Redemption (Enigma Black Trilogy Book #3) (32 page)

Despite my best attempts at consoling her, her body still shook. With her sobs growing louder, a few of the others, including Jill, made their way out of their compartments to see whom the frightened voice belonged to. “When I got closer to the city,” Kara continued, practically hyperventilating, “I ditched my car down a side street and ran, crouching in alleyways and dumpsters every time I heard the sound of footsteps coming my way. I spent the majority of the day searching through buildings and hiding in the shadows until I ran into people patrolling the streets around this place. When I saw they weren’t in uniforms, I figured I could trust them.”

“You can,” I said, rubbing her arm. “Everything’s okay now, Kara.”

“No, you don’t understand, everything is not okay,” she said, tears streaming down her face at a more pronounced rate than before. “That’s why I’m here.”

Ian’s face radiated concern, and his eyes were transfixed on Kara as though he wanted to say something, but feared what her response would be. “What is it?” I asked, watching as her face grew even paler before my eyes. Then a thought occurred to me, one that should have hit me the moment I saw her standing in the hallway. “You were able to get into Victor’s office, weren’t you? That’s why you’re here, isn’t it?”

She glanced up at me, her eyes wide with tears. The nod that followed a second later was all the verification I needed. “What did you find, Kara? Please, tell me.” I grabbed Kara’s hand while Ian sat on the other side of her. “Was it Cameron? Did he let you in? Were you able to find anything? Did he tell Victor? I’m so sorry for asking you to be nice to that little—”

“He’s dead, Celaine,” she said, trying to control her breathing. “Cameron’s dead, and it’s my fault.”

“What?” Ian asked, shocked. “How?”

“He shot himself in the head, right in front of Drew and I, after we found out—after we found out—”

“After you found out what?” I asked, squeezing her hand.

Her breathing increased, and a sudden anger emerged from her unlike I’d ever seen in her before. “It’s been him all this time,” she said softly as though the secrets were fighting with her to stay hidden. “We’ve been working for him the entire time.”

“We’ve been working for whom—” I asked, my voice trailing off the instant the answer struck me. “No,” I said demandingly. My feet hit the floor as my body stood up, but my mind was too detached from my physical form to realize that I’d changed positions at all. I was numb from head to toe. “It’s not him, it’s not,” I said to her, my voice pleading. “He’s not The Man in Black.” I took a couple of steps back. It felt like I was floating instead of walking. Tears clouded my vision. “I’ve not just spent the last year training under and eating dinner with the man who killed my family. Tell me I’m misunderstanding you, Kara. Please.”

“There was a room,” she began again without correcting me. “A hidden room inside his office. Drew found it while I was going through Victor’s files. We found bombs and a suit—his suit. It was unmistakable, and Cameron confirmed it,” she said, her voice trembling. “I’m so sorry, Celaine. I had no idea about any of it.”

“Damn it,” Ian yelled, his voice pained. He jumped up from the pallet and paced the floor of the warehouse with his hands on his head. “That son of a bitch murdered my father, and I was living under the same roof as him all this time.” His face reddened from a fury I never thought he was capable of showing. “And to think I was grateful to him for choosing me. I was grateful to the man who burned my father alive. Grateful to the man who ruined my life.” Ian walked away from me, letting out a sick, guttural yell, resembling that of a mortally wounded animal that refused to quit fighting for its life. Furious, he punched one of the shelving units, splintering the wood where his fist struck it. From where I stood, I could see blood dripping from his hand. The wood fell to the floor, leaving a bloody trail in its wake. Perhaps too numb to notice or care himself, his injury didn’t seem to faze him as he collapsed to the floor and rocked back and forth with his arms hugging his knees.

“That’s not all,” Kara said nervously.

“What do you mean, ‘that’s not all’?” I asked. “How could there possibly be more?” Ian looked up at us from the floor, blood still dripping from his hand.

“Victor knew your father. They were both doctors at Hope Memorial.”

As much as I tried to get my mind to process what she’d said, I couldn’t wrap my head around it. Instead, I stood in front of her, staring at her until my brain would finally allow my thoughts to connect with my lips. “How do you know that?” I asked.

“In your file, there were photographs and newspaper clippings spanning your entire life. Celaine, it was eerie to say the least. In one of them there was a photograph of your father and Victor together.” She looked over at Ian, who was making his way back over to us. “There was also a photograph of a Phillip Grant.”

“I had an uncle named Phillip,” Ian said. “He and my dad had a falling out when my dad and my mom began dating. I never met him, and my dad rarely spoke of him. All I ever knew was that he was a doctor who died in a car accident.”

“He was a doctor at Hope Memorial,” Kara said, “along with George Stevens.”

Stunned, Ian and I exchanged glances with each other before turning our attention back to Kara. “That can’t be a coincidence,” I said.

“No,” she agreed. “I don’t think it is.”

“We weren’t chosen by random,” Ian said, disgusted. “We couldn’t have been. Something must have happened, some rift must have taken place between them. That sadistic psychopath chose us to fulfill some twisted vendetta he had against them and their bloodline, and what better way than by enslaving us and using us as tools while he slowly picks us off, too.”

“Celaine,” Kara said just loud enough to jolt me out of the trance I found myself in. “In your file, I also found this.” She reached into her pocket and pulled out a folded newspaper clipping. With a shaky hand, she slipped it between my fingers.

An unexplained feeling of dread consumed me as I unfolded the clipping. Dread that reached its climax when I saw Chase staring back at me from the photograph in my hands. “A wedding announcement?” I asked, my stomach suddenly turning in knots. “Why? Why would this be important to Victor?” Confused, I scanned the announcement, stopping near the end at the printed wedding date. “He’s getting married today.”

“Cameron didn’t give me much to work with,” Kara said, “but before he took his own life, he mentioned that Victor had him gather information on Chase and that he left a few days ago with enough bombs to blow up a small town.”

“Do you think he’s trying to draw Celaine to him with an attack at the wedding?” Ian asked.

Unable to support myself anymore, my legs gave out from underneath me. Before I hit the floor, Ian’s arms grabbed me and pulled me back to my feet as I began to wretch, dry heaving because my stomach was too empty to dispel any content. In my head, the vision of Chase, Jim, Carrie, and MaKayla, together in one room being held captive by The Man in Black—by Victor—played in my head. This image of them then morphed into a vision of my parents’ vehicle in the parking ramp with my parents and brother trapped inside.

I hadn’t been able to save them. I wasn’t strong enough then, but I was now.

By now, all of the rebels in the warehouse had gathered around us, taking in the same information we’d just learned. My eyes met Jill’s, and I felt the guilt wash over me. In order to have the slightest chance at saving Chase and the family I grew to call my own, I would have to leave the rest of the rebels to fight their own war so that I could fight my own.

“Go,” Jill said, as though sensing my inner turmoil. “Both of you. If The Man in Black is planning an attack, as it appears he is, and you are able to apprehend or, better, kill him, then that in and of itself is a victory. Without him, Brooks doesn’t have quite the leverage. The fear and apprehension the people have over when and where the next attack will take place will be put to rest, as will the power Brooks has over them.”

“She’s right,” Nicholas agreed. “And now that we know for certain that Brooks and The Man in Black are connected, maybe we can expose that in our attack somehow today.”

“An attack?” Kara asked, confused.

“We’re staging a march on Brooks’ territory, which I’m sure will turn into a war with his soldiers.”

“Soldiers,” Kara repeated, turning to me. “You were right about them being under some form of mind control,” she said.

“Yeah, we pretty much surmised that,” Nicholas said, stealing a glance at some of the former soldiers in the group.

“They’re being controlled by a program that Cameron created,” Kara added. “Drew is back at The Epicenter right now doing what he can to find the program on Cameron’s laptop and rewrite the commands.”

“Really?” Jill’s eyes brightened. “Tell him to get a move on, then. If he can somehow rewrite, delete or destroy the program altogether, and the soldiers snap out of whatever spell they’re under, we may actually have a chance today.”

The rest of the warehouse sprang to life with revised vigor. For the first time most of them could remember, hope dared to enter into their thoughts.

Flanked by armed guards, President Carver Brooks strode past the stone walls of the underground prison on his way to the isolation cell at the end of the corridor. In his footsteps, several strides behind, Finn followed, occasionally stealing glances at the rebels housed in each cell.

“Open the door,” Carver said to the guards at the door of the isolation cell. Without a word, one of the guards nodded in acknowledgement of the command he’d been given and removed the key from his belt, opening the door. As the door swung open, the prisoners inside squinted at the sudden appearance of light in their pitch black cell. “Unchain them and lead them out here into the hall.” This time, both of the guards sprang into action.

Carver stood outside, watching as Marshall and Jeremiah were released from their bonds, only to find a gun pointed at each of their heads as they were pulled up to a standing position and led out to the corridor. Disheveled in appearance, their movements were slow, their joints stiff from the limited movement the chains allowed.

“Gentlemen,” Carver said, a condescending smile plastered across his face, “bid your cell goodbye, because you won’t be returning to it again.”

“Aron is going to help you get back to your car safely,” I said to Kara. I tied my hair back into a braid with a shoelace I found on the floor. It wasn’t perfect, but it would do to keep the hair out of my face after I slipped my helmet on. “Whatever it takes, Kara, make sure Drew disables the program as soon as possible. If it is possible.” I stared out from Ian’s and my compartment down at the rest of the rebels, at Drake and Jill, Brad, and Britta—who was still not quite right in the head after Brad’s near death. “Some of the last good people left in this country are in this room with us right now.”

Kara sat down next to me. In her hand, she clutched my backpack with the few belongings I’d packed. I’d have no use for them where I was going and asked her to take them back with her to The Epicenter. “There are good people everywhere. You just don’t know it because their voices aren’t as loud as the others,” she said. She lowered her head to look down at her fingers as she ran her thumb along the straps of the backpack. “I need you to promise me something.”

“I don’t think I’m in a position to make any promises.”

Next to me, I could hear Kara sniffing, and the tears began falling from her already swollen eyes again. “Then please just tell me that, if given the opportunity, you’ll finish him off when you can. There will be no leniency. No plea bargain. None of that taking him prisoner bullshit. If you get the opportunity to see the life leave his eyes, you’re going to take it.”

“I stand corrected. You may have just found the only thing I can actually promise.” The backpack in her hands caught my eye, and I grabbed it, remembering the one thing inside I needed to take with me.

“I can’t lose you, Celaine,” she said. “So, if you wouldn’t mind, please come back alive.”

“I’ll do what I can,” I said, keeping my eyes trained on the contents inside the bag as I fought back tears of my own. “But if the only way to ensure his death is through my own, then I’m not going to look back. I can’t look back. I promised them I would never look back.” At the bottom of the backpack I found the necklace Chase had given to me, the one that had been passed down to his mother, and clasped it around my neck, tucking it into the collar of my suit. “This needs to go back to its rightful owner—Chase’s wife,” I said, patting the locket.

Ian and Aron entered the warehouse and made their way over to the bottom of the shelving unit. “If you’re going to make it out of here before the shit hits the fan, we need to leave now,” Aron called out to Kara.

She nodded. “Be right there,” she said, the quiver returning to her voice. We stood up to face each other, unsure of what the future held for either of us. Unable to control myself, I wrapped my arms around her, wondering whether I’d ever see her again.

“I love you, sis,” I said with my head buried in her shoulder. “No matter what happens, no matter who wins or who loses today, I want you to go and live your life. Find happiness. Don’t allow yourself to be consumed by hatred.”

“I’ll do what I can,” she whispered. “I love you, too.” We both wiped tears from our eyes before making the climb back down to the floor. When we reached the ground, Kara took Ian into her arms in an embrace. “I know you’re not the hard ass you make yourself out to be.”

“I see Celaine’s been telling my secrets.”

“Just keep her alive, please,” she whispered.

“I promise,” he said, looking up at me. “I promise.”

Kara let go of Ian and nodded at Aron to signal that she was ready to leave. They left the warehouse with Kara turning her head to look back at us one last time before she rounded the corner and disappeared from sight completely.

“A couple of the guys brought their motorcycles with them when they came to the city,” Ian said. “They’re hidden out back. They said we could we use them.”