Chapter Nineteen
Adam
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GRABBING A SHIRT FROM the banister where I’d discarded it, I shrugged it over my body and took the stairs two at a time.
Whoever was at the door hadn’t stopped knocking, and somehow, the word ‘knocking’ didn’t do the noise justice.
The crashing was louder than any polite knock, and its volume spoke of an insistence that concerned me.
Whoever was there wanted to get in badly.
Calm down. The warning resounded in my head. No one knows we’re here. We’re safe.
The thought grounded me as I reached the bottom step.
Caroline and I had mainly kept ourselves to ourselves, only leaving the house for a meal or to visit the grocery store.
We hadn’t even spoken to a neighbor since we’d arrived, so there was no way we could have upset anyone enough to be causing such a ruckus.
As my feet reached the hard floor of the entrance hall, I pulled in a deep breath. Whoever was there, I’d handle the situation. Until a few days before, I’d been the commander general, responsible for the behavior and welfare of tens of thousands of people, for God’s sake.
I’d manage whatever came our way.
Moving toward the door, I could see the dark silhouettes of multiple figures looming outside, the unexpected outcome stirring my simmering unease.
Why would so many people be there? If we’d managed to offend one neighbor, I’d have been surprised, but I couldn’t believe three or four of them would have come calling.
By the time I was close enough to reach the lock, I realized the banging had stopped, and for the first time, I heard the male voices outside.
“?ffne dich!” Even as my head translated the Swiss German instruction into English, the order to ‘open up’ was loud and clear. “Polizei! ?ffne dich!”
The police.
I froze at the acknowledgement, time lurching into its slower, protracted pace as I processed the news. The police were outside, and there was only one logical reason they were there.
For me. I gulped down the rising disquiet. They’re here for me.
“Sir?” Caroline’s voice traveled from the top of the staircase, and glancing around, I saw her waiting there, the covers from our bed draped around her as though she was a Grecian goddess. “Have they gone away?”
“No.” I hoped my voice would reach her without me having to raise it.
Whatever we needed to say to each other in those last, fleeting moments before our bubble of paradise was pierced by the law, I longed for the privacy to speak those words.
“No?” Confusion echoed in her voice. “What do you—”
“Polizei!” The call came again, that time accompanied by some sort of battering ram, which smashed hard into the other side of the door. “?ffne dich!”
My heart raced at the unraveling situation, my feet automatically backing me toward the bottom of the staircase as the ram came again.
“Oh my God!” Caroline was halfway down the stairs by then, her hand covering her mouth when the battering ram broke the lock altogether.
Shards of wood splintered in all directions, confirming what I already knew. Whatever we were going to say, it was too late.
“Auf deinen Knien!”
The order for me to drop to my knees was hollered from multiple male voices at once, and peering back, I realized I was staring down the barrels of five menacing-looking semi-automatic weapons.
I knew the type well, having authorized the sentries at Fortorus to use similar guns, but I’d never been subjected to that end of them before.
“Ich sagte: Auf deinen Knien!”
The command was growled again, that time by a guy to my right who barely looked old enough to buy an alcoholic drink, let alone use a firearm. Staring at the guy, I lowered slowly, acting on autopilot, but my heart hammered so fast I was surprised everyone in the small hallway couldn’t hear it.
Panic, an unfamiliar foe, clutched at my insides when my knees hit the ground. What was going to happen to me, and more importantly, what about Caroline?
“Okay.” I raised my hands in the air. “Ich tue, was du verlangt hast! I’m doing what you’ve asked!”
If the armed police were really there looking for me, the best thing I could do was cooperate. Getting myself shot wouldn’t help me or Caroline. If being in command had taught me anything, it was that compliance, at least initially, was a good first instinct.
“What’s happening?” Caroline’s voice was shaky as she watched me kneel. I doubted she’d ever seen her master do as he was told before. I couldn’t remember the last time I had. Her intervention, however, only inspired one of the officers to turn their weapon on her.
“Bitte!” I arbitrated on her behalf, needing to let them know Caroline couldn’t speak their language. “Sie spricht kein Deutsch. She doesn’t understand.”
“Then let us speak English.” A pale-faced woman stepped forward, her expression serious. “Are you Commander General Adam Harper?”
“Yes.” For the first time in fucking years, the things happening around me were out of my control, and I didn’t know how to cope. “I’m Adam Harper.”
After so long being the one either wielding the weapons or in charge of those who did, it was utterly debilitating to find myself so powerless.
But worse still was the threat to Caroline.
She’d done nothing wrong except follow me across the English Channel, and she’d already been punished enough.
Ian’s rules and the terrible regime at Fortorus had seen to that.
I couldn’t live with myself if anything else awful happened to her—especially because of me.
“Please, make sure she’s not harmed.” I glanced Caroline’s way, our eyes meeting for just long enough for me to acknowledge the heartbreak swimming in her gaze.
“And you are...” The officer who was seemingly in charge of the spiraling events checked her notes before her gaze rose to Caroline. “Miss Caroline Craness?”
“Y-yes.” Caroline’s stammered response was reminiscent of so many better times, times when I’d been the one provoking her agitation, but kneeling on the hard floor, I had no way of knowing whether we’d ever know those moments of intimacy again.
“You will also come with us, please, Miss Craness.”
“What’s happening?” Caroline gripped the banister. “Where are you taking us?”
“Wait there.” The asshole with his gun still pointed at her raised one hand as he spoke.
“But,” she started. “We need to know what’s happening! If you’re the police, what are the charges?”
“Allow us to explain, Miss Craness.” The female officer’s accent was thick, but her English was word perfect. “But please, you must not resist.”
“Not resist?” She sounded horrified, and had I not been so overwrought, I might have smirked at the disgust in her voice.
My little girl had never been one for conformity.
“Commander General Adam Harper.”
My attention was back on the policewoman immediately as she spoke.
Traveling under the guise of Adam Clément meant I hadn’t heard my old title for days, and somehow, the resonance of it was disturbingly jarring in the crowded hallway.
“We are arresting you for war crimes and crimes of aggression in violation of international human rights treaties and international law.”
Her words reverberated in my ears, some of them captured and processed by my brain, while others seemed to rebound elsewhere, lost in the ether.
War crimes. My head lowered. That’s who I am—a war criminal.
I hadn’t known my arrest was coming, but I’d always been aware of the risk once I’d left Britain. Ian’s bullshit laws provided impunity there, but beyond its borders, I was fair game.
Throat drying, all I could think was that they’d found me. Somehow, the authorities had tracked us down. Despite moving under the radar and only paying for things in cash, they’d discovered who and where I was.
The question of ‘how’ flitted through my mind like a musical chord, but the rational answers were soon drowned out by the crescendo of alarm, its melody screaming in my head until I turned to acknowledge the noise wasn’t music at all but someone screaming.
Caroline was screaming.
“Miss Craness.” The female officer scowled. “You’ll need to be silent, or we shall take you to the car outside.”
“Caroline.” For maybe the first time, I gazed at her with imploring eyes, needing her to know that, however the situation had arisen, and however much I might have loathed the fear in her voice, pissing off the people with the guns would not pay dividends.
For the time being, we both had to concede. “Please.”
Holding my gaze, her eyes sent me their terrified unspoken message, and knowing I couldn’t move to comfort her tore me up inside.
“Okay.” Her voice was croaky as she stepped forward and reached for my shoulder. Her delicate digits clung to me as though I was her anchor in the raging storm. The irony of that analogy was that, for so many weeks, she had been mine. “I’ll be quiet.”
With a curt nod, the female officer went on, “While you will initially be held in custody in Switzerland, you will ultimately be transferred to the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court in The Hague, in the Netherlands.”
My eyes flitted briefly closed at the thought. Ian and I had never even considered the reach of international law when we’d established the new order, yet there I was, the one on my knees having my rights read to me—the same rights he and I had stripped away from so many others.
In a twisted way, there was a forbidding satire to my fate, and rather than rile, the idea was grimly reassuring.
After all that time with power and virtual license to do as I wished, justice had finally come calling.
It was my time to pay the piper.
I guess nobody outruns the past.
The sardonic response flitted through my head, temporarily distracting me from the agonizing, clenching pain in the pit of my stomach.
Caroline was free. I had to hang onto that, and whatever happened to me, she was well beyond Ian’s grasp. I hoped to anything holy that we could be together, but if that wasn’t to be our fate, at least she was alive.
“These charges,” the officer went on, “are based upon documentation which has identified the use of your authority in accordance with the apparatus of the state to wrongly incarcerate, persecute, and torture civilians for cruel and inhumane treatment, and for kidnapping, slavery, and rape.”
My focus flitted to one of the women I had indeed kidnapped, incarcerated, and held in servitude, tears burning in her eyes as she gazed at me.
I was guilty of all the charges against me, except for one.
I’d never taken Caroline, nor any woman, against her will.
I liked to dominate, and to demean, but I hadn’t forced myself on anyone sexually.
It was a small consolation in light of the many heinous things I had organized, officiated on, and overseen, but as two of the officers with guns yanked me to my feet, there was still some small solace in the knowledge.
I was a bad man, a selfish man, maybe even an evil man, but Caroline had managed to break through the veneer of my malevolence and remind me who I really was before it was too late.
I was a better man because she had loved me.
“Cuff him.”
The female officer’s lips were moving, though I barely processed her words, and I didn’t resist as two of the assembled group tugged my hands behind me and forced my wrists into cuffs.
“Take him into custody,” the officer ordered.
“Wait!” Caroline called, gripping onto my arm as they started to move me. “Please just wait a minute.”
She pushed past the largest officer who’d told her to be quiet and somehow managed to maneuver herself in front of me.
My little girl versus all those armed police, yet she had achieved her purpose, reaching for me as I fought against the metal at my wrists.
I would have smiled at her fortitude and the irony that I was the one restrained had I not been so thoroughly despondent.
Only Caroline had enough pluck and courage to shove past men with guns and demand their prisoner’s attention.
I supposed all those months as my captive had honed that mettle inside of her, or more likely, I couldn’t take any credit at all and, deep down, she’d always had the audacious bravery to act.
“Miss!” The officer sounded utterly exasperated, a feeling I knew all too well where Caroline was concerned. “Do not impede us in the course of duty, or we’ll have no choice but to arrest you as well.”
“Please.” Caroline glanced back at the other woman. “Before you take him, I just need to tell him something.”
Not waiting for permission, she looked back my way and rose on her tiptoes.
“I love you.” She mouthed the words, although everyone crowded in the claustrophobic hall must surely have heard her.
Staring into her eyes for the few seconds we had before one of the goons hauled me out of the door, I swooped to press my lips to hers.
If I never saw her again, if the bastards with the guns got their way and locked me up, and I never got to spend another moment alone with her, then I needed that gentle collision of flesh to keep me whole.
To remind me that the love we’d made had been real.
Then, as quickly as the caress had been offered, I was jerked sideways and out of the door. As the Swiss sunlight blinded my eyes, all sight of Caroline was lost.