Hilly never thought she’d prefer the man who’d led them on the punishing hike to the decoy camp, but in the face of the burly man with a gun trained on her chest, she missed him a whole heck of a lot.
She bumped along in some all-terrain vehicle, hands tied behind her back with something hard and plastic that bit into her skin. The driver had been the one to tie her up and throw her in here. Burly gun guy had been holding his weapon trained on her ever since he’d materialized in the lean-to.
The women had done nothing. They’d gone on as if they hadn’t even noticed two men grabbing her, overpowering her and taking her away. They’d chatted and cleaned as if no one else existed.
Hilly hoped she lived long enough to spit in their faces.
As much as the gun unnerved her, especially with the intense bumping of the vehicle as they drove too fast over rocky ground, she held on to the belief that she had a chance to survive. After all, if they wanted her dead they clearly could have done it back at the lean-to. Those women hadn’t cared.
Her true worry, one she kept trying to push away lest it made her cry, was that the man had lured Cam away to harm him. Cam could be dead or injured, just like her father could be.
She closed her eyes. Tears threatened. Hopelessness threatened. But the bottom line was they could be dead, sure, but they could just as easily be alive. It was all fifty-fifty happenstance, and the only way she found out for sure was if she lived.
So, she would. She would stay alive, and she would do what Cam had tasked her with: observe. Pay attention. File it all away. If she did that she could find her father, find Cam and escape this situation.
They’d said they were taking her to the compound to “await trial.” She didn’t know what that meant, but as the vehicle kept moving down the mountain, it didn’t seem to be taking the same confusing, circular route the other man had hiked her and Cam up. This was a straight shot to lower altitudes.
That was good. As long as they didn’t keep going too long, the decoy camp wouldn’t be too far away.
She tried to count the seconds and keep track of the minutes. The separation with Cam was scary and not at all ideal, but if these men brought her to the main compound she had a chance to find her father.
That was her primary goal. All others were secondary, no matter how often her mind drifted to Cam and if he was all right. Cam could take care of himself. He’d been a Marine. Surely that meant he could hold his own.
The vehicle slowed and Hilly held her breath. They’d been in the car maybe ten minutes. Could they really be this close?
She craned her neck, trying to get a glimpse of where they were headed instead of where they’d been. The man with the gun didn’t seem to care, so she kept looking, kept noting things like the cluster of trees, the abnormally shaped boulder. Anything that would help her find this place again if she escaped.
When the vehicle pulled through that cluster of trees, she nearly gasped. There were tents and lean-tos like at the decoy camp, but at least twenty of the weird square tents, and two giant lean-tos, along with a third building that reminded her of her cabin, though bigger.
The vehicle stopped in front of it and the driver hopped out. He grabbed her, pulling her over the side, while the man with the gun followed—always pointing that awful thing right at her.
The driver pushed her forward so harshly she nearly fell, but he grabbed her before she did, yanking her back up and sending a shooting pain through the joints of her shoulder at the odd angle of her arms. She cried out at the shock of it.
“Shut up,” the man hissed in her ear.
He kept nudging her toward the door of the cabin, though he was gentler now. She got the impression he wanted to hurt her, but was holding himself back.
But why?
The man knocked on the door, and she filed away in her brain the way he did it. Two short raps, then a loud bang with the flat of his hand. After a pause, he did it again, and she wished she’d thought to count the seconds of the pause. But it was more important to remember the things that mattered rather than beat herself up over the things she couldn’t keep track of.
The door creaked open. Inside was dark, despite the light of day outside, and Hilly’s body rejected the possibility of going into this shadowy, dank, dungeon-like abyss. She tried to step backward, lean or twist away, anything but be forced inside.
But there were two big men behind her, and eventually they maneuvered her into the darkness.
This was the most panicked she’d felt the whole time. Being tied up, being taken somewhere against her will wasn’t a picnic, but the darkness had panic crawling through her veins, terror roiling through her stomach.
“Please,” she gasped through breaths that were harder and harder to take.
When a light flicked on, she flinched against the sudden brightness. One of the men holding her arm chuckled, then they were pulling her forward, and she forced her eyes open, forced herself to observe, to watch.
It was one big room inside the cabin, set up like an old-fashioned church. She’d seen pictures of churches in different textbooks or articles. Pews lined the sides, an aisle in the middle, but it led to a long table, with three men seated on the other side.
They’d said trial, and while the seating was church-like, she decided that was not what this was. It was a courtroom.
“Will you please state your name?” one of the men said, holding a pen in one hand.
She looked around wildly. But there were only the two men holding her, and the three men behind the desk asking her calm questions.
“State your name, please,” the man repeated, his voice still calm but lined with steel.
“L-Leigh. Leigh Tyler. My name is Leigh Tyler.”
He wrote something down, conferred with the men on either side of him, then nodded. “We’ll ask one more time. State your real name.”
“I just told y—”
Almost simultaneously with the man’s sharp nod, she felt a sharp, punishing blow to the back of her knees. She fell to the ground on a yelp of surprise and pain, both from the blow and the way her knees hit the hard ground.
“Are you ready to tell us your real name?”
Hilly squeezed her eyes shut, focused on the cool of the dirt underneath her palms rather than the throbbing pain in her knees. She swallowed, breathed and then opened her eyes, looking straight at the man asking the questions.
“My name is Leigh Tyler.”
Again he nodded, and again she was hit with something hard and painful, this time against her back. She tried to bite back the cry, but it was too painful. Too much.
“Another chance,” the man said, so calm and untouched by any of this.
She struggled to breathe and she couldn’t decide what was worse: the pain or the truth. But if it were Cam in this situation, and it was very possible he was somewhere else in the same exact situation or a worse one, he would take the pain. He wouldn’t break, not if it put her at risk.
She knew that, beyond a shadow of a doubt, so she braced for the next blow and repeated her fake name.
She waited for the blow, but it never came. Eventually she opened her eyes, looking up at the men behind the table. Did they believe her now?
But the man was smiling pleasantly, and Hilly didn’t think that boded well.
“If pain won’t sway you, perhaps this will.” He made a gesture, and the man to his left got up and went to a door in the back of the cabin. He opened the door, and motioned someone inside.
A small man, head bowed, shuffled in, someone behind him pushing him forward. His hands were tied behind his back much like hers, and she could tell despite his downward-cast face there were bruises across his cheek and neck.
He was pushed forward, something harsh ordered at him and he finally looked up. When he locked eyes with Hilly she had to swallow a gasp, swallow the word that wanted to come out of her mouth.
Dad. Dad. Oh, God, Dad.
“Recognize each other?” the man behind the table asked, something like pleasure rippling through his voice.
“N-no,” Hilly said firmly, hoping her father would back her up. She swallowed at the bile rising in her throat. She couldn’t let panic or terror win. “Are you going to do that to me?” she whispered, hoping it would make them think she was only scared of being the next—not because she recognized her father.
Dad. Dad. He was bloody and bruised, but he was alive. She wanted to cry, weep with relief, and she couldn’t let herself.
She had to focus, and think, and somehow get them both out of here.
“I told you,” Dad said, his voice sounding raspy and abused. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I killed the girl like you told me to all those years ago. I don’t know who this is.”
Killed the girl?
“Our intelligence says otherwise, brother.”
The way the man said brother made Hilly’s skin crawl, but she grabbed on to Dad’s story.
“I don’t know who he is. I don’t know who you are. I just want to go back to my husband. Please.” She didn’t look at her father, hoped he had the good sense not to react to that.
“Your husband,” the man said with a little chuckle. “Cameron Tyler.”
“Yes. Yes, please. He’s okay, isn’t he? Can I see him? Can’t you just let me go? Please. I’m only here because he wanted to join you guys.”
The man made a considering noise, and when she dared look up at him, his gaze was on her father. She couldn’t risk looking at him, as well. She might fall apart, or he might.
“Does the name Hillary Simmons ring any bells to you, young lady?”
Ice settled low in her gut and spread up her spine, just like when Laurel had said the name Hillary—was that only two days ago? She kept her gaze steady, thinking about Cam and what he would do in this situation.
Remain calm. Stay as close to the truth as she could. File it all away to use later. “It doesn’t. I told you, my name is Leigh Tyler. I just want to go back to my husband.”
“Where did you meet your husband, Mrs. Tyler?” he asked pleasantly enough, though he said Mrs. Tyler with the kind of sarcasm that made it clear he didn’t believe her.
Stay close to the truth, just like we practiced. “The police station, believe it or not.”
“And what were you doing at the police station?”
Stay close to the truth. Remember the plan. It was her mantra now. Her center of calm. “He was reporting a crime. I was visiting a friend.” They’d agreed to stay close to the truth, without giving away she might have been reporting Dad missing. Flip their roles, be vague about the crime.
“You have a friend at what police station exactly?”
Her gaze sharpened on this man, who apparently thought she was stupid enough to give him more ammunition to use against her. “I’m not telling you that while you have me tied up and have no concern over physically attacking me. I won’t bring my friend or my hometown into whatever this is. You’re a madman.”
The man’s smile spread. “Suit yourself.” Once again, he conferred with the man next to him, their whispers too low to make out any words.
The other man, who hadn’t spoken at all, got to his feet and went over to the man holding Dad. He whispered something in his ear, and the man nodded. Then he walked over to the men behind her.
Hilly shook, and she didn’t try to stop herself now. They’d expect her to be afraid, wouldn’t they? Why not let her actual fear show through when Leigh Tyler, stranger to all this, here only because her husband wanted to join the Protectors, would definitely be horrifically afraid?
He whispered something to the man who’d driven them here, and the driver nodded. He did the same to the man who’d continually trained the gun on her. Each man grabbed an arm and hauled her to her feet, then started dragging her toward the back door.
Dad was already being led out by the man who’d brought him in. In complete silence, they were taken to a tiny building behind the first. It looked much like the cabin she’d just been in, but there were no windows.
Greasy panic crawled through her and the “please, no” was out of her mouth before she could think to fight it back. “Don’t. Please.”
But they tossed Dad inside, and then her. It was pitch-black, and she heard the sound of locks clicking in the doors. She was standing, hands tied behind her back, in a small, stuffy, black space.
“No. No. No.” She didn’t think she could take this. For a blinding moment of panic she opened her mouth to yell out exactly who she was.
“Shh,” Dad said quietly. “It’ll be okay.”
She thought of Cam telling her that. Things were not okay.
Except Dad was alive, and they were together.
“Tell me, Mrs. Tyler, how’d you end up here?” he asked loudly, a clear hint she was supposed to keep pretending.
She swallowed, tried to calm her breathing, her heart. Her legs ached and tears were spilling over, but she was alive and Dad was alive, and Cam was somewhere out there and it was possible he could save them if they couldn’t save themselves. It had to be possible.
“My husband read about the Protectors. He wanted to join them. So, I came with him. We were going to join them.” She paused, taking another deep, calming breath and letting it out. “What’s your name?”
There was a pause. “James Adams.”
It was the name she’d always known her father to use. The name there was no matching record of. Hilly frowned, but she kept on. “How did you come to be here?” she asked, hoping that even in lies she could find some truths.
“I’ve been a member of the Protectors since the seventies,” Dad said carefully. “But I haven’t lived at the compound since the eighties. It was too confining. I wanted my own space, but I still came back for meetings.”
That could be a truth. Clearly the Protectors knew who Dad was, knew the name James Adams, so most of what he told her could be the truth. She had to hope in the truth she could find some potential for escape.
“If you’re a member, why are they treating you this way?”
“They think I’ve betrayed them.”
“How?” she demanded, wincing at how desperate she sounded.
“They seem to think... They think instead of killing an enemy’s daughter as they tasked me with years ago, as I accomplished years ago,” he said firmly. “They think I kept her and secretly raised her as my own instead.”
Hilly didn’t breathe. There was a buzzing sound in her ears, a slow-blooming pain in her chest.
Raised her as my own.
Hillary Simmons. Hillary.
Raised her as my own.
“Breathe,” Dad whispered, something like regret laced in that very simple word.
Still, she did as she was told. She sucked in air, let it raggedly out, and she swallowed down all the words scrambling for purchase, desperate to escape.
I can’t be her. I can’t be.