Wrong Time (26 page)

“So she’s okay?” Lee asked while
sounding extremely relieved.

The doctor nodded to him. Lee jumped to
his feet and grabbed the doctor. Before Lee even realized it, he was giving the
doctor the biggest hug he had ever given anyone. The doctor only smiled. Some
people went to medical school for the money or the ability to say that they
were a doctor, but this particular man only wanted to help others. Seeing the
expression on the face of the man across from him let him know that he had done
his job. Even if he couldn’t understand the words of praise that were coming
from Lee’s mouth, the look on his face was universal. The doctor had seen it
many times before. He had just given Lee a piece of his world back. That’s what
he lived for.

“All right, let the guy breathe,” Sam
said.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” Lee said.

“He says that it’s quite all right and
that you’ll be able to see her soon,” Sam said.

Lee reached his hand out and shook the
hand of the man who had saved his best friend’s life.

Eventually, Lee was given the okay to
go see Trish. As he entered the room and sat down by her bed, he was relieved.
She was sleeping soundly. Lee thought it was better that she be sleeping than
for her to be awake and in pain. He took her hand in his and just sat silently
beside her. He felt foolish for all the anger he felt earlier. He thanked God
for another chance to speak to Trish. Lee was tired, and as he sat there, he
slowly felt himself starting to drift off, but then suddenly, he felt
something. Someone was squeezing his hand. He opened his eyes to see Trish
staring at him.

“Hey,” Trish said weakly.

“I’m so glad that you’re okay. I
thought I had lost you,” Lee said.

“Thank you for saving me. Without you,
I don’t know how I would have gotten out of there.”

“No, I should have been watching your
back. None of this should have ever happened.”
 

“Don’t blame yourself. You did all the
right things. Now if you want to talk to someone about the wrong things, then
go talk to Zane.”
 

“What do you mean?”

“Well, why do the foot soldiers get
body armor and the bomb squad just gets a pea shooter and a good luck wish?”
Trish asked with a forced smile.

“I’ll definitely talk to him about it,”
Lee said and smiled.

“I’m going to try to get some sleep. In
case you haven’t noticed, this is really painful,” Trish said.

“All right, you do that, and Trish, if
I didn’t say this after everything that’s happened, I would regret it.”

“What is it?”

“I love you, and I’m so glad that
you’re okay. I don’t know what I would have done without you.”

“I love you, too. Do me a favor, and
don’t leave me alone. I want you with me,” Trish said.

Lee refused to leave her side until she
was able to be released from the hospital.

Chapter 27

A few days earlier .
. .

Markus Boyd found himself wounded and
on the run from two intruders. As he limped to the lift, he clutched his leg,
which had a fairly large knife sticking out of it. Once he was inside, he thought
hard about the two faces he had seen. They were none other than the faces of
Nathan Grey and Samantha Fisher.

“So the reports were true,” he mumbled
to himself.

Earlier in the week, he had gotten
reports that Chloe flipped on him. She had given up information on where he
might be. That much was clear, but Markus still had a hard time believing it.
He had pulled that girl off the street and rescued her from a life that was unacceptable
for anyone to live, and this is how she chose to repay him? He was furious and
determined to find Chloe. Torture would do no good to get information out of
her. Instead, he would make her an offer she couldn’t refuse, and only when she
had told him all that he wanted to hear and done everything that he wanted her
to do, would he kill her. At least that’s what he thought he would do at that
moment. The door to the lift opened on the ground floor, and Markus exited and
limped outside to his car. He was losing blood, and he didn’t really feel like he
should drive, but it wasn’t as if he could walk four blocks over to the
facility, at least not in the shape he was in. He began to drive, and soon he arrived
at his destination. He got out of the car and hobbled toward the doorway until
someone saw him. His men rushed toward him and carried him inside. The place
may have looked like an ordinary business, but it held countless soldiers in
disguise. The particular reason that he came here was because of the doctors
who they had inside. They wouldn’t ask questions about the wound he sustained.
Once he was on the table and the doctors began to work on him, he felt a prick
in his arm.

Ah, an old familiar feeling, Markus
thought to himself. Markus wasn’t a drug addict in his own mind, but a man in
his position had to have something to sooth his worries, or so he told himself
every night. The truth was that Markus couldn’t sleep at night, and without
such medications, it was a near impossible task. The only thing he couldn’t
stand about injecting himself in order to sleep was the dreams that came with
it. He could never figure out if these dreams were actual dreams or thoughts
from another time that he didn’t have the courage to face when he was awake. As
a cool feeling worked its way up his arm, he felt himself slowly start to drift
away. Markus was asleep, but his eyes were clearly flickering back and forth at
the moment he fell asleep.

Markus looked up and saw only a
screaming drill sergeant. He just lay on the ground, crying in the dirt and
screaming for his mother.

“Your precious mommy isn’t coming for you.
Don’t you know that all you useless kids either have parents who abandoned you
because you were so useless, or your parents are dead? Either way, no one’s
coming for you now or ever,” the man said.

Markus couldn’t remember his exact age,
but he couldn’t have been more than eight years old. He was part of the
beginning of a project that was called the Ripple Effect. The idea behind the
project was to take children who had no home and no family and then train them
from a very young age to be the perfect soldiers. They broke the minds of the young
boys in the camp quickly, but they never anticipated just how broken Markus
would be when they got through with him. Today the same project operates as a
half educational and half physical camp, but back in the days that Markus was a
prisoner there, it operated as an almost exclusive physical military camp that
pushed children and teens to their breaking point. Many of the young boys died
from exhaustion. Many others simply gave up on living and withered away, but
after that first day, Markus made up his mind. His parents hadn’t wanted him,
and now this man standing in front of him was going to make his life a living
hell, and that was fine for now because someday he would kill everyone
responsible for his pain. As the years went on, it became clear that Markus
stood far above his peers. He was stronger and far more intelligent. Instead of
being scolded, he was now being rewarded as if he were some kind of success
story for the evil men who had put him here. He went along with their little
gestures, the whole time pretending that he was proud of his accomplishment.
The truth was that he was only biding his time and waiting for the perfect
opening to take back the life that was his and to take the life of a few choice
people. Once he had graduated and was given his first mission, he eagerly
accepted. He was to kill a certain target located in Germany. Markus didn’t
know what the man had done, and truthfully, he didn’t care because he wasn’t
going to go after him anyway. Instead, he waited outside of their camp for his
old instructor. He followed him home that night and watched him from a
distance. At home, the man appeared to only be a normal person with a wife and
two sons. Markus wasn’t just angry. From the years of torment he had received from
different instructors like this man, he had grown sick in the mind. He didn’t
want to just kill this person, but, instead, he wanted to see how much he could
make him suffer first. He made his way up to the house with only his field
knife and a rope. Markus burst through the door, and he was immediately met by
his old drill sergeant, but Markus was ready for him. In fact, he had been
fantasizing about this moment for years. He met the man with a hard right hook
to the jaw, knocking him down to the floor. Markus had the strength that would
be expected of a professional boxer. They had taught him well at the camp, maybe
a little too well. The man’s wife ran to the phone, but Markus ran to her and
grabbed her. He placed the blade up to her neck, but then he paused. He had a
better idea.

“You don’t want to do this,” the man
said to Markus.

“Tie the children up,” Markus commanded
as he threw the rope to him.

“What?”

 
“You heard me. Do it, or this precious
lady you love so much is going to need a new head,” Markus said while sniffing
her hair in a sick way.

“All right, just hold on,” the man said
as he took the rope and started to tie his children to their chairs.

He didn’t want to do as Markus said,
but he didn’t feel as if he had a choice.

“What are you going to do?” the man
asked after he was done with his task.

“They’ll make fine little soldiers,
won’t they? They’re both about the same age as I was. Well, I think that one of
them may be a bit younger than I was, but it doesn’t matter,” Markus said as he
quickly slashed the woman’s throat.

“Why?” the man cried in a half angry
but also very desperate voice.

“I want you to be traumatized as much
as possible before I kill you, and I want you to die knowing that your children
were as desperate and shocked by their own circumstance as I was,” Markus said
with a sick smile.

The man came at Markus in a rage, but
he was hasty. He had no weapon, and Markus was half his age and had twice his
strength. Markus caught him by the throat with one hand and slammed him against
the wall.

“I’m really going to enjoy this,”
Markus said as he plunged the blade deep into the man’s stomach. As Markus released
his grip from the man, he slowly slipped to the floor. Then he handed the man a
small knife from the kitchen table.

“I’m going to give you a few tasks and
every time you fail to do one of them, one of your children is going to be
hurt,” Markus said.

As the night went on, the screams of a
man and his children could be heard outside the small country home. The only
sound that could be heard from Markus was laughter. He was the happiest he had
been since he was a boy. Markus didn’t hurt the children because the man
complied with every single self-mutilating task he gave him until he bled out. As
Markus left, he turned to look at the children he was leaving behind. He felt a
small twinge of guilt in his heart. Maybe it was that even a monster such as
him still feels some level of guilt, or maybe it was because he had felt the
same fear and anguish that those two boys were feeling, but either way, as
Markus walked out of the house, tears began to stream down his face. His task
was done, and regardless of how he had to accomplish it, it somehow gave him peace.

At first, Markus found work with common
criminals. He was given a new identity, and he helped smuggle things in and out
of Mexico. It was a lowly job for him, but he changed his appearance, and with
his new papers, it was truly a second chance. After working there for a year,
something occurred to him. As a child he was powerless, and as an adult, all he
was doing was following the orders of others. Markus had a need to feel in
control of his life, and he was determined that he would never feel powerless again.
He went to Las Vegas to find some of that power for himself. While most crooks
make money in Vegas by paying people off to throw games, Markus had a different
approach. Paying someone off only cuts into the profits. Threatening to break
someone’s face if they didn’t do what you told them to do, and then actually
delivering on your threat if they didn’t come through, was a much more
profitable and effective means of gaining money and power. Markus’s name was
one that spread quickly amongst criminals, although it was never truly his real
name. Markus’s real name was Drew Barnes, but that was a name he was ashamed of.
Drew was only a weak child, but Markus was a powerful man who was not to be
crossed. Markus had all the power and money a person could want in Vegas.
Before long, he had so many things going on that he had to hire associates to
help him with all of his many endeavors. This still wasn’t enough power for him.
In his spare time, Markus studied, getting smarter and smarter daily. He went
to school and got degrees to build up his knowledge. Being a powerful Vegas
thug was one thing, but he desired the ability to control the strings of the
very system. He would control the masses and the very government that had
controlled him for so long. As he went through school, his ideas grew to a
scale that was nearly unimaginable. He understood how to not only control
people, but he also had ideas about how to control small governments and even
turn nations against one another. All it took was someone smart enough,
committed enough, and just devious enough to do the task. Soon he would begin
his exploits. He had the money, and he had the time. Now all he needed were
people, and that wasn’t going to be much of a problem. No matter where you go,
there’s always someone who craves money, power, or in special cases, just the
ability to kill people without limitations.

Once Markus had established dummy
offices around the world, he began his reign of terror. All it took to get
things stirred up was a little supposed terrorist attack here or there. You
could attack one location and make it look as if someone else was responsible
for the action. Then after the fighting between the two countries began, you could
sell weapons to both sides and kill targets for a price. It was perfect. He
would use their system, a system that had manipulated the people and killed
many innocent children, to manipulate them. They would pay him for his services,
and he would control who lived and who died from afar. It was an added bonus
that he could give people like himself who were alone, sick, and generally lost,
a chance to start anew. He could give them a chance to kill the very people who
had tortured them so much. Jacob had been one of these people, and Markus was
sure that Chloe was, too. She had been abused as a child in ways that made even
Markus cringe. He would never say it, but he felt a human connection with her.
Here was a woman who had felt the pain he had felt. She was someone who
understood how to block out pain and to go to another place in your mind where
you can buy some time until you can kill the very people who are hurting you.
That much he loved about her. He couldn’t help but think of how it was truly a
shame that she would have to die for crossing him. He almost wanted to show the
girl mercy when she was found, but to do so would show an extreme weakness that
would without a doubt be taken advantage of by someone like Chloe. Markus
forced his eyes open. His leg was throbbing, but he turned to his left to speak
to the man sitting next to him anyway.

“You should rest, sir,” the man said.

“I need you to find the location of
Chloe Schneider now,” Markus said.

Once the man scurried out of the room,
Markus began to look for his phone. As he looked to his right, he found that it
was lying on the table next to his bed. He turned to grab it, but he was
interrupted by a visitor in the room. It was Daniel Gronkowski. Daniel was the
man who led the facility here in Paris, and he wanted some answers as to what
was going on. Markus set the phone down momentarily.

“God! What happened to you Markus?”
Daniel asked.

Markus explained the entire situation
to him.

“I need you to do two things for me.
First, I need you to schedule a flight out of this place for me, and second, I
need you to prepare everyone here to fight. They know they have me on the run,
and they’ll strike here soon. That much, I’m sure of,” Markus said.

Daniel couldn’t help but be shocked by what
he was hearing. Markus Boyd was running away from a battle. This was the man he
had come to think of and fear as an almost indestructible being, and he was
just going to run away like a coward. After noticing the look he was receiving
from Daniel, Markus spoke.