Three (Article 5 #3)(93)

“Our people at the mini-mart. They were all dead when we got there.”

My hands hurt, like pins and needles digging into my skin. They’d been tied too long; I could barely feel my fingers.

“I’m sorry to hear it,” he said.

“Are you?”

He chuckled humorlessly. “In medicine they call it triage. Prioritizing where to allocate your resources.”

“Prioritizing who lives and dies, you mean.”

“Yes,” he said. “Essentially. I made a call. We didn’t have enough people to send.”

Even with everything else, I was relieved to hear he hadn’t sent a team to execute them, as Chase had suggested. But the fact that we’d both considered it made me question our purpose all over again.

“What are we doing?” I asked. So many lives lost. They hit us, we hit them back, but in the end, what would we gain? The removal of the MM only mattered if it was replaced by something better, and right now Three didn’t seem much better. I hoped the old president had something better in mind.

“Protecting our families. Our mothers and our fathers,” he said, just as he’d told me in the cemetery before he’d given me the three scars on my chest. “Our sons and our daughters.”

But it wasn’t all the sons and daughters he fought for. It was one daughter. His. Cara.

“They let her go, you know,” I said. “I saw her. Alive.”

I could hear his breathing then, and only after a moment realized he was weeping.

“Thank you,” he said quietly.

A moment later there was a screeching of metal.

“Let’s go,” I heard a muffled voice say. DeWitt didn’t answer, but from the sound of it he was pulled from his cell and taken away.

I was alone.





CHAPTER


23


THE deadbolt slid back, and the door pushed inward.

Sweat broke out on my brow. I tried in vain to jerk my hands free. All I could think of was my mother. This was how she’d spent her last moments, too. In a cell, awaiting a grim fate.

Tucker entered the room. He hobbled toward me quickly, wincing, one hand gripping his thigh where he’d been shot.

“Well if it isn’t Captain Morris,” I said.

He moved behind me, favoring one leg, and I did everything I could to make it hard for him to grasp the cuffs that bound me in place. The cuts on my shoulder burned like fire as I twisted away.

“Hold still,” he ordered.

A second later the latch popped, and my hands were free. As he knelt on the floor to remove the restraints around my ankles something beyond my control took over. I dove on top of him, bringing the chair to the ground with a crack that echoed off the walls. My thumbs wrapped around the soft tissue of his neck, but were uselessly numb from so many hours confined, and he peeled them away easily.

He rolled, and ended up on top of me, pinning my shoulders in place with his knees. My legs twisted, still attached to the chair.

“Hold. Still,” he repeated.

“Where’s Chase?” I gasped. “What did you do to him?” I bucked my hips in an attempt to dislodge him, but he sat on my chest, crushing the air from my lungs.

From his pocket came my necklace that Reinhardt had torn off, and he held Chase’s mother’s ring directly over my face.

“You want me to tell you, hold still.”

I stopped.

Slowly, Tucker eased back and released my legs. I snatched the necklace up and hurriedly put it back in place over my head.

“You have two minutes before surveillance comes back on,” said Tucker. He lowered to my ankles and again, the metal popped. “Then the control station will see you on the camera feed.”

My gaze flicked up to the box in the corner. “Can they hear me?”

Tucker shook his head.

“Where is he?” I stood, rubbing my hands together.

“He’s being moved. Everyone on this floor is being moved. You included.” He seemed to read my mind and added, “What are the chances that you’d escape twice on my watch.”

The door rested on the deadbolt. He hadn’t let it close completely.

“Where are they taking him?”

“The party. The chief is about to show us what happens to terrorists.”

It was like the rehab hospital in Chicago where they’d kept Rebecca. The circus, Truck had once called it. Where they exploited the injured to deter noncompliance.

Us, he said. Because he was one of them. One of the soldiers.

But he was helping me. At least I thought he was helping me.

He checked his watch.

“Give me your gun,” I said.

“Not this time.” But he reached into his belt, and withdrew the knife he’d used to carve into my skin. I snatched it out of his palm and paused, trying to figure him out.

“Did you really start the fire in Knoxville?”

He didn’t answer.

I swallowed. “And Chicago. There were so many people in those tunnels.”

Tucker flinched. “I didn’t have a choice.”

“You expect me to believe that.” He was probably going to tell the MM where all the bases were, too, if DeWitt hadn’t beaten him to it.

“I don’t expect you to do anything,” he said.