Chapter 19
You win some, you lose some...
The next day, Cage drove him to the small Bella Rosa police station near a private air field fifty miles from San Diego. Cage drove because Zach’s hands were shaking so badly.
Cage’s Jeep was first in a caravan, followed by vehicles holding other SEALs, police, FBI, CIA, State Department and Department of Defense reps, and Zach’s family.
..his father and mother, who had put aside their differences for this occasion, Danny, and his grandfather and grandmother.
And the news media, of course, who couldn’t be kept away.
Zach had gone through absolute hell the past four days.
The first twenty-four hours were bad when Al-Jazeera showed an interview with Arsallah, who played the meek-and-injured-party card, pleading for some of his evil cohorts to be released from prison.
Like that was ever going to happen. The tangos in question were the worst of the worst. Arsallah had forced Sammy to repeat his demands, interspersed with anti-American insults.
Britta sat in the background, looking a bit bruised, but not too bad.
He assumed by the tilt of her chin that she’d declined Arsallah’s “invitation” to speak.
But then yesterday, Zach received a manila envelope containing photos and a tape. These were bad. Really bad. But at least they were not body parts, as he had feared.
They must not have fed Sammy and Britta much, or given them more than a minimum of liquids since their capture, because their faces were drawn and haggard.
Sammy had bruises over every inch of exposed skin.
Britta...poor Britta...had one eye swollen shut, a bleeding, puffy lip, cuts and bruises and possibly a broken ankle.
Her chin was still raised defiantly as she gave her canned bullshit talk to Arsallah’s cameraman.
On the day of their escape, Britta had somehow managed to get herself and Sammy out of the basement they had been kept in.
Sammy had hidden in the garage of an abandoned gas station till the next morning, fearing that he would be caught by Arsallah’s men.
Which gave Arsallah’s men time to leave the area.
Hell, they’d probably left the country by now.
And Britta, well, she had not yet been found.
Zach had been warned to expect the worst.
When they got to the police station, Zach told Cage, “Hold everyone off. Let me have some private time with Sammy first. Okay?”
Cage nodded and squeezed his shoulder.
Zach opened the door.
Sammy saw him first and screamed, “Daaaa-dyyyyy!” as he rushed forward and launched himself into his arms, hugging him tight with his legs straddling his chest. The boy was squeezing so tight that Zach could barely breathe.
But who the hell cared about that! Tears ran down his face and into Sammy’s neck. Sammy’s tears wet Zach’s neck, too.
Pushing his way into an interrogation room, and slamming the door with his foot, Zach sat down and just held Sammy in his lap, head pressed against his heart.
His clothing was filthy, and he smelled like he’d wet his pants a time or two, or worse, but he was whole and alive and that was all that mattered.
Finally, Sammy pulled his head back and said, “I escaped.”
“I know you did. You’re a brave boy...I mean, little man.”
He shook his head. “No, I’m a little boy.” He hesitated, his bottom lip quivering. “Britta didn’t escape.”
“Well, now, we don’t know that for sure. We just haven’t found her yet.”
“They hurt her bad. Real bad.” He began to weep again. Between sobs, he revealed, “Sometimes...sometimes she let them hit her when they was aimin’ for me.”
That didn’t surprise Zach. Still, his eyes welled with tears again.
“She broke Daoud’s nose with my baseball bat when he came ta capture us.”
Ah, so that’s whose blood it was.
“Her ankle mighta been broken. Do you think she coulda run with a broken ankle?”
That news stabbed at Zach’s heart. “I think Britta could do anything she wanted.”
“We’re gonna get her back,” Sammy said, patting his shoulder as if he sensed his father’s despair. “I jis’ know we are.”
Zach wasn’t so sure.
“Oh, and I forgot to tell you. I hit Hakim across the shin bones with my hockey stick.”
“You did? What a brave boy you were!”
“Oh, I forgot another thing,” Sammy said, “Britta said to tell you somethin’ if...if she didn’t come back.”
It felt as if a vise were squeezing his heart. He didn’t want to know. Because if he listened to the message, it would be like admitting she was dead, and he wasn’t ready to accept that.
“No, Sammy, don’t tell me. Let’s wait for Britta to tell me herself.”
Sammy brightened at that scrap of hope.
Zach only wished there were someone to give him hope.
Home, not-so-sweet home...
Britta attempted to open her heavy lids, despite the pain that ravaged her body.
“Britta! Britta! Can you hear me?”
Son of a troll! It was Mother Edwina of St. Anne’s Abbey.
Either Britta was being plagued with that bloody dream again, or she had reversed her time travel. Both notions posed great threats to her sanity. So, she did the only sensible thing: she succumbed to the pain-sleep again.
Whether mere hours or days had passed, Britta did eventually open her eyes again, and this time wider than a slit. She was still on an abbey cot, still in pain, but not so much as before. “Thirsty,” she choked out.
With Mother Edwina’s help, she sat up, propped against some rolled-up blankets, and drank thirstily from a cup of water. “What happened?” she asked through cracked lips.
“You fell off a cliff when you and Sister Margaret were on your way to Jorvik.”
“No, I mean this time.”
Mother Edwina tilted her head in confusion. “There was only the one time.”
“What? When did I fall off the cliff?”
“Three days past. You have been in a pain-sleep since you were brought back here.”
“Three days? That’s impossible. I was in WEALs for more than three sennights.”
“Wheels? What wheels?”
The blood began to drain from Britta’s head as the certainty of her situation hit her.
She was back in time. It was as if all the other had not ever happened.
..the time travel, WEALS, and most of all, Zachary.
Had she dreamed it all? If so, how could she have dreamed in such detail?
No, it had been real. Britta’s heart constricted at the enormity of her loss.
Dazed, she shook her head to clear it, and it felt as if knives were cutting into her scalp.
Her brain could not handle the strain of unraveling the turmoil, not now, and she fell back into the pain-sleep.
Days went by, and Britta was able to sit, then move about with a makeshift crutch. Her face and body were battered and bruised. She had a broken ankle. But she was alive. The trouble was, she felt no joy in the living.
One sennight after her “return,” whilst still bedridden, her father sent a message informing her of a new groom he had procured for her.
..procured being a key word. The man was a Norse merchant of much wealth but no lands.
..Tume Ivarsson. The young man delivering her father’s message also warned that this would be her father’s last effort to deal with her amicably—as if he had ever been amicable to her—and the consequences would be on her head if she did not yield.
Britta felt a yearning for normal family life, due to that blasted Zachary the Pretty, no doubt. So, trying to be amicable, she went to Father Caedmon who was a far-travelled cleric, and asked if he had ever made the acquaintance of Tume Ivarsson.
Father Caedmon recoiled at mere mention of the man’s name.
“What?” Britta wanted to know.
“Amongst other things, he is a slave trader.”
She told her father’s emissary “no,” but told him to ask her father if he would accept a groom of her choosing. She received a reply later that day via the red-faced messenger, “Never!”
The fact that she’d received the reply so quickly gave Britta fair warning.
Her father was nearby. Oh, he would not attack the abbey outright, not wanting the powerful Papacy on his back, but her father was the master of deceit.
She recalled the attack on Sister Bernice which had prompted her initial flight from the abbey which had led to her time travel.
Next day, Father Caedmon set off for the minster in Jorvik and some priestly duties, and to seek church backing if her father should dare breach the nunnery walls. The ringing of the bells and constant chapel services were lessened in his absence. Thank the gods for that.
It took more than a month for Britta’s ankle to heal, and by then her other injuries, like the bullet graze of her back, were fading. Not so her heart. She missed Zachary, and Sammy, and her life in the future. At night, she wept for all she had lost.
Three sennights later, Britta knew what her father had meant by “consequences” if she failed to surrender to his sinister matchmaking.
A young nun named Sister Gloria had foolishly left the abbey courtyard to fetch a stray lamb.
She had only gone a short distance when captured by her father’s men.
She was returned to the gate the next day.
She had been repeatedly raped, but that was not the worst part.
They had slit the tendons behind each knee so that the young woman would be a cripple for life.
Days later, when she was able to speak, Gloria told them that her father had personally said this was the condition Britta would be in when she wed, if she did not yield soon.
A woman did not need to stand to be mounted, or to give birth, her father had said.
“Is there no one we can approach to protest?” Mother Edwina asked Britta.