Murray Hill || A Superhuman Tale - 1

Chapter Sixty-Three

"I have had just about all of this shit I am going to take," said Camille.

There was no one there to listen to her—no one except for the large and attractive refrigerator that she'd baptized Reggie. It was an extremely handsome appliance, the precise model that she wanted for her own New York City apartment, but it was not much of a conversationalist, and its innards no longer held anything of allure for the angry and worried detective.

She'd been in the room all night, but the promised resolution alluded to by Chris the previous day hadn't been forthcoming, at least not to her knowledge. Repeated requests for answers, and demands for her release, had gone unanswered by the men who waited in the offices outside.

So, she continued her attempts to engage them in conversation, in order to work away at their apprehension about revelation, capture, and punishment for the crimes in which they were engaged.

There was no escape, otherwise. She'd been over every inch of Reggie's sterile home and had found nothing. There was one door, no windows, and cinder block walls. The suspended ceiling had a six-inch space above it.

That left but one way out.

She'd observed that the men took turns bringing her food and checking on her. All three were cautious when they entered, but the technician, Johansson, had taken to carrying a handgun, tucked behind his back waistband, when he came into her small prison.

That is a definite no-go, she'd thought several times. Corrections officers never carry firearms when in contact with prisoners for good reason.

The next time Johansson came to check on her, she'd resolved to clock him, yet again, to seize his weapon, and to negotiate her exit past the others, even if it meant shooting her way out.

It was as simple as that. She didn't like having her fate in the hands of others, and, as nice as Chris had first seemed, it hadn't escaped her thoughts that the final resolution he had in mind was for her to disappear into a shallow grave somewhere in these lovely mountains.

She intended to go kicking and screaming.

Out of the blue, she noticed the door to her makeshift cell was open and Dunphy stood in the doorway, looking at her. She rolled to her feet, ready for a fight.

The quiet man, now even more quiet than usual, simply raised his finger to his lips and stepped aside. When she failed to move, he gestured once with his head. Camille took a deep breath and moved toward the door. Careful not to let the man get behind her, she moved into the lobby. The only other person present was Johansson, who appeared to be fast asleep on a couch two feet too short for his lanky frame.

Dunphy moved to the glass double doors that opened onto the parking lot and held one open. She followed him out. He pointed to the right, down the road from which they originally had come.

"Your stuff is in your car. Follow that road and you'll see signs taking you back to the main highway—don't forget who helped you." He pulled keys from his pocket and moved to a sedan parked on the other side of the lot.

It occurred to her to ask him about Sam but, instead, she ran and jumped into her borrowed SUV. After firing the engine, she took off in the direction Dunphy had indicated. A glance at the rear-view mirror showed the man driving away in the opposite direction.

"You have got the gift," she hooted to herself. Then she paused, tapped the brakes several times to ensure they worked, and reminded herself that, even if one man had had a crisis of conscience, she was not yet out of the woods.

The vehicle's clock told her she'd been in the custody of the Valhalla rogues for nearly 24 hours. Glancing over, she saw her phone, credentials, and various other possessions on the seat next to her. Her bags seemed to be in the places she'd left them, and reaching under the driver's seat, she felt the small pack with nearly 60 thousand dollars cash was still in its place. She would take a proper inventory later, when she had time to stop, but it appeared the gang who couldn't shoot straight hadn't even troubled themselves to search her belongings.

Plugging the phone into the charger, she formulated a plan. If Sam was headed to Canada, then that's where she was going. But not in this vehicle. The SUV was known by their enemies, and there was no guarantee they hadn't concealed some tracking device in it.

The notion is not without precedent, she chortled to herself.

To her pleasant surprise, phone service was back. There was a lengthy list of texts from Philly, enquiring about her location and safety, and she fired back a quick note stating she was well and in hot pursuit of Sam, who she thought had escaped his captors.

The location of the secret facility at which she'd briefly been held, and which doubtless earlier had held Sam, was not clear in her mind, but she wrote a brief description of it for Philly and told her the approximate times she'd been there. There was no need to dramatize events. The other woman would be able to extrapolate the facility's location from the pinging of Sam or Camille's cell phone at the time in question.

Thank you, Dunphy.

After an hour, which felt long enough to ensure she was well away from Valhalla and its thugs, she pulled over to a rest area and began to search for a place to rent a car. She had the strong urge to go buy a lottery ticket after immediately hitting pay dirt. The only car rental office within 100 miles, in any direction, was in a small tourist community just down the road from the rest stop at which she sat. As Tommy and Sam had both earlier urged her, she texted Philly to rent the vehicle for her on one of Tommy's corporate cards.

The timing again was perfect. Within two hours, Camille was driving north on Highway 89 toward the border, having picked up the rental (another SUV), arranged for the storage of Sam's borrowed vehicle, and having gone shopping for necessities such as camping gear and clothes suitable for the climate.

She'd even grabbed a few changes of clothes in sizes that she thought would fit Sam. If what the contractors at Valhalla had said was true, he was on his way through the wilderness. There was no guaranteeing what condition he'd be in when he emerged.

Who is he travelling with? she wondered.

She drove as fast as safety allowed and negotiated the border with surprising ease, given the amount of cash she had to declare. From durance vile in a Valhalla breakroom to a cozy coffeeshop in Cardston, Alberta, took her less than five hours, but it felt a world away.

As it usually was, her first thought was to contact the local police—or, in this case, the RCMP. She put that notion aside for the time. There was no clear way of knowing just how much clout the people they were fighting had in Canada, if any at all. But she would first sit down and come up with a plan to find Sam herself.

Fortunately, the road network in that part of Canada was not dense. Sooner or later, if Sam was where Chris had said, and if he'd avoided further capture, he would emerge somewhere in Waterton Lakes National Park. She would travel there next and explore any clue she might find at the park or along Highway 6.

She studied the map of the area on Sam's tablet in the greatest of detail, but decided to stop and purchase the best paper map she could find. Valhalla seemed to have the power to have cell service shut off for entire areas of the state in Montana. It never hurt to be prepared.

About two hours before dark, Camille grabbed up the tablet and her phone and headed for the rental car. She planned on trolling the area for most of the night, only stopping when sleep or other natural urges demanded it.

It may well have been an illusion, but she suddenly felt very close to finding her friend.