Grandfather (36 page)

“Quite a scene out there,”
Mrs. Harrison said. “I just don’t know what I’d do if I had to be
out there. People are going crazy and arguing and . . . ugh, it’s
such a disaster.”

She took a seat on one of
the sofas and picked up a glass half full of wine that had been
sitting on the end table. Mrs. Harrison motioned for us all to take
a seat. Belladonna did so beside her. Mrs. Harrison seemed to not
mind, even though she had no idea who Belladonna was. Edgar chose a
comfy-looking chair across from them, and Ashton and I sat on the
couch next to him.

“This is just such a
surprise. I didn’t think I’d ever see you again. Of course, my
husband thought you’d be making an appearance in the future. Now,
what are you doing back out?” Mrs. Harrison asked. “Aren’t you
worried you’ll be seen?”

“We wanted to risk it,” I
answered.

“Well, now, you have to
tell me what for.” Mrs. Harrison sat her glass down.

“I was hoping to see Mr.
Harrison,” I told her.

“My husband,” she said.
“Now that’s a wish I can’t grant you, dear.”

We said nothing. That was
unfortunate. Mrs. Harrison gave Belladonna and Edgar suspicious
looks. She looked back at me. “Who have you brought with you?” she
asked.

“Mrs. Harrison,” I said.
“You know that your husband saved me?”

Mrs. Harrison laughed. “Do
I know? Oh dear, of course I know! I helped plan it beforehand, and
it was rather risky if I must say so myself. But it was well worth
it. I trust that you agree.”

I nodded.

“We thank you for that,”
Belladonna said. “We were worried something had happened to
him.”

“And the other two?” Mrs.
Harrison asked. “Weren’t you worried about them as
well?”

“Of course we were worried
about them,” Belladonna added quickly.

Mrs. Harrison looked at me
and then at Ashton. “Where is the girl?” she asked. “She was so
beautiful. In fact, she reminded me of myself in my younger days.
What was her name?”

“Marley,” Ashton
answered.

“That’s right,” Mrs.
Harrison said, taking another sip of wine.

“She stayed behind with
her mother,” Belladonna replied.

“So sweet,” Mrs. Harrison
said. She examined Belladonna from head to toe. “You know, green
looks so good on you. I have a dress that would probably suit you
perfectly.”

“Oh,” Belladonna said,
taken aback. “Oh, no thank you. I have dresses of my
own.”

Mrs. Harrison didn’t
pursue any further. She faced me again. “Now, what is it you want
with my husband? He’s quite a busy man. Busy, busy, busy! And you
never told me who you’re with.”

“I’m
Belladonna.”

“And I’m
Edgar.”

Mrs. Harrison nodded.
“So,” she said simply. “Names are important, yes, but they don’t
tell us who a person really is.”

Belladonna frowned,
looking a bit annoyed. She took a deep breath.

“They’ve been keeping me
safe from Cornelius,” I told her, trying to make things easier. “We
can trust them. If it wasn’t for them, I’d be with Cornelius right
now.”

“The rebellion group?”
Mrs. Harrison asked. “My husband did mention it.”

“We’re that group, Mrs.
Harrison,” Belladonna said.

“Tryin’ to do everything
we can do expose Grandfather,” Edgar added.

Mrs. Harrison chuckled.
“Well, I do believe that has already happened, wouldn’t you
say?”

“It has,” Belladonna
answered. “Thanks to Ashton, here.”

“And why is that?” Mrs.
Harrison asked.

Ashton explained to her
how he had snuck to Cornelius’s office and found the letter and
recording.

“We gave it to the press,”
I told her.

“Well, then,” she said. “I
suppose you guys have succeeded in letting those know Grandfather
is out there somewhere. I do applaud you.” Mrs. Harrison slid her
bracelet off of her right wrist and put it back on. She repeated
this several times.

“Do you believe?” Ashton
asked. “Believe that Cornelius is their leader? The Grand
Imperial?”

Mrs. Harrison pondered as
she continued playing with the bracelet. Finally, she said, “My
husband and I do not trust Cornelius,” she said. “I do not know if
he is actually a part of Grandfather or not. But, alas, I do
consider every possibility. My husband, you see, says that
Cornelius
is
involved.”

“He’s right,” Belladonna
said.

“Richie predicted
something big was about to happen,” Mrs. Harrison said.

I remembered Mr. Harrison
telling us the same thing.

“
I suppose he was
right.”

“Damn straight he was,”
Edgar blurted out, accidently letting out a burp at the end of his
sentence. Mrs. Harrison gave him a look of disgust.

“My other question,” Mrs.
Harrison said. “As I said before, my husband is quite the busy man.
If he wasn’t, we’d probably never have the privilege of having all
of this. What is it you want from him? Do you want him to join
you?” She glanced at each of us, clasping her hands
together.

“Yesterday, Mr. Harrison
told me that he had an operation going on that would keep him safe
or prepare him for what was about to happen,” I told her. “We were
hoping to talk to him about it and –”

“Perhaps we could combine
our resources,” Belladonna interrupted.

“Now what resources might
you have to offer him?” Mrs. Harrison asked.

Belladonna looked at
Edgar. He grunted. “Mrs. Harrison,” he said. “I’m a wealthy man. I
used to live within this wall before.”

“I don’t think my husband
needs more bitcoin,” Mrs. Harrison said.

“But we have information
we can offer him,” Belladonna said. “We have information on
Grandfather: Proof that they knew about the president’s
assassination beforehand.”

“And we have people ready
to take any action to destroy their power,” Edgar added.

“We have people coming
soon, too,” Ashton said, referring to the men Robert were out to
get.

“More importantly,”
Belladonna said. “We will have a way to identify every member of
Grandfather.”

Mrs. Harrison actually
looked impressed. But she didn’t say anything.

Belladonna continued. “I
don’t know what kind of operation your husband has, but if it can
help us, and we can help him . . . we should combine those
resources.”

“Perhaps,” she said. “But
it is up to my husband, and he’s not here at the moment. I’ll
definitely be telling him that you stopped by. He’ll be just as
surprised as I.”

We were all kind of
disappointed. When were we going to have the chance to talk to Mr.
Harrison again? I sure hoped that Belladonna didn’t plan on taking
me to the city every day until we actually caught him.

“When will he be back?”
Belladonna asked quickly.

“Hard to say, dear,” she
answered. “He was gone all night. I may not see him until
tomorrow.”

On TV, some young man was
interviewing a random older woman on the streets. “I don’t think
Cornelius could ever be a part of Grandfather,” she told the
reporter. “He’s such a lovely man.”

Another middle-aged man
appeared on the screen, talking to a different reporter. “I just
don’t know who to trust anymore,” he was saying. “I can’t even
trust our president right now.”

“It seems as if we’re all
fighting each other,” Mrs. Harrison said sadly. She had also been
watching the TV. “I hope everything is worked out quickly. I don’t
want to spend my older age living in chaos.”

“Remember,” Edgar said.
“for something to get better, it’s gonna get pretty damn ugly
first.”

“Ah, yes . . . what did
you say your name was?”

“
Edgar.”

“
Well, Edgar.
Unfortunately, you’re probably right. Oh well. If it’s going to
happen, it’s going to happen. No need in trying to prevent
it.”

Belladonna stood up slowly
and thanked Mrs. Harrison. “We appreciate your time.”

Me, Ashton, and Edgar
stood up and thanked Mrs. Harrison as well. “Don’t you worry,
darlings,” Mrs. Harrison said. “I’ll tell my husband that you
stopped by. Perhaps there’s a way you can be reached?”

“Yup,” Edgar said. Mrs.
Harrison handed him her phone. He used it as if it was his own.
“Have him call me.”

Okay, that was new. I had
no idea that Edgar had a phone. I hadn’t even seen it lying around.
Did he just never use it? Ashton, too, appeared shocked. I assumed
Belladonna knew because she didn’t seemed phased in any way. Heck,
maybe she even had one. Edgar handed Mrs. Harrison her phone, and
we walked to the door.

“Now, you be sure to stay
hidden,” Mrs. Harrison told me.

“Hopefully,” I told
her.

Mrs. Harrison waved at us
as she shut the door behind her. We walked back toward the gate. “I
didn’t know you had a phone,” I told Edgar.

“A lot you don’t know
about me.”

“Maybe I would if you
would tell me,” I argued back.

“True,” he said. “But I
ain’t too much on doing that.”

Oh well. All that mattered
to me was that Mr. Harrison had a way of contacting Edgar. That
meant I wouldn’t be dragged into the city every day.

Chapter
Fifteen

W
e hopped in the car, claiming the same seats, but the driver
didn’t move. We were all silent, and just as I was about to bring
it up, Edgar reached forward to place a hand on Belladonna’s
shoulder. “The arena is too risky.”

She didn’t answer him.
Edgar leaned back once Belladonna agreed. “Back to the
mountain.”

The driver spun the car
around, speeding off.

The traffic was the worst
I had seen it, and I knew it had to be because of Cornelius’s
public address at the arena. By the time we reached the city
center, it was bumper-to-bumper, barely moving. Edgar cursed the
other drivers, though it probably wasn’t their fault.

Just as before, most
pedestrians looked depressed and frightened, just wanting to know
the truth about Grandfather. And again, I felt sorry for them. When
we passed the Presidential Tower, people surrounded the entrance,
shouting what I assumed to be demands for answers. Soldiers stood
in front of the doorway, dressed in green uniforms, pointing guns
at the crowd, preventing anybody from entering the
building.

“Chaos,” Belladonna said.
“Just what I want.”

“You’re right,” Edgar
said. “We need this.”

We left the city center,
and thankfully, the traffic picked up.

I just wanted to know how
Cornelius was going to get out of this problem. What plan would he
come up with? I really hoped there would always be people who
didn’t trust him. That was our prediction. But it was very possible
that if Cornelius could find a way out, everybody would go back to
normal. Then everything we did wouldn’t matter.

Would they still question
the wall? I had no doubt Cornelius would continue arresting those
who spoke against it.

We made a turn down a
road. The buildings became smaller and smaller the further away we
got from the city center. The sidewalks were less busy,
too.

I think we had been in the
car for about fifteen minutes. It was such a boring ride.
Belladonna eventually turned the radio on, turning up some cool
electronic song I got into. It was relaxing.

That didn’t last
long.

As I was really getting
into some techno song, the car jolted, causing my head to crash
into the ceiling. I yelped, bending over and holding my head in
pain.

The others, including the
driver, were rubbing their heads. I guess I wasn’t the only one who
hit the ceiling.

“
What was that?” Edgar
asked.

“
Pothole maybe,” Belladonna
said, not sounding very confident in his answer.

The car jolted again. This
time, I heard a loud boom from somewhere off in the distance. At
least I was pretty sure I heard something. Maybe it was just me.
The other drivers around us were just as confused. People who had
been walking on the streets stopped, spinning in every direction,
looking for the source.

The car jolted again. This
time, the driver nearly lost control of the car. Other drivers
nearly did too. Unfortunately, a truck wasn’t so lucky. Pedestrians
jumped out of the way as the nice blue vehicle skid up onto the
sidewalk and slammed into a shop’s windows, sending shards of glass
flying in every direction.

Our driver along with
others nearby came to a stop, just in time for another large jolt.
I ducked, making sure I didn’t hit the ceiling again.

That’s when I heard the
screaming.

“
What the hell is goin’
on?” Edgar said, glancing all around.