Chapter Twelve
White Ravens
Gage
Gage dropped the last of the dishes into Roz’s sink with a heavy clink, telling himself this was what normal sounded like now.
The slow, nerve-grating drip of a leaky faucet. A clock ticking too loudly on the wall. Sleet spattering the window. Roz cussing under his breath at the coffee grounds he’d spilled on the floor.
“Go to work,” Gage said, resting his hip against the counter.
“Damn, bro, you tellin’ me to get outta’ my own crib?”
“I need time to pray and meditate,” he said. “To get my head straight before I see them. You sitting here watching me breathe isn’t helping.”
Roz waited a beat, then sighed. “You sure?”
“I doubt anything’s changed in the last six months. It’s Thursday, so my mom’s volunteering at the hospital, and my dad’s in his office at church until four. They’ll both be sitting down for dinner at five. That’s when I’ll go.” He swallowed a lump of anxiety. “So go to work.”
Roz didn’t move.
“I’m not helpless. I don’t need a babysitter.”
“All right, all right,” Roz muttered.
He made a bunch of noise in his small bedroom, before he came back out and dropped a folded pile of clothes into Gage’s hands—a heavy cotton sweatshirt and threadbare denims.
“Thanks.”
“Thanks, hell. I want that hoodie back. It’s one of my favorites.”
Roz’s palm landed heavy on his shoulder and gave it a firm squeeze. “I’ll be back by five.”
The door opened, then closed, and silence crept in behind it.
Gage went to the window, opened the blinds, and dropped to his knees.
He turned his face toward the sky and let the sunlight warm his face.
“Father,” he whispered, head bowed. “It’s me again.”
He stayed there until time vanished.
It wasn’t until the lock turned in the front door that he realized how long he’d been on his knees.
He tried to stand and his legs screamed. His fingers had gone pins-and-needles, cramping from how tight he’d had them clasped together.
The door shut, and Roz’s boots clomped along the floor towards the kitchen. Gage smirked at the hiss of a beer can being opened and the refrigerator door slamming.
“Don’t tell me you haven’t moved for seven hours,” Roz called out.
He’d meditated far longer than that before.
Gage pushed himself upright, bracing his hands on his thighs.
“I blinked a few times.”
He walked the numbered steps back to the kitchen and sat gingerly at the table.
“You hungry?”
“Not really.”
His stomach churned as though something alive was twisting around in there. The last thing he wanted to do was feed it.
“You ready to do this?” His friend asked.
Not at all. Gage nodded anyway.
A plastic bottle was pushed into the center of his chest. He tried to stop his hands from shaking as he twisted the top.
He drank the water in three loud gulps and motioned for another.
“You’re gonna’ be fine,” Roz said. “Let me wash up and change, then we can go.”
Fine, huh?
Fine was a word people used when they didn’t want to tell the truth.
This is about to go horribly wrong.
Roz’s old Lincoln rumbled beneath him as cars flew past, tires skidded, and horns honked endlessly.
Gage sat angled toward the window, focusing on not cataloging every sound the way his new, screwed-up brain wanted to, and instead replayed what he was going to tell his parents.
He was leaning toward some version of the truth.
He’d tell them there was a program that recruited inmates. And he’d taken a deal to work for a nameless agency, that may or may not be affiliated with the government, in exchange for the remainder of his sentence. He’d confess to the experimentation to explain the vision impairment.
Then he’d explain that he escaped when he found out the organization was corrupt…and it was why he wouldn’t be able to stay with them.
He’d tell his father not to investigate the anonymous agency, or write his congressman, not to go on the news, nor write to the prison warden.
Gage had a sinking feeling the Ravens wouldn’t hesitate to eliminate a self-righteous preacher on the West Side of Chicago threatening to expose them.
His heart leapt into his throat when Roz took a hard right, and the shotgun on the floor in the backseat knocked against the base of his seat.
“Can you please drive a little less erratically?” He gritted.
“Relax, G. I’m just making sure no ones tailing us. We’re deep in the West Side, and I’m on a hit list, remember?”
They circled the block twice before Roz eased to a stop.
“We’re across the street,” he said.
Gage turned his head toward his parent’s house.
In his mind, it was as vivid and detailed as ever—the narrow porch with three steps he used to clear in a single jump, the chipped white railing and sun-faded blue shutters he had to paint every few years, and the small yard edged by his mother’s flowerbed.
“Does the lawn look okay?” he asked softly.
Roz was quiet for a second, as if he hadn’t expected that question. “Yeah.”
“Is the sidewalk salted?”
“Looks like it.”
“Are the trash cans at the curb. Tomorrow is pick up.”
“Gage,” Roz said gruffly, as if he knew how much this was killing him.
He used to complain about hauling those cans, pulling weeds in his mother’s garden every Saturday morning in the summer, and shoveling the snow during the dreaded winters.
He’d taken that peaceful existence for granted.
It’d been a mundane life, but it was safe.
Chicago Theological Seminary classes Monday through Friday. Bible study on Wednesday nights, volunteering at the food bank on Saturdays. Church on Sunday mornings. And quiet family dinners each night.
He’d been so desperate to get a taste of “real life” that he’d ignorantly walked into a pit of fire, not thinking he’d get burned.
He’d just wanted to make his own decisions and not have to do exactly as his father instructed. Make how own mistakes.
Mission accomplished, Gage.
“You ready?” Roz asked.
“Yeah,” he whispered, reaching for the door handle.
Before he could touch it, his mother’s familiar voice floated across the street, sweet, respectful and so unexpected it knocked the air out of his lungs.
“Thank you both so much for coming,” she said. “I think this is a wonderful cause you’re fighting for.”
His father’s deeper baritone followed, full of that pulpit conviction Gage had grown up with.
“There needs to be changes in the penal system,” his father said. “It’s not right what happened to my boy. He was a good man. A Christian man.”
Another male voice answered, smooth and calm. “A lot of men trapped in the system are good. It’s why we started our prison reform program, Pastor Harrington.”
Gage went still. He knew that voice.
Recognition struck like a shockwave as a cold ripple slid down his spine.
Roz leaned over him as if he were trying to get a better view out of the window. “There’s two guys talking to your folks.”
“What do they look like?”
Roz sucked his teeth. “Umm, they’re not facing us. They’re tall, kinda built, I think. I don’t know, they’re wearing heavy coats.”
“They said they’re doing some kinda prison reform,” Gage whispered.
Roz’s gasp was loud near his ear. “You can hear them?”
Gage shushed him as footsteps scuffed along the concrete.
“What color are their suits?” he asked.
“Why does that matter?”
“Just tell me,” he snapped.
“Uh…I dunno,” Roz said slowly. “Like a…dark green. Blackish green. It’s dark. I can’t see their faces, and they’ve got hoods on. They sure don’t look like any Mormons I’ve ever seen.”
They found me.
Cold spread through him.
“What the hell is up, G. You look terrified,” Roz said. “I’m getting you outta here. I don’t like this.”
“No, don’t start the car—”
The engine turned over.
The footsteps stopped dead.
Gage’s heart banged against his ribcage.
“Oh, shit. They’re looking right at us.”
“Drive!” Gage yelled. “Now!”
The car lurched forward, tires spinning on sleet and salt.
“What the fuck! They’re running after us.”
Roz grunted as he took a sharp turn and hit the curb with his back tire.
“Running?”
“Yeah, on foot. Who the fuck are these guys, G?” Roz sounded as if he was freaking out.
Oh my God.
“They split up.”
They’re going to box us in.
“Get us as far from here as you can, and fast,” Gage ground out, bracing a hand on the dashboard.
“I’m trying.”
“Floor it.”
Roz cursed. “I’ve got twenty years of prison time sitting in this car, Gage. Unregistered weapons and aiding a fugitive? I can’t go on a high-speed chase.”
“The police will be the least of our worries if those guys catch us.”
Roz hesitated for half a second, then slammed his foot down on the accelerator.
He whipped them around another corner so hard Gage’s shoulder slammed into the door.
“Do you see them?”
Roz was breathing hard as if he were pushing the car instead of driving it. “No, I— No. I think we lost ’em.”
No, we haven’t.
Gage’s skin buzzed, and the hairs on his arms lifted as though they were warning him a storm was brewing.
“Faster,” he urged.
“Dammit, Gage. Talk to me.”
Gage could hear the leather creaking where Roz gripped the steering wheel.
“Are these the guys who took you?”
“No,” he said, jaw tight. “But I think they’re the ones who’re supposed to take me back…or finish the job.”
Roz’s answer was to punch the gas harder, as Gage heard him cock the chamber of his Colt.
They took another wild left.
“I can’t get on the interstate. If a state trooper clocks me doing ninety, we’re done. You’ll be just as fucked if you get arrested again”
Gage opened his mouth, but before he could speak, his world jerked sideways.
Roz cursed and stomped the brake. The car skidded, tires screeching on snow and ice, before it came to a jarring stop.
“What’s happening?”
“There’s a black van at the end of the alley. It’s blockin’ us,” Roz snarled. “I can’t get around it.”
“Ram them outta’ the way.”
“It’s too damn big,” Roz muttered. “Hang on.”
Freezing air rushed into the car when Roz powered the window down.
Gage didn’t know what he was doing until the deafening sounds of him firing his Colt made him clap his hands over his sensitive ears.