Wrong Place (The Wrong Series) (17 page)

“Look
, I don’t like this anymore than either of you, but there’s simply nothing that can be done right now,” Campbell said.

“
Is there really nothing that can be done, or are we simply sitting back and choosing to do nothing?” Dan asked.

“
We’re choosing to do nothing for lack of a better option,” Campbell answered.

“
What if we could give you a better option?” Dan asked.

“If you can tell me how to bring down a corporation located all over the world that holds almost limitless power and resources
, then I’m all ears.”

“
I’ll come up with something,” Dan said to himself.

“In the m
eantime, what can we do to help Agent Fisher?” Jason asked in a more worried tone than he had meant to ask the question in.

“There will
be
no
help for Agent Fisher. She disobeyed our orders, and my guess is that she’ll probably die.”

“That’s it?!
That’s how we treat our agents?” Jason said in an outraged voice.

“Do I need to remind
you that the mission was canceled before it even began? Your agent went rogue, and if anything, your own failure to act as a handler and control the agent who we assigned to you has ultimately been the thing that got her killed. Don’t come to me expecting pity for her and your own mistakes.”

“Everyone needs to calm down. We aren’t going to be able to change
anything today. Let’s go, Jason,” Dan said as he retrieved his new friend and led him out of the room.

In this mom
ent, Jason felt helpless. He thought that Campbell was heartless and that he was only covering his own butt, but at the same time, nothing he said was false. He had asked Sam to let this case go. He had never
told
her to. Jason made her his close friend when she should have respected him as a superior and obeyed his orders. If he had not failed to do his job, then she likely wouldn’t have failed at hers either. If this was anyone’s fault, it was most certainly his.

“This is all going
to work out in the end. You’ll see,” Dan said as they walked back to Jason’s office.

“No,
I really don’t think that it is,” Jason said with a frown.

Chapter 17

Nathan and the others
had been traveling for about an hour and a half when Jess stopped at a large truck stop.

“You guys can go in and get a bite to eat
, but I think that Sam needs someone to tend to her wounds, and now that we’re out of Atlanta, I’m going to do exactly that,” Jess said.

“What all do
you need? I can go get some supplies inside,” Nathan said to Jess.

“I’ll need alcohol
and cotton balls, gauze, tweezers, and try to find some butterfly bandages for her leg.”

Nathan quickly went
inside to get all the supplies. Trish was very hesitant about going inside with Lee and Michael. She may have had a friend in Jess, but Lee and Michael were still very suspicious of her.

“Are you coming
or what?” Lee asked as he started to walk away.

“Yeah, I guess
I am.”

Once
they were inside, the three of them ordered and then sat in silence for quite some time. Lee was the first one to speak.

“Look
, I still don’t trust you, but maybe I could learn to if you would just explain who you actually are and how you got caught up in all this.”

“Hone
stly, I don’t know where I would even start trying to explain everything.”

“Just start at the beginning,” Michael said.

“Okay, but I have to warn you. This story is kind of long.”

“Ever
since I was very young, I’ve always had two talents. One is that I can quickly learn just about anything, and the other is that I can read people and situations on such a level that I can accurately project the end result of almost any situation,” Trish said and was then interrupted.

“Are you saying you’re
a psychic or something?” a very wide eyed Michael asked.

“No
, you idiot. Stop interrupting the story,” she said while visually showing her frustration at his comments.

“
I’m sorry.”

“I’m
able to read people and situations. A psychic is only a made up thing that idiots believe in. Anyway, not only did I graduate at the top of my class in high school, but I also made my dad rich from sports betting. I could look at any team and take into account their players, coaches, weather in the area, schedules, and injury probabilities to almost perfectly project where they would be at the end of the season. Being able to read people also helped me manipulate them, too. I got anything or anyone that I wanted because with a small amount of effort, I could see what made them tick and how to get them to do exactly as I wished them to. I planned to go to college and eventually make myself rich in similar ways that I had made my father rich, but I was approached right after my high school graduation by a man who called himself Markus. He and Jacob are the only two people whom I’ve never been able to get a read on. I think that’s because the two of them are a little bit off, okay maybe they’re a lot off. In Jacob’s case, I guess I should say that he
was
off. Markus offered me an opportunity to track people and get information out of them with reasoning rather than by complete brute force. There would be no rules. I could manipulate anyone in any way I wanted to as long as it was to his advantage, and to boot, I could use my skill set for anything I wished to on the side. I enjoyed the challenge of being given a file and having to project where a person would be just based on the small amount of information within the file. After they were captured, I also enjoyed getting information out of them. I could get all the information that someone like Jacob could get out of a person without ever even laying a finger on them.”

“Wait a minute
. I just don’t buy that. How do we even know you can read anything or anyone? I’m going to need more than just your word to actually believe you,” Michael said.

“
Well, let’s do you then, Michael. Judging by your three hundred and eighty-seven posts on Nathan’s web page and the fact that Jess enters your apartment in the late hours of the night, I would say that if any emergency ever happened, you would probably run to Nathan or have Jess simply come to you. Your past mental instability indicates that you may not care about any physical harm I could do to you, so if I wanted to make you tell me any privileged information that you may have in your head, I would simply threaten to hurt either Nathan or Jess. I think you’re outwardly simple, but inwardly you’re very complicated. Judging by the bandage on your hand and your history of mental illness, I would say that you’re a threat, but not to anyone other than yourself.”

Lee looked amazed.
How could she tell that much about Michael just based off a few records and a bandage?

“I would say she pretty much has
you figured out,” Lee said in amazement.

“Oh
, do you want to go next?” Trish asked and smiled. 

“No, that’s
quite all right.”

Michael was now
officially feeling depressed. Is it really
so
obvious that I’m pathetic, Michael wondered.

“So why would you get out of that line of work
, considering how good you are at it and how much you enjoy it?” Lee asked.

“Every person
I ever captured and interrogated was killed. I didn’t have to kill them or even have to lay a hand on them, but I brought them back to the people who eventually disposed of them. That never sat well with me. I’ve been looking for a way out of this life ever since I finished with my first solo interrogation and found out the fate of the man I had captured.”

“I see. I think
I might be able to forgive you for Tasering me now that I know who you are and your whole situation,” Lee said.

“Well
, I’m so glad that I have your approval,” Trish said sarcastically.

Nathan
returned to the van with all the supplies. Before he got in, Jess pulled him to the side.

“A lot of the things
that I’m about to have to do will probably hurt her really badly. If the need arises, I might need you to hold her still,” Jess said.

Nathan nodded. He really hated the idea of seeing Sam writhing in pain
, but if someone had to help her through this, it was going to be him. The two of them got in the van and crawled back to Sam.

“This is probably going to hurt
, but I need you to be as still as you can,” Jess told Sam.

She grabbed her
left arm. After investigating the injury, however, she found that she only needed to put the arm back in place. Sam’s arm had only been popped out of its socket, as opposed to being broken. Nathan took Sam’s other hand and squeezed it encouragingly. In one swift movement, Jess popped the arm back in place. Sam winced in pain, but after everything else she had felt that day, this seemed minor.

“
All right. I’m going to need you to try to keep that arm straight and still. You probably have some torn ligaments. Nathan, take the alcohol and cotton balls out and disinfect any open cuts while I work on getting this glass out.”

Everything was finished but one thing
.

“
I noticed a pretty bad gash in your leg. What happened?” Jess asked.

“He
stabbed me.”

“
It’s a good thing that the knife missed your femoral artery. We need to disinfect this and get the wound closed up. Hand me the butterfly bandages, Nathan. I think we might be able to close this up with just them. It doesn’t look too bad.”

After many flinches from Sam, it was
done. The wound was finally disinfected and closed.

“Hey
, we’re back,” Lee said.

“We brought you guys some food,” Michael said.

“Thanks,” Jess said while grabbing the takeout bag.

“Hey
, do you mind driving for a while?” Jess asked Trish.

Trish turned and
looked toward Lee as if to ask, “So do you trust me enough to know that I’m not going to drive us straight into a trap?” Lee nodded back at her to show his approval. Jess was confused by the strange exchange of looks she had just witnessed.

“Well
, will you drive?” Jess asked.

“Yeah,
I don’t mind,” Trish said while taking the keys.

“
Okay, let’s hurry up and get out of here,” Jess said.

Three hours later everyone stopped to stretch their legs and grab some drinks. Nathan stayed in the van. He didn’t want
to leave Sam alone.

“Go ahead
and stretch your legs. I’ll stay with Sam,” Lee said while sticking his head back in the van door.

“
No, it’s okay. I want to stay here.”

“Go. You can get me a drink
. I know that your legs have to be killing you by now,” Sam said.

His legs really were hurting. The small back
seat didn’t exactly agree with his 6’2” frame.

“Okay
, but I’ll be right back,” Nathan said and exited the van.

“Hey
, are you okay?” Michael asked after noticing that his friend still looked dizzy.

“Yeah
, my head is just killing me. I don’t really know what hit me back at the hotel, but whatever it was, it left its mark.”

“Yeah
, we really need talk about that,” Michael said nervously.

“What? Do you
know who hit me?” 

“
I might know who did it, but I’m pretty sure they are sorry,” Michael said while looking down at the ground.

“
Well, who was it?”

Nathan was angry. He just wanted two minutes alone with whoever hit him. He didn’t care who it was
. He was about to hurt someone.

“It was
me,” Michael said quietly.

The anger in Nathan subsided. Why would Michael hit him? It had to be an accident.

“It was you? Why in the world would you hit me?”

“Well
, Trish was coming up behind you, and I thought she was going to hurt you. I had a baseball bat, so I took a swing at her. She moved, and guess who my bat hit.”

“Okay
. . . I guess I should say thank you for the intent . . . I think.”