Article 5 (33 page)

His eyes were filled with what I’d once thought was honesty.

“I shouldn’t have said that now. It’s too much. I’m putting too much on you. But … Christ. I mean it, I—”

“
No!
I trusted you, and I thought it was right and it wasn’t right. It was a lie.” I felt ill then, disgusted by my own self. I wanted to crawl out of my skin, to leave it in this dirty room with its ugly truths.

“It wasn’t like that. You know.
Please
know.”

His reached out to touch my hand.

“No!” I bawled. “Don’t touch me. Don’t you
dare
touch me. Not ever again.”

I struck the wall. My world was crashing down. Everything I believed was scattered. False.

I didn’t think. I couldn’t. I rocked forward and hit him as hard as I could. My hand seized with pain from where it had connected to his jaw. I hit him again. Again. He didn’t try to stop me. He placed his hand beneath my elbow, giving me the strength to hit him harder.

When I had no punches left, I folded over my reeling stomach. I was no better than Roy, hitting my mother. I wanted violence to resolve my anguish. To show Chase how wrong he was. The parallel made my reality infinitely more devastating.

“It’s okay. Hit me. I deserve it.”

As though that would make it better. As though that would fix anything.

“No more,” I moaned.

He lifted his hands in surrender. “Ember, I’ll do whatever you want. Just please let me get you somewhere safe. That was the whole point in this. I knew that once you found out, you’d want to get as far away from me as possible, and if you believed your mom was in South Carolina, you’d let me take you there. I told you in the beginning, if you want me gone after that, I’m gone.”

“I’m not going anywhere with you.”

“Please. Just let me get you somewhere safe.”

All the slashes of pain inside. All the losses. My mother. Chase. Beth. Rebecca. Trust. Love. I had nothing left but the skeleton of integrity.

“No.”

“If you won’t listen to me, do it for her. Lori wanted you away from all this.”

“Don’t!” I cried out. I could not bear to hear her name.

He hung his head. “I’ve messed everything up. From the beginning. I’ve done nothing right by you. By your mother. She loved you so much, Ember.”

“She’s dead because of you!”

And what was worse was that she was dead because of me, too. Because if I’d never told Chase to leave, he wouldn’t have gone into the military. They never would have targeted him. They never would have used us to break him. Through some twist of fate, I had killed my own mother. The shame was so thick I could not speak it.

He rocked back onto his heels and then stood. I knew I had wounded him. I had done so deliberately. I wanted to injure him. To make him hurt as deeply as I did. But how could he?

“Yes,” he said simply. “She’s dead because of me.”

“Get out. Get away from me.”

Minutes passed. But he did leave. I heard the door close softly behind him.

*   *   *

I SOBBED
for hours huddled in a clenched ball. I cried until the tears dried up. And when they did, my body cried without them.

Every image that entered my mind pained me. Every thought led me to the same conclusion.

I was alone. Absolutely alone.

When I could breathe again, I forced myself up and stumbled toward the window. I could hear other people in the hallway asking Chase what had happened. He didn’t answer. It didn’t matter.

My arms were heavy. My head felt heavy. Bloated.

Air.
That feels nice,
I thought absently.

I slid over the ledge and out onto the fire escape, needing the cold to stop the fever. The balcony was too small. I could climb down the ladder. I could get to the street. It looked like a black hole from up here. Maybe I could disappear inside it.

The rain was soothing. The first soothing feeling I’d felt in what seemed like an eternity. It soaked through my clothing, my hair. It washed away the salt on my face. It entered my eyes by way of my matted lashes and cleansed them.

I walked. And walked. Unable to focus on anything. Remembering nothing.

The lights didn’t surprise me. They barely roused my curiosity. But soon the car had stopped alongside the sidewalk where I stood. Men got out. They spoke to me in harsh tones I didn’t understand. They grabbed my arms. They dragged me into the backseat, where the rain no longer reached me.

*   *   *

A CLANG
on the metal door. My eyes blinked open, unfocused. A fluorescent light directly above my head buzzed and flickered. The ceiling was pocked with dried peels of white paint. Mildew and body odor soiled the mattress I laid upon. I had no pillow. No blankets.

Where was I? How long had I been here? It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered.

“She won’t eat.” Someone’s voice came muffled through the door.

“I don’t give a damn.” Another male.

“Me neither,” the first scoffed, “but she’ll be dead before her trial if she keeps this up.”

“Then she’ll be dead. Wouldn’t be the first time.”

I closed my ears to their callous disregard. I closed my mind to all consciousness.

*   *   *

A HAND
was shaking my shoulder. Then a hard pinch to the sensitive skin on the underside of my arm. The pain snapped my eyes open. Apparently I could still feel some things.

“You need to get up. Get up!” A woman’s voice now, warped with annoyance. I moaned and rolled away. My face pressed against the cool, cement wall.

“If you don’t knock this off,
I’ll
get in trouble for it.”

“Leave me alone,” I managed weakly.

“You’ve had three days of that already. Now you’ve got to get moving.”

She shook my shoulder again. When I rolled onto my back, she grabbed my arms and pulled me into a seated position. My head went very fuzzy and dim.

“Hey.” She slapped my cheek lightly. “Are you going to throw up?”

“No,” I said feebly.

“Hmph. You’ve got nothing to throw up anyway.”

She shoved a plastic bowl onto my lap. It was filled with something that resembled soupy oatmeal. I stared at it blankly.

“Unbelievable,” the woman said. She picked up a spoonful and shoved it into my mouth.

I sputtered and choked. But the tasteless, lukewarm mush slid down my throat and entered my starved stomach. Soon my mouth was watering for more.

I ate, focusing for the first time on the woman. She had gnarled, arthritic bumps on her hands and deeply etched creases beside her mouth. Her face held a look of concern it seemed would never fully dissipate, and her eyes were almost translucently blue. It wouldn’t have surprised me if she were blind, but her movements dictated otherwise.

Her hair was gray and wavy, and she wore a navy pleated skirt and button-up blouse. The uniform covered her sagging body the way a burlap sack covers potatoes.

Haven’t you ever seen the Sisters of Salvation?
I heard Rosa say in my mind.
They’re the MM’s answer to women’s liberation.

It was like I’d never left the reformatory.

In the tiny cell, the narrow bed reached out from the wall and nearly collided with a metal toilet at its foot. There was barely enough room for the woman to remain standing in front of me without our knees touching.

“Where am I?” I asked her. My voice cracked. It had not been used in some time.

“Knoxville Detention Facility.”

So I had been captured after all.

It won’t be long until they kill me, too,
I thought, in a completely detached way.

“Finish up, Miller.” She slapped the side of my bowl, and some sloshed onto a paper gown, like the kind people wear in hospitals. Somewhere along the line someone had taken my clothes.

“You know my name.” My haircut hadn’t disguised me in the end. Oh well.

She huffed. “Put the dress on. You can’t stay in that.”

With no notions of modesty, I stripped down to my undergarments and slid into the oversized Sisters of Salvation uniform, forgoing the handkerchief. My appearance now matched the clear-eyed woman.

“Now what?” I asked.

“You wait until someone comes and gets you.” She knocked twice on the door. It opened from the outside, and she slid out of view.

I stared at the wall across from me, my mind blank.

*   *   *

SOMETIME
later I heard keys jangle against the door, then a metallic squeal, and the barricade was removed, revealing a lean soldier with a broad chest. He had a slight face. Piercing green eyes. Golden hair slicked to one side. One large hand held a clipboard and a pen. His other arm was casted from the elbow down.

He had a gun holstered beside the nightstick on his hip. I wondered if he was here to shoot me, the way Chase’s commanding officer had shot my mother. I was surprised that I didn’t much care. At least this nightmare would be over.

There was a dreamlike quality about him. I felt like I recognized him from somewhere. Pieces began to pull together, one at a time.

“Your knuckles look like hell. What have you been doing, cage fighting?”

I glanced down, thinking that my hands actually looked pretty good. The scabs had peeled, leaving behind thin, white scars. Most of the darker bruising had faded. I wiggled my fingers. Just a dull ache.

“You have no idea who I am,” he said, stealing a look back toward the door.

I saw three discolored lines on his neck. Fingernail scratches.
My
scratches.

“Tucker Morris.”

“Yeah,” he said slowly. As if this were the most obvious thing in the world.

Silence.

“Aren’t you even curious why I’m here?”

“Does it matter? I’m sure I’ll be executed either way.” My voice was flat. Emotionless.

“That’s morbid.”

“Am I wrong?”

He smirked. “Where is he?”

“I don’t know who you mean,” I said with my jaw locked.

“Withholding information won’t help your case.”

“What
will
help my case?” I asked sourly.

“Being nice to me might.” There was a buoyancy in his tone. Almost as if he were flirting. I nearly gagged.

“I will not be
nice
to someone who participates in the murders of innocent people.” The words burned my tongue but did nothing to my dead heart.

“So he told you? I thought he’d chicken out. Just like he did with her.”

There was a flash of anger. I wanted to claw at him again, like I had when he’d taken my mother. But then the desire was gone. All that remained was bitterness.

“You’re a bastard, Tucker.”

“I should say the same.” He grinned at his own cleverness. “But watch your mouth. You can’t talk to a soldier that way.”

I scoffed. What was he going to do? Kill me? Get in line.

He hesitated. “Jennings already has abduction of a minor, assault with a deadly weapon, theft of federal property, and at least ten other petty charges tacked onto his AWOL. This isn’t someone you want to protect. He obviously wouldn’t return the favor.”

I hadn’t given him the chance to protect me—I’d left when he’d been guarding my door. By the time he realized I was gone, I’d probably already been thrown into this cell.

I wondered what my charges were. Something about running from the reformatory. Theft and assault. What else? Fraud for our non-government-approved marriage? For some reason, I found the tally mildly amusing. I didn’t even care if they pegged me as the sniper now.

“Why are you even here? I thought you were in a transport unit or something.”

“I made rank. I’m on a fast track. I’ll probably be an officer soon.”

“Congratulations.” I said. My tone didn’t faze him.

“Your trial’s been moved to the end of the week.”

“Damn. You couldn’t fit me in today, huh?”

“I bought you three more days to ponder your fate. I’d like to make sure you get the full experience of incarceration. That’s as a favor to our mutual friend.” His jaw twitched as he spoke.

Tucker was flat-out evil. He was even more despicable than Chase.

“I’m detailing you to cleanup until your sentencing.”

He opened my door and motioned for me to step outside into the hall. My legs were weak from days of not walking, and my head spun for a few seconds. I was surprised Tucker let me out without handcuffs.

The woman who had woken me earlier in the day was busying herself scrubbing floors. She had a sudsy bucket beside her and wore elbow-length rubber gloves.

“Delilah, this is Ember Miller,” said Tucker from the doorway.

She glanced up and then hoisted herself to her feet.

“Yes, sir.”

“She’ll help you until her trial.”

Delilah nodded submissively. Tucker pulled me aside before turning to go.

“I’ll be down the hall at that office. Come see me when she’s done with you.”

“I can’t wait.”

He chuckled as he walked away.

“Grab a brush. We’re scrubbing floors. And then it’s cleanup of another kind.” Delilah wasn’t much for small talk.

We went room by room, cleaning the floors, making the beds, scrubbing the toilets. Only two of the rooms were occupied, and those we did not enter immediately.

While I was working, a handcuffed man with sallow skin and bruises on one cheek slumped down the hall. He was accompanied by four guards, one of whom carried a silver briefcase. They pushed him roughly into an empty room. A few minutes later, all four guards disappeared the way they had come.

“Just gone to trial,” commented Delilah. I wondered morbidly what the outcome had been.

When we were finished, I followed Delilah downstairs to the cafeteria, where we picked up two trays of gray mush from a soldier wearing a hairnet. I watched as several soldiers were cleared in and out of the building’s main entrance by a guard behind a thick plate of glass. Every time the door opened, a spine-curdling buzz spiked my eardrums.