9. Anastasia
It’s midnight and I’m curled up on the deep black sofa in my apartment. The TV plays Grey’s Anatomy, but after five seasons of outlandish scenarios and every couple failing, it’s become mere background noise in my attempt to busy my restless thoughts.
A six-beat tone jerks me from my numb state, and I scramble to untangle myself from the two blankets I’ve buried myself in. Shadow leaps off the sofa, alert eyes tracking me.
It’s the phone Rix gave me.
Heart beating in my throat, I snatch it from the coffee table, and there’s one notification from an app I don’t recognize. I tap into it and read the text:
Leave the apartment on my signal.
I shoot up and rush to stuff my feet into boots and sling on a black jacket. I pull up the hood of Rhett’s sweater that’s starting to look old and tired, but I don’t care.
At the door I wait, hardly able to be still in my racing anticipation. Shadow sits by my heel. He never said I couldn’t bring him.
The first message disappears, and I stare at the dark gray background, chewing my thumb and waiting for another to appear.
When it does, I feel as if my heart will burst from my chest.
Hall is clear. Take the elevator to the garage floor. Don’t get out until I say.
I don’t miss a beat. My blood soars as I make my way hurriedly down the hall. I glance up as I reach the elevator, clicking the button too many times as if it will bring it twenty-two floors up to the top level faster.
Rix must have cut the camera, and he’s probably only cutting one at a time so the missing time will be a near undetectable few seconds in each feed. Tony recently switched with the night guard posted outside my door after checking I was safe inside. I wonder how Rix made him wander away long enough for me to slip out.
The chime of the elevator is music to my ears, and I slip in, heading down. It’s like a chase, as if there’s someone after me this very second, and if Alistair discovers me missing, the consequences don’t bear thinking about. He’s a controlling, possessive man, so finding out one of his own has eluded him would be as good as any betrayal.
The doors open, and my heart thrums in the silence.
Then the message comes.
Now.
As I leave the elevator another instruction comes.
Left exit. Walk down 5th Avenue.
Merging into the trickling pedestrian traffic, I clip on Shadow’s leash, more for other people’s peace of mind than as a necessity. I march fast.
Another message chimes.
Slow down before someone stops you out of suspicion.
Scowling at the device as the message fades away, I try my best to slow. Be calm. But between the giddiness of hearing from Rix and the potential I could be caught by Alistair’s spies, a wrecking ball swings loose in my mind.
A black car with reg XDL will approach you. Get in.
Suddenly I’m awash with doubt. Nerves. What if it wasn’t Rix at the club? In my desperation I believed him, but now, reservations I should have had back then freeze me. The car approaches, and I can’t move. I stare at it like a fool.
The window rolls down, and the driver—Rix—leans over the passenger seat. “Less than forty seconds until those street cameras come back on, Red,” he hisses.
That snaps me to move. Shit. I have no other choice.
I open the back door for Shadow and then slip in the front, staring straight ahead as Rix speeds off.
“I don’t bite,” Rix says at my stiffness and refusal to look at him. “Well, depends who you ask, actually.”
I want to relax at his humor, but my thoughts are scrambled. Shadow would bite if I commanded it. He’s my security right now, lying in the back seat.
“You don’t speak anymore?”
“How do I know you are who you say you are?” I rush out.
I slide him a look then. He doesn’t appear offended by my doubt.
He reaches into his side compartment and then holds a card out to me between two fingers. I recognize it. As I take it, the logo of Xoid surfaces the painful memory of when Rhett showed me.
Welcome the lost, pity the found.
“I guess I am lost now,” I mutter.
“Which is why, thanks to your excellent connections, you’re getting a fast-track to Xoid HQ. Not many get to come here, by the way. We have many other setups in many states, but the Den is where it all began.”
I flip over the card to find his initials are on it: “RB.”
Beneath it is a six-digit code like the one Rhett had.
“What does the code mean?”
“When someone calls it, it connects to the phone of whoever they’re trying to reach. Not a call though—instead it’s like a temporary virus to them while our phones completely copy their data. We know who called, where they live, and so much more that we can usually guess why they contacted us. And then we can decide if we’ll answer, and they won’t know until we show up. Or don’t.”
I find that fascinating.
My unease doesn’t fully settle from being given the piece of card; it lingers for the twenty-minute drive. When he cuts the engine, I stare out at the pitch-black deserted building beyond chain-link fencing with new anxiety.
“Afraid of the dark?” Rix asks.
I jump at his voice, not hearing him step out. He leans in his open door.
Unbuckling, I know I’ve reached a whole new level of reckless judgment to have gotten in a car with a stranger and let him lead me to somewhere far away from civilization in the middle of the night.
Oh well. Too late to find my sanity now.
I get out, clutching Shadow’s leash tightly as I follow Rix through the dark. He has a flashlight, but we don’t go through the chain-link fence.
“Where are we?” I whisper.
“It’s an ex-army camp.”
“Isn’t it . . . trespassing? Illegal?”
“Highly.”
I gawk at his back, but he doesn’t elaborate to ease my new fear.
He goes through an open metal side door into a building long forgotten. It’s creepy as fuck, and I feel like I’ve just stepped into a haunted bunker. I’m waiting for Michael Myers to appear around the next corner with a chainsaw to rattle the eerie silence.
“Never judge a place by the exterior,” Rix mutters.
We step into a huge elevator, the newest-looking thing I’ve seen so far, and Rix presses his thumb to a scanner before typing a code into the keypad.
“Did you have to bring the wolf?” Rix asks as we start heading down.
“I may be a desperate fool to follow you in the middle of the night, but I’m not that na?ve. He’s the best source of protection I have.”
“Fair point. I only say because ... well, don’t let him eat Frodo and Sam, will you? I mean, between you and me, I wouldn’t cry about it, but I’d never hear the end of it from Jeremy when he gets back.”
“Who are?—?”
The doors slide open, and I’m taken away, thoughts stolen, at what expands before us. I step out, trying to take it all in.
It’s a massive tin-looking construction, a hall with so many screens and computers, desks, and chairs seating countless people. Surveillance feeds, data, websites ... I follow Rix mindlessly down the middle, trying to take it all in. For some reason, I imagined the “Den”consisted of Rix holed up in an apartment alone, surrounded by empty pizza boxes and soda cans. I giggle at that image now.
“What’s so funny?” Rix asks, walking backward. He smiles too, and I’m overcome with how much hope he gives me.
This place.
It’s real.
I’m in Xoid. And we’re going to get Rhett back.
I stop walking, and people start noticing our intrusion of their workspace. It’s so casual, but at the same time I can read the laser focus of everyone here. Feel the family they’ve found in each other, but also the gravity of how.
“Listen up, guys,” Rix says, clapping his hands together.
I shift with the attention of the room as he silences their idle chatter.
“This is Anastasia Kinsley, Kaiser’s girl.” He crosses over to me, slinging an arm around my shoulders. “Which means she’s our girl.”
“’Bout time, Kinsley!” a guy shouts out. His grin is so warm and welcoming, and others begin greeting me.
I’m so overjoyed that all my reservations fade away at once. Looking over everyone, I’ve never felt such prideswelling in me. For all these people; for Rhett, who built this; for me, as I hope to do him proud.
A door at the far end opens, and I don’t expect the elderly woman who comes out. Just then, yapping echoes through the hall, and I stiffen. Shadow growls, and then I see them: two tiny Chihuahuas come speeding toward us as if the old woman set them off as fireworks.
“Frodo and Sam?” I guess.
“Part of the ‘Xoidship.’” Rix sighs, reciting his brother, I assume, with a grin.
For a second I hold my breath in case Shadow reacts badly to their obnoxious barking, but he merely watches them, tail wagging, as they snap around him like piranhas out of water, as if he couldn’t swallow them in one mouthful. You have to admire little-dog confidence.
They start to calm when Shadow doesn’t react, but the moment he takes a step forward in intrigue, the Chihuahua sirens are off again.
“That’s it,” Rix says, scooping them up, and that silences them immediately. “We don’t have time for dog showdowns right now.”
He carries them while nudging me forward. “There’s someone I think you’d like to meet.”
We head toward the elderly woman, who waits expectantly, leaning on a daisy-scattered pink cane.
“About time indeed,” she says warmly when we reach her. “I’ve been waiting to meet you, Ana.”
She heads back inside the room, which is like a small studio apartment. The scent immediately hits me: the comfort, safety, and love that any elderly person’s home embodies. It’s decorated with pastel florals over the sage-green couch and the table linen. She heads over to the kitchen area, which isn’t so much for cooking, but it has a stove where an old kettle whistles.
“Let me get that,” Rix says, putting the two dogs down, and they must feel the same sense of calm in here as they don’t immediately go for Shadow. Instead their paws tap across the hard ground, over the carpeted rug, and into a small house I don’t think Shadow would even fit his head into.
“Ana, this is our Oma.” He introduces us, pouring boiling water into three cups.
“A pleasure to meet you,” I say. Was that awkward? I wring my hands, unsure why I feel like getting this woman’s approval is important.
“Sit, sit.” She ushers me over to the four-seater dining table.
Rix brings over the tea, joining us. He begins dropping in more sugar cubes than I think anyone can take, and he adds a helping of milk.
“You live here?” I ask timidly.
“Since the beginning,” she answers cheerfully.
“I don’t mean to pry ... but why?”
“Oma is a retired trauma therapist. Well, should be retired.” Rix casts her a playful pointed look. “She refuses to be fired and live out her days in complete relaxation above ground, spoiled by us.”
I add one cube of sugar and watch it dissolve with the swirl of my spoon.
Oma says, “I still have a mind and ears and knowledge. I’ll retire when I’m dead. My grandson likes to fuss.”
It makes sense. Though I wonder with a heavy heart if Rix and Jeremy still have parents.
“Oma raised us.” Rix answers the question that must be written on my face. “Then she happened to find out about Xoid when Rhett and I met up and began setting it up and she decided her soap operas weren’t keeping her entertained enough.”
“You’ve never been good with secrets,” she says.
Rix adds milk to her tea, no sugar. She takes a sip.
“So you help the people working here ... or the victims they save?” I ask.
Rix answers for her. “Sometimes both. Though mostly our people. They’ve been through some dark shit?—”
“Language, boy,” Oma scolds.
I bite my lip at his sheepish look.
“Sorry. Dark stuff, and when they choose to join us, they know what they’re signing up for. For many, getting to help others out of similar situations and shut down bad guys helps them heal, but everyone needs help. Oma is an absolute credit.”
I’m completely awed by her selflessness. She waves off his praise as if what she does isn’t all that much. But it’s lifesaving.
“I can’t imagine what Rhett’s going through,” I whisper. What kind of torture is Alistair inflicting on him? My panic starts to rise fast, terrified of the awful conjurings of my mind.
“We’ll be here for him,” Rix says. “You’ll be here. I’ve known Rhett far longer than I’ve been in Xoid. We met because of Alistair, ironically enough. My dad was a drug dealer, far lower in the chain than Alistair. He was basically his footstool. Rhett frequented our house for a while to drop off new street drugs. We were twelve.”
Despair fills my chest for the young boys who were exposed to far more than any child should be.
Rix continues. “I guess what I’m trying to say is, I’ve known every dark shade of Rhett Kaiser. He’s the most resilient fucker—shit, sorry Oma—man I’ve ever known. He lives to get things done, push through hardships, and pull others out with him. He lives to save people. But he’s never lived for himself. He’s never let anyone save him.Until you.”
I’m so sick of crying, but I can’t help it when his words make my heart too big for my chest. It’s painful. “I miss him,” I whisper. “So much.”
“Me too, dear,” Oma says, reaching a hand over mine on the table.
We sit with Oma for a half hour before heading back into the main room.
“If you ever need to talk, dear,” Oma says warmly.
“Thank you,” I say.
I thought I’d feel out of place when I finally got to come here, but I feel at home. I feel so warm and welcome, and this is leaps closer to Rhett. No one looks at me like the president’s daughter who doesn’t possibly belong here. They don’t watch me with distain for my wealth or status, and I’m so relieved that I wish I knew how to show it.
“It’s been more than a week since I saw you,” I say as we wander around and Rix tries to explain what happens at some of the stations.
“Sorry. We got caught up in stopping a possible trafficking target. It took longer than I thought. Rhett would be livid if we let all of Xoid’s work slip to save him.”
I think so too, but it doesn’t make it easier to want to fight Rhett on his selflessness when he isn’t even here.
“I took the liberty of making these,” he says, swiping up a card-size, deep red metal wallet.
I take the offering, and there’s a lever on the side, which I pull down. It opens, and I pluck out a card.
“A.K.,” and below it, a six-digit number.
“It connects to the phone I gave you. Welcome to the Xoidship.”
I’m speechless. It’s a token of belonging that makes me feel so warm and powerful.
“Thank you,” I say, but it doesn’t feel enough for how easily he’s accepted me.
Rix merely smiles, perching on the desk that is so neatly organized. Four black pencils sit in a formal line next to a straight notepad. A small black globe. A coaster with the Xoid logo. A wireless phone-charger pad. I figure this is Rix’s station, but I don’t expect the controlled tidiness that has me wondering if he’d combust if I shifted a pencil out of line. Definitely not an empty pizza box and soda can kinda guy.
“This is where I hack surveillance feeds, communications, and the like,” he explains about the half-dozen screens around him. Some are split, with many feeds on one, and I become overwhelmed with one glance at what they’re keeping track of daily.
Rhett is out there somewhere.
As the feeds occasionally change, I can’t help but think he could be in the vicinity of somewhere I’m looking directly at. He doesn’t know we’re looking for him. Perhaps he’s given up hope, believing we all think the car wreck killed him and no one is coming.
The thought leaves me hardly able to breathe, imagining his loneliness and neglect.
Then something sparks to my mind with a skip of my pulse. I ask, “Can you hack into a live performance feed?”
Rix slips a curious eye my way. “Very possible. Though I don’t think we’ve tried before.”
“What about something broadcast from the White House?”
“What are you thinking, Red?”
I bite my lip. My idea sounds highly risky, but it makes me giddy as hell. “I’m thinking it’s about time Rhett Kaiser knows Xoid is active, and that we’re coming for him this time.”