Authors: Nadene Seiters
He yanks, and something solid on the other end stumbles.
Troy braces for the hit to the face from Nate, and takes it with grace as he
bounces back. He wraps his solid fingers around the man’s neck and squeezes, but
Nate is almost as large as Troy. This man has a better shot at beating Troy
rather than Bobby.
In the darkness of the room, they both grip each other’s
throats and squeeze as hard as they can. Bobby is still sniveling on the ground
about his broken jaw, and curls up against the wall as he tries to hold it in
place. Soon he’s going to pass out from the pain, and Troy wouldn’t feel right
killing a man while he’s down. But Nate isn’t down, not yet.
So he wraps some of the chain around his fist and slugs the
man between the eyes. Nate stumbles once, and then his knees buckle. The
clatter of a gun falling to the ground alerts Troy’s ears, and he kneels down
with his attacker to find it. To his left, close to Nate’s foot, is the Glock
that Troy purchased with the silencer. He doesn’t have time to wet it with
water to make it even more silent, but he had greased it. So he flicks off the
safety in one move and points directly in front of him. The gun goes off in the
room and leaves an echo that sounds like a firecracker.
Nate’s roar alerts Troy to the fact that the man is still
alive, and he fires again. This time there isn’t a noise to go with the sound
of a bullet cutting through flesh. Bobby’s still whimpering in the corner, and
Troy is pointing in his direction. He feels something in his chest that he
refuses to acknowledge and pulls the trigger. When he’s sure that each person
in the room, other than him, is dead, Troy flicks on the safety for the gun and
opens up the door.
He was wrong. He’s not inside of a storage room. Troy stares
at the interior of a parking garage that has been abandoned for years. He was
being held within a rather large storage room off the underground garage. The
sun peaks down through a hole in the ceiling where rebar is bent as if it melted
in a fire long ago.
Troy stands in the sunshine for over fifteen minutes as he
tries to wipe what he just did from his mind. The gun hits the concrete, and he
knows that the police will find it. They’ll also find his prints, well, Robert
Trenton’s prints. Their database won’t hold his new names, either one of them.
The FBI will know who murdered these three, but they’ll also know that Troy Red
did this in self-defense. How else was he supposed to get out of that room
alive?
Without looking down at himself, he stumbles up the concrete
steps to the ground level and looks out at the abandoned block of Los Angeles
that was almost his grave. There will be others hunting for Robert Trenton
because that’s the way life goes for him, but none of them will find him. If
they do, no one will find their deep graves.
A woman puts her hands to her mouth as she comes around the
corner with a grocery bag in her hands. The eggs crack and spill from the paper
bag when it slips from her fingertips, and her eyes bulge when she sees the
deep gashes across Troy’s chest. His eyes are glittering with something feral
and dangerous, but she slowly withdraws a small cellphone from her purse.
“I’m calling the police.” She says in a strong voice. Her
dark skin reminds Troy of chocolate chips, and her kind, brown eyes remind him
of his niece’s undying love for a man who killed others to survive. As the
weight of the matter starts to crush down on him, Troy falls to his knees on
the concrete and looks down at his traitorous hands covered in blood.
“Does it ever end?” He whispers as he hears the sirens in
the distance. All he can think about as they load him onto a stretcher is how
the woman who had dropped her paper bag had put her hands to her swollen
stomach. Is that what Cassidy was going to tell him? That she is pregnant?
Rolling over in the hospital bed, Cassidy pinches the bridge
of her nose as she tries to make her headache dissipate enough for her to
concentrate. The sound of a monitoring machine beeping loudly makes her want to
vomit, but it’s not the same feeling she had before outside of the dude ranch
barn. As the memory of vomiting all over Victor’s shoes flashes back, she feels
a flush coming onto her cheeks.
When her eyes open, the room is blurry for a moment as her
vision focuses, and then she wishes she were still passed out. Victor is
sitting with his hat pulled down over his face, and his legs spread out in a
plastic chair. He looks rather uncomfortable, but he’s snoring nonetheless. Rolling
over onto her back, she lets out a long sigh as she tries to remember what
happened after she passed out in the bathroom.
Out of her peripheral vision she sees someone with blonde
hair sitting in another chair with a baseball cap pulled down over his head.
It’s around eight in the morning, and she supposes that both men didn’t get
much sleep last night. Her hand automatically flutters to her abdomen as she
thinks, and then she pulls it away quickly. There’s nothing there. She took a
test, so why does she keep thinking that something might be there?
A few more minutes pass before a nurse coming shuffling in
quietly with a cart. She makes a shushing motion with her finger to her lips
and her eyes sparkle as she grabs a pudding cup off the cart and plops it onto
a plastic tray with eggs, bacon, and a piece of toast. While it all might sound
appetizing, it looks as if someone mutilated the toast, the eggs look as though
they must be just the whites, and the bacon was microwaved. It looks rubbery.
“So which one is the daddy?” The woman with brown, frizzy
hair asks as she moves an attached platform over Cassidy’s bed and puts the
tray down. Her eyebrows furrow as the woman looks at her expectantly, and then
her heart starts to race in her chest. The monitor shows how much the question
has actually upset her, and it prompts a nurse to come in with a worried
expression.
“What’s going on?” She asks loud enough to wake both men.
Victor’s legs jerk as he sits up and repositions his hat. As soon as he sees
that Cassidy is awake, he gives her a broad smile and crosses his arms over his
large chest.
“How’re you feeling?” He asks at the same time the nurse
asks the other woman what happened. Cassidy looks from one face to the next and
tries to gauge from everyone’s emotions just how serious this situation is. Her
bottom lip trembles as she starts to feel overwhelmed, and she wishes she could
throw herself out the window.
“Would you all just be quiet?” She yells, startling everyone
into silence. Her loud breathing is the only noise in the room as she methodically
rubs the bridge of her nose with two fingers. Her head is going to fall off
soon! “Will someone please explain to me what is going on?” The nurse who
brought breakfast pats her on the leg gently and retreats with her food cart to
do the rest of her rounds.
“I’ll get the doctor.” The other woman explains quickly as
she retreats from the room, as well. Feeling guilty that she’s almost cleared
the entire room, Cassidy lies back on the fluffy pillows behind her and closes
her eyes.
“Do you want me to draw the curtains?” Victor asks with a
gentle tone. With one nod of her head, the curtains are being drawn so that the
room is a little darker. She can actually hear her heart rate slowing as she
counts backwards from one hundred. It’s something that her father taught her
when she was young.
“Ms. Fern?” The doctor asks, and she recognizes her cover
name. Cassidy opens her eyes and sits up a little straighter when the female
doctor comes in. She’s not much older than Cassidy with a bright, wide smile
and pretty, brown eyes. Cassidy notices that both men in the room seem to sit
up a little straighter, too.
“Yes, Cassie Fern, that’s me!” She says nervously with a
little chuckle. The doctor gives her a funny look, but her smile never falters.
Moonlight rolls his eyes behind the woman’s back and repositions his baseball
cap so that it’s backwards. The man might have a chance if he could wipe the
desperate look off his face.
“I’m Doctor Gray, Cassie, and you’re in the Saint Ethel
Hospital. Do you remember what happened?” She shakes her head, and the female
doctor looks pointedly at both men. “Patient confidentiality, I’m afraid I’m
going to have to ask you two to leave since neither one of you are the father.”
Her throat starts to clog up, and she almost wants to ask both men to stay in
the room. Then she won’t have to hear what she knows is coming. Doctor Gray
sits down on a plastic chair near Cassidy’s bed, and her smile begins to turn
down.
“Cassie, did you know you were pregnant?”
Wow, that one hell of a way to have it broken to you.
Cassidy thinks as she shakes her head.
“Well, let me get you up to speed on this. You’re around two
months along. Don’t worry, they’re very healthy!” Cassidy knows that she’s
growing paler by the second, and her forehead feels clammy. She might vomit
again. “While morning sickness is quite common, seizures are not. Now, we did
some blood work, and I took the liberty of doing some testing on the fetuses
for you, as well.” Cassidy starts to grip the white sheets over her as she
tries to draw in deep breaths. Can’t Doctor Gray see that she’s going to pass
out?
“How many?” She chokes out faintly. The woman finally looks
up from her clipboard to see the distress on Cassidy’s face.
“Oh, oh I’m sorry! Three. You’re having triplets.” She
thought she was bad off before when she thought it was one! The room begins to
spin violently as her world crumbles away and she feels a sob building up as
she tries to comprehend what this woman is saying. Her fingers loosen on the
sheet as she falls backwards and loses herself into darkness.
She’s not sure how long she’s been unconscious, but the
doctor is now standing over her with a stethoscope to her chest and then the
woman moves it down to her abdomen. Cassidy tries not to think about what the
woman is listening for down there, and stares at the popcorn ceiling above her.
She wonders how they clean those things.
“Could you just tell me why I had a seizure? Is there
something wrong with me?” Cassidy tries to clear her throat as she’s speaking,
but it’s not working. She has a groggy voice from passing out, and it’s not
going to go away for the rest of the hour, most likely.
“No, of course not! You just had extremely low blood sugar.
Do you have diabetes?” Cassidy shakes her head.
“No, I’ve never had low blood sugar in my life.” She puts a
hand to her forehead and glances at the door. Moonlight and Victor have their
faces almost pressed to the glass as they stare in with worry.
“Have you been experiencing nausea?” Cassidy chuckles dully,
and the doctor smiles knowingly.
“I’ve been throwing up every morning, afternoon, and evening
for the past few weeks.” At least the heart monitor is not going haywire now.
“Well, dehydration and lack of proper nutrition would
explain all of your symptoms. We found nothing wrong with your blood work
otherwise. So we’ll just need to keep you here for another couple of hours to
monitor your condition, and then we’ll set you free with strict orders to keep
hydrated and keep eating. Triplets will suck the life out of you!” Cassidy
feels a tightening in her chest as the heart monitor starts to jump again, but
Doctor Gray puts a comforting hand on her knee.
“I’m kidding! Well, kind of. You’ll be perfectly fine as
long as you see your local gynecologist for regular check-ups. This will be
considered a high risk pregnancy, so you’ll need to go in often. They’ll
explain the risks for triplets when you go in next.” Cassidy’s head starts to
spin, and the doctor recognizes the look of nausea on her patient’s face and grabs
a basin. There isn’t much to come up, but it’s still gut wrenching.
Cassidy leans back onto the pillows and stares at the
ceiling as she tries to comprehend what she’s supposed to do with triplets. Her
hand rests on her abdomen as the doctor gets her some water to rinse her mouth
out with, and then Moonlight steps into the room. He looks nervous as he
settles into one of the plastic chairs.
“Get Troy.” He opens his mouth to argue, and she turns a
steely gaze on him. “You will contact him and let him know that he’s a father.
It’s his choice whether or not he wants to live up to that responsibility. But
I won’t have him walking around not knowing.” With that said, she closes her
eyes as she leans back and struggles to keep the tears in. She sincerely hopes
she won’t have to go at this alone.
Snippets of the doctor’s conversations over his limp body
come back to him as he starts to surface from unconsciousness.
Lost a lot of blood…
Can’t seem to find identification…
Going to need stitches on this one…
What the hell happened back there?
He surfaces with a loud gasp and immediately tries to sit
up. His jerky motion pulls the IV right out of his hand, but he doesn’t notice
the tiny prick of pain. A nurse tries to get him to lie back down, but he’s in
survival mode, and her hands all over him just makes him struggle harder. He’s
weak from blood loss and his body aches all over, but he’s still a formidable
opponent for five nurses, including one male.
“Lie down, you idiot! You’re going to rip out the stitches
and end up spending much longer in here than necessary!” He recognizes that
voice and tries to slow his breathing to a normal rate.
“Marty.” Troy whispers with a gritty voice. He tries to
clear his throat, but ends up making the situation worse. “What the hell are
you doing here?” He finally gets his eyesight aimed at Marty Summers and tries
for a smile. The man is wearing a Hawaiian shirt with a pair of khakis, and he
looks absolutely ridiculous. His silver hair is sticking up at all different
odd angles, and his brown eyes are narrowed with his dispassionate gaze.
“I was on vacation, dick. They called me back from the
Jamaican Islands to come get your ass. You know, I was really enjoying myself
there.” He throws up his hands in a placating gesture as Troy crosses his arms
over his chest. He’s disbelieving of the man in front of him, and he doesn’t
want the IV shoved back into his hand.
“Right.” He responds with a quipped tone.
“Okay, okay. I wasn’t in Jamaica, but I
was
on
vacation.” Troy just eyeballs the aging man in front of him and he finally
sighs. “Right, fine, I wasn’t on vacation. Let’s just get you out of here and
take you home. It’s Jack now, right?” The female nurse quirks an eyebrow and
Marty shrugs a shoulder. “He changes names often, sometimes it’s Jack, Jackie,
or Jackie Boy. You know, one of those guys.” She still doesn’t look convinced,
but Marty stares her down until the young woman retreats.
“I’m not going back to Colorado.” He pulls the sheet off
himself and starts to swing his legs over the side of the bed.
“So you’re officially declining the witness protection
program help?” Marty looks a little taken aback for once, but he regains his
composure almost as quickly as he lost it.
“No, I’m not. But you’re going to take me to Cassidy Grant,
or whatever her name is now.” Both men’s gazes meet, and Marty recognizes
what’s in the young man’s eyes. Well, he’s a young man compared to Marty
Summers. He used to see it in his own eyes when he was younger, the love and
compassion for another. Boy does he miss those days.
“You’re in luck, son. She insists that she speaks with you
in person as soon as you’re able to leave the hospital.” Troy stands up on his
own two feet, and Marty turns around as soon as the man pulls off the hospital
gown. “Jesus, kid! Your clothes are in the closet.” Marty points at the tiny
closet near the bathroom door and Troy pulls the door open to grab his clothes.
Another female nurse comes into the room and turns around
immediately when she sees Troy’s backside exposed for all to see. She has a
needle on a tray in her hands and sets it down on a table by the door gently.
With one clearing of her throat, Marty glances in her direction finally.
“I’m here to give him his tetanus shot. He’s going to need
it.” Troy grunts as he pulls on his pants and then winces when he pulls his
shirt over the stitches across his back and chest. He’s going to need some pain
killers if he’s expected to take any long trips.
“Fine, give that to me and some Vicodin. Then I’m out of
here.” The woman gets a stern look on her face as she holds up her hands in
front of her when she turns around. Troy is fully dressed, to her relief, and
she grabs the needle off the small tray.
“I’m afraid you should stay here for a few days. And we need
to know what happened. The police are investigating-” Marty puts up a hand to
stop her spiel and gets a small smile on her lips.
“I’m sorry, Ms-” He waits a long while before she
understands.
“Jessica, everyone calls me Jess.”
“Jess, you see, I’m a federal agent, and this man is coming
with me whether the local police like it or not. You can tell them whatever you
want, but as soon as that tetanus shot is in this man’s arm and a bottle of
Vicodin is there too, then we’re out of here.” She huffs once and jams the
needle into Troy’s arm with remarkably little fineness. When he flinches, she
only rolls her eyes at the absurdity. He didn’t flinch when he almost tore out
some of his stitches putting on the shirt. The baby can handle a rough
injection.
“I’m afraid I cannot give him a prescription without a
name.” The woman clips as she disposes of the needle into a medical waste bin.
“Put it under Marty Summers dear, and make it quick. He has
a plane to catch.” Troy almost groans aloud at the word plane, but it will get
him to Cassidy sooner. He just wants to see her face and smell the scent of
her.
The woman waltzes from the room the a perturbed look on her
face, and both men stand silently as they wait for her return. Marty checks his
phone three times and taps his foot when two minutes pass. He narrows his eyes
when the clock hits three minutes, and Troy chuckles aloud at the man’s
impatience.
“What’s so funny, Jack?” Troy stretches his right arm and tries
not to break any of the precise stitches.
“I think you’re more worried about getting out of here than
I am.” As if proving his point, Marty’s eyes flick in the direction of the
hanging wall clock again, and the woman finally returns with a bottle of pills
and discharge papers. A doctor is following her with a none-too-pleased
expression on his face.
“Mr. Summers, right?” Troy shrugs once with indifference as
he takes the pills from Jess. Her jaw is set as if she’s upset with him, but he
ignores her and turns his attention to the doctor. The discharge papers are
shoved into his hands along with a pen.
“So I can go?” He asks while glancing in Marty’s direction.
“You’re supposed to be detained here until the police
arrive, Mr. Summers. But your…
associate
has insisted that if you want to
leave, you’re leaving.” The doctor looks miffed by all of this, but Marty
Summers steps forward to rescue Troy finally from the verbal abuse.
“He’s healthy enough to travel?” He sounds bored, and Troy
recognizes his own tell before he starts using force.
“Well, yes if he’s careful with those stitches he can
travel. They need to be in for fourteen days, Mr. Summers. Then you will need
to find a local doctor that can check on them and take them out for you.” Troy
nods along impatiently, and as soon as the doctor takes a breath to continue,
Marty walks from the room followed by his ward for the time being.
“This is all bullshit, Summers, let’s spring this joint.”
The older man walks briskly down the hall and takes the stairs down to the
first level. Troy barely has enough time to catch up to him as he exits through
the front doors. There’s a vehicle already pulled up to the curb with a driver
wearing a pair of dark sunglasses inside. Marty, or whoever he truly is, slides
into the back and waits for Troy to follow.
“You got water, Ishmael?” The man in the front tosses back a
miniature water bottle, and Troy takes two of the Vicodin. They take off at a
slow rate until they’re on the highway. By the time they reach the airport,
Troy has determined the Vicodin is not working and takes another for good
measure.
They board a private jet rather than a commercial flight,
and Troy furrows his brows when he sits down in a leather seat.
“I thought you said we were going to miss our flight? Can’t
this take off at any moment?” Marty just gives him a sideways grin and leans
back in his own seat. The driver was left with the vehicle, and their pilot
seems to have a sense of humor.
“Please fasten your seatbelts, gentleman, and hold onto your
beers. We’re going to have a bumpy takeoff.” Marty idly rummages through his
cellphone and Troy thinks about telling the man he shouldn’t have it out during
takeoff, but changes his mind. His fingers grip the armrest on either side of
his seat as the jet starts to take off, and he barely feels the ripping of a
stitch in his back.
“I’m curious, Evans.” Troy flinches at the false name and
wishes he could go back to Troy Red. But maybe he can have them change it to
Troy Evans. At least the first name would be the same.
“About what?” The plane has steadied, and he dares to
unlatch his seat belt long enough to head for the flight attendant’s cabin.
This is where they keep the good stuff, but he grabs a bottle of water. He’s
already hopped up on Vicodin, so there’s no reason to be drinking too. Troy
doesn’t want to be too inebriated when he finally gets to see Cassidy again.
“Why did you do it?” Marty asks when Troy sits down. “You
could have lived a happy life in Colorado and left it all for the police in LA
to take care of.”
“Do you want the truth?” Troy asks as he uncaps the bottle
of water and takes a long swig. There’s nothing like pain pills to give a man
dry mouth syndrome.
“Yeah, the real reason you did it. Not the heroic version.”
Marty looks genuinely interested in Troy’s motive for killing three people, and
he wonders if it’s human curiosity or if it’s a professional’s curiosity. Marty
Summers and Troy are not that different in nature, really. They both kill in
cold blood as a career. It’s just a matter of who they do it for that makes it
right or wrong in most people’s eyes.
“It’s who I am, Summers. They were a threat to me and mine,
and I took them out. It’s as simple as that.” They both sit in silence as they
contemplate what Troy just said. Marty wonders if this man would have become an
agent if he had not been born into the wrong family. He would have made one
hell of an agent.
“So do you think that you’re going to be happy sitting at
home with a cute wife and nothing to worry about but whether or not your next
paycheck will be on time?” Troy snorts as he studies his water bottle and
watches a small bead of moisture fall down the plastic side. He’s thought about
that ever since he was captured and put into that dark room. He has the scars
to prove that he cares about the ones he loves, but is that enough for him?
“The truth?” He asks again. Marty nods with narrowed eyes.
“No, I won’t be happy sitting at home with a wife.” He pauses as he takes
another sip of water and swallows roughly. “I’ll be ecstatic, over the moon, in
heaven and hell at the same time, Marty. I want nothing more than to forget
about the terrible things I’ve done in my life, yet I can’t. But I’ll spend my
entire life trying to make up for it.”
Marty nods his chin once as he sits back in his seat with a
satisfied look on his face. He has a knack for knowing when perps are telling
the truth or not, and the man sitting across the aisle from him on the plane is
speaking from the heart. He’s glad to hear it. Because one more screw up on Troy’s
part, and he’ll be out of the program for good. But Marty doesn’t see that
happening.
The plane touches down onto the tarmac in Idaho, and Troy
groans as he thinks of the state known for its potatoes. If he had his choice
of places to live, he’d be in Hawaii right now. But he has a feeling that no-one
ever gets to go to Hawaii in the witness protection program. That would be too good
for people like him.
“We’ve still got a few hours to go by car to get to Cassidy.
Do you think you can make it?” The water bottle is empty, and he’s feeling
pretty high from the pills, so he smiles. It’s a goofy smile that has Marty
returning it, but it falters when he sees that Troy pulled a few stitches in
his back.
“We’ll have to stop real quick and get that cleaned up.”
Troy attempts to twist and turn so that he can see what Summers is talking
about, but it’s useless. He’s led from the plane like an invalid and across
another tarmac into a small building. It reminds him of the tiny airport in
Morgantown, Pennsylvania.
They exit out the front and get into another car. This time
it’s a black, nondescript vehicle with Idaho license plates. Marty doesn’t say
much as he starts the car and immediately gets onto a highway nearby. The cool
air of the mountains washes over Troy, and part of him thinks that maybe it
wouldn’t be so bad to live in a place like this. It’s remote, and it reminds
him of when he first met Cassidy.
I insisted on coming back
, she reminds herself as she
grooms a foal. There are over eight horses here for the guests during the
summer months, and they all need care. Yet she has a feeling she’s not allowed to
clean a stall because no one wants her to turn green again. Everyone on the
ranch knows, and everyone has their own opinions about the father not being
present.
Cassidy tries to ignore the pitying looks and goes about her
daily business. She insisted on being discharged from the hospital on the
grounds that there was nothing they could find wrong with her. Victor stomps
through the field with another bottle of water in hand and a banana muffin his
sister made this morning. If she has to eat another thing in the next hour,
she’s going to kill someone!
“I thought you might be hungry.” Victor’s kind eyes crinkle
at the corners as he hands her the muffin, and she proceeds to feed it to the
horse. They’re all going to get fat if she keeps this up, but she’s not hungry
at the moment.
“I told you. When I’m hungry, I’ll come inside to eat. I’m
fine
.”
A few of the other workers nearby glance in her direction with worried
expressions, but Victor is smiling.