember,” she said. “That’s all. Just one word. Remember.”
“Fascinating,” he murmured. He studied her carefully.