Escape (Chronicles of Hart) (18 page)

Grace didn’t know how much time had passed. She needed to get out of here before they found her. In a startled panic, she slipped from the tub and walked to the small high window. Looking out from the second story she could see the hill behind the house, beyond the fence, where she had come in. Shapes moved up the hill, into the woods. At least ten bodies surrounding this house, slipping into cover amongst the trees. She would have to wait it out a bit longer.  More sirens sounded in the distance.

***

Peters was on the phone with tech. A call had come in from the Oneida police department about a battered girl needing medical attention. The address was backing onto the forest. The closest team had already been sent in. Peters and Platt were following with King. Their team in the forest had added the new location to their GPS and were walking in that direction, still looking for Grace’s trail. They left the second car there, piling back into the sleek black of their company vehicle and onto the winding roads of north Tennessee.

Peters sped back onto the highway. Taking the next exit they began winding through the small town towards the properties closest to the adjoining forest. The desolate town sat mostly silent in the late autumn evening. Eerily staring back at them were closed store windows and vacant lots. Sirens sounded in the distance echoing in the silent streets. They drove towards the sound on the empty streets. It was like being in a ghost town.

Ethan, still in the back, woke with a start as they plowed over a speed bump. Pretending to have been awake the whole time he sat up wiping a trail of drool from his chin. King looked to him with a raised knowing eyebrow and a smirk on his face.

“Hey, where are we going? Did you find her?” Ethan’s tone quickly jumped from groggy to alert as he noticed the speed they were driving. Wind whipped in from the rolled down drivers window as Peters plunged onto a dark street. The breeze slapped his hair against his forehead and it slowly became un-plastered after his stint of sleep against the window. He looked out to the eerie town, befuddled as to how Grace could have ended up here.

“You
need
to stay in the car,” King reminded him. The air fell silent as the car sped forward. Ethan pulled his lips tight and reached for a seatbelt, nodding his acknowledgement to King. He turned to the window. Looking out into the haze he rolled his eyes. King could treat him like a child all he wanted. Ethan was a grown man and would do whatever he wanted.

***

The police had arrived on the scene followed closely by the team Peters had called. After exchanging information with the lead officer and waiting for them to call their own back up in. They proceeded together into the house, three agents and two badges. The kicked in door clung uselessly from a hinge, waving them forward into the disarray of the tiny cottage home at the edge of town. The smoke had nearly cleared from the kitchen where they found a mother and son huddled under the table. Objects were strewn about in a manner that suggested a tussle had broken out resulting in them hiding in the cloudy room under the table.

“They wanted the girl
,” the mother sobbed, clutching her son to her after one of the officers knelt next to her showing her his badge. She shook terribly, clinging to the fabric of her son’s rumpled shirt like a security blanket. Her shirt was ripped at the collar and around them an array of kitchen utensils and mugs lay scattered and broken on the floor.  The boy seemed shaken up as well. Cuts on his hands and blood under his fingernails showed his determination as he held his mother close, looking to the officers with steely eyes. The struggle in the home was obvious and the kettle still squealed at a boil on the stovetop across from them. A second officer walked over and took the kettle off the burner. The whistle quickly died down as he moved it over.

“Did they get her
?” He asked turning to the cowering family beneath the table.

“I don’t know. There was smoke everywhere
,” the woman sobbed. Slowly climbing from beneath the safety of her kitchen chairs, she held her son tight by the arm as he joined her in a huddle.

The boy shook his head firmly “She’s still here, they were pretty pissed about it too
.” he looked back at his mother, wrapping his arm around her tighter. “I think they’ll come back for her. Get us out of here,” he begged, slowly inching his mother out from under the table and up into a chair. For a teenager he seemed to have grown into a whole lot of responsibility in one hour. Knowing to move his mother slowly to prevent more shock to her system, he stood behind her holding her shoulders. “Get us out of here” he repeated to the team of men standing in the kitchen. The men nodded in agreement.

“Check the house
,” the first officer commanded staying by the boy and his mother. He pointed to the others to get moving.

And the team split into two: police and agents, to search the house.

shielded

Grace huddled beside the bathtub watching the flickering lights in the window. She could hear noises downstairs, heavy footsteps and voices. She could hear weeping as the footfalls stopped momentarily and she wondered if the family downstairs was alright. She couldn’t help but feel a tug of guilt for bringing her problems crashing through their front door. The footsteps started up again, circling around the downstairs noisily. She hoped not to be found and knew that she would be if she didn’t move.

Hard footsteps sounded on the stairs and outside the bathroom door. She could hear the doorknob jiggle and the footsteps walk away. Sounds from adjacent rooms implied they had begun to search the upstairs and would soon return to her when they didn’t find her in one of the bedrooms. She listened for gunfire and shouting, anything to determine whether this group was working for her father or not. The police sirens outside had gone quiet, leaving just the flashing of their lights beaming in from around the front of the house. Grace couldn’t tell if they were real police cars from here. This window was faced squarely into the backyard with no chance of seeing the front. Under the sounds of footfalls, the house was still. The downstairs had gone quiet. The mother was no longer weeping from the kitchen as far as she could tell. Grace slipped back into the porcelain tub. Behind the curtain she melted into the large basin, hoping that she would be over looked when the door was finally opened. Wrapping her arms tightly around herself for protection, she closed her eyes and waited for it to all be over.

***

Peters pulled in behind a police cruiser. An ambulance was circling around to back into the driveway. The house was buzzing with life as uniforms and suits charged around the property, all appearing to be in the pursuit of something imminently important. The flashing lights lit up the street like a scene from a horror film with blues reds and whites melding to leave a sinister glow leaking hazardously into the neighbouring yards. Curious neighbours stood at their windows, hiding behind curtains and blinds to remain unseen by the swarm surrounding their neighbours’ home. Lamp posts dotted the street dimly echoing off into the flashing light. They remained unlit, another abnormality in this strange desolate town. The house sat at the end of a dead end street. It backed straight onto the forest with a steep cliff peering down behind the fence of the backyard. It was a small home. Old and dated, it looked like it had once been a cottage tucked into the trees, until they had been chopped down and new houses had sprung up on demand. The driveway was long, making the home secluded from its fashionable neighbours. It hid behind two large pine trees, needleless and dying. They looked as emancipated as the house itself.

Peters walked in the front door with Platt and King close behind. Flashing his credentials to the officer at the door, he asked him, “anything yet
?”

“No sir, someone was here, not sure if the girl still is or not.”

“Where are my men?”

“Checking the upstairs sir
.”

Walking through the gaping hole where the front door had finally fallen off of its hinges. Platt turned to the staircase at the back of the house, marching up two steps at a time. If Grace was still here, she was surely going to distrust him or any other agent or officer that approached her. He looked back at King, waving him to follow. Having met King briefly might be just what they needed to get her to come out of hiding in the tiny house, if she was here at all.

***

Jay was angry when he saw the agents entering the house. Their timing was quicker than he had anticipated. It had thrown a wildcard into the mix. He was going to have to rethink the capture mission entirely before sending his team back in. He comprised a quick plan, hoping that they wouldn’t see through his daring and into the danger that the plan was going to present them with.  He signaled to his men to meet him low on the other side of the hill where they wouldn’t be seen.

Men slipped from behind the trees with the whirling of the lights like shadows slipping back into the woods. They moved with such sure feet that they seemed to be only a figment of the imagination, illusions wandering through the night. They slowly approached Jay on the other side quietly freezing as they waited for his command. As the last of the men had gathered around he waved his hand at the ground.

“We are going in... again
,” He whispered as the men knelt in the dirt around him, “take her by force. Kill anyone that gets in the way.” He kept it short and simple, leaving little room for questions or error. He had worked with these men for fifteen years. They had an understanding and he was going to be very sorry when he lost them.

“Yes sir
,” the men mumbled into the night like a small rumble of thunder.

“Through the back and fan out. She is still in there if they’re looking.”

Jay and his team of eight disappeared into the trees back towards the house. They slipped over the fence unnoticed and silent, pounding through the back door like they were storming a castle.

***

Grace heard more steps on the stairs, followed by mumbling on the other side of the door. The knob began to jiggle intensely as the door shook in its frame. With a click, it gave way falling with a clatter to the bathroom floor. The knob rolled across the floor tapping against the porcelain as it finally settled into a stop. Grace held her breath, freezing in an awkward position to avoid making any sounds. The door swung open flooding in light from the hallway. Grace cowered in the tub as the light filtered through the curtain blinding her momentarily. She slowly blinked to clear her eyes.

“Grace
,” a familiar voice whispered. She tried to place it. It sounded like agent King.

She peeked out around the curtain to see King behind two men in the bathroom door. He slipped through the men and into the bathroom as Grace stood slowly and awkwardly in the bathtub clinging to the curtain. Joy passed over her face as she realized Ethan would be close by.

“King,” she gasped with joy as she climbed from the bathtub racing to his side. “Where is Ethan, is he okay, are you okay. Were you at the diner when it blew up?” she babbled quietly looking at King, intently waiting for his answers.

“Yes, yes, and yes
,” he chuckled back with a quiet smile. He was glad to see that she was alright and even more pleased to see her enthusiasm returning.

“Father sent men here to get me, they
are
still here.” the words spilled out urgently as she looked over their shoulders and back out the bathroom door. The hall light glowed with the flicker of a bulb that was soon to burn out. “Is your partner okay?” she continued softly, looking into King’s eyes guiltily.

“We found him.
” He nodded sadly, glad that she cared.

A loud bang came from the down the stairs. Gunfire rained from below while more smoke clouded into the air. Shouting sounded loudly as the confusion had had its moment; they had returned.

“How many of them are there?” King asked Grace as he stepped between her and the door.

“I don’t know, ten maybe
.” she stepped back into the bathtub cautiously, “They used smoke last time too,” she whispered as smoke rose from the kitchen below. She listened to the shouting beneath them, hoping not to hear Ethan’s voice in the crowd. Where was he if not here next to King, she distractedly glanced around looking.

King crossed the room to check the window for an alternate escape route. Through the tempered glass he could see that the drop was too steep to jump. They were going to have to take Grace back through the house to get her out unless they could find a way to get through the window safely. A mattress wouldn’t fit and there wasn’t enough time to call a team around the back to catch them in a sheet. The noises coming from the downstairs were chaotic. Getting her down the stairs and through the small full house was out of the question. King ripped at the window pulling it as far open as he could before it held fast. He ripped the screen off tossing it into the bathtub with a resounding clang through the silent bathroom. The other two men seemed to catch on to King’s overall plan. They began searching for anything that might help him in his conquest of the bathroom window. King pulled on the curtain rod; it sprung from the wall cracking the tiles around it. He shook his head and tried the base of the porcelain sink; tugging at it until he was satisfied that it wasn’t going anywhere. He looked back to Grace, sizing her up.