I take off down one street that looks fine enough. It’s too early for any of these businesses to be open yet. My bare feet are sensitive on the brick sidewalks. Most of the hexagon bricks are intact, but the broken ones jut out and hit the tender skin on my soles. I used to run barefoot all the time at my dad’s insistence. It helped me with excellent run form, but my callouses have long since healed.
I will myself to pick a direction. I stop again and survey the area.Think, Charlie, think!And then I remember my phone!
I pull it out and I have maybe five percent battery left. I do one quick search to help orient myself. Once I know where I am, I head left toward Downtown Tampa. If I can get to Kennedy Boulevard, I can figure out how to get to headquarters. Which will give out first, my feet or my phone battery?
I navigate to my contacts as I keep going down the sidewalk and turn left.
My thumb presses the button to dial Declan and give him an update before this phone dies on me. When I round the corner, I run smack into someone and drop my phone. It’s a man a few inches taller than me. He smells like the cologne my dad wears. He steadies himself by holding my arms. This works and neither of us falls down.
“Oh my gosh! I am so, so sorry,” I apologize reflexively. I must look like a total mess, with mud and sweat all over my too big borrowed clothes.
“Gotta watch where you’re going,” the man says. He has kind hazel eyes set into sunworn skin; the kind of tan you get from years spent outside.
“I’m so sorry. I’m glad you’re not hurt,” I say, repeating my apology, before a plea begins to form on my lips, to ask this man for help, to explain that someone is after me.
Then everything begins to move slowly.
It’s a phenomenon I spent time looking up on one of my many hospital visits. I would sense it just before my limbs would go numb. When I told my doctors, they said it only seemed that time was moving slowly because my brain was busy capturing every facet of a stressful moment. It happens to people during car accidents or other physical traumas. They say they can recall every minute detail of the seconds leading up to it, the brain working in overdrive. So when I could recount the exact patches of light peeking through the canopy, the leaves falling into puddles on the course, it wasn’t part of my condition. It was a stress response to a traumatic event: losing all control of my limbs.
The first time my legs went completely numb on a training run, I was on a steep trail. I hit the deck and rolled over tree roots and twigs. I knew something was badly wrong. After crawling on my elbows to find the team, my dad hurried over with the first-aid kit. The antiseptic wipes didn’t sting. Didn’t cool. Didn’t do anything. I remember every terrifying millisecond of that ordeal and the moments just before. The crunch of the leaves under me, the sound of my body thumping against the ground, the look on my teammates’ faces.
Right now, with this man’s hands on my arms, I experience the same sense of time drawing to a stop. A bird flits from one magnolia tree to the next. In the distance, a rooster is crowing. A white van rolls down the street. But I can feel his hands on my arms. I can feel the scratchy gravel beneath my feet, warm but not hot enough to burn yet. This isn’t an episode, so why does time feel like molasses?
“Oh, not a problem, Charlie. You’re just who I was looking for.”
The same heaviness I experienced last night at the bar with Blaed sets over me. The street spins while I stand still. In my periphery, the van slows to a stop and the door rolls open. The grip on my arms tightens like an arm-pressure cuff.
“It’s about time we were properly introduced. I’m Xander, but everyone calls me X.C.”
All my self-defense practice did nothing to prepare me for this encounter. My mind is telling me to wind my arms round and break his hold. But I’m frozen. All that practice and now I’m too terrified to use it.
He pulls something out of his jacket pocket and covers my face.
Oh, this is what chloroform smells like, I think before everything goes dark.
43
DECLAN
My thumb hovers over the phone screen. I want to break it with my hands. But doing so won’t crush Ian. It will only slow me down.
I dial Oliver instead.
He answers after one ring. “It appears as if it’s only Ian in the safehouse. I have a view of every angle and I don’t see her,” is how he greets me. He must be watching the security feed from headquarters.
“I’m on a training ride. I wanted to clear my mind before diving in today,” I offer as an explanation and an apology for why I’m not there already.
“It’s good you didn’t leave to get Charlie right after I called. Could have been both of you there when Ian arrived.”
Oliver’s relief only fuels my guilt. I should still have been there with her. I shouldn’t have left her. But then would Ian have tried to take me out? Shot me first?
“I’ll pick you up,” Oliver says, not acknowledging my silence.
“Ian is the mole.” I say this hard-to-swallow truth aloud.
“Yeah. I did a rewind on the video log from just before the alarm sounded. He took aim at Charlie and she fought back. After she fled to the tunnels, Ian tried to pull out the security panel and mess with the wiring, but it appears he electrocuted himself. Then he threw around most of the small furniture pieces trying to break the windows. They’re not going to budge. Now I can see him pacing,” Oliver says, growling through the phone.
The alarm went off four minutes ago, maybe five. I can picture Ian covering his ears as the piercing sound repeats over and over. It’s a small justice to know the noise may drive him mad.
