Exponential
Page 65
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Mara trembled in the darkness. She tried to tame the out-of-control sounds her body was making. She was sure the hammering of her heart inside her head would be tangible to anyone that approached her as she crouched there attempting to be motionless.
She still clutched the small media card she snatched from the laptop at the last moment before barely making her escape.
As Mike was switching off the equipment, there were suddenly men at the back door of the van. They swung open the doors and roughly grabbed Annette by the hair and practically lifted her out of the van by it. Mike tried to put up a fight but was struck a blow by someone’s nightstick and he crumpled to the ground.
In the commotion, Mara fell forward more to the front of the van and in the dim light behind some of the equipment, the intruders didn’t apparently see her. At least she hoped they didn’t. While they were occupied with Mike and Annette, she extracted the media card from the laptop and crawled further toward the front of the van. She quietly climbed out of the driver side door and scooted through the tall, wet, dying grass into the darkness.
Eventually, she made her way to the farm building she spotted at the edge of the field earlier. It was really nothing more than an old pole shed. The door was simply a large opening and there was only a dirt floor. The wood siding of simple vertical boards, were weathered with enough spaces and cracks in them for her to peer out.
By pressing an eye up to one of the cracks, she could see the lights of at least of the part of the house that not obscured by the rise in the ground and tall weeds. The light slipping in through the cracks cast ugly shapes and shadows on Mara’s face and throughout the inside of the shed. She sharply caught her breath when she could make out the silhouette of a figure standing on the small hill, looking in the direction of the pole shed.
If he carried a light, there would be no way she could hide in here without being discovered. She frantically looked around for some means to escape or to hide, but could see nothing appropriate. Her heart was beating so furiously, she could feel the pulse in her neck. For the second time in just a few days, her right leg began to tremor and she couldn’t seem to make it stop.
She could hear a siren and wondered if it was the police after her or perhaps an ambulance for Mike. She hoped he would be OK. Annette and Mike would no doubt tell the police that she was with them. She wondered if they would add burglary or trespassing to the murder charges.
Perhaps she should take her chances with the police. She had the proof in her hand. The media card. It contained the recording of the phone conversation. It was certainly enough to convince her, wouldn’t it be enough to convince the police?
Suddenly she felt a wave of nausea at the recognition of the voice that spoke with Damian. She didn’t recognize it at first because of the poor quality of the sound coming through a speakerphone and then the anemic reproduction of the voice by the equipment they were using. She had just heard that same voice on the television a couple of days ago at Dell’s house. Bob Danvers, the Chair and Chief of the Viiradium Corporation. Running for Governor of the state of Massachusetts. Bob, or Robert Edmund Danvers – R.E.D. Of course. His close associates used his nickname ‘Red’ in conversation with him.
The pieces began to assemble into ugly clarity. No wonder they wanted to shut her up so badly! It was becoming political. Here was a trusted man with lots of money – in fact a billionaire – and lots of power who wanted even more. If what she knew were to become public, never mind the police, if even the media got wind of this story, it would ruin him completely. Politics and scandal were poor bedfellows. Imagine the heyday the media would have: Large scale theft of private information for profit. Kidnapping. Murder. Attempted murder. He would go down and go down hard.
The only thing she had to do, was… survive.