and laptops and see dozens more of their people—our people have their dead bodies spread across the tiled floor in HD in a firestorm created by the FBI. It won’t matter to them that the truth is a mass suicide or a mass police incursion.”
“We haven’t accomplished much tonight otherwise,” Sheridan shook his head. “We haven’t recovered any of Atlanta’s missing children.”
“And Serena Tennyson is still loose,” Chris added.
Sheridan stole a long look at the mansion. Ryan watched him, but the pain of defeat had painted his face red. Or perhaps that pain is the betrayal you felt when you learned that your dear old friend, Raymond Rice was Pandora’s Regent.
I wonder if you hurt nearly as much as I did when I learned my father was the Caretaker.
Chris continued to watch both men, but found that he kept a guarded eye on Ryan. He could see the man’s muted lips utter: Don’t do this, Sheridan…don’t do this.
Sheridan looked at the top his shoes.
“I look forward to reading your report, Agent Prince.”
For better or worse Sheridan had made decision. For better or worse, Justin Ryan wasn’t finished yet.
“Are you insane, Sheridan? The sooner this crisis ends, the sooner you are likely to be named Rice’s successor. And yet, you are going to throw it all away for this man.”
“Maybe,” Sheridan nodded without looking away from his shoes. “Go on, Agent Prince, let’s not wait any longer.” And then he fixed Justin Ryan with a sharp glare. “This is my call, Mr. Ryan.” And then he turned his attention back to Chris as if it had never left him. “But if I hear as much as one gunshot…all bets are off.”
“Understood,” Chris was off, angling towards the mansion’s front door without bothering to look at Sheridan or Ryan again.
Getting inside the residence wasn’t as difficult as he would have thought. He picked the lock with the skill and silence that Xavier had taught him when they were teens. Once inside he got his gun out, got low and slid himself along walls, behind furniture and along the floor inching his way forward.
The entrance opened into a huge atrium longer than one he’d ever seen even over at Ernestine Johnson’s place. The walls were newly painted, the floor’s wood finish spit shined and immaculate. Huge paintings of famous black leaders lined the walls down one of the nearby halls. He needed to keep moving, but he couldn’t help note all of the historical figures in his presence. He saw Martin Luther King Jr, Malcom X, and President Adolphus Sweet…
…As well as portraits of his father Isaac Prince and his brother Xavier.
And then Special Agent Christopher Prince smelled the unmistakable scent of already rotting bodies even before he saw them.
There were bodied sprawled on top of other bodies loitered along seemingly every inch of space in the next room on the floor. Two bodies were keeled over on a nearby couch. Three more were slouched over loveseats. Many more had died while they sat at the dining room table.
They had poisoned themselves. It was the only logical conclusion. The common factor near each and every body was a plastic cup with red wine, or some similar substance, spilling on the surfaces around the dead bodies like blood. Chris went numb. Chris couldn’t move. And all he could think of was if he would look like these people here when his mother’s cancer overtook him months from now.
He got his guard back up and his gun out in front of him again. Most of the poor bastards were probably higher level Peacekeepers, members of the board and others loyal to a House in Chains from a distance.
Where are you Grace Edwards? Where are you Quincy Morgan?
And then he found the two members of the Circle as well.
There was a small breakfast nook directly behind the dining room. Small was a relative term, of course, in a place as vast as this mansion was. What he saw there reminded him of the classic setting from the Last Supper that he’d seen even as a child.
Grace Edwards was dead…of that it was no doubt. And to see the finality of it, to see her like that after the loyalty and love that she’d shown her brother and the help that she’d provided him—and yet, the born investigator in him was far more interested in how she had died—and by the looks of it she had not gone down without a fight. Good for you, Grace
Chris kneeled over to where her body lay flat on the tile. He examined her fingernails, as polished and beautiful as they were earlier, were now broken and cracked. Someone else’s skin and bruised blood was underneath them as well. This wasn’t about his betrayal of Xavier, he thought, as turned her hand over and again. It was far more personal than that. In the end, even with this potential of a HIV infection from her undercover work with the Bishop, Grace didn’t want to go through with this. She didn’t want to die. He felt for her pulse a long time after that to see if fate had awarded her wish …but to no avail.
Quincy Morgan had gone with even more of a bang; a death worthy of a Sargent of Arms of a House in Chains.
He’d shot himself in the back of the head, undoubtedly minutes after watching his flock die in front of him. In his mind’s eye Chris could remember meeting this man for the first time in the Fox Theatre during the siege there. It felt like years ago now. And the special agent hadn’t forgotten the sense of jealously that he felt towards the other man for his build and intelligence. How he had missed being him in his younger days. How much he wanted to be respected and even feared by other men once again.
And now it was little time left before Special Agent Christopher Prince joined this man in eternity.
Chris stopped in his tracks and prayed for God to send him a sign—any sign or angel to let him know that He was still on the side of what was still good and righteous.
And then his business cell phone rang, startling him.
Chris answered the call without looking at the caller ID.
“Christopher,”
Angel. It was an angel on the line.
“Christopher. Thank God you are alive. Thank God I reached you in time.”
“Angel, where are you?” The questions came pouring out of him. “Where have you been? Are you alright?”
The Doctor tells him where her approximate location is.
“Christopher, listen to me closely,” She sounded as she had been waiting to unload her information for a long time. “Four of the missing children survived the ordeal. He and I have come to agreement for him turning himself in. Keaton’s prepared to surrender to you and you only. Do you understand me? No cavalry, no copters. No one should be there when this goes down except you, me, him and these children. We need you to hurry though. I think we’re being tailed, but I’m not sure whether it is Pandora or somebody even more dangerous.”
Chris heard shots ring through the phone. A second series of shots sounded even closer.
“Angel,” Chris shouted into the receiver. “Angel,”
“Hurry, Christopher,” The fear in Angel’s voice was tangible and real. “I don’t know how long we can make it out here.”
And then the signal between the phones was lost.
He looked at the receiver for a minute before he dialed Special Agent Nicholas Sheridan and reported to his boss A House in Chains’ horrible Vision of the Future that he’d found inside the mansion.
How could he have forgotten to tell Angel that her husband was alive, well and here in Atlanta?
Angel
AN HOUR EARLIER:
She found Louis Keaton, Moses Jackson and the other three boys slumped over, tired, weary, cold, hungry, scared and in near panic.
She found them using a precise recovery route from her memories of her time under Serena Tennyson with Pandora, great timing and fucking dumb luck. Going into this simple analytics told Dr. Angel Hicks Dupree that the chances of finding the lot of them alive was so obscenely remote, that the spill that she’d prepared for them seemed like a distant memory from someone else’s life now that she was actually face to face with them.
And yet, she’d found them and for the moment that’s
all that mattered.
Louis Keaton’s general—Moses Jackson explained to her what had happened to them since Louis had engineered their escape from the clutches of Pandora and some compound miles from here. It wasn’t all good. They’d lost two boys to the quake when their pickup truck overturned. Louis—that’s what he referred to himself as in the interim—quickly told her that they were being followed by several other parties, not just men loyal to Serena Tennyson.
And then he told her that he’d barely overcome an episode about a half an hour before she’d found them.
And she could see his eyes misting as he told her that Hugh was calling him even now as they stood here talking.
“Hugh,” the doctor said as gently as she could and massaged his neck. How many years has it been since I last saw you, Hugh. She knew that their time was short—they were being chased and probably from many different directions, but she needed to know some things first. “Come over here, Louis. Why don’t you come over here and sit next to me please. You must be so tired. Please come. Sit.”
“Why do you address me by calling me by the terrible name? Do you want to see him surface again? Do you want to have him destroy and chance that we have to survive tonight?”
“Just like I told you then I’m reminding you again now—you should make no mistake Hugh Keaton is your true self.” Angel said. “You’ve used this Louis persona as an escape mechanism all of this time. I can’t blame you for that. It was safe there. It was civilized