Escape (Chronicles of Hart) (24 page)

Six armed men swooped in through the front door surrounding Hart and his man. They grabbed him, wrapping his arms behind his back to cuff him. Hart locked eyes with Grace as they took him to the door, “It’s not over” he hissed, smiling as they dragged him away into the light of the moon. Grace smiled;
this will be over soon enough
, she thought. Grace stood like an avenging angel, calm and peaceful, while men stirred around her. She watched as her father was taken into custody, waiting until he was out of sight before she stepped back to the staircase and collapsed in a heap onto a step. She clutched at her side, curling into Ethan as she pulled him down with her “I love you too.” she smiled into his dark eyes. They stared out the front door at the low moon over the scraggly lawn for a moment before more men came rushing through the doors and the whole house was lit up like a circus.

Men swarmed into the building searching, setting up lights and taking statements. Paramedics came rushing in behind them. Grace and Ethan stayed still, looking at each other for the first time in years. Ethan looked into Grace’s damp eyes and whispered, “I’ve always loved you.”

Grace pulled herself up to kiss him.

***

Paramedics had looked Grace over. She was stitched up in the ambulance for good measure. King insisted that Grace and Ethan stayed in a safe house until this case had gone to court. He was on the phone making arrangements with his office. He and his partner would be staying close. Chung had woken up three hours ago, and was set to be released in less than a week. King had been on the phone with the hospital when it had happened. Chung seemed pretty relieved that his hard work had paid off this well. He would have to wait for the rest of the story until he was out. King was afraid of giving him a heart attack, and he was still in pretty bad condition.

King looked over the files before he had to hand them in to his senior officer. Kidnapping, murders, embezzlement: Hart had been involved in a great deal of shady business. In King’s opinion killing off your own daughter and locking her away in a tower topped the list pretty well. Hart was going away for a very long time. And
he
was going for a very long shower when he got home. As the adrenalin and caffeine slowly wore off he could feel his eyes growing heavy. He took a ride in the back of one of the vans, closing his eyes only once. He woke up at the office sure that he had only blinked. After forty eight hours like he had had, he felt that he could sleep for a week. He probably would, his schedule had already been cleared for him. He smiled as his co-workers patted him on the back on his way in, all dying to hear of his gallant rescue mission. He felt like James Bond in all the commotion of his return to the office. But they too would have to wait for the story, he needed to go for de-briefing first. Walking past his desk on the way to the back office, he looked down at it one last time, knowing that by tomorrow the corner cubicle would be moving on to a new agent. He patted his wall as he passed, smiling.

***

Grace settled into her secret life under house arrest like a professional. Having spent ten years locked away the situation seemed a nice transition into her soon to be free life, giving her a chance to adjust to all the new technology and catch up on some of the life that she had missed. It felt strange knowing that if she were to be tossed back into her old life this very moment she probably wouldn’t know what to do with it. She wasn’t ten years old anymore; grade school was long gone for her. She had skipped middle school and high school. Most of her old classmates were in college or university. Some of them had even settled into life as adults. Having Ethan for company greatly improved her demeanor. He was able to help her figure out little things, like how to use a touch phone, or a computer; how to change the channels on the television. She was baffled with how technological every day things had become. Grace was finally happy, taking time to enjoy the little things she had missed over the years, like bubble baths. She had a lot to catch up on and was looking forward to every step. She spent nights curled up on the couch with Ethan practicing reading children’s books while they watched re-runs of Shark Week over and over.
How had she gone this long without knowing all of this?
She thought to herself smiling.

The safe house itself was little more than a bungalow on a dead end street. The fence in the back had been electrified and the furniture, though minimal to others, was extravagant and lush compared to the lumpy bed Grace had used in her tower. This was considered their high security risk placement. There had been cameras installed all over the outside of the house in almost every tree and bush. Sometimes when Grace was close to a window she would look at them and make faces, thinking King and Chung might be a the other end watching. Whoever was probably thought she was strange but it helped fill the time up for her and Ethan, sneaking through the house without being seen from the outside cameras. They would crawl past the windows laughing at their bad ninja skills when they were spotted by the agent on duty at the house. He would sit reading his paper with a stoic stare on his serious face until he looked up and caught Ethan or Grace rolling across the floor under the window; coffee would spill down his chin as he laughed, clutching his side. Grace took pleasure walking from room to room and sitting on every chair, noting the firmness or softness of the fabric and cushion. Whenever Ethan caught her doing this he would start laughing and she would go flush with embarrassment. Still she enjoyed having more than one place to sit and the luxury of company was not lost on her. She would talk and talk to anyone in the room for hours and she liked listening even more. Hearing the sound of someone else’s voice was something she had missed in her imprisonment. Talking out loud to herself had never filled the void of someone else’s spoken thoughts.

Grace would stand for hours with the fridge door swung open deciding what she would try next. After ten years of rice and protein shakes she was thrilled to have real food again. The different textures and tastes were euphoric to her bland taste buds. She often found herself taking small tastes of many things until she was full rather than eating a real meal. Even the water tasted better, cold from the tap and not filled with rust and white clouds like she had become accustomed to. Everything made her smile and at times she found her cheeks sore from all of it. But not even that could stop the grin plastered across her face from staying put.

King and Chung had stayed in touch with them, calling every day to check in on them. Two new agents, Kramer and Wilkinson, had been stationed in the house with them for their safety. The situation was strenuous on the new agents. The case King was working on was very high profile and put Grace and Ethan on several hit lists; there were people who could not afford to let this case be opened let alone brought to trial. Two times they had packed Grace and Ethan up in the night and moved them to a new location; Hart had business partners who would not
allow
this case to go to trial and they would do just about anything to stop the ball from rolling forward.

Grace had taken to avoiding the windows after she locked eyes with a strange man in their backyard one night. That had been their first move. Since then she had kept all the blinds closed and Ethan close by her side. Their games of window ninja had come to an abrupt stop quickly becoming a more serious avoidance of any place that they could be seen from the outside because of the targets on their backs. They took to quieter activities to pass the time. Ethan was trying to teach Grace multiplication, it was something she had missed out on when she had been ripped from her old life. She spent hours poring over fake homework assignments Ethan and Wilkinson would make for her trying to solve the problems on her own. She wanted to get up to par with the children she had grown up away from. She wanted to know what they knew.  Sometimes she would become frustrated when a particular question remained unanswered before her for too long.

“If you have three sets of three,” Ethan explained one night. “That makes nine. So, three times three would be nine, see?”

Grace scribbled onto her piece of paper making sense of it as she nodded. She looked back up to Ethan with a smile still plastered across her face.

Grace leaned in for a kiss, “Thank you for not treating me like an idiot, I feel so silly.” She brushed her lips against his lightly.

“No problem.
” he pulled her in so their foreheads touched, “and I felt pretty silly when you had to save me from the cellar.” He smiled “You were always the knight in shining armor Grace.” he brushed a strand of hair from her face delicately.

“And
you
were always my princess,” she laughed, pulling him in closer again.

SAFE

Soon Grace had more pressing issues to deal with as she was escorted by guards twice a week to meet with her attorney. This case was going to be very public and she was preparing for the long-term consequences. Having been legally dead for the past ten years left a lot of questions to be answered in the eyes of the law; her name, education and inheritance had all fallen wayside when she had been presumed dead. Given the gravity of her father’s actions this trial would likely leave her with enough to get by for the rest of her life but Grace wanted more. She wanted the education she had missed out on. She wanted to keep her identity and she wanted more than anything to move on. Grace wanted to save other people, but first she had to finish saving herself.

Luckily with the help of some of Hart’s men that had been taken alive they had pinpointed locations of some of his other facilities and three other missing people had been found alive. All of which had been set to stand trial against one criminal or another. Most of the cases had been dropped when the key witnesses had gone missing. It was an ingenious business plan for Hart: if you could pay someone to hide your opposition for long enough, the case wouldn’t hold up in court. Grace even considered her father’s methods more humane than the alternative. Although purely evil, at least he kept most of his victims alive until their court dates blew over. Then he would ship them off to Mexico or Europe in cargo and have them unexpectedly show up back on the radar looking like they had bailed on the courts of their own free will. Still the cases had all been closed and he and his business companions would continue swindling money out of others pockets for another day.

This case was getting bigger every day as more names from the list were found and investigated; the cases were all linking together. Nearly all of the crime filed away ten years ago was accounted for on Grace
’s pages. Mr. Hart had been running a shady business of kidnapping those in opposition to his business morals by faking their deaths or as in Mr Evans’ case, killing them. As the names and dates began to line up Grace’s attorney became more flustered, arriving with her own entourage of security one day. It was then that Grace began to realize the dangers she was in standing against these men. Her team of one slowly became a team of five, and then ten as the list of criminals became longer and longer. They were fighting for more victims than just Grace. She soon met some of the other survivors, mostly conversing through Skype and other online correspondence. Even she was not permitted to leave the safe house for these meetings. She was under house arrest until the court date finally arrived.

Months passed, seasons changes, and Grace waited until the day arrived when she was finally called upon to put her father’s actions to justice. She relished the moments of fresh air as she walked to the armoured van, arriving at the court through a back entrance. She was kept in a locked room with the other witnesses surrounded by guards until the case required her. Each day that Grace appeared in court Ethan was there to support her. Sitting between King and Chung for security, he was not allowed out of the house without a guard any more than she was. And each day that her eyes locked with her father’s she felt pity for him. He was going to find out just how difficult it was being locked away in a tower but he was going to have very unhappy company with him. With his conviction he had taken with him a ring of crime bosses and several companies involved in staffing his kidnapping business. Reporters wanted to hear from Grace, swarming at her each day as she left the courthouse through the back entrance. She held her chin high and her lips pressed tight as she passed them by. She wanted her story to be told but she wanted it told on her terms, sparing no details. She would bide her time until it was the right moment to share her suffering with the world, when her situation might help someone else who was suffering. Not for publicity or fame she was not going to be portrayed as a victim. Grace was going to be the survivor.

***

The trial passed with little effort from their side. They were a clear winner from the jump off. Three years of lawyers and courtrooms were still heaven compared to three years locked in her father’s prison. The day the case was finally closed Grace felt a rush of relief. She watched with quiet pride as her father was escorted out of the room in his formal jumpsuit for the last time. She held Ethan’s hand tightly under the table, he smiled to her whispering, “See? You did it.” She nodded.

As they exited the courtroom that day agent King turned and took Grace’s hand in his. Looking at the proud smiling young woman before him he felt pride in his accomplishments. She had been stronger than he had given her credit for. He still remembered the scraggly young girl that had been running toward her freedom only three years ago. Now standing before him in a clean cut suit with her wispy locks of twisted orange tucked behind her ear, it was hard to imagine they were one and the same. He looked at her with pride in his tired eyes,