Escape (Chronicles of Hart) (12 page)

Hart pressed his foot to the floor, key still in the ignition. He wound the cord past the rock walls surrounding the building. Fury was rising in Harts throat. Grace would not elude him. He knew her like his own daughter, perhaps because she was. With a flick of a switch, the church was set ablaze.

***

Ethan awoke to the smell of warm pizza and the sound of Chung closing the door. Light filtered slowly away as the click of the door shut it out. Rubbing the kinks out of his neck he rolled forward out of the lumpy dirty chair he had been folded into. The room was dark, with the curtains drawn closed. Only the glow of the bathroom was casting shadows across the small room. Ethan walked to the cramped dining area where three boxes of pizza now sat piled teetering on a small metal table. King sat at the table in a small creaking chair. He looked up to Ethan from his slice of pepperoni pizza. His face was cold in the faint light; he appeared pensive with a furrowed brow.

“You forgot to tell us Grace was Mr. Hart’s
daughter,
Ethan.” Kings eyes shot daggers from across the table as he reminded Ethan of the facts that had been left out of his original report. “Good men were killed out there,” He snorted. His arm twitched as he set his slice down on the table. He looked about ready to pounce. He sat poised waiting for Ethan to respond.

Ethan reached for a slice, looking to the floor ashamed.

Quickly swallowing a bite of pizza Ethan looked to Chung for support, “I didn’t think you would believe me,” He replied.

“Believe you?” yelled King “W
hy on Earth would he lock his own daughter up!” he stood from the table, scraping his chair across the floor already grooved with marks from the rickety metal chair. “Of course I wouldn’t have believed you; I watched her funeral ten years ago! It was pretty public.” King was pacing now, shaking his head as though he had rehearsed these lines over and over on their trip to the motel. He looked straight at Ethan, stopping inches from his face “You could have given us some proof Ethan. Isn’t the story that she was killed with your own father?” King was outraged; he had been led blindly into a trap by this idiot. He was accountable for all the men that had died at the cabin. He would be lucky if the relief team didn’t relieve him of his duties. He could see the hurt look on Ethan’s face and wondered briefly if he had gone too far, dragging the kid’s dad into it. This was such a mess and Chung looked smug standing in the corner with his arms lazily crossed. King had never been so furious.

“No,” Squeaked Ethan after a moment. He backed away from King’s face. “Hart killed my father and used it as a cover-up to hide Grace. She was a liability or something.” He trudged on, looking to the sleeping Grace for comfort. “I think she has information that could end him. So he hid her away.” Ethan looked to King, “She has enough evidence to put Hart behind bars... somewhere
,” he concluded, reaching for a second slice of pizza as his stomach turned in knots. He fell loudly into a second aluminum chair, scraping beneath him as it slid slowly under his weight on the uneven floor.  Ethan hoped his indiscretion would not cause his rescue to fail. He could not bear losing Grace to her evil father again and the repercussions would surely ensure his own death. He shook with fear, covering it up by biting into the slice of pizza shaking in his hand.

Grace began to stir. The room fell silent in anticipation. They all looked to one another hoping she hadn’t overheard their conversation, looking guilty and trying to cover it up by reaching for more pizza.  Sitting up groggily Grace took in the room, blinking as her eyes adjusted to the harsh dimness of the place. “Is that real pizza?” she asked Ethan bemused. She squinted as she looked to the tiny alcove of a kitchen. She smiled as the smell reached her, breathing in heavily the aromatic scent of pizza. She struggled to get her legs free of the confines of the bed linens.

Standing, Ethan crossed the room, placing a half empty box of pepperoni and cheese at the end of the bed for Grace. Greedily she swiped a slice and began eating. “mmmmmm,” she garbled through a mouthful of pizza. She smiled through her chewing, blissfully enjoying her first taste of real food in such a long while. The others stopped to watch her for a moment, almost forgetting how long she had been out of the real world until this moment. Thinking of the little things that they took for granted, and here Grace was, trapped in the confines of her father’s rage for ten years of her short life, sitting and enjoying a fresh slice of pizza. Ethan smiled at her exuberant joy.

“Grace...” King began, reluctant to interrupt her in her pizza haven. She was already on her third slice. A banging at the door interrupted him. She looked up mid-bite with curiosity.

Rising from his chair, he crossed the room to the door slowly. Checking the peephole first, he opened the door with a relieved sigh. “It’s about time, this is a raging mess. Tell me you brought enough backup.” he peeked into the parking lot searching.

A tall stern man appeared in the door, “Agent, we are removing the girl from your custody for transfer to a safe house. You are to report to base for debriefing.” The man pushed past King towards Grace with an air of arrogance. As the light from outside filtered into the room Grace could tell she didn’t trust this man. His hair was sleeked back and his face appeared to be stuck in a menacing sneer. He looked over the room, and then Grace. He stopped at the foot of the bed, looking intently at a tousled Grace, waiting impatiently while tapping his large foot. She looked up over her slice of pizza, defiantly biting down. Chewing, she waited for a reaction from him. He scowled, turning away from her. He held out his hand, waiting for Grace to stand and follow him.

“I’m going with her,” Ethan demanded.  He stopped a foot away and a foot shorter than the new agent.

“I’m sorry son, you are not authorized to travel with her
.” the man turned to Ethan with a look of disgust “perhaps it would be best for you to go have a shower,” he said with a scowl.

“Can agent Chung come with me?” Grace interrupted, not fully trusting this new agent and his intimidating demeanor. She looked to Chung for support. He jumped forward, seeing the look of pleading in Grace’s eyes. He could tell she was uncomfortable around this new agent. He couldn’t quite shake the feeling that something wasn’t quite right about the sneering giant himself.

“Yes,” Chung agreed, interrupting before the man could speak, “I will stay with her.”

The new agent raised a brow, looking to Chung as though sizing him up. “Then it is settled
,” he concluded “we leave immediately.” Plucking Grace up by an elbow he gently pulled her to the door. Chung followed her out, wrapping his jacket around her tiny shoulders for warmth.

Grace looked back over her shoulder to Ethan and King, both standing confused in the quiet motel room. “Thank you
,” she whispered over her shoulder as she was tugged out of sight.

Ethan fell to the end of the bed, bouncing on the lumpy mattress as he sunk into oblivion. He stared after Grace watching as the last trace of her orange hair whisked away out of sight. He looked to the far wall of the room, willing his eyes not to water up. He hoped this was not the end of his friendship with Grace, but he couldn’t help feeling like she was being ripped away all over again.

King stood seething at the open door. With one last shake of his head he threw the door closed with a resounding bang and walked back to the table of pizza boxes.

***

At the foot of the steps a black car sat idling. The windows were tinted enough to give Chung trouble looking in. He could see a driver still sitting behind the wheel. “You are up front with Smybert
.” the agent nodded to Chung. Stepping back as the door swung open, “I will sit with the girl in back.” He tugged Grace’s arm once more, propelling her away from the back door as he swung it open, narrowly missing agent Chung as he entered the front seat.

The doors clicked closed as the engine purred. Chung looked the car over. It didn’t look like the standard issue. The ID number was missing from the dash and the seats were stained from several coffees that had spilled out of the broken cup holder between the passenger and driver seats. Chung looked out the window. The tint was streaked from this side and looked cheaply done. He reached into his pocket and slipped out his cellular phone that he had retrieved from Grace in the woods. He tucked it into the back of the seat as he fumbled with his belt. If anything went wrong at least they would be able to track the vehicle. More often than not, he would end up spending twenty minutes fishing his phone back out of mistreated company cars that only looked sketchy, but you could never be too sure in this line of work.

Grace was relieved as she settled into the scratchy leather seat.  At least at a safe-house Hart wouldn’t be able to find her. She wished Ethan had been allowed to come along too. She hoped that she could talk them in to keeping him safe from her father. She frowned, sitting in the back seat next to the tall slimy looking man. Something about him was oddly familiar.

“This won’t take long
,” he assured Chung from his spot in the backseat.

They settled in and the car began at a screeching pace. Peeling out from the lot it sent up a plume of dirt and rock. Chung looked back confused. Just in time to see the agent beside Grace raise his pistol and slam it back into Chung’s temple.

Grace looked to the driver in horror. These were not friends of Ethan. This was not a backup team; this was Harts last ditch attempt to get her back in the tower. Her mouth screamed silently agape at the horror. She had been through this enough to know they would be nicer if she were quiet. She looked frantically for an escape route. The car was going too fast to get out the door. She kept looking.

PURSUIT

Ethan washed himself up in the restroom while King checked over and packed his last few items with a slice of pizza hanging from his chin.

“You want a ride kid?” King asked from the other room over a mouth full of food. “You should come in with me, they might have questions.”

“Yeah, okay
.”

Ethan turned off the restroom light and stepped back into the room. King was standing in the door, talking to someone. He turned to Ethan stiffly,

“We have a problem kid...”

Ethan raced to the door. Standing outside were two neatly dressed agents, below them several dark vans sat idling.

“
This
was our backup,” King concluded as he raced out the door speaking rapidly with the new agents.

Ethan followed close behind, catching only snippets of the conversation. He could tell by their tone that this was a serious miscalculation. Heads were going to roll.

Ethan was in a panic. Who had just taken Grace and Chung from the motel? Didn’t these men have some sort of protocol, a secret password or something to stop things like this from happening? He was in shock when King tugged at his arm, leading him down the rusted stairs. Thunder boomed and with a crackle in the distance, rain began to fall in sheets soaking Ethan as he raced along behind King trying to hear what he was saying to the other man.

A sleek black car sat at the front of the swat team cavalcade. The two agents slid inside. King opened the back passenger door, waving his hand for Ethan to climb in first.

Ethan ducked out of the rain and slid across the soft leather seat to the driver side, looking to King for information. Even a look on his face to tell him what was going on.

“They were heading North
,” King reminded the driver, shaking his hair out into the back seat like a wet dog as he closed the door beside him.

The car sped forward, leaving Ethan searching for a seatbelt to hold on to. The convoy followed with flashing lights.

***

Grace was panicking, were they taking her back to her father, or the tower? Maybe they already had a new tower lined up for her. Ethan would never find her. The man beside her reached over forcefully, clutching her hands together in her lap. Outside it had started pouring. Grace couldn’t see out the window the rain was coming too fast. The car slowed down as he gripped her hands tighter.

“Sit tight, this will be over soon,” he sneered putting a damp cloth to her mouth.

Instinctively she held her breath. The chloroform had been used on her too many times before. She faked fainting again, and slightly dizzy she held on to her consciousness. She felt hands on her, folding her into the space at the foot of the seat, a blanket being tossed over her. No one would see her now. Hearing movement she knew the man was climbing up front. An opening door and a grunt indicated Chung had been expelled from the vehicle. The door clicked and the car sped up. The wipers sloshed quickly across the front window. Grace held her hand over her mouth to hold in the gasp that threatened to escape her lips.