Chapter 5
A nia fell asleep again, waking to an odd sound that had her bolting out of bed and staring around her room nervously. She snatched the loaner phone off its charger and checked the time—5:00 a.m. She walked quickly to the window and peeked behind the curtain, not sure what was bothering her. It was not light outside at all, save for the streetlamps. Vehicles were parked up and down the road, as people had come home last night. With this hotel, vehicles for the guests were parked in the allotted parking lots.
Yet her instincts told her that something was wrong; she just didn’t know what.
She quickly dressed, threw her few belongings into the one bag she had and stepped out of her room, knowing that nobody would care if she was here later today or not. She’d prepaid, and, if she came back, she would pay again. If she didn’t come back—or couldn’t—that was a whole different story. She raced down the hallway toward the rear stairs, taking them down to the exit.
Without warning, the back door opened in front of her, and there were two men, startled, but eyeing her, and then their features lit up in mild surprise. One wore a big fat grin, as he said, “Would you look at that? Just the person we’re looking for.”
She was snatched up, and all she could do was scream at the top of her lungs. But, in this location, she highly doubted anybody would care. A hand was slapped over her mouth, and she immediately bit down hard on the nearest finger.
“You stupid bitch.” His furious words were followed by a smack of his hand to her head.
But one man had loosened his hold, so, with her nails, she quickly scratched his face, while she kicked and punched, twisting and wiggling free, and was on the run immediately.
With the two men pounding the pavement behind her, she darted through back alleys, over fences, until she reached another parking lot and skittered under a van, getting road rash. There she holed up and waited, frozen. She was trying hard not to give away her position.
She heard footsteps thundering past the van, where she was lying. Then the men swore, one going left and one going right. She waited, her cheek flat against the concrete, as she desperately tried to regain her breath, not only that but she needed a plan, and again she needed a plan that would work. A voice broke through the fog in her brain.
Stay put. We’re on the way .
She left out a soft sigh. Sanders . She closed her eyes, her breath raspy, as she whispered in her head, Hurry. They found out where I’ve been staying, and I’m in a nearby parking lot, but I don’t know where .
Keep the signal on , he murmured. We’re in a vehicle, racing toward you .
She wasn’t even sure how that worked or what other abilities he had, but, holy crap, if he could come get her right now, he would be a lifesaver.
Did you see who it was?
She thought about it and could only give him brief descriptions. Both six foot, the huge bodybuilder thuggish types. Black jeans, black T-shirts, not brush cuts but short hair , she replied. Other than that, they looked like they’d been around the bend a few times, though I didn’t have much of a chance to look. One’s got fresh scratches on his cheek and the other one? Well, I bit his finger , she shared. Then she almost laughed. If they try it again, they’ll get a lot more .
Stay put , he repeated.
Oh, I’m staying put, but I don’t know if they’ll come back.
You let us know, but you stay where you are. We’re coming to you.
Good, but hurry.
Do you have any idea of the address where you were staying?
She gave him the coordinates of the main cross-streets. I don’t know the exact address of the hotel though. It’s not exactly prime living .
No, and it doesn’t matter whether it was or not. You stayed alive, and that’s what counts.
Yeah, but I’m in danger of not being alive much longer if they find me. They’re pretty mad.
Stay put , he repeated, a hard warning in his tone. This is our chance to grab you. If we lose you now,… it’ll be almost impossible to find you again. This time your father will lock you up for a life .
The fact that he was correct didn’t make it any easier to stay where she was, especially when she heard footsteps coming back. In her head, she sent out an alert. They’re back, looking for me .
Don’t move, just stay quiet. Stop sending the signal, just leave it on beat.
She wasn’t even sure what the hell that meant, but considering that she was afraid somebody else might track it, she shut it down, knowing that the men had physical coordinates for the main part of the hotel, but she’d run quite a distance from there. With her eyes closed, she tried to disperse any energy around her, in case some energy worker was out there. She was just doing whatever she could, yet not knowing quite what she was doing, but desperately hoping that somebody would help.
Then another voice broke in, and he said, I’m Terk. I work with Sanders. We’re the ones who rescued him. You need to stop thinking. Just imagine calm, peaceful waves of cool energy spreading out from your body and away from these men. What you don’t want to do is focus on them, and you don’t want to not focus on them either. Just try to stay calm and keep that energy from being rattled.
She froze. Are you saying my father might have somebody who can track me?
It’s always possible. We have somebody who can track you too. So never assume that there isn’t anybody else like us. What we have to do now is ensure my team gets there fast enough that you’re not taken again. So, we need to ignore your father for now.
She agreed wholeheartedly but wasn’t sure how to do it. I couldn’t give him an address .
It’s okay. While I’ve got a lock on your position, they’re heading toward you. Also, we have somebody here that can give us further directions to a more accurate extent as well .
His calm demeanor was soothing her as well.
The biggest thing is for you to stay put. If you do get snatched, you keep this link open, I can track it. Stay with me now.
Somewhat relieved to hear that, but hating the idea that she might get snatched again, she closed her eyes and just focused on her breathing, anything to try and keep that sense of calm within her heart. To have it go sideways now would be the worst, so she tried very hard to remain calm. When she heard footsteps slowly walking around the parking lot, she felt the reactive tremors shuddering through her body, as she worked hard to keep everything from blowing up.
Then she heard the men’s voices. “She couldn’t have gotten far,” roared one of the men. “What kind of fucking bitch is she?”
“Hey, we’ve got news from the tracker.”
“Yeah, well, he’s been wrong before. I don’t know if he’s just making up shit to keep us on our toes or what, but he’s hardly a very good tracker.”
“Maybe, but he told me that she’s not far from here.”
Her heart froze. It just boggled the mind to think that people were tracking her. But it could account to some degree on why she was struggling so much to send and receive messages. The men were talking again.
“Doesn’t matter if she’s fucking close or not. If she’s not right here in front of us, it doesn’t matter. It’s just too far away. He needs to give us better instructions.”
She heard phone calls and muffled voices, as they moved over to the street. She kept her own energy as calm and as quiet as she could, then Terk again whispered in her mind.
Stay still. Stay calm. You’re doing just fine . When she heard another vehicle drive up and pull into the parking lot, Terk added, That will be Sanders and Riff .
She was almost giddy to hear it.
Get ready to go with them but not yet. I’m getting them closer to where you are.
A vehicle now pulled up beside her, and she froze again.
That’s them. Stay calm .
She let out her breath slowly, and then suddenly someone was down on the pavement beside her. She cringed in shock and terror, only to see a man staring at her. The relief on his face was too serene to scare her. Then he flashed her a smile.
“Ania. I’m Sanders. You’re a hard one to find. Come on. Let’s get you into the vehicle and out of here.”
With that, he quickly scooped her to his side, away from where the bad guys were and into the back seat of a car. He quickly pulled a blanket over her, and they calmly drove out and away.
*
“You can sit up now,” Sanders said, flipping back the blanket. He smiled down at the shock of black curly hair, pale white cheeks, and huge blue eyes blinking up at him. He grinned. “Even though I had photos of you, I can’t say you are exactly how I expected you to look.”
Her gaze narrowed, and she nodded. “Ditto. Albeit without the benefit of a photo.” She slowly sat up and looked around. “Are they gone?”
“We drove past them getting out of the parking lot,” said their driver.
She looked at him curiously and offered, “Hi, I’m Ania.”
“Hi, Ania. I am Riff.”
She turned back to Sanders. “Do you know somebody named Terk?”
He chuckled. “Sure do. Technically he’s Riff’s boss. He’s the one who signed off on the mission that got me rescued. And this one too.”
“I really appreciate the help,” she murmured. “How many people are there like us who can do this?” she asked in wonder. “I mean, all of a sudden, something that we thought was very unique and not widespread seems to be what everybody wants. More and more people can track us too.”
“I think that’s because they suddenly see a purpose behind our gifts,” Sanders explained, as he looked around the street, his gaze coming back to her. “Of course we also know that your father is very involved in trying to supply more of us.”
She winced at that. “My father has a lot to answer for,” she declared, her tone harsh.
“Yes, just not today,” Riff added.
Sanders let out a sigh. “I hate to tell you, but you should hear it from me. Your aunt is dead.”
Ania gasped, a hand going to her mouth.
“We figured your father was to blame.”
She nodded. “My mother was ill, but she was not on her deathbed. So I’m afraid he may have killed my mother too. Oh, Vanessa,” she exclaimed.
“Terk has her in a safe place. He had another man in the area, so he’ll watch over Vanessa, until we have your father under control. We’re more concerned about getting you out of here than making him pay for anything.”
“Can you get me out of here?” she asked, staring at him.
“We can. At least that’s the plan,” he noted. “We just need a little bit of cooperation.”
“From whom, though?” she murmured. “Because, when you think about it, I do have a passport, but my father’s got to be looking for me at all the major airports and seaports and other terminals,” she shared. “I don’t know how to get out of the country.”
“We can drive, so that would be one avenue. I doubt he’ll check all the roads.”
“Unless he declares you some criminal and engages the local authorities to put up roadblocks,” Riff commented.
Ania snorted. Riff was right. “He would do that in a heartbeat, if he thought it would get him what he wanted.” Riff looked at her in the rearview mirror, as if checking the veracity of her comment, and she nodded. “He’s changed since my mother died,” she murmured. “My mother always kept me somewhat protected from him. Mostly I think because he was quick to use his hands to hit her. She always got the backhand but tried to keep me clear of it. Until recently, I was attending university in town, while he required me to still live at home. As long as he didn’t know about what I could do, I lived a relatively peaceful life. But my mother knew that I had some abilities and didn’t want him to find out.… I don’t know what happened after she died. I don’t know whether she left him a note or somebody mentioned something, but, all of a sudden, he was all over me.” She turned to look again at Sanders. “I was being held, the same as Sanders was, but in a different way,” she murmured. “I was under house arrest, whereas you were in prison.”
“A prison that was a lab,” he muttered.
Her face winced at that. “I am sorry. We don’t really realize what we’re capable of, until we get in these situations, do we?”
“In your father’s case, I think he was scared about handing over people who supposedly had special gifts. So he was big on testing us, and, of course, I never quite got the testing right,” he shared, with a waggle of his eyebrows.
She beamed. “Yeah, I never did either. Not that he really understood what we could or couldn’t do, and I think that’s been our salvation. So far, he doesn’t really understand what we are capable of, so it’s been a little easier to hide. But those men back at the parking lot, they did say that they were speaking with a tracker. Although they were complaining that their tracker wasn’t good enough.”
“A tracker?” Sanders repeated, slowly letting out his breath.
Riff nodded. “A good tracker is worth his weight in gold. However, if you’re no good at tracking, that just makes it even harder, almost impossible, in fact. Add in some wrong information and a few missed signs a couple times, then nobody’ll believe you.”
“Their tracker did tell the goons that I was close, and they were standing right beside me. I was under that vehicle, hoping that they wouldn’t bend down and see me. That’s when Terk told me to stay calm and to disperse my energy, not thinking about what was going on because just thinking about them could bring me to their attention.”
“Yeah, that can happen,” Riff agreed. “The minute you activate energy, it has its own pulse, a unique beat. So, if you try not to think about something,… it’s likely guaranteed that you’ll think about it. As soon as you do, you get that weird feeling of somebody looking at you. You turn around, but nobody is there, and they get that same feeling. Of course, in this case, it just means that they would have turned around and would have doubled their efforts to find you even faster.”
“That’s insane.” Anai was skeptical.
Sanders added, “The fact that we left and that they didn’t find you is huge because you are free and clear of the men on the ground. Now the tracker is a worrisome loose end. So it’s a matter of getting you farther away,” he murmured. “For that, we’ll have to work a little harder. First off though, are you hurt?”
“No, just scraped up a little.”
“Do you need anything? When did you eat last? Are you okay for a long trip?”
“I had leftovers last night, but I was so keyed up that I couldn’t really eat. Then I had a lot of trouble getting to sleep. Yet I slept like a log for a while but woke up with my heart slamming against my chest, knowing something was wrong. I just packed up and bolted outside, and they basically caught me leaving at the back door. I screamed bloody murder, fought like crazy, managed to slip free, and just ran. I was exhausted by the time I hit the next parking lot. When I thought I was out of sight for a second, I just dove under that van and stayed there.”
“That was a great decision. Most people look high or on the ground, but to check under every vehicle wouldn’t necessarily have been considered. That was good thinking on your part.”
She smiled. “I would like to say I thought it through that much, but really I just saw a chance and went for it.” She yawned, sitting up again. “I have to admit that this has been a pretty rough week.”
“It has been,” Sanders agreed. “We tracked you down to the old guy who hired you to do inventory.”
She stared at him, her jaw dropping. “What?” she cried out. “You were that close, and I didn’t know?”
He laughed. “We were that close and were trying hard to get closer, but you were on the move. So trying to follow you was like trying to find an ant in the dirt. Sure, you went to a big city, where you would blend in more, but it also made it harder for us to find you.”
“I didn’t even think about a rescue,” she shared. “Plus my father had kept me fairly drugged. So every time I tried to send out messages, I seemed to be working with a very low-powered battery. I was getting really fuzzy signals.”
“You would have been,” Riff confirmed. “It’s a thing for Sanders here too, since he’s still damaged from everything that happened to him. He’s getting help from other people, sharing their energy with him to keep him strong and active—which he shouldn’t be burning through, since it’s other people’s energy.” Riff shot him a glare.
At that, Sanders nodded. “I understand, but I needed their energy to find Ania, and now that we have, I should shut it down—providing we don’t lose her again.”
“Don’t lose me again,” she whispered. “Please don’t lose me again.”
He reached out his hand, and she gripped it. “I don’t plan on it,” he stated. “You were what kept me sane that whole time I was a prisoner.”
“I don’t know about keeping you sane, but I was trying to figure out what I, or anybody, could even do for us,” she noted. “I mean, we were both prisoners, just in different ways. I never told you very much about it though.”
“No, but I understood,” Sanders said. “You weren’t free to help, and I didn’t expect you to.”
“And yet I should have,” she admitted. “I was told that the pills my father gave me were antibiotics—because I had a bad cut on my arm, bad enough that I needed stitches. So I never thought anything of the pills.”
“Exactly. And that’s the thing about drugs. They keep you in that state. Once that first drug goes down, it’s hard to know that you’re being fed more lies and more drugs, so that you can’t ever quite get clear,” Sanders explained. “How did you finally figure it out?”
“I think I grew a little more resistant to the drugs,” she guessed, with a wince. “I started to get a bit clearer and realized something ugly was going on. My father wouldn’t talk to me about it, and then I realized that he was changing my drugs, adding medications, switching drugs, even though the wound had healed. I finally realized what was happening, but getting away from him was a whole different story. Once I knew that Sanders here was free and clear, then it gave me hope that maybe I could get out. Obviously I was hoping that he would come after me someday, but I didn’t really see any way for that to happen. So I didn’t hold out much hope for it.”
Sanders sighed at that. “It hurts to hear that, but I get it. When you’re a prisoner, you hang on to every little bit of hope that’s possible, and I get why you would also think that maybe I couldn’t come, but, hey, we got you out anyway.”
She squeezed his fingers. “Thank you.”
Sanders asked, “So you didn’t tell us if you needed anything.”
Ania smiled. “Can I get to a bathroom, get some coffee, maybe some food? If not, it’s okay, but—”
“Absolutely,” Riff replied. “Let me get an idea of where we are and where we can go from here. We need to stop and check in with the others anyway,” he added, taking a look around. “It’s just a matter of staying safe at this point.”
“Staying safe is one thing. Staying away from my father, who’s got eyes and ears everywhere because he’s big in the military and the government—is a whole different story.”
“Got it,” Riff said. “Still, we’re not really into failing. So stay strong, give us a chance, and let’s get you into a washroom, a hotel, or at least a coffee shop, where we can connect with a few of our people.” Saying that, he pulled into a truck stop up ahead, then looked around and asked, “You want to chance going in?”
She nodded. “I have to use the bathroom, so I have to go inside, unless one is outside.” She sighed. “I would love to go in and sit down and have a meal, but—”
“Exactly. We won’t take a chance on that. Sanders will take you in to use the bathroom and then order some food, while I check in with the team.”
And that’s what they did. By the time Sanders escorted her back to the car, he looked down at her, ensuring she was comfortable. “You feel better?”
“A little bit, yeah,” she said. “Nothing quite like knowing that you’re out of an ugly situation, even though it’s still dicey. Obviously I’m ecstatic just to be free.”
He gave her hand a squeeze.
“But the fear is still there,” she admitted. “Now that my father killed my aunt, I also think he killed my mother.”
“We think so too. In fact, I’m guessing that Riff is doing his own side investigation into that each time he disappears. So that fear is healthy in that it keeps you alert. I’m glad to see that. We have to be realistic about our situation. I came back for you as soon as I was able. Ever since I got back, we’ve been trying to catch up with you, but you’ve been staying under the radar pretty well.”
She chuckled. “I had to. My father is not exactly slow on the uptake. When he decides he wants something, he goes after it, whether you like it or not.”
“He’s your blood father?”
She looked up, smiled, and nodded. “Yes but I have wondered about that. However, if you’re thinking that’s not normal behavior for a father, you also have to understand his motivations. He’s extremely loyal to his country, Russia, and he loves money, but mostly it’s power that does it for him. And handing over someone, a blood relative no less, who has all these abilities that somebody in the government says they need, would give him incredible power and a step up. That leverage is worth so much, within the government, the military, and elsewhere,” she noted. “So, I understand his point of view and why he’s more than happy to hand me over. I’m just not very impressed that he was totally okay to do it against my will.”
“Right. Because you are still a prisoner because it’s not your choice.”
She nodded.
He got her settled back in the car. “It would be best for you to stay out of sight.”
“I’m fine with that. I just want…” When she hesitated, he seemed to want to know more, and she shrugged. “I’m just scared to be alone, in case they return.”
“I’m staying here with you, so no worries there. I’ll pick up the order when it’s ready, but, other than that, we’ll sit here and wait for Riff to come back.”
“Any idea where he went?”
“To make a phone call or two, I presume.” Sanders looked around, but he himself wasn’t exactly sure what Riff was up to. Sanders saw no sign of the man. It wasn’t a problem, until at least ten minutes had gone by, and Riff didn’t return. That made Sanders uneasy. He needed to go in and get the food, but he was unwilling to leave her outside alone. So, he sent out a message to Terk. Have you heard from Riff?
Terk’s reply was instantaneous. Yes, there’s a problem. You have to take over the driving .
That’s fine. I can drive. I need to go pick up the food and the coffee I ordered, but Riff was supposed to be watching her while I did that. He set out to contact you, and there hasn’t been any sign of him since.
Hang on.
Sanders tried to give her a reassuring look. “Come on. Let’s go pick up our takeout order, and then we’ll hit the road.”
She scrambled out of the back seat, and he led the way into the restaurant. They quickly paid for the food, then went back to the car. She got into the front seat this time with the food, and he got in on the driver’s side. Mentally he sent out a message. Terk, where is he?
Riff’s gone to cover your tracks. He’s also picked up a tracker’s energy—not one of ours. You guys drive out of there fast and right now.
And, with that, Sanders slammed the vehicle into gear and pulled out of the parking lot and headed down the highway at top speed.
Ania frowned at him. “What happened?”
He gave her a smile. “Let’s just say, our plan has changed.”