Chapter 6 #2
“Hey, Jason. Sorry it took me so long to call. It’s been busy and I couldn’t get a signal.
” He paused for a moment, listening to the other person.
“Yeah, it’s going all right. I’m... I’m okay.
Facing this stuff isn’t exactly pleasant, but.
.. I’m handling it. Plus, I’ve got Logan with me, so I’ll be all right. ”
I kicked my feet harder in the water, using the splashing to help drown out Clay’s conversation. Whatever he said to his brother was private, and it shouldn’t be exposed just because he didn’t realize I was within hearing range.
It must be nice, having a brother. Or any family at all, really. I’d been so young when the bell ringers took me that I didn’t have any memories from before them. There was no telling where I came from, or even who I was.
Even my name may not be mine.
The bell ringers called me Jordy, so that was the name I used, but I suspected it wasn’t my original name. I didn’t even have a surname.
After joining the recovery center, they’d helped me get a proper name, social security number, and all that paperwork stuff that made a person a person.
My DNA had been run, but nothing had come up, and no birth record had been found for me.
I’d been a completely blank slate who’d had to build himself from scratch.
At first, I’d considered changing my name, but Jordy was all I’d ever known, and even though the bell ringers had given it to me, I’d made it my own.
I wasn’t going to let them take that from me as well.
Instead, I’d simply added a proper surname, so now my full legal name was Jordy Emerson.
In the past two years, I’d been asked several times by my therapists, nurses, and even other patients at the recovery center, about the significance of the name I’d chosen.
The truth was, I’d just flipped randomly through a baby names book until I found a name I liked the look of and sounded good with Jordy.
It hadn’t been any more complicated than that, but I liked the overall effect. Jordy Emerson felt like it fit me.
I stayed by the pool for a long time, even after Clay finished his call and wandered off.
I’d have been happy to stay there all day, but eventually, everyone was rounded up for a meeting.
We weren’t there for vacation, after all.
We had a very important mission to accomplish, one that I probably should have been more focused on, but I’d been trying not to think about the reason I was down in that bunker in the first place.
One of the cottages in the bunker was bigger than the others and acted as a communal recreation area.
There was a full kitchen, with plenty of chairs and tables for everyone to sit comfortably.
Efforts had been put into making everything comfortable, including a meal of cold sandwiches and hot tea, but I still couldn’t shake the feeling that we were in some sort of bizarre board meeting.
Like we were there to discuss stock prices and quarterly earnings, rather than divulge details about the most horrific moments of our lives.
I sat in the corner of the room at a table that was only big enough for one person, poking at my tuna sandwich as I listened to everyone else speak.
It turned out most of the investigators were not staying at the bunker permanently. They’d only come to help transport the witnesses to safety, but the case against the bell ringers was still ongoing. So, the investigators for the case needed to get back out there and continue their work.
Along with the witnesses, only two other men were left at the safe house. Kitt, and a man named Sebastian that I hadn’t met yet.
Sebastian walked with a limp, so it was obvious why he was being kept out of field work, but I still had no idea what Kitt contributed to the case.
Across the room, it was clear that Clay hated being separated from Logan. They wouldn’t even be able to visit each other, since we couldn’t risk having too many people coming and going from the safe house for fear of giving away our location.
I felt bad for him, but a part of me couldn’t help feeling jealous, too. It must be nice having someone to miss. If I had someone like Logan at my side, I wouldn’t want to be apart from them, either.
Maybe.
It was actually hard to say. I’d never actually had a romantic partner before, so I couldn’t say for certain how I would handle it.
While at the recovery center, I’d gone on a few dates, just to get used to the idea of reintroducing romance into my life, but nothing had come of it, and they’d all ended in disappointment.
Once basic introductions had been made, Kitt stepped up to the front of the room, and I finally learned why he was here.
He was our lawyer.
I nearly laughed out loud and took a big bite of my sandwich to silence myself.
A lawyer?
Really?
Even legal dramas on television, where every character was played by an unrealistically attractive actor, wouldn’t have been able to pass off Kitt as a lawyer.
Sure, he looked professional, with his polished shoes and bespoke suit.
He even had a pair of wire-framed glasses perched on his nose to complete his “intellectual” look, but the man was hotter than sin and his every gaze turned into a smolder.
Not to mention he was built like a Greek statue.
If this man was a lawyer on top of everything else, then life truly wasn’t fair. One person did not need to be blessed in so many ways.
After I’d agreed to become a witness, I’d done as much research as I could into the bell ringer case.
Because of this, nothing Kitt said next surprised me.
I already knew that the case was struggling, mainly due to the fact that they had no one to directly blame.
Senator McLeod was already dead, and all the other names that they’d been able to dig up so far were clearly just lackies following orders.
If they wanted to take down the bell ringers, they needed the leaders, not just low-level managers.
That was where witnesses like us came in. We had firsthand experiences with the bell ringers and could, hopefully, point the investigation toward specific people.
Once he’d explained everything, Kitt relinquished the floor to anyone who wanted to speak up.
It reminded me of the group therapy sessions I’d attended at the recovery center, where everyone sat around in a circle and recounted their own experiences.
It had always shocked me how reluctant people were to reveal anything at those sessions, often speaking so vaguely that it was impossible to tell what they were actually speaking about.
It seemed like such a waste. The recovery center was an opportunity to heal and grow.
Why get in the way of that by continuing to keep secrets?
I expected this meeting with the other witnesses to be different. Everyone was there specifically to stand as a witness against the bell ringers. Yet, to my surprise, as I listened to the other’s stories, I found it no different than the meetings at the recovery center.
Clay went first, telling the story of how he’d been kidnapped by the bell ringers from his home as a child.
How he’d immediately been put into “service” and kept locked away for years until he eventually grew too old for the bell ringers’ “taste” and was lucky enough to be set free, rather than killed and disposed of.
Thomas’s story was similar. He was also kidnapped from his home when he was young, but in his case, he’d managed to escape on his own after several years of captivity rather than being set free.
The two sisters, Madison and Maria, had a different story.
They were eighteen and nineteen years old, and I could tell as soon as I saw them that they weren’t victims in the same way that Clay and I were.
Instead, their brother had been the bell ringer’s target.
Apparently, something had gone wrong during the boy’s kidnapping, and the two sisters had been taken as well.
Three people going missing from one family had caused a huge manhunt, which eventually led to all three of them being rescued, but the sisters had still gotten a good look at several of their kidnappers.
Their brother was too young to be a reliable witness and was currently staying at a recovery facility to heal from the abuse he’d unfortunately suffered.
So, the sisters had agreed to speak up for him on his behalf to ensure that the people who harmed their brother were punished.
When the sisters finished speaking, both visibly upset from their memories, Kitt encouraged them to take some time to calm down and thanked them for their help.
I scoffed, making an audible huffing sound that drew everyone’s attention. I hadn’t meant to do something so rude, but I couldn’t help it. This whole conversation seemed so pointless.
Clay gave me a pointed look, clearly trying to tell me to be quiet without saying so out loud. However, his signals were interrupted when Thomas stood from his chair to face me.
“Have you got a problem?”
“What, no,” I hurried to explain.
“Really, because it seems like you’ve got something to say.”
I should have just apologized and left it at that, but his judgmental gaze rubbed me the wrong way.
After spending so many years playing along with what my captors wanted from me, my internal pendulum had swung the opposite way.
Now that I was free and living under my own power, I never knew when to hold my tongue and couldn’t help challenging people.
Rolling my eyes, I shrugged off Thomas’s accusation.
“Well, someone had to say something.” I checked my watch.
“We just spent an hour talking, but no one has said anything that’s of any use.
These investigators already know how you were taken and things like that.
I know it’s hard to talk about. Trust me, I’ve been there.
But they need details that they can actually use, not just vague stories. ”