Chris Jordan - Torn

“Not my decision,” Vash had informed them. “Maybe Evangeline forgive you, maybe not.”

That had provoked much weeping and whining. Vash has a low tolerance for whiners-there’s something about a pleading voice that sets his teeth on edge. Had it been entirely up to him, the Barlows would have perished in their own home, victims of an unfortunate fire. Not as punishment, but because he finds them to be as irritating as they are untrustworthy. As it is, their fate remains undetermined-Eva has too much on her mind, and seems eager to blame Vash for not having the godlike powers to know everything and be everywhere at once.

“Let me see if I’ve got this right,” she says with her acid tongue. “You had him and you let him get away? This so-called nobody, this supposedly harmless man who used to be with the FBI? And then the harmless nobody steals one of your tactical vans, waits until your men retrieve the woman from the house, then steals her away and they both vanish in a puff of smoke. Is that about right?”

“Somebody help him, obviously.”

“Obviously.”

When Evangeline gets like this, frustrated because things haven’t gone her way, she looks as if the only thing that would make her feel better is the opportunity to kill someone with her own hands. Vash would be sympathetic-when he was slightly younger he often indulged in such excessive reactions-except that in this instance he’s the someone Eva would like to kill. Something to keep in mind, when it comes to long-term survival strategies.

“Any idea who helped him?” she asks sweetly.

“We review the video. Takes two hours, maybe three. Many cameras, much data.”

Eva the Diva gets up close and personal, bumping her hips into his pelvis, and not in a friendly way. More like the sexual aggression of a praying mantis, eager to be off with his head. “You don’t need to find it on the cameras, darling. We both know who it was.”

Vash shrugs. “Could be Weems, yes. Is possible. Or maybe he bribes one of my men.”

“Trust me, Wendy did it. And you know how I know? Because I was watching. You can’t be bothered, apparently, so I’ve been keeping an eye on Mr. Ugly. And guess what, he wasn’t at home. Again. So I guess he must have borrowed that invisibility cloak from Harry Potter, huh? The one that lets him come and go without being seen?”

“Who is this Harry Potter?”

“Don’t be dense, darling.” She hooks her fingers in his belt, tugs him even closer. “The point is, we can’t control Wendy if we don’t know where he is. Silly me, I thought I stressed that. I thought I made it clear. But apparently you don’t think it’s important to keep my most dangerous rival under surveillance. My blood enemy. The wretched little man who would happily dance on my grave, given the chance. No, you let him come and go as he pleases.”

“I have men looking at blueprints. He must have hidden exit from Bunker.”

“How is it possible that you wouldn’t know about it?”

“No one can know what they don’t know. This is point. Okay? Maybe he makes modification in Bunker before I take over security. Some way to get out of Bunker without being seen. Yes, that’s what I believe. He comes, he goes, we can’t see.”

Vash is fairly certain he knows where Weems’s secret exit terminates-inside a bathroom, out of camera range-but decides not to share until he’s certain, and has a plan to deal with it. Eva’s inclination is to go in with guns blazing, but Vash is keenly aware that the Bunker is well fortified and that Ruler Weems will have a plan of defense. Plus, with a former FBI Special Agent on the loose, now is the time for caution.

“This nobody who got away,” Eva says. “Tell me how you’re going to catch him.”

“Road has been closed, campus being searched. Also private residence. He can’t get away. Only way out is to hike through mountains. Thirty miles, winter conditions. Impossible. So maybe they freeze to death.”

“So you think they’re trying to get away?”

“Yeah, of course,” he responds, surprised by the question. “They know they can’t get to boy.”

“And what happens if they make it?” she says teasingly, her fingers at work beneath his belt.

“Bad things. Not good. The mother give testimony, Feds get search warrant from judge, come here looking for child.”

“That’s what you think?”

“What else?”

Eva smiles with her teeth. “I looked this man up, this nobody you said not to worry about? I read the blogs, darling, testimony from grateful parents, and I came to my own conclusion. I don’t think he’s trying to get away. He’s going to try and rescue the boy. That’s what he does.”

Vash disengages her questing hand, steps away. “Good,” he says, clearing his throat. “If he does that, we catch him for sure. Nobody gets into Pinnacle.”

“Like Wendy can’t get out of the Bunker without us seeing him?”

Vash has no reply.

“Let’s do something about the boy,” Eva muses.

For a while after Jed died, I kept having this dream about a long dark corridor. I was in a hospital or mortuary and somewhere at the end of the corridor was a room where I would be asked to identify the body of my dead husband. I wanted to get there, wanted to see Jed one last time, but the corridor seemed to go on forever and I could never get to the room before the dream ended. It wasn’t a nightmare, exactly. There was no fear, just a great longing. Then the walls would begin to close in and I would wake up in a cold sweat, missing Jed so bad that my whole body ached.

The dream comes back to me as we hurry along the tunnel in single file, Weems leading the way, with me in the middle and Shane following in a crouch. The tunnel, Weems explains, is made of fiberglass pipe, six feet in circumference-plenty tall for me and the strange little man, but not nearly big enough for Shane to stand upright. He can touch both sides of the tunnel with the palms of his hands and does so, to help keep upright as he scoots along, hunched over. The escape tunnels were installed when Arthur Conklin was worried about criminals who might be drawn to the Ruler’s wealth. Apparently there was a time when the cult leader feared he might be kidnapped and held for a billion-dollar ransom. The tunnels were a way out, as well as a place of refuge. They appear on no blueprints, their existence known only to Arthur and his trusted associate, Wendall Weems. The cult leader, recently remarried, did not even inform his new wife of the secret escape tunnel, lest she be part of some plot against him.

“That was during his paranoid phase,” Weems explains. “He got over it, of course. The thing about Arthur, he was always learning, exceeding the limitations of the ordinary mind.”

I’m still feeling a bit stunned, not so much by the flash of the stun grenade itself as by the rapid turn of events. Only a few days ago I’d been snatched from the airport, caged like a dog, flown across the country, confined to a shuttered house, tormented with video images of my son being brainwashed, and told there was nothing I could do about it. True, I’d been clinging to the notion that Shane would find me, but it was the kind of hope that keeps people buying lottery tickets. What were the odds?

In his laconic way he makes it sound like no big deal. “You were the one who told me about the Rulers,” he points out. “So I came to where the Rulers live and started poking around. Just basic investigation.”

My joy at being freed lasts about as long as it takes for a deep breath. There’s no room for joy in my heart until I have Noah in my arms. And if Weems is right, freeing me has put my son in immediate danger.

“We’ve started the clock ticking,” he says, his melodious voice booming in the tunnel. “Kavashi knows about Mr. Shane’s connection to the FBI. He’ll be expecting a raid, and taking precautions. That means destroying evidence, and, Mrs. Corbin, your son is evidence.”