Chapter Forty

The humvee bounced over potholes, nudging me against the soldiers then thrusting me towards the dash. The soldier with the gravelly voice, who I’d heard addressed as Major Sanders, yanked me back onto the seat. He maintained his grip on my shoulder and I clenched my jaw to avoid screaming out in pain.

“Can’t have that pretty face scratched up,” he said before returning to his conversation.

I tuned out the soldiers’ remarks and pondered ways to escape, ways to bring Abi to her knees. Every so often, words like “steak,” “champagne,” “promotion,” and “president” caught my attention and I would swallow the anger. How could they speak of celebration while so many of the people they’d previously counted as friends starved, or were dead? These were distractions I couldn’t afford.

Memories of Luc’s promotion bubbled to the surface and I felt my lips curl into a smile.

“Hit him hard,” I had whispered to a four-year-old Rosie and a twenty-month-old Maggie. “This is the only time it’ll ever be okay to hit your daddy, so make it count. We want that promotion to stick.” It was customary for the pinner to strike the pin for good luck. It also was a way to inflict pain upon the soldier, or at least it was when the insignia was still a sharp pin. They’d switched to patches a few years before, but the custom hadn’t been tossed.

The girls beamed, their eyes dancing with excitement.

“Jessa, do you want to carry Maggie? I don’t think I can handle both of them, and this’ll be a way you can participate, too.”

Jessa smiled with surprise and seeming desire to help, but she hesitated, looking to her mother for approval. She’d clearly believed that Sheila or her grandmother would be assisting me. A perfectly-coiffed Sheila nodded, and handed Maggie to her daughter, while Jessa mouthed, “Are you sure?” to me.

“Absolutely,” I had answered. “I want you to be a part of this, and your uncle will be tickled you’re up there. You know that we love you like a daughter, right? So it only makes sense for you to be involved in the ceremony, too.”

Jessa whispered something to her mother. I hadn’t been able to discern it, but it sounded like her wishing for her own father, rather than the one she had in her uncle who she saw maybe twice a year. Sheila’s eyes pinched to slits, and Jessa stood to join me.

We started walking to the podium, the girls’ giggles eliciting a smile from the general while Luc somehow maintained a straight face.

The general began to speak and Maggie leaned toward him and reached for his rank, interrupting the speech with a squeal of the word, “star.”

I cringed and said a quick prayer that Maggie would remember that it was her father she was supposed to slug, and not the general. Thankfully the general and audience of soldiers, our friends, and family laughed and distracted Maggie from whatever course of action she’d planned to take. Red-faced, she shrank into Jessa’s arms and I breathed a sigh of relief.

When the appropriate time had come, Maggie removed the double-bar captain’s insignia from Luc’s chest. I lifted Rosie to her daddy’s chest and she replaced the patch with one that had a golden maple leaf embroidered into it. Rosie then walloped her father with a punch that widened the general’s eyes and Maggie followed it with her own that hit Luc squarely on the chin.

“Wow. They can hit! Did I flinch?” a pink-chinned Luc had asked when we were out of the general’s earshot.

I’d laughed at him before answering that he hadn’t even blinked during the pinning. He pulled me into an embrace, careful not to show too much affection while in uniform. I frowned.

“You know I can’t kiss you here,” he whispered, “but I’ll more than make it up to you tonight.”

In a matter of seconds, Sheila and Sue joined our celebration. Sue threw her arms around her son then reached for Maggie. Sheila hugged her brother but it was almost robotic. The gestures were right, but she seemed distracted, bothered even. And soon, Mike, Carrie, and their three children swarmed us, Mike shaking Luc’s hand, while Carrie offered her warm congratulations to Luc and me.

“Do you need help with anything for the party?” Carrie asked me once the stream of well-wishing soldiers narrowed to a trickle.

“I’ll need to borrow your oven for the lasagna, but everything else is pretty much finished. Should be a piece of cake.”

“Well, if you need anything else, don’t hesitate to ask. You’re always helping me and I think it’s kind of lame that all you want from me is the use of my oven, especially when you have a hundred people coming to your house for dinner tomorrow night.”

“Oh, Carrie, stop it. I know you’d take a bullet for me. It makes my picking up your late-night calls and watching your kids pale in comparison.”

Those words jolted me back to the harsh reality of Carrie dying to keep my family safe. The thought of so many of the memory’s participants dead, captured, or implementing the Order’s plans sent chills up my spine. I had to do everything in my power to end their reign of terror.

Peering out the window, I took in the absence of cars as we approached the city. A few months ago, it would have been rush hour and we’d be stuck in a traffic jam marked with obscenities, accidents, and drivers willing to sell their souls if it meant moving ahead two inches. Now, nothing impeded our path.

The humvee veered off the expressway onto an artery that would eventually lead to the heart of DC. They were taking me on the scenic route.

We passed through neighborhood after neighborhood lacking the hustle and bustle of residents returning from a long day’s work. Cars still lined the sides of the road, but dust and grime covered their affluence. The only sign that someone had been here in the past several weeks was a green X that marked the majority of the doors along the thoroughfare. I assumed what few were left unmarked belonged to members of the Order.

Off in the distance, dark puffs rose beyond the Lincoln Memorial. Perplexed, I scanned the horizon, trying to determine the origin of the smoke. Gone was the towering obelisk, the beacon of liberty and hope named after our first president. I didn’t want to think about the Washington Monument in pieces and smoldering on the ground, but I was certain its absence wasn’t a magician’s trick. A gasp crossed my lips.

“Tour’s over, Lieutenant. Head to the compound,” Major Sanders ordered after hearing my reaction. He removed his hand from my shoulder and pulled a black cloth from his pocket. The blindfold stretched over my eyes and I felt his grip on my shoulder again.

Minutes later, the humvee came to a halt and the door whooshed open, cold air stinging my face.  The major guided me off the seat and helped me to the ground. One, two, three steps I counted until a change in the sound of the pavement and a turn to the right. Another thirty paces, and warm air swirled around me. I hadn’t heard a door open, but I was no longer outside.

“We’ll be descending three flights of stairs. Don’t try anything stupid,” the major said. I felt fingers clasp my other arm and we began our descent.

Were we in the metro? The stairwell of a parking garage? I listened for any hint of our location, but our steps were all I heard until we reached the last stair. Soft shuffles replaced the echoing clicks of shoes. We were on carpet, and by the smell of it, it had been cleaned fairly recently.

The soldiers led me through what I could only assume was a long corridor, after two hundred paces and no turns. Finally, a tap, followed by the sound of a door opening and then a woman’s voice. The door closed behind us and the blindfold slid away from my eyes.

Abi was seated at an executive desk and was speaking into a telephone, her lips pressed into a thin line. She broke away from the conversation to tell the major to uncuff me and to gesture for me to sit in the swiveling chair in front of her. She promptly returned to her call as I sat down.

Her desk was clean, the top stocked with the typical office supplies. The pencils and letter opener struck me as the best weapons within arm’s reach, but all would require much closer contact than the desk would permit. I raised my eyes from my surveillance in time to see Abi remove a pistol from the drawer and place it onto her calendar. Her manicured fingernails twirled the pistol while she listened to whoever was speaking on the line. The pistol spun on the desk until she stopped it, its barrel pointed directly at me. The color drained from my face, and she smiled, clearly contented by my show of fear.

She ran her fingers through her hair, as though one could be out of place. I was instantly reminded of how disheveled I must look. I was certain the wind had done me no favors, but I was not going to allow myself to be jealous of her. Ultimately, I had what she wanted and I smirked, knowing that it would provoke a reaction. She resumed twirling the gun.

“Yes, she’s just arrived. Okay, I’ll begin the interrogation and see you when you arrive.” She rolled her eyes. “Don’t worry, I’ll let you take care of the honors. I know my orders.” She hung up the phone and put her attention on me. “I honestly don’t know what he sees in you. Where’s the journal?”

The major retrieved the tablet from inside his coat and gingerly gave it to the colonel. Abi frowned in disapproval as she looked at its wet exterior. She thumbed the pages, scanning them then shaking her head.

“Boys, you may return to your quarters now, assuming that she’s been thoroughly searched.” Her voice was measured.

Major Sanders’ shoulders dropped upon hearing her command and he replied, “Yes, ma’am, the journal and the fuzzy handcuffs were all we found on her. She’s clean.” He saluted her and left the room with less pomp and circumstance than when he’d ushered me into the building.

Abi sat in silence, seeming to ponder her next move as she opened the journal again. I wanted to reach across the desk and bludgeon her with the pistol, but she hadn’t taken her hand off of it, and I’d be dead before I could rise from the chair.

“You seriously thought you could negotiate your family’s freedom with a Spanish notebook?” she asked incredulously. “Where’s the real one?”

“I think we both know that your offer wasn’t sincere. If I’d come with the books, I would have nothing to barter with. If I’d brought my children, they’d be carted off to your nearest internment camp or worse. This way, you have me, but you won’t receive your precious books until each of my demands is met. And right now, I want to see my husband.” My voice was firm, though I was quivering inside. I had no idea from where the strength came.

Abi launched the journal at me. She lifted the gun and clicked off the safety. Seeming to think better of it, she slammed it onto the desk and took a deep breath. “He isn’t your husband unless your marriage was performed by an Order official, but what makes you think he has any desire to see you? What makes you believe he isn’t here voluntarily?”

I scoffed at her suggestion. “I know my husband, and if he had wanted it, I would have been captured and you’d have your books and my family in custody. It didn’t quite work out that way, now, did it?”

She tilted her chin towards the ceiling in frustration. “You don’t know your husband half as well as you think you do.” She picked up the phone, pressed a button, and said, “Luc, please come to my office. I need to see you right away. Please bring Marcus with you.”

I was thrown by her use of his first name and the friendly tone of the call. It could easily be a trick since I wasn’t privy to the actual identity of the person on the other end. But if it was Luc, she wasn’t lying and I’d surrendered in vain.

We were quiet – I was sizing her up and plotting my next move – until a knock at the door interrupted the tension. It hadn’t been even a minute, so I deduced that wherever he was being held wasn’t far.

In walked a hulking soldier wearing the vibrant green uniform of the Order. Luc followed closely behind. He wasn’t in uniform, nor did he wear the white pajamas with green stripes that I’d seen the encampment’s prisoners donning on TV. Instead he wore khakis and a white button-down shirt. His face was shaven, his hair recently cut, and it didn’t appear that he’d lost any weight since leaving us at the cottage. He didn’t acknowledge my presence and seemed to skip over me as if I were nothing more than a fly on the wall.

“What do you need, Abi?” Luc asked once the door closed.

I tried to disguise the hurt that was seeping onto my face and to understand how he could pass me over in favor of her. Had he been brainwashed? Was he doing this to protect me, the kids? Regardless, it felt like the ultimate betrayal and it riddled me with the force of a thousand bullets.

It was Abi’s opportunity to gloat and she did in her smirk at my dismay. She stood from her chair, and I could almost see her wrestling with whatever remained of her conscience.

“I’m really sorry, Luc, but I think this is for the best.” She lifted the gun from her desk and fired a bullet into my husband. Crimson stained his shirt and he slumped to the floor. My screams reverberated around the room as Abi said to Marcus, “Take him to the infirmary. Tell the surgeons to withhold treatment until they receive my order.”

Marcus carried an unconscious Luc out of the office, as my screams became uncontrollable sobs.

“Would you shut up?” Abi’s voice held no remorse and it reminded me of the cold snake I’d always assumed her to be. She pointed the gun at me. There was something about her stance that clued me in to her desire to shoot me.

I promptly closed my mouth, the tears stinging me into submission.

“I believe we were discussing the journal’s whereabouts. You can disclose them now and Luc might be able to recover, or you can continue your game and have one more death to add to your tally. I’ll let you decide.”