The Black Coats

by Colleen Oakes

  Chris McCray stepped in front of Thea’s face with a soft smile. Then she roughly grabbed her cheeks, her long fingernails pressing into Thea’s skin. “So you’re the girl that Julie is so worried about. You don’t look like much.” She clicked her tongue. “Naughty, naughty Thea, sleeping with the enemy.”

  When she stepped back, Thea saw that it wasn’t actually a sweater draped over her shoulders. It was a black coat. Louise continued to fight as a fourth man stepped up behind her holding a silver pipe. Chris McCray was yelling now, her voice bouncing off the back of Thea’s skull. “Get her down, but don’t kill her!”

  Louise twirled, her fist flying forward, but it was too late. The pipe slammed across the back of her head, and she collapsed to the ground like a rag doll. Thea screamed as she was pulled down into the swirling black, her thoughts discombobulated and firing randomly as her limbs went limp. At least Bea isn’t here. I didn’t tell Drew . . . I’m so sorry, Mom. My team . . .

  Her lungs burned as she breathed in the cloth once more. I can’t die on Natalie’s birthday.

  Her vision tunneled before her. There was only the sound of rushing water, and then what she had feared most: a nothingness that swallowed her whole.

  Twenty-Five

  Thea woke up with her back burning, a painful stabbing sensation tracing from underneath her ribs to her right shoulder. She twisted her neck, trying to remember exactly what had happened. Her thoughts were fuzzy and slow. Where am I? She blinked. “Hey!” whispered a voice. “Hey, she’s awake.” She felt something pressing up against her, shoving her sideways. Why couldn’t she use her hands? She slumped forward and felt a wave of nausea rise up inside of her.

  “Swallow it.” She knew that bossy voice. Everything came flooding back. Chris McCray. The office. The men. The pipe. Bile rose up in her throat.

  “Swallow it. If you throw up in here, I swear to God . . .” Mirabelle’s perfume enveloped her. She turned, gagging, but the bile didn’t come up. After a few dry heaves, Thea took a deep breath in.

  “There you go. Breathe.” That was Casey’s voice.

  Thea finally found her own—a strangled sound, foreign. “Where is Louise?”

  “She’s not awake yet, but she’s breathing.”

  She leaned back, her shoulders pressing up against something hard. After a minute, she felt like she could open her eyes, her lungs greedily pulling at the cool air. They were in an empty storeroom, lit by a single flickering light bulb. Boxes of paper goods and office supplies were stacked all around them. Her hands and shins were bound together with duct tape in front of her, along with a piece that ran across her chest and strapped her to a ventilation pipe that ran through the middle of the room and up into the ceiling. Mirabelle and Casey were seated in front of her, bound in the same way but taped back-to-back. Louise lay curled in the corner, asleep, a lump the size of a plum on the side of her head. Thea could see her chest rising and falling, the most beautiful thing she had ever seen.

  “You’re okay. You’re okay.” Mirabelle’s voice was soothing now.

  Thea let out a strangled cry. “I led us straight into a trap. Oh God, I’m sorry.”

  Casey nudged her foot against Thea’s. “How could you have known?”

  “I should have.” Her mouth trembled. “Your hand!”

  Casey nodded. “I can’t tell because of the duct tape, but I’m pretty sure at least three of my fingers are broken. No piano lessons for me this month.” It was a joke, but in Casey’s somber delivery, Thea heard a real fear.

  “Phones?”

  Mirabelle shook her head. “They took them.” She twisted around so that she could rest her head against the cool pipe. Thea pulled against her restraints, exerting every sliver of energy she had left, her head still buzzing.

  Casey raised her head. “It’s not going to work. We’ve tried for the last thirty minutes. Might as well sit tight, wait for whoever’s coming to pack us into a railcar.” Her voice turned angry. “Oh, Thea, now that you’re awake, there’s something I’ve been wondering about: What the hell does your boyfriend have to do with this?”

  Thea looked at Mirabelle, who simply shrugged. “There is something about being tied up, about to be murdered, that makes me not want to keep secrets anymore.”

  Thea focused on pulling her hands apart, or sliding them backward through the duct tape. Nothing moved. “Arrggh!” She sat back, her chest heaving, her eyes meeting Casey’s accusing glare. “I should have told you. I should have told all of you. I’m sorry.”

  Casey settled back against the wall next to her, wincing as she flexed her hand. “Tell me everything. From the beginning.”

  Thea closed her eyes and began talking, twisting her hands back and forth, hoping to loosen the duct tape. The longer she talked, the stranger the story became, each thread tangling tighter and tighter: Drew and Adam Porter, his interest in the Black Coats, the empty file on Natalie, what she had overheard from Julie and Sahil, and finally, what Drew had said about the Monarchs.

  Casey sat forward, pulling Mirabelle backward. “Ow!” she screeched.

  Casey didn’t notice. “The Monarchs?” She sat back with a shake of her head, her darkly lined eyes widening. “That makes so much sense. For a long time, I’ve wondered what the Black Coats’ real purpose is. I mean, yes, we are serving justice and all that, which is, I have to admit, incredibly intoxicating, but how does that really serve the Black Coats? What is their endgame?”

  “We wash the floors,” mumbled Mirabelle. “We fold cloth napkins.”

  Thea frowned as she looked around the room for anything that could help them. If only they could move. She leaned her head back against the pipe, her curls drenched with sweat. “No. We are still being recruited.”

  “For what?” asked Casey.

  Thea focused her eyes on the ceiling. “For the Monarchs. They probably select the best of us to become them—but only after we’ve used our inheritance, because then they’ll have something to hold over us for the rest of our lives.”

  There was a long silence that was broken by Mirabelle stifling a cry. “Thank God I didn’t kill Marc. Thank God, thank God.”

  Thea looked at the doors. There were two doors on either side of the room, both made of reinforced steel and most likely bolted from the outside.

  “We tried pressing against them,” sighed Casey. “Neither door budged. We already tried everything.”

  Thea opened her mouth and screamed as loud as she could, but it only reverberated off the thick walls. And besides, who would hear them? They were in an empty building outside of town. By now night had fallen. Team Banner was utterly alone. Thea bit her lip angrily. She had gotten her team into this, and now it was time to get them out of it. She had to think of something. “Can you guys try to get some boxes down?” Thea strained against the pipe.

  “It’s just paper,” moaned Mirabelle.

  “It doesn’t matter. We have to do something. Move!” Thea kicked her bound legs out toward a shelf, colliding with the shelving unit. She kicked at it until a box tumbled to the floor. Slowly, Thea used her legs to draw the box over to her, wincing as her muscles protested. “Mirabelle! Stop crying and get those boxes open.”

  Her friend took a breath. “Okay.” Mirabelle and Casey struggled to their feet, arguing the whole time about who needed to do what.

  Thea’s bound hands tore at the plastic sealant. The box opened. Paper, just as they had suspected. She kicked it away. “Next.”

  They froze as a moan came from the corner of the room. Thea looked over as Louise rolled onto her back. A thin line of blood was crusted across her forehead, with another at the corner of her mouth. Her bloodied hands were bound tight, but her legs were free. Her eyes fluttered open. “Thea?”

  Thea bent her head forward, encompassed in the sweet relief that her friend was okay and knowing that the memory of a man hitting her with a pipe would be seared into her mind forever. Louise gagged and then pushed herself to her knees.

 
; “Take deep breaths. There you go.” Thea tried to make her words reassuring.

  “My head.” A piece of Louise’s mousy brown hair fell over her eyes as she moaned. “It’s exploding.” She filled her lungs once more and opened her eyes. “I am seriously considering resigning from the Black Coats.”

  Thea smiled gently. “That makes four of us.”

  As Mirabelle and Casey continued to pull down boxes, Thea scoped out the room, looking for something useful. She blinked. Two boxes in the far corner weren’t the same size as the others. She leaned forward, the tape pressing hard against her chest. She squinted as she tried to make out the words on the box. Office World, a unique company for your growing needs. Underneath it were the words she was looking for. Office Supplies. “Mirabelle!” Thea nodded toward the box. “Third row up, two boxes over. Look.”

  Mirabelle’s eyes widened. “Do you think maybe . . .”

  They looked at each other. “Scissors,” they said in unison. Mirabelle and Casey began moving toward the shelf. Thea felt hope growing in her chest, when she heard voices outside the door.

  “Shhhh! Stop! Sit back down where you were. Louise! Pretend you’re still out!”

  Louise collapsed onto the floor in her original position. Thea stared at the door, wanting to look whoever came through straight in the face. She would not go quietly. The metal door swung open, bringing with it a blast of cool air. She gasped out loud when President McKinley strolled in, flanked by five men. A few were muscular, but three of them were just dangerous-looking—the kind of men Thea would avoid on the street, with wandering eyes and hands. McKinley clicked her tongue. “Ladies. Do you have everything you need?”

  Thea leaned forward, praying that her duct tape would snap, feeling helpless and furious all at once, her eyes burning as she stared at McKinley. “You can’t kill all of us. Four teenage girls missing all at once would bring the FBI.”

  McKinley sighed. “You know, Thea, you are right.” Then she smiled wickedly. “Fortunately for us, we have so many friends in the FBI that one phone call would clear that problem up completely. But it’s not Team Banner we’re punishing. It’s you. And if your teammates speak of what they saw here, we will kill them one by one!” She put her hands on Thea’s face and then tapped her fingers against her nose. “As we speak, a letter is being written in which you’ll tell your parents that you are running away to Seattle because you can’t handle being here, where Natalie died. And you know what happens to runaways. Poof! They disappear all the time.”

  Thea looked at Casey, who dropped her eyes to the floor, her chest heaving. Her eyes flicked to Louise, who hadn’t moved. Thea looked hard at President McKinley. “How can you hurt me? Being a Black Coat is about saving women, protecting them.”

  “That’s exactly what I’m doing,” hissed McKinley, her face distorting in anger. “You led the son of a cop straight to our doors. Adam Porter was getting dangerously close before we stepped in with our Dallas branch. Your foolish actions threatened a society that has saved hundreds of lives, and for that . . .” She stood and rubbed a white cloth over a knife that she had pulled from her coat. The men stepped forward. “I’m willing to betray my conscience a little. In fact, you might say that I have a darker side than most. At times, Robin found me a little too harsh for the Monarchs and did her best to tie my hands, but now that Robin is six feet under and Julie is in charge, her standards are a little more, how shall we say . . . flexible. She knows that sometimes you have to get your hands dirty.” She leaned forward, her mouth close to Thea’s ear. “And that’s what I am. Julie’s dirty hands. Ever since we were Monarchs together.”

  She sat back, resting a hand on Thea’s shoulder. “I promise, I’ll be kind. You’ll barely feel anything. I’m not a monster. I don’t want you to be in pain.” She squeezed Thea’s shoulder. The blade was cool against Thea’s neck, and she could smell bleach on the president’s hands. Mirabelle began crying softly. This can’t be it; this can’t be . . .

  The light bulb flickered. McKinley paused. It flickered again. The men shifted uncomfortably. “It’s just the power,” snapped McKinley. “They haven’t finished securing the lines for the office.” The light bulb dimmed once before lighting again. McKinley turned back to Thea. “I won’t enjoy this, truly I won’t. But the Black Coats are more important than one girl’s life.”

  Suddenly, there was a loud pop of electricity and the windowless room was plunged into pitch black. The door rocked open, and there was a shuffling sound. Then Thea heard a shout and something landed with a thud near her feet. The lights flickered again. McKinley stood, her knife held defensively out in front of her. A man’s body lay by Thea’s feet.

  The light bulb flickered again. Darkness. Then light. And then . . . a slash of red lipstick. “You might not enjoy this, but I will. You bitch.” The lights came on. Nixon flew forward, her fist meeting McKinley’s face, sending her flying back out of the room. The man closest to her grabbed a gun from behind his back.

  “Get down!” Thea screamed at Mirabelle and Casey. A bullet ricocheted off the shelves and buried itself deep into a box of paper, shreds exploding from the point of entry. Nixon grabbed the shooter’s hand and forced it up to the ceiling, firing several more shots as she rammed her hand up against the flat of his nose. He gasped and staggered backward. Her movements almost too fast to see, Nixon slammed his head down against the metal shelving.

  The second man was on her now. He grabbed her from behind, but Nixon arched her body up and away, launched vertically, and flipped her legs toward the ceiling. She landed squarely on his shoulders before she whirled in the air, her black coat flapping around them in a blur. There was a crack as she thumped the butt of a knife up against his temple, and then Nixon rode his unconscious body down to the floor.

  Thea struggled against her bindings, screaming at the other girls to do the same. The largest man in the group, his arms covered with graphic tattoos, stepped forward, caught Nixon by the arm, and twisted. She screamed in pain and jammed her foot up against his face, her sharp heel leaving a spurting puncture wound. He yelled and lost his grip momentarily.

  “Thea!” The second her arm was free, Nixon slid a knife across the floor to Thea. She grabbed it in between her bound hands and began sawing at the duct tape across her chest. Just a little more; just a little more. Nixon was struggling with the largest man now. The tape binding Thea snapped. She lunged away from the pipe, knowing that she had only seconds to make the right decision.

  Only seconds . . . Leaving her own hands still bound, Thea fell forward and cut Louise free, because if her training had taught her anything, it was to trust the best woman for the job. Their little mouse exploded and leaped onto the back of Nixon’s attacker, bringing her fists together hard against either side of the man’s temple. He slumped to the ground. Another man surged forward and grabbed Louise’s hair, but Thea kicked her feet hard across his kneecaps. A loud snap echoed through the room. Thea smiled. That’s right, you prick, these legs are strong. He dropped to his knees, and Louise delivered a right hook to his face, followed by a hard kick to his throat. His eyes rolled up into his head and he was unconscious.

  The huge man stumbled to his feet again. Nixon rushed at him, but he was as quick as she was and threw her sideways, her body hitting the shelves. With a grunt he hauled Mirabelle up against him, his meaty hand curled around her jaw, a thin knife against her throat. A trickle of blood began to stain her collar. Still bound to Mirabelle, Casey was writhing.

  “Don’t move!” he bellowed. “I’ll kill them both!” Nixon froze, her eyes like burning coals. Louise crouched on the floor like a cat, her mouth clenched tight. Thea’s chest was bleeding as she sawed through the duct tape around her hands. “Who do you think you are?” the man screamed with Mirabelle’s body rigid in his arms. “Women, acting like this!”

  At that moment, the duct tape broke. “Sorry we forgot to bake you a pie,” spat Thea as she shoved Nixon’s knife deep into his upper thigh.
The man stumbled, reaching for Mirabelle’s neck, but it was too late. There was only a blur of black as Nixon whirled and something silver sliced through the air near Thea, moving too fast to be seen. She turned just in time to see the small metal butterfly bury itself in the man’s forehead, leaving only a vertical line of blood as its razor wings cut deep into his skull. As he fell forward, Thea lunged to catch Mirabelle and Casey before they hit the ground. Near the door, another man raised his arms in surrender and tried to kneel. Just before he hit his knees, Louise delivered a roundhouse kick to his head. He slumped against the shelves, unconscious. Nixon took a deep breath.

  Thea raised her eyes to her president, her body shaking with adrenaline. “Thank you.”

  Nixon wiped the blood off her mouth. “Thank you, ma’am.”

  When they turned around, McKinley was long gone.

  Twenty-Six

  An hour later, most of Team Banner was seated in a circle on the floor of the office with Nixon standing in the middle. Casey held an ice pack against Louise’s head. Mirabelle was still a bit shaken, and Thea sat behind her, one hand pressed against her spine to steady her. McKinley’s henchmen were either piled or tied up in the back room. Only one was dead, the rest unconscious.

  Thea’s eyes kept lingering on the closed doorway, her stomach churning. Dead. That man with the razor butterfly in his head was dead. She felt like she was teetering on a precipice with sanity on one side and a whirling black abyss on the other.

  Nixon reached out and put her hand on Thea’s cheek, and it brought her back from the brink. “Don’t be sorry for him. McKinley made a mistake by climbing in bed with monsters. I know the names of those men; they have killed and raped and planned to do it again. I won’t lose a minute’s sleep over them, so let me carry it.” She sighed. “Don’t worry. The live ones I’ll leave at the police station. They aren’t going to talk about what happened here.” Their president took a moment to look at each of their faces. “I’m so proud of you right now.”