All rightttt here’s the chapter you’ve all been waiting for, the one where my little plot is completely revealed. Okay that’s a lie not completely. But you’ll see. This should be interesting. Sorry this one was kinda late, I had exams last week and then I was sick and I got my braces on yesterday :P life sucks. BUT! I’m excited to say that I’m going on the March for Life tomorrow and Friday!! Eek! Perfect week to remember LIFE guys that great gift, thank your mom for giving it to you!
All right enough blabbing. Enjoy and please fan/vote/comment COMMENT especially that would means loadssss and I love to hear your input!!
Gracias!
Chapter Twelve
♥ Astrid ♥
Initially, our time in London wasn’t much different from what we had been doing in Michigan, minus the sight-seeing, ironically enough. Josh decided it would be too dangerous to roam around the city now that Young had officially set the AWOL up against us. It would only be a matter of a few hours before they tracked us to London, where we had been forced to use passports. Or maybe Wulf wasn’t with us and he knew we were in London already.
Either way, our weekend was spent inside the flat. Only Josh left early Saturday morning to pick up enough groceries for a week, making sure to practice a flawless Londoner accent before he went. He rented a car after I bullied him into it; I hated being without the easy escape route of a vehicle.
A complaining Joel and I stayed at the house, exploring for as long as we could, which wasn’t very long at all. I did, however, find spare clothes in the dresser in my bedroom and quickly changed out of the jeans I had been wearing for more than a week. I was also relieved to see that the bathroom, and therefore the shower, was in perfect working condition; it was so nice to be clean again.
Saturday and Sunday were quiet. We lay around the flat, trying not to think of what we would do next, because truthfully I had no idea. Though we had moved across an ocean, it felt as though we were back in the motel room, lost and alone. Josh grew restless again: I could see it in the roving of his eyes as he lay on the couch or in the spring in his step as he paced. He wanted to be moving again, but we had no idea where to go.
Sunday night Josh received a text from Wulf, short and succinct. A Delta team had arrived in London, handpicked by Young himself, and they were already on the lookout for us. I was far from shocked by this; if anything the surprise was why it had taken Young so long to find our location. Wulf also said that although he wasn’t leading the group, he was with them there in London, which came as a relief to Josh but with slight suspicion to me. He told us to stay put and wait it out for a few days.
And so we did. Until that Wednesday, the twenty-first of December, when Josh was going stir-crazy and began to dismantle his gun and put it back together again with a look on his face that didn’t bode well for the near future. Joel was restless too, complaining about how many basketball practices he’d missed and how his coach was going to kill him.
So much like the motel again, I received a phone call. I was becoming used to the shock of the outside world knowing who I was, and so I answered to Jay’s voice somewhat calmly, stepping into my bedroom as the boys gave me curious looks. The call was short – indeed, my brain didn’t kick in until some time later – as was his message: He recited the address of some hotel in inner-city London and told me to meet him there – “so you can find out about what I told you would interest you.”
Even when my brain cells started responding, I didn’t know what to do. Josh knew who had called – it was probably written all over my face – and I knew that he wouldn’t want me to meet Jay, but I also knew that we were getting nothing accomplished sitting around this flat. And so I told Josh I was going out and not to be concerned if I didn’t return right away, and though he was openly reluctant about it, I shoved a knife and a gun inside my boots, another gun in the inside pocket of my jacket, and closed the door tightly behind me.
No regrets now.
My ponytail bounced against my neck as I threw up the collar of the flying jacket against the biting wind, burrowing my hands deep into my pockets. I had left the Notre Dame sweatshirt in the bedroom and was now regretting it, moving my feet more briskly as the cold buffeted my uncovered face. Even with the weather, there was the normal bustle of passersby on the streets that I ducked by, keeping my head down just in case. Paranoid or not, one little slip could give everything away.
The hotel was much further than Google Maps had made it look, but I wasn’t going to risk a taxi and so spent a good hour walking to find it. By the time I came to the front doors – it was a nice enough place, homey and not too fancy – my nose and ears were numb and I was wishing I had worn snow pants. Once inside the lobby, I took a moment to ease feeling back into my limbs; after all, moving quickly or shooting is difficult with frozen body parts. Then I stepped up to the pleasant manager and said I was meeting a friend on the floor Jay had told me.
Climbing each step of the stairs slowly but firmly, I at last pushed open the door to floor number four, wondering briefly why Jay would want a floor from which it would be very difficult to escape. The thought made me pause for a second, but the helpless frustration of the last week propelled my feet forward and then I was padding down a carpeted hallway. I slipped my gun out of the inside pocket, transferring it to a front one, and kept my eyes peeled for room 12D.
No one was around, which wasn’t overly strange as it was an hour at which most people would be at work, but nonetheless I felt a prickle of unease, not least because it was Jay I was to meet. It was like him not to bring backup – he was independent, preferred to do his own work – but I felt that even he would in this sort of situation. Unless he knew that we were really alone here in London, knew that it was just Josh and I.
Room 12D.
The gun came out of my pocket, gripped tightly with one hand as the other slowly reached for the doorknob and opened it just a crack. No noise came from within, which meant absolutely nothing, and after a moment I took a deep breath and kicked it open, immediately flattening myself against the wall next to the door with just my gun pointing around the corner. I stayed there for a few seconds before entering the room, my gun in front of me.
He was there, merely ten feet in front of me, golden hair drifting into blue eyes while his own gun pointed steadily at my head as my eyes roamed the room. No one else was present – that I could see – and the undisturbed state of the room suggested that Jay himself had only just arrived. For a full minute we stared at each other, guns not moving an inch, and then I slowly began moving around the room, his gun following me like a prowling wolf.
“Nice place you got here,” I commented at long last, blasé to the last syllable.
His mouth parted in a smile. “Like it? We could stay a while.”
My eyes flickered to the bed and I lifted an eyebrow in amusement. “What a mind you have there.” I was still scoping out the room, taking in the dresser on the back wall and the window next to it, the nightstand to the right of the bed and the lamp on top of it, the bathroom door on the left wall, which was open. It seemed unlikely that someone was hiding in the shower – it wasn’t Jay’s style – but then I wasn’t sure I knew him as well as I had thought.
“Why don’t you put the gun down?” Jay’s voice was silkily pleasant, his own remaining steady in his hand. “We’re just here to talk. No one else is with me, I swear.”
“Because your word means so much,” I returned, but lowered my gun anyway, sticking it into a front pocket where I could reach it easily. He looked at me for a moment, blue eyes expressionless, and then placed his own gun back into a holster on his hip, not even bothering to hide it. Cocky, he was.
“Have a seat.”
I glanced around for a chair, but he gestured to the bed, and after a moment of hesitation, I sank down on one side of it. He sat on the other and threw his legs up on the blankets, leaning back on his elbows and appearing to be perfectly relaxed. I remained poised to move quickly if I had to, something he noticed with a laugh as he said, “Lighten up, beautiful; it’s just a talk.”
Still I didn’t move and at last he began again. “So. Has Young set up an AWOL against you yet?” And when I looked at him somewhat warily, he said in amusement, “I’m not dumb, Astrid. It’s clear something’s going on in Delta, and I know the last thing Young wanted you to do was scamper off to London. He’s not very happy with you, is he?” His eyes were boring into mine. “Because of your mistakes in France.”
“Tell me,” I said sweetly, swinging my legs onto the bed so that I was on my side and propping myself up on one elbow to smile at him coyly, “what have you been doing here in London? Does Cloying know you’re here?”
“Does Josh know you’re here?” he countered, just as amiably, and I shrugged.
“Touché. So?”
“No, Cloying doesn’t know I’m here.” He paused, eyes searching my face for a moment, and then said in an entirely different tone, “And he also doesn’t know something else. Something that I have – you may be familiar with it.” One hand slipped underneath his sweatshirt, pulling out a metal object on a silver chain from around his neck. “Seen it before?”
Rolling onto my stomach, I held out one hand and he dropped the object in it lightly. Fully conscious of how close his face was to mine now, I gave it a cursory glance. It was a metal key, small and thin and old-looking, one of those that your grandmother usually gave you to some box of memories. I figured it probably wasn’t that, though, and let it fall out of my hand so that I could move a few more inches away from those burning eyes.
“No.” My voice stayed casual. “What is it?”
In answer, he lifted the key again, tugging at the end that would enter the keyhole, and to my surprise a half-inch of the metal slid off, revealing the boxlike shape of a USB port.
My mouth fell open on its own, my fingers reaching out to touch it again as he kept his eyes on my face. His neck bowed a little as I tugged the key down on its chain, and through my surprise I was suddenly aware of how close his face was to mine, how his eyes became hooded as I looked up too suddenly to find our lips only a few inches apart. They were doing that burning thing again, the blue swirling into some smoky puddle as there was a few seconds’ pause, the key lying forgotten in my palm.
Clearing my throat, I dropped the key, moving away from him. “So what is it?” All pleasantries had disappeared from my voice.
“A USB port, clearly,” he said, as if nothing had happened. “It’s what it holds that’s more important here.” He tapped the little device. “I stuck this flash drive into a system at Delta Headquarters before I left three years ago. Took a bit of hacking and quite a bit of security problems, but that’s what we were trained for, no?”
“And what exactly did you take?” I couldn’t even begin to imagine the kind of information that Delta’s computers held.
His eyes were suddenly ice, his voice like a recording. “A list of every agent Delta has ever employed, with code names and addresses and all personal information.”
The room spun violently so that I felt like I was going to throw up.
“Do you have any idea–?” I managed shakily after a moment.
“Why do you think I took it?” A sly smile. “How much do you think someone would pay for a list like this?”
I covered my mouth with one hand, feeling sick. “But – so many people…they’d be found and killed.” A thought struck me, rather belatedly. “Jay – my name’s on there. And Josh’s and Charlie’s…” I stopped. Not that it mattered anymore.
He was shaking his head, his gaze suddenly gentle. “I wiped your name from the system,” he said softly. “No doubt they’ve replaced it by now, but this” – he shook the jump drive – “doesn’t have it.”
“And Josh’s?” I whispered, my eyes fixated on the tiny device that held so much. His hesitation was answer enough and I groaned, burying my face in my hands for a moment. “Jay, what have you done with that list?”
His hands moved to my shoulders, almost automatically it seemed, and I froze as he began to massage them smoothly in a gesture so familiar that I felt a lump rise to my throat. He sensed the tension increasing in my deltoid muscles and his hands froze as well. For a moment we remained as we were, and then I raised my face to look him in the eye.
He didn’t remove his hands as he said quietly, “I haven’t done anything with that list, Astrid. No one has seen it.”
“Oh really?” I couldn’t help the mocking anger in my voice, my fear rising as I realized just what he was holding, just why Delta still wanted him after so many years. “How much did someone pay for it, Jay? How else were you able to run around Europe, avoiding Delta?”
Actual hurt shone in his eyes, for just a second. “I’m telling you the truth. I wouldn’t be so stupid as to sell it like that; I thought you knew that.” And as I made a noise of disbelief, “Well, how were you able to get to London? I know Delta’s not feeling particularly generous with their money right now.” I felt my eyes flicker, just a little, and he smiled thinly. “See? I didn’t need to sell it. Not then, not now.”
I exhaled, staring at the bedspread. “So…you just carry that around your neck? Isn’t that a bit risky?”
He reached over and touched my gun through the pocket’s material. “How about you carrying this around? Isn’t that a bit risky?”
“That’s entirely different,” I snapped, brushing his hand away. “This is a safety measure.”
“Well, so is this.” He fingered the chain. “Why do you think Delta’s still after me? It’s not something stupid about the mafia; I’ll admit I lied about that. That’s what they told Josh and Charlie when I left.”
I thought of something, a brief moment back at Cloying’s manor weeks ago. “What about the Delta agents that –?”
“– I was accused of killing?” Jay finished with a twisted smile. “What do you think? I took the Red list, Astrid. They were after me for three years across the States, Europe…there were probably more than three agents, too, wouldn’t you think?”
I couldn’t speak.
“Delta knows I have this,” he said, looking at the key with an unreadable expression. “It guarantees my safety for at least the time being – they can’t find it until they find me, and I’m not going to let that happen, am I?”
“How is it guaranteeing your safety, then?” I asked in exasperation. “That doesn’t even make sense. If they find you, they’ll kill you and then take it from around your neck.”
A smile brushed his lips, his hair falling into those brilliant eyes as he leaned forward so that our faces were two inches apart. “What a positive person you are,” he breathed, his breath hot on my lips. I struggled to keep my gaze away from his eyes, knowing they would be doing that dangerous swirling again; a girl could forget how to breathe under those eyes. Still, I found my eyes being drawn to them as he cupped the back of my head in one hand, his lips moving ever closer…
I jerked away, sitting up on the bed and looking away from him. “I thought we were here to talk.” My voice was so frosty that I was amazed he had the nerve to laugh quietly.
“I don’t mind changing the agenda.”
Standing, I grasped the gun inside my pocket, glaring at him. “So is that why you called me here? This is what would interest me?”
Frowning briefly, he swung his legs over the side of the bed, looking up at me with a thoughtful look on his face. He seemed to be going through some sort of battle inside his head, his eyes giving him away as he tried to make it look like he was studying me instead of hesitating.
“No,” he said finally, in a voice I couldn’t read. “No, that’s not it. Though it was very interesting, wasn’t it?”
A flash of the old devilish smile as he stood. Now I was looking up at him as he took my long, dark ponytail in one hand, letting it run through his fingers as he pulled away.
“Would you like to go with me?” He was almost whispering. “Would you like to come and see what I have to show you?”
I swallowed hard, clutching my gun even more tightly. “Go where?”
“You’ll find out, won’t you?” And, smiling as I narrowed my eyes, “It’s perfectly safe, I promise. Cloying won’t be there, and it’s my territory. I’ll be in charge, so I can keep you safe.”
“For how long?” I asked warily, thinking of Josh and Joel waiting for me anxiously in the flat and feeling a little guilty. Thinking of Joel was getting me nowhere – if I didn’t watch myself, I was going to spit the truth out in his face.
He shrugged mysteriously, just raising an eyebrow. “Well?”
I thought of the power in the little flash drive, thought of the frustration of the inability to do anything there in London, of the restlessness in Josh’s eyes, of my own longing to find out what was going on…Maybe Jay could show me, maybe he would let something slip so that we might have a lead as to where Cloying was. Then that frustration would ease.
And so my voice was steady as I answered, “All right.”
We left the hotel together, through the back exit into a small parking lot. He held my arm as we walked through it swiftly, his eyes moving in a constant one-eighty surveillance that made me nervous. Approaching an Audi, he pulled a set of keys out of his pockets that turned out to be real keys as he opened the shotgun side and gestured for me to go in.
“Must have a nice income,” I commented, looking the car over as I slipped into the seat.
“It’s a 2010 model,” he said shortly, striding around to the driver’s side and sliding inside. Twisting the key in the ignition, he glanced over to see my raised eyebrow. “All right, so it’s a nice car. It’s not that expensive.”
“Getting a little defensive, aren’t we?” I smiled, keeping my voice light. “I’m sure terrorists make quite the salary – selling arms on the black market would be very profitable, not to mention your other goods.”
His knuckles were white on the steering wheel as he maneuvered into the crowded London streets, his eyes flicking to the rearview mirror. “If you don’t know what you’re talking about, you should probably keep your mouth shut. That kind of talk could get you shot.”
Taken aback by the sharp reply, I sat for a moment in stiff silence, turning my head to stare out the right window so that I wasn’t looking at him. After a moment I heard him exhale loudly and risked turning slightly to see that he was glancing at me with irritation scrawled across his face.
“Look, I’m sorry.” He didn’t sound like he was. “Just try and keep those kinds of opinions to yourself, okay? You don’t really know what’s going on here. And for where we’re going, you really shouldn’t act like you do.”
“Okay then,” I said, still a little affronted, and a long silence followed as he remained focused on the road, his eyes moving rapidly from street to sign to passersby, his jaw muscles locked tightly. He was nervous about something, that much I could tell, and it was contagious: I couldn’t help feeling a bit wary as well as we began to leave the modern brightness of inner-city London and entered what would be considered the slums.
“So much for a good income,” I said after a while, studying the old-looking buildings and run-down lots. “Maybe I should take back that comment.”
“You haven’t seen anything yet,” said Jay darkly, and then he ignored me as he continued driving, swerving and turning frequently down the maze of twisted roads. Even with my near-photographic memory, I was soon lost, my sense of trepidation rising as I realized that getting out of this place would be more difficult than I had expected.
The streets were empty except for cars that were parked at certain intervals, stationary cars that watched us as we drove past. At some points Jay would slow and raise one hand until someone had seen his face and let him pass. At last we stopped in front of a nondescript building, Jay scooting down an alley and parking the car at the back.
“Come on, then,” he said roughly and got out of the car. Gone was the amiable, playful Jay from the hotel room, replaced by the darker side that I had caught a glimpse of in the manor all those weeks ago. The lonely, angry, lost side that scared me and made me want to protect him at the same time.
He didn’t bother to open my door this time, already walking up to a broken-looking door. I hesitated and then unclipped my seatbelt, opened the door, and stood on the icy ground. Spots of snow still dotted the ground, black from car exhaust, and as I stepped in them, they were crushed beneath my feet, the sound strangely ominous as I approached the building.
“What is this?” I was ashamed to hear a trill of nerves in my voice.
Jay stared up at the façade of the building, his face brooding. For the first time I realized that there were dark smudges under his eyes. “Somewhere I wish I didn’t have to take you,” he said heavily, and I let him take my hand. “Not the most romantic place, sorry. Come on.”
Even though I felt childish doing it, I stepped a little closer to him as he inserted a pass-code into a box beside the door and pushed it open. Inside was just as dark as outside, and the air felt so empty and black that I couldn’t suppress a shiver. He wrapped one arm around my waist and I allowed it as we moved forward. His face was almost as dark as the atmosphere as we stepped around broken furniture to a door that was partially hidden by long, heavy curtains.
This door was unlocked, and he pushed it open to reveal a flight of stairs that dipped down into darkness. They looked unused, but as he released my waist and started down them ahead of me, they didn’t creak at all and I realized they were made of modern materials instead of rotting wood and brick like the rest of the place. Though they had seemed endless, we soon reached the bottom and yet another door, which Jay unlocked and threw open to reveal a long hallway with harsh, bright lights that made me close my eyes briefly after the sudden change.
“This is it.” Jay’s voice was flat. “The place Delta would love to find.” He stood in the middle of the hall, feet apart, one hand resting against the holster on his hip. His blue eyes were steely, masking something darker as he avoided my gaze.
I looked around, saying carefully, “This is where Cloying stays?”
He laughed, the sound reverberating callously through the hall. “No. I said that wrong, I guess – Delta would be pleased to find this. They’ll never find Cloying. No, this is something different, something I almost wish,” his face twisted briefly, “they would find.” I didn’t understand his mood change, but he was pulling at my arm again. “Come on. Little bit further.”
I realized as we walked through the hall that this place had been built underneath the building, spreading further down the block. It was ingeniously built, modern in every way in a sharp contrast from the buildings above it, with security panels on thick doors hewn into whitewashed walls. Noises that I couldn’t place came from within these doors, but Jay walked past them without even glancing their way, his back stiff and his face pale. I hurried along next to him as his nervous stride grew increasingly longer; signs of affection toward me had disappeared.
“Where are we–” I began as the hum of the lights overhead and our feet against the concrete floor at last grew to an unbearable level in our silence. He didn’t even look at me, just held up one hand to cut me off. We had reached yet another door, one that he stopped in front of for a long moment before glancing back at me and pushing it open with a resolute expression. As I was about to enter, however, he caught my arm.
“Astrid,” he said, his voice serious as I had never heard it before, “what you see in here – I swear, it wasn’t me. This is why I’m showing you, why I’m taking this risk. I understand if you hate me for it but – please.”
“Jay, what–?”
“Just follow me.”
His face was a mask as he stepped aside to let me enter. Not without a good deal of trepidation, I stepped into another harshly-lit room with the same cold, whitewashed walls and low ceiling. Some sort of desk stood in front of us, about six feet in front of a long, wide window that I understood to be some sort of two-way mirror from its odd tint. Its view was complete blackness, so thick and heavy that I thought it might breathe. Something inside of me jumped unpleasantly, my heartbeat suddenly quickening as I stepped around the desk for a closer look.
“Astrid–” Jay swallowed audibly. “I’m going to turn on the light in that room and I want you to sit down–”
“What?” I stepped a foot closer to the glass. “What’s inside?”
“Don’t go any closer,” he warned. “Not until I show you, okay? Do you understand?”
The lights flashed on suddenly in the room in front of me before I could respond. I threw my hands up to my eyes at the intensity of them, wincing as my retinas burned. Behind me I could hear Jay exclaim in confusion and then he was swearing, swearing something awful, finishing with a barely perceptible, “Oh no, not him.” And then he was at my side, his hands moving up to cover my eyes as I began to bring my own down, saying, “Maybe this isn’t a good idea–”
But I pushed his hands away, my eyes facing the room in front of me –
And my heart stopped beating.
My mouth moved but made no noise, my feet wanted to move, to fly from that room into the next, but they were frozen in place. I felt as though the room was spinning, my eyes blurring suddenly as the world seemed to dip forward. And then someone had grabbed my waist, pulling me back up carefully and saying, over and over, “You’re all right; it’s okay.”
But it wasn’t – it couldn’t be – because how –?
When my head cleared, I realized rather abstractly that Jay was holding me, his voice worried and furious. He was saying something into some sort of intercom even as he tried to comfort me, something in a language I couldn’t understand. His words held a black fury, just barely held in check as his jaw muscles twitched from being clenched so tightly together. It was directed at what was in front of me: a dark, massively built man whose features looked vaguely familiar. I would have tried to remember if it hadn’t been for what the man was heading for.
Or whom.
A dark-haired figure was tied by the wrists and ankles to a tall wooden pole, strangely medieval-looking in such a modern place. He was slumped forward, held up only by his bonds and clearly barely conscious. His hair flopped over his face, hiding his features from sight, but I knew – my heart leaped and I knew so suddenly, so clearly – and I leaped forward, forgetting the glass was there and colliding with it painfully.
“Don’t!” Jay sounded as though the word was wrenched from his throat. He came forward, taking my shoulders and pulling me backwards. “Crap, crap, crap…”
Still there were no words in my mouth; I could barely breathe.
But the man, the dark, swarthy man who looked more and more familiar by the minute, could, and he was advancing on the wilting figure. Jay was yelling now, but the man just raised one fist and slammed it into a panel on the wall, which evidently silenced Jay’s voice inside the room. He started swearing again, releasing me as he banged on the glass, but the man ignored him. He began to speak, and though he couldn’t hear us, his words were perfectly clear.
“Acordado ainda?”
And then I remembered. The Portuguese – of course, the Portuguese – and in that strange dialect that I’d never heard before and so could barely understand. Awake yet? Jay had fallen silent, his body seeming to quiver as he stood at my side, staring at the scene that began to unfold. I couldn’t move, my hands braced against the glass and my eyes staring at what my mind couldn’t believe.
The dark head rose to look at the Portuguese. “Claro. Eu estavaesperando por você.”
Of course. I was waiting for you.
Any doubts that had risen were swept away by that voice, the voice that sent me pushing against the glass, an odd, animal noise rising in my throat as Jay grabbed my shoulders again and tried to pull me away. The Portuguese laughed out of the blue, the sound echoing around the room cheerlessly and sending a shiver up my spine.
“Eeu ouvia vozde Jay?” Did I hear Jay’s voice?
Jay jumped visibly as the captive spoke his name.
“Yes, you heard his voice,” replied the Portuguese in his dialect, the laughter vanishing from his face to be replaced by an ugly look, and then he said something that I couldn’t understand. The boy bound to the pole turned a little pale, his face still half-turned away from us, but that familiar mocking was in his voice as he replied.
“O mestre está de volta, então. Voltar a dar-lhe ordens.”
Even in my befuddled state, I understood what he was saying: He was taunting the Portuguese, saying that Jay was above him, that he had to respond to his orders. The man didn’t take that too well, his face darkening considerably as he stepped closer to the bound figure and struck him full across the face.
Crying out, I threw myself against the glass again as Jay tried to restrain me, pushing him away as I looked for some way into that room, some way to get to that dark-haired boy slumped against the pole. But the Portuguese was speaking again, too rapidly and angrily in that dialect for me to grasp, shouting into the boy’s face as the veins in his neck bulged. The captive responded at intervals with short, cocky-sounding remarks that thinly covered the fear that was rising on his face, the fear that perhaps only I saw because I was so accustomed to how he felt.
My hands were still pushing against the glass as they worked themselves into a crescendo of furious yells, the Portuguese’s voice rising into a bellow and the boy remaining stubbornly mocking even as his face grew steadily white while the man’s fists curled into massive fists. His tormentor was only barely controlling himself, a flash of animal rage darting across his face more and more at every comment from the dark-haired boy.
And then – it was so quick that I almost missed it – the captive bawled, “Deus abençoe a América!” and the Portuguese flew into a rage, slapping the boy across the face so that his head jerked backwards. His fists flashed in all directions, sending the captive crumpling to the ground and straining against his bonds with jabs to the kidneys and stomach and his unprotected face, all with a precision that spoke of years of practice and mastery. I was screaming, pounding on the glass senselessly as Jay shouted into the intercom behind me. A sob rose in my throat, ripping out of me as I tried to reach him, tried to reach the boy as he dipped away from me, the fists sending him spiraling into unconsciousness before my eyes.
It seemed to go on for hours but could only have been a few seconds, the Portuguese finally stepping away from him and snarling something that I couldn’t understand before storming out of the room. I was lying on the floor, sobbing as my fingers brushed at the glass desperately, some voice in back of me saying to wait just a moment, that everything was going to be fine if I just waited.
And then I was being lifted to my feet, gently steered back through the entrance of the room as I tried to check the tears that were still streaming down my face. I couldn’t move my feet – someone had a shoulder under my arm, guiding me – and a numb feeling was beginning to spread through my body. Slowly we made it to another door, this time leading into that room behind the glass.
The arm released me, and I stumbled forward, my mind not trusting my feet to move me or my eyes to clarify what I was seeing. Somehow I reached the drooping figure and brought my hands up to his face, brushing the hair out of his half-closed eyes to see if it could be true, if this wasn’t some crazy nightmare.
Bruises spotted his face, one of his eyes brilliantly purple and puffy, and his hair was long and floppy and obviously hadn’t been washed for who knew how long. His skin was so white that I was almost afraid to touch it, my fingers moving tenderly, so tenderly, across his face. They trembled as my mind whirled, wondering if it could be, but even as a moan escaped his mouth his eyelids flickered open for a moment and it was then that I knew.
Grey.
Stormy, rebellious, playful, irrepressible grey.
My mouth was dry and so were my eyes; suddenly the tears had stopped, as if my body couldn’t accept it and was shutting down. Someone was behind the pole now, and dimly I registered the flash of a blade in the light, slicing through the ropes that bound his wrists and ankles to the pole, and then he was falling forward into my open arms. I staggered backwards, though he was no weight at all, and somehow re-orientated him so that his head lolled back in my lap, his body sprawled across the ground limply.
I had forgotten Jay even existed, but there he was, dropping the knife and crouching anxiously by my side. His face was almost as white as the one in my lap as he said, “Astrid – I don’t – I didn’t know he was going to come in. If I had–” He seemed unable to speak for a moment and when he did, the words came with a convulsive shudder. “I hate him.”
I didn’t look at him, couldn’t tear my eyes away from the boy in my arms, my own voice coming out so shakily that I was a little surprised that there were words at all. “Why – why didn’t you tell me? Before?”
“I couldn’t,” he said, and as if from a distance I heard the pain in his voice. “Believe me, Astrid; I wanted to, but–”
My breath was coming in ragged gasps, my mind still reeling so violently that I felt physically sick. I couldn’t accept what my eyes were seeing, that pale face shrouded by the dark hair that fell so familiarly…And then suddenly his eyes were opening again, the grey almost black with hazy pain, and they focused on me as if from afar, as if we were a mile apart and I was trying to catch his attention with an uncertain wave.
“Astrid?” His voice was scarcely a whisper and so husky and disbelieving and cracked with pain that it tore like a knife at what was left of my shattered heart.
“Oh Charlie,” I breathed, my own voice barely audible as my lungs seemed to explode in my chest. And as the recognition in his eyes slowly faded as they rolled back in his head and he drifted away once more, I did the only thing a highly-trained professional espionage agent could think of doing in that situation.
I burst into tears.