Enigma Black (30 page)

“Get your helmet on,” he ordered, “just in case we have to make a quick escape.”

Before I knew it, he took off, slamming me into the passenger side door. I angled my arm up, grabbed my seatbelt and secured it around my body. “You could have given me some kind of warning.”

“Yeah, I could have, but what fun would that have been?”

The car sped through the tunnel, blaring through its entrance into the pine forest. I glanced at the dash, noticing that it wasn’t laid out the way a normal car dashboard was, which, by now, really shouldn’t have been a shocker to me. Blake pressed a button, lighting up a screen in the center of the console between him and I. In the screen was an image from the training room where everyone was still assembled. Inez walked over to the camera.

“Inez,” he began, “we’re en route to the target. We’ve taken vehicle number 445A. Please keep us informed of any new developments while en route.”

“Roger, Blake.”

He turned off the screen just as the car emerged from the trees and onto the roadway where he punched the accelerator. I watched the speedometer: 40…60…85…110… After 123, I focused my attention on the roadway hoping that, if he were to lose control, our deaths would be quick and relatively painless.

“You look like you’re going to be sick.”

“No, I drive 123 miles per hour all the time.”

“Actually, we’re going 154 right now.”

“Stupendous.”

“At this rate, we’ll be in the vicinity of Hope Memorial within 25 to 30 minutes.”

“It’s comforting to know that you fully anticipate getting us there in one piece.”

He laughed. “Don’t like my driving, do you?”

“When my eyes are closed, it’s perfectly fine. By the way, do you really intend on me staying back at whatever hideout we establish?”

“Nope.”

“Didn’t think so. So, you’re totally okay with defying Victor, too?”

“Yep.”

“Glad we’re on the same page.”

“The way I see it, you know more about this hospital than any of us. You’re our best asset for this mission. It would be stupid for me to leave you completely out of the equation when your knowledge could solve it before our time runs out.”

“Are you going to tell me now what Victor meant about things not going as planned?”

He grew sullen. He’d been avoiding an answer to this question, and I could tell he’d hoped I wouldn’t bring it up again. His brow was furrowed with concern sprinkled with defeat. “I don’t suppose you’re going to take no for an answer on this, are you?”

“Not a chance.”

“What Victor means by that is if…if we were to confront The Man in Black, and in all likelihood we will, if one of us is injured we can’t seek treatment from anyone outside of the Epicenter. It would be a huge breach of security, compromising our entire program. Our funding would be cut and everything we’ve gone through would have been for nothing.”

“If…one of us is injured, and it’s a survivable injury only if action is taken in…oh…let’s say five minutes…that doesn’t matter to them?”

“No, it doesn’t.”

“We’re supposed to die as opposed to being treated by a third party?”

“Yes.”

“Well, I guess the only solution to that is to not get injured at all then.”

The familiar smirk returned to his face. “That’s the spirit.”

Our car turned down Blossom Street, the surroundings becoming more and more recognizable, telling me that we were less than a mile from Hope Memorial. As we turned down the street, a police car pulled out of a dark alleyway, coming within inches of our bumper. A red beam appeared from the windshield, a sign that our license plate was being scanned and read.

“Government plate?” I asked.

“Yeah, he won’t dare try to pull us over,” Blake prophesied. As though silently agreeing with him, the officer, appearing satisfied with the information he received, pulled into the lane next to us, nodding at Blake as he drove by. We continued down Blossom Street, eventually passing Hope Memorial, my former home. A shiver ran throughout my entire body, and goose bumps prickled my skin.

“What if he’s watching us this very second?”

“Let him watch us then. The sooner he attacks, the sooner our job is done.”

“And the sooner we catch him, the sooner we can return to our lives.”

“Yeah. Our lives.” The tone in Blake’s voice seemed less than enthusiastic.

“You don’t seem too thrilled with that premise.”

“That’s because I have no life to return to. The Epicenter and the cause are my life now. To be honest with you, I’m not too sure what I would do if I weren’t there. I guess I never thought about it before.” He turned down the alleyway of an abandoned building two blocks from Hope Memorial, angled the car behind a weathered dumpster, and killed the engine.

“Let’s cover her up, then develop our plan of attack,” he announced as we emerged from the car. I peered in the dumpster, where I spotted some cardboard. Once the car was successfully covered, Blake and I, donning our masks, made our way down the dimly lit street to the doorway of a dilapidated building. From the looks of the weathered advertisements on the window, our chosen hideout had once housed fine antique furniture. With a swift kick, the boards covering the doorway were reduced to splinters by the force of Blake’s foot.

“Show off,” I mused.

“Ladies first.” He gestured for me to enter.

“Who said chivalry was dead.”

“Chivalry? I’m sending you in first to make sure this place really is abandoned.”

“You’re using me as a human shield. How sweet.”

“Only the best for you, babe. Don’t say I never gave you anything.” I stepped inside the pitch black building, allowing my eyes to adjust to the infinite darkness that encapsulated the room. Luckily, a hint of moonlight shone in an un-boarded window, creating somewhat of a lunar light source. In the light of the moon, I saw a figure facing me at the far end of the room. My body stiffened as a surge of adrenaline overcame my being.

“Calm down, Cujo. You’re looking at a mirror,” Blake laughed, thoroughly amused.

“I knew that.” My body relaxed, and I was happy that it was too dark for Blake to see the crimson on my flushed cheeks.

“Uh, huh.” We wandered around the cluttered building, avoiding pieces of broken furniture and whole pieces of perfectly good furniture left in the previous owner’s hasty retreat. Buildings like this were common place around here. Once the frantic mortgagee left town, ultimately defaulting on their loan payments, the banks took over. Having worked at a bank, there were a few times when I was called in on weekends to help clear away the possessions of the former tenant of a building we were in the process of repossessing. Most of the time, the bank, after failing to locate the whereabouts of the tenant, would just send the confiscated items to auction and pocket whatever money was made. Then again, sometimes we employees would benefit from the cleanups, getting first dibs before the items were hauled away. The kitchen table in my former apartment came from just such repossession.

I located a mattress amidst a pile of discarded dresser drawers. Clearing it, I lay down, enjoying the feeling of an actual bed underneath my back instead of the board-like imposter mattress my room at the Epicenter offered. Blake walked over and sat down beside me. The mattress shifted with his weight. “Are you worried?” He asked, a hint of compassion reflected in his voice.

“Of course I am. I’m not worried for me, though. I’m worried for all of those patients, those physicians, nurses, visitors and…”

“Chase?” Blake interceded.

“Yes. As selfish as it may sound, I’m worried about him most of all.”

“You aren’t going anywhere near the pediatric unit, you know.”

“What if that’s where the action is?”

“We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.”

“Some plan that is.”

“Speaking of plans, we should probably come up with one of those.”

“That’s probably a good idea considering daylight is only a couple of hours away.”

He dusted off the side of the mattress and laid down next to me, staring up at the ceiling. I shifted to my side, my head resting on my arm, spinning my finger around an indentation in the mattress, following one of the stripes that made up its pattern like an imaginary roadway. Blake turned his head to watch me, obviously amused. “I plan on putting street clothes on over my suit while I scout around the hospital using the map you’re going to draw for me based upon your memory of the hospital’s layout.”

“You know, I’m not an expert. They’ve added an entirely new wing for the cancer center that I’m not at all familiar with.”

“Do the best you can.”

“What do you want me to do? It’s not like I can just walk around there without being noticed.”

“I need you to scout around the outskirts of the building, letting me know if you see anything that appears out of place to you. Also, do the best you can to break into the ventilation system. That seems to be a popular place for him to set up explosives.” He rolled on his side to face me. “But…most importantly...I need you to keep your head on your shoulders. Whether Chase is there or not, don’t let your emotions get the best of you.”

I nodded without looking him in the eye, rolling back onto my back. His eyes were still on me. He was deep in thought. My guess was that it had nothing to do with the impending confrontation. “Celaine,” Blake’s voice cut through the silence, “do you think you’ll ever be able to move forward in your life without him?”

“If by that you mean will I ever completely be over Chase…well…no…I can’t see that ever happening.”

“Kind of what I thought.” There was a touch of disappointment in his voice when he spoke. “How long has it been since you’ve slept?”

“A couple of days,” I replied.

“Why don’t you try now? I need you in top form tomorrow. I’ll do a preliminary patrol of the streets and the buildings surrounding the hospital.”

“The chances of me falling asleep right now are slim to none.”

“Yeah, but the chances of there being any attack for a few more hours are also slim to none, so you might as well rest up while you can.”

“Okay. You’re the boss,” I conceded.

“Don’t worry; I’ll wake you if there’s any action.”

“You’d better.” The mattress shifted again as he stood up to leave me alone with my restless thoughts.

****

Blake paced the sidewalk, feverishly taking drags from a cigarette out of the pack he’d managed to keep stashed away from Victor‘s prying eyes. Smoking—especially when it pertained to someone of his kind—was not exactly smiled upon back at headquarters.

“Damn it.”

He threw the half-smoked cigarette onto the ground, stomping it out against the cracked concrete. There’d only been one other time when a woman had made him feel the way he felt now and that had ended miserably. So why was he considering changing his entire philosophy for this one? Was she so different? Yes, he already knew she was. Never before had a woman been able to simultaneously intrigue
and
terrify him. Try as he might, he couldn’t deny his feelings for her even though he knew he had to. For the sake of the mission, and his pride, he had to.

But that was easier said than done. The way she smiled that crooked smile of hers; the way her eyes seemed to penetrate his soul; the impeccable, smartass retort she always seemed to come up with even to his most audacious of comments. She was the complete package, one of which he’d been incredibly protective of since her arrival at the Epicenter. Surely, her feelings for Chase would grow cold, especially when he found some other broad to shack up with to take her place.

Running his hand through his disheveled hair, Blake nervously pulled out another cigarette, stuck it in his mouth, and lit it behind his cupped hand. Nerves always had a way of bringing out the chain-smoking pacer in him, and tonight was no exception. Ash poured down, falling to the ground slightly behind his footsteps. “Just tell her now, you idiot,” he muttered.

Yes, he would tell her. At the very least, it would give her something to think about and, who knows, maybe someday she would look at him with the ability to reciprocate those feelings burning within him. Taking a final drag from his cigarette, he tossed it to the pavement, watching it roll into an awaiting storm drain. It was time to man up.

Shuffling back up the sidewalk to the door of the furniture store, he hunched over to crawl through the remnants of the doorway, quietly making his way back to the mattress where she lay…sleeping. He’d only been gone twenty minutes and she was already sleeping. Carefully, he sat down at the foot of the mattress, doing his best to avoid disturbing her. In the silence, with his head in his hands, he listened to the melody of her breathing, knowing that this was as close to perfect as he was going to get tonight.

Tomorrow
, he thought.
I’ll tell her tomorrow
.

In that instant, she began stirring in her sleep, mumbling unintelligible words he couldn’t quite make out, until a single, undeniable name escaped her lips, tearing through him.

“Chase,” she moaned.

Damn it
.

Chapter Twenty-Six

The Incident at Hope Memorial Hospital

I awoke as the sunlight broke through the horizon. Blake was nowhere in sight, still patrolling, perhaps. My muscles ached. I stretched them, eliciting a charley horse in my right calf. Frantically, I jumped up, putting pressure on the afflicted limb in the hopes of gaining some relief. Instead, I only managed to further exacerbate the matter by tripping over one of the many piles of junk congregated throughout the building. One thing was for sure, no matter how much science intervened, it still couldn’t completely eliminate my propensity for klutziness. It was as though it’d been infused in my DNA somewhere.

From my vantage point flat on the ground, I saw a pair of boots entering the building. My eyes trailed up from their leather exterior to the figure they belonged to: a blue jean-wearing, sweater-donning Blake complete with coffee and doughnuts to start the day. His expression changed from one of exasperation to one of curiosity as he cocked his head.