Simon
He has been living at Fort Knox for nearly seven days and longs to return to the farm. He feels terrible that he left it in the first place. The burden of the clinic and their patients will fall on Reagan’s shoulders while they are gone.
“Right, Dr. Murphy?”
He snaps out of his trance and turns to find Dr. Avery speaking to him.
“Huh? Um…” he stammers with embarrassment.
She merely chuckles without judgment. “Never mind. Hey, let’s hit the mess hall and grab some dinner. I’m beat for today, too.”
“Oh, sure,” he says and slides back on his rolling stool. An idea strikes, and he asks her, “Dr. Avery…”
“Eliza,” she corrects as she always does.
“Right, Eliza. Have you heard of a woman living here named Angelica?”
“Angelica? Hm, no, don’t think so,” she answers and pushes a wisp of blonde hair behind her ear. Her eyes narrow and she asks, “Why do you want to know?”
“Here, Dr. Avery,” a young woman says. Simon thinks he remembers seeing her earlier in the week.
“Thanks, Sofia,” Eliza answers and takes a file folder from the woman.
She stares at Simon a moment, so he says, “Hi, I’m…”
“I know who you are, Dr. Murphy,” the woman says shyly.
She’s probably around his age, pretty with kind hazel eyes and a gentle smile. She has a scar on her neck, though, and it doesn’t look like something that was accidental. Simon finds himself speculating on what happened to her. The way she looks at him, he has the feeling they’ve met before. She is timid and usually looks away when he makes eye contact. He gets the impression that she thinks she knows him. Maybe from the clinic? He’s not sure. There are so many people in the fort that recognition happens hourly.
“I’m sorry. Have we met?” he asks and extends a hand to shake hers. She shrinks back and tries to ignore his outstretched hand. He gets it. She’s probably like Reagan in that she has been through something traumatic and has a natural distrust of men. Instead, he offers a nod of sympathetic understanding. She’s helpful around the medical clinic and brings them patient charts and new cases when something pops up.
“No, I’ve just heard a lot about you,” she remarks. “Have a nice day, doctors.”
They both nod and offer a smile as she retreats quietly, closing the glass door as if making the slightest of noises would disturb the scientists.
“She’s sweet,” Dr. Avery comments after Sofia makes her exit. “Terrible what happened to her and her family.”
“What was it?”
Eliza sighs heavily and pauses before saying, “Her family was murdered, and she got separated from her sister, who ended up in some sex slave camp in Nashville, I guess. She doesn’t really talk about it. I only know because I heard it from her friend when I asked why she’s so shy. I figured it was something terrible. It always is now, right?”
He secretly wonders if it’s the same sex slave camp that the family broke up, killed the men, and freed the women from. It’s the only one he knows of, so it makes sense.
“Right. Yeah, that’s too bad,” he remarks.
“Sofia and her sister are the only ones left in her family.”
“Wow, that’s tough,” he says, more thankful than ever for Paige’s survival and journey to the farm.
“Yes, anyway, about this Angelica woman. Why do you ask?” Eliza questions.
Simon’s not sure if he should tell her the reason, that this woman is the key to finding the President or putting an end to the highwaymen conflict forever. “No reason,” he lies and gets a confused look from her. “Uh…she’s someone Cory told me to ask for if I came up. He wanted me to give her something.”
“Your phone number?” she teases.
He chuckles nervously. “Um, no, not my phone number.”
“Good,” she says and leans closer on her stool.
Simon wishes he had somewhere to back further away. She sometimes invades his personal space a tad too much. They are the last two people working in this area of the lab as others have gone off for dinner, some work in different spaces, and the rest left for some R and R with family and friends. He knows Derek is working with a few of the general’s men and Herb is treating his son, who has become very ill since they arrived on the base. Simon worries he will not recover, but Herb told him not to lose hope.
“It’s not like any of us even has a phone anymore,” he says with clearer logic.
“But if you did, you wouldn’t give her your number, would you?”
He doesn’t like to lie but telling her the real reason he wants to find this Angelica person could jeopardize their chances of figuring out who she is in the first place.
“No, of course not,” he says.
“Would you give it to me?” she asks with a smile that exposes her white teeth.
“Um, sure,” he replies and places his notepad on the table behind him. When he turns back, she has moved closer.
“You don’t sound very convinced,” she comments.
Simon frowns, not understanding why she’s so hung up on getting his non-existent phone number. It is just another in the long list of strange conversations he’s had with women where he is left unsettled and confused. What she does next doubles that feeling.
“Let me offer you some incentive,” Eliza states and leans in and kisses him on the mouth.
Simon startles and pulls quickly back. She only grins and presses into him further and stands. Then she slides her hands up his chest under his white lab coat and kisses him more ardently this time. She is very assertive when she wants to be.
At first, Simon simply stands there and allows her to keep pressing her mouth against his. Then he wonders what it would be like to kiss someone other than Samantha. One time in town a girl his own age kissed him, but he hadn’t thought much of it because she was under his care and doped up with narcotics because they were treating her leg wound, which had required extensive irrigation followed by twenty-three stitches. Other than her, he has only ever kissed Sam. He hadn’t actually ever considered kissing someone else. She’s the only one he’s ever wanted to be so intimate with or wanted to kiss in such a way. Perhaps his feelings for Sam aren’t as genuine as he thinks. Maybe he could have feelings for someone else, too. Without thinking it through very thoroughly, he slides an arm around her back and pulls her firmly against him and returns the kiss.
Eliza moans softly against his mouth and digs her fingers into the thick hair at the base of his neck. She is much more eager than he. Simon mostly looks at this as an experiment. His moral conscience immediately kicks in, and he ends their kiss and steps around her.
“I’m sorry, Dr. Avery,” he apologizes and rakes a hand through his hair, probably causing it stand on end.
“What? Why would you say that? I’m not sorry,” she states very clearly. “I’ve actually been waiting impatiently for you to do that.”
Simon turns to face her and realizes that she has stepped closer once again. “That was extremely unprofessional of me. I apologize.”
“No!” she says emphatically. “Don’t! I don’t want you to feel that way.”
“Excuse me,” he mumbles and rushes from the room.
What he just did was morally reprehensible. Dr. Avery has been nothing but helpful to their family, to the sick children of their town, and to him as a mentor and colleague. She didn’t deserve that sort of treatment from him. She deserves a lot more respect.
As he walks toward the housing where he is staying with the rest of the McClane family and Sam’s uncle, Simon contemplates his feelings for Dr. Avery. She is extremely kind and exceptionally smart about medicine. She’s very pretty and tall. She’s blonde. She is probably a good kisser, although he doesn’t have a lot of experience from which to draw and make the proper comparison. Unfortunately, he hadn’t felt anything toward her when he’d kissed her just now. It was almost robotic as if he was merely going through the motions and performing some sort of lame procedural analysis. That isn’t fair to her, either. She doesn’t know that he is a complete idiot and desperately, hopelessly, stupidly in love with someone else who hates him right now. Tomorrow, he’ll find a way to make it right with her.
Tonight, however, he has strict orders from Derek to find out who this Angelica woman is and to do so as covertly as possible. After a quick change into darker clothing and shedding his white lab coat, Simon grabs a quick bite to eat in the kitchen where volunteers from the mess hall staff have left them food. They have been very accommodating and friendly toward the McClane family and have acted as gracious hosts.
Simon takes his pistol and slips out the back door, which lands him in an alley between many homes and brick buildings. He has taken this route before and knows it well. Derek has been doing what he can to snoop during the day while he has taken the night shift and done the same. Unfortunately, they haven’t come up with much, and Parker is back on the base, so snooping is even more difficult. It was nice for the first three days they’d arrived because that weirdo creep wasn’t around. The general had sent him on a mission to do surveillance in the area.
He jogs in the dark and comes to the headquarters where General McClane resides with his wife and some of his higher up officers and advisors. One end of the building houses them, but the other end is where they have their administrative offices. Robert told them previously that they started files on each of their residents, mostly for medical purposes and to keep a head count of their citizens on the base. Derek scouted it out and found that the offices hold the files and told him how to get there. Simon is to read the files in search of Angelica. If he doesn’t find her, he is then supposed to go to the medical clinic and break in to look at their files. He has a key, so it’s not like he’s really breaking in, but nobody should be in there so late at night, and it would definitely arouse suspicion. Only Robert McClane knows of their search. He is in complete agreement and has offered every support within his reach to help them discover this traitor. After all, he and his people are also affected by the treachery. And Simon is convinced that Angelica does, indeed, reside on this base. Having taken in thousands of people in the last six months, it’s like searching for a needle in a haystack, and they can’t exactly go around asking people about her since they believe she is also working with others on this base, as well. While Derek and Huntley check some of the more secluded areas of the camp like the vault of hidden supplies that Cory found at the far edge of the compound, Simon will be working alone tonight.
Even though the general is on board with their hunt, he is distrustful of his own people now and has to keep mum on the search. And so, Simon must break into the barracks housing of the general’s staff and advisors and look for those files at the other end of the building. At this late hour, most of the residents of the base are in bed. The only ones still up are on watch patrols. Although most of the guards know him, they will still become suspicious of him wandering around with a flashlight and dressed in dark clothing. The lockpick kit would also tip his hand if they insisted on a pat-down. Even if he would not be met with penalties or punishment from the general, they still don’t want the guards to know they are searching for Angelica. They aren’t sure yet who they can trust or who might be working for her.
Simon slips into the building through a rear entrance after picking the lock and shutting the door silently behind him. Even though most of the base is now run on solar power, just like the farm they try to conserve energy when and where they can. Subsequently, there aren’t lights on, which makes it slightly more difficult to see. He flicks on his flashlight and creeps stealthily forward. Ahead and to the left are the barracks that house many families and trusted advisors of the general. He goes right.
A noise at the other end of the long hall alerts Simon that he might not be alone, so he pauses inside the threshold of a closed door. Running into someone could hinder his progress, and he waits until all is silent again before moving out.
Once he reaches the administrative offices, he picks the lock and enters the main room. The desk in front of Simon belongs to the general’s secretary, so he knows what he needs to find won’t be in this room. He moves past her area and doesn’t bother with Robert McClane’s office, either. He already told them he doesn’t know the woman, so there’s no sense ransacking his office. Instead, he hooks a left and goes down a short hall toward the staff’s offices. The first two prove pointless, but the next one is Parker’s. He tries the knob, finds it locked, and uses his kit to pick it. Once inside, Simon relocks the door and quickly gets to work. Four filing cabinets prove a bounty full of paperwork. This is where the motherload of personnel files, citizen files, and any and all other paperwork and record-keeping are stored. He hadn’t known that. He wonders if the general does, either. General McClane told him that the files were in his office and that he’d already checked them, with the help of his secretary, for the name Angelica and has come up with nothing. Does Parker keep his own record of the people on this base?
Most of it is all in the same handwriting, which he verifies is Parker’s by checking a half-completed letter on his desk. This is going to take him hours, so Simon settles in at Parker’s desk with a stack of files and begins scouring as quickly as he can manage while still being thorough.
Some of the information Parker has data mined on people seems a bit too personal just for record-keeping of one’s town citizens. He has assured them that the information they gather is important since nobody knows each other. Some of it is harmless like what skills a person might have. Some are talented wood-workers, others skilled chefs, nurses, or seamstresses. But other data such as a woman being barren, or a man being a potential danger because of his military experience seems to be pushing the boundaries to Simon. Parker also notes the poor performance of certain individuals in their tasks or jobs on the base and places black hash marks beside their names with rude remarks. Simon wonders what happens when they get what Parker considers too many. He makes sure to remember to tell everyone about this find.
He reads and replaces the files precisely as he found them and starts another stack. When he consults his watch, Simon is surprised it is nearly three a.m. and that there is still so much to sort through.
Placing the newest pile back in the cabinet, Simon stands and pushes the drawer back in. As he is about to pull out another drawer, a flash of red on the floor catches his attention. He stoops to inspect it and finds a sliver of red paper sticking out from the bottom of the filing cabinet. Attempting to pull it out from under the cabinet fails as it is wedged too tightly, so he has to pick the lock on the filing cabinet drawer, the only one with a lock at all. When he has it open, Simon is puzzled at what he sees. There are no hanging files. Nothing at all. The bottom of the filing cabinet has been cut away so that it no longer has a metal floor at all and the actual carpeted floor is exposed. The red paper he’d seen is sticking out of the carpet and gives away the location of a hidden panel. He runs his fingers along the floor until he finds a place where he can pry it up. Once the plywood with the glued-on industrial carpeting attached to it is lifted, he engages the hinge that will hold it open while he pulls out the contents. There are quite a few red files inside along with hand-drawn out maps and other paperwork.
Voices in another area, what sounds like the receptionist’s desk instantly sends a shiver of apprehension up his spine. He has to get out of the building, so Simon grabs some of the red files, stuffs them in his pack, closes the cabinet, and flicks off his flashlight. Unfortunately, the voices are drawing nearer. He can’t make his exit the same way he came in, so he rushes to the nearest window that is unobstructed by office furniture and pushes it open. The ledge outside of it is about five inches wide. Not going to work. However, an ancient old black walnut was spared from being cut for the past three hundred or so years, so he uses his upper body strength and is able to climb out onto a thick branch that he prays will hold his weight. Then he carefully pulls down the window again. Should Parker realize the window is no longer locked, he’ll know someone was in his office. Simon shimmies across the branch to the trunk and inches around to the other side where he is reasonably sure he won’t be seen in the dark. His clothing is black and matches the varying shades of gray and black of the old tree’s trunk.
A light comes on in the hallway, and Simon shies away from it, scooting further around the tree. As he’d worried about, the door to Parker’s office opens a second later and in he walks along with another person, who Simon can’t see as well. It is definitely a woman by her frame and size, but the slant of the hall lighting has left her in shadow. Parker says something to her, opens the drawer on the right-hand side of his desk.
A screech and a woosh of air hit Simon simultaneously, and he startles and loses his footing. An owl has swooped in to perch on the branch above him, obviously irritated at the sight of Simon. He nearly falls to his most certain death, and in his clumsy state and odd positioning he is left in, almost drops his pack. It hangs askew from his left arm, and a file falls out, crashing through the limbs of the majestic tree and landing on the grass below. The whole debacle takes less than three seconds and makes almost no noise, other than the offending owl. Once he has righted himself, he swiftly turns to see if Parker and his female companion have seen him, but they haven’t. They are engaged in conversation. Simon breathes a sigh of relief.
Before Simon can even begin his descent for the dropped folder, Parker leads his companion from the room and turns off the light again.
“Shit!” Simon whispers in a state of panic to himself and his winged partner in crime.
He has to get to the ground before they do and collect that file. In a rush of tangled tree limbs and ungraceful movements, he scurries down branch by agonizingly slow branch, that red folder glaring up at him like a beacon of scarlet deception. The door to the building slams shut, and Parker strides toward the side of the building with his usual confidence. The woman is gone. Simon is out of time to retrieve that file. Perhaps he won’t see it.
Simon is still about twenty feet in the air holding his breath as Parker walks closer. He keeps going as if he is on a mission to get somewhere. However, that damn blood-tinged folder catches his eye. Of course, it does. It is literally a red herring thanks to a damn white owl.
“What the hell?” Parker murmurs with confusion, looking around suspiciously before bending to retrieve it.
Apparently, he is the only person who uses this color of folder and knows that the secret stash in his office has been compromised. He glances up toward his office window, which causes Simon to panic and back away from his prying eyes even further to the other side of the massive trunk. Without pause, Parker rushes back into the building. Taking cue, Simon scampers down the tree and runs as if he is racing Cory back at the farm for the call to dinner. His friend can move pretty fast when food is involved. Once there, he hides the pack under his bed and takes off his boots, shoving them under with the pack.
“What’s going on?” Derek asks from his own bed in the same room.
“Shh, don’t say anything. Trouble,” Simon whispers fiercely and climbs under the covers, pulling them to his chin and rolling so that his back is presented to the door. He forgets his black stocking cap is still on, so he rips it from his head and shoves it under his pillow.
Like clockwork, within moments, their bedroom door creeks open and someone flashes a light into it.
Faking the sound of a man awakened from a deep slumber, he hears Derek ask, “What is it? Is something wrong, Parker? Is it the general?”
“Um…no, sorry. Go back to sleep, Major Harrison,” Parker replies apologetically and leaves, the door clicking more softly closed than it had opened.
They wait a few minutes before Derek finally asks, “What’s going on, Professor?”
Simon swings his legs over the side of his bed and digs out the pack as Derek turns on the bedside lamp.
Simon hands the pack to his friend and crosses the room to lock the door.
“I think we’ve got a problem,” he finally answers.