Last Stand: Patriots (Book 2) (15 page)

In three quick strides he was nearly on her, his face a mask of anger. Diane reached into her right boot and pulled
out the knife. Edward had told her this was her last resort if she were caught trying to slip him the Ambien and now she was getting ready to use it.

“Get back,” she shouted, waving the blade in the air. If he took another step she
was ready to jam it into his belly.

The Chairman skidded to a stop. He had a smirk on his face, as though he
knew she didn’t really have the upper hand.

Sure
, Oneida wasn’t the biggest town, but if this was who the president had sent to restore order and protect the people, then the commander-in-chief’s judgment was far worse than she’d previously believed.

In a flash,
a choice was suddenly before her. Turn and charge out the door behind her or lunge and end the life of a man who’d already victimized countless others.

“Diane,
if you only knew how much trouble you’re—”

Flipp
ing the knife into an overhand grip, Diane took two giant steps and swung down, narrowly missing his chest. Instead, the edge of the sharpened blade pierced the dark blazer he was wearing and tore a long gash down the front. Up went the knife for the next strike when a clump of folded papers dropped from the hole in the Chairman’s jacket. That split-second delay was all the time he needed to turn and run to the kitchen screaming for help.

Were those the papers she’d been sent to retrieve?
Diane scooped them up and ran for the door.

The swinging kitchen door blasted
open right as she rounded the last set of tables. The humorless Secret Service agents emerged, pistols drawn and firing. But Diane continued running until she slammed through the front door, bullets shattering the glass around her. If she’d been hit, she didn’t know it.

“Get her,” the Chairman screech
ed from inside.

Escape wasn’t possible. Diane was smart enough to know that. But she needed to find somewhere safe to stash these documents.
She ducked around the back of the next building, hoping to buy herself some time, and that was when she saw it. A mailbox not ten feet away. Because of the curfew, the streets here were empty, but she knew that with the gunfire and shouts that would all soon change.

Charging
full force, Diane skidded up to the mailbox, pulled open the lip and slid the documents inside, waiting until they landed with a dull thud.

From there she ran north on
Main Street, heading back toward the apartment where Kay and the kids were staying.

A handful of shots rang out behind her. They were firing at her with pistols and the rounds went zinging over her head. She was less than a dozen yards from the building when the men on horseback came galloping up
from the other direction and surrounded her.

Diane put her hands in the air and let the knife drop to the sidewalk where it fell with a clang.

The men in dark suits were there a moment later, twisting her hands behind her back and restraining them with zip ties.

She kept expecting them to read her
Miranda rights, before remembering those didn’t exist anymore. One of many checks and balances that had once made this country great and had become some of the first casualties in the new world order.

The Chairman caught up a few seconds later, his shredded blazer showing
clear signs of her handiwork.

“
Where is it?” he demanded.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“You like to play games, do you? Well so do I.” The Chairman turned to the suit beside him. “Send her to the interrogation room. And bring the others along too.”

Diane gasped. She knew perfectly well
‘the others’ meant Kay and the children.

The townspeople emerged from their homes as Diane was led away by the two
Secret Service men. She could tell by the looks on the faces of those gathering that they’d seen many others carted away.

Although John didn’t often open up about his experiences in the military, he had told her about neighborhoods on the outskirts of
Baghdad that were controlled by militants and in some cases Al-Qaeda. He’d tried to describe to her the meek way people watched the injustices going on around them. The fear of being the next victim often made them subdued as yet another member of the community was taken away never to be seen again.

They couldn’t
entirely be blamed, John had told her. Risking one’s life for a cause took tremendous courage and extraordinary foolishness. But what these people watching now didn’t fully understand was that by standing by, they were becoming complicit in the crimes they were witnessing.

“Don’t you people see what’s happening?” she shouted. “Is this the kind of country we want to live in?”

One of the Secret Service men swatted her on the back of the head with an open hand. She felt a burst of stinging pain, but kept appealing to the growing crowd of onlookers.

“Shut her up,” the Chairman
yelled from somewhere behind them.

The next blow wasn’t with an open fist. Something hard connected with the back of Diane
’s skull and for a moment she saw stars. She struggled to catch her breath. Her arms wrenched at a painful angle behind her back.

Within minutes she was led into a small warehouse off the main strip and shoved
into a wooden chair. Her hands were freed of the zip ties and lashed to the back of the seat. After that, her ankles were bound to the legs of the chair. Opposite her was another seat, presumably for her interrogator.

Diane wasn’t entirely surprised t
o see the Chairman enter wearing a new blazer.

“Frankly, I expected more from you, Diane,” he said, examining the cuticles of his right hand.

“Yeah, well, I’m happy to disappoint you.”

The Chairman
grinned and there wasn’t an ounce of humor in it. “I could have made you and your family comfortable, do you know that? I didn’t ask for much. Just a little company. Some nice conversation.”

“When the president finds out what you’ve been up to here…”

The Chairman laughed. “When he finds out? Whose orders do you think I’m following? When the threat against democracy is this high then extreme measures must sometimes be used. The freedoms you enjoy are guarded by men who break the Constitution every single day. You don’t see it because it’s hidden from you. That’s the reality that none of you are willing to accept. Sometimes the rules must be bent in order to preserve the things we love. You had a chance to bend your own rules with me and you chose not to.”

“Because I’m married.”

“See what I mean? Your loyalty to that vow was stronger than your need to protect your family. If you’d only played along, Diane, then none of this would be happening.”

“You said ‘freedoms you enjoy
,’” she said. “Why not ‘freedoms
we
enjoy?’”

The Chairman looked confused. “What are you on about?”

“When you were talking before, you spoke as though you weren’t one of us, as though the freedoms promised by the Constitution didn’t apply to you.”

“A slip of the tongue. Are you a linguist, dissecting every word I say?”
“No,” Diane replied. “It just struck me as odd.”

The Chairman leaned in closer. “Well
, let me tell you what’s odd. For a woman whose life is hanging in the balance, you don’t seem very worried.”

She stared back at him. Of course she was afraid. But not so much about what might happen to her. It was the fate of Gregory and Emma that worried her most. By going on that mission, she’d risked losing everything, but
the Chairman had said it best himself.
Sometimes to protect the things we love, we must bend the very rules we seek to preserve.

“Who ordered you to slip that
powder into my drink?” he asked. His hands were gripping the chair back.

“No one,” she replied.

A loud clap filled the room as he slapped her face. A deep red mark bloomed on her cheek.

“I’m going to ask you again,”
the Chairman said as his hand rose above his head. “Who ordered you to steal the presidential papers?”

“I don’t
—”

Whack!

Blood dribbled down her chin. Diane felt her lower lip start to swell.

She held out for a few more minutes before the Chairman swore in frustration.

“Get Chiang!” he called out to someone Diane couldn’t see.

A large sliding door opened and one of the
Secret Service men slipped out. A moment later he returned with a short, frail-looking man holding a briefcase. Another man entered with them, carrying a small table. He arrived first and set it down. Chiang then laid his metal briefcase on top, undid the combo and opened the lid. Inside was a row of stainless-steel instruments.

Chiang was old and slightly hunched
, the flesh around his eyes puffy with age. His mouth curled into a permanent grin.

“Hello, young
lady,” he said, addressing her, his breath reeking of fish sauce. “I have a certain level of experience encouraging people to tell me things they’d like to keep secret.”

To
his left, the Chairman looked on with glee.

Diane’s heart began to
hammer in her chest. This was like some horrible nightmare you couldn’t wake up from.

“Yes, Chiang. She’s a stubborn one
, no doubt about it. Perhaps you could encourage her.”

Diane’s eyes darted between Chiang and his briefcase packed with torture devices. The old man seemed to be surveying his options, trying to decide which one to use.

Squeezing her eyes shut, Diane clenched her teeth, almost able to feel the excruciating pain that would soon rack her body.

Chiang pulled out a scalpel, that sick
, widening grin plastered on his weathered face. “We start small.”

He began to approach her and then stopped, shaking his head.

“What is it, Mr. Chiang?” the Chairman asked.

“No, too easy. This is too easy.” He turned to the
Secret Service agent who’d disappeared back into the shadows. “Bring the little girl.”

“Which one?”
the Chairman asked. “There are two.”

“Emma,” Chiang said. “We start with Emma.”

•••

The agent
brought Emma in and sat her roughly in the chair opposite Diane. Her daughter was crying from the moment she entered the warehouse and grew louder when she spotted the blood on her mother’s face.

“Don’t do this,” Diane howled. “I’ll tell you everything you wanna know, just don’t hurt her.
”

“I’m afraid it’s too late for that,”
the Chairman said flatly.

Chiang looked Emma up and down then turned back to his briefcase. He was whistling a happy tune that Diane had never heard before. After a moment,
his fingers settled on a head clamp with a row of inward-pointing screws. Emma’s eyes grew wide when she saw it, her chest heaving with fear.

Chiang swung around, holding it out as though he were about to crown a princess.

“His name’s Edward,” Diane said, a mist of blood spraying out as she spoke. “He came to my cell and gave me the knife, said he wanted me to stick you with it the next time you asked to see me.”

Chiang moved toward Emma as she struggled in her seat.

“Mom, please make him stop.”

“He was the one who got us transferred to the apartment,” Diane said, firing the words out as quickly as she could. “Then
he told me there’d been a change of plan. They didn’t want you dead anymore. They wanted the presidential commission you kept in your breast pocket.”

The Chairman held up a hand and Chiang paused
, the crown of screws still outstretched in his hands. A growing look of disappointment was on the Asian man’s face, as though he hadn’t wanted Diane to talk before he had a chance to play with his toys.

“How’d they know where the document was?”
the Chairman asked.

Tears were streaming down Diane’s face. “I have no idea. All he told me was to drug you and
check your inside pocket for the papers.”

“What about the knife?” the Chairman asked.

Chiang’s arms were starting to shake.

“That was in case I failed.”

“And fail you did, although not entirely. Where did you hide the document? Did you give it to this Edward?”

Diane shook her head. “I stuffed it into a mailbox.”

“The one on Main?”

She nodded. “That’s all I know, I swear. Just please let Emma go.”

The door behind them opened and the agent slipped out.

“I hope for your sake it’
s still there.” The Chairman turned to Chiang. “Put that thing down before your arms fall off.”

Less than five minutes later, the agent was back. He approached, stepping into the single shaft of light. He had a wide face with small eyes and fleshy lips.

“And?”

He shook his head.

The Chairman turned to Diane
, who looked just as shocked.

“It must still be there,” she cried. “Look again.”

“I believe you,” the Chairman said. “Which is why I’m going to let your daughter go.”

The agent untied Emma and held her back when she tried to lunge forward to hug her mother.

“But treason is something I will not tolerate,” the Chairman told her. “That’s why tomorrow you’ll be taken out and hanged in front of the entire town. I want them to see what happens when people break the peace in Oneida.”