I freeze.
He parts his chapped lips and makes an unintelligible sound. It’s the quietest and briefest of murmurs. I strain to hear, to understand what he’s saying. He tries again, this time mumbling a few slurred words. I think I hear the wordangelbut I can’t be sure.
Is he hallucinating? What if he wakes up and tries to grab me?
He might be injured, but he’s much bigger than I am. The flight response kicks in, and I turn on my heels and bolt to the door. Just before shutting it behind me, I remember to turn off the light. The lock mechanism clicks again, sealing the heavy door.
I run upstairs to my room, my heart thumping like crazy. What I just saw wasn’t normal. There is no rational explanation for it. Try as I may, I can’t fathom why my parents—my respectable and law-abiding parents—would keep an injured man locked up in their basement.
Is he a bad man? Or is he a good man hiding from bad men?
But then why is he here, and not in a safe house, under police protection? Could our house be that safe house? Are my parents providing a service to the police by hiding him here and taking care of him?
Whether he’s good or bad, I know I’ve discovered something dark. Something dangerous. Something my overprotective parents don’t want me to be a part of.
What does one do with a discovery like this?
DARREL
With difficulty, I open my eyes. My head is pounding, my body is on fire. The fog in my head is still there. It’s just as thick as the other times when I woke up and found myself being bandaged or spoon-fed. Every time, I saw the same middle-aged couple who’d brought me to this dark, moldy place.
But something is different now.
A new person is here with me. I don’t think she’s human. She’s a beautiful creature of light, an angel. She comes closer. I peer. It’s a skinny young woman with thick brown curls framing her delicate face.
No, no, it’s an angel!
She’s too ethereal for a human. There’s an aura of light all around her. She’s a divine envoy who’s come to save me. Or she’s here to administer the last rites and confess to me because my body is broken beyond repair.
I try to speak to the angel, but I’m too weak. She doesn’t seem to understand what I’m saying. I close my eyes in frustration. When I open them again, the angel is gone. I’m alone in the dark once more. I sink back into the mattress, defeated.
The pain in my chest and limbs is back again. It’s strong, stronger than I can bear. It begins to overwhelm me. It warps my mind until I don’t know what’s real and what’s a dream or a memory just like it did after the crash…
I glance at the altimeter and check the fuel gauges. We have more than enough for the rest of the flight.
Beneath us, the Swiss Alps look as majestic as ever, but I’m in no mood to meditate over the view. We have a top-priority mission to complete, and the weather is turning bad. The sky darkens and the wind picks up. I check my phone for an update on the weather conditions, but there’s no reception up here.
The info is on the radio.
“We’ve got a storm warning,” I shout to Prince Theodor from the copilot’s seat.
“I suggest we head east to avoid the storm,” Jordan adds. “Then we’ll cross the Swiss border again.”
“Do it!” Theodor says, green-lighting the suggestion.
I glance over my shoulder at Elise sitting next to him. She’s scared, I can tell. He’s trying to reassure her by telling her they’re in capable hands, but she’s not convinced. That’s a shame because we’ll do just fine. The storm is coming in fast, and the wind is buffeting the helicopter, but our aircraft is a sturdy, well-designed machine. And Jordan is an excellent pilot.
Something makes a loud pop.
“What was that?” Elise asks.
I hope it isn’t what I think it is.
Jordan turns to her and Theodor, while the helicopter starts to shake. “We’ve been hit!”
“With what?” Theodor asks.
I think he already knows the answer. The barrage of thuds crushing against the chopper leaves no doubt as to what’s going on.
