The Crimson Fall (The Sons of Liberty Book 1) (36 page)

“Edward, what—”

Before Edward could think, he turned around, raised the gun, and pulled the trigger. Shannon’s eyes went wide as she fell fast to the floor, leaning up against the blood streaked wall behind her. She looked down at the growing circle of red and began to quiver. She glanced up at Edward; her eyes filled with pain and confusion, and suddenly she began to scream.

Edward rose to his feet and held out his hand, trying to quiet the hysterical girl.

“Help me!” She shrieked as he approached. He raised her shirt and looked at the wound. The bullet had struck her in the middle of her abdomen just above the waistline. He tried to comfort her, but she just continued to cry with pain. He glanced around the room—looking for something to help bandage the tiny hole—but he knew her injuries were beyond his abilities to fix. Suddenly, with a painful realization, it dawned on him that there was only one thing he could do for her.

“Please, Edward,” she said as she grimaced with pain, “Do something.”

“I’m sorry.” He stood up slowly, tears starting to stream down his face, and raised the gun. Shannon looked up with horror in her eyes.

“No!” she yelled through the sobs. “Don’t do this. You can help me. You don’t have to do this.”

“I’m sorry,” he said as the gun wavered unsteadily in front of him. “It’s the only way.”

“No, don’t do this.”

“I’m sorry.”

“No! I’m not ready. Edward. Don’t!”

Her last shout echoed in the hallway, followed by the reverberating boom of the gun. Edward dropped to his knees and began to weep, knowing that the life he had lived was over. When his sobs finally subsided, he shuffled over to Bob’s desk and began to gather what he could. His watch buzzed again inside of his briefcase next to the dead girl. Edward walked over to the leather case and opened it up. He reached inside and picked up his watch. It flashed once with a reminder on the screen.

‘Bob’s Birthday on Friday. Don’t forget!’

Edward took a deep breath as he tried to justify what he had done.
Bob was going to kill me and I couldn’t have done anything for Shannon. Don’t ever forget them. Never forget them!
He clasped the watch on his wrist—hoping it would somehow remind him of the life he had just lost. However, doubt continued to cloud his mind, telling him that he alone was the reason that his friends now lay dead.
No!
He shouted back at the voice inside.
I did what I had to do!

And as he paused—standing alone in the swirling wind that engulfed him—a dark voice rose from the depths of his soul and responded to his silent outburst.

And you’ll do it again, Edward. You’ll do it again.

Monterrey, Nuevo León, Mexico

Day Fifty-Two

The man underneath the straw hat never liked the heat, let alone Mexico. He stood next to his dusty car, wishing the sun didn’t feel like it was bearing down on him even while he waited underneath the shade of a tree. The gray solar panels on the roof of his car had already charged the battery to seventy-five percent, and he hoped he would be back on the road within fifteen minutes. He glanced at the mariachi band to his left—a group of seven men that he pictured as nothing more than musical clowns without the face paint—and shook his head. He had no idea how they did it, but the men somehow managed to dress in full dark green and gold cotton outfits even though it felt a thousand degrees outside. It was a kind of heat and an annoying culture that the man under the straw hat looked forward to leaving behind.

Food had been somewhat scarce over the past few weeks, but most of those problems had remained north of the border. The man had been smart enough to stock up on what he could as soon as the interview ended. He had enough jerky, beans, and canned foods to last him, and him alone, weeks more on the road. He held his head down, taking his merry time on a piece of dried beef, when a woman wearing jean shorts and a checkered button up shirt pulled up next to him in the simmering parking lot. She got out of her car, holding her purse as she put on a pair of aviator glasses and took out a bottle of water.

“How do they do it?” the woman asked as she motioned toward the band. “You’d think they’d shrivel up like that beef jerky you’re chewin’ on.”

“Hell if I know,” the man said with a laugh.

“This damn heat is maddening,” the woman said with an added curse. “I can’t wait for some cold again.”

“You got that right.”

“I’m Holly, by the way,” the woman said as she stretched out her hand.

“The name’s Frank,” the man lied.

“I take it you’re not from here?” the woman asked.

“What gave it away? My snowy complexion or my lack of enthusiasm for all things Mexican?”

The woman laughed as she removed her button up shirt, stripping down to a black tank top underneath before splashing water on her hands and rubbing her neck. If her goal was to catch the eye of the man under the straw hat, she was doing a mighty fine job.

“So which way you heading?” she asked.

“North,” he replied.

“Same here,” the woman said. “I figure we’ll be like fish swimming against the current. I still can’t believe what’s going on up there.”

“It happens to the best of nations.”

“So you got family that way or something?”

“No family,” the man said as he took another bite. “Just me.”

“That makes two of us. The road gets lonely, you know. We might make a good team, you and I. Frank and Holly, the hot, displaced, traveling fools.”

“That’s just the heat talking,” the man said as he looked at the woman sideways.

“Probably, but it’s nice to find someone willing to speak English.”

“Well, I hate to break it to you, sweetheart, but I’m not much of a talker myself,” the man said dryly. “But talk all you want. I’ll do what I can to keep up.”

“Good,” the woman said with a slightly seductive smile. “I could use the company, you know.”

“I’m sure,” the man said plainly.

“So what did a man like Frank do before the crap hit the fan?”

The man paused, looking over at the woman ever so slightly underneath his hat before laughing. “What is this?” he asked. “Do you really think I’m an idiot?”

The woman paused, her eyes narrowing with concern before she eventually replied. “I’m not sure I follow.”

“Are you one of them?” he asked. “Because you don’t look like one of them, and I’d hate to mess up that pretty face of yours over a disagreement, sweetheart.”

“Look, I don’t know what you’re talking about, but you can’t talk to me that way,” the woman said firmly.

“Empty your purse,
Holly
,” the man said. “If that is really your name. And I can talk however I please, thank you very much.”

The woman stuck her right foot out and planted her left hand on her hip before replying angrily. “I most certainly will not.”

“Fine, then,” the man said. “Have it your way.” He reached behind him and pulled out a gun, pointing at the woman. “You think I’d buy the ‘pretty lady traveling my way’ routine? You should have tased me and tortured me first, but that time has come and gone, hasn’t it? Now you’ve got five seconds to convince me you’re not one of the Patriarchs’ own before I pull this trigger. And don’t even think about reaching in that purse.”

The woman stumbled over her own words as she grew frantic. “I don’t know what you’re—”

“Five. . . .”

“Please, I just wanted to—”

“Four. . . .”

“Do you seriously think—”

“Three. . . .”

“Okay I’m leaving!”

The woman held up her hands and began to back away. The man kept his revolver pointed at her.

“I’m just going to—”

The woman tripped over a small pothole in the simmering asphalt and fell fast to the pavement. She hit the ground hard, sending her purse and the small gun she had been hiding sprawling across the pavement. A gun, the man noticed, that was very similar to the multipurpose weapon he had always carried before he abandoned the Patriarchs. She looked over at the gun with wide eyes and then up to the man.

“Please, I was only doing what I was told. Wait!”

The man pulled the trigger, silencing the crooked agent for good. The mariachi band stumbled over their notes as the crowd around him fled. He walked over to the dead woman, inspecting the now useless sidearm, before tossing it aside and proceeding to search her. In her back pocket, he found a card-sized tablet, much like the one he used to take on missions. After a few moments of hacking through the encrypted key codes, he unlocked the device and found what he was looking for.

Target: Mitch Dunham.

Last known address: São Paulo, Brazil.

Mission: Apprehend him alive and unsuspecting of your identity. Protect him for questioning. If he is dying or in mortal danger, use all means to gain the access codes to the Scorched Earth Program and the location of the White Shadow Prototype.

If necessary, use torture.

              ~Sigmund

Mitch scrolled through anything else he thought might be useful and then tossed the tiny device into the bed of a nearby pickup truck, hoping its tracking device would throw his pursuers off. The woman had been careless, and he suspected they wouldn’t be so discrete next time—once they found her body. He stood up, put his sun glasses on, and dusted off his pants before climbing back into his car. He started the engine but paused, waiting as he tried to decide his next move. After the email he had received from a friend, he had been traveling toward the same destination for weeks. However, just because he avoided capture this time didn’t mean they wouldn’t find him again, and he couldn’t yet afford to risk leading the Patriarchs to the very weapon he had stolen from them.

That is, the weapon that eight men had died to protect.

So much for New Mexico,
Mitch thought as he put the car in gear.
I’m sure Tim will be just fine in his little fortress for a little while longer.

Searcy, Arkansas

Day Eighty-One

“I’m sick of this weather,” Nadia Andreou mumbled to herself in her native language. She paced back and forth in what had once been the Administration Building at Harding University, the small college sixty miles north of Little Rock that she attended. Or at least she had attended, when it was still a school.

Despite the fire burning in what once had been a purely decorative fireplace, a shiver ran down her back. She rubbed her arms briskly and then crossed them beneath her breasts as she continued to pace.

Now what, Nadia?
She asked herself.
You should have gotten out of here as soon as you saw it coming.

That was not entirely true, and she knew it, but it was close enough to the truth for her to at least wish it. It had been almost two months since the panic first began to sweep the nation. Much of the student population—over four out of every five—had fled as soon as the food disappeared, but the remaining students either lived too far away or were too blinded by their faith in the system that they had decided Harding was where they would be safest. Being a Greek immigrant, Nadia fell in the former category. But even the number of those who had initially decided to stay had dwindled as winter approached. In the end, roughly three hundred students, twenty professors, and a couple hundred local citizens had taken refuge at the small college campus, banding together in an effort to survive the madness.

Ten years ago, at the age of eighteen, Nadia had left Greece and immigrated to the United States with her family in an effort to escape the corruption and oppression that had gripped her beloved Hellenic
Republic after the financial collapse of twenty-ten. She had been raised during that time of great economic turmoil and watched as Greece fell under such a massive amount of debt that Germany and others had come to their rescue with loan after loan. It had been no secret either that every Greek citizen knew they’d never be able to repay what was given. When the loans stopped coming, the austerity measures were put into place. Eventually people rebelled, demanding new leadership, though they only managed to vote in new corrupt politicians. Nadia had been young when things got really bad, but she quickly grew accustomed to the new way of things. Years later, at the age of twenty-five, her master’s degree in political science had earned her a spot at Harding University teaching on the subject of policy repercussions while she worked toward her doctorate.

So, when she saw what happened on live TV and heard the frantic accusations against the president before Dan Martin was shot, she knew it would only be a matter of time before things grew dark once more in her life.

And everyone else’s life for that matter.

“Nadia,” a voice cried from behind her. “I’ve been looking everywhere for you.” A handsome man with curly black hair who had been one of her undergraduate students approached her. The man’s words quickly brought Nadia from her distant thoughts and back to reality.