Ever Hayes - Redemption

“Go for it.” I challenged him with my expression as much as my words. I doubted he’d throw his whole plan away now. I shook my head. “Danny should have let them kill you.”

“Hayley—” His eyes betrayed a faint trace of hurt.

“No, Lazzo. You killed my boyfriend tonight. You’re not killing this girl too. It just doesn’t make any sense.”

“Hayley, think about it. You think you can trust this kid—the captain’s daughter—to not go directly to her dad?”

“I won’t…” the girl stammered.

We both told her to be quiet in extremely different tones. Lazzo took a step towards her. “Then everyone on this boat will be looking for us.”

“I can help you,” the captain’s daughter volunteered quietly.

Lazzo’s sarcastic laugh didn’t keep me from asking, “How?”

“We can’t trust you.” Lazzo laughed again.

“Yes, you can. I promise I won’t say a word about this to my dad. I won’t tell anyone but—”

“Lazzo, think about it.” Before he could argue, I explained my train of thought. “What if she’s telling the truth? What if she could help us somehow? Maybe at some point we’d need that.”

“Why would she—”

“I hate my father,” the girl spoke up boldly. “My brother and I both do.”

That psycho has two kids? How does a man like that get two chances at fatherhood? “Your brother?” I asked in surprise.

“Yes. My twin brother, Chase, is here too. My mother left my dad when I was ten, and then she died before the attacks. The judge made us move back in with Dad. I… we… didn’t have a choice—then or now. But we definitely don’t want to be here.”

Lazzo clearly wasn’t buying it, but he didn’t say anything right away. I wanted to believe her, but Lazzo was right. Trusting her was risking everything before we even made it to the mainland.

“How do we know—”

“He used to beat us.” She clearly sensed this could be her only chance to present her case. “All the time. There were weeks when we couldn’t go to school because of the bruises. He used to beat Mom, too. She would protect us as much as she could, but he would beat her down. He was—”

“That’s not enough.” Lazzo was shaking his head.

“Lazzo…” I stopped myself. I didn’t know what to think. It all made sense, but maybe too much sense—if that was possible.

The girl jumped back in then. “Look, you want proof? I’ll even leave the gun with you. I’ll tell my dad I dropped it overboard. He’ll yell at me, call me names, maybe hit me a few times, and that will be it. You’ll have a gun. No one will even—”

“Girl, you don’t have the gun.” Lazzo waved the rifle in front of her. “I have it. Neither of you has a choice here. This is my—”

“We’re letting her go.” Keeping my eyes on Lazzo, I lowered my hand down to the girl and she took it. I helped her up and continued to stand between her and Lazzo.

Suddenly I felt a knife blade pressed up against my throat, and the girl’s other hand gripped my left arm with surprising strength.

“Damn it, Hayley.” Lazzo pointed the gun at the girl’s head.

“Easy,” I whispered back to the girl.

“You’re letting me go.”

I knew she was talking to Lazzo, and I watched him shake his head. “Lazzo—”

“Hayley, this is wrong.”

Then we heard a voice calling down the hallway. “Flynn, where are you?” I didn’t dare move. Her name is Flynn?

“I’m leaving now,” Flynn whispered in my ear. “That’s Chase.”

I nodded slowly. “Go.”

“Hayley—” Lazzo objected. The girl didn’t move.

“Go,” I repeated. This time she obeyed, removing the blade from my throat and slipping quickly from the room. I spun and listened to her run off down the hall.

Lazzo stomped his foot but didn’t say anything when I held a finger to my lips. I was listening to Flynn’s conversation with Chase.

“Where were—what the hell happened to your face? And where’s your gun?” her brother asked.

“I was stupid. I was standing on a rail and slipped. I hit my face and dropped the gun over the side. It’s gone.”

Not bad . She hadn’t given us up yet, at least. The last voice I heard was Chase’s. “Dad is going to kill you.”

I listened to their voices and footsteps fade away and turned back to Lazzo, who was pacing and scratching his head. He kicked the steel frame of a bed. “That was stupid.” He glared at me.

“Maybe.”

“Is no ‘maybe,’ Hayley.” He was fuming. “It was stupid. She could have killed you. And if she tells anyone, they’ll come here. They come here… they die. Then I will have to shoot you too. We all die.”

This is getting old . “I know, Lazzo.” My only hope was to trust Flynn.

My only hope was to trust Captain Baker’s daughter.

Careful what you wish for —I’d heard it said a thousand times. In this case, Danny’s request to make Redemption Island a black hole on the Area 52 surveillance system was the wish we were going to regret. We didn’t need a satellite to see the USS George Washington from Redemption, but we also weren’t really watching it. The governor had asked us to keep an eye on it—since it was in the satellite “black hole”—and we did that during the day. But at night—when we went to bed—its security and occupants weren’t on our mind.

Danny knocked on my door around nine thirty Monday morning. “Is Hayley here, Dad?”

I rubbed my eyes. It had been a long night, thanks to Ollie’s restlessness. “No. You just woke me up.”

The calm on my son’s face flickered to something else. “Huh. She wasn’t at Blake’s either. No one has seen her or the girls, or Sam, since last night, and the boat they took out to the carrier is still gone.”

I heard footsteps walking up behind me. “What’s going on?”

Danny was looking down at the cove then out toward the open water.

“No one’s seen Hayley or…” I stopped myself.

“Wait… what?” Tara pushed past me.

Idiot. “Tara—” Too late.

“Danny. They didn’t come back last night? Emily…” Panic was evident in her voice. “No one’s seen Emily?”

“That’s why I came over here.” Danny placed his hand on Tara’s shoulder. “You’d told her to be back in an hour. I thought maybe she’d checked in—”

“We just went to bed.” I interrupted my son.

Tara was grabbing his arm now. “Danny… No one has seen any of them since last night?”

Danny shook his head. Tara pushed past me again and into the house. Danny turned back toward the tree house. “Tell her we’ll find them. I’ll let you know as soon as I hear anything.”

“Please do.” I watched him walk away then followed Tara inside. She took her nightshirt off and stepped out of her underwear. She slipped into her black bikini and a pair of board shorts, threw on a light hooded sweatshirt, and brushed past me once more.

“Tara, what are you—where are you going?”

“You stay with Ollie.”

I couldn’t really argue. Yes, Hayley was out there too, but Emily was much younger, and Tara had been against letting her go along last night. I’d had to convince her it was okay. I had a feeling some of Tara’s emotions right now involved a certain degree of anger toward me as a result.

Ollie was sleeping now—of course. Right when I wanted him to be awake so I could keep up with what was going on. Screw it . I grabbed a T-shirt, pulled it on, and went into his room. I lifted him out of his crib and hurried out the front door. By the time I reached the tree house it was empty. Figuring they were at Blake and Kaci’s, I almost sprinted there, Ollie bouncing—sound asleep—in my arms the whole way. I found everyone crowded around the computer in the office. Danny was on a direct line with one of the operatives in Area 52. It sounded like the governor was there too.