Drew
A couple of hours earlier
I was grateful for the company Lydia and Ivy provided, but I was going stir-crazy. How in the world did they manage to stay sane every time their men left on a mission? How did they not pace the floors and get sick to their stomachs?
I twisted my hands in my lap, worry shooting through me like a rogue arrow.
“It’s best not to sit and think about every possibility that might go wrong,” Ivy said, nodding at my hands. “You just imagine that they’re off at work, doing a job like anybody else.”
“But they’re not.”
“No, they’re not. But they are highly trained and have defied the odds over and over again. They’re careful and meticulous, and they don’t take unnecessary risks. Eventually, you just get to the point that you choose not to agonize over every possible danger.” Lydia smiled warmly as her words sank into my head and heart.
I didn’t know if I could ever get used to living this way, but if she did it and Ivy did it, then perhaps I could get past it.
“So, you don’t still worry about them?”
“Of course we do. But we’ve learned to push that worry back to the far parts of our minds. It’s there, a monster lurking in the shadows, but we simply take away its teeth.” Ivy smiled warmly.
Pretty powerful way of looking at things. I tried to relax, tried to calm my racing heart, tried to think about having Hunter in my arms again, only to start the worrying process all over again.
I jumped up from the couch and paced the floors. I couldn’t sit still.
“Want to watch something different?” Lydia asked.
“I’m fine. I just need to move.”
Lydia and Ivy glanced at each other and went back to watching TV, but I could tell they were still keeping one eye on me. My phone buzzed in my pocket, and I pulled it out to see a blocked number on my screen.
“I’m just going to take this in my room.” I moved quickly, not giving either woman an opportunity to comment on my jittery behavior. When I was behind my closed door, I answered the call.
“Hello?” There was no answer. “Hello?”
I shook my head. That was weird.
My hand touched the doorknob, and the world exploded.
Boom!
A loud blast rent the air, the ground shaking beneath my feet and plaster falling from the ceiling. I hit the floor, reaching above me to turn the knob and get out of the room. When I opened it, my heart crashed against my ribs as I took in the scene.
Smoke filled the room, debris and ash flying in the air. I looked to my right and saw a huge hole in the wall that had been at the end of the hallway.
“Ivy! Lydia!” I shouted their names, hoping they were okay. I saw two heads pop up over the couch. Thank God.
“Over here!”
I got to my feet, walking towards them with determination, when four men with large guns ran towards me from the hole in the outside wall. If they’d blown through the living room, Ivy and Lydia would be dead. The reality of the situation froze my feet to the floor.
“Run, Drew!” Lydia’s voice broke through the haze in my mind, and I turned to run towards the door. Only, I wasn’t quick enough.
Rough hands grabbed me from behind, pulling me up against a hard chest. I fought with everything that was in me, kicking, punching, scratching, but it was no use.
“Where’s the antidote?” a nasty voice said in my ear.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
The man in all black shoved a phone in front of my face, holding me in place so I couldn’t get free. It was a live video feed of Hunter sitting on the floor playing with dinosaurs. Two guards stood behind him, one with a gun aimed right at his head.
“No. Please, no!” If they still had Hunter, what did that mean for Levi and the team? Had they gone to the wrong place? Were they in trouble? Was this some kind of trick? I couldn’t take the chance.
“Do what I say and he lives. Give me any problems and I’ll give the command to shoot. Do you understand?”
Tears clouded my vision and clogged my throat. I nodded furiously, and the man shoved me forward.
“Now, get the vials.”
I hurried to the kitchen, glancing at Lydia and Ivy, who were standing in the living room, their hands up as two of the men held guns on them. I would not be responsible for the deaths of my friends or my son.
Grabbing a lunch bag out of the cabinet, I crammed several vials of the antidote into my purse and slipped in two vials of the mutant antidote. I turned and held it up to the men.
“This is all I have here.”
“Let’s go.”
When I reached where he was standing, he shoved me from behind, making me trip over my feet. His hand shot out and caught me roughly around the arm. “You better not drop those vials or there will be hell to pay.”
“Then stop shoving me.”
I jerked free of his hold and followed the masked men out through the hole in the wall. They pushed me into the back of a black SUV, and within seconds we were barreling down the highway.
What would happen when Levi returned? Would they come after me?
“Where are you taking me? Where’s my son?”
No one answered me.
“They’ll come find me. You won’t get away with this.”
The man next to me, the one who’d manhandled me at the gym, snorted, pulling the mask from his face. He had a bald head, like a cue ball, and a smashed face as if he’d taken one too many punches.
“They’re all dead.”
“What do you mean?”
“We knew they were coming. No one was left at the bunker, except for a little welcome gift The Vicar had us leave for them. They didn’t stand a chance.”
The men laughed as if it was the funniest joke ever told. Fear was a living, breathing monster, and he indeed had teeth. He also had a name—The Vicar. I thought I’d been afraid before, but the thought of Levi’s death shook me to my core. He couldn’t be dead. He couldn’t be.
I stayed quiet as we pulled into an empty parking lot, where I was thrown into the back of a van, unable to see where they were taking me. I tried to calculate the turns, but it was virtually impossible.
I’d dropped my phone in the commotion, so there was no way for anyone to track me. Cue Ball had tried to take the vials from me, but I insisted on keeping them with me at all times. “Highly unstable,” I’d told him, and with a grunt he’d left them alone.
I’d need to find a way somehow to contact someone once I was at the destination, and hoped that Ryder could use his magical computer skills and figure out where the hell I was. That was if he was still alive. I had to believe they were. If not—the alternative was too terrible to consider.
After two hours of driving—I only knew this because I asked Cue Ball incrementally what time it was—the doors opened, and I was grabbed by the arms and pulled from the van. I was in the drive-under of an abandoned ER entrance. The doors didn’t work, since there was obviously no electricity hooked up to the place, so the thugs who’d escorted me to my new home pried them open with a crowbar.
When we entered, it was like stepping back in time twenty or more years. It felt as if I’d walked into a dystopian novel where a catastrophic event had wiped people out in the middle of their workday.
Syringes lay on the floor half filled with blood, empty vials of medicines were turned over on silver trays, blue cloths laid over vacant beds, while an out-of-date incubator sat baby-less in the hall. The place creeped me out as we passed by rooms crawling with vines that had slithered into the building, wrapping themselves around the unused beds.
We entered a new wing of the hospital, this one dimly lit, the sound of a generator humming nearby. Wires fell from the missing ceiling tiles, a blue fluorescent bulb flickering, creating a strobe-like effect on the nightmarish tableau.
The doors at the end opened, and The Vicar, dressed in a teal-blue suit, his crisp white shirt opened at the collar, walked out, his hand perched on Hunter’s shoulder.
I didn’t think, didn’t wait for an invitation or a reprimand—I jerked free from the guards holding my arms and ran as fast as my feet would carry me towards my son. The Vicar released his hold, and Hunter met me halfway as we fell into each other’s arms.
Tears fell from my eyes, drenching the side of Hunter’s neck as I held him, sitting on the dirty floor of an abandoned hospital. Hunter’s own cries nearly broke me apart, and I just wanted to go to sleep and for all of this to be a bad dream.
Unfortunately, that wasn’t an option, so it was up to me to figure out a way out of the mess.
I pulled back so I could see Hunter’s precious face, his blue eyes swimming with tears.
“You okay, buddy?”
“Yes. I missed you so much.” A new barrage of tears flowed, and I held him closer, my angry gaze falling on the man responsible for my son’s broken heart and his lack of trust. A trust that would take me a long time to rebuild.
“Do you have what I need?” The Vicar seemed unaffected by our display of emotions, the heartless bastard.
“Yes.”
“Good. I have a lab set up for you on this hall. You’ll work there until you’ve finished five hundred vials of the antidote. You have three days.”
I stood, pushing Hunter slightly behind me. “Three days? It took an entire team of scientists twenty-four hours to produce a hundred. How in the world am I going to give you five hundred in that amount of time?”
“That is your problem. Not mine.”
“Take her to her room.” He said the words to the men behind me. “Marco, you will stay with her at all times—is that clear?”
“Yes, sir.”
“He’s not staying with me in my room.”
“You, my dear, do not have a say in the matter. Hunter, come with me.”
The Vicar held out his hand for Hunter, who shrank back behind me, grabbing tightly to my legs.
“No—please, no. Matias, he’s been through enough. At least let him stay with me.”
“I might have considered that if you’d given me reason to believe you can be trusted. As it is, you’ve already betrayed me once. I will not tolerate a second time.”
“Please, please. Don’t take him.”
The two thugs removed Hunter’s hands from my legs and dragged him back to The Vicar, his little screams and pleas breaking my heart into a thousand pieces. My hands went to my mouth as I tried to keep it together.
“It’s okay, buddy. Mommy will come get you real soon, okay? Be strong, Hunter. I promise everything will be okay.”
But he was beside himself, lost in the hopelessness and despair that I could not allow myself to sink into.
When The Vicar left, the two thugs took me to my room, which was a hospital room with two beds. It appeared to have been cleaned, no creeping vines snaking around the beds, but that didn’t change the eerie feeling that came over me as I took in my new home for the time being.
Marco settled himself on the bed, the plastic mattress squeaking as it adjusted to his weight. He lay back, closing his eyes. As if sensing that I was still standing there staring at him, he opened them. “You might as well get some sleep. It will be a long day tomorrow.”
Without another word, I went to the bathroom and slammed the door. I took in my reflection in the mirror—puffy, red-rimmed eyes, dark circles so purple it appeared as if I’d been in a fight and lost.
And in some ways I had been. I’d been unable to keep my son safe. No one had any idea where I was, so help would not be on the way anytime soon. Vicario wanted five hundred vials of the antidote in three days, and it was physically impossible to produce that amount even if I worked around the clock with no food and no sleep.
Still, I had to find a way out of there. Hunter not existing in the world wasn’t a future I could imagine. Levi would find us, if he was alive, and I had to believe he was. And if not, I would get us out. I would.
And with those thoughts scrolling through my mind on replay, I fell into bed and sank into a restless slumber.
***
I woke with a renewed determination to get my son back and get us the hell out of there. Since it was impossible to do what Vicario required, my only option was to kill him.
The question was, how? How did I get close enough to infect him with the disease or give him the wrong antidote? And then how did I get Hunter and myself out of this place and to safety?
I needed backup. I had to find a way to get a message to Levi and the Shadow Force team. The thought of Levi and the memory of Cue Ball’s words the night before came flooding back. Were they even alive? Had they been ambushed and now were all dead? I couldn’t fathom a world without Levi in it, so I pushed that thought far from my mind. They were fine. They had to be. I’d know if something had happened to him—right? I’d just feel it in my soul.
No, he was fine. I was sure of it.
I glanced over at Marco, who was still snoring away, and slipped out of bed. I showered, wrapping myself in the too-small towel while I finger-combed my hair. The Vicar had, thankfully, gifted me with a toothbrush and toothpaste and even a change of clothes in the form of scrubs that I was sure had been discovered in some supply closet at this godforsaken hospital, but they were still in the plastic, so at least they were clean. But no hairbrush was to be found.
The door to the bathroom swung open, and Marco stood there scratching his head.
“Oh, oops. Forgot you were in here.” His gaze traveled down my body, and he went from sleepy to turned-on in seconds.
He leaned against the doorjamb, his arm up above his head making his belly protrude even more than it already did. Marco was physically fit everywhere but his gut. He had massive arms and a thick neck and slicked-back black hair that looked like it needed a good washing.
“Well, I am in here. Do you mind?” I made a shooing motion with my hands, but he didn’t budge.
“You know, we could have a little fun in the evenings. No need for us to both suffer alone.”
I inwardly rolled my eyes, but the suggestion gave me an idea. I dropped my hands that were holding the towel in place, praying it stayed closed, and allowing Marco a better view of my body. I would play this to my advantage.
“That’s true. But if The Vicar found out—” I moved forward, closing the distance between us, and walked my fingers up his chest to the cleft in his chin. “He might be really angry.”
Marco swallowed hard. “Nah, he’d be fine with it.” His hands moved to my hips, and I ducked under his arm, sending him a wink over my shoulder. Marco groaned and shut the door.
I’d need to be careful with this game, or I’d wind up in trouble, but if I could get Marco to trust me, even just a little, perhaps I could find a phone and call for help.
I put my scrubs on in record time. I really didn’t want to be caught naked by Marco. By the time he emerged from the bathroom, I was waiting by the door.
“I’ve got a lot to do. Where am I working?”
Marco seemed a bit grumpy, but he nodded towards the door. “I’ll take you.”
We walked down the creepy hallway that was a little less terrifying in daylight but only showed how truly dirty the place was. It had probably not been used in twenty or thirty years.
Marco stopped in front of a laboratory that had also clearly seen better days, but upon a quick inspection, I saw it appeared to have everything I needed. It had also been cleaned recently, so at least I didn’t have to waste time with that.
I got to work immediately, setting up my supplies, all the while aware of Marco’s eyes on me. I put on a little show, wiggling my hips more than normal, bending over to tie my shoe that didn’t need to be tied, subtle things that would draw his attention like biting my lip while I pretended to be thinking.
By lunchtime, Marco was restless. He’d been on his phone most of the time, darting furtive glances in my direction when he thought I wasn’t looking.
“Is there something to eat in this place?”
Marco grunted and left the room, returning with a couple of brown paper bags. Inside was a sandwich, chips, an apple, and a small bottle of water.
“Thanks.” I smiled and took a bite of the sandwich. Marco didn’t say anything, just huffed and dug into his lunch.
After a few minutes, I decided it was go time. I needed to get Marco out of this lab and out of my way so I could get his phone. He didn’t seem like a really smart guy, more likely hired for his brawn than his brains. I was using that to my advantage.
I sighed. “So, you must be really important to The Vicar if he put you in charge of me.”
Marco looked confused, then must have decided he’d go with that assumption.
“Uh, yeah. I’m real important. I got my own office and everything.”
“Really? I’d love to see it.” I batted my eyelashes and put a finger to my lips, dragging it down my neck. Marco’s eyes followed its path, and he jumped up.
“This way.”
While his back was turned, I grabbed a syringe I’d filled with the mutated antidote. I was grateful Rich had sent several vials of it over instead of the one I’d asked for. Always prepared—that was Rich.
I stuck the syringe in my pocket and followed the big buffoon to the office he was so pleased with. It was an old hospital administrator’s office, a tiny box with a dusty desk and two leather chairs. Marco stood proudly in the middle of the room.
“See? All mine.”
“Nice.” I walked around, admiring the furnishings, the empty bookshelves behind the desk, and then rounded it and sat on the corner, crossing my legs. The action would have been a whole lot more seductive if I were wearing a short mini skirt instead of hospital scrubs, but it didn’t seem to matter to Marco. He took the bait, walking over so quickly I almost fell backward.
“Whoa, there, big guy.” I giggled, the sound obnoxious and a little maniacal.
“Sorry.” Marco leaned in, his mouth fastening to the side of my neck where he sucked for a few seconds and then trailed up to my mouth. I could feel the bile rising in my throat, but I pushed it back down and forced myself to pretend that I was in the moment.
Marco’s hands moved to his belt, and I knew it was now or never. I slipped my hand into the pocket of my scrubs and pulled out the syringe, popping the safety cover off with a flick of my thumb. Marco started to pull back to see what I was doing, but I grabbed the back of his head with my free hand and changed the angle so I could deepen the kiss. He moaned, his hands roving all over my body, my stomach churning with disgust.
For a moment, I had second thoughts. This guy was bad, sure—he worked for one of the most evil men I’d ever known existed—but did he deserve to die for it?
It was only a moment of hesitation before thoughts of Hunter filled my mind. And it was with his life, his safety, his future at the forefront of my mind that I plunged the syringe into Marco’s groin.
The big guy reared back, his eyes wide with shock and betrayal.
“Dammit—what was that?”
“I’m so sorry.” The words were so inadequate, but I wanted him to know.
“Wha—”
But that was all Marco was able to say before he fell face-first onto the floor of his beloved office.