The memory made Joe’s heart pound with hope. They’d almost lost their virginity that evening in the old storm bunker. That had been the closest Sam had ever allowed him to see into her soul. Just a brief glimpse of her agony before hormones had overtaken him. Why hadn’t he let her talk instead of trying to get it on with her? Sure taught him a lesson that night, especially when her grandmother came back from the store.
“Hey, there’s concrete under here,” called a firefighter. “Looks like some stairs.”
They’d uncovered the passage, but the cement was cracked and broken over the stairwell. After working to clear the fallen chunks, Joe found the remainder of the stairs mostly intact. He flicked on his flashlight and started down.
“The walls are probably weakened, Detective. We should reinforce it before anyone goes down there.”
Joe ignored him and continued down the damp stairwell. He’d probably get an earful from the chief in the morning. The acrid air filled his lungs. A haze hung around him and stung his eyes.
“Sam?” His voice merely echoed.
Was she down here? If so, what condition would her body be in? It always felt different being on a scene when you knew the victim. Anxiety sat like a rock in his stomach.
Miraculously the walls and ceiling appeared secure as the door squealed in protest. No fissures or gaping holes in the cement. Whoever had built this shelter definitely knew what they were doing, but a good foot of water pooled on the floor. The possibility of Sam drowning hadn’t even entered his mind.
“Sam, answer me!”
Joe coughed as he scanned the room, shining the flashlight across the floor while he sloshed the grid. Back and forth he crisscrossed the room, hoping his feet would run into something then alternately squelching that hope if it meant they’d drowned her. The light glinted off the water until he arrived back at the stairwell. His bittersweet hope was lost as another flashlight shimmied down the stairs and shone into his eyes.
“She’s gone.”
Chapter 14 - An Introduction
The lights blurred. It hurt to breathe. The room spun. A distinctive steady beep in the recesses of her consciousness drew her up from the dark pit.
Samantha blinked in an attempt to still the spiraling room. The bright lights glared. As her awareness grew, she felt the presence of an oxygen mask covering her nose and mouth. Where was she?
A face materialized. The dark cropped hair. Chiseled features. Piercing blue eyes. Something about him seemed familiar.
Samantha attempted to speak, her voice raspy and hollow. “Where am I?”
The man acknowledged her. “You have decided to rejoin the land of the living, I see.” His voice was deep and all business.
After he wrote something on the chart and read the monitor beside the bed, he pressed his hand to her forehead. His starched lab coat quivered like butterfly wings each time he moved.
Butterflies.
Samantha’s mind drifted. She saw her mother in a white straw hat walking through a meadow, butterflies flittering all around her. Her mother reached out and allowed them to rest along her arms. Samantha ran to join her, but the butterflies kept getting in the way. They gathered and swarmed, turned gray then black. The black hole opened up and she felt as if she were falling, falling, falling.
She awoke with a start. He hovered at her side.
“Samantha?” His blue eyes were deep like the ocean waves below Washington’s cliffs. They held the tiniest speck of concern.
“Are you a doctor?” Samantha asked. The oxygen mask fogged over.
“Just call me Dr. Marcus.” He returned to business again.
The environs appeared stark and sterile like an operating room at one of New York’s finest hospitals. But she’d gone back to Kansas, hadn’t she?
“Where am I? What has happened?” Her tongue felt thick and clumsy.
The memories came crashing back. Gramm’s death. The cemetery. The box. Ringing in her ears. An explosion. She tried to throw back the sheets and scramble from the bed but collapsed from the effort. The pain in her arm sent a shockwave through her body like a lightning bolt.
“Your residence is a medical facility in downtown Wichita.”
Dr. Marcus grabbed her good wrist and searched for a pulse. He continued, “Someone didn’t do their job well in constructing the entrance, but we’ve already dealt with that. There was a bit of a breach, and it allowed smoke to enter the safe room. We were almost too late in reaching you.”
Fog muddled her brain. Samantha stared at him in confusion and pressed her hand to her temple when he released it. One phrase pierced the fog like an arrow.
“Safe room? H-how do you know about the ‘fraidy hole?”
He again bent over the chart to scribble something concerning her condition and checked her IV bag. What was her condition exactly? The room swam. Fatigue clawed its way through her body like a lioness in the shadows waiting for her prey.
“Because we built it.”
Dr. Marcus strode from the room as Samantha lapsed into unconsciousness.
***
The media circus had already begun as Joe pulled into the parking lot of Castor Construction’s administrative offices. The vultures. One could hardly blame them though, when word crossed the airways of the CEO’s death – shot down in broad daylight in his own office.
Chief Snowe directed him to park at the side of the building, and he got out. “Let me distract the media while you run upstairs.”
“Got it, Chief.”
Death had surrounded him for years, but he didn’t look forward to the job at hand. Sam’s death last week had hit him hard, and he’d had a difficult time shaking it off. Truth be told, her passing had hit him harder than even his own mother’s six years ago. Mom’s life and body had deteriorated slow and steady – cancer. They’d had time to deal with the reality, had time to say goodbye. Mom had been at peace.
Sam was another story. The longer she’d stuck around town, the more he’d allowed himself to toy with the idea that they’d make another go of it. He’d convinced himself that she just needed time to deal with Gramm’s passing, that she’d eventually take his calls when she was ready. He could wait.
Where had waiting gotten him?
Police personnel greeted him as he made his way through the maze and into the far office. Albert Castor’s body sat slumped in his chair, blood splatters surrounding the bullet hole in the window behind him. Good luck finding that slug. After Joe gave the okay, the medical examiner bagged and tagged the body. Nothing on the desk appeared to be disturbed, just a set of blood-spattered blueprints Mr. Castor had been reviewing. Joe collected the notes from the secretary’s interview and scanned them for any appearance of inconsistency. He’d follow up with her before he left.
Considering the recent demise of his father, Joe was surprised to see the elder son present and being interrogated in the far corner. Manny Castor stood to inherit a vast sum of money, not to mention the power of the largest construction conglomerate in the Midwest. Though the man’s eyes remained focused on his interviewer, Joe felt the coldness of the dark, beady gaze watching him out of the corners of his eyes. He’d never backed down from a challenge before, direct or subtle.
Joe interrupted and stuck out his hand. “Mr. Castor? Detective Joe Roberts.”
The beady eyes directed their full attention toward him but a hand remained unoffered. “Detective.”
“Excuse my intrusion, but wouldn’t you be more comfortable conducting the interview down the hall?”
“I’ve spent more time in this office over the years than my own, Detective. My father’s death doesn’t change that.”
“Were you in here when the assailant arrived?”
The man had the audacity to smile. “One of the rare and, dare I say it, lucky moments when I was not.”
Joe glanced back over the notes from the secretary’s interview. “The secretary said you’d left this office a few minutes before the shooting, that she’d
heard a sharp disagreement about the same time.”
“Yes, to grab another set of blueprints for comparison to the ones on my father’s desk. We were arguing about a problem on a previous project.”
“Where is the other set of blueprints?”
“I hadn’t located them before I heard the shots.”
“And you didn’t see anyone run out of the office?”
“No.”
Manny Castor wasn’t going to give them any information, even if he knew something – and Joe would bet his measly pension the man knew more.
Much more.
***
Two men stood talking near the foot of her hospital bed while several others stood silent near the doorway. Sleep had dissipated the fog in her head. Then she remembered his name – Dr. Marcus.
The doctor spoke. “How are you feeling now?”
Samantha watched him with focused eyes. “Better, I guess.”
Dr. Marcus didn’t write anything on her chart but only watched her, stared deeply into her eyes as if groping her mind. Samantha’s flesh crawled but she stared back in defiance. Dr. Marcus’ lips curled into a smile.
He leaned toward the other man and whispered, “See, she’ll do well indeed.”
Narrowing her eyes, Samantha firmed up her position. “Tell me what’s going on here or so help me, I’m calling the entire damn nursing staff.”
The other man, much older and almost frail looking, shuffled around the bed and came alongside. “You may call me simply Debrille.”
Debrille’s beady eyes looked like someone had bored holes into his head with an ice pick. His voice sounded pinched with a bad French accent, stature short, and his gray hair cropped like the doctor.
Debrille continued, “I am arrived from a long journey, my dear, to offer you a once in a lifetime opportunity.”
“Okay, Simply Debrille, first tell me where I am. I don’t recognize this hospital.”
Samantha glanced again. Wasn’t any of the Wichita hospitals she was familiar with. Wait, Dr. Marcus had said something about being downtown. Perhaps Riverside.
A smug smile glanced off of Debrille’s face. “You are in a state-of-the-art facility of my own making. I have many such facilities scattered around the world. In this part, we have done much work these past few decades.”
“I don’t understand.”
Debrille settled himself into the nearby plush armchair. “This may take some time to explain.”
He removed his red tie and held it into the air. One of the doorway goons captured it then returned to his post.
Debrille continued, “I have dedicated my life to rooting out corruption – invested and spent my fortune many times over to create an underground labyrinth of research labs, medical facilities, housing units, and safe houses connected to the world above. I prefer to surround myself with the best minds and hands to assist in carrying out my quest. We can move about in corporate and political circles the world over, protect the common man from the corruption of the powerful, then slip away into the night without a trace. We are seen when we wish to be seen.”
His eyes bored into Samantha’s. “How would you like to avenge yourself on the man who put you into this bed?”
Samantha hesitated. A dull ache crept up her neck and gripped the base of her skull. “What are you saying? You know who caused the explosion?”
Debrille snapped his fingers. Dr. Marcus slipped a photograph from the clipboard and handed it to Samantha.
“Do you recognize this man?” asked Debrille.
Samantha’s heart went cold at his words. The photograph quaked. Tears of rage sprang to her eyes. Samantha held in her hands the photo of a leering rapist – a picture of President Frederick Warner.
Her father.
Without thought of the pain in her arm, Samantha ripped the photo in two, then again, and again until the tiny pieces pooled upon the sheet. She stared at Debrille through a veil of tears.
“How do you know this? How do you know who I am? How did you know where to find me after the explosion?”
Debrille sat upon the edge of the chair, his body trembling, his fervor increasing with each word. “Because I ordered the construction of the safe house where you were found. Your parents worked for me. He killed your parents and your grandmother. He ordered your death. Now you must work for me.
“Because he will stop at nothing to silence you.”
Chapter 15 - The Elite
The coldness in Samantha’s soul gave her unstinting clarity of thought. Her mother’s letter came to mind.
“You are the Elite.” It was not a question anymore.
Debrille smiled, a sickening, twisted band of flesh. “Bravo. Bravo, my dear. You have the sharpness of your mother’s mind. Perhaps her quickness too? Yes, second in state in the hundred yard sprint.”
“I can’t even begin to grasp how you know this about me, why you know this about me.”
“We make it a point to know and understand everything about our own. We have protected you for many years, you see.”
“Protected me? From what?”
“From your biological father.”
“Don’t ever call him that to me again.”
Debrille chuckled and glanced again at Dr. Marcus. “I like her spirit. Yes, a temper just like his.”
She didn’t have to ask who Debrille meant by his.
“You see, my dear. We have watched your activities for many years, kept you outside of his radar. Covered your tracks. He never knew you had gone off to school in New York, but he found out about you again when you came back. You had to be taken out, you see, to keep you from being a thorn in his flesh. Now he and the entire world believe you to be dead.”
Dead.
The word hung ominously in the air. She’d been surrounded by too much of its reality recently – hell, pretty much for her entire life and career.
“But surely someone saw you pull me from the fire – the rubble.”
They couldn’t have accomplished extracting her from all of that mess without being seen. It’d been just about dusk at the time of the explosion, plenty of light for the neighbors to see the activity. They would’ve all been searching for the cause of the noise and damage. Miracle this gang found her and got her out before the fire department arrived. Joe might be looking for her even now.
“No, my dear. We move underground. You were rescued via a connecting tunnel and brought here out of sight of any human eyes. The only thing anyone above will find is the rubble and assume you were consumed by the explosion.”
The thought came down on her chest like a crushing weight. The world thought her dead. Joe thought her dead. No ties any longer to the land of the living, she’d become a mere wisp in the wind.
“How did you know I would even be down there?”
Debrille raised his brows matter-of-factly. “You are your mother’s daughter.”
Oh sure. That settled it in everyone’s mind but her own. “What happens now?”
“It is very simple.”
Debrille lit a cigarette and drew on it, blowing out the smoke like a deep and dangerous thought. The smoke dissipated the moment it went into the air. Good filtration in the ventilation systems. State of the art.
“As you now have no further ties to your world, we wish you to join ours.”
“Join the Elite?”
What had her mother said about them in her letter? How she wished she still had that final link to Momma. But it, as well as her life, was now ashes to be blown about at the whim of a wind.
“Yes,” Debrille stated. “There is now nothing to stop you.”
“But I have bills, huge student loans that Gramm’s estate will never be able to repay.”
“They are already paid, my dear. The wire has already been routed and re-routed to cover those costs. It is but a pittance in order to have you with us. Dr. Marcus will be able to continue whatever training you have need of in the field of medicine…as well as other areas of necessity.”
Dr. Marcus stared at her, his blue eyes cold and unfeeling like an impenetrable wall. How would it be to work with such a man, to become such a human being? Something about him seemed so oddly familiar: the angle of his jaw, his chiseled chin. But exhaustion overwhelmed her again – her mental capacity stilted by all she had learned.
Debrille interrupted her tangled thoughts. “We need you, Samantha. You need us. It is time to carry out your revenge on the man who raped your mother, killed the Bartlett family, murdered your grandmother, and attempted your life.”
Samantha stared at the pile of torn fragments, the photograph of that hated man. A beast. Anger surfaced hard as ice and beat against her ribs, begging to be released.
As she continued to glare at the pieces, Samantha replied, “I accept.”
The matter settled, Debrille erupted from the chair, belying his earlier frail appearance, and strode from the room followed by an entanglement of guards. Dr. Marcus alone remained to change her IV bag. Afterward he wrote on her chart and checked her pulse before he spoke.
“I’ve given you a sedative in this bag to help you sleep a little longer. Helps to repair that broken arm and your weakened lungs.”
Samantha rolled her eyes at him. “I’m well aware of the need for rest, doctor. I was near the top of my class, as I’m sure you know.”
A brief stare glanced from his eyes, the hint of a smile on his lips. “I’m looking forward to continuing your training.” Then Dr. Marcus left the room.
The steady beep of the monitor echoed in her mind as the medicine took effect. Her jumbled thoughts drifted to the photos on Gramm’s dining room table. Two faces came together in her mind as darkness swelled around her.
Dr. Marcus was Shades.
Chapter 16 - An End
The limousine turned down the cemetery lane. Samantha stared through the dark veil as the familiar twin vaults came into view. A chill passed over her at the sight of fresh earth mounded over the surface of the nearby ground. A new granite stone graced the head.